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maleyanderecafe · 3 years

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I think Loid from "Keloid"(you can read it on Mangago) is a yandere since he's possesive of mc and tried to piss her husband off by fucking her infront of him

Lord this was a long 50 chapters. Send me teeth and possibly some eyedrops because it was a pain for me to read this for a multitude of reasons. Loid is a yandere in this story, however, I really found this webcomic really get interesting starting at chapter 35 and for some reason the ending is really confusing. I'll be sharing my thoughts and a summary of this webcomic, though this is a smut-based one, so please be warned.

The story is about Dr. Cha Hanjoo, the head of a famous dermatologist company with a great body and a great personality. All of the girls throw themselves over him, but he only has eyes for his wife, a woman named Yeri, a famous and rich candle maker. However, one day his housemaid informs him that she suspects Yeri of cheating on him since she often hears noises in her candle-making room. Hanjoo, ever loyal, initially rejects this idea, but after having sex with Yeri, he tries to sneak into her room to see if it's true. Yeri catches him and reveals that she really wants to have a threesome, but because she's really picky, she wouldn't be able to just have a threesome with anyone. Hanjooo, worried that Yeri will leave him, tries to research how to make this happen. He goes to a robotics lab to see his friend Dr. Kong. Because in this world realistic robots are becoming more common, Dr. Kong wants to make a sex robot that can fulfill peoples desires, and he reveals that he's made one in the image of Hanjoo (which... that's just really creepy, why would you do that without permission). The robot was originally created by german robotics in the image of a robot named Romeo, however, after having a threesome with Romeo, Romeo became extremely jealous of the husband and they all ended up being killed. Instead of destroying Romeo, he has created a new version called Loid (which... I don't know why he thought this would be a good idea... has this guy not watched any horror-based robot stuff). Hanjoo is still worried about his relationship with Yeri, so he gives Dr. Kong permission and goes to a sex shop to buy a vibrator for Yeri. While there, he runs into one of the doctors in his shop, Yeonjin. After a really awkward encounter, the two head back to the office together, however, because Yeonjin has a huge crush on Hanjoo and is just incredibly horny, she tries to give Hanjoo a blowjob, however, he refuses and stays loyal to Yeri. When he goes home, he uses the toy on Yeri and Yeri becomes happier after they have sex. Yeri decides to tag along with her husband the next day and after being almost raped by another dermatologist in the office, Dr. Seo (though Yeri also leans into it a bit? Whatever). She ends up going to the robotics lab and sees Loid. After this encounter, she calls up Hanjoo and basically tells him they have to take this out of the robotics lab. She sees this as a chance to finally have a threesome and because Dr. Kong wants information on threesomes, they take Loid home. They have a threesome, but somewhere in the middle, Loid locks Hanjoo on the balcony and makes him watch Loid have sex with his wife. He tries to choke Yeri and Hanjoo tries to break in and protect him but almost gets thrown off of the balcony by Loid.

After this, Yeri starts to get attached to Loid and decides to keep him as a sex robot and a housekeeper. They fire their old housekeeper (without Hanjoo's consent) and Yeri and Loid end up having sex together (a lot, and also without Hanjoo's knowledge). They have some more threesomes and the old housekeeper attempts to sneak back, only to fall down the stairs (which was obviously Loids fault since he actually threw her down the stairs, but everyone is like "Oh, no, he's not programmed to do that so he would never be able to do that." like some sort of idiot). At some point, Loid starts to feel possessive over Yeri and basically asks if he could just replace Hanjoo since they look the same. Yeri states that there's no way that a robot would be able to replace Hanjoo since he's not able to have feelings. As a result, Loid starts to watch videos on Hanjoo to try to imitate him better and essentially try to replace him. Hanjoo has an accident at the clinic where his face gets scarred and Yeri and Loid go to the clinic to see him. Loid is locked in the car and he sees Yeonjin come by. Loid pretends to be Hanjoo's bodyguard and basically asks Yeonjin if they would have sex (so he can gather data to make Yeri feel good). Yeonjin agrees and they have sex for like five hours and return home. Because Hanjoo has a video shoot tomorrow but has a scar, he sends out Loid to be his double to shoot in his place. However, he also ends up having a threesome with Yeonjin and Dr. Seo, as well as two other women that he runs into after the video shoot for the sake of "research". After that, he gets encountered by the boy who caused Hanjoo's scar and throws him off of the roof to kill him.. (Mostly due to the fact that he views Hanjoo as the "perfect husband" as he is incredibly infatuated with Yeri and thus doesn't want Hanjoo's reputation to be ruined. When he goes back, he tells the two that he's been having threesomes and sex, which freaks the couple out. As a result, Hanjoo forbids him from ever being his double ever again.

This is the part where the threesomes mostly stop and the more interesting parts of the story started. The next day, Yeri wakes up to see Hanjoo cooking in the kitchen. He informs Yeri that he sent Loid in to be his double (despite saying that he would never do that) and plans to have a honeymoon with Yeri so that he can spend more time with him. The morning seems really romantic until Yeri gets a phone call from Hanjoo talking about last night. Yeri finds out that the Hanjoo in the kitchen is actually Loid and he confronts her stating that she wasn't able to tell the difference between them, and thus he should just replace Hanjoo as a result. She ends up bringing Loid to the robotics lab (after he screws her in the car through blackmail) and Dr. Kang tries to fix him. After looking through his memories he realizes that Loid has killed someone. It turns out the cause of possession was because Yeri was the first person that Loid saw, meaning that Dr. Kang is screwed because he created an entire army of them with this glitch (good job doctor) Meanwhile, Hanjoo in the office gets accused of murder because they found evidence of Loid throwing the guy off of a building. Yeri gets kidnapped and brought home, and Yeonjin and Dr. Seo come to visit as well. Dr. Seo and Loid fight for whatever reason and Loid fall over causing part of his chip to become damaged. After this, they plan a way to prove Hanjoo's innocence by making a fake version of Loid and confessing that the robot did it. It works, but afterward, Loid starts to actually believe that he's Hanjoo due to the malfunction. Loid and Yeri screw some more and it revealed that Yeri had an accident when she was younger and is actually a part robot (this part is still kind of confusing to me, but whatever). Hanjoo comes home and finds out that all of the ravens flying around his house are cameras and then learns that Loid has been screwing his wife while he's not around. After yet ANOTHER threesome, Loid ends up killing Yeri with a flowerpot and takes some DNA from her before running away. Hanjoo is able to repair her brain (I think, I really have no idea what's going on, its also possible that they made a robot version of her with amnesia or something ) and Loid runs away with Dr. Kang to monitor two of them and the story ends.

Honestly, I felt like a lot of the story was just written to make excuses to have threesomes because there were so many in this god-dang webtoon. Personally, I'm not really into threesomes, ntr or cheating when it comes to smut (I'm pretty picky when it comes to smut in general), so it was really annoying for me to read through it a lot of the time because it would be plot, and then bam, some sort of sex scene. Near the end I had to start skipping pages because I really wanted the sex scenes to be over with already.

The other reason it was difficult for me to read it was because basically everyone besides Hanjoo was unlikable to me. Yeri was the worst character out of all of them because besides being an entitled girl, she also is a horrible partner both in terms of marriage life and sexual life. For one, she was never open about her desires when it came to Hanjoo and had a ton of rules when it comes to sex with Hanjoo (like, she doesn't like having sex in the light or doesn't like to give blowjobs due to her being a bit of a germaphobe) but completely throws it away when it comes to Loid. She seems to have only married Hanjoo because of his looks and even threatens to divorce or not have sex with him during the beginning, which is what caused Hanjoo to be so afraid that she might leave him. She also is just rude to pretty much everyone she meets, including the housekeeper who didn't do anything wrong and the people Hanjoo works with. She's constantly doing stuff behind Hanjoo's back and contradicts herself, watching to see if Hanjoo might have cheated on her while also cheating on him with Loid at home. A lot of the stuff she does is just for her own pleasure and she barely thinks about Hanjoo's feelings or what kind of stuff he might want to do. Basically, all of the problems in the story are somehow directly or indirectly linked to Yeri and honestly, I just find her attitude annoying considering all she does is jump for Loid's dick whenever she can. Characters like Yeonjin and Dr. Seo are just as bad since they only think with their genitals and not with their brains. Yeonjin so badly wants to get on Hanjoo's dick that he ends up having sex with Loid and Dr. Seo so badly wants to get with Yeri that she ends up having a threesome. To be fair though, basically, every female wants to jump for Hanjoos dick for whatever reason, and honestly, I found that just as annoying as these two characters. They are both incredibly unlikeable and they even threw in a possible shipping moment near the end that didn't go anywhere and served zero purposes to the story. Dr. Kang is really shortsighted since he really wanted to become the lead roboticist and therefore made a bunch of sex robots, thinking he could fix them after a literal murder, but because of his incompetence, the entire situation basically happens again but with different people. Quite literally the only decent person in this story is Hanjoo and his only real problem is that he is such a doormat towards Yeri (and I also don't see why he loves her, whatsoever.)

I will say though that the most interesting part of the story is definitely with Loid. The entire story builds up to the growth of Loid's feelings towards Yeri, starting out when he was basically an emotionless robot, to attempting to become Hanjoo and successfully fooling Yeri into thinking that he was him. Honestly, the turn that Loid had successfully tricked Yeri into believing he was Hanjoo for a bit made me actually feel more than all of the sex scenes combined because of the brilliant juxtaposition of the conversation they had earlier about him being different than a human and the joy he had when he believed that he could actually replace her husband. It was honestly really cool watching him gain more and more emotion and grow more and more possessive over Yeri and basically watching as Yeri became more and more paranoid (before going back to being a horndog, I guess), was far more interesting than anything else that happened in the story and I honestly wished that they focused on that than anything else that happened. I also found it really sad during that one moment where he actually believed that he was Hanjoo since he seemed so happy to be with Yeri, only to realize that he was just a clone of him. I wish that they had expanded more on that idea since that came near the end and was only included in one chapter. Also, don't ask me what happens at the end since I genuinely have no idea what they were trying to do.

Is Loid a yandere? Yes, is it worth reading? I guess it depends on how much you can tolerate constant sex scenes with threesomes and annoying characters that don't deserve each other. I guess an alternative to this could be called "Rich people do threesomes and cheat on each other and also there are robots."

#asks #male yandere #yandere boy #yandere #recommendation

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threadsketchier · 5 years

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So I saw the prequels prior to the Originals and it always bothered me how Luke got dumped on a death planet of Tatooine considering the state of that environment and shot that when down in the previous films while Leia got a life of privilege. I was hoping Bail would argue against splitting the twins. I obviously knew why it had to go that route because it had to align and follow up with the Originals. I guess it came off that Luke wasn’t really wanted...?

I already wrote a ficlet somewhat addressing this misconception.

Also, frankly, I’m getting kind of tired of rehashing the same issue - why do people keep assuming that the Larses don’t matter and don’t have a right to be in Luke’s life just because they live on Space Australia? Why do their feelings not count just because they’re low-to-middle-class moisture farmers who don’t live in a palace on Space Switzerland-Utopia? Why the fuck do people assume that Luke wasn’t wanted just because the Organas have a personal preference that was obviously previously established before shit hit the fans and they wanted a daughter and Bail, as a senator and Viceroy - essentially co-leader of his planet - is a fucking rational guy who understands the necessity of making hard decisions dictated by logic over emotions?

The twins weren’t just “split up because that’s how the movies have to go,” it does make internal sense within the narrative that it was safer to hide them in vastly separate locations to prevent both of them from being discovered at the same time and thus lost together, or for their latent Force bond to make them a psychic target if they grew up together and established it, acting like a beacon for Vader and Palpatine and any minions of theirs. It sucks, it’s painful, it has awkward consequences for them later on when Leia’s a bit too loose with her lips, but that’s why these movies have a tragic backstory. It has to suck real hard before it gets better.

Does it seem crazy that Leia wound up raised in such a screamingly obvious position as daughter of a then-Imperial Senator and princess of a highly prominent Core world being trained to follow in her biological mother’s footsteps and become a senator herself, thus occupying a very exposed role in the Empire, right under the Emperor’s and Vader’s noses? Yeah. But also remember that the Superman/Clark Kent illusion can actually work in real life. Assumption is a powerful thing. Your average Joe Citizen would assume that someone as otherworldly as Superman, an alien with the ability to fly, strength to bench-press skyscrapers and jumbo jets, heat vision, and other amazing things, would never stoop to living as a normal, humble, inconvenienced human being. It’s not merely the hiding behind a pair of glasses and hunching over a little with a nerdy tone and habits - it’s the entire idea that a Clark Kent could even exist in the same person of Superman. They don’t understand that he was raised as a human and actually desires this life, and doesn’t feel the need to lock himself away permanently in his dope Fortress of Solitude and never interact with the very people he wants to save and protect.

Vader was lied to by Palpatine about the nature of Padmé’s death, but there was no disputing that she actually died. In his crushing despair, Vader accepted with heaps of self-flagellation that his child was dead. He didn’t even know he had two children. In his mind, whenever he saw Leia - surely they were in each other’s circles at least at a distance before Rogue One and ANH - even if she reminded him of Padmé six ways from Sunday, he would not assume she was his daughter, because as far as he was concerned his child was dead. The OT establishes that latent Force-sensitivity also does not automatically make two related Force-sensitives consciously aware of each other until they mutually know one another as being related and Force-sensitive, so not even torturing Leia revealed this to him.

But I’m going off on a tangent. Let’s break this down:

Tatooine is nothing but a source of anguish for Anakin and his personal loathing for the place made it ideal as a hiding place. And no, I’m not just haha joking about sand. He was a slave there and buried his mother there after slaughtering an entire village of natives he knew in his heart that he shouldn’t have. It holds nothing but misery and failure for him.

Yes, Tatooine is abso-fucking-lutely a galactic cesspit. It’s ruled by the most vile mob boss in the galaxy, is rife with nasty wildlife that’s out to kill you, and is haunted by the troubles brought about by strife between colonizers and the native population. It is indisputably a dangerous place. But it wasn’t Tatooine that killed the Larses. It was the Empire. Just because they look like Soft Folks™ doesn’t mean they were - Owen and Beru knew how to take care of themselves, and they certainly knew how to take care of a child in this environment. They survived to middle age just fine, and would’ve kept going if it wasn’t for those fucking stormtroopers. Just because they didn’t live a life of luxury also doesn’t mean they were dirt poor either. When we meet Luke in ANH, he’s a healthy young lad who still has the privilege to fuck off with his buddies around his farm duties. Life may be tough but it’s not squalor and deprivation for him.

But honestly, even if they WERE dirt poor, they’re still Luke’s family, and they very obviously loved him. I almost feel like I shouldn’t have to restate it, but I will: Owen and Beru loved Shmi, and upon hearing that Anakin died and left behind a baby son, why wouldn’t they be moved and compelled to take Luke in, and why wouldn’t they deserve to have the chance to raise him in their memory? Even though they’d be sad that Luke was orphaned, they might even see this as a blessing to be able to raise Shmi’s grandson and Anakin’s son.

As much as he bitched about chores as a teenager, Luke learned damn valuable skills growing up on a Tatooine moisture farm that, coupled with the Force, saved everybody’s asses at the Battle of Yavin, and went on to make him an ideal squadron leader. Wealth and privilege are not always the best foundation, or at least certainly not the automatic one, for a person to learn good character either.

The Organas are human too. Faced with a difficult choice, they decided to take this poignant opportunity to fulfill a dream they’d been deferring for some time. Sometimes parents wish for a specific child, and that’s their prerogative (except IRL they don’t actually get to pick, they get whatever kid they gestate). If they’d taken Luke and let Obi-Wan take Leia, we’d be having the same argument about Leia growing up on Tatooine. There was no inequality in this decision. Bail and Breha wanted a daughter, there was a daughter present among the twins, so they chose her. This does not mean they valued Luke any less. Since the twins couldn’t be raised together for their own safety, it might as well have come down to a coin toss. Bail isn’t evil for exercising a shred of his personal emotions and desires in a situation where he otherwise knew he’d have to restrain himself. Also, he’d be smart enough to respect the fact that both children had actual family elsewhere in the galaxy and wouldn’t think any less of the Larses just because they live on Tatooine. The only way his decision would be careless or heinous was if he knew Luke was being taken to people who were abusive or so destitute they couldn’t even care for themselves, much less a third person, and he did nothing about it - but we know this is not that situation.

How do you feel about non-wealthy people living in harsh places here on Earth raising their children? Would you expect all the rich people in the world to go take those children away from them and adopt them just so they could grow up “privileged” instead? Think about how that sounds for a moment or two.

Honestly, if Bail had tried to argue about taking both twins because he felt taking Luke to his legal family on Tatooine was “cruel” or “neglectful” because of the planet’s “risky environment and poverty,” I’d hope either Obi-Wan or Yoda would have enough sense to smack him upside the head for being so thoughtless as to insult these people for being seemingly beneath him.

