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love-archon · 3 years

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A Poem For You

Fleeting romances in the court of the Raiden Shogun, whose reign stands eternally still...

Spring - 春

"In Naniwa Bay, now the flowers are blossoming. After lying dormant all winter, now the spring has come..."

-Wani of Baekje

• The old tales warn of kitsune: yokai that take on forms of handsome men and beautiful women to play tricks on the unsuspecting humans. When they are careless, however, their disguises slip, and one can see a tail or two poking out from under their robes.

• Or, in the case of your soldiers' archery instructor, Gorou, a pair of large, fluffy ears emerging from his hair.

• There are whispers of a general in the rebel army far in the mountains, who has the features of a fox spirit and the slyness to match. Thankfully, the army lacks valuable intel to proceed, and cannot move forward without the use of spies.

• You blink and, in a shimmer like dust on sun-baked earth, the ears are gone. The gentle afternoon breeze rustles the leaves, and he nocks his arrow and lets it fly.

• Perhaps you were simply imagining things?

• Gorou, who guides his trainees with a strong, reliable hand, steady as stone,

• Gorou, who splits arrows in half as they fly, vowing to protect you always,

• Gorou, who smiles fondly at you as you walk through the gardens of your estate, holding your parasol to veil you from the sun, would never betray you or the great shogun. Would he?

• One warm spring night, where the dew still drips from the sakura flowers, he sits with you on the rooftops. His round lazuli eyes meet yours, and he tells you, truthfully, that he'll be leaving soon. Won't you join him?

• Your heart stirs to agree, but you respond that you cannot abandon your duties to your family, or to the shogun. He looks disappointed, but gets up from his seat, telling you that he accepts your decision. “If you ever change your mind,” he begins, but stops when the look in your eyes makes it clear you can’t.

• But you didn't know that "soon" meant now.

• Papers stolen from your family's most secret rooms are rolled up in his hands. His plain clothes melt away to reveal the uniform of the rebel army. The foxlike ears you thought were a dream now rest on his head, clear as day.

• Most striking of all, however, are the nine tails shimmering behind him- the mark of a fox spirit that’s accumulated centuries of magic.

• Your eyes can’t quite catch the way he leaves, and you’re not sure exactly when you became alone in the night with the flowers.

• Or if you’d imagined the saddened way he said goodbye.

Summer - 夏

"The spring has passed, and the summer comes again;

For the white robes are spread to dry on the Mount of Kaguyama."

-Empress Jitoh

• You do not know who keeps sending these letters, despite your best efforts. Only that they must be a refined noble of high status and excellent taste.

• Each cut of paper, beautifully bound, is dyed the right color to match the season. They are appropriately adorned with fresh sprigs of plants from the sender's garden, or tied with a luxurious ribbon of patterned silk. Lavish scents drift off the pages in a perfume that's sweet and light.

• Oh, and the words.

• The appearance of these gifts pale in comparison to the contents. The mysterious admirer has learned the alphabet borrowed from Liyue, and the complex brush strokes are applied with just the right deftness that each kanji character shines.

• Your beauty is eternal, they proclaim, like unmelting snow on summer mountains, and strikes the heart like a bolt of lightning. In your luminous eyes, the ideal of your god has been met- a thousand times over...

• As dizzyingly romantic as it is, one thing gives you pause, as you lift your own brush to write your reply.

• "Your god," it says. Not mine.

• Who would know the secret etiquette of the court so intimately, to the point that other suitors' letters paled in comparison... and not worship the immaculate Raiden Shogun, much less take an interest in you?

• Then you are sent in your clan head's place to deal with the troublesome Fatui that have slipped past your nation's defenses, and you find your answer then. Their leader wears the traditional attire of a traveling nobleman, and wields his weapon with aristocratic grace.

• His underlings fall rather quickly under your hand, but he himself is annoyingly persistent. He darts out of the way of your attacks, but it takes all your power to stop his from striking true.

• You do not get his name, only his face- fair and clean and luminous, with delicate features twisted in cruel amusement.

• It’s a shame that you must marr it with your blade, but what can be done?

• Then, he glides past you, close enough to whisper in your ear, and completes the poem no one has seen but you.

Autumn - 秋

"Even in the age of almighty gods unheard of;

The waters of Tatsuta are dyed in crimson red."

-Lord Ariwara-no-Narihira

• It is time for the great procession- an event of fanfare and decadence, where you and your family must travel from your ancestral home to the domain of the immortal shogun to display your wealth.

• Despite the excitement surrounding the occasion, you know quite well it is nothing more than a way to maintain control over the lords of Inazuma.

• But no expense must be spared if it means preserving your reputation. If it means that no other family dares question your wealth. Not in travel, not in housing arrangements, not in entertainment, not in the hired guards to protect you on your long and arduous journey.

• And so, after you pay the Kaedehara clan the exorbitant sum they demand, they give you twenty able-bodied samurai under their command... including Kazuha, their youngest son.

• The servant girls- and some of the boys- traveling with you blush when he passes, observing his lithe form and gentle eyes and striking, pale blond hair. One streak of red is visible there, calling to mind a sole maple leaf in autumn.

• Kazuha does not join in the other samurai's revelry. While they cheerfully indulge in the food and drink provided to them on the journey, and boast of their prowess when the time comes to fight bandits hiding on the path, he remains silent and alone, his eyes only on his collection of handwritten poems.

• (And, when you aren’t looking, they shyly flit to you before looking away.)

• In the end, however, Kazuha is the only one who actually bests a bandit in combat.

• Late at night, when the others are sleeping off the wine, large shadows flit past the trees. The bandit clans in the area thrive during this time, like hunters when beasts migrate in droves. They're confident that this traveling party will be easy prey.

• But one thief approaches too rashly, too quickly, and one crimson eye opens to meet him.

• Kazuha drifts from one opponent to another like a leaf falling from its branch, carried by strong winds. And yet, none of them can touch him. One after another, each man collapses with a sharp cry, only their silhouettes visible in the darkness.

• In the morning, the traveling party awakens to see fifty-some criminals tied up and piled up in a heap, and bursts into laughter. As the other samurai are still hung over, it’s clear who was responsible for this.

• Yes, Kaedehara-kun is a wonderful samurai. Skillful, composed, brave. And an excellent companion to have by one’s side, if one is lucky enough to have met him.

• It was quite the shock to learn that he would later flee the islands, sailing onward to the Land of Contracts aboard the ship of a pirate lord.

• But if anyone had the strength of mind to defy the gods- wouldn’t it be him?

Winter - 冬

"In winter, the early mornings. It is beautiful indeed when snow has fallen during the night, but splendid too when the ground is white with frost..."

-Sei Shonagon

• Lady Ayaka is one of your closest friends, with your families being in a partnership for centuries. You have fond memories of playing together in the snow, with cranes flying overhead in the white sky.

• You know her secrets, and she knows yours. Nothing is kept between you- this is how you survive in a court of treachery and lies.

• So when she passes by in a sunlit hallway, you hear a whisper that shocks you to the core. Smooth silver hair floats past your sight, quiet as snow, and just as fleeting. But you must collect yourself quickly, for spies may lurk behind any silken screen.

• You will be betrothed to Kamisato Ayato, your dear friend's older brother, in ten day's time.

• As close as you are to Ayaka, Ayato has always been a shadow flitting in the corner of your sight, being too busy with his duties to see you. So his visage- to you- is as featureless as a field of snow.

• After all the romance novels you've read, it's difficult to accept marrying a man you've never spoken with, but... what can be done? You can only hope that Lord Ayato is kind and treats you well.

• But... what if he isn’t?

• Lady Ayaka would never speak ill of her brother. In fact, no noblewoman would even consider such a notion, even if it were true. Good appearances, on every level, are more important to nobles than gold.

• But all the same, you’ve seen the ladies of the court who are trapped in loveless homes like birds in cages. How their smiles are painted on, how their laughs ring hollow and empty, how they glance longingly to the world outside, beyond the lavish court that hides them here.

• Your gaze drifts towards the harbor, where the water shimmers with light. You could run away, too. To the eastern mountains, where your former archery teacher hides with his fellow rebels- although to do that would invoke the shogun's wrath. Or, riskier still, follow Kazuha's path to the harbor, and chase him on to Liyue...

• “Young Lord Kamisato is waiting for you,” a servant says, breaking you from your thoughts, and bowing hastily before you can meet her eyes. The servant across from her does the same as the paper doors slide open, and they do not rise as you walk through.

• This room is airy and spacious, of course. Wind from opened windows seems to sigh as it passes over you and beyond, and you can smell flowers from the garden carried in from the breeze. How strange... even a garden that you played in countless times seems completely new and unfamiliar.

• Gracefully, soundlessly, Ayato emerges from behind his ornate screen. Power and elegance flows from his every movement. And at last, you dare to look at what you have never seen before.

• You look at his face, finally revealed before you, like translucent ice giving way to the land beneath the white...

• And gasp.

_______

Author's Notes

Wani of Baekje: Each opening quote is a poem by a famous Japanese author, but Wani was a scholar visiting from Ancient Korea!

Great procession: Known in Japan as sankin kotai. Powerful lords were forced to spend massive amounts of money to travel from their homes to the shogun's castle and back; in this way, the shogun was able to keep them on an efficiently tight leash.

#genshin impact x reader #kazuha kaedehara x reader #scaramouche x reader #gorou x reader #inazuma

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imaginesfora3 · 3 years

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Stormy [Furuichi Sakyo/Reader]

Nights like these weren’t uncommon.

You had found that the stormier it was outside the easier it was to cozy up with Sakyo on the couch, romance permeating through the air; he was normally seated there watching some movie you’d never heard of, allowing you to join him if you promised not to talk. It’s not as though you wanted to have a full-blown conversation with him constantly but him saying that always made you want to annoy him a little, poke fun at how seriously he took analyzing movies for the sake of acting, but you saved that for when you wanted a piece of his rowdy side. The pouring rain made you a little more complacent and you agreed to his rules, flopping yourself down beside him with your legs thrown across his lap as you watched.

Sakyo wasn’t the ‘Netflix and chill’ type of man, if you told him you wanted to watch a movie with him, he was going to watch it. It didn’t fit the situation perfectly since you had injected yourself into his personal time but it at least gave you the chance to observe his handsome face without him telling you to scram. You watched his face uninterrupted, noticing the subtle little changes when something happened in the movie to change his mood; it was hard to see if you weren’t looking closely but Sakyo could be rather expressive, and you delighted in seeing all the little faces he made without even knowing.

You think he might be getting distracted when his hand rested on your thigh but he’s as laser-focused as ever, his hand slowly moving up and down your calf in a comforting motion. You wondered how many people would be in awe to see such a scary man give such an intimate show of affection, fingers gliding along your skin as you wriggled under his touch, inching ever closer. You managed to get a side glance out of him but it was your turn to pretend to be enthralled with the movie, knowing he could read you like a book but still pretending anyway.

There had been a time where Sakyo never would have imagined this.

Never would have thought he would be sitting beside the person he loved, holding them, feeling the warmth of their skin and the weight of their admiring gaze. He had denied himself such pleasures for so long for the sake of their happiness, or so he had said. Maybe he just didn’t know how to be a good boyfriend, maybe it was safer to hide behind every excuse he could pile up until the wall was so packed in there was no one willing to tear it down. It had been a team effort to level the playing field once more, a solid effort of you slowly picking away at him while brick by brick he allowed himself to be vulnerable with you.

Did he think he deserved you?

Not in the slightest.

It was a mindset that you scolded him over, seemed to get genuinely upset over which was understandable enough as it had caused a fair bit of fighting between you. You had even broken up for months, Sakyo unable to properly talk with you, skirting around the concept of love and insisting you were better off as friends. He thought you were presenting him an ultimatum, either love or nothing at all, but in the end, he understood that things between you would never be normal again if he let you go. He wouldn’t just be lacking in your love but your presence entirely, and even with those walls built back up, they would never be as strong, not after you. Not when you had created such a solid crack in its foundation.

But that was why you insisted on building a new one, a foundation you could stand on and build together. No cracks, total transparency, an understanding. He had thought it was just a romantic notion to be able to start over at his age, to be able to see something from someone else’s view point when he was so stubborn himself. But your sincerity reached him, his heart was never as cold as he tried to make it seem, and you never exploited that part of him. You loved and cherished and teased, but you never hurt him, not willingly.

Sakyo wished that the movie didn’t speak to him so clearly, that the miscommunication between the two protagonists didn’t ring so true to life, but it seemed even Hollywood was able to get it right once in a while. The teary-eyed main character reminded him of you, of your frustration, desperate to get him to understand. The stoic secondary character, the love interest, the one who rejected their feelings and refused to admit to them, truly believing the person they loved back was better off without them. There’s also a sense of embarrassment lingering in the back of his mind as he identified with this overdramatic movie far too much for this being a parallel to his reality.

“Sakyo, are you really gonna make me sit through the credits without talking, too?” You had moved your legs from his lap and had instead moved to lean against him, arms wrapped around his as you rested your head on his shoulder. “That ending was depressing. Who wrote that? I should sue.”

“…Not everyone has a happy ending.” A true enough statement but he knew it might just cause an argument if he’s to start a debate about what makes a truly great love story; some of them ended in tragedy, forever a mark on the hearts of those involved.

“…I guess you’re right.” An unsettling silence filled the room as Sakyo looked down at you, lips pursed as he tried to think of something to say. He hoped it didn’t come off as him assuming you and he would have a bad ending, he would never wish that on you after all that you had already suffered through. He had broken your heart more than enough for one lifetime, to the point he knew he’d be making it up for the rest of his life. “You should try watching something upbeat for once.”

“I watch everything as long as it’s good.” That was a lie, you had totally seen him watching some of the trashiest movies to ever grace the big screen, but from the smile on his face you realized it was a joke. He was in rare form tonight, not only outwardly showing you affection but cracking jokes as well.

“Since when have you become a comedian?”

“Who’s laughing?”

Sakyo tried to keep a straight face but it was so hard when you were giving him that incredulous look, the uncharacteristic smile being hidden behind his hand as he pretended to wipe his mouth. You grabbed his hand with one hand and turned his face towards you with another, not missing the low growl that came from his throat at your show of aggression. With Sakyo there was always a bit of fight but you knew how to get your way more often than not, and tonight would be no different. Getting to see his full beautiful smile, not obstacles in the way, was a moment that should be cherished.

“You’re going to have to tuck me and hold me real tight tonight to chase all my sad thoughts away.” Your noses brushed and Sakyo fought back an eyeroll at your dramatics, “You object to cuddling with me? Aren’t I the sun to your shine? The light of your life? Your very reason to take that first breath in the- “

“Be quiet.” Sakyo cut you off with a chaste kiss to your lips, holding you there for a moment before he pulled away to see your pleased look. He tried to ignore the fact you were clearly leading into him doing that, all too used to him cutting you off by kissing you to shut you up. “Stop pointing out the obvious.”

“Then just agree to give me what I want!”

“… I didn’t tell you to join me.”

“Ugh, does it always have to be so difficult with you?!” Your head flopped back down to his shoulder in defeat and Sakyo smirked, turning back towards the screen. You settled your legs back across your lap as he went to turn on another movie, sighing in defeat at the fact he was making getting him in bed an uphill battle tonight. It wasn’t even that your mind was in the gutter, you simply wanted to be held by the man you held so dear.

“If you can stay quiet through another movie… I can think of a reward for you.”

“Ooh, a gift… Is it change tied to a string? I don’t know what type of gift cheapskates give out~” You teased, ignoring the shiny piece of jewelry around your neck and the heavy ring on your finger.

“You can go to bed alone tonight.”

“And have you sleep on the couch? Your back could never survive.”

The dangerous glint in Sakyo’s eye as he squeezed your thigh told you that you were on the edge of receiving a punishment rather than a present, but with Sakyo, both always turned out in your favor. Your hand rested on top of his, leaning back against the couch and giving him your best ‘love you~’ smile.

You were sure you’d get your way tonight.

Stormy weather was for lovers, after all.