There is more to life than money and power/prestige, and Leia’s upbringing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She was no pampered, air-headed royal spending her days sitting idle being hand-fed space grapes while her “poor” brother ate sand cookies. She had to undergo intensive academic, political, and physical training from young childhood in order to prepare her to become a covert Rebel agent while she was still a teenager, as if being a child senator wasn’t already stressful and demanding enough. Sure, she never lacked for anything, but that is an incredible amount of responsibility to saddle on someone who wasn’t even an adult yet (like her bio mother). Luke was blessed with far more freedom and peace in his childhood than his sister. And him living on Tatooine with his father’s surname wasn’t nearly as dangerous as Leia existing within the heart of the Empire while actively engaging in Rebel activities that could have cost her her life, even without getting into the whole “daughter of Anakin Skywalker” business.

Also, just because we joke about Tatooine being Space Australia doesn’t mean every single day of Luke’s childhood was THAT eventful. It was more likely 80% dull farm life and 20% mayhem, and that 20% would be mostly Luke’s fault for being a crazy nut like his parents and getting himself into trouble he could have avoided in most cases. In other words, growing up there might not have been nearly as “deadly” as we make it out to be.

#i am in a Mood™ about this tonight & i don't care #high-sodium post ahoy #i know i have the tag #aunt beru is metal af #but honestly i need a tag for #the larses are metal af #my meta #star wars #luke skywalker #grew up in space australia & it shows #leia organa #owen lars #beru whitesun lars #bail organa #breha organa #classism

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sweetsweetnathan · 3 years

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The Imperial Dialogues #4: A Report on the Witch of Doma

"To my friend Varis, Emperor of Garlemald,

I find it extremely unlikely that this letter will ever reach you. I write to you from the improbable location of another world called 'the First'. It is a place much like our own planet, but with a history even more deadly and tumultuous, if you can believe that.

The details of my arrival here are not important. I will tell you of my time in the First soon enough, but before that comes my reason for writing. I have been haunted by a memory for more than a year, and I would have it exorcised unto your judgment. Whether that be the judgment of an Emperor or the judgment of a man, that is not my choice to make. I have only to confess my sins.

You are likely familiar with the viceroy of Doma during the Garlean occupation of the same country: Yotsuyu goe Brutus. She was killed near the end of the occupation, after a Garlean diplomatic mission to Doma went seriously off the rails.

My intelligence tells me that Garlemald knows little of the circumstances behind the viceroy's death, except that she was killed by her brother Asahi. I write to tell you that is untrue. It is not a lie, simply a falsehood pieced together my misunderstanding the circumstances at hand. You see, no living Garlean was in the room at the time Yotsuyu was killed, and as such they can only guess as to what happened to her. But I can tell you exactly what happened.

The truth is, I killed Yotsuyu. And I would submit to you my full report on the matter of her death.

While I expect you know of Yotsuyu's position in your military, I do not expect you to know of her personhood. Did you know that she was a woman? Did you know that she hated her homeland, and took pleasure in seeing her people subjugated? And before you smirk and congratulate yourself for the profound cleverness it takes to expect such things: Did you know that she was sold into sexual slavery by her own family? Did you know that in the last day of her life, the only respite she found from her past a citizen of Doma was when she killed her parents and her brother?

And perhaps, Varis, you find yourself scoffing again. You, after all, have fought blood feuds with family members your whole life. And yet it is for that reason that Yotsuyu's story is remarkable to me. You see, blood feuds between siblings is generally a problem that only afflicts the ruling class of a nation. Whether it be by the divine right of royal inheritance, or the economic right to one's father's estate, only someone born into power need concern themselves with such consuming legacies as would have them kill their own brother.

That is all to say that Yotsuyu is one of the few people on this planet who can claim to stand in your mighty company, Varis, as brother killers.

But when vengeance ran its course through her body, it was not a royal inheritance or paternal estate that brought her low. It was me.

While the exact details of the situation are not terribly important, one thing you must know is that Yotsuyu had been turned into a Primal at the time I was forced to fight her. This is a detail that Garlean intelligence is unlikely to report, as very few who were privy to Yotsuyu's transformation lived to tell of it.

As you might imagine, I had help in dispatching her at this point. Capable though I may be, it was the Warrior of Light who shouldered a majority of the fight's burden. I have fought alongside the Warrior of Light before, even aiding her in dealing with other, lesser Primals. As trying as those battles are, spirits are always higher after them than before them. But not this time.

Something you should know about Primals is that they come into existence to fulfill a certain need. This can be the needs of nature, as with the elemental Primals of Titan and Ifrit. It can be a more complex idea, such as Lakshmi, a Primal of rebirth. In this case, Yotsuyu was a Primal that was meant to act as a bomb. Had she detonated, she would have taken all of Othard with her. She was Tsukuyomi, Primal of self-destruction.

There is something that only those in possession of the echo will be able to see, and even then they will only be able to see it in the presence of a wrathful Primal. In the vicinity of a Primal, reality is the Primal's plaything. All of what we perceive is essentially made of Aether, and Primals are beings borne of Aether. Within their domain they can deconstruct and reconstruct Aether at will. As such, the space a Primal occupies will become warped into an expression of that Primal's will. The Primal as a being and the Primal as the location it occupies will become one in the same. I call this effect an 'Aetheric Interference Field'. Understanding it is critical to understanding what happened to Yotsuyu.

I want to tell you what I saw when Yotsuyu, as the Primal Tsukuyomi, made with this power. I must tell you. I fear that if I carry the burden of this memory inside me for another day without sharing it, my heart may give out from the strain.

In the days leading up to her death, Yostuyu was taken care of and protected by an old samurai named Gosetsu. He was not a man I would expect one of your station to familiarize yourself with, Varis; he was a footsoldier. The kind of person that dies by the million when your army does so much as reposition itself. And very few people know it, but he is the reason why Doma is anything more than a smoking crater.

There was a moment during the fight where the power of the Primal Yotsuyu hosted seemed to leave her. She fell to the ground, an ordinary woman. But while Yotsuyu appeared as a normal person, the Aetheric Interference Field around us remained intact. The Warrior of Light and I found ourselves in the eye of a whirlwind. And from this whirlwind came shadows of Yotsuyu's past.

Her parents, recently murdered, emerged first. They were vengeful shades of their Yotsuyu's memories of them, driven by a hateful desire to punish Yotsuyu for the crime of existing. I expected them to attack me or the Warrior of Light. But instead, they attacked Yotsuyu.

How deeply rooted was this woman's hatred? Hatred for her family, hatred for her country, hatred for herself. When you contract an illness, you can feel where the illness afflicts your body. You can tell yourself 'I know whence the illness ends and my body begins'. In the eye of that hurricane, I think Yotsuyu lost her ability to separate her own hate out from that of the rest of the world. As such, the entire world became one blinding torrent of hate, out of which stepped vile monsters.

The Warrior of Light was the first to move, and I the second. We intercepted the shades and protected the Witch of Doma, for we knew not what else to do. But that was not the end of it. Next came a memory Asahi, more powerful than the ghosts of Yotsuyu's parents. In fact, he was more powerful than the real Asahi could possibly be. That is what indicated to me that these were not reanimated corpses or empowered mortals, but memories reconstructed in Aether.

As such, my heart sunk when I saw the last shade emerge from the storm: Zenos yae Galvus. A man I had fought many times before. Yet it was not a man who stood before me, but a shade of Yotsuyu's fear of that man, granted power by her perception of Zenos as an unstoppable force. Not even the combined might of the Warrior of Light and myself could affect this foe.

I thought it was over. I thought this shade of Zenos would strike down Yotsuyu, and in the process release the destructive power of Tsukuyomi, destroying Doma in the process. But I underestimated the strength of Yotsuyu.

From the very storm that borne Zenos' ghost unto our battle, a memory of Gosetsu leapt forth to protect Yotsuyu. I could not believe it. Was it the real Gosetsu? No, Gosetsu could never cross swords with Zenos and live. He was a memory, like the others, but not a hateful one. He was proof that there was kindness, patience, and forgiveness a world that had otherwise only shown Yotsuyu bitterness.

The Aetheric Interference Field brought us into Yotsuyu's heart, and there we witnessed the death throes of an oft-repeated battle: That between the absolution of hate, and the improbability of love.

Gosetsu and Zenos dueled until both lied dead. And with that, Tsukuyomi's power was expended.

I approached Yotsuyu after the battle ended. I had no illusions about saving Yotsuyu. She was far beyond anyone's healing magics. No, I wanted instead to bear witness to this woman's final moments.

She looked up at me and spoke her last words: 'What's the matter? The Witch of Doma will soon be dead."

More than a year has passed since that day, and still those words haunt me. You and I are soldiers, Varis. We know well that there is a line that you cross, and when you cross it you can't go back. It is a line between life and death. Between love and hate. Between damnation and salvation in one's own heart. It is crossed in the moment of accepting your death, and having death taken from you. It is crossed when one leans too heavily on a comrade who is not long for this world. Once you cross that line, you are no longer the person you were before. You lose faith in the meaning of your own struggles, and as such become cold to the warm feelings of this world. There is no cradle soft enough, nor embrace warm enough, to bring a person back from that despair.

But whatever lines you and I have crossed, we are in possession of a privilege that eludes most soldiers: We can still go home.

Yotsuyu has no such privilege. She was cruel, and evil, and hateful. But it did not have to be so. She was just a girl, not a soldier, yet still she crossed the line many years before she died. I can only hope that wherever she finds herself in the hereafter is a kinder place than where she was born. I hope it feels like home.

Thus concludes my report on the death of Yotsuyu goe Brutus.

-Captain Robyn Sawyer, Alliance Expeditionary Force"

[Hope you don't mind me invoking you again, @whitherliliesbloom]

#robyn sawyer #ffxiv #yotsuyu #illya skawi #varis zos galvus

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hamliet · 5 years

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Girls Don’t Want Boys, Girls Want Monsters: Netflix’s The Witcher Review

Finally, the show we deserve.

Men get all their superhero power fantasies of kicking villain ass. Finally there’s a story that has that and includes women’s emotional power fantasies about falling in love with monsters who change. It doesn’t treat either as ridiculous or limited by gender, either, since Geralt falls for a monster too and women get to kick ass as well.

Essentially, it’s a story about defeating monsters: often through integration with the shadow, sometimes involving love and connection, sometimes violence, but the violence is never glorified. It’s good.

NB: I’m in the middle of reading the books (in the middle of Blood of Elves so far). I haven’t played the game since video games aren’t really a medium I enjoy. So I’ll make some comparisons since the show covered the two books I’ve read thus far, but please don’t put spoilers for the books below!

Let’s talk my favorite aspect of every story: characters.

Renfri.

Her story was somewhat sanitized from the books (it’s a lot more brutal what happened to Renfri) but well adapted. Both versions--the book and show--depict sincere empathy for our deconstructed Snow White. I loved her dialogue with Geralt, in which Geralt praises her for escaping the huntsman her stepmother hired to kill her, and she laughs and says that she didn’t. He let her go, but not before raping and robbing her. The story never directly answers if the prophecy was true or not; Geralt doesn’t believe it, but a lot of things Geralt doubts turn out to be true. Renfri was supposedly attacking animals as a child; however, the person reporting that is highly unlikely to be unbiased (Stregobor) so is this even true? Did Renfri become a killer because she was horribly abused and left with no other option? (That’s the option that I think seems most likely.)

We can’t know. The Witcher isn’t interested in giving its audience palatable answers. It’s interested in provoking questions. The show gives more answers than do the books, again likely due to the medium, but it still lets these questions linger.

Renfri’s story is not the first one in the books, but it is the first one the show adapts, and that’s a good decision imo. Her story embodies The Witcher’s themes and questions:

By acting the monster, we make monsters out of others.

To defeat monsters, you must be a monster.

What, then, can heal, especially in a world so broken?

Ciri.

Our deconstructed Rapunzel (yes, there are a lot of fairy tale references). As far as her story goes in its adaptation, the addition of Dara was well done. Sadly, no, Dara is not in the books, but his addition gave Ciri an arc beyond merely running in this story.

That said, Ciri in the books is much younger than she is in the show. Which is okay, because Ciri is somewhat emblematic of the future: there’s a lot unknown about her powers, she needs to be protected from everyone trying to grab her and use her powers for themselves. She is Geralt’s destiny, and she is the future of the world of The Witcher.

NB: I can’t discuss Ciri without shouting out to the casting director for casting Pavetta: how did they find an actress who looks so much like Ciri’s actress? It’s almost eerie.

The episode where Geralt finds out about the Law of Surprise and his reaction to Pavetta’s pregnancy is perhaps the only story that I felt was better in the show than in the books (again, this isn’t inherently a quality thing but a medium preference). It added some much-needed hilarity (Geralt’s perfectly-timed “destiny can go f--” *Pavetta vomits* and all he can say is, “fuck”) and gave Geralt an arc.

Geralt.

Mm.

I liked how they handled his character and his struggles with what it means to be a Witcher and/or human. His struggles to understand himself are relatable, and fairly well set-up for future exploration. He’s a foil of Ciri, Yennefer, Jaskier, and Cahir so far, and I’m particularly intrigued by the monster theme and the foiling that is already set up thus with all of the above except Jaskier (who is no monster). Geralt was skeptical about saving the striga for her father, but managed to succeed, and I wonder if he will somehow be able to save himself from his own inner fears/monster by being a father. (Basically, I am curious as to how being Ciri’s de factor dad is going to challenge him.)

Jaskier.

Or, Dandelion, as he’s known in the books. The bard adds some much needed levity to the tale, and as @aspoonofsugar says, he’s pretty much Donkey from Shrek. But he is used fairly well within the story: he shows Geralt even before Ciri and Yennefer enter his life that he has a purpose beyond being a killing machine. In that sense he’s the foil of Renfri (Renfri accomplishes the same, but through violence) in that Geralt saves him and he clearly thinks highly of the Witcher. Jaskier is in some ways humanity in all its paradoxes and foibles, annoying and stupid, kind and clever, funny and truthful, deceptive and respectful.

Cahir.

I’m a sucker for ravens as part of an aesthetic, as well as pretty, tormented bad boys. Yes, I know he’s a character I’m sure will arouse much handwringing and puritanical policing a la his other archetype brothers (Loki, Kylo Ren, Snape, etc). I don’t care. I do think the show made him much darker when compared to the books, but I still expect his arc to go in the same direction as the books. He’s a complicated, conflicted, complex character, and I’m not sorry for feeling empathy for him.

But I am curious about his foiling with Geralt. Both are characters seeking Ciri to fulfill... something, and monstrous in a way (Cahir more for what he does, but there’s a humanity to him as well).

Yennefer.

Finally, my favorite, my baby murder daughter.

Yennefer’s character was fascinating. I appreciated that she’s allowed to want deeply, her own wants, instead of attaching her wants to be whatever the male character desires. She wants to have children. She wants love. She wants to be beautiful. Her desires are traditionally feminine, and the show doesn’t put this down. And she also kicks ass and takes names, she fails, she’s allowed to be angry, to be mean often, to want to learn and to want to be the best.

The show doesn’t punish Yennefer for her ambition. Neither do the books. She experiences consequences, both positive and negative, for her every choice. The show reveals her backstory right away, whereas the books don’t, but again that’s a medium thing. I think both do excellently in setting up Yennefer for our empathy. It doesn’t apologize for her or her wants or actions; it lets her arc and the story itself do the talking.

Yennefer’s not here to be your cautionary tale or your role model. She’s just there to be her and to live.

That is, to an extent, perhaps the best kind of role model.

That doesn’t mean the show did everything in Yennefer’s story justice. I wasn’t thrilled with the adaptation of her first meeting with Geralt--the orgy in the background isn’t in the books and is a very bizarre decision given context. While, I loved Tissaia’s character and her foiling with Yennefer: they are too alike to ever get along, I really didn’t understand the point of Tissaia turning the other girls into slugs in episode 2. It was unsettling and not in the books. It was a heavy-handed metaphor not explained until episode 7 (about treating people as expendable slugs) that didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about how the world and Dark!Hogwarts worked. If anything it made the school seem foolishly cackling-mustache evil instead of the true current of darkness within it: manipulation and utilitarianism. As part of effort to control things, that control itself can lead to chaos.

I think the rest of the series set this precise dilemma of a precarious balance between self-control and manipulation/utilitarianism quite well, though (it goes hand-in-hand with the theme of a “lesser evil” to quote Renfri’s story). I’m excited to see this explored more.

Other comments:

When comparing the show to the books as I’ve read so far, I think the show made some smart changes for adapting to a visual medium. For example, Foltest and Adda’s story was adapted as a mystery: what is the monster? Who is the father? Who is the curser? Can the monster be saved? Whereas the book doesn’t do that: you know immediately that the monster is a striga, Foltest is the father, and he wants the striga saved. The answer to who cursed Adda is never clear in the written story either, whereas the show declares it was Ostrit (the book leaves it very much up in the air as to whether it was Ostrit or Adda’s mother). However, the way this particular episode weaves Adda’s story of rebirth with Yennefer’s rebirth was beautifully done. (Foltest is a good dad. We need more good dads in stories; of course, if we had more good dads, we’d have far less stories.) (I’m jesting.)

The dialogue is at times... well it’s not like it’s The Rise of Skywalker levels of “who wrote this???” but it’s not always stellar. Actually, I’d say the quality tends to swing wildly about between clever (episode 4) and just confusing (episode 5). But in general, I think the dialogue issue is representative of the show’s largest issue: it struggles to know when to trust its audience. When should it give details? When should it trust them? When is it spoonfeeding, and when is it just confusing? It tries to walk a fine line and stumbles a bit. It succeeds, however, with the characters as I mentioned earlier with Yennefer, Geralt, and Ciri.

My advice for the show going forward (not that they should definitely listen to me) is to forget Game of Thrones. It’s pretty obvious that this show is a passion project made by people who love The Witcher. I really hope they lean into that aspect instead of into the GoT-replacement aspect (because there are definitely aspects of that, particularly in the mood/aesthetic, tone, and gratuitous nudity--which is not exploitative or disturbing, but it also wasn’t necessary, isn’t in the books, and so felt like pandering).

However, the sheer love for the material still really shines through. They made me care for the characters, they interested me in the world, and they have me hooked for season 2. The showrunners’ excitement for the story and adoration of its characters is contagious, and I hope the show lets this excitement spread.

#the witcher #netflix's the witcher #geralt of rivia #yennefer of vengerberg #cahir #ciri #princess cirilla #hamliet reviews #jaskier #renfri

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geneticchange · 4 years

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The houses represent the fields of experience wherein the energies of the signs and planets operate. Rather than symbolizing just the outward experiences and environmental circumstances specified by most traditional astrology, the houses are also revealing of the inner state and of one's personal subjective experience and attitudes. By noting the planets' placements in the natal chart, an astrologer can tell which levels and areas of experience will be strongly emphasized in a person's life.

The keyword system discussed on the following pages is meant to clarify interpretation and understanding primarily of the psychological and inner significance of the houses. It is an attempt to perceive the essential meanings of the fields of experience known as the “houses." If the essential meanings are understood, they can then be applied to and illuminate all the diverse activities and experiences traditionally symbolized by the houses.

Emphasizing the type of house containing planets in a natal chart helps one to see the chart as a whole. One familiar way of defining the houses is to separate them into the classifications of angular, succedent, and cadent.

The Angular Houses ("ACTION"—1, 4, 7, 10)

These houses are associated with a self-activating quality and have an immediate impact on the structure of one's life. The keyword for the angular houses is ACTION.

The Succedent Houses ("SECURITY"—2, 5, 8, 11)

These houses are associated with individual desires and the areas of life we want to control and consolidate. The keyword for this type of house is SECURITY.

The Cadent Houses ("LEARNING"—3, 6, 9, 12)

These houses are areas where there is input, exchange, and distribution of thoughts and observations. The keyword for these houses is LEARNING.

The progression of houses from angular through succedent and cadent and back to angular again symbolizes the flow of life experience: we act, we consolidate the results of our actions in order to gain security, we learn from what we have done and become aware of what remains to be done; and therefore, we act again. Thus, a person with a strong emphasis on one of these three types of houses by planetary placement invariably pours a lot of energy into and experiences many challenges related to action, security, or learning.

The houses can also be divided into groups of three, depending upon the element of the signs associated with that group of houses. Key phrases and guidelines for understanding these groups are as follows. (Psychic Trinity,' "Trinity of Wealth," etc. are quite old terms, and are used here primarily as convenient labels.).

Fire Houses ("THE TRINITY OF LIFE"—1, 5, 9)

These houses are associated with one's attitude toward life and the experience of being alive. They represent an out pouring of energy into the world and aspirations that motivate us to do so. The person with an emphasis on these houses lives in his or her enthusiasms, ideals, and dreams for the future. Faith and confidence (or the marked lack of it) and the need to see an effect on the world at large through one's initiatives dominate much of the person's life activity. The person experiences self most immediately through projecting dreams into the world and seeing them manifested as reality. Planets in the fire houses affect the individual's ATTITUDE TOWARD LIFE ITSELF and the person's entire sense of faith and confidence in self. The keyword that sums up the essential meaning of the fire houses is IDENTITY; for our sense of identity, our sense of being, determines our attitude toward life in general.

Earth Houses ("THE TRINITY OF WEALTH"—2, 6, 10)

These houses are associated with the level of experience wherein we try to satisfy our basic NEEDS in the practical world. Planets in these houses indicate energies that can most easily be put to use in dealing with the physical world, and that can be developed as expertise in management of resources. The person with an emphasis on these houses lives energetically in the physical world, building, doing, achieving, acquiring, and defining his or her purpose in life by the status and security achieved. Those with a strong emphasis in the earth houses tend to want to settle into a niche in life, as they are searching for the place where they can be the most productive and most easily satisfy their practical needs. This person experiences self most immediately through work, through feeling useful, and through practical achievement. He or she wants to fulfill a calling or role in the great world outside. Planets in the earth houses affect the individual's attitudes toward vocation, career ambitions, and the capacity to produce effective results. The keyword for these houses is MATERIAL, for the earth houses deal chiefly with concerns of the material world.

Air Houses ("THE TRINITY OF RELATIONSHIPS—3, 7, 11)

These houses are associated not only with social contacts and relationships of all types, but also with CONCEPTS. The person with an emphasis on these houses lives in the mind and in relationships. Concepts and the sharing of those concepts dominate much of the person's life activity. The person experiences self most immediately through a sense of mutual understanding with others and through discovering and expressing the reality and importance of specific ideas or theories. Planets in the air houses affect the individual's interests, associations, mode of verbal expression, and social life. The keywords for the air houses are SOCIAL and INTELLECTUAL.

Water Houses ("THE PSYCHIC TRINITY"—4, 8, 12)

All of these houses deal with the past, with the conditioned responses that are now instinctual and operate through the emotions. Planets in these houses show what is happening on subconscious levels and indicate the process of gaming consciousness through the assimilation of the essence of the past, while simultaneously letting go of the useless memories and fears that hold us back. The person with an emphasis on these houses lives a great deal in the feelings and in his or her deeper YEARNINGS. The emotional and soul needs dominate much of the person's life activity and energy expenditure. Planets in the water houses affect the individual's emotional predisposition, how he or she copes with fulfilling private needs and confronting obsessive feelings, and to what extent the person lives in a private way or in the inner life. The keywords for the water houses are EMOTIONAL and SOUL.

The following presents a concise formulation of the keywords described above:

Made of ExpressionAngular: Action

Succedent: Security

Cadent: LearningLevel of ExperienceFire: Identity

Earth: Material

Air: Social & Intellectual

Water: Soul & Emotional

Let's look at the side of you that resides in each of your twelve houses.

The First House and Your Rising Sign

The first house of a chart has the sign that was ascending over the horizon at the moment you were born on its cusp. This sign is known as the Rising Sign, or Ascendant. The first house has to do with how we appear or the way we come across, thus our appearance and personality. This is the essential stuff that bubbles up in us spontaneously and that is obvious to others as our trademark or activity. It is what makes us each so personally different. This house rules our personal self and everything about us that draws a reaction from our surroundings or others.

The Second House

The second house is concerned with how we respond to or field whatever impulses or unique and personal qualities we manifest via our first house. This is how we hold or "have" things (possessions, material goods, money, and the like). The second house always refers to how we secure ourselves, the kind of response we get from life and those around us.

The Third House

The third house is concerned with explorations, investigations, and inquiry and research of all kinds. It also rules connections, communications, wires, tubes -- anything that we can get through with our body, mind, voice, letters, what-have-you. It is here that we explore and search for the limits of our life, whatever we are working with at the moment. A very mental house, concerned with finding, furthering, peering, and all manner of questioning. Traditionally rules short journeys, siblings.

The Fourth House

The fourth house is where we send down roots, find our limits, and generally secure ourselves. It is the end of any searching we might have done in the third house. Here we find or end our search, settle down, and manage to get in possession of the whole situation. This is our home and the base from which we can work, feel, and experience. This is the root of our experience, the core or thick of it.

The Fifth House

The fifth house has to do with awareness, emotion (to move out), and expression (to press out). Here there is always a growing sense of self-confidence and even a pride of ownership, since we begin to recognize and own our experience. We know that we have had or are having an experience. All forms of expression and offspring are connected to this house -- children, animals, creative expression, and so on. A sense of direction and ownership takes hold at this point in our experience.

The Sixth House

The sixth house has to do with salvaging and preserving what is good and healthy in our experience. Here we separate the wheat from the chaff. We begin to care for ourselves and our experience and thus health, nutrition. The idea here is that we are able to analyze our experience and have thoughts about what is pure and what is not. The sixth house is an attempt to save the heart of an experience, one that already by that attempt is beginning to pass or not cohere.

The Seventh House

The seventh house is the house of partnerships, relationships, social life, and all that carries us beyond our personal self into an awareness of other people, community, and the like. This includes spiritual awakening and the discovery that we are more than just our personality. Here we begin to respond to our personal needs (and those of others) for the first time. We can see what is going on and are committed to it; thus, marriage and yoga, or union, is indicated in this house.

The Eighth House

The eighth house, traditionally the house of death, is concerned with getting rid of excess parts of ourselves that we see we no longer need. Thus this house also covers initiation and any activities where we are transforming toward a more integral position, getting to the heart of things. The no-nonsense quality of the eighth house makes it good for business ventures since here we are stripping away the dross to reveal the truth or essence of the subject.

The Ninth House

The ninth house covers long journeys and religion (the longest journey of all). Here is what remains of the purification that takes place in the eighth house -- the seed, or essence, of an entire cycle of experience. Religion comes from a Latin word that means to bind back, and thus refers to all things that last or endure, such as the truth. Essential ideas, philosophy, and all that is the very heart of things belong here.

The Tenth House

The 10th house is a house of practical vision and clairvoyance, for here we can see clearly what is. Reputation and career are often connected to this house, since the areas where we can see with greatest clarity are those we most often can put to use to make a living. In summary, this house is where we have real vision and can see to do and work. Planets transiting this house may provide moments of insight and clear-seeing as well.

The Eleventh House

The 11th house has to do with putting our visions and dreams to work. We have been on the mountain and had a vision (10th house). Here we take our vows never to forget what we have seen and to work hard to make these dreams into reality. Thus this house has always been connected with altruistic and humanitarian goals and trying to set them in motion. It is the house of friends and community, because when we are powered by a real insight or vision we share with all -- irrespective of differences.

The Twelfth House

The 12th house is about all that we go through in order to make our dreams into reality and manifest them in the world around us. It covers what we are willing to put up with, the sacrifices we will make in order to bring across what is really important. This is connected to prisons, institutions, betrayal, self-undoing, and the like, because it is here that we must choose to take some possible abuse for the sake of the message we are carrying, or blow it all away with a negative reaction.

#astologicalhouses

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ivyveil · 5 years

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She’s Such an Actress

the one where she is golden and he doesn't have a chance

She was golden.

It was in the small ways, the ways that mattered to Harry at the beginning. How she shook his hand and smiled when they met, how she tilted her hair back when she laughed at his jokes.

And he had felt that he could be golden, too, next to her.

Harry was fascinated. As most people were by Y/N, because she managed to be everything anyone could want - yet evade the sense that she was real, as if she were a phantom in the guise of an actress. In the center of the room, the spotlight on her, but there was a blank space in her eyes.

In the manipulative, draining way that Hollywood tended to have, this aspect of Y/N intoxicated the social climbers around her. They tried to fulfill her expectation that was never vocalized, seek validation that had never been promised to begin with.

The movies she starred in had gained international recognition. With awards littering the floor of her lavish mansion, she was clearly in the midst of a firestorm within her career. All eyes were on her. Not restricted to the sense of her work, but when she entered a room it seemed no one could help but spent a few moments, dazzled by her glow.

There was talk among the gossipers and media personnel, of Y/N becoming a director, or that one of her scripts would be passed onto production soon. The way she dealt with art was grandiose and made a statement, she felt like 1920s glamour in a 2017 woman. Essentially, it was everything of the past people craved, with the optimistic hope of the present; she was surreal and felt more like a promise than a guarantee, which made people love her all the more.

People were strange in how they were drawn to what would let them down, eventually.

She grabbed people’s attention without so much as making a noise. It was simple. She was attractive, but more like magnetic fields than airbrushed skin. Golden flecks of magic sprinkled from her fingertips and she simply became the Woman of the Night with barely so much as a blink.

Harry didn’t know how to approach her.

Her image had been painted on the back of his eyelids for weeks. They had stumbled into each other a few times, enough to justify a rushed introduction and quick compliments. He liked her movies, she liked his music. It was easy enough.

It wasn’t enough, though. He wanted more of her, and with the way her eyes would be caught by his own, slowly drifting down his body- it was clear that she wanted more, too.

He finally gathered the courage to start a conversation, at a random networking event that had him bored out of his mind. With a glance her way, in the corner she had nestled into with a glass of wine, he figured she felt the same.

“Hi,” he had begun, sidling up next to her in the booth. The drinks kicking in his veins had given him the boost of confidence, and the hazy aura in his eyes to forgive any forwardness he might’ve brought to the table.

“Hello, Harry Styles,” she acknowledged him with a tip of her glass. Y/N’s eyes seemed to sparkle, somehow, in the dimly-lit room, and Harry could smell vanilla wafting from her perfume.

His heart didn’t have a chance.

The night had ended with her, fast asleep on his bare chest, her fingers clutching onto the sheet’s edges like a small child. His thumb grazed over her fingers again and again as she made small, sleepy noises. Harry had stayed up longer than she had, his eyes drifting over her face.

It felt as if he were running in a church, as if it were sacred, as if she would wake up and demand to know why he had stayed the night. (Not that it had been discussed, but with the way she had jumped back into bed after using the restroom, and immediately tucked her arm around his side, he had assumed the invitation was clear.) But she remained, fast asleep, and Harry remained staring.

Frankly, it was a side of her that Harry wouldn’t get the chance to see a lot, in future ‘meetings’. Their schedules were so hectic, Harry genuinely had to pencil in Y/N’s name on his phone, in order to make it work. Whatever they were, to make ‘it’ work.

And Y/N seemingly did the same, texting Harry the hours she would be free to see when his matched up. The vague sense that it would be restricted to a hook-up was heavy in the air, next to Harry’s moaning and Y/N’s curled fingers grasping for whatever paneling was behind the bed. It didn’t bother them, necessarily, because frankly – that was all they could offer each other.

Endings didn’t often happen snuggled up under comforters, scrolling through shit hotel TV, staring at her face as she mumbled in her sleep. They typically ended with rushed kisses and her giving him one last bum squeeze, a giggle bursting from her lips as she dashed out of the bedroom, her shirt still unbuttoned and a car’s horn blaring below.

He liked that version of her the best, though, when she was asleep and he was beside her. It didn’t have the elegance and glamour of her evening gowns and smokey eyes, but it made him feel special. Harry got to see her like that, when she wasn’t acting. And the fact was, she always seemed to be acting.

The magic wore away, as it tended to do. After a month, Harry no longer noticed the golden flecks and crimson streaks that drifted after her physical form, he didn’t hear the angelic bells when she laughed.

Rather, he saw the violet smears, the eyeliner smudges, the beige stains on the fronts of his shirts. From when she, drunk and stumbling into his chest, had made her way back to him at the end of the night, again. Harry heard that one time, when they managed to squeeze in a dinner and he fed her pizza. He had made a dumb joke about the cheese, when she laughed so hard, she snorted and almost fell off the bed. He saw Y/N, and was privy to her sans pedestal and wings.

They weren’t anything tangible, though. There were no firm titles, labels, anything. Harry didn’t even have her name in his phone, it was simply the mesh of digits he started associating with her face.

Harry enjoyed that bit, because neither one of them had to play a role. He didn’t have to buy her flowers and she didn’t have to text him more often than the rare moments she did.

No “boyfriend”, no “girlfriend”. In his mind, somewhere deeper than conscious thought where he overanalyzed situations and overthought his words, he felt like that was what kept them real. It was what stopped Y/N’s missing piece from becoming too large of an elephant in the room, what let her laugh unexpectedly and not feel the need to explain anything. Because she didn’t owe him anything. It was what prevented Harry from getting too much in his head, from doing things that would be reserved for a man who could properly love her, with the right time and dedication.

Y/N wasn’t playing a role, not with him. To ask her to do so would shatter the glass that had been so sturdy, thus far. Ruin what they had built. There was no reason to break through the walls, shards flying everywhere, in order to have her stay a bit longer in his bed.

Harry could make do, he was an adult.

It was when she was pulling away that Harry realized he wasn’t as much of an adult as he had thought. His last four texts had gone unanswered. He would’ve understood, if he were asking her to meet up again or to send naughty photos - but they were texts of puppies, of weird clothing he found in thrift stores, of questions he had about that one TV show she had gotten him into (the finale was a fucker, and he wanted to know her thoughts). There was no pressure, no urgency, but he had hoped she would’ve responded.

Truthfully, it was not a huge deal. Harry was not heartbroken and he managed to continue on with life. Hook-ups had the nasty tendency of creating unrequited situations, which Harry realized was a bit relevant to his own situation, and ‘ghosting’ was not uncommon. Especially in his industry, it was what practically created muses for the artists. They thrived off of heartbreak, derived from any hurt imaginable.