#Sakyo Furuichi #Furuichi Sakyo #A3 #A3!#act! addict! actors!#a3 act addict actors #a3 x reader #furuichi sakyo x reader #sakyo furuichi x reader #a3 imagines #scenario

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outbythehighwind · 4 years

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The Misconceptions of FF7: A Cloud, Aerith & Tifa Analysis Part 2/5

Link to all parts: https://outbythehighwind.tumblr.com/post/640347336477966336/the-misconceptions-of-ff7-a-cloud-aerith-tifa

Last post, I examined the misconceptions around Cloud’s character with a brief psychological analysis on how the selves that are “Ex-SOLDIER” Cloud and ‘real’ Cloud pertain to ‘Cloud’ the being. This was to evidence that Cloud’s feelings (as both “Ex-SOLDIER” and his true self) are ‘Cloud’s’, and to refute the nonsensical notions that: the player until the Lifestream sequence is not really playing as Cloud; Cloud’s feelings toward Aerith are Zack’s; and only the ‘real’ Cloud’s feelings for Tifa are valid (because “Ex-SOLDIER” Cloud has feelings for Aerith).

I had referred to ‘feelings’ in the general sense. These next two posts will examine them in the specific spheres of friendship and romance.

Nowhere in the game or FF7 compilation does it explicitly state that Cloud romantically “loves” or “is in love with” Aerith or Tifa. FF7 handles its themes in a manner that is incredibly human and complex. So, before attempting an objective analysis of his ‘feelings’ beyond the general sense – ie. what kind of love he has for each woman – I want to draw attention to the role of the player.

The developers want the player to form their own attachments, have the agency to play to them out, and have their own emotions evoked throughout their experience of the game. This is why the love triangle exists within the narrative – narrative being that tool by design (how the story is told; the lens by which the player experiences the game, and the tool by which the writers play with the player’s emotions). The player can, to a degree, make choices that alter story events within the narrative. They can manipulate the affection points to take Aerith or Tifa (or even Yuffie) on the Gold Saucer date. They can keep the relationship with both women platonic and have a bro’s night out with Barret. A player who is torn between the girls can therefore experience ‘more’ of the love triangle than a player who takes the latter route of bonding with Barret.

Which brings me to another nonsensical argument: that because the date mechanics ‘favor’ Aerith (who begins with a 20 affection point advantage over Tifa), the game wants Cloud to date Aerith, and therefore Cloud’s true love is Aerith. Again, nonsense. For this argument to stand, it must first adhere to the fact that the love triangle exists outside of the date mechanics: if the game wants Cloud to date Aerith, it must want Cloud to date Aerith in its plot (the always true relationship between story events that does not alter on player decision). This particular date is only an available option within the narrative. That is not to say it is not canonical – quite the contrary. Of course Aerith’s date is canonical. So is Tifa’s, or Yuffie’s, or Barret’s – if the player so chooses. It is not a plot matter, but an experience for the player.

But let us assume, for a moment, that it were a plot matter. Let us assume Cloud’s ‘romantic love’ is the person he spends the night out with at Gold Saucer. Aside from the obvious Barret and Yuffie alternatives, here is the problem: who comes for a night out is not determined by Cloud’s affection toward them, but their approachability in their affections toward Cloud. It is Aerith or Tifa (or Barret or Yuffie) who takes Cloud out. Naturally Aerith would begin with points higher than Tifa because there is no barrier of a dark & secret past between them, and Tifa has lower self-confidence, tending to lock her feelings away.

So the player has agency over the Gold Saucer experience. This does not alter the plot. Aerith will die; and Cloud’s “sealed up secret wish” involving Tifa will be brought to light in the Lifestream.

Cloud’s feelings in the plot sense – ie. as they truly are (not to the player’s subjection, but objectively Cloud’s) – are complex. Before giving my two cents worth on two beautifully deep relationships, to all who say that ‘because Cloud romantically loves one girl he doesn’t care about the other,’ I propose the following statement:

“Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend.” – C.S. Lewis

I lament with Mr. Lewis at the degradation of friendship's meaning in the world today. So when I speak of friendship, I wish to stress its meaning: that it is one of the highest forms of love.

Cloud’s feelings toward Aerith, I believe, can be interpreted as either of the two loves – friendship or Eros (romantic love) – or both. Even within the experience of Gold Saucer, I personally have not any solid evidence that Cloud’s feelings for Aerith are Eros, and whether they are or not has no influence on the plot. Cloud and Aerith will become (very) close; Aerith will die; Cloud will be distraught; and Cloud will continue the fight they started together – Eros or no Eros. That being said, I can see how conclusions of Eros are a possibility. Cloud’s investment in Aerith’s journey and well-being is very personal. His care toward her runs so deep, in fact, that his “Ex-SOLDIER” persona is often cracked.

Aerith is the first and only character to humor this self that Cloud is so desperate to project to the world. She takes the mickey by giving him the title なんでも屋さん (“Nandemoyasan”) – “Mr. Jack of all trades”. Yet she allows him to ‘play SOLDIER’ in making him her bodyguard and supportively holding him to that role.

Cloud is encouraged and feels strong when he is with Aerith. She raises his self-confidence and trust in his own strength in a uniquely distinct way that no other character does – not even Tifa. Though he is encouraged by Tifa to “be strong” also – in a uniquely distinct way pertaining to his accepting of self (which is, ultimately, what saves him) – Cloud feels weak around Tifa, due to his constant failure to live up to being her hero as he perceives it. With Aerith, we have the opposite effect.

Aerith simultaneously encourages the “Ex-SOLDIER” façade and breaks through it. They share laughter and tease one another on the rooftops. Cloud reveals his soft side when urging her to open up to him.

Aerith realizes that she does not know the ‘real’ Cloud, and tries very hard to find him, to bring him out. However, she does not. Not even within the Lifestream where he ends up twice in a broken state and she has maintained her complete physical consciousness. This is a role that only Tifa can fulfil.

Likewise, Cloud realizes Aerith is facing her own inner struggle – of what it means to be a Cetra – and he time and again goes out of his way to try help her, from risking his life to rescue her from Shinra to pushing to talk to her even when she wants to be left alone (note how Aerith turns her face away in the screenshots below). The writing stresses that this is by Cloud’s own investment, not simply that of the party’s as its leader. “But I’m… we’re here for you, right?”

Paralleling Aerith’s inability to reach Cloud’s true self, Cloud is unable to help her in discovering and fulfilling her task as the last Cetra, and Aerith finds herself more and more “alone” in pertinence to her inner conflict.

Her nandemoyasan, her dear friend, fails her, and that haunts Cloud after her death as he grapples with his own role in saving the Planet – a hope that is lost without Aerith.

Which now brings us to her death.

Aerith dies at the point where Cloud’s inner conflict against Sephiroth first peaks for the worst. Just having become aware that Sephiroth can override his very conscious (being forced to hand over the Black Materia in the Temple of the Ancients), Cloud has begun to doubt himself and is immensely afraid of who he is. Immediately following is his failure to save Aerith.

Cloud, whose entire life struggle and “Ex-SOLDIER” persona were built upon his self-loathing due to feelings of failure, weakness and inadequacy, has just failed to save this woman so precious to him. We see the haunting and guilt it holds over him in Advent Children, where he despairs and distances himself from his family for fear of failing them too.

Cloud does everything in his power to ensure Aerith’s mission is complete, not just for sake of the Planet, but for Aerith. The fight for the Planet is the party’s fight – the “we” fight, together as a whole. But it is more for Cloud, so much more.

“I’ll do the rest.”

Cloud’s external fight for the Planet and his personal feud with Sephiroth is in much part out of his deep love for Aerith.

This love is, no doubt, an incredibly powerful mutual friendship. It is clear that, in addition to this friendship, Aerith has romantic feelings for Cloud (which I will evidence in part 4), but what of Cloud for Aerith? Could he have feelings for her that are Eros too? Absolutely. I have found no evidence implicitly for it, nor implicitly against it, and that to me is a beauty of player experience in the narrative. (I also believe this is what Nomura meant when he expressed his desire to leave interpretation to the player.)

However, in the sense of plot and Cloud’s feelings that are not up for the player’s interpretation, I hold to my understanding that Cloud – even if having romantic feelings toward Aerith – is romantically in love with Tifa, and that that Eros is core to his very being.

I will not say “there’s nothing more” between Aerith and Cloud even in my interpretation of them as friends. For that implies friendship is a lesser love than Eros, which I do not believe is true. C.S. Lewis said that (no pun intended) “To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves,” “the crown of life and the school of virtue”, and I agree with his saying that “few value it because few experience it.”

My hope is simply this: that people would lose this notion of ‘competition’ – that one girl must win ‘all’ of Cloud’s affections, and that at the expense of one ‘winning’, his relationship with the other is belittled.

Link to all parts: https://outbythehighwind.tumblr.com/post/640347336477966336/the-misconceptions-of-ff7-a-cloud-aerith-tifa

#ff7 1997 #cloud strife #aerith gainsborough #tifa lockhart #my analyses #ff7 advent children #ff7 remake

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jedi-order-apologist · 4 years

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Hello there! Could you maybe put together small SW novels recommendation list? You reference books often and I assume you can suggest a few good ones that shed light/give more insight into the Jedi culture. Thank you for your blog and have a good day 💗

Thank you! I hope you have a good day too.

I actually haven’t read that many Star Wars books, all things considered - there are a lot, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the prequel era stuff, let alone the rest of the franchise. I only recently started getting into the books, and there’s probably a lot more really good ones out there that I just haven’t had the chance to get to yet.

What I could do is go through what I have read and give my opinions on those. So far, in no particular order, I’ve read:

- The novelizations for the prequels and some of the original novelizations for the OT. More on my thoughts on those here (and specifically for the ROTS novelization here), but in summary: TPM novelization is a bit weak, AOTC novelization is decent and really helped sell the romance to me in a way the film fell flat for me, ROTS novelization is nothing short of phenomenal, ROTJ novelization is also pretty good, I don’t remember the ESB novelization enough to say anything on it, and I never read the ANH (or technically just Star Wars) novelization. I’d say they’re worth checking out at least once.

- Shatterpoint. I really like this one, it deals a lot with Mace struggling with the dark side, and it captures the idea of falling to the dark side as something rooted in defeatism, which really resonates with my interpretation. There’s quite a bit of discussion of Jedi philosophy and why they do and believe the things they do (or at least how Mace Windu sees it) - I’ve cited it before in my meta because I think it lays out pretty well why they resist the dark side. It also deals a lot with the costs of war - especially psychologically. There’s also a decent element of Jedi as family through the father-daughter relationship of Mace and Depa. On top of all of that, it’s very well written (same author as the ROTS novelization). I strongly recommend this one, though be warned that it is a very heavy, brutal book - oh, it’s not completely bleak, and it has it’s moments of humor, but it is not a happy story. It ends in victory, both in the immediate situation, and with Mace coming to terms with some of what he’d been struggling with, but I wouldn’t call it a happy ending, more that…well, as Mace says, he’s the last one standing.

- Yoda: Dark Rendezvous. I read this one most recently, and I made a long post on why I absolutely loved it. It’s not perfect but I think it’s the best portrayal of the Jedi in the books that I’ve come across so far - this book really goes hard on the “Jedi as family” idea, which I love, and there are really good conversations on (and inspiring examples of resisting) the dark side, and working through but not giving into grief. Everyone should read this book, it shows the Jedi as an inspiring people with so much tenacity and compassion, doing their best. And it eviscerates every bit of nonsense about the Jedi (and especially Yoda) being “emotionless” or “loveless”- it’s full of amazing passages that are absolutely perfect responses to these notions, direct refutations of them even (as well as refutations about the idea of the dark side having any kind of merit at all) because they get slung around in the story by a lot of the characters. If I could only pick one Star Wars book to suggest someone read, it would be this one, absolutely.

- Kenobi. Do you like Westerns and a sad Obi-Wan with a chronic hero syndrome that doesn’t help him with the whole ‘staying under the radar’ thing? If yes, you will probably like this book. It doesn’t really get much into Jedi culture, since…well, they’re dead, and most of the book is written from an outside perspective, not Obi-Wan’s. I think that was a good choice, because while he’s understandably going to be very sad during this time (it takes place during his very early days on Tatooine), constant exposure to that, in my opinion, would overdo it and wear out the audience. So the outside perspective of how sad and weird he is, where the characters don’t understand the context behind his behavior, but the audience does, works really well. I have some issues with it - for instance, while it’s kind of hilarious how much everyone wants to jump his bones in this book, I do wish that they’d kept the chemistry between Obi-Wan and Annileen strictly platonic (and the language around romance in this book rubs me the wrong way). And how people find out his last name is a bit contrived. But it’s a decent read that I’d recommend.

- Jedi Apprentice (series). I’d recommend this with the caveat that you have to go into it keeping in mind that it’s written for younger readers. Which absolutely does NOT mean it’s all fluff and sunshine and rainbows, very far from it (I call this series “Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Collection of Childhood Trauma” for some very good reasons, and the fact that he tries to sacrifice himself to suicide-bomb a door open with the slave collar wrapped around his neck before he even gets taken on as a padawan is just one of them), but there’s a lot of stuff that…doesn’t feel like it was explored fully to an adult reader’s satisfaction. It has a lot of the usual kind of fridge logic that often comes into play with kids’ media, and while it was written to be favorable towards the Jedi, that fridge stuff gets taken by fandom as reasons to criticize the Jedi quite often. More on that here.

- Cloak of Deception. This one’s…okay? It does spend quite a bit of time with the Jedi, but it feels pretty surface level. Luceno’s strength is in the fantasy space politics; for whatever reason his character interactions always fall flat for me, though I’m not sure if I can articulate why they’re so unsatisfying to me outside of a handful of good moments. But if you’re looking for a look into the politics leading up to TPM (or at least, Legends take on it), this is (one of) the books to look at. I say one of because I actually read Darth Plagueis first, and there is a bit of overlap.

- The Approaching Storm. This is the lead-in book to AOTC. It does a decent job with a look at the Jedi, I think, with a few snags (Barriss straight-up heals brain damage/mental illness to the point of complete personality changes, which seems way outside Jedi abilities to me, and there’s a bit of “maybe we shouldn’t take people from their families” angle instead of the Jedi as family angle). Also for some reason it refers to Barriss and Luminara as humans. And while the book tells us a lot about how important it is that the Jedi negotiate this conflict, most of their actual obstacles are getting places, with the negotiation itself getting glossed over. But it was a decent read, I think.

- Labyrinth of Evil. This is another Luceno book, this time for leading up to ROTS. The character interactions worked a little better here - or at least they had more of their moments - Anakin basically going “Marriage what marriage I don’t see a marriage” in front of Obi-Wan was pretty damn funny…and everyone knows the “infinite sadness” line that follows off of that. I’ll be curious as to what the current continuity gives us for what set off the invasion of Coruscant, because this (as part of Legends) gave us a pretty good reason for it. I’d recommend it, again, for the examination of the political situation, and there’s some decent action in here too. There’s a few insights into the Jedi but it’s hit or miss whether I agree with them, and they’re not the focus.

- Darth Plagueis. This one’s probably the best of Luceno’s books (that I’ve read), but it’s not Jedi-friendly. Most of that’s because, well…it’s from the Sith’s perspective, so they’re not going to be very pro-Jedi. I’m mostly okay with that because a lot of their criticism of the Jedi is very clearly coming from an obviously bad faith position (”the Jedi let the Republic decay” the Sith say as they devour a man’s heart and talk about how the Sith need to make all the problems of the Republic worse), although there’s one scene at the end that I really don’t like because it appears to really claim that the Jedi would’ve told Anakin to never talk about his mother, which doesn’t match up with, well, AOTC, for one thing, or just my impression of them in general. But what this book does do well is a look at how the Sith influenced the political situation, and a lot of midichlorian lore (seriously, this book feels like a middle finger to prequel hate - “oh you thought the fantasy space politics were boring? You thought midichlorians were stupid? Here’s why you’re wrong”). Luceno’s way of doing character interactions actually serves this book really well, because the Sith are able to be written as the focus characters without making them sympathetic in the least. If you’re looking to get invested in characters, probably not the book for you, but if you’re looking for fantasy space politics, it’s pretty good.