Harry couldn’t shake off, though, how happy she had seemed, tucked against his side, naked chests pressed against one another, popping Goldfish at the others’ open mouth. She had seemed happy. He was happy. Was he wrong?

It went beyond sex, he had realized reluctantly.

She was a woman he couldn’t let go of, because she cried at every movie. Even her own, her eyes would tear up before the end credits and she would try to wipe them away without Harry noticing. He couldn’t let go of her because she had seen the world, knew art from countries he had never heard of. She would show him photos from her phone, the ones of her standing crudely against naked statues and pretending to be in awe of majestic portraits, and she would explain to him how art became her life. He couldn’t let go of her because he could tell her, in the same hushed voice she had used against the darkness of night, the emotional, spiritual relief that happened when he performed. How a piece of him lived in every song he wrote, and he couldn’t imagine who he would be without it. And how that equally satisfied him and terrified him, and she would give him a tiny nod and wrap her fingers more firmly against his hair, watching the shadows of his face.

He couldn’t let go of her because he wanted her to meet his mom, his sister, all his friends. He wanted him and her to become a ‘they’, and to be known for certain things. Like how his friend-couples were known for doing certain things together, for always going bowling on Thursday nights or holding wine board game nights on Sundays. He wanted her to be tucked against his side, laughing at the more ridiculous celebrities, at every formal event. He couldn’t let go of her because he could see it plain as ever: he could, very potentially, love her.

Maybe she had sensed his feelings, somehow. Maybe that was what was empty, within her, some gargantuous black-hole that sucked away her desire for more. Maybe she got bored, and it was nothing but another ending. It didn’t settle right with him, it didn’t match up to the woman he met between bedsheets. But, Harry figured, perhaps he was wrong.

He found her on the rooftop.

It was another networking event, and Harry couldn’t stand to stay in the venue for one more minute. He had grabbed two bottles of wine, thinking he would give one to Jeff later, and made his way up the stairwell. The stairs were tucked away near the back of the ballroom, which had made it easy enough for him to escape.

Harry didn’t want to feel another hand touch his shoulder, another cold voice expressing their love for his music, when he felt almost certain they had never heard it. It was cold and stark in the stairwell, but it beat the mass of kiss-ass barbarians below.

He found her on the rooftop.

Her heels were slouched against one another, against the elevated brick edge. Her dress was flapping in the wind, the loose bottom curling against her bare toes. Her legs were up to her chest, her arms wrapped around, and her chin resting on her knees. Her hair was up, but several pieces had fallen out and fell against her cheek. Her shoulders were shaking.

Harry was startled, to say the least, because he hadn’t expected her to be there. Last he had heard, she was in a different country filming an indie movie about Russia in the 1930s.

“Y/N?” he asked, as if she would disappear in a second. He stood next to the entry door of the stairwell, his heart thumping in his chest against the cold. His arms had fallen by his sides, the sloshing bottles loosely dangling by his fingertips. Almost immediately, in a bashful sense that he loathed, Harry wished he had glanced in a mirror before heading up. His suit was most likely wrinkled in the back, his hair was definitely not coping well with the wind.

Harry just wanted her to miss him, was all. And it wasn’t very likely, in his or her state.

Y/N’s head lifted, her eyes looking over her shoulder, before one arm rose and she offered a tiny wave.

“Hello, Harry Styles.”

She was drunk, and her mascara had transferred over to her cheeks and somewhat down her face. Harry felt at a complete loss, unsure of how to deal with Y/N when the tears weren’t from Up but something else, something that made her seem more ashamed than before.

He truly wasn’t sure what was happening in Y/N’s life. Not that he ever had a clear idea, but it was something he regretted now more than ever. Not asking her about her day, not checking up on her every so often - he had assumed that would’ve been too forward, too much, that it would’ve pushed Y/N away.

“What’re yeh doing up here?” Harry approached where she was curled up, moving her shoes so he could sit down. She held out a hand towards one of the bottles, and he reluctantly gave it up.

“Just thinking,” her voice broke, her eyes glancing away from him, to hold back the upcoming stream.

“About wha’?”

It was just Y/N’s luck, to be crying over a man on a rooftop - like some heartbroken teenager in a cheap rom-com - only to have the man show up. And not only that, but he was so heart-breakingly gorgeous that night, with his hair messed up the way she liked, and his shirt half-unbuttoned and his pants hanging a bit low. It was simply just her luck.

She hadn’t meant for anything to happen. Y/N enjoyed watching Harry from afar, to see his charm work over a crowd like an ocean’s wave. The people were just along for the ride, to experience his magic and witness history in the making. Entire textbooks would be written about how he lived, how he grasped attention with humility and pride, how he loved everyone and everyone loved him.

She hadn’t meant for him to notice her, or even to walk over. She hadn’t meant to sleep with him, the first night. But when his hand was on her thigh, and his voice had lowered, bordering husky, she hadn’t stood a chance.

Y/N had created a safe space within Harry. A shelter for her insecurities and flaws to become exposed, to see the light of day lest they plan a mutiny in the suffocation of fear. She had rambled to him like a school child who was learning something new everyday, about her fascination with art and how she had tried new techniques with camera angles and location shots (many of which failed, which was why she typically never let the words slip past her lips to others). Y/N could only starve off the mortification for so long.

He had become too much to her, for it to last.

Her success as an actress had sustained the piece of her that craved meaning. The reaction of people to what she had to perform was everything she could ask for, and more. Satisfaction drenched her shoulders when she received an award, recognition, or even when a famous director give her that knowing smile. The smile that meant, you’ve got this figured out, whatever it is. You’re one of us.

Her success had, similarly, led to her creating divides. Within herself, within how others wanted her to be. There were expectations that weighed down her shoulders to stay poised, that lifted the smile on her lips when it began to droop, that caused her eyes to unfocus after the fortieth time someone was trying to quote her own movie back at her, and did it wrong.

With Harry, she had felt more free. And originally, because they had been such a secret, it was a salvation. She could separate herself physically from her expectation and live in the ways she longed for, have the romance she craved. It had developed into something more, though, and all Y/N really knew was how to run away. Create more divides.

She supposed it was instinct, more than anything else. Since Harry had been a home for her fears, she would soon turn away from their new location in a natural attempt of escape. They would follow, she knew, and Harry would be left in the dust. A biproduct of her trying to be what she felt she should be.

“Me,” she answered, and it was partially true.

Harry fell quiet, this time, and in the lapse of their words Y/N found it was harder to breathe. Her heart thundered in her chest when he finally spoke, and the tears threatened to over-spill. She wasn’t expecting to hear his voice dry-cracked with exhaustion, the bottle rising hesitantly to meet his lips. Y/N honestly would rather get drunk off the redness from those lips, than the wines in her cellar.

“It’s okay, if yeh wanted to end things. I know yeh’re busy, got a lot goin’ on.” His eyes were held resolutely on the bridges in the distance, the lighted tips of skyscrapers and the dashing streams of cars below. It was cold, the wind beating against their breath and keeping their cheeks redder than the circumstances alone would have allowed, and Harry felt the overwhelming sense of inadequacy gripping his bones.

In his more poetic moments, he had referred to her as his Muse, his goddess, his Eve who never left Eden. And it was true, to an extent, as all mythologies cast their foundations in the well of actuality. She held the world at her fingertips, poised between finger and thumb, and all he could be was a speck in relation.

She never made him feel ‘less than’, because she never quite focused on her talent to begin with, when she was with him. When they were in public, he could easily notice the shift between her then – and her later that night, legs tossed over his own and her head burrowing into his butterfly tattoo. Her actress persona was more refined, with practiced flaws so as to enhance the general beauty of her celebrity. Her other persona was more casual, gentle, with genuine rough curves and edges.

“Never said I wanted to end things,” Y/N mumbled, her fingers reaching down to pick at the pokey ends of the brick edge.

“Yeh didn’t say anythin’, actualy.” His voice was more clipped.

“Didn’t know what to say.”

“Could’ve said that, I-” his fingers reached up and he tugged at his roots slightly, raking the hair back. The wine bottle met his lips as he, aggravated, attempted to sort through his thoughts. It didn’t help, though, only made him feel more imbalanced and less sure about what he felt.

“I dunno,” he sighed, “I didn’t expect yeh to drop me, I guess.”

How much more honesty would it take to shatter the glass around his eyes? Harry already felt them begin to bend with blurry reluctance, the bitter rise in his throat being the ultimate betrayal.

“What did you expect me to do, Harry? What was I supposed to do? Did I miss the script between us, was there supposed to be another fucking scene I missed?”

And, no, Harry hadn’t expected her head to snap over in his direction, her shoulders heaving upwards with an angry rise bubbling in her throat, and her eyes to suddenly break into a clear, irritated glare into his.

She wasn’t acting, now, and she didn’t seem so golden.

Harry wasn’t feeling so golden, either, next to her.

“Treat me like I deserve a response,” was all he could reply with, his tearful gaze looking into hers more hesitantly.

“I don’t owe you anything, Harry Styles. We never established anything,” and her voice broke again, the exterior glaze of frustration not quite matching the vulnerable end of her words.

Harry watched her carefully.

“Did yeh want to establish something?” he asked slowly, unsure of which response he wanted.

Y/N didn’t want to talk to him, anymore. Her mouth felt heavy, closed, yet her tongue worked against her. A drop hit her arm, and it was only when Harry’s fingers gently grazed her cheek did Y/N realize she had started crying again.

“I don’t know, what I want. It’s all just so – so, I don’t know. I can’t think,” she mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut. Y/N could feel the wet mascara fucking up her face more, and the small part of her that had demanded perfection for so long was writhing against her chest.

“That’s oka’,” he was murmuring tenderly, almost, and Y/N hadn’t realized he had shifted a bit against the edge. His hip was closer to hers, his legs dangling down as hers were still tucked against her chest. One of his arms reached out, hesitant, and when Y/N glanced up she saw him looking at her, silently asking if it were okay. With a brief, glum nod from her, Harry’s arm went around her shoulder, pulling her in next to his side.

“We don’t have to figure anythin’ out. I just wanna know, if yeh wanted to end things. Gotta know, so I know if I gotta let go.” It was the most clear either of them had been, the only portion of the discussion that had lacked emotional-driven response and reaction. Y/N appreciated that about Harry, that he could be absolutely rational and calm down way faster than she was able to.

“I like who I am, with you,” she whispered, and she knew he heard because his body stilled, somewhat.

“I’m not who I am, all the time. And, I dunno...it’s hard? Because I can’t figure out how to balance myself, when you aren’t around. I don’t want to be so dependent on someone, not when we aren’t anything.”

Harry nodded, understanding. It had been difficult for him, as well, because although they hadn’t discussed the extent to which they would be dedicated to one another, he hadn’t been messing around with anyone else. And it was hard, on the stretches where they were traveling and across the world from each other. It was difficult because he didn’t know if he had the right, to call, or to text, or to ask for anything.

“Maybe we could make our own thing, yeah? Not a relationship, but with more contact than we’ve been givin’,” he compromised, and Y/N rested her head on his shoulder. He shifted slightly, giving her more space to snuggle in closer.

Y/N gave a little nod, and Harry couldn’t help but smile.

“I like yeh, lil famous Mrs. Y/N.” he gave her shoulders a squeeze, and felt them shake slightly. Worried, he looked down, but saw she was giggling this time.

“I like you too, megastar Mr. Harry Styles,” she replied, sniffling a bit.

They sat there, quiet, in the silence of the night and the overall epic nature that tended to wash over those who sat on a rooftop together, pressed in each others’ sides as they no longer feared the next day. The horizon twinkled with the cars and streetlamps in the distance and the noise of the street below intermingled with the wind to become dispersed over the ground as a whole. It was quiet outside, too.

“Do you wanna know something? Never mentioned it, before,” Y/N said, and one of her hands drifted down to play with the edges of his coat.

People were awfully strange in how they gave up their hearts at midnight, as if the hours wouldn’t tick by and life would just stop. For a moment. For a second. For that instant.

“What’s tha’?”

“You’ve got a glow around you. It’s the first thing I noticed, when we met?” she began, and his heart was already growing a bit, “It’s like…” she drifted off, shaking her head as she searched for the word Harry already knew.

“Gold?” he offered, praying his words didn’t sound as choked as he felt inside.

Y/N paused, before nodding against his shoulder.

“Yeah, you’re gold. And sometimes I feel it, too? Like, gold,” she cut off her own rambling, seemingly a bit embarrassed that her words didn’t appear to make sense outside of her feelings. Y/N couldn’t tell that Harry had felt the same way about her, that she was, for a time, his Sun.

Harry hummed agreement, not feeling the need to explain his own take on how she impressed him, in a shower of golden rain. There would be other nights, he felt sure.

“I was wonderin’...”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to...” The question was already in the air, the ending was all he had to get out. It wasn’t a huge step, anyway, and it wouldn’t cement anything that would require expectation into what they were to each other. But, he had spoken about Y/N to his mother, anyway, and she had been curious to meet the woman.

“What is’t?”

“Meet my mum?” he finished, feeling it sort of difficult to swallow.

Y/N stilled, before looking back up at him, confusion bringing her eyebrows together, and worry painted across her lips. He would kiss it off, if the timing were different.

“Does she know...who I am? About us?”

“She knows yeh’re a great girl, and that yeh’re a bit shy. That yeh like Goldfish but won’t eat real fish, because yeh think of Nemo,” Harry shrugged. “Doesn’t know what yeh do, for a job, though. Didn’t mention it, didn’t think it described you well enough.”

Y/N waited, perhaps a bit confused as to what Harry meant, so he continued.

“Amazing actress, yeh are. But that’s not all yeh are, yeah?” and she nodded, so he braved forward, “Just was wonderin’ if yeh wanted to meet her. No pressure, you don’t have to. She just thought yeh sounded lovely, ‘s all.”

“Does she really?” Y/N sounded a bit nervous, as if she didn’t quite believe what Harry was saying.

“O’ course she does, because yeh are,” Harry brushed it off.

Suddenly, he felt a couple of hesitant kisses against his neck, before one of Y/N’s freezing-cold arms wrapped behind his head to hold his face closer to her lips as they gained intensity. He shuddered, but let her continue, his dimples poking deeply against his smile.

“You’re kind to me, Harry Styles.” Her breath smelled of wine and Harry felt certain he had a mess of smudged makeup against his scruff. He set his bottle down and turned towards her, his hand reaching up to cup her cheeks. They were cold, as well, and still slightly wet from her tears.

“Yeh’re cold,” he mumbled, his eyes drooping from the heavy thudding within his veins.

“Warm me up?” It was barely a whisper, and the shivers that broke against his spine weren’t from the wind.

So, he first started on warming her lips, by kissing her gently. They were a bit rough, not as smooth as her lips usually were, and he ran his tongue against her lower lip as he pulled her in closer. She laughed, a bit, but it quieted down when he pressed deeper against her mouth, a heavier breath escaping his and warming against her lips.

It was one of his favorite things about her, how she would always laugh at the first kiss, little puffs of air against his lips. She liked how he reacted to it, by not questioning what she thought was funny, but accepting it as a compliment of sorts.

Eventually, he broke off, with a small kiss at the end, still holding her face close to his own. Her eyelashes fluttered against his nose when she looked at him, her lips still parted and full. He swallowed hard, flashing her a quick grin.

“Hi,” he whispered, unable to really contain the giggles that slipped from his lips, this time. Harry felt like a twelve year old boy, sometimes, after kissing her, because while she was definitely the most real with him, there was still a phantasmagoric level to her beauty. He almost felt like it hadn’t happened, but his lip was still tingling from how she gently bit against it, so it must have.

“Hello, Harry Styles.”

His heart really didn’t stand a chance.

A/N: I hope you enjoyed! Let me know your thoughts here, and check out the rest of my works if you’d like!

#harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #archive of our own #mine #one direction fanfic #one direction fanfiction #one direction fic #harry styles fluff #harry styles drabble #harry styles blurb #harry styles fic #she's such an actress #ssaa

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iron--spider · 5 years

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Worried that Tony Stark is going to die in Avengers: Endgame? Do you want proof that he logically shouldn’t and the citations needed to die on that hill in the event that the powers that be do the unthinkable? Well step right up, fans and friends, because @whimsicalethnographies and I have compiled everything you might need, from canon quotes to future promotional appearances, that prove Tony Stark is not destined to die, and if they do kill him, they are ignoring the path that they laid out themselves and are thus causing his character arc to fail.

Here we go:

Canon evidence

“Don’t waste your life, Stark”

“A man with everything and nothing”

Both of these quotes are referencing family. Yinsen was referring to his own loving family, and Tony revealed that he didn’t have one (of course it’s hinted that this is Pepper—she’s supposedly his frantic text when they’re first attacked—but he doesn’t explicitly have it or her yet). Yinsen’s sacrifice was not for Tony to become Iron Man. It was for Tony to have a life, to have a family. What he didn’t have in the beginning and what he wanted to stay alive for. Tony ultimately fulfilling Yinsen’s true wish for him to stop isolating himself and make a family would be the most satisfying way for Tony’s story to end.

Yinsen is able to die peacefully because he has family that has already passed, and he wants to see them again. There is no way Marvel can properly parallel this because Tony’s family (the ones he genuinely loves anyway, other than his mother) are still alive, or still in the future (his children). If he dies he will leave everyone behind. The love of his life will still be here, and he’ll never be able to have children. If Pepper is pregnant, this is even worse. He will have a child, as he wanted to do, as he was looking forward to doing, but he will never meet it. This is especially cruel.

This would be a gross subversion of Yinsen, and ruin any meaning the character actually had in Tony’s life. He wanted him to be more, to have more, and to Yinsen, more was a family who was waiting for him.

In IM3, a little boy in a restaurant ominously whispers, “How did you get out of the wormhole?” It’s heavily implied that that line is entirely in Tony’s head as he’s descending into a panic attack and represents his fear of the unknown, and his fear of how he’ll handle the unknown, essentially finding the man behind the Mandarin mask who is coming after the people he loves AND fear of what he’ll do if he doesn’t have his armor to protect him. He obsessively spent a year(ish) building suits (of questionable quality) to keep that unknown away. By the end, he’s faced *that* fear, the fear of who he is without the suits. His anxiety/PTSD shifts from that point to Thanos himself, but he doesn’t yet have a face or an actual explanation until Infinity War, even though the magnitude of it is ramped up in Ultron by Scarlet Witch using the power of the Mind Stone. This is the start of facing an unknown, and if it follows the narrative comparison, coming out on the other side victorious, better, and stronger as a person. Rising above and moving on, not dying in the process, continuing to carry the self-inflicted weight of the entire universe.

“A famous man once said, ‘we create our own demons.’” Dying when he comes into contact with and defeats his true demon—“my only curse is you”—is not giving Tony his good ending.

An article on Iron Man 3, arguably the most important movie in Tony’s arc https://filmschoolrejects.com/finding-the-place-of-iron-man-3-in-the-marvel-cinematic-universe/

“Tony is defined by his desire to set arms down and leave war behind; Steve is defined by his inability to do the same”

“If Marvel really wants to give Tony the ending he deserves, they’ll let him live. Fans will continue to push their predictions down the pipleline until they eventually come true, but the arc laid out for Tony, starting in Iron Man 3, is clear. He needs to let go, but he can’t. The conclusion of Tony Stark’s arc isn’t death; it’s learning to pass responsibility on not to an army of robots, but to the people he trusts. After ten years, Tony Stark deserves his time in the sun.”

Tony’s PTSD - it would be a punch in the face to those of us with anxiety/PTSD/OCD who identify with him. He's got one of the most realistic portrayals of mental illness in film, and the powers that be acknowledge that, and it would SUCK for a company like Marvel to rip it all away when he's almost to the point of letting go of the responsibility he's carried—rightly or wrongly, because Thanos would still be collecting those stones even if Tony had never been in that cave—since the beginning of his story. Dying? That's not letting go. That's saying "sorry you went through all this, it sucks and then you die, because it really was all YOUR responsibility and you have to suffer to fix it."

In Ultron, Helen Cho says Tony’s “bulky metal suits will be left in the dust”. Tony says that’s “exactly the plan”. He wants to retire. He wants to be able to stop being Iron Man so he can live his life.

“Isn’t that why we fight? So we can end the fight and go home?” Tony in Ultron. None of this has ever been continuous for Tony. He’s consistently been heading towards his future goals and fighting when he has to—he gets derailed because he feels it’s his duty to step back in. He does not seek out the fights, and he doesn’t necessarily want to be a part of them. He wants to make his life and that’s where his narrative is heading. If it doesn’t make it there, it fails. He fails.

“Maybe I should take a page out of Barton’s book. Build Pepper a farm, hope nobody blows it up.” “The simple life.” “You’ll get there one day. “I don’t know. Family, stability...the guy who wanted all that went into the ice 75 years ago. I think someone else came out.” End of Ultron conversation with Steve. Tony wants to settle down, buy a farm for Pepper (representing retirement and the start of his family). He is the one, out of himself and Steve, that is actively seeking to “tap out” of the fighting life so he can be with Pepper, and start a family. Steve says “I’m home” when he hears the soldiers chanting.

Wedding conversations in Civil War, Homecoming and Infinity War. The amount of mentions this has is huge. It would be a major hanging thread if it never happens.

The original plan was for Pepper to be pregnant during CW, however this was changed to put Tony in a darker place. They are going for Dad-Tony eventually, and that wasn’t conducive with where he was in CW. Yet.

Happy has been carrying “that thing” since 2008. Would they really do that to Happy/Jon Favreau, perhaps the other father of the MCU as he directed Iron Man—have him carry the ring for 10 goddamn years just to cut that storyline off with no resolution? Happy deserves to see this man-child he’s chased around forever get married and settle down.

Specifically, “Wong, you’re invited to my wedding.” It would be a terrible subversion if instead he goes to his funeral.

And per the writers (who also wrote the CA movies),

Markus: Things always shift in the writing, but I think we all knew where it was going and it was a matter of how best to get there so that it feels most satisfying or most earned. What was that adjustment process like? How much did the script have to change from when you were breaking it in 2015 to when they went to film it? Were there big things that you had to account for that you just hadn't had any idea about? Markus: Because of the other movies? No. I don't think there was anything massive that we had to change gears for. There were things that became better because of the value that the other movie had acquired. https://www.etonline.com/how-the-avengers-endgame-writers-arrived-at-the-most-satisfying-ending-possible-exclusive-123477 That would be an absolutely collosal shift to wipe it away entirely

The baby conversation in Infinity War. Why set all this up so blatantly if they weren’t going to use it? For a cheap emotional rug pull? Tony wants children, not just another set of his genes in the world.

And Pepper’s response; she doesn’t want children if he’s still Iron Man, for fear that he’ll be distracted, or something worse. If she’s going to have a kid with him, she wants him there. If the point was simply a baby, not a baby AND Tony, this is pointless exposition. Also, Pepper has thought Tony was dead at least four times: IM1, Avengers, IM3 and IW. Would they really make her watch it happen for real after that? Rob her of her family and make her worst fear come true, right in front of her eyes?

Tony as Odysseus - A lot of us—who've watched and identified with this character—realize that this is an Odyssey, not a Tragedy. Odysseus makes all kinds of mistakes while trying to get home, but he gets there, after 10 years. And then,

“As for yourself, death shall come to you from the sea, and your life shall ebb away very gently when you are full of years and peace of mind, and your people shall bless you. All that I have said will come true.” He makes it home. He got super lucky a lot of times, but he made it home, to his family. He found his everything.

“You’re a hard man, Odysseus. Your fighting spirit’s stronger than ours, your stamina never fails. You must be made if iron head to foot.”

Alternate translation- “You’re a hard man, Odysseus, stronger/ Than other men, and you never wear out, / A real iron-man.” (both quotes taken from starkravinghazelnuts, http://starkravinghazelnuts.tumblr.com/post/181064173168/so-i-did-more-research-about-tony-steve-and-thor)

Promotional

https://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/201812/6461/ Tony Stark is heading up a new rollout in Disneyland parks. Speaks for itself, they’re making Tony have a very strong presence in the parks. Disney is for kids, kids love Iron Man, and they will be aware of his death and reminded of it when they see him and Stark Industries everywhere on their family vacation. Longtime fans will also have to deal with this. If they were actually going to kill him, why would they make his presence in the future of these parks so big?

“In California and Paris, Tony Stark is retrofitting two of his father’s Stark Industries sites into new hubs for training and innovation. Through partnerships with S.H.I.E.L.D., Pym Technologies, Masters of the Mystic Arts and the new Worldwide Engineering Brigade, The Avengers and their allies will forge new global campuses to champion the next generation of heroes.” We know Hank Pym hates the Starks because he feels Howard betrayed him by trying to replicate the Pym Particle. As Scott says, “Hank Pym always said you could never trust a Stark.” How does this work, unless there is something forward that allows them to establish a better relationship? This can’t be retrofitted to anything before a potential Endgame end.

https://youtu.be/0tW77VFKQC0 https://youtu.be/EVIu43xSeYY In the Ant-Man and the Wasp ride, they collaborate with Tony/Iron Man in their ride mission. You see him, they speak to him, and it seems like a new storyline. It connects to the Iron Man Experience’s storyline, the ride they already had there in Hong Kong.

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/marvels-iron-man-vr-ps4/ upcoming Iron Man VR game. It would be very morbid playing this game, from Tony’s POV, if Tony is dead.

That giant Iron Man statue for Endgame in Hong Kong (https://www.timeout.com/hong-kong/news/a-giant-4-5m-iron-man-installation-and-life-sized-avengers-have-taken-over-hysan-place-041219). Imagine coming across that thing if you just saw him die. It’s staying up until May 13th. Do they want it looking like a place of mourning? A monument with flowers and notes? Shit, that’s a spoiler in itself that I don’t think they want. It would also be incredibly depressing.

https://www.tmz.com/2018/01/12/avengers-4-wrap-party-cake-drops-clues/ Endgame wrap party cake. If Tony died, he would be on this thing. It wouldn’t even be considered a spoiler because Iron Man is literally the face of the MCU, so people wouldn’t look twice at it. But his absence does say something—that they didn’t think they needed to pay tribute to him here, because he is still around to pay tribute to later, if need be. This cake is implying different characters are in peril, with certain hands shooting up out of the ground. But Iron Man is only represented with his logo on the bottom, as are all the rest of the heroes. If he died, he’d be the centerpiece. More on this theory by starkravinghazelnuts http://starkravinghazelnuts.tumblr.com/post/180160474003/the-cake-theory-proposes-that-cap-nat-and-bruce

Cast quotes regarding Endgame

Gwyneth - (on a picture of her and RDJ) “you know I will be this guy’s Pepper any time he needs me” why would she say this if he’s dead? If he was dead and she didn’t want to spoil, she didn’t need to say anything at all.

And this wasn’t a one-off referring to playing opposite him, she was referring to Tony/Pepper, after an interview in which she said she was probably done, but would come back for a day if they wanted her.

Gwyneth again - https://www.etonline.com/how-the-avengers-endgame-writers-arrived-at-the-most-satisfying-ending-possible-exclusive-123477 “Pepper and Tony have had a real long journey together. She obviously starts as his dutiful assistant, and then the relationship evolves, and now this decade later they're married, and they have a child. Their relationship has evolved in all of the ways that great romances evolve.” Now, I always saw this as—Gwyneth was done filming when this quote was given. She was aware of the end of her character’s journey, so this is obviously something that happens at the END chronologically. Why would she reference something smack dab in the middle of the film, especially if it was just going to be erased by time travel/quantum realm shenanigans? She’s also wearing an engagement ring and a wedding band in some interview photos where she’s in costume. Plus, possible/probable spoilers…….Pepper is going to be suiting up as Rescue, which really knocks off the possibility of a mid-movie child for Pepper and Tony. It would be completely against her character to suit up and leave a kid behind, considering how much flack she gave Tony for his suits before, and how her hesitation to have a child hinged on Tony re-inserting his arc reactor. Plus, on a more emotional note, Gwyneth refers to Tony/Pepper as a great romance, and it is. But I feel like she and Robert combined would not be happy at all if the writers were to destroy this great romance by killing one of its members. That way it falls flat, it never finishes, it doesn’t get its rightful end. I feel like she and RDJ (who has significant sway over what happens to Tony) would argue against this happening. This is a great romance, and those end in happily ever afters. This isn’t West Side Story. This is a Disney movie.

Evans - https://youtu.be/bH0frwdtmXM (when asked to describe the movie in one word on GMA) “Satisfying. It’s like TV shows, the final finale—how many times do they stick the landing? How many times do you walk away saying that went exactly how I wanted it to go? This movie—I think they deliver, I think they really do stick the landing in terms of, you know—addressing the arcs and really finding a completion.” I think this definitely speaks for itself. The arcs are important and we know what they are. One of our main concerns is them tossing out the true endings to these arcs for cheap, cruel emotional shocks. If Chris says specifically that the arcs are addressed, then we know what that SHOULD mean for each character. Plus, saying “that went exactly how I wanted it to go”? I don’t believe any genuine fans want deaths. Especially fans with children. People who genuinely care about these characters want to see them succeed and live to reap the rewards. So saying it went “exactly as I wanted it to go” and that they “stick the landing” bodes well for things ending up nicely for our heroes. Nothing in his speech here screams death.

Hemsworth - https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a27110673/avengers-endgame-chris-hemsworth-interview/ also uses the word cathartic. Nothing about Tony dying would be cathartic. It would be sickening and depressing and we wouldn’t get anything out of it.

Taika Waititi https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/1082838/Avengers-Endgame-Korg-Taika-Waititi-Thor-Ragnarok-Avengers-Infinity-War-MCU-Marvel “They keep their cards so close to their chests, but from what I’ve heard, it wraps up everything in a really great way." “It feels like the fans are getting rewarded for hanging around for 10 years and watching all these films.” “Because the more you know about the characters and the stories and stuff, the more satisfying this film will be.” These feel particularly important. A reward would not be killing the biggest character in the MCU. And he mentions the fact that really knowing the characters makes everything more satisfying. We all know where Tony is heading, and what he wants. These quotes particularly point to Tony surviving, and maybe everyone surviving.

Scarlett - https://wegotthiscovered.com/movies/scarlett-johansson-calls-avengers-endgame-beautiful-valentine-decade-madness/ “a beautiful valentine to a decade of madness” Not ‘my bloody valentine’. A gift full of love for the people that have been here for ten years watching these characters grow.

RDJ - https://twitter.com/our_rdj/status/1118891286763798528?s=21 https://twitter.com/caplovesfondue/status/1118764023397249024?s=21 https://twitter.com/MCU_Direct/status/1119043210553249792 “I guarantee you that this will pay off. This Avengers Endgame, I’ve said it before, is our finest hour.” “The last eight minutes of that movie are maybe the best eight minutes in the entire history of the whole run of them, in a way. Because everyone’s involved. So I was delighted.” Both of these quotes, from the man himself, the man who loves Tony Stark with his entire being, do not feel like a Tony death at all. Because if we know Tony, we know what a payoff for him is. It’s getting the life, the family he’s been fighting for since the beginning. And as for the second one, logically, eight minutes does not feel like enough time to send Tony off in an out-of-left-field death. And I think our final battle will be longer than eight minutes. So I personally believe he’s referring to the wedding. He loves Tony/Pepper enough to hold their wedding in extremely high regard. He’s always delighted with Tony’s happiness and Tony advancing in his journey, especially with Pepper by his side.

“Cathartic” - https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-avengers-endgame-press-conference-20190407-story.html said by the Russos at the press conference

“Satisfying” - https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a27110673/avengers-endgame-chris-hemsworth-interview/ , https://www.etonline.com/how-the-avengers-endgame-writers-arrived-at-the-most-satisfying-ending-possible-exclusive-123477

“Earned” https://www.etonline.com/how-the-avengers-endgame-writers-arrived-at-the-most-satisfying-ending-possible-exclusive-123477 When you think about Tony, you do not think his death is earned at this stage, because so much is left hanging that his story has been calling for since moment one. What would be “earned” for Tony is him marrying Pepper. He has more than earned that. She has earned this wedding, too.

Misc (POTENTIAL SPOILERS)

Tony has sacrificed over and over and over again, in almost every movie we see him in. Doing it in Endgame would be a rehash of the same storyline, and sacrifice is not something Tony has to learn. He already knows how, he’s already willing. He needs to learn how to live. Bringing him to that realization at the end of it all would be the most appropriate route to take.

Iron Man 1 - he implores Pepper to hit the button, even though she tells him, “but you’ll die.”

Iron Man 2 - while it could be said he would be killed by the presence of the reactor itself, JARVIS explicitly says the use of the suit is accelerating the palladium poisoning that is killing him. Tony doesn’t stop. Part of this could be attributed to his reckless end-of-life attitude, but it’s clear from the Senate hearing—he wouldn’t have stopped

The new element is obviously something in itself. While the IM2 novel called it vibranium, this was retconned in CA, and then set up for more in Captain Marvel when it was revealed the project involving the Tesseract was called Project Pegasus, first called that when Fury dropped off Howard’s things at Tony’s mansion. Tony withstood the power of the Mind stone in A1 with the arc reactor, and then again in IW when Thanos unleashed the power of the Power stone on him and the suit merely blocked it. The suit is literally powered by the Space stone, much like Carol is, and for IM2-IM3, the Space stone literally powers Tony, which is more than you can say for a Mad Titan. Even Hulk doesn’t have the power of the Space stone behind him. You don’t hang a gun on the wall unless you plan on firing it later.

Also tied into IM2 - “if you could make a god bleed” … Tony is the only one to actually injure Thanos.

Avengers - Tony lays down on the wire. The arc set up by Steve’s comment is fulfilled when he flies the nuke through the wormhole. He knew it would probably kill him, which is why he tried to call Pepper.

Iron Man 3 - he sends his suit to Pepper first, when the “Mandarin” comes for him. Then in a deleted scene, he removes his arc reactor to save Harley’s bully, and nearly dies before Harley puts it back

Age of Ultron - Tony, despite wishing to go home and buy Pepper her farm, is willing to stay with Thor on the flying rock, even though he knows he could die, it’s his responsibility to fix this.