- Rogue Planet. This one has a good interpretation of the Jedi, I think, though you do have to contend with the “written before AOTC” issue of authors not realizing that Jedi weren’t supposed to get married and have children. But I liked the look at how they handled discipline - Anakin gets in trouble, and he’s brought before the Council, and the whole process is about questioning him to get him to realize and admit what he did wrong, not punishment. They then make the decision to redirect his energy into something productive by sending him and Obi-Wan on a mission. Also, Anakin sees a Jedi therapist at the end of this book, so it’s a good one to throw back at anyone who claims that the Jedi never helped him or that the Jedi don’t do therapy. But…plot-wise…it’s a little weak, mostly in that not much is resolved because it’s mostly setting up for stuff that won’t pay off until much, much further down the line (as in, whenever the Yuuzhan-Vong show up). The ship-growing thing was cool though.

- Wild Space. If you’re looking for a ridiculously dramatic Obi-Wan whump fic that’s one step away from sticking Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padmé, and Bail in a foursome, this is the book for you. If you’re looking for things like accurate characterization, an interpretation of the Jedi consistent with the films, believable interpersonal communication, or an actual plot…you will be sorely disappointed by this book.

- Clone Wars Gambit: Stealth. This is the sequel to Wild Space. It has a second part, Clone Wars Gambit: Siege, which I have not been able to bring myself to read, which probably tells you all you need to know about my thoughts on the first one, though you can read more about them here. In short, I strongly do not recommend this book at all, and find it to be pretty terrible characterization (even though it’s played for sympathy) of the Jedi and especially Obi-Wan. Wild Space at least has absurdity going for it. Stealth does not.

And that’s it! That’s all I’ve read so far. I’m sure not everyone will agree with my opinions, but in terms of my personal recommendations/non-recommendations, this is what I have.

#book recommendations #or not recommendations as the case may be #discussion #jedi #on jedi culture #Anonymous

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billxharry · 4 years

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The Day Before You Came should have been Harry’s song, not Donna’s: A Rant

You know, I very much wish they hadn’t included The Day Before You Came on the HWGA soundtrack. Not that Meryl’s version isn’t lovely, it absolutely is, and I listen to it often, savouring the much too minimal amount of Meryl’s Donna we got for this film, but knowing they never wrote any sort of context for her singing it, and never even had a plan to do so, because it was always just going to be on the soundtrack is a let down, especially when there was a certain character who could have benefited from being given the song.

If a song is included on the soundtrack, especially for a musical, where every song tells the story, I like to think it should fit somewhere in the film, but I just don’t think it works contextually for Donna in this film, and even more importantly, I personally don’t feel it fits Donna’s character in general. This movie is focused on young Donna particularly. Exuberant, passionate, bold and living her life with only the occasional and fleeting doubt. This song certainly doesn’t fit her at all at this stage of her life, before Sam. Her heartbreak over him, while justified, is at least somewhat eased in this movie by the arrival of Tanya and Rosie, then by Bill showing up and whisking her away, (I like to believe Harry arrived later as well, as I refuse to believe they were just that lazy as to not get the order from the journal correct, so Harry arrived at the island after Bill, they just didn’t show it, end of story. That would also help bridge where I feel HWGA! went terribly wrong in portraying young Harry and Donna’s encounter, as I have the hardest time believing the fondness shown in the first movie would exist between them based on that singular encounter alone, especially on Donna’s part. Perhaps another ramble about that at another time.) The most impactful of anything though, for Donna, was giving birth to Sophie.

Emotionally, for me, this song would have only have had a chance to fit in the first movie when we actually see the emotional hurt Donna has struggled with the years after Sam left, not in prequel sense, when what we see is Donna moving on as best she can, and knowing in the future her and Sam later wed and were happy. (For much too short of time. I will never stop being mad at this.) Even if they had put this song in the musical/first film, it still wouldn’t have fit, character wise for me, though. The Winner Takes It All was a much more fitting choice to convey those emotions.

What Sam put her through affected her greatly, and continues to do so, we do see that in the first movie, but both movies also make it a point to make it clear Donna pushes on, somewhat because she has no choice when she finds out she’s pregnant, but also because she’s Donna. She’s strong and independent, she doesn’t conform to the things others would think to do, and even when we see how these events have weighed on her as the years progressed, we also see at heart she will always remain Donna Sheridan, life and soul of the party, and how that spirit has always remained. What fight and determination she always had, she devoted use for raising Sophie, to giving her everything she needed in absence of a father, and I would certainly not label that a listless and aimless life of routine. In fact, with raising a child on her own, while also managing the inn by herself, we see the opposite is in fact true. She’s overworked and her life is a crazy rush of every possible job and ever changing responsibilities.

(An aside, I am aware that there’s a long standing thought that in the original ABBA song, the you the song is directed to may actually be Death, and yes Donna (unfortunately) did die (WHY.) So technically, it could be looked at that way as to why Donna would be singing it in the second film. That works even less, though, since the type of life that is sung about is especially not the type of life Donna would be telling Death she was living after the first movie where she got her (much too short lived 😡) happy ending. If Sam wasn’t the you Donna was singing to, and it was indeed a deathly entity, that’s an absurd notion to me. She would literally be saying her life was lonely and dull and without aim before she died? And had been for a very long time? Despite the first film showing us was that was never true? We’d also have to be ignoring the prominence that was placed on Sophie and Donna’s bond, her bond with Tanya and Rosie, the fact that Sam and Donna wed and we can assume were happy during the time before she got ill and passed away... No, be it if the the “you” is referring to Sam or Death, neither scenario works for Donna in my opinion.)

The Day Before You Came describes a life that runs on almost a precise schedule, without anything unexpected happening. Always being able to follow an exact schedule, always being able to have time to watch tv, read, get to bed for a lot of rest... It’s painful in how excruciatingly bland the existence of the life of the singer is. Unchanged, day in, day out. The singer is going through the motions of life, but not living it. They are lonely, alone. As I mentioned, Donna’s work life is anything but on an exact schedule, but even more importantly, emotionally that’s not life for Donna raising her daughter. Sophie means everything to her. While the romance with Sam coming to fruition at the end of the first movie is extremely fulfilling and what you want for Donna, the movie also makes it a point to show the true heart of the movie is the relationship between Donna and her best friends, but even more than that the most pivotal relationship Donna will ever have is the one she has with Sophie. She was not romantically fulfilled, that’s unarguably true, and she was absolutely overworked and overwhelmed, but she had Sophie and that meant everything to her, made everything worth it. The second movie, with My Love, My Life once again hammered that point home. Donna’s life was never what The Day Before You Came describes, and the biggest reason why was Sophie. I mentioned the Winner Takes It All being a much more apt choice, and it is. It’s very easy to see the romantic and emotional context to that song, and it’s definitely a song sung to a lover who you were hurt by. The Day Before You Came is... about a lot more than just the romantic side of things.

Give Donna/Meryl material, absolutely YES, but couldn’t it have been relevant? And seeing as we had to suffer through the terribly unnecessary death story-line, I would have loved had she got some truly joyous material, as we see her at the end of the first film, the type of material she deserved...

Ol Parker talking about this song, saying it was never going to be in the film, just on the album because “It’s so specific and I couldn’t find a way to make it work.” is incredibly disappointing for me, because no, you couldn’t find a way to make it work for Donna because it didn’t fit her, her character, or the life she had lead. However, there absolutely was one character who absolutely could have sung that song and it absolutely would have worked. Hmmmm, who could it be, who could it be, this is such an impossible connection to make apparently... a rather seemingly by the book character, who is living an unfulfilling life, alone, going to dull job, going home to an empty house and repeating it every day... hmmm. HMMM.

Honestly though, go and listen to the song or read the lyrics, and tell me that song would not have absolutely have been perfect for Harry. I can’t understand having a character it fits so incredibly well, but saying “it’s too specific, can’t possibly put it in the film.” Especially when you created two characters for the *sole* purpose of making Cher being able to sing Fernando work, but you can’t make a song work that fits a pre-existing character like a glove. Granted, Ol made it apparent he didn’t actually understand or care all that much about the “older dads” (the older cast in general was treated very poorly in this film as I have said 1000 times.) They absolutely should have had more to do acting wise, but singing wise as well. The first movie was successful because of the cast it had. Yes. Some of the singing was panned by people. A lot of people. But the success of the film was still indisputable, so I see absolutely no reason for including so little of what made it work to begin with. Colin especially could have pulled this song off vocally. They had a chance to really enhance the source material, expand on the characters we loved, and instead we got regressions of the the worst sort.

I obviously would want this song to be about Bill from Harry’s perspective, because Bill absolutely had every means to remedy all of this for Harry. Who better to give him adventures, spontaneity, love, ... and how easy it would have been. (Heck, it could have even have been sung about Sophie changing his life so thoroughly. I would of course prefer it be about Bill, because like Donna, Sophie means the world to Harry, but also like Donna, Harry deserves romantic fulfillment as well. I just want just Harry to have someone who has the ability to help him out of that life... The first film knew where the faults were in Harry’s life, and by the end of the movie they were on the path of trying to remedy that. No, I will never say Petros was the answer, but at least they tried, and more than that he unarguably had Sophie at the end. A daughter he so wanted. Harry’s life should have changed, at least in some way. By no means should we have ended up with him right back where he was, being unhappy and unfulfilled. This song, had it been given to Harry, would have felt like they were acknowledging this character, this life, and I would hope the “you” in the song would be enough to show that his life was able to move beyond that.

In all this, I don’t mean to say this is a happy song, of course not. There’s a sadness in the lyrics, a melancholia, especially with the slowed tempo and beautiful accompaniment by Benny that they gave the song for the HWGA soundtrack. That particular version really amps up that feeling, and that is why, as much as I dislike the fact that Harry is right back to being miserable, this song still could have worked with that story line. Take for example- In Bill, Harry had found someone who really made him evaluate the life he had been living, seeing it for what it really was and just how unhappy he had been, but now he has been given the potential to change that. Traveling with Bill has changed everything. For him. However, perhaps as far as he is aware, that feeling of finding someone who could change your life so thoroughly was one-sided, that this particular love was unrequited, and the things that they did together that meant everything to him, didn’t have the same impact on Bill, at least to his knowledge. Cue The Day Before You Came, a quiet but impactful reveal of the depth of Harry’s feelings, and the push Bill needs to work up his own courage to show Harry has changed his life just as much. Ideally, Bill would sing a short reprise of the song with lyrics written to convey what was missing in his life before Harry came into it, and finally they would both be in total understanding. Is this absolutely cliche and fanfic worthy? Oh, no doubt. It’s not the most deep or profound working of the song, I am aware. However, it is Mamma Mia! and I feel that’s allowed.

Having Harry sing this song would have been acknowledgement of a sort, that yes, this is back where this beloved character is at, and this is why, but there is something, someone, in his life that can help him out of it, and he can have his happy ending. I just feel that is a lot more meaningful than what we got, which is just... nonchalance about the whole thing. “Yep, there was supposed to be an awakening of sorts for Harry at the end of the first movie, but that doesn’t really matter, he’s miserable and unhappy, alone, still, right back in that lifestyle he was so unhappy in, five years later. It’s not actually worth the time to acknowledge any of this or try to remedy it, though, it’s not important. He’s going to end the movie in the same unhappy and lonely fashion, but hey, Fernando!” And we are stuck with a song, though absolutely beautifully sung, by a character it doesn’t fit, as a throw away soundtrack inclusion, nothing more, and a missed and extremely easy to see opportunity to give it to a character who really could have used it...

#Harry Bright #Donna Sheridan #Mamma Mia!#Mamma Mia! Here we go again!#I haven't posted a rambling rant in so long #so this feels good #I have actually been sitting on this one for a little bit though #It's so long #I would say I am sorry but i am not #I have a lot of Mamma Mia! feelings #whoops didn't tag #Bill Anderson/Harry Bright #but of course it is #typos abound I am sure #I am actually sorry about that though

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dalekofchaos · 5 years

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Why I ship Harmione/Harmony

Mostly, I am a sucker for best friends to lovers. And I always thought reading the books and watching the movies, they should have gotten together. So I will explain why I love Harmione and why I think they should be together.

Harry and Hermione have a very close emotional relationship, so it is natural for people to want to see them together. They have so much respect and adoration for each other. They have great chemistry together, grew up similar and they just felt right together. They were both great at magic, both very witty and intelligent and were there for each other during hard times as well.

Hermione sees Harry for who he is, therefore she would also love him for who he is. She had very few preconceived notions about Harry before attending Hogwarts and she let those go as soon as she got to know the real Harry. This alone makes her a much better match for Harry than most witches his age as all he want to be is “Just Harry”.

Harry respects Hermione’s ideals a lot more than Ron does. That’s not to say he agrees with every one of them and Hermione would have to learn to accept that not everyone would agree with all of her ideals, but they likely wouldn’t start many, if any, arguments over them.

They already have a strong relationship built on mutual trust and respect. And they have enough in common, and enough differences to truly complement each other. And just as in a proper relationship, their arguments never turn into fights, they resolve their issues.

And most importantly, they are truly loyal to each other. Hermione stuck with Harry from beginning to end, even when certain others faltered along the way.

Even when Harry was enduring more stress than most people could possibly endure, Hermione never left his side, through all of his ups and downs. No matter what, they are always there for each other when they are most needed.

A lot of people say about Harry and Hermione “I like that the hero didn’t get the girl” or “why should the hero always get the girl?” You have it backwards. Why should the Brainy girl always have to settle for less than the Hero?

They truly are Equals, unlike the characters they ended up with.

If we examine Harry and Hermione’s relationship throughout the books, we see Harry giving her very long discussions about his failed date with Cho Chang, his feelings of inadequacy when searching for the Horcruxes, his reliance on her strength and acumen, and his empathy for her troubles with romance. Conversely, Hermione spends a lot of time comforting Harry and challenging him to be better than he is. She serves as both a devil’s advocate and a confidant. These are the building blocks to a strong friendship, if not romantic relationship.

Hermione alone shares Harry’s most significant moments of emotional development in the entire series—the moment when Harry faces his fears and discovers his connection to his father through his Patronus in PoA, and the moment in Godric’s Hollow at his parents’ graveside, where he comes to terms with their death (Hermione being the last person to see Harry and tell him he’s a great wizard near the end of Philosopher’s Stone before Harry confronts Voldemort directly for the first time since he was a baby is also pretty major, but the Patronus scene in PoA, followed by the hippogriff flight, I think trumps even that).

Relationships work best when people have a lot in common, but also have enough differences to have their own identities and balance each other out.

Harry shares to some degree Hermione’s intellectual curiosity. He likes to read his schoolbooks, and do his homework.

Harry and Hermione both grew up in the muggle world—shared experience.

Harry and Hermione both grew up without friends (and were bullied)—shared experience.

Harry shares Hermione’s values—Hermione wants to free House Elves, Harry actually frees one. ( Compare to Ron, who wishes he owned a House Elf ).

Harry and Hermione both merely become slightly more irritable under the alleged “influence” of Slytherin’s locket—(Ron goes completely mental,and really, given Harry’s life experiences, “the horrors in his life” as Lupin might say, one might be forgiven for thinking that HARRY would be the one to lose his marbles).

Hermione is a more credible stand in for Lily than Ginny in the equation of Harry = his father + (Harry’s partner) = his mother—Hermione brings out Harry’s “better angels,” she’s muggleborn, and she’s intellectually and compassionately a match for Lily. (And really, isn’t it slightly creepy for someone to choose a partner (i.e. Harry’s surrogate sister, Ginny) who looks like their mother)?

Hermione provides a balance—a voice of reason when Harry is feeling a bit reckless.

Harry provides Hermione a balance—a voice of instinct when logic fails.

Hermione sticks by Harry even when Ron ditches him at a point that Harry needs his friends the most—twice (proving that the much vaunted “loyalty” of Ron is vastly overrated).

Hermione is there for Harry in the two most important emotional points of his life, next to him discovering he was a wizard:Hermione alone shares the moment that Harry discovers his connection to his father through his Patronus when Harry sends 100 Dementors packing at the end of PoA. The Super-Patronus, as an embodiment of positive emotion, symbolises Harry’s extraordinarily powerful “ability to love.” Hermione alone shares the moment that Harry visits his parents’ graves.

For when people bring up Harry’s “She’s my sister” quote

Harry and Ginny are like siblings, Ginny is more or less his surrogate sister.

Ron and Hermione fight like a brother and sister, they act like Katara and Sokka from ATLA

See how that goes? The "sibling" argument doesn’t work, because it can be applied to anyone and everyone.

There are book moments to support that they could work in the books, not just the movies Quotes source

I feel like I’ve done a good job explaining why I ship them. To me Harry and Hermione are like soulmates, they are James and Lily, but with a happy ending and finding agency with each other. To Hermione, Harry isn’t the chosen one or the boy who lived, to her he’s “just Harry.” To Harry, Hermione is wonderful and brilliant and always enjoys her presence. They are always there for each other and to me Harmione will always be the one relationship that I view as soulmates and one I wanted to be canon.

Here are other tumblr posts that better explain why we ship Harmione/Harmony

Post 1

Post 2

Post 3

Post 4

Post 5

Also this beautiful video PERFECTLY explains why

youtube

#Harmione #Harry x Hermione #Harmony #Harry Potter #Harry James Potter #Hermione Granger

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chaoswillfallrpg · 4 years

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SAOIRSE MACMILLAN is TWENTY-FOUR YEARS OLD and a WRITER in SHORT STORIES AND OTHER FABLES at THE QUIBBLER. She looks remarkably like KATHRYN NEWTON and considers herself NEUTRAL. She is currently TAKEN.

→ OVERVIEW:

Never without a quill in her hand and a fire in her heart, there were few as free spirited as Saorise MacMillan. Raised on the coast of Ireland in County Wicklow, there was never a day that went by that the Irish witch didn’t encapsulate her time with the written word. Both her own and in the many fables she devoured. Saorise dreamed in ink, imaging the world not as it was but how it could be. While her other siblings MARIANNE, FIONN and ORLAITH found romance in people, Saorise found them in moments. In the wish as she blew a dandelion into the brisk air and the hope it could hold. In laughter and tumbling hills where she spent her days scribbling in her dearly clutched notebook bursting with clipping and photographs. In the glimmer of someone’s eyes as they spoke of their dreams, forgotten letters and cobble stoned paths. In the flicker of a street light and the melody of a song she held close to her heart. Romance for Saorise was filled in the salty wind blowing through her wild locks, leaving a deep sense of satisfaction in her chest and a longing of adventure in her heart. Unlike her siblings she didn’t dream of affection from another person. Content just as she was and with the company of her family. Thinking that they were marvelous on their own, why would they want that to change? Furiously independent, outspoken and opinionated, Saorise became the ring leader of the group. Despite being the second youngest, she led the siblings with the stories she imaged. Writing tales of famous wizards adventures, creatures they’d faced and the above all the colourful characters that they met alone their journeys.

Ink stains became a permanent aesthetic attached to her attire. From her hands, to the stars she scribbled on the cuffs of her jeans, to the loose drop of a ink spot on every item she owned; unlike her sisters, Saorise didn’t take note of her own appearance. In fact she negated the societal expectation as frequently as she could. Aesthetics never something she found herself thinking of unless it was commented on by her sisters. While Mar and Orla gushed about boys and ribbons, Saoirse had grass stains and loose leaves tangled in her hair from rolling in the hills with her brother Fionn. Fionn and Sersh were more like twins than they were elder and younger. Rough playing with one another, they’d spend hours play fighting and climbing trees at the edge of the fields of their family cottage. The dynamic fit. With Saorise and Orla having a tendency to butt heads, both being equally as stubborn and Orla longing to be the centre of attention, it was usually Fionn’s job to drag Sersh off to calm her angry, while Mar mothered and dried the youngest’s tears. The MacMillan’s lives were quaint. Despite the family being members of the famous twenty eight, they weren’t as frivolous and didn’t hold as many riches as other families in the community. Instead of money, grand balls and meaningless conversations; the MacMillan home was always filled with laughter. Love radiated throughout the home, with the smell of freshly baked pies from Marianne and their mother, to music from their father and Fionn, wishful tales of adventure in the plays they put on from Saorise and the art that Orla created. Despite being more secluded, there was never a dull moment in their lives.

Unbeknownst to them, their little group had been missing a key piece until AUGUSTUS ABBOTT had entered their lives. A quite boy from Godric’s Hollow, Sersh encouraged him to come out of his shell and fully experience the things life offered. Though when they met he was quiet and reserved, she was able to quickly pull him out of his shell. With Augustus’s parents fickle and heated with a divorce; fun was something Gus lacked in his life and something he found ten folds in the Macmillan family. Colour, vibrancy and fun was finally brought into Gus’s life and soon it was hard to imagine the siblings without Gus. The five children spent hours together, encouraged into childish fantasy. Spending days dreaming and nights laughing over dinner tables and camp fires. Gus and his mother quickly became honorary MacMillan’s after little persuasion to the rest from Saorise. There wasn’t a day that past where Saorise and Gus weren’t together. Hours spent building pirate ships to sail off and become lost boys like in the muggle story they had read; only for it to sink and them to reveal in the adventure over wrapped peanut butter sandwiches. Gazing at the stars and telling each other their strangest thoughts, deepest secrets and expressing their hopes and dreams no matter how small and ridiculous they may be. Saorise was sure others would deem them peculiar, but they were perfectly normal people to her. Believing whole heartedly that no matter what universe or past lives they had lived, at some point they would always be bound to find each other. A bond so strong their parents often referred to them as two sides of the same coin.

There was never a person that could imagine a version of Saorise without Augustus or Augustus without Saorise. Coming to Hogwarts, she was delighted to be storted into Hufflepuff with her brother and alongside Gus. It was the best scenario and what they’d always hoped. Even from the first dinner, her and Gus set out to recruit individuals into their own little gang of misfits. The unexpected and be known ‘weirdos’ of Hogwarts were exactly the people that they were looking for. The quieter and more unsuspecting ones – just like Gus had been - were always the most fun in Sersh’s eyes. Over the years they found their people. Fellow Hufflepuff’s, EDGAR BONES, EVE DIGGORY, TILDEN TOOTS, were quick to make their name in their little gang. Although a few years younger, upon her joining Hogwarts, misunderstood SYBILL TRELAWNEY soon joined their little gang. All unique and brilliant in their own right, the friendship group would often spent hours together by The Black Lake. Dancing to muggle music played on a turn table, listening to copious amounts of Muggle rock music, smoking cigarette and even drinking the occasional punch. Priding themselves in being outlandish and unusual, they enjoyed and basked in the stares and disapproving glances; Sersh maybe most of all.

Known for her bold and loud opinions, her unique and quirky personality often ended her in trouble with a few of the purists in the school. Despite standing at only 5′4, Sersh was never afraid to make her opinions know even to those much larger than she was. Standing on tables if she had to just so she could dare look them in the eye, one person that she become quick to quarrel with was VIOLET BULLSTRODE. Furiously loyal to her friends, as soon as Violet spoke against Sybil, there was no way she could sit ideally by. Becoming passionate about equal rights for all, she joined ‘Sorcerers for Equality’. Voicing boldly and loudly about the inequalities the wizarding community was facing, having no issue in standing up for those with less privilege than her family. A believe that carried on after she left Hogwarts. Delighting in Muggle music, literature and history, one of Saorise’s most prized possession is the record player Gus got her for her sixteenth birthday, along with her patched denim jacket which she wears with pride. Admiring particularly CHARITY BURBAGE, Saorise is unashamedly a feminist and has no issue in speaking against those who are set in the ‘traditional’ ideologies about what the wizarding community should be.

Her bold nature took the attention of publisher XENOPHILIUS LOVEGOOOD. While traveling in France with Gus the summer after graduation, she’d received an owl offering her a writing position at The Quibbler. Saorise was ecstatic at the idea of finally being able to do what she wished and write for a living. Though it wasn’t necessarily the novels that she dreamed of writing one day, it still put bread on the table. Even if she had to admit some of the things she was writing were ridiculous nonsense just to please the readers, atleast she was writing and living in the big city she had always longed for. Though as time passes, turbulence feels like it is growing. Recently, she has caught herself looking at Gus slightly differently. Granted she had occasionally in the past, but always passed it off as nothing in their teens. Adamant in herself that she was perfectly fine as she was. But the jealous pang in her chest whenever they spend a night drinking in The Leaky Cauldron and a witch interrupts them to speak to Gus is evident. As is the slight warmth in her chest when his laugh catches her ears. New and a little unnerving, she’s pushing down the notion because the reality would be earth shattering. Instead she laid her focus on the growing turn of events and the displeasure of her brother taking fancy to a known purist. Everyone can feel that there is an unease in the air, while Philius is trying to encourage her to take a more journalistic route and start reporting on the mysterious on-goings, Saorise can’t help but fear for the safety of her siblings and friends with the growing evidence that something more sinister is at play.

→ ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Blood Status → Pure-Blood

Pronouns → She/Her

Identification → Cis Female

Sexuality → Demisexual

Relationship Status → Single

Previous Education → Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Hufflepuff)

Family → Marianne MacMillan (sister), Fionn MacMillan (brother/housemate), Orlaith MacMillan (sister)

Connections → Augustus Abbott (best friend/potential love interest), Eve Diggory (close friend), Sybill Trelawney (close friend), Tilden Toots (close friend), Edgar Bones (close friend), Xenophilius Lovegood (boss), Cardorac Dearoborn (friend), Charity Burbage (admiration), Ted Tonks (friend), Violet Bullstrode (adversary)

Future Information → Aunt of Ernest MacMillan

SAOIRSE MACMILLAN IS A LEVEL 4 WITCH.

#saorise macmillan #kathryn newton #the society #original rp #new rpg #taken #taken neutral #neutral #taken witch #quibbler #taken lgbtqia+

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notasiren21 · 4 years

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My Romance Kdrama Rankings and rec.:

*warning: possibly a lot of spoilers but tbh mostly just a redone synopsis of the shows*

Also a bit lengthy as hell

#12. Melting Me Softly

This show didn’t do that well as much as it was expected to, considering it even had Ji Chang-Wook as the male lead and the adorable Choi Bo-min who was introduced and quite possibly helped quick start the recognition for his kpop group Golden Child. I’ll admit I expected more of this and I don’t hold anything against the script writer who I heard did Strong Woman, but I kept in mind that the whole premise itself was also very complex to work with. Besides the fact it had two very cute and good looking male leads to draw me in, what really did it was the said premise. This is coming from a girl who is in love with Fallout 4 where the playable character was cryogenically frozen and then thawed out two centuries later, that shit slaps with me for some reason and I was excited to see it play out in this.

The romance is okay I guess, still “aww” worthy and has an intense kiss scene that’ll go down in Ji Chang-Wook’s kissing portfolio no doubt, as well as a hot kiss with his former and now aged flame that is only dreamt of. What drives the romance is the male lead with his puppy dog eyes and loving gaze, only a few have COMPLETELY mastered this in the kdrama buisness. Choi Bo-min was a complete adorable cutie who seemed to have fallen in love for the first time and I couldn’t help but fall in love with him (we’re also the same age but that’s besides the point and I’m completely in love with Rocky from Astro so like, I gotta keep this professional).

Time and time again I have issues with female leads in dramas and feel like the men pick up the slack when it comes to acting, this was one of those times. She was funny and quirky but seemed very out of focus on serval aspects. I think her most redeeming trait besides being made for the media and entertainment business in the show was her completely devotion to her brother.

#11. Suits

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, Park Hyungsik is my favorite korean actor hands down.

I’ve seen bits of the American version, the original version, and it didn’t interest me in the slightest. I took a chance on this because I saw this cutie wearing a suit and converse and maybe that’s my kink, who knows, but I was fucking HERE for it. Now I’m a huge slave to romance and the shows, romcoms, that shit. I need to ship, I need to see the love, possibly write a fanfic of it, save gifs of the couple being cute or someone pining. But this show didn’t focus on the love story brewing on the side, it focused on its original intent and purpose which was Park Hyungsik and Jang Don-Gun’s partnership as mentor and mentee, the practice of law, and Park Hyungsik’s storyline as someone who got mixed up in the wrong crowd and fauxed having the license to practice law. The love story you get is the reason it’s on this list and why it’s ranked lower, but all in all this was a good show and one of the few exceptions to a non romance focused show.

#10. Suspicious Partner

The only reason this doesn’t have a pic is because I can only use ten and I gotta figure which would need one and which wouldn’t.

To start off, this show is fucking hilarious with the cast dynamic. It was like what, 40 episodes? I didn’t realize I needed a prolonged show until this came along. At times, it seemed like the main plot was dragging and I was reminded of why I prefer typical kdrama fashion of a one season within 12-32 episode limit, but it made up for it.

Yes, yes, Ji Chang-Wook, the god of kissing, stars in this. My first introduction to him was actually Melting Me Softly and because of how he did in acting with what he could, the emotions he portrayed, I sought out another show of his pre-military duty. God, he fucking serves in glasses and a suit. His character’s jealousy regarding Nam Ji Hyun (his romantic interest) and Choi Tae Joon (Ex best friend, slow burn, exes to friends to platonic lovers that’s one sided while the other can’t stand him, 35k words) instilled the notion that he is fucking funny as hell when needed and such a mood. You want to see the (not even romantic rival bc Choi and Nam are best friends) spraying with a water hose on your lead’s rival? Want to see a hot guy like Ji Chang-Wook panic and try shoving him out of the house when the girl catches them working out? It’s gold.

The feud with the moms -granted they didn’t realize the knew they were the mom’s of the leads-, the slow burn of enemies to friends with the girls, the redemption of a broken friendship, the crackhead and large old baby played by Lee Deok Hwa and the poor father figure who is tired of everyone’s shit portrayed by Jang Hyeok-jin. It’s everything you need for at least a week. It’s possibly a great starter show to ease one into the fact that most dramas don’t hold to that many episodes.

The romance is great, the fucking pining on Ji Chang-Wook’s side is great, the kissing scenes are fucking one for the history books, and you’re guaranteed to be giggling to yourself in several scenes.

Oh and there’s like, a serial killer but yeah, romance!

#9. What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim?

The reason why it’s not so high on my list despite being popular is quite possibly some of the side cast.

While Park Seo Joon and Park Min Young severed as a fucking power couple and their tandem dynamic was strong as hell, there were characters who made the show’s story seen to drag out despite it being 16 episodes (see what I mean by usual number??). For one, we learn that a brown haired Lee Tae Hwan is not gonna make for a silent crush in this show. No, brown haired Lee Tae Hwan just gets on your nerves and despite it being purely because his character is mentally blocked in this twisted memory, he forces the main character into staying isolated within his own pain and nightmares from what really occurred when they were children. He lies to his family, keeps it hidden from those who are close to him and love him, suffers alone. It’s what keeps him away from chasing after Secretary Kim besides his egotistical personality -which I never thought could be so great but it is. The main character’s brother in his endless pursuit to chase at Secretary Kim himself starts to gnaw on your chill as you watch him subconsciously force this notions that they’re tethered to one another, deserve each other, etc. While you can’t entirely fault him for how he is given the psychological trauma he endured, you can get annoyed with him very easily for the other accounts and purposes.

The side story of the roof top guy with the one suit -I’m sorry, he’s great in 2PM but I can’t stand him in about every drama he’s in- and the seemly rookie girl become more of an obstacle when you just want to watch the main focus. The driver of the main character is hilarious but his romantic interest is over the top at times. Sometimes it just takes away from the show.

#8. Hotel Del Luna

Ah, I wish I could’ve put a pic.

To kick this off, can we like get a spin off with Kim Soo Hyun? Thanks.

FINALLY, A FUCKING FEMALE LEAD I STAN COMPLETELY AND WOULD WATCH EVEN WITHOUT YEO JIN GOO THERE FOR A ROMANTIC INTEREST.

This bitch, IU, fucking slays in her role as a hotel owner for the dead before the leave for the after life. Everything she does is iconic -yes, the fucking cocking of the rifle, the child like smile seeing diamonds, blessing the poor boy with the ability to see the dead then let him get chased per her own amusement before business. I really would’ve watched the show even if there was no romance. Whether it’s modern times or her orignal lifetime before being condemned to a life of immortality hell and aimlessly running a hotel, she makes for a strong lead. Her reasons for wanted to avoid love seemed so valid compared to other female leads who completely brush guys off. She doesn’t want love, and yet she doesn’t want anyone else touching Chan Sung (Yeo Jin Goo) because she’s not dumb enough to let go of something that makes her feel alive. While her character is legitimately described as cold and greedy, her intentions for holding onto him reveal an insecure part of her that’s been tucked away for centuries. His dedication to the hotel and her, to helping the ghosts move on and such, it’s great and makes for a binge full night.