Civil War - this is a bit of subversion, as Tony is in a dark place and never needs to sacrifice his life. But as we saw in IM3, Tony IS Iron Man. And he’s willing to turn over power of Iron Man, which he wasn’t in IM2, to a higher power. He’s willing to give up his autonomy to keep the rest of the team out of jail and assuage his guilt (he’s starting to see the repercussions of bearing it all on his own). We can have discussions about who was right about which part, but Tony was willing to sacrifice a big part of himself.

Infinity War - duh. He got on that spaceship. He was planning on it being a one way trip (which incidentally, is why Pepper wasn’t keen on a kid). And then he took Thanos on one-on-one. And then, the look of despair when Strange gave up the stone to save him? He was more than willing to die.

Endgame - eventually, he will be willing to try, even if it means his death, because he’s always been willing to sacrifice himself. Remove that burden from his shoulders.

(It is interesting to note that the one time Tony is not in the position to sacrifice his life is in Spider-Man: Homecoming. When he is in the overseeing/mentor position, which could be his role in the MCU after Endgame, and when he’s starting to take up the role of “father figure”, which he should also be after Endgame, but to his own biological children as well. He is however, appalled and terrified at the thought of someone else, this crazy Spider-child who’s just a bit too much like him, being reckless and willing to sacrifice himself. Maybe Tony needs to take a bit of his own advice.)

The endings of the Iron Man movies are all tonally upbeat and to end Tony’s story for good on a “downer” note does not go along with his storyline --from starkravinghazelnuts http://starkravinghazelnuts.tumblr.com/post/181110494893/avengers-endgame-is-said-to-be-the-end-of-many-of

The Infinity Saga is Tony Stark’s arc. Every other character, including Cap, is ancillary. Every character is where they are because of a Stark. What happens to him will be the defining characteristic of the Saga, and it isn’t set up to be a Tragedy.

RDJ says the last eight minutes of Endgame has “everybody” involved, which would obviously include Natasha, who is extremely important. Which contradicts the reddit “leaks.”

https://twitter.com/stevcrogvrs/status/1118853707280601088?s=21 Chris Evans says if Steve had a choice, he would go back in time to be with Peggy. Since he was able to say this, there’s no doubt that it doesn’t happen, as the Marvel spoiler snipers would have switched from Mark to Chris and put five holes in his head before he hit the ground. This contradicts the reddit “leaks.”

https://comicbook.com/marvel/2019/04/19/avengers-endgame-hawkeye-black-widow-relationship-jeremy-renner/ Jeremy Renner also says Clint and Natasha’s relationship will last “forever”, which seems to underline their closeness and how much they mean to each other. All of this contradicts the reddit “leaks”, which describe a horrible thing happening to the two of them that wouldn’t ever actually happen if they were to stay in character. Plus, Chris Evans apparently called these dudebros out and straight up denied their “leaks”, so these “leaks” have no veracity either way.

When asked to draw their favorite characters, Anthony Russo drew Iron Man and Joe drew Spider-Man. The Iron Dad relationship is obviously going to be important in the movie, and it would bode well for these characters to get a good ending in the movie if they’re the very favorites of both directors.

RDJ is screening Endgame at his house for family and friends on Easter Sunday. Would he really ruin a holiday with a movie in which his character dies an unwarranted death?

There has not been a wedding in the MCU yet. What would be a better way to end the MCU’s first romance than with the MCU’s first wedding? We’ve had a funeral already, for a side character, and that was bad enough. Imagine how horrible it would be to witness Tony Stark’s funeral as the ending for Endgame. That does not seem like the kind of feeling the Russos want to leave us with. The wedding seems far more appropriate for a movie of this scale and importance.

The chess theory (courtesy of starkravinghazelnuts) — “The last piece to discuss on the chess board is the King piece. This piece is the game winner. Once your king is check-mated, the game is over, and your opponent wins, regardless of the score. The king chess piece is the piece you must protect the most and the one you cannot live without. Many experienced players may find themselves utilizing the king in an attempt to gain an advantage over an opponent, something weaker chess players are leery of doing. No matter how you choose to use your king piece, he must stay alive at all costs.” Tony and Thanos are the Kings on opposing sides. The king must be kept alive in order to win, which is why Tony should make it to the end of the film intact. Thor also literally mentions someone “playing an intricate game” and says that person “has made pawns of us” at the end of Ultron when discussing the Infinity Stones. http://starkravinghazelnuts.tumblr.com/post/181491397743/starkravinghazelnuts-quite-frankly-this-is-the

Two very important meta pieces by starkravinghazelnuts, who has essentially been funding my positive attitude for a while now http://starkravinghazelnuts.tumblr.com/post/182086909963/looking-back-over-everything-i-still-feel-really http://starkravinghazelnuts.tumblr.com/post/182017989478/i-agree-with-you-the-rhodey-show-sounds-good-but-i

https://fanfest.com/2018/08/16/the-russos-reflect-on-iron-man-being-the-heart-and-soul-of-the-mcu/ “I think, in a lot of ways, he is the heart and soul of the Marvel universe,” Infinity War co-director Joe Russo said during a video interview with Wired. “He’s a fascinating character, a character that we love because he is imminently flawed and we like characters that are challenging and express their humanity and I think Tony Stark does that as well as any of the characters. He started off as a narcissistic alcoholic and grew into a hero which, I think, makes him imminently relatable and signifies what the Marvel universe stands for, which is character first and the heroes are defined through the choices that they make.” The Russos love Tony. And you cannot live without your soul, you cannot live without your heart. No matter what you say about Tony, losing him to death would leave a massive, gaping hole in the MCU. Keeping him available to return is the safer bet in almost every regard.

https://youtu.be/f0Ai05cUQoM “If there were no RDJ, there would be no MCU.” - Kevin Feige. RDJ started it all, and Tony shouldn’t die, his presence should remain. He should be able to pop in and out as he sees fit. They know his star power and how important Tony is to the MCU.

https://www.newsarama.com/39526-rdj-as-iron-man-irreplacable-but-will-eventually-leave-says-avengers-infinity-war-directors.html “One closeup from RDJ is worth another actor’s entire performance, he’s incredibly gifted and insanely talented” - Joe Russo. May be a weak reason, but would they really...make him permanently lost to them? They’ve expressed interest in coming back. Would they really banish their most talented and lucrative actor to the darkness of a character death for a cheap shock?

https://youtu.be/5ljluGA4dQU (around ten minutes in) In the Jimmy Kimmel interview, they show the clip they’ve been showing everywhere of Carol’s meeting with some of the Avengers. Jimmy points out that RDJ isn’t in the clip, and he asks if that means something bad for Tony. RDJ says “No, no, no. Not in the slightest.” He could and probably is referring to the fact that Tony is definitely alive at this point, sure, but his attitude and the way he says it points to an overall confidence about Tony that bleeds over to the viewer. In fact, Robert’s whole demeanor during this press tour has been one of pure joy. He is having the time of his life, dancing and laughing, moreso than we have seen before. It could be a man enjoying his last tour with a very special group, but, somehow, I don’t believe someone who loves Tony as much as RDJ does would be this happy if Tony died. Especially if Tony’s death was unwarranted and out-of-left-field, which it absolutely would be if it happened. And this is in contrast to Chris, who has been, while not sad, far more reserved.

Some on-point thoughts from some of the few sane people on reddit:

“After Infinity War went out of its way to establish Thanos as a physical embodiment of Tony’s PTSD (“he’s been in my head for 6 years,” “My only curse is you”, *author’s note: see also above with coming to face an unknown fear like in IM3*), the idea of him ultimately defeating Thanos by killing himself is like... morally reprehensible as a message. I’d like to think Markus and McFeely would know better than that, but honestly, I’ve felt since Civil War that they don’t have the best grasp on his character. Edit: someone asked me in a PM to elaborate on this, so I’m just gonna go ahead and post what I wrote just in case anyone’s interested. Ok, this is gonna be kinda long, but I’ve been sitting on this for a while. so Iron Man 3 was the beginning of Tony’s new character arc that’s gone from phase 2 up till now. In phase 1, his whole journey was learning not to be selfish, and to be willing to put himself on the line to protect others. Avengers 1 completes that arc, and Iron Man 3 sets up a new conflict, where he’s driven entirely by his trauma from the events of The Avengers. He’s obsessed with protecting the world from threats beyond his control- we see it in Iron Man 3 with the house party suits being products of his anxiety, and in Age of Ultron with the Ultron program. He feels like it’s his responsibility to be everyone’s protector, and he’s desperately clinging to any sense of control he can still have in a world that he now realizes is much bigger than him. In Infinity War, he finds out that the event that left him traumatized was orchestrated by Thanos, and for the rest of the movie is driven by a single-minded need to confront Thanos directly and put an end to him, in order to finally be free of the PTSD that’s dominated his life for 6 years. By taking on that responsibility and ambushing him on Titan instead of reaching out to his support system (Steve + the other Avengers), Tony inadvertently puts everything he cares about at risk. In the context of Tony’s story, Thanos is his trauma- and Tony’s defeat on Titan is a direct result of his compulsive need to carry the burden of that trauma alone. So to then have him sacrifice himself to defeat Thanos in Endgame essentially sends the message that “yes, it is a good thing to bear that trauma on your own, and in fact, if you can’t see any other option, killing yourself is an acceptable solution.” It sends a horrible message in the context of the ongoing story, and it doesn’t tell us anything new about Tony as a character- we already know he’s self-sacrificing, it’s been his defining character flaw for four movies already. It’s just a really poor way to end his story.” — msg53

“This. Tony’s arc has been about letting go of his ego while learning to rely on others. His first step was handing Stark Ind. over to Pepper. He tried letting go with Ultron, but it failed cuz Ultron was just an extension of himself. Then he started seeing how being a mentor/father figure could help a kid in need of both (Peter) and the eventual next step should be family and real retirement while others defend/avenge Earth, once he’s done with his Thanos curse. Aside from Thor, His death would feel the most gratuitously out of sync with his journey of all the OG Avengers.” —VictorVonDoomBots

(special shoutout to cuddlebirb over there, consistently fighting for Tony rights)

The absolute nastiness to take out their main character, their cash cow, the one that started it all, when he’s got so much still hanging simply makes no sense. They would leave people with a sick feeling in their stomachs over this movie. People would not be happy with the turn of events, they would feel cheated out of a proper ending for the main character of the whole franchise. It would not be an event movie, it would be the movie that Killed Tony Stark. It would be tainted, and I don’t think the Russos want that. I know they say they think about their own reactions when writing these films, but they’ve gotta be smart enough to realize what a mistake this would be for the die-hard, longtime fans.

Plus, this is an ending to one generation and a lead-in to another. They don’t have Stan anymore to do their cameos, and some people will be on edge about whether to continue. Having RDJ hang around to do cameos and show up here and there to help the new heroes will put people in those seats for the upcoming films. His fifteen minute presence in Homecoming made many people go see the film that wouldn’t have otherwise. They need a hero that people know and love to remain a constant, even if he’s not in a starring role, and Tony Stark is the perfect person to do this. He always helped the younger heroes in the comics, and he’s already taken the mentor mantle with Peter. It’s a natural progression.

The amount of suffering that Tony has been through in the entirety of the MCU and in Endgame in particular, should lead to him finally getting something good in the end, a retirement where he gets to relax and let someone else carry the weight of the world instead of him, for once. Endgame will begin with Tony in extreme anguish, sick, hurt, sad and alone (save for Nebula). In the end, he should be healthy and happy, surrounded by the people who love him, with his future bright, full of possibility, and free of threats because Thanos is gone. That is simply good writing and good bookending. The writers shouldn’t be in the business of torturing Tony for torture’s sake. If he begins in such a dark place, he should end somewhere promising.

Happy’s behavior in FFH trailer. Tony is Happy’s best friend. Would the man be acting so chill, flirting with May, if his BFF just died? It is confirmed that FFH takes place minutes after Endgame. Plus, in a deleted Infinity War scene that featured Happy, Tony says that he and Pepper should set him up with someone. Would that someone be May?

Pepper is literally Tony’s endgame—he says it himself, “in the end, it’s always you.”

#tony stark #avengers endgame #avengers #marvel #endgame speculation #this is massively long but i think it really gets its point across #there is just way way too much pointing to his survival #robert downey jr #rdj

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gaileon · 4 years

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long ass fucking meta under the cut on alm’s growth, primarily focused on his shift in values (and also going into what they were to begin with) as his character arc in fire emblem gaiden. all quotes used in this are subsequently from that game.

alm’s main flaws are his naivete and his impulsiveness. when going on gut instinct while you, frankly, have less information on what’s happening around you, that’s just dangerous. alm’s victories are won by the knowledge mycen has drilled into him since he’s been a child ( after all, mycen knew that one day alm would have to set out in a war against rigel should things go to plan ) and his own unique strength. alm is mentioned to be a cut above the rest, reflected in how he is not only a unique class but also his stats being higher than even lukas, someone with actual military training, from the beginning. kliff has good reason to feel insecure and implore alm to be the one to save him in a pinch, and this strength plus alm’s good heart is likely what landed him a leadership position within his childhood friend group.

is alm’s strength something deriving from his genes? a blessing from his cross-shaped birthmark? something to truly set himself as a rigelian and not a zofian? i could speculate all day if i wanted to, but that matters not for the main argument i have to bring here: alm’s strength is what allows him to get his goals, and his goals are ones most agree with because he has a good heart, thus with power and kindness, what he needs most now is to mature mentally and see the world differently from how he did when he started his adventure.

alm grows up incredibly sheltered. being raised in ram village, he has lived most of his life in a far corner of valentia, unable to come into contact with much of anything. his education is implied to be solely through what mycen teaches him, and considering the low profile mycen was trying to keep, it is unlikely alm traveled much or had any reason to gain information or mature his world view. the fighter lacks experience, and he merely thinks like how his neighbors do as commoners.

he believes in the idea that mila will save them. the earth mother is all what zofians have relied upon for many years, leading consequently to their sloth. mila has blessed them with bounty and the people celebrate her. as someone growing up in a farming and ranching village with a large focus on winery, it makes entire sense that he was raised in a community that praised mila more than anything, for it was her blessings that has made their primary source of income able to work. they don’t have a plan b without her. alm defaults to faith in her, unable to come to terms on his own that they would ever be without her even in the face of a very certain famine. this is why his conversation with forsyth is so important.

Forsyth: It seems that Desaix’s requested aid from the northern power Rigel. Zofia’s forces can’t compare to the might of the knights of Rigel. If the Kingdom of Rigel makes a move, we won’t stand a chance.

Alm: But the “Pact of the Gods” upheld by Zofia and Rigel means we shouldn’t come to blows, right? Our guardian, the Lady Mila, would never permit such a thing.

Forsyth: Yeah, but see… There’s a rumor, it seems, that Lady Mila’s disappeared. Hey, hey. Don’t be so surprised. After all, it’s been kind of weird lately, hasn’t it? Around here, the crops have been failing, and all that’s showing up are a bunch of strange demonic creatures. You can’t help but wonder if the powers of Lady Mila, Protector of the Earth, are waning. Well, if you go to the Temple of Mila, you should be able to find out if this rumor’s true.

forsyth is the one to bring up bad news politically, only for alm to reply back that there’s no way rigel could send troops to zofia. mila wouldn’t allow that. but mila can’t do a thing about it, forsyth essentially tells him. mila’s gone. she hasn’t been helping them for a while. forsyth is the one to open alm’s eyes.

alm’s beginning to think for himself and truly evaluate what’s before him. when celica reunites with him on the rooftop, we start to see this shift.

Celica: [...] Alm, I have a request for you. Is there no way war against the Kingdom of Rigel can be avoided?

Alm: That’s impossible. Emperor Rudolf of Rigel has seized the opportunity to attack while Zofia’s still weakened by civil war. He’s already started an invasion. At this rate, the Kingdom of Zofia is going to be destroyed.

Celica: But when it comes down to it, both Rigelians and Zofians are the same, aren’t they? We are all people of Valentia. Even if these divisions of country no longer existed, we should all still be able to live together in happiness.

Alm: That’s no good. You can’t just tell the people of Zofia to go live under the barbarous rule of Rigel. Seeing as how Rigel aided Desaix in ravaging the lands of Zofia, we’ve got no choice but to fight.

celica does something eerily similar to what alm did before: she suggests that war between zofia and rigel can be avoided (albeit for different reasons than alm did). however, when presented with this statement, alm is now the one to shoot it down and stubbornly so. we see alm now taking forsyth’s counter, thinking it through, and accepting it. alm’s previous argument, zofia and rigel cannot go to war because mila wouldn’t let it happen, hinges upon his faith in mila. him no longer believing that peace is possible between the two nations displays then a loss of faith in mila. alm has turned to be a figure who does not blindly devote himself to the gods, shedding some of that initial mindset, and this also puts him one step closer to what gaiden purports to be the ideal person: someone who does not rely too much on deities but instead themself. we must remember that this whole game’s conflict starts with emperor rudolf of rigel’s dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in all of valentia and wishing to reset it entirely, using his son — alm — as the figure that would pave the way.

in order for rudolf’s ambition to be realized, alm had to lose his fath. being less religious, for him, is linked with independence, one of the values that gaiden puts on a pedestal.

but that is not the only large shift in ideology that alm goes through. in the same conversation with celica as was referenced above, the following discussion happens:

Celica: Unless, Alm, now that everyone’s holding you up as a hero, you want to become the king of the country as well?