It’s only ranked lower because the ending sadden me when I realized it was him picturing how they would meet one another again. And because they teased us with Kim Soo Hyun, like that’s cruel.

#7. Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (aka Goblin)

Tbh, this show would be lower if it weren’t for the Reaper and Sunny, as well as Deok Hwa.

I’ll probably get a lot of hate for this, but I couldn’t stand Kim Go Eun in this. I’ve watched her in Cheese in the Trap and thought she was good and stuff, but this I found myself growing annoyed and glaring at the television while my mom preached upon her behalf. The goblin was funny, his dynamic and weird polar friendship with the Reaper is quite possibly what really made the show, but I failed to see the spark between them until the time skip. Then, THEN, I could tolerate her a bit better.

Maybe it’s because she was protraying someone around my age in high school, but she went from this independent and driving girl to someone who became too needy and clingy. She acted like a little girl in front of a crush when she could’ve handled it more marturely with the said maturity she showed before meeting him. Granted, I know she had a very difficult home life after her mom died and she saw ghosts everywhere, and her living with the Reaper and Goblin was like this warm family she felt safe in, but I just couldn’t. Her endless pursuing of the Goblin got on my nerves and she would get upset, but then again did she ever act like an adult and do the most natural thing? Aka sit down and discuss the whole situation.

“If you’re comfortable, can you tell me why you think I’m your bride?/Why is there a sword in you?/What happens if I pull it out?/ What do you want me to do?/etc”

No, instead it was a constant “I’m the goblin’s bride”, “I’m your bride”, there was this bratty entitlement laying underneath the cutest exterior that was so apparent for someone my age, and I got pissed when she admitted to have seeing the sword the first time around. Like this man has been in total agony for fucking forever and you strung him along hoping for the possibility that you may be the key to him finally getting the ending he thinks he’ll get. It was selfish, she didn’t even know him but insisted on seeing how to be his bride. She should’ve stepped back and thought the situation out carefully. It wasn’t until that blessed time skip that I started to like her better. She wasn’t a kid then and became mature like she needed to be. There’s the need to flaw a character, but her’s was always biting at me.

Oh yeah, Sunny and the Reaper are the true couple in this story and their love that’s star crossed in two lives really hits you. There was more chemistry than the main couple, there was confusion in flirtatious banter, there was stupidity for first time romance against a tired experience woman, there was the hidden history that they both remembered after the time skip. The angst, the pure acceptance, the guilt and remorse. They made the fucking show alongside the Goblin and Reaper’s bromance and Deok Hwa’s “I just want a credit card and to be irresponsible but these two dumb fucks keep almost revealing their true selves to the world and I’m fucking done with these children”, on top of God taking his body as a vessel and becoming 10x cooler with that hairstyle while drinking with Fate (such a badass who loves her children I can’t, I stan the side character too).

#6. My ID is Gangnam Beauty

Oh my god, my introduction to Astro. Cha Eun Woo (aka Lee Dongmin). My god, if it weren’t for my mom, sister and I officially ruling Cha Eun Woo as god tier in terms of looks and making him this untouchable bias we can’t have, I would have never let this adorably hot as hell dancer and rapper distract me. Really, I kept wanting to be distracted by Rocky but I felt like I couldn’t miss the visual god in the front. Blessed I finally was able to divert my attention to the one I wanted to watch so very much and became my bias wrecker. Mom loves Moonbin like he’s her own son and we’re not her children, sister loves MJ’s psychotic idiocy.

ANYWAYS, the female lead, Kang Mi Rae, was stiff as hell when watching it a second time around and at times, knowing their age gap can be bothersome, but it was a cute slow burn of her and Cha Eun Woo’s character, Do Kyung Suk (sounds badass too, doesn’t it). While he appeared stiff as well, probably could’ve played a robot if he wanted to, I felt like he did well portraying his character who grew up in a dysfunctional house where their political father’s position took presidence over family. He was taught it was unmanly you cry, he never smiled (idk how Cha Eun Woo did it, this cutie never stops smiling or laughing), he never spoke up, etc. He appears socially handicapped until Mi Rae appears back in his life and he slowly let’s go of this anger as the story progresses. She learns she doesn’t have to be so self conscious about her plastic surgery or who she used to be because he loves both.

The villian of this story was well thought out (only kdrama where my dad actively participates in the discussions because he hated her so much and says her name with such spite while bragging he knows at least one Astro member so that’s his “idfk what a bias is but I’ll go with the Gangnam kid”). She brought the tension and there was the window to pity her and realize something was most definitely wrong in a tragic way. She sought after Kyung Suk like a prized trophy when he didn’t express interest, stepped inbetween blooming relationships, set boys off a progressive course away from her, and turned one kid psychotic. That was just with her obsession to have the boys fawn after her; completely disregarding her endless efforts to knock Mi Rae down a peg or two in meticulously planned schemes. She was incredibly smart and cunning, it can’t be denied and she drove them closer together in spite of her tries to wedge between them.

Really, this made me wish that the Webtoon True Beauty that’s supposed to get a drama adaption will cast him as the main male lead Suho. It’s almost similar but Suho seems more dimensional and expressive and I feel like he would truly shine there.

Stan Astro.

#5. Extra-Ordinary You

Ah, this one hurts me. @macaknight, just watch it.

This is a young love one and one of the few that’s not absolute cringe worthy. Set in high school where yea, there’s drama and it’s in Asia so there’s that weird “all mighty and supreme group that conquers the school” called the A3, a girl (Kim Hye Yoon) with a heart condition learns she’s a character in a manga -doesn’t realize she’s not the main one tho and that’s hilarious alone. She finds a focus with this unnamed student who stays in the background and shadows (portrayed by SF9’s Rowoon). The girl, Eun Dan Oh, is someone to worship and cherish, especially since she’s so young and very promising. I thoroughly enjoyed her character and how her efforts to derail the natural progression of the story with the catalyst of student number 13, later on Haru. There’s so many fucking twist and turns, characters to let your heartbreak for as you wish to adopt them and protect them from the world, it all hurts so much but in a masochistic against yourself kind of way you can’t let go of.

Those who are aware they’re in a comic book, they all struggle to break their “character’s” roles and expectations. The second male lead of both the drama and the drama’s manga is sick and tired of playing the violin and being this unrequited love interest that’ll lose in the end, forever the friend. Dan Oh is livid she’s expected to die from her heart disease and is forced to endlessly pine for her childhood fiancé Baek Kyung who is a complete asshole to her while in character. Number 13/Haru is tired of being an unnamed background character who continuously suffers and gets toyed with by the author. Dried Squid Fairy lunch maker is sick of how he must remember shit that’s kept a secret as he tries in vain to keep the story on track to avoid repeated mistakes and consequential devastating punishments to those who don’t follow the storyline. Yeo Ju Da (the main character of the manga) wants to experience the love story she wants without the drama. Baek Kyung want to prove himself and that he genuinely cares for Dan Oh but is forced to be an asshole because that’s how he’s written.

It’s a fucking mess and it’s fucking fantastic. The friendship of A3 (Lee Do Hwa the vionlist, Oh Namju and Baek Kyung), Lee Do Hwa and Dan Oh’s powerful best friendship after being self aware and confiding in each other (honestly I want a drama with just two of them, they’re so cute and funny together), the A3 that happened outside for those self aware between Dan Oh, Number 13/Haru, and Do Hwa where they all genuinely care for one another, Dan Oh’s acceptance that her manga best friend is a bitch but nice to her and the male lackey of their group is funny, etc.

I didn’t think another self aware comic book character show could happen without ripping off W-Two Worlds, but it did. They did it.

#4. Angel’s Last Mission: Love

That song that goes “It’s alright, it’s alright” in a sad melodic way? Yeah, they play it when it’s not alright.

This show has heartbreak galore, even in the first episode for numerous reasons. They don’t want you to be alright for the most part and yet our sadistic selves can’t help but suffer through it. L’s portrayal of being an angel is such a gift, I didn’t know I needed it. I was dead set on living my life until I saw this and felt myself crumble to bits.

You want sacrifice? You got it. Tears of cute boy and a girl who can’t catch a break? Check. Plot twists? Lmao, it’s a kdrama. Yea. Angst and hurt? Fuck yep.

While you’re at it, listen to the song too so you can suffer some more.

#3. Descendants of the Sun

THIS WOULD BE AT THE TOP IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE FACT I AM COMPLETELY IN LOVE WITH THE FIRST ONE AND THESE TWO GOT DIVORCED IN REAL LIFE. I still wish the best for them and their child. I still hurt but love them.

So much fucking chemistry and angst, so much hurt and wounds (it’s legit a show with a military background and characters), so much cool fight scenes and surgeries. Their soundtrack slaps, the backstory of characters really set the tone to their current stories, shit overlaps somehow, the female rivalry is hilarious, the cat and dog friendship of the male leads warms my heart. They have such iconic stills and scenes.

The main leads connected so fucking well they got married in real life (we don’t talk about the end result, I’m still crying but I get it.) This kdrama is probably one of the staples to korean dramas in general.

Another female lead I really liked as well as the second, I just struggled at times with Song’s character at times because of the pain she put them both through.

#2. W-Two Worlds

This is my go to for recommending korean dramas to someone for the first time -I got an ex hooked on it that he cried several times throughout it/life 1/4 of the varsity boy’s soccer team has seen this because of me.

This is the comic self awareness show that I didn’t think could be redone, but kudos to you Extraordinary You, you created an orignal that breaks my heart.

This show hurts so much as well, I don’t watch them if they don’t hurt in one way or another.

Lee Jong Suk stars as the main character (Kang Chul) who is also the main character of his own comic book he stars in. The issue is that he’s self aware and that there’s something wrong with his world and life. His webtoon/manga creator is trying to kill him because having his creation alive is driving him to insanity and was the only comfort when he pushed his family away for his career and alcoholism. The creator’s daughter is alerted that her father went missing while cooped up in his room while drawing Kang Chul’s death and end to the manga without a resolution to his storyline (Think of a korean Batman without the suit and brooding personality). Plot twist that’s in the synopsis, she gets pulled in by Kang Chul inside the comic and can come and go if it pertains to him because he controls it without realizing.

You have a main character who is written as this playboy orphan and sole survivor of his mass family’s murder that questions his existence and purpose BEYOND how we do. He meets this girl who speaks almost cryptically to him without realizing and knows more about him than needed or given, and now he’s experiencing oddities besides the notion of love that he can’t understand because it’s not how he is written and the glitches in his world.

This show is twisted in a psychological sense that messes with a comic character who is now alive and real, fucks up the mentality of the creator, puts the daughter in an immense amount of stress when she was just trying to be a fucking surgeon, yes, black haired Lee Tae Hwan is crush worthy in this unlike brown haired Lee Tae Hwan in Secretary Kim. (It’s the hair, you change the hair on a character and everything is different).

The exploration of what love is that works alongside the devoting dark plot of the culprit murderer really drives this show as well as the couple’s endless efforts to save/protect one another in any means necessary, even if they both suffer from it.

These two truly can’t live without one another and it shows with all they do for each other. There’s nothing they wouldn’t risk to keep one another in their arms.

And Lee Jong Suk delivers his share of being one of the King of Korean Drama Kisses as well, gif saving worthy and iconic ones as well.

#1. Strong Woman Do Bong-Soon

Park Hyungsik. Park Hyungsik. Park Hyungsik. Park Hyungsik.

Need I say more?

We stan Park Hyungsik’s character, Ahn Minhyuk, in this blog. We basically stan Do Bong Soon as well for how happy she makes him.

This is possibly totally bias but this is one of my two white noise korean drama shows that I continuously find myself rewatching time and time again. And that’s saying something since I only have one white noise show that’s in English. Three shows total.

People had issues with the script and what the actors had to say, but for the most part I thought the love story and the rival one was pretty well written, then again I kept watching different translations on different sites. So I wasn’t bothered at all. People also didn’t like the side characters and stories regarding the sketchy well dressed gang she hospitalizes in the first episode that stuck around until the last but I felt it was important to have them to prove how having Bong Soon in their lives can change a person and how she has this affect on people overall.

My god, the love story. Bong Soon has this massive crush on police officer and high school friend she was sweet on, Guk Doo, who doesn’t seem to acknowledge her feelings and is all about protecting the law and stuff (I can respect, I’m a LEO kid). He isn’t aware of her abilities of being incredibly strong and nearly indestructible. Nah, instead, CEO of AIN Software, Ahn Minhyuk, accidentally finds out and is like super chill but excited and curious about it and her??

He hires her as his bodyguard in the mist of receiving threats regarding his family company and they find an odd balance with each other while Minhyuk falls in love with her so hard, he literally tries to protect HER from danger. He’s so wonderfully extra that it’s no wonder Park Hyungsik and Park Seo Joon are best friends in real life, they both have the ability to play someone so over the top in a cute and funny way that you appreciate it about them. A cutie with a button nose and weird ears decked out in monochrome color scheme and dark sunglasses, whistling as he rides a hoverboard around? Die for 100%. Someone who gets crazy jealous and presents it in a healthily humorous way by dramatically posing to securitygates of his company that open automatically for him? Stan. Wants Bong Soon’s attention while she’s in a room away from him so her opera sings her name loudly and dramatically? Worship.

While it’s hard to watch the slow progression on her end yet the obvious budding of it, it’s understandable since she’s been in love with Guk Doo ever since high school and has assumably never had a boyfriend in hopes that he would reciprocate her feelings. So the second time watching it and stepping back to analyze, I could forgive her.

All the while, Minhyuk making Heart Eyes ™️ at Bong Soon for literally everything she does makes you feel. The way he holds her and treats her like she’s this precious porcelain doll that could break it handled the wrong way speaks volumes considering he knows of her Herculean strength. He openly loves her when he comes to realize what she means to him -which is a lot sooner than you’d think but welcomed-, and looks at no one else but her. The love story probably would’ve also happened faster if everyone didn’t think Minhyuk was gay (that’s a solid fact, I’m not joking), only those close to her and see how he acts/looks at her realize “lmao, he ain’t gay Hunni”. Minhyuk is this cute hottie that girls wish were straight (it’s fucking hilarious) who acts like a complete lovesick dork with Bong Soon. He freaks and spazzes out when she calls him a nickname or acts cheeky with dropping honorifics, speaks aloud to himself of his thoughts regarding her, literally can’t contain himself when she acts cute to get on his good side and distract his anger.

Oh and there’s like this serial kidnapper too so there’s badass scenes of the two working together, power couple def.

Their soundtrack slaps too and you somehow end up vibing with it. The song You’re My Garden on it, I learned to sing it because it’s one of my top favs.

They’re just the cutest with their hamster and puppy dog relationship. It’s my go to show and I won’t stop watching this. It’s so obvious how Park Hyungsik grew to fall in love Park Bo Young (that’s a legitimate fact) when filming and their bts cuts are too cute, I wish they were dating in real life.

(Also, we have another King of kiss scenes -to those who watched this drama already, you know the scene, iconic 🔥🎼)

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littlemisssquiggles · 5 years

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You remember my comparison art piece of my Ruby and V7 Ruby? How V7 Ruby seems to be trying to hold onto hope and explore herself as a young woman (as CRWBY said this volume would show a more "playful side" to Ruby). Well, I can see her trying to explore herself because she knows that they might not have a lot of time left, what with how things are. I can see her trying to become more outgoing as a means to experience as much as she can before it's too late.

Hiya Miki-chan. To add to your point, I can see Ruby becoming more relaxed and carefree while everyone is in Atlas due to the fact that, for the first time since, I guess Beacon back in Vale, Atlas will provide our heroes temporary sanctuary. It’s why I like the idea of teams RWBY, JNR and even Oscar as well continuing their huntsmen training at Atlas Academy. After all, I believe the original plan for Haven was for our heroes to travel to Haven to possibly continue their training there? Possibly? Correct me if I’m wrong. However as we saw, this was not the case at all.