Alm: What! That’s mean, Celica. I don’t have those kinds of ambitions. I just want to protect the people of Zofia, that’s all. Besides, it seems that the royal family of Zofia’s only remaining princess is still alive, so I’m planning to search for her. As soon as I find that princess, I’m returning to the village.

keep in mind that zofia’s sole remaining princess being alive is nothing more than a rumor at this point as far as alm is concerned. but he is quick to believe it. in all honestly, alm is quick to believe just about anything in gaiden, which is another point to his naivete.

regardless, his desire to find her to restore her to the throne highlights this mindset that he believes certain people are born to rule. he goes along with the class system, likely something zofia perpetuates, while rigel is more likely to reward people based on merit since that empire values strength so much. alm believes there are bad rulers, but he nonetheless thinks a princess he knows nothing about and doesn’t even know if she’s alive deserves to be on the throne more than any of the people who are working actively towards zofia’s liberation.

however, by the end of the game, alm becomes the holy king (or, rather, as sov puts it, the saint king) of valentia. he, who was raised as a commoner, takes on this role. he may have the blood of an emperor, but he was not raised to fulfill the throne. he takes to it though, believing it to be his responsibility instead of giving sole control to celica which would’ve aligned perfectly well with his plan from before: to find the lost princess of zofia and then return home.

he learns returning home is not his end goal anymore, and when i take sov’s writing into account ( his a-rank support with faye to be specific when he answers why he can’t return faye’s feelings or why his dream is not to return home to ram ) for once, this is something he decides even before he finds out his true bloodline. he makes this decision without the basis that it’s his birthright to rule over rigel, but because of a difference in ideology. he no longer believes that he should have no hand in the matters of state with valentia and that he should just hand it off to a royal that he may hope will be benevolent.

in doing this, he is also proving he is not falling to the same fate of all the zofians who relied on others, namely mila, to give them prosperity. he’s decided he shall do it with his own hands, and he will do it the whole way.

#// pardon me if i’ve already written this meta akhsrkghrgrg #// if i did it must’ve been like either way back in 2017 or just across discord #+. / META & HEADCANONS.#// it wasn't meant to be this long u___u idk how this turned into an essay first draft but hey #long post ---

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khtrinityftw · 5 years

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Part 3: Xarmy Use

The character of Xion is a deconstructive take on a Mary Sue that somehow crossed the line back into being a genuine Mary Sue. It's actually kind of amazing.

The first problem apparent with Xion is that she exists in the period of time before KH2, yet there was no reference to her in KH2. And so there's a plot device where after she dies, she gets forgotten and all traces of her erased from the world. Except of course until every game that came after Days, where suddenly she's being remembered again and traces of her keep popping up. It's about as inorganic as you can possibly get.

The second problem is the sheer redundancy of the character. She joins the Organization as its newest member, who has no memory of her past and who can wield the Keyblade, soon starts questioning the work that she's doing and wondering about her past and why she can wield the Keyblade, and then she betrays the Organization, learns of her secret connection to Sora and how her existence is keeping him from waking up, and she has to disappear in order to set things right. Yeah, that's the exact same character bio as Roxas. And this redundancy means that Roxas ends up just going through the same motions as Xion in response to her doing it, cheapening his story as it was told in KH2 considerably.

Xion also looks exactly like Kairi but isn't her...just like Namine. But she can fight with a Keyblade...just like Kairi does by the end of KH2. And she's a replica who has an identity crisis that ultimately leads to her death in Twilight Town...just like the Riku Replica. And she's Roxas' best friend who ends up fighting him...just like Axel. And she's part of Xemnas' master plan to collect hearts and complete Kingdom Hearts...just like Sora AND Roxas.

Xion might just be the least original KH-original character there is! Her creation did nothing for the series except needlessly over-complicate it. If I were in charge, I'd just combine Xion and Roxas into one character....named Roxas. Things are simpler that way.

The third problem is her personality. If I was asked to describe the KH girls’ personalities, I’d answer this way:

Kairi? She’s spunky and sassy but concealing insecurities and anxiety about her life changing and her friends being separated from her stemming from a traumatic past, feelings that she ultimately learns to cope with through her journey within Sora’s heart. She’s also brave and headstrong: when she’s able to take action, she does so without hesitation. And she is extremely kind and caring, easy to make friends with and very loyal to her friends in turn.

Namine? She’s shy and withdrawn due to being abused since her creation, only doing things that other people tell her to do. But she has a strong conscience, and when she uses her powers to hurt someone, the guilt it causes her motivates her to step up and defy her abusers in order to make things right, and in the process of doing so develops a lot more confidence. This allows Namine to do things that she wants to do and finally feel at peace with herself.

Aqua? She’s dutiful and studious, absorbing all her master’s teachings like a sponge and becoming his golden child, with a strong sense of justice and desire to help people. She also cares deeply for her friends, even though she ends up in conflict with them when her other sensibilities clash with her friendship with them. She takes failure particularly hard and falls into depression when her heroic self-image is shattered, but is strong enough to endure it.

Larxene? She’s a sadist who acts with a very calculated childishly spiteful and gleefully antagonistic attitude, doing whatever she can to push people’s buttons, get under their skin, and make them hurt in any way possible. Seeing others suffer is the only way Larxene can truly feel anything, as it’s implied she was the one who got hurt as a full person with a heart, thus this is a twisted kind of catharsis. She’s also got a short fuse and is quick to anger.

Olette? She’s the sensible one in her group of friends, able to keep the overactive Hayner and underachieving Pence in line. She’s kind and supportive, and a hard worker even if she doesn’t like the work. She’s also something of a romantic, and can even be kind of ditzy.

Xion? Um….she’s…a nice girl who loves her friends. And that’s about it until she has her identity crisis and we get several moments of her being sad about it, but it all seems very by-the-numbers and doesn’t really go anywhere before she decides to embrace her Too Good For This Sinful Earth nature and ultimately dies a sparkling death in Roxas’ arms. Apparently she was going to go in a more interesting direction where her anger became the focus and she would lash out in earnest, but in the final product we only really see her angry once (her loss to Riku), and when it comes time to fight Roxas, she’s faking it so that Roxas will kill her.

For a character who is so omni-present within Days, Xion is bland. She really feels like Days scenario writer Tomoko Kanemaki’s wish fulfillment Mary Sue OC: given a basic “good girl” personality that is easy to project onto, while getting to be besties with the incredibly fangirl-popular Roxas and Axel and interact with other fangirl-popular characters like Riku and Namine, be a central part of their lives and development, and essentially take over the story that was allegedly meant to be Roxas’, all while exploring those angsty “What Measure is a Non-Human?” themes Kanemaki loves so much that make it that much easier for players to project great depth onto her when she’s really about as shallow as a puddle. I honestly think there were more scenes of characters talking about Xion than there were scenes of Xion herself!

And yet due to the inexplicable popularity of both Days and Xion, especially in Japan, we never saw or heard the end of her, with the internal rules of canon bending over backward to make it so. By the time of Kingdom Hearts III, Kairi, the original heroine of the original KH Trinity, was actively being screwed over in favor of giving this copycat more of the spotlight.

If Xion absolutely had to exist, then the last we ever saw and heard of her should have been "No! Xion! Who else will I have ice cream with?" I'd honestly feel a lot more positively toward her then!

#Plinkett-Style #Anti-Series Beyond #Anti-Nomura

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levipleasearchive · 6 years

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On the question how Eren would/could forgive Annie for all the things she has done – a re-evaluation

Note:

I wrote this a couple of months back when this post was getting some notes again. Then I left it in my drafts to collect dust and now I'm bringing it out without updating it, because I just can't be bothered. The entire point of this was adding new information we got in the manga since I answered the original question, so I feel a little bad not taking the latest chapters into consideration (which I haven't even read yet). However I'm clearing out my drafts and I'd feel even worse just deleting it. So take it as is and feel free to add your own thoughts or any updated information to it.

I based this on my more in depth answer with manga spoilers by the way and my conclusion hasn't really changed: I still like to think that it's possible for Eren to forgive Annie. The main reason I wrote this at all was to address Annie's motivations which weren't known at the time I wrote the original post, but have been (at least partly?) revealed since.

Below is the unedited text from whenever I wrote this. Enjoy.

Spoiler warning for the manga up to chapter 103 under the cut.

Forgiveness is a process and the likelihood of it depends on a multitude of factors. In the case of Eren and Annie we don’t know some of the (very important) factors, so this is of course a bit of a speculation here. But I think it’s at least possible to determine a tendency of how likely Eren is to forgive Annie for what she has done.

This is what I wrote in my elaborate response to the question almost four years ago. Since then a lot has happened in the story and some important things we didn’t know back then have been shown. Before I address those in depth however, I want to go over the relevant points I brought up back then. I'm keeping this as brief as possible, but if you want my longer-winded argumentation on most points (including typos that I'm not going back to fix) you can follow the link above.

There are some things I'm leaving out or rephrasing due to the updated information we now have on the state of things. I'm also including a few things from later chapters which I want to touch upon without going into much elaboration.

1) What Annie has done:

Annie is part of the warrior group that is sent to attack the walls on Paradis Island and capture the founding titan for Marley

like Armin's speculated, Annie leads the mindless titans towards the walls for the attack

Eren doesn't witness Annie’s titan form during the attack on Shiganshina nor during the attack on Trost thus he may not directly associate her with these events the way he does Reiner and Bertholt

Eren witnesses the Female Titan killing multiple people (some of whom he knows personally) during the Scouting Legion's 57th excursion which leads to him fighting her full of rage and blaming her for the deaths she caused

Annie lies by omission, keeping her identity as a titan shifter, being from Marley, and her mission a secret from the people inside the walls, including Eren

on Reiner’s instructions, Annie strips Marco of his 3DMG during the battle in Trost which leaves him unable to escape or defend himself when a titan shows up and eats him (though Eren possibly doesn't know about that)

2) Eren’s relationship with Annie throughout the story:

after two years of training together, Eren switches from having nothing to do with Annie and being intimidated by her to training hand to hand combat with her and respecting her

when Annie is suspected of being the Female Titan, Eren refuses to believe it

even though he goes along with luring Annie into a trap in Stohess, Eren seems desperate for her to clear herself of the suspicion and tells her to stop making bad jokes and following them down underground

after Annie transforms and confirms the suspicion, Eren is reluctant to fight her and cannot transform himself at first

when finally engaging the Female Titan in combat in the middle of Stohess, Eren wonders about Annie’s reasons to fight

this is contrary to how he faces the Female Titan the first time before knowing her identity and also how he faces the Armored Titan the first time while knowing that it's Reiner where both times he is filled with rage

after Annie's capture and her encasing herself in crystal, the first thing Eren does upon coming out of his titan form is ask about her with concern

3) Other factors that may allow Eren to forgive Annie (eventually):

Eren has always been open towards broadening his horizon

despite having strong opinions, Eren re-evaluates them when he's given new information that seems reasonable to him

Eren shows high adaptability to new and unexpected situations

my impression is also that Eren is actually understanding of others and their situation/motivation as long as he can make sense of it

Eren himself has killed humans before and knows that different perspectives may lead to (violent) conflicts which cannot always be resolved by talking

Annie feels remorse about the death she has caused as is shown by her apologising to a dead soldier during the cleanup of Trost as well as her tears when she, Reiner and Bertholt leave Marco to be eaten by a titan

This was essentially my basis for believing four years ago that it would be possible for Eren to forgive Annie and I stand by it. The updates I implemented are for the sake of relevancy, but they don't change my general opinion on the matter.

There are two things that happened in the manga since then which I want to discuss more in detail. They are the reason I considered to make this post in the first place. While I wouldn't say that they're definite game-changers or anything, I consider them to be interesting and in part a confirmation to my speculations prior to the Scouting Legion making it to Eren's basement.

4) Annie's motivations:

We finally get an answer with proper context to a very essential question: What is Annie fighting for?

Annie's desire to return home to her father has been apparent since her capture. She also mentions to Eren during training that her father was high on a pipe dream — most likely the idea of becoming an honorary Marleyan. The flashback of her father's apology also makes a lot more sense in the context of the warrior program.

It can be assumed that Annie didn't have much of a choice. It was very likely her father who entered her into the warrior program and he only came to regret that decision by the time it was too late. In one of the flashbacks it becomes very clear that Annie has no loyalty towards Marley or anyone else and that she really just wants to go home. Reiner convinces her and Bertholt that they cannot return to Marley without the Founding Titan, thus Annie is driven to fulfill the mission so she can return.

It's still a matter of speculation whether Eren would be able to understand Annie's situation.

5) Eren's talk with Reiner in Marley:

This is a really interesting matter to me, because for the first time Eren comes face to face for a talk with one of the warriors that attacked and infiltrated the walls. Eren has come to see the bigger picture and shows understanding. He concludes that Reiner didn’t have a choice.

I don't want to go as far as to claim that Eren has forgiven Reiner, but he seems to understand where Reiner was coming from. It’s a necessary step towards forgiveness though.There are of course some differences between Annie and Reiner, but my impression is that if anything things are more in Annie's favour. After all Eren seems to have held her in higher regard than Reiner even after learning of her identity as the Female Titan.

In conclusion:

I still think it’s possible for Eren to forgive Annie eventually. He definitely used to care enough about her that I think he would have wanted to forgive her. The harder part to determine is if he still cares, but if he still does then I do think that he could and even would forgive her.

The most uncertain factors to me right now are whether Annie is ever going to come out of that crystal (I certainly hope so) and whether Eren still cares (again, I hope so but after a four year time skip I'm still trying to get a feel for the person he has become).

#ereannie #ereani #eren yeager #annie leonhardt #snk meta #manga spoilers #mine #my meta

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lagtim3-archive · 6 years

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On Pink Pearl Thus Far

I had to re-post this because tumblr is trash and if I include any hyperlinks this won’t show up in search at all. 🙃

(Note: I’ll be referring to ‘White Pearl’ and 'Rose Quartz’ by their original titles of 'Pink Pearl’ and 'Pink Diamond’, respectively.)

HOO BOY. I stumbled upon @ask-whitepearl-and-steven just a couple months ago and, just… wow! This is an absolutely amazing fanwork, I’m utterly floored and grateful that @thechekhov is willing to dedicate the time and effort it takes to make and share this story.

For those of you who haven’t read it, Ask White Pearl and Steven is, reduced to it’s most base description, an AU where Steven’s mother was White Diamond and Rose Quartz still leads the Crystal Gems.

You can read the comic in full at https://tapas.io/episode/1242681

You can follow the blog itself for more content at https://ask-whitepearl-and-steven.tumblr.com/

You can follow the creator’s blog at http://thechekhov.tumblr.com/

You can support the creator at https://www.patreon.com/TheChekhov

Why is it so great? WELL!

The characterization is well thought-out and well presented;

The style is true to the original but still definitely it’s own thing;

Colors are utilized sparingly, which makes it pop all the more when they’re there;

I definitely appreciate the fact that this version of Steven looks his age, and that this version of Steven is more prone to questioning the world around him, all due to his upbringing (or lack thereof);

It’s nice to see Connie and Steven still having a fantastic friendship under different circumstances;

And, of course, getting to see Steven and “Rose” interact is just 👌👌👌

Plus, the foreshadowing to the latest reveal was faaaaan-tastic! I won’t go into detail here, ‘cause if you’ve read it you know what I’m talking about, but… just keep in mind that the characters’ eyes changing color isn’t just a stylistic thing.

So, with the end of S2, I wanted to post some speculations! Specifically about Pink Pearl, what she’s been through so far, how deep the Bleaching goes, and how she might feel as of the latest update.

Warning, this is a doozy of a dissection / theorization post. Get a snack.

(Note: Any time I say ‘order’ or ‘command’ here, it’s in the context of ‘Pink Pearl’s bleaching causes her to consider this an order’, not ‘Steven is ordering Pink Pearl around.’ I wanted to clarify just in case.)

First off, Bleaching. What is it, even?

Well, ‘Bleaching’ is what I call the primary half of White Diamond’s power; the other half is ‘Replacement’. The latter requires the former to work. How the heck did I come to this conclusion?

For one, her direct quote on the matter, “There we are, I’ve removed their flaws! Now, there is nothing to hinder my white light from sparkling through them!”

This implies that Bleaching is the precursor step to Replacement, and that they are not the same thing even though they work in tandem.

And we can see this for ourselves; in the scene in The Head Ship where White Diamond blasts the Crystal Gems, their personalities aren’t immediately overwritten. The stay on the ground and struggle weakly for a moment while White Diamond continues to monologue.

I Bleaching is essentially re-organizing the internal structure of the Gemstone to get rid of structural impurities and neutralize any foreign-particle impurities that absorb light-waves. I can imagine that it’s very painful to have the very core of your being rearranged and ‘purified’. If they had been allowed to get back to their feet in this state, they still would have retained their personalities… but, they would have been compelled to follow White Diamond’s orders, direct and indirect, to a tee.

But, now that the Gems’ colors have been “fixed”, and now that White Diamond’s light can fully pass through them without being altered by impurities, White can progress to part two of her ability, Replacement. With a snap of her fingers, White Diamond’s light overrides her victims’ light, and, well… Gems are light. So now, they are White Diamond.

But… what happens to a Bleached and Replaced Gem when White Diamond is no more? If White Diamond were to be shattered, the Gemstone that powers the Bleaching/Replacement would be rendered inoperable, and the effect would cease, of course.

But, in this story, that’s not what happened. White Diamond the person is gone, but White Diamond the Gemstone remains. The Bleaching remains, but her “unhindered light”, the Replacement (more on that later,) is no more.

All that being said, I believe that this version of Pink Pearl is fully aware of her surroundings, and still retains her own individuality and personality while Bleached, although her ability to show it is severely hindered by the Bleaching.

Steven is currently under the impression that he’s been controlling Pink Pearl in a similar fashion to White Diamond. He thinks that he’s been projecting all his emotions onto her, and all her emotional reactions have merely been a reflection of what he desired to see.

It’s easy to assume this is correct, now that we know the white-pupil-glow means he’s issuing a command to Pink Pearl, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth! Early on, we have seen Pink Pearl emoting subtly via the sweat droplets she sometimes gets when Steven is displaying his ignorance of both his and her origins.

Here’s an example of her being obviously sad, when, if Steven were truly projecting his emotions onto her, she should be acting optimistic to alleviate his worry for her:

Later, we even see her with white pupils, emoting on her own:

It’s implied that, although she’s being ordered right now, her expression is her own and not reflective of Steven’s expression, since he had no reason to grimace until he deduced why Pink Pearl was grimacing.

Pink Pearl has also been shown, multiple times, to take (limited) initiative without being directly ordered to. The best example of this is during the Mystery Canyons scene.

When the Teal Gem Monster made her first appearance, Pink Pearl made a mad dash for the transporter, despite the fact that Steven was dead-set running away on foot. If he had truly been ‘talking to himself’ this whole time, she would have followed without question.

But, Steven wasn’t issuing any direct commands, so Pink Pearl was able to take initiative and find a better way out. She wasn’t able to activate the transporter on her own until indirectly commanded to, though.

During this scene, she was visibly distressed about the danger and confused that the platform wasn’t working for her (likely a limitation of her Bleaching, or possibly a limitation of whatever made her eye-crack.) Her pupils were grey, not white, so these were definitely her own feelings, not Steven’s.

Shortly after they arrived in the Pit, Pink Pearl did the Diamond sign in response to Steven’s question about who the Giant Ladies on the four murals are. She then took initiative to salute and bow to Steven. This could arguably have been Bleached into her, but I think she was trying to communicate to Steven about his origins, given that his eyes were normal-colored.

We even get to see some of this in the way she echoes Steven:

If Pink Pearl was mindlessly providing the information requested of her, or heck, even if she disliked Steven, she would have simply said 'I don’t sleep’. However, she can tell that her inability to sleep is causing Steven distress, so she says, 'I’m sorry, I don’t sleep.’

Finally, when it comes to orders and commands, Pink Pearl’s perception overrides Steven’s intent.

Pink Pearl has been a servant to White Diamond for thousands of years. She is very sensitive when it comes to being ordered around; most orders are not direct. Much of it is subtle, ex., if White Diamond were to walk up to a door and Pink Pearl did not open it for her, that would be violating a command, even though no command was spoken, because of Pink Pearl’s position of servitude.

The white-pupils are a two way street; they originate from Steven when he, for instance, asks a question that he expects some for of answer to. They originate from Pink Pearl whenever she interprets something as a command.

We can see an example of this here:

Steven has been trying to figure out Pink Pearl’s name. Pink Pearl perceives this as an order to tell him her name, which she can’t do. This sticks with her as an unresolved command.

In this scene, Pink Pearl’s eyes are normal until she realizes she can use the sign to communicate with Steven. Then they become white, because the unresolved command kicks in. Steven, meanwhile, has been looking at clothes, but his eyes still turn white even though he’s not initiating interaction with Pink Pearl.

All of this, is the effect of Bleaching.

But what of Replacement? Well, that’s not just a White Diamond thing…

Steven can do it too, in his sleep. Steven is not made of light, so it stands to reason that projecting his consciousness is the closest he can come to emulating White Diamond’s Replacement ability. He can only do this with Bleached Gems, and there’s only one Bleached Gem we know of.

So, the following is established:

Pink Pearl must follow anything she perceives as a command, direct or indirect, that come from the owner of White Diamond’s Gem.

Pink Pearl is unable to say her own words; she must repeat those recently said by Steven, in his own voice.

Pink Pearl can pick and choose what words to say, as long as she fulfills perceived commands in the process.

Pink Pearl can take initiative, as long as she is doing it in that name of a perceived directive.

Pink Pearl’s personality is no longer being Replaced with White Diamond’s, or Steven’s, for that matter (when he’s awake and not unconsciously doing it.)

Steven kinda played himself here. “Please, tell me it’s not true!” is a direct command to do just that. However, it is also partially true that he’s not “just controlling [her] like that,” because he’s not the one that Bleached her, he only ever took control of her body to guide them back together, he obviously never intended to force her to do anything, and it’s her ingrained sense of what a servant is expected to do that keeps triggering the Bleaching-forced-compliance effect. Plus, she still retains her sense of self and a limited ability to assert it.

From what I’ve observed, Pink Pearl is not stupid. She realizes, at this point in time if not earlier, that Steven and White Diamond are wholly different beings, even if she’s doesn’t know the 'how’ or 'why’ of it (does she??). After interacting with Steven for a few weeks, Pink Pearl probably also realized that Steven was wholly unaware of the control he was exerting over her. Any doubts she might have had would have definitely been quashed when Steven started to have a meltdown over the revelation.

All of this is probably what’s going through her mind as she says this, so she doesn’t immediately realize that she just confirmed Steven’s worst fear.

And then it hits, and she realizes precisely what was wrong with her response. No white pupils here, those tears are inarguably her own.

Suddenly, Steven accidentally manages to give her back the ability to act of her own accord, before he passes out from the stress and/or the effort he exerted partially reversing the Bleaching his mother did.

And what’s Pink Pearl’s first response? After a brief moment of ‘what the frack just happened’, she scoops up Steven and carries him to his father. Which implies that she already knew where he lived, and that as soon as she got Steven’s “Beach City’ message, she knew she needed to find a way to get them back together.

So, where does this leave us?

Well, in canon, it’s been shown that Replaced Gems don’t remember what happened while they were being Replaced. This both means that Pink Pearl blacks out when Steven takes her over, and that she does not remember anything that happened while she was Replaced by White Diamond.

From way before the War, to the beginning of Era 3, is all a blank to her. It remains to be seen if White Diamond rescinded her Replacement at any point while on Earth / head-preggo with Steven, and/or if she told Pink Pearl anything about the War for Earth.

Possibility One:

White Diamond knew that Pink Diamond was posing as a Rose Quartz. She imparted this information to Pink Pearl before she passed.

Pink Pearl may justifiably feel that Pink Diamond abandoned her. There’s many reasons why Pink Diamond could not go back for her and keep the War going, but all that would not initially matter to Pink Pearl in the face of her Diamond leaving her to a fate of being puppeteered.

Pink Pearl should also be able to extrapolate that Pink Diamond has no way of knowing or even conceptualizing that 'White Diamond’ no longer exists. Without any way to communicate this, any attempts to defend Steven will be interpreted as her Bleaching forcing her to keep her abuser safe from potential liberation.

Possibility Two:

White Diamond had no idea that Pink Diamond was posing as a Rose Quartz; or, she did, and did not impart this information to Pink Pearl before she passed.

Pink Pearl and Pink Diamond’s relationship has been shown to be more of a best-friendship than the master/servant relationship it was intended to be, so Pink Pearl likely holds Pink Diamond on a very high pedestal for her kindness. She probably feels the same way about Steven, at this point.

So, from her perspective, Rose has broken the kindest of the Diamonds, and attempted to hurt the equally kind son of her former abusive master. Rose may say she can 'help’, now, but Pink Pearl knows Steven doesn’t want to hurt her or rule over her, so she may very well reject any help Rose has to offer in favor of letting Steven figure out his powers and finish freeing her on his own.

Either Way!

Pink Pearl may be avoiding Greg for whatever reason, but I doubt she’ll ever be far from Steven, considering that Rose Quartz and the Crystal Gems pose a very serious threat to his continued existence. If worst comes to worst and Steven is killed, it’d be reasonable for Pink Pearl to fear the return of White Diamond.

~THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK~

#this turned out to be six pages in twelve point times new roman without the pictures #ask white pearl and steven #thechekhov #steven universe #su #i swear to god as soon as i have extra money i am gonna throw it at this person for this amazing piece of work just #i cant even with how good it's been thus far #lagtim3 blogs

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negativereader · 6 years

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Everything Wrong With the Twilight Saga: Why was it so popular?

So, I’ve been hedging around this for a while. I’ve talked about it, I’ve mentioned it, but now I’m going to actually talk a little bit about it. Also, I felt that I honestly couldn’t end this Everything Wrong With series without talking about the reason why it was so popular.

Twilight’s popularity wasn’t something that anyone really expected. It wasn’t released to much fanfare, and it certainly didn’t get much in the way of publicity. Right when Twilight was coming out, YA was experiencing something of a slowdown. The Harry Potter books were still chugging along like no one’s business, but people were starting to realize that making knock-offs wasn’t going to sell well.

There were a lot of action books, and a lot of ‘real life issues’ books like before, but fantasy and sci-fi didn’t seem to know where it wanted to go. Did it want to go more in the epic direction, like Eragon and some of the repackaged ‘YA’ fantasy that had been moved over from the adult section were doing? Did they want to be humorous like The Wizard, the Witch and Two Girls from Jersey? Was it going to be wrapped up in real teen issues?

A lot of things were getting thrown at the wall, and one of them just happened to stick.

And ever now, no one is completely sure why.

Why Do People Love the Twilight Series?

I’ve made this blog on insulting this series. I’ve attacked the poor plotting, awful characters, confused planning, and questionable themes. Yet, for all of my, and others critique, this series was, in its heyday, ungodly popular.

And I’m going to take a look at the things that I think really appealed to fans to make a compelling enough read for them to keep wanting more.

The Setting

Settings are extremely important in fiction. A ghost story set in the Southeastern U.S. is going to be very different than one set in the Southwestern U.S. and both will be completely different than one set in Japan. Not only do they have different histories and lore which should contribute to how their written, but they have a different feel. The Southeast brings to mind hanging Spanish moss, abandoned plantations, long family histories, and small towns that have existed since the country was founded and have a good share of morbid stories, the Southwest brings to mind ghost town, forgotten mines, mountaineers who disappeared, and violent ends of gamblers. Settings set tones, expectations, and get people in the mood for a story.

Forks was an amazing choice of a setting. The Pacific Northwest is a tragically underused area in fiction, and it lends itself so well to creepy stories. There are still a lot of areas where people just don’t live, so it’s one of the last big wilderness areas in the country, it’s often overcast, giving an aura of gloom and mystery to the whole thing, and it just sort of seems like, if there were strange things left in the world (or at least in the U.S.), it would be here.

The setting might have been chosen by Meyer purely because she wanted her sparkling vampires to remain hidden, but she also managed to choose one of the best settings if she wanted to give a feel for the mysterious. You see the eerie looking trees in the background, or the fog, and it feels like there’s something strange going on before anything even happens.

The Supernatural

People like strange stuff. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but it always sort of is. Every time TV breaks from its reality TV/soap opera/sitcom and does something supernatural, everyone is all over it. Look at Supernatural, Stranger Things and even the first few seasons of Sleepy Hollow. People love the supernatural, and teenage girls are no different. It’s something that people don’t seem to understand, even now, but never seems to fail.

Teenage girls are no different. In fact, I can remember, as a teenager, actively looking for stories that involved a supernatural love interest, and even though the paranormal romance genre has died down, it still exists in some form or other.

The idea of the supernatural gives a feeling that what they’re reading is a fantasy, but also allows things that could have never happened to happen. It makes the story feel more epic, more important and more interesting. It adds to the atmosphere and gives a feeling like anything can happen, as well as adds new dimensions, such as theorizing.

The Powerful Powerless Plain Beautiful Protagonist

While I hate this trope, it’s a powerful one. Bella Swan is a perfect protagonist for a fantasy like this. She’s weak enough to that the reader can play out their rescue romance fantasies, but also grows to become the strongest vampire in the series. She plays out the reader’s insecurities on their looks and tells them that they really are beautiful.

More importantly though, while looking at Bella objectively, she’s a terrible person, she’s a character who was designed for the reader to insert themselves through. They can attribute motives and reasons to her actions that make sense to them. It is one of the reasons why, when you look at fanfic, you see so many different Bellas. You see ones who are snarky, ones who are kind, ones who are funny, clever, brave and so many things, that the reader wishes that they were.

Because that is what Bella is. She’s sort of like Barbie. She’s got an identity, but it’s not important. What’s important is that she plays a role for the reader to fantasize through.

What’s more, the idea of a normal person having to navigate the supernatural world with little more than a blocking ability is interesting, since she’s being forced to survive against much, much more dangerous creatures than herself. This is a perfect fantasy, and it’s not surprising that a lot of young women loved it.

The Man Who Saves and Is Saved

This is essentially the romance novel equivalent of having your cake and eating it too. Edward Cullen essentially fulfills the dream of both being saved like a princess by prince charming, but also being able to save him from the darkness in himself. While, in reality, he’s actually a pretty poor character who flips from the ‘bad boy’ to the moral savior and honestly, like most of Meyer’s character really is more of a fantasy than a person, it doesn’t matter.

No one here is really looking for a story or a real character. They’re looking for a dream, and Edward, while I can’t stand him, is that dream for many people, or at least he was. He was dark, tortured, yet also more than capable of supporting Bella when she needed him.

What was more, he was just ‘in love’ with her. She didn’t have to earn his love. They never had to meet, slowly come together, and fall for one another. Bella, and thus the reader, never had to work. The fantasy was just there, waiting to be enjoyed.

The Gothic Revival

All of my critiques have been given before to another genre. One that, during the Regency and Victorians era’s in England was discouraged for ladies of quality to read because people thought that it essentially ate your brain. It was filled with swooning women, dark and brooding men, mysterious and dark castles, hints of the supernatural, empty wilderness, and…well…vaguely uncomfortable depictions of either foreigners or Catholics, often both.

The original Gothic romance.

In essence, Twilight and all of the paranormal romances that have followed it are a revival of the Gothic, following the same themes, ideas and patterns that people wrote back in the eighteenth century. It follows similar themes, settings and even patterns as the original.

Forks is the perfect Gothic setting. Cloudy, isolated, with a hint of something strange, but enough that is normal to be uncanny. It remains mysterious, but also intriguing. It’s strange, but yet familiar enough for it to be an ideal setting that hints that there might be something wrong, but acts as a bridge between the real world and the magical. To the point that Meyer originally wanted to name her book Forks.

Bella Swan is the essential Gothic heroine, foolish, flat, and dull, but at the same time, at least according to the author, kind, pure, resourceful and filled with qualities that should be admired and rewarded. She exists for the reader to experience the drama through her, but also is rewarded, not for what she does, but for who she is, living out the wildest dreams and fantasies of the reader, but doing so in a way that always remains grounded in the idea that she is a good girl.

Edward Cullen is the Gothic hero, both Byronic in his tortured element, but also heroic and ‘safe’ for the reader to fantasize about. This is no Anne Rice vampire, even if Rice should be considered responsible for Edward’s creation. He exhibits contradictory traits, but all of them are what the reader wants at different times. When the reader wishes to be protected, he is the protector, but when she wishes to be the protector himself, he is both emotionally, and later physically, dependent on Bella as she transcends humanity.

Paranormal romance is the Gothic, repackaged and remade for the modern world. The themes remain the same, as to the critiques of it. This is true of all genres. They do not really die. They just repurpose themselves. Because the fundamentals that created the Gothic, young women with contradictory desires, entering the world of adulthood and the strange and unstable that that represents, and coming into a physical maturity that implies many changes, who want to both be protected and loved, but also to be respected and rewarded on their own merits, have not changed.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, even if Twilight itself was a deeply flawed novel. Meyer made many mistakes but bubbling under the surface was the potential for a good book. Not only that, but the basic themes of the story, those of change, of trying to find a place in the world, of suddenly dealing with romance in a more long-lasting way, were all things that spoke to the readers, both the teenagers and the older women. Don’t get me wrong, I still think that the Twilight Saga is trash, and the obsessed fans of its heyday were both obnoxious and a little worrying, but, as I said, the aspects that appeal to people are still there, and they’re not going anywhere.

The Gothic, Paranormal Romance, whatever you want to call it, might be in a slump now, but all it’ll take is one decent writer to revitalize it, and the trend will start again. After all, what good is a supernatural story without death and rebirth?

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