I guess I can see our heroes settling down sort of nicely in Atlas and making themselves at home within the kingdom walls. After all, Atlas currently is considered the safest kingdom in Remnant for the time being since Ironwood recalled all of their kingdom’s forces to protect the outer borders which Ironwood also took care of closing off to the outside world. As far as we know, no one is expected to get in or out of Atlas. I also wouldn’t be shocked if there is an invisible force field of some kind surrounding Atlas—possibly one produced by a higher quantity of hard light dust similar to the ones used during the Vytal Festival and Caroline Cordovin of Argus for the mecha-fight.

In the case of Ruby Rose, this squiggle meister is very much intrigued to see this more ‘playful side’ to our young rose. Makes me wonder if we’re going to see Ruby try to be all flirty, catching the attention of potential love interests while in Atlas (apart from Oscar of course). It’d be precious if Ruby is the type to try and be all sexy and flirtatious (possibly encouraged by Neon Katt) only to end up sort of failing, but in an adorable fashion befitting of her chipper personality of course. Makes me think back to my Ruby’s Big Bad Boyfriend headcanons—both one and two.

It also makes me wonder if we’re going to see the typical teenage drama story trope where Ruby is the girl naïve to love and romance who falls for like the first impressively handsome love interest to take an interest in her only to have this person be revealed to be a fake ass hat who breaks her heart.

And then this leads to our boy Oscar Pine coming in clutch to sort of white-knight for Ruby, schooling the jerk who hurt his lovely red rose while simultaneously revealing to Ruby the charming little prince behind the gentle farm boy who’s been in front of her eyes the entire time.

Yes I know this all sounds mighty cheesy right now but…aw hell, who doesn’t like some cheesy romance? The hopeless romantic side of shipping heart beats for this kind of stuff and I think it could be adorable for our titular smaller, more honest Rosebuds since their friendship and bond is so adorable and pure.

I’ve talked once or twice before of seeing a more carefree side of Ruby who spends her time worrying about normal teenage girl stuff—like her looks or romantic relationships and stuff like that as opposed to what we’re accustomed seeing from her—a young girl thrust into the leadership role and influenced to be a voice of reason,guidance and motivation to her older teammates.

Seeing this side of Ruby could be sweet. I’m all for ‘Ruby the Teenaged Girl’ moments in V7 especially when it comes to seeing this so-called ‘playful side of her’. I’m sorry, this just makes me think that Ruby is gonna try to flirt with someone only to fail hard but still looks cute nonetheless.

One moment that I’m hoping for is a possible parallel to V2. One thing that fans like myself are anticipating for V7 is a reunion with Team FNKI who eventually take our heroes partying or clubbing in Atlas, as promised by Neon back in V3.

I remember @ezroar even sharing an idea about FNKItaking our heroes to an secret underground rave and quite frankly I’m all for this idea. I’m especially for this idea if it leads into another ‘Painting the Town’-esque type of episode where we get to see everyone dress down and rock casual wear including the JNR gang plus Oscar.

Anyways why I’m hoping for another partying or dancing episode is for the sake of seeing a parallel moment where Oscar is possibly alone in the corner at the club, feeling socially awkward and out of place amongst all the dancing bodies and flashing lights and Ruby is the one to come over and kind o fcoax him into having fun.

I want this because it would be a nice call back to the scene in the Vytal Festival Ball with Ozpin where Ruby was alone and Oz came over to impart his usual wisdom on her.

I think this could be a great way to show just how much Ozpin’s wisdom has influenced Ruby in a way. With all the negativity surrounding Oz’s characterization as of late, it would be nice to have the show give a little reminder that Oz is a good man who, more or less, always looked out for the children in his care and cared for them as their mentor.

Say what you will about him. Yes he’s done some shady things in the past that could paint him as a gray character. Although more light gray than people believe him to be since I still stand by the notion that Oz’s actions were justifiable. But then again, that’s just me talking here.

Nevertheless, Ozpin was a good mentor who offered great advice whenever he could. And one of the people he imparted that wisdom to was Ruby Rose. I guess I just really would like to see the two messages that Oz left with Ruby come back to be used by Ruby to counsel Oscar in a sense.

To me that could be a good segway to frame that there is still a side of Ruby that believes in the words Ozpin told her. Not to mention that it can also open the door to show that in spite of what happened, Ruby still believes in the good of Ozpin . In the past, whenever she needed his advice, Oz willingly helped her during moments where she felt emotionally vulnerable. Ozpin showed Ruby empathy during those times. He chose to understand her. Help her even. And Ruby wasn’t the only one Oz helped before or showed empathy to. This could then potentially lead to Ruby suffering a stark revelation of what she did to Ozpin; realizing the wrong in what she put him through.

Yes, her actions with Jinn may have finally gotten the untold truth about Salem, however it revealed more than that. It also forced Oz (and possibly all the other lives that are a part of him since he is a culmination of countless of men) to relive some of the most tragic memories of his past.

Ruby exposed Oz. She unlocked all his skeletons without his consent.She laid out all of his dirty laundry to an audience of people who showed him no mercy. This is why I will always stand in the court that defends Ozpin. While I understand that he kept secrets from the group and I empathize with them feeling angry and resentful toward him for that particular reason. Ozpin did wrong but that doesn’t make what the group put him through any less right or good. It still doesn’t look any less bad when you acknowledge the other side of this coin that highlights that Oz was a person who was always kind,understanding and sympathetic to each and every face in the group that turned their backs on him.

Oz may have had secrets and told lies but he had justifiable cause. He’s also not the only one amongst the heroes sailing in the same boat. I just find it really sad that Oz never turned his back on anyone in his team. He always showed them empathy when they laid their insecurities at his feet. But the minute he needed that understanding in return, he…doesn’t get it. We don’t even get to see one person in the group consider the bigger picture or the other side of the picture. Everyone just adopts the same impression.

Salem can’t be killed. Oz lied about it to them. He doesn’t have a plan and he’s a bastard for it, according to Yang. I was expecting the truth about Oz to divide the heroes just as much as it has divided the fandom. But instead,everyone just adopts this one-sided thought that puts Oz as someone to be distrusted and he becomes a subject that no one wants to discuss—or rather the Writers don’t want them to discuss. Yet.

The only person who at the moment seems to be sympathetic with Oz is,Oscar. But that could potentially come back to bite the poor kid in the behind for the obvious issue with that. Poor Oscar. He’s probably going to have to play super glue or tin foil to a group that’s crumbling at the seams. Yes the heroes managed to get by without Ozpin’s influence for now. But how long is that luck going to last? Especially when General Dimples comes back into the picture?

Arthur Watts did point out back in V6 that Ozpin is the only one who can talk sense back into James. But how much will Oz help if he isn’t willing to show up. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a scene where Qrow takes Oscar to speak Ironwood on the hope that the kid would be able to pull the same ‘parlour trick’ he did back in V5 when he and Oz first soul swapped.

Unfortunately for Qrow, Oscar is unable to soul swap since there is no other soul to swap to. Oz still isn’t there nor is he willing to come out. He may have shown up to assist Oscar that one time since he was in immediate danger but I doubt Oz will do that again. Not even to see James. As a matter of fact,I figured Oz would feel even more ashamed to face James since he falls in the category of being another man, like Qrow, who put his fate fully in Oz under the impression that they were doing good that was actually helping humanity. Imagine how much more devastated and paranoid Ironwood might become if he learnt the truth? As a matter of fact, it might even be worse if Ironwood learnt the truth. Since V2, Ironwood had shown doubt in Oz despite their affiliation. He was also the one member of his circle to actually challenge his authority. How do you think James would react if he found out that all of the uncertainties he showed in Oz’s judgement were fact? That he’s better off trusting his old judgement than in his old friend.

Ironwood learning the truth could backfire badly on the heroes,especially if Oz isn’t there to soften the blow with his words. Just like everyone else, James could become another person to paint Oz as a liar leading people to their unavoidable deaths with all of the good he’s done being thrown out the window over one main mistake.

A mistake which, ironically, was the point he was trying to make before with Lionheart. I guess what I’m saying here is—Ozpin was wrong for keeping the truth about Salem a secret and lying about it. However, in my opinion, he had justifiable reasons for doing so which I understood.

I mean, I can go and on as to why I still defend Ozpinbut that’s not the topic on discussion right now. In a nutshell, I want V7 to show Ruby Rose recalling the advice Ozpin gave to her at Beacon and using those same words while she’s trying to motivate and/or assist Oscar through his development as a huntsman.

The impression I have is we are going to get to see Ruby truly stand up and stand by Oscar, probably a lot more than we’ve seen her in past seasons since out of everyone on the hero squad, Ruby relates to Oscar the most since she’s been in his shoes before as the underdog youngster planted with the badge of leadership with a lot of expectations to come from you (and I seriously hope the season plays off of this to help strengthen their dynamic and blossoming friendship).

Going back to the rave idea, I think it could be cute to have Oscar being at the club and feeling like he doesn’t belong there (which could potentially tie into his suppressed emotions over the Merge and feeling overwhelmed by everything that has happened to him within the past few weeks). Ruby takes notice of Oscar’s awkwardness and joins him in the corner. She tries her best to sort of emulate Ozpin in that moment, remembering the same words Oz once told her about dancing being not too similar from combat and how it’s good to take the time to enjoy yourselves when you get the chance.

In spite of Ruby’s reassuring words, Oscar admits to her that it’s not the dancing part that’s making him feel uneasy, it’s other things—basically it boils down to Oscar feeling sort of out of his element and feeling useless for not being able to keep up with everyone else when he’s expected to, given his situation.

This then inspires Ruby to help Oscar so she takes him away from all the loud music and sweaty dancing bodies toa much more quieter section of the club. Let’s say, according to Flynt who knows the place,there is an abandoned ole school dance hall with a jukebox in the back. The equipment still works but it hasn’t been used in while. Ruby accepts this place since at least it’d be quiet and secluded enough for her and Oscar to have some privacy while she helps him out.

This moment then leads to another heartfelt conversation between theRosebuds which also leads into Oscar bucking up the courage to ask Ruby to share a dance with him which she accepts. Rather than bumping and grinding to fast paced technobabble like their friends, Ruby and Oscar spend the remainder of the night slow dancing in each other’s arms in the back by themselves; just going with the flow to the tune of their own beat all the while enjoying and appreciating each other’s company.

I’m still sticking to my guns that Oscar is quite a decent dancer but is more accustomed to slow dancing, having been raised by his old fashioned farm bred family in the farm lands of Anima. And let’s say this works out great for Ruby as well since, I have a feeling that while in Atlas, Ruby might want to done away with her old ‘not a fancy-prancy-dancy girl’ act and give dancing a go. However Ruby is the opposite of Oscar. While Oscar knows how to dance but is apprehensive about the clubbing side of it, Ruby on the other hand becomes open to giving things a try but has difficulty since she doesn’t know how to dance.

And what doesn’t help is that she winds up pairing up with partners who,let’s say, aren’t willing to be patient with her slip ups. So in the end, the evening works out well enough for both Rosebuds when they fight a compatible (dance) partner in each other. Ruby helps Oscar to relax and go withthe flow while Oscar is patient with Ruby and helps her to see the joy o fdancing. Or…something along those lines.

That’s something I think would be adorable for the buds. Who knows? Maybe we might actually see Ruby make Oscar smile brighter and laugh uncontrollably for once in the show apart from his usual short chortles.

My headcanon is that Oscar is extremely self-conscious about laughing too much cause he’s a snorter—he does a cute little piggy laugh whenever you ge thim to laugh too much or even a little more than usual. The first time Ruby heard Oscar legit piggy laugh, Oscar was incredibly embarrassed about it afterwards but Ruby just found it to be the cutest thing ever. That’s it. That’s my headcanon and you can’t tell me otherwise.

Continuing on my last ask, I can see Ruby changing her outfit and style before seeing more distressing news, maybe them showcasing the news of them stealing from Argus and the grimm attack- it shows her face and her old outfit.

Her face begins to tremble from trying to suppress tears… before her expression hardens with determination. She throws on her outfit and then begins to spike up her hair. She refuses to be brought down by this. She will rise and she will live.

As you brought it up, I’m curious to know how the series is going tohandle what happened in Argus. Or rather if they would actually address it atall. From the way V6 ended, it just feels that we’re more likely to see ourheroes go to Atlas without facing any repercussions on their actions in Argus.Especially coming off of how Cordovin said she was going to cover up for them in the paperwork.

I did like your idea from Reconciliation where our heroes wounded up apprehended by the Atlesian authorithies only to receive release and a bit of parlay from Ironwood. That seemed fitting. However I think what we’re more likely to see is how the events of Argus affected the image of Atlas to therest of Remnant…again.

Afterall, what the people of Argus saw wasn’t Cordovin using the mecha to apprehend a monster (at least not at first). Nope, what they saw was Cordovin more abusing the power of the Atlas military while making boldfaced proclamations about how much the world has forgotten about the ‘awesome might of Atlas’ and to consider her actions a reminder of that.

That is what the civilians saw and I wouldn’t be surprised if that is what will be brought back to bite Atlas in the ass as another pressure Ironwood has to deal with as both the General of the Atlas Military and a member of the Atlas Council.

This actually makes me wonder something.

What if…based on how things look, all the blame for the stunt in Argus is placed on Caroline Cordovin and her forces in Argus,forcing Ironwood to recall them too back to Atlas for their immediate expulsion?

If the heroes found out that Cordovin was to be punished or worse,jailed for the stunt in Argus, do you think they would step up and take the blame in her place, revealing the truth to Ironwood? Would Ironwood even be willing to listen to them giving his mental state?

I guess I’ll conclude with this question and wait to hear your answer.

~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

#miki-13 #squiggles answers #oscar pine #ruby rose #oscar and ruby #professor ozpin #rwby theories #squiggles answers: rwby

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daysswithyou · 5 years

Text

Fallen Chapter 11: Is this...?

previous / next

Characters: DAY6 Young K x OC (Rachel)

Genre: angst, fake dating, high school romance, fluff, romance

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And so, you do.

You become a regular visitor at the team’s training sessions and gradually, you’ve grown to love the team. You start to care for them like your younger siblings; and you have a particular soft spot for Dowoon because he takes Biology classes with you. All it took for you was a week to be able to match their names to their faces, positions and class levels. Now, after a month, you’re around the team so much that you’re able to match personal belongings to the person; you know whose shoes belong to whom, and whose gym bag belonged to whom. Very soon, you started helping captain Sungjin with his duties – both of you hollering at members after training sessions to bring home their basketball shoes and dirty jerseys. It was a clear indication that you were perhaps spending too much time with the boys, but that didn’t stop you from continuing to show up for trainings, sometimes with food in hand for the entire team. Brian watches all of this with pride from the side line, smiling when he saw how the boys readily accepted you into their tribe, treating you with respect like they would with their biological older sister.

Today, Brian is witness to another defining milestone of your journey in joining the team when Coach Nickhun walks up to talk to you, a sure sign that Coach was also beginning to accept you as part of this big family. Brian’s chest swells with happiness at the sight, letting out a small puff of laughter because his body can no longer physically contain his delight at the sight in front of him. Eyes never leaving your beautiful face, Brian carries on watching your interaction with Coach Nickhun, his smile growing wider by the second. He was completely oblivious to Sungjin’s presence beside him, until the older male decides to make himself known.

“Kang, you really like her, don’t you?”

“Of course I do, she’s my fake – ”

Brian pauses midsentence, unable to continue the rest of the sentence. Was he… really about to call you his fake girlfriend? It felt so wrong to label you as his fake girlfriend when it’s been so long since you’ve been acting like one. Ever since basketball finals, you have been genuine with him and the team, lending them support in any way that you can.

The star player turned to look at his captain, confusion written all over his face. Meanwhile, Sungjin directs a pointed gaze at Brain, almost as if he expected this outcome to his question.

“Not in that way Kang. I meant liking her as a woman, as a partner. It feels weird labelling her as a fake girlfriend, doesn’t it?”

For a split second, Brian stares at his captain with a dumbfounded look on his face, not wanting to believe the truth behind Sungjin’s words. He kicked the thought out of his head the moment it dawned upon him, not wanting to let himself immerse too much in this notion.

“Ay hyung~ what nonsense are you sprouting! I don’t see her that way, and I’m sure she does not too.”

Sungjin scoffs at his teammate, in disbelief of Brian’s stubbornness.

“Deny it all you want Kang, but your heart will eventually tell you to the truth.”

Sungjin runs off the moment he finishes the last word, going back on court where he is needed more. This gives Brian time to turn his attention back to you, whom was still talking to Coach Nickhun.

Do I… really like her… in that way? No, it’s rididculous. How can I be in love with her? There is no feelings involved in this, it’s all purely business.

Yet, the nagging feeling scratching away at his chest will not leave him alone, making him more uncomfortable by the second. Thankfully, he’s distracted by you waving him over. Jogging over leisurely, you pull Brian down to sit beside you when he’s within arm’s reach, your kneecaps now pressed against one another. You don’t give Brian a chance to greet you when you interject with your question, talking at quickly at full speed,

“I’ve got an idea, listen and tell me if it’s good. I was talking to Coach Nickhun just now, and he mentioned that he wanted to reward the entire team for winning the championships again, but he was getting sick of just bringing all of you out for a meal at some fancy restaurant. So, I suggested holding a party at my aunt’s café. We can close the place for the night just for the team; there’ll be homecooked food, you can stay as long as you want because no one is going to chase you out during closing. But then again, I’m not sure if this is a good idea, or if the celebration comes too late after your victory. Also, is it too corny or – ”

Brian’s face lights up with each proposition you make, grateful that you even thought of offering up your personal space and time to do something for the boys to appreciate their efforts. Without thinking, he slips his hands into yours, holding on tight before giving your hand a squeeze, affirming your efforts.

“I think it’s a fantastic idea. I’m sure the boys will enjoy it very much.”

Still holding on your hand, he turns back to face the court before hollering at them.

“YA KIDS! YOUR NOONA HERE WANTS TO HOLD A PARTY AT HER PLACE TO CELEBRATE OUR CHAMPIONSHIP WIN! IS EVERYONE GAME?”

The boys take some time to process his words that were shouted over the large expanse of the court and surprisingly, Jae, whom is seated right at the opposite end, asks the most important question.

“IS THERE FOOD?”

You throw your head back in laughter as Brian opens his mouth, ready to reply. But this time round, you beat him to it, completing his sentence for him like a couple would.

“THERE WILL BE! I’LL COOK!”

The entire team erupts in cheers when they hear your answer, all agreeing without the slightest bit of hesitation. Brain watches the happy scene unfold before his eyes, already counting down towards the weekend.

This is going to be a good time.

Both of you continue to watch the team as they huddled together to discuss about their plan for the weekend now that the party is happening. Everything was going well – except that you two weren’t the only witnesses to this event.

---

The weekend rolls around fairly quickly in between school tests and assignments, and the team was all in high spirits when they made their way over to your café, grateful for the celebration and small time granted to them to unwind for the week. Brian, in particular, was excited to see you again, after his last text to you roughly three hours ago. (The conversation ended because you had to busy yourself in the kitchen, making food enough to feed a hungry group of boys.)

The food prepared was all laid out on the table the moment the team came in, your aunt welcoming them on your behalf. You pop your head out to say a small greeting to the team and coach before heading back into the kitchen to prepare dessert, knowing that the boys will be in good hands with Esther and Jae around.

True enough, the duo got the party started at full force, switching between karaoke and games effortlessly in between food breaks. You glance out from time to time, observing the party outside through the small glass panel on the kitchen door. Focusing on swirling the chocolate again, you only looked up when you heard the sound of the kitchen door swing open, loud pop sounds filling the quiet space for a moment before the door swings shut again, muffling the sounds from outside.

Brian Kang makes his way over to you, standing to watch you with his hips against the counter.

“Younghyun, what are you doing here? You should be outside enjoying the party; I think Esther and Jae are doing a great job hosting the party.”

“Is there anything I can help with? I feel bad leaving to do everything alone.”

“Your sling might be off, but you’re still recovering. It’s not a good idea to have you do anything.”

“Oh come on! I can play basketball now, surely I can help with cooking.”

You contemplate for a short while, wanting to reject Brian’s offer to help. However, it looks like he won’t leave until he gets his hands dirty – so you eventually concede.

“Well, I could use an extra pair of hands, but do you know how to cook?”

You raise your eyebrows at him as a challenge, doubting that he would have the time to experiment with cooking in between school and intense training sessions. But as always, Brian Kang is full of surprises.

“Of course, what do you need me to do?”

“Oh~ alright then you can help me prepare the whipped frosting by first beating the eggs. Just the egg white though, no egg yolks.”

“Gotcha.”

Quickly washing his hands, you watch as he walks around the kitchen like a natural, finding all the utensils he needed with ease.

Both of you fall into an easy conversation as you worked on the dessert together, and you watch as he eats well whilst preparing the food, stealing a chocolate chip or two from your open bag whenever he walked past you. You chuckle at the sight, glad that he is eating so well.

“You know, Mum and Dad would have loved to meet you.”

“Why?”

“You love food as much as they do. They would have fed you well if they saw you here today.”

“Really? Speaking of which, I haven’t seen your parents yet. Are they out of town today?”

Your hands stilled upon hearing the mention of your parents, panic flashing through your eyes momentarily. You swallow nervously, hoping that Brian would not have caught on. Steadying your voice, you said your next words slowly,

“Yea, they’re out of town today.”

Wanting to turn the conversation away from this dangerous topic, you glanced around for anything that you could possibly talk about, before you spotted the scene outside and deciding that it would be something safe to talk about.

“This is really nice; it’s been so long since my aunt and I had so much fun.”

“What do you mean?”

You shake your head at his response, not expecting him to question you about your current situation; you were hoping that he would have responded by confirming your statement, seeing as he’s also one of those that didn’t get much time to himself in between student duties and basketball trainings. But now that he’s got the ball rolling, you didn’t find the need to lie to him about your current situation.

“Oh, the usual. Bills to pay, and we’re hardly keeping up with the rent. We almost got evicted and if someone wants to buy over this place, we’re doomed. We’re barely keeping this place alive but…”

You trail off, wondering if you should add in the last part to complete what you wanted to say.

“But…?”

“But we keep going. We keep trying our best.”

You turn to meet his eyes that were already trained on you this entire time, flashing him a smile. It was one that said – It’s ok. I’m ok. You don’t have to be so worried for me if you are.

Brian’s heart clenches at your words, wondering about how tough it must have been for you to hold on, and how much more about yourself that you’re holding in but not revealing. Your eyes seem to harbour more unspoken stories, but he will not pry until you’re ready to tell him. But he does wish that he has the ability to take your burdens as his own; he wants to do something – anything – to help lessen the weight on your shoulders.

Yet when you show him that pretty smile of yours, his heart lightens a little, and he’s able to find the strength within him to mirror your smile, knowing that you’re still hanging on just fine with your unwavering conviction and spirit. He finds one more reason to love you more than he did just the day before – even though he was still blissfully unaware of the fact that this was love that he was feeling.

You’re the first to break away from the sweet moment both of you shared, suddenly remembering the ravenous group of people outside that you’re supposed to serve.

“Let’s go feed them dessert now, they’re probably still hungry despite polishing off the main course.”

You’re the first to push through the heavy doors, the sight of you with a tray full of chocolate cake in your hands a very welcomed sight. The team thanks you with cheers and hoots of appreciation, relieving you of your tray-carrying duties fairly quickly, before decimating the cake and devouring it in seconds. Brian watches this entire scene from his spot behind you, fighting back a small smile when he sees how much you’ve managed to gain the approval of everyone – even usually strict Coach Nickhun is looking upon this heart-warming sight with happiness.

From the corner window, a black figure watches the sickeningly sweet moment unfold, eagerly waiting for the time to come – to rip this happiness to shreds.

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meggannn · 6 years

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(based on your previous ask) do you mind if I ask how you feel about lok? is there a general consensus if it's good or bad? youre really insightful and just wanted to know if there were any major issues you had with it

yeah sure, i’ll do my best. if you want a quick answer to your question, here is a link to some of my other korra posts where i say pretty much the same thing as i do here, just in fewer words. cause this post will be mostly an unhappy summary of my experience watching the show. this post will contain spoilers, and disclaimer, i am a really biased, disappointed asshole, so i’ll just admit that now.

short answer: i liked the concept of lok more than the product we got. a lot of that is because you had a physically buff brown wlw protagonist written mostly by cishet white men and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t handled great. when i think of lok now i tend to fluctuate between bittersweet nostalgia and quiet, simmering rage.

if you don’t care about the show summary, skip at the middle paragraph break down to my tldr.

so for those who don’t know, LOK was really my first “big” fandom on tumblr. when it was announced, a bunch of ATLA purists were already hating on it because 1) brown woman, 2) it was unrealistic to go from ATLA’s technology to streampunk in 70 years, and 3) it wasn’t ATLA, basically. it was my first big interest that i got to participate in as it was airing, and i was really excited about it. i defended it, i wrote meta, i liveblogged, i wrote tons of fic and spammed theories/wants before the damn show even had a release date. all that is to say, i was Invested, and i believed in it before i even saw it. people called me a bnf, i’m not sure if that’s true, but i did gain a lot my followers in my first few years on tumblr by posting korra stuff. a lot of them – hello – i think are still around today (i’m not certain how all the video games hasn’t scared them off yet)

i should say at this point that my opinion of LOK the show has been really wrapped up in the ugly stain left by the fanbase. korra the character has been the subject of tons of racist, misogynistic criticism since the moment we saw her back; when she showed up on screen as a proud young woman who fought with authority and stood up for herself, that was the nail in the coffin for her reputation. i agreed that she had a bit of growing up to do, because ATLA/LOK have always been stories about coming of age and maturing, but i disagreed strongly with this notion that she deserved to be “humbled,” which is what a lot of fans were looking for.

the overall consensus on if it’s “good” depends on who you ask. most people agree that ATLA is better overall: it was better plotted because it benefited from more writers in the room and more episodes to flesh out the world. opinions on LOK specifically range based a lot on their opinions of the K/orra/sami pairing, if they were involved in or what side they were on in any of the fandom wank, and also just complete random chance.

i’ll go more in depth into my ‘history’ with the show below, but i just wanted to mention that all the while the show was airing, korra was being hit with waves of criticism by so-called fans for basically being a confident brown woman who were calling for her to learn her place, respect her elders, etc. another common theme was fandom’s brilliant fucking idea that asami, a light-skinned feminine non-bending woman who was more polite and reserved than korra, would’ve made a better avatar. because you know why. (korra was often described as brutal, rough, unsophisticated, next to pretty, perfect asami. and asami is a fine character, to be clear, but that’s what she was – fine. nothing really stands out about her, which is a fault of the writing, because she had a lot of potential too.) so anyway all of this did sour my mood toward engaging with other fans outside my friend circle.

–

it was around maybe the middle of book 1 that i realized the writing for the show was simpler than what i was expecting – not that it was childish, which it was (because it was written for children, i understood that), but i felt like the plot meandered and the twists came out of nowhere. it felt like they were making it up as they were going, and it opened threads it didn’t answer. one of the biggest threads was the equalist revolution, which was a very sensitive topic that got jettisoned when the leader was revealed to be a fraud, and that devalued the entire movement in an instant. really disappointing, because i was looking forward to seeing that addressed. for a lot of people, this was a dealbreaker, and they started walking. i stuck with it, but loosely.

book 2 aired, focusing on the spiritual world and some really cool history. it still suffered a lot from awkward b-plots and loose threads it didn’t know how to tackle. korra lost her memory and then regained it 2 episodes later with no consequences, mako flip-flopped between korra and asami because bryke don’t know how to write teenage romances without making it a love triangle, and at some point bolin kissed a girl against her will and they didnt acknowledge that at all? i honestly don’t remember. anyway at the end of book 2, even though korra saves the day and prevents the world from descending into darkness for ten thousand years, due to events beyond her control, korra loses the spiritual connection that ties her to all of the previous avatars – aang, roku, kyoshi, wan, everyone. and people hit the fucking ceiling. “korra’s not a real avatar if she lost her connection to the old ones! that’s the entire point of the cycle! this show is bullshit, it’s not canon anymore!” (the entire point that finale demonstrated that korra’s power alone was enough to save the world and she didn’t need anyone else. but people found that ~unrealistic~ i guess). as you can imagine, being a fan of LOK is starting to get a little tiring by now.

books 3-4 is where the korra haters got to love the show again, because they were both straight-up torture porn. after everything she did saving the world, this is the arc where korra got beat down, tortured, dragged into the dirt, swallowed and spat back out. book 3 is a lot of people’s favorites because it was the first book that felt fully plotted out before it was put on air, which is why i enjoyed it too. but for me it was difficult to see a girl, whose identity revolved around being the avatar after being raised and sheltered to think it was all she was good for, effectively abandon her life and even her name by the beginning of book 4 because the events of book 3 were that traumatizing for her. somehow this was character development. we were encouraged to stick with it because we hoped korra would find herself again. and she did, sorta.

but it makes me furious that people who had quit in books 1-2 came back during 3 because they heard these books were better – aka book 3, the book that featured korra the least, and books 3-4 in which korra got her ass handed to her in some of the hardest fights vs some of the cruelest villains of the series. (nevermind that the book 3 villains suffer from the anime villain curse: they quickly went from “cool character design” to “wait, how does this rando group of villains show up with powers literally no one in the universe has ever heard before?” – questions no one ever answers)

anyway book 4 is a mish-mash of… i’m not sure. i’ve rewatched all the books but i don’t know if i’ll ever touch this one again. the culturally appropriating airbender wannabe, zaheer (a complete rando who somehow masters airbending enough to fly, which was a huge middle finger to airbending masters aang and tenzin for no reason) a guy who literally tortured korra one season before and put her in a wheelchair, is the one who the writers send korra to for her spiritual awakening that lets her save the day. not tenzin or jinora, her spiritual teachers with whom she has positive, healthy relationships – they send her back to her abuser who terrifies and degrades her a bit more before deciding to help. this was a pattern: the writers made both korra and asami face their abusers (in asami’s case, her father) for catharsis instead of gaining peace over their trauma another, healthier way because…. i’m not sure why. there is no reason why. and then there’s the guilt tripping nonsense of asami feeling as if she had to forgive her father, who tried to kill her, because he said he was sorry and sacrificed himself for her in the finale. it’s angst galore, if you like that kind of thing, which i normally do, except this is less angst and more just the writers trying to hammer in torture porn, grimdark, and poor attempts at morally gray nonsense into their finale season.

anyway at the end of her journey, korra, our buff brown woc, learns that she had to suffer to learn how to be compassionate and relate to her enemy. i’m not exaggerating, she literally says that. which is lovely.

–

tldr: i wasted a lot of emotional time and energy into this show and was extremely disappointed when some of the ending’s notes were “you had to suffer to become a better person” and “forgive your abusers/villains because aren’t we all the same in the end?”

but also on a strictly narrative level, LOK also bit off way more than it could chew both emotionally and thematically. it had an amazing premise, but it was not committed to

utilizing the steampunk genre to its best potential in the bending world (after the creativity in the rest of the worldbuilding, the LOK series finale was literally fighting a giant robot – seriously?)

giving its hero the respect and character arc she deserved. and i don’t say that because i think korra had no growing up to do in b1, she did, but she didn’t deserve for it to happen like that.

so basically i realized that a lot of the writers that made ATLA great weren’t brought back for LOK, and it showed. i realized that the LOK writers, when they listened to fans, were listening to the fans that whined the loudest, or (more likely, since they plan seasons years before we see them) they thought from the beginning that it was a good idea for korra to go through years’ worth of pain just to be spat out a humbler, “better” person

the reason i told you all that about me defending LOK in the beginning is because i need you to understand that i believed in LOK longer than i probably should’ve. i wanted it to be everything i was expecting in a diverse children’s show with an unorthodox female protaganist. but just because they had a brown wlw heroine doesn’t mean that they deserved to be praised for it when they treated her like garbage.

and korra and asami walk into a beam of light together in the last second of the show and i’m supposed to applaud the writers for their bravery or something

#megan talks about korra #Anonymous #askbox #this is a very condensed summary because otherwise i'd be here all day talking about the pro-asami anti-korra fandom wank

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usernamingishard · 6 years

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Life is a montage: atleast mine is

As a child I had a strong connection to film, stories, books and cartoons. But first, let me take a moment to describe that any matter, any entity, any item or concept, any notion or instrument is but a branch, with many branching leaves or sometimes further branches. A computer is not just a computer, it's also what that computer can do, it's also what that computer is made of, it's also a single technological advancement amid a timeline of others, it's also a conversation about the gadgets available for the youth. So when I say I had a strong connection to film, stories, books and cartoons, I don't mean just the narration of other's lives through whatever media available whether that media is a book or TV show. What I mean is, I am interested in the concept of three act structure, I am interested in the concept of reocurring themes, I am interested in the power and effect of framing, I am interested in the expression of emotion through facial expressions in movies, and sound effects in cartoons. I spent my childhood delving into stories of heroes, of villains turned good guys, of Romance, of the friendship between a boy and his dog, of how people go through heartache, of how High school is going to be, of what bullies look like and how to stand up to them. I see Movie, Books and cartoons (I'll call Media for short) in every day life, and I see every aspect of my life in Media. This could be called natural, everyone has had their head wrapped around something as a child, but Media is different in that it is an expression of life itself, so in these 50 years since the first product of film, and thousands since the first written word, every part of life has been incorporated atleast once. It'll be very hard to remember a concept or matter or life event that hasn't been mentioned in one way or another in a movie, let alone books. Technologies' effects on life? Black mirror is a single example. Hitler or pearl harbor? Inglorious bastards and a movie of the same name. Coffee? I think you can take a few minutes to find a movie where a character invites to have coffe or drinks. Standing up to bullies? I guess all/most of the superhero movies? However, when Media express them, they express them in such dramatic and impactful way, and I learned that, and incorporated it into my expectations. each wink furthers or enhances the plot, each misstep or stutter is exposition about the character, each door opening scene is suspense. Naturally, the way the plot moves also becomes of the things that I expect in life. There's a happy ending for every plot and subplot, the main character (easily known to be me) gets the love of his life, and there's a solution and reason to this emptiness I feel inside me.

But real life? It's nothing like that. Many times a family member may make me doubt myself without even them actually being toxic, nor should I leave them, nor do we solve their attitude, either by talking or actual effort, unlike any of the movies I've watched. I've never had a relationship no matter the efforts I've payed into the few crushes that I've had the past few years, even though that's how all books end. And the personal flaws in the main character have been with me since childhood, unlike any of the comic book characters I've read grow over them. And worst? Music doesn't play whenever something important happens. Life feels unscripted, random, inconsiderate, unfeeling. I feel out of place so often that I don’t consider myself to be a normal neurotypical, even though I most probably am. However, none of this compares to the aftermath of my last crush. For reasons I shan't delve into, I very vigorously wished to accomplish having her by my side, and as such, turned her standards into my own goals, and became obsessed with bursting through limits not set for me. All through that period, and a few months after rejection, I was left clueless. I had a line to success that I was not on, neither at the failing side nor at the successful side. I felt out of tune. I knew I wasn't a man, and I knew I wasn't human. because I set my whole world on that scale that I was not even in league with. I wasn't under her standards nor was I above, I was her friend. A different zone, you could say. She appreciated and loved me without the hope of being her lover, but I didn't acknowledge that. During that year, nothing made sense, everything I've ever seen in a movie or a book or a TV show was far from applicable to my life. There were no happy endings, no retribution, no closure infact, no good music, no starry skies, no good times with good friends, no family bonding moments. I spent that period just attending school and sleeping. A lifeless robot going through the norms. Meanwhile, inside me was something heavy crushing against my ribs, that although heavy, was empty.

So, I learned to not think about it. This was a very hard lesson that I learned to master. I cut off from my crush for a while, got busy in friends, in anytime I had outside, in any small accomplishments I can consider. Slowly I started to acknowledge the good little things, such as that one positive friend, listening to a good song without interruption, and having lunch with the family after being too hungry at school. I acknowledged throughout that whole time that a girl wasn’t and couldn’t have been the reason behind the way I feel. It’s just that life didn’t go my way for the millionth time, and that was just my last straw. I accepted that life has no absolutely no algorithms, artistic cycles or patterns, in other words no set series of events and experiences, reocurring themes or chronological set of circumstances and changes. As I said, I started to appreciate the little things, and accepted that this is all there is to life. No big event or shocking marriage or solution to a world problem, just a good cup of coffee every once in a while, and a new gift from a good considerate friend every other.

There's a drug in Egypt called Hash. I suspect that it's nothing more than a less intense version of weed, and those who I know tried both have said the same, but that’s not scientific evidence so I can’t say anything for sure. Basically, a high means any train of thought is 1. Unstopped, you can get to as deep a level as you’d like in thinking about something, and 2. It feels right. No matter what’s the issue you’re thinking about, you’re right to think about it now, you have the solution to it, it doesn’t feel out of place, and you’re accepted. But the train of thought can be anything. That’s why my friends who are there for the laughs can joke with each other and laugh for hours, while I can literally watch a movie and feel so ingrained into it. Mind you, not a movie on TV, a movie through my eyes. And that was my high, but lemme start from the beginning.

I was with a friend, and another called us, told us he has some stuff to try, so I told him to come. It wasn’t a blunt, it was a pure piece of the stuff, that we could put in a cup, hang a cigarette between the walls of the cup, and burn the Hash. You close the cup with a wallet or anything really, and when there is enough gas collected in there, u remove the wallet and inhale. We did that, playing nothing else matters by Metalica. A friend was laughing in silence, and the other was having red eyes and staring into the wilderness, and I was completely sane and normal. when the hash was snuffed out, they fished out the cigarette and gave it to me. I smoked it, when for some reason the latter half of the cigarette fell. I looked at it, and in a single moment I felt like I didn’t have within me the energy to pick it up in a million years. Thankfully my friend did, and gave me ashtray and told me to snuff the cigarette out, it’s done. I did as commanded, laid my back to the chair’s back, and everything cut to black.

What I thought being on drugs would feel like, was exactly what I felt. Although I have zero memories of this time and instantly woke up to people trying to wake me up, I remembered later feeling absolutely enthralled and impressed at every thought, and the sheer force of final solution that I had reached. I didn't have a single speck of trouble finding the solution to anything I thought, and I was so accurate. Nothing else matters, who does it represent to me? Of course my best friend from high school. Why? Well easily because when the singer says "never cared for what they do, ... what they know" we had a conversation that was just like that. And of course it makes sense that in this moment of high, I'd think of him, because he's the type of best friend I'd wanna show this feeling to, and because his moral compass might challenge the idea of smoking anyway, and indeed I felt like I did not at any moment question if this is right or wrong and just jumped into it. So it's natural that that thought would affect the next one.

What you just heard was flawless argument. There was no pressure to find the right thing to say, no wait process, and not a single moment of loss where something feels out of place or is the wrong answer. After I woke up from the black, I found that I was crying my balls out, and my two friends were trying to wake me to see what's up. They took me to the bathroom to wash my face. You know that dramatic scene in a movie where you look in a mirror and stare real hard so you start to regain control? I did that. My friend said salty things wake you up, so he brought us a sandwich. You know the after credits of The Avengers, how after all the thrill and action of the fight, the next scene to contrast that was the Shawerma scene? That's exactly what I saw, one friend munching in silence as he looked at the ground, the other contemplating god knows what in the sky. To almost make me regain consciousness the friend who brought the stuff went "what y'all just went through, that's trippin'", kinda like how a mafia guy goes "it's alright you have nothing to worry about all you need to do is etc, etc." And that's exactly what I was describing in the beginning. Every single breath these guys took, every single moment of silence, every chat was something out of a movie, and I was having the goddamn time of a lifetime. I was giggling like a lunatic, and at one point raised my hand and made a frame as if I'm filming them, zooming with my eye at the person who's speaking. Everything about a movie, I was so in control and comprehension of. For example, I once was sitting with some people at a pool. I'd look at the pool, the green, blue aqua lights, together with the waves of water would feel so serene and calm and beach like. I'd feel alone, relaxed, sleepy, everything you ever heard about looking at the beach. Then I'd flip my head 20 degrees to the left, and I'd see my friends. Even though we're still at the pool, the scenery changes so strongly, I'd suddenly feel more awake, feel a crowd of people even though there's only four others, feel socially awkward as I usually am around people. Feel the colours change towards orangy red. Look back to the pool, get sleepy, serene, quiet, look to the friends, feel awake, hyper, attentive, awkward. I also did that a couple of times because I was so amazed at how strange everything that was.

I smoked a whole bunch of times since then. I can't put the things in words that would do it justice.

Now, returning to my normal life, something quite strange started to take place. The thing that was lacking in my life, those scenic moments, those expectations, they started to somehow come alive. I started to learn things and change in personality, it felt as though every trip to the beach came at the right time and so I appreciated it more, I

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angstymarshmallow · 7 years

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About Diamond Choices Part ?

On and off I’ve been thinking about the parameters of diamond choices. What makes it so different? Why does it matter? Why are they sometimes so many in one chapter let alone an entire book? Could there be another system to replace it?

The answer to most of these should be straight cut and dry, but very little things in life are. Instead it becomes complicated when we consider several factors and the mixed opinions of the general public.

First and foremost diamond choices are in nature exclusive content that a player has to be willing to purchase. Whether it’s for clothes to stick out among their peers and be showered in compliments, for approval from other characters, steamy diamond scenes that arguably makes you more compelled to love a character or to further the impact of a plot. These are only some of the most noticeable notions I have given some thought to after playing the mobile app for about a year (and a little bite). Mostly diamond choices work under the idea that there is some reward worth buying into. Its again – exclusive but should be exclusive for a reason. In no way do I believe that diamond content if they are to be what I’ve defined – supposed to be included in regular content.

The problem is this becomes frustrating for people for a numerous amount of reason. A common phrase pay to be gay when for the better half of certain books; female love interests are sidelined and creates an unfair dynamic and ratio for men to women. In some cases, I try to think of it as plot related reasons but other times I’m not convinced that placing any LI under the eye of a lot of diamond choices won’t encourage the everyday player to stick to them. Before I get off topic here; it isn’t the only thing ‘wrong’ with the system. While I understand the relevance of diamond choices (and often prefer them because hey I want to support the developers of the game, its writers etc), I do understand the frustration with other options.

Clothes Clothes!

Diamond choices in choosing clothes for instance. I tend to like that certain diamond choiced clothing impact and influence the story (because why else have the clothing option to begin with?) For instance, in the royal romance; the way your MC dresses does matter. Granted the free choices aren’t very appealing, it matters because it involves MC’s standing at court – the way the Corodnian media views her and honestly shows her ‘embracing’ a sort of cultural relevance in Corodnian society. To them it matters that MC dresses in the proper attire during the apple ceremony, or more recently having the Corodnian pin on her outfit from last week’s chapter in a show of support. There are other instances when this isn’t as important (which by all means skip) but I do see the importance of it.

This isn’t the same for all stories however. Smaller books such as Home for the Holiday, the Haunting of Braidwood Manor has little importance to the storyline (except for that santa dress) and It Lives in The Woods has nearly no emphasis on clothes (it’s too busy coercing me to buy a whole bunch of little animals and weapons); where choosing the diamond options have little effect.

And some books fall in between.

In Endless Summer, arguably there are a few of the diamond choices presented through clothing that unlocks an extra scene or leads to another clue for the player to uncover. The most extremely useful is that andromeda armor (because it lets you exploit approval from MC’s friends), but for the most part a lot of the clothes serves for a purpose.

In the Sophmore for the first half of the book; as MC throws parties, it is encouraged if not highly implied for MC from her friends and the game itself to change her clothes and choose a diamond option in order to throw a more successful party. It’s avoidable to be honest, because the parties doesn’t seem to have a lasting impact – but does this mean this is a case where the diamond choices don’t matter?

And then there are books where it’s apparent that the diamond option for clothes serves no other purpose than just to be aesthetically pleasing. I don’t think that’s necessarily bad – if a player has the money to spend it on more frivolous decisions than by all means. It is apart of the reason why the free options are never as glamourous. Ultimately why would it be when the non-free choices are trying to entice you the entire time you’re reading?

Plot

I spoke about this a little earlier but not in great length. In a lot of cases, I am totally for spending diamonds on uncovering more about a character, the plot or something deeper that doesn’t necessarily have too much of an impact on the overall plot. Players that don’t spend money on diamond choices, shouldn’t have a bad experience playing a book because of it. However, their experience shouldn’t be the same as someone that’s paying for those extra choices to begin with. I think there has to be some sort of balance (and while people will never be truly happy with that), I do think again the reward has to be worth it for the diamond scene to be enticing to begin with.

For example, Endless Summer has a mountain of diamond scenes. Especially in book 2 with all the idols and certain parts of book 1 (collecting all the dossiers). These two specifically served a purpose. They gave extra scenes to players who were fortunate enough to spend (that much) on diamonds to begin with. I like this. It makes sense, and despite how expensive it made it for me (I literally stopped playing Endless Summer until I could afford to dump a whole bunch of diamonds into it lol), it made my experience that much better. Granted, I don’t think I understand everything that’s going on in that book (does anyone?) it would have probably given me a different experience if I had played the entire thing without spending any money on diamonds.

Approval

Without a doubt diamond scenes allow approval ratings with most characters to go up. Whether it’s just a conversation about their feelings or current predicament, or some one-on-one time in private; they do allow an opportunity to grow even closer to someone that would have otherwise not been as transparent. For fans of Drake Walker and Hana Lee for instance – I can tell you from personally spending money on their diamond scenes that I’ve come to appreciate them a lot more that I wouldn’t have if I didn’t pursue them. This doesn’t mean that I think it’s fair. It is nice, but I think some of their development relies too heavily on diamond scenes and prevents people that don’t want to spend diamonds on such things harder to enjoy the way their characters are. It’s sad that there isn’t much of a build up in relationships without paying.

Other characters have it worse.

Arguably Victoria Fontaine has been on the cruel end of this stick after last week’s Red Carpet Diaries update. The player has the free choice to meet up with Teja and Matt; explaining their side of the story as well as apologizing to one another. This isn’t even a choice for Victoria who is literally about to leave the country and when MC catches wind of this; you’re presented with the option of running after her as a diamond choice otherwise she’s completely out of the movie (and probably out of the story for at least a chapter). This was bold, really bold. It’s pushing the boundaries of making diamond choices matter more and maybe even placing the player in a situation where they’re realizing that while this is technically a free game – microtransactions are apart of what makes this company so successful (I could talk about microtransactions forever really). The even stranger part is that this intentionally apart of the plot, apart of Victoria Fontaine’s character that doesn’t only feel out of the player’s hand…but feels forced? Is this a case again of only understanding certain characters and only seeing their development through diamond scenes? As someone that’s spent most of my diamonds in Red Carpet Diaries on Seth and Teja (a little of Matt), I don’t get to see a softer and more understanding side of Victoria much but that doesn’t mean her character development should be reduced to something so simple.

The Pay to be gay term comes to mind and the more I think about it, the more I realize that there is indeed an undisputable pattern. It isn’t a fair playing field for both biological sexes and the more I think about it – the more I realize it hasn’t been for a long while. But how do we fix this problem? Why are we sacrificing one for the other? And doing the opposite doesn’t solve the problem either. Should diamond choices prevent the play from getting to know the characters, specifically love interests better?

The Choices that Aren’t Really Choices?

Nothing is more apparent than realizing specific choices you’ve made in the past doesn’t matter in a series of books like Zack and Brandon’s relationship. If you were like me and had no idea what the future had in store for them, you may have funnelled money into their relationship and several others such as Tyler and Abbie or the rest of the gang in this most recent The Sophomore book (I didn’t this time around because I’m stingy now). Zack and Brandon’s relationship doesn’t last, which makes the player question rendering them an option to date and helping them to date is useless? I’m not sure how much influence the player really has outside of those diamond scenes from The Freshman series because I spent a lot of time trying to get them to work – but I assume that they were always destined to break up; just as likely as I assume they would have gotten together anyway without your help. A lot of people were annoyed by this (myself included), but at the same time I understand. If we’re going to pour interest in a story app, the characters have to feel real. And people break up. People drift apart. It happens – but should it happen if we’re paying for it? The answer to that I think is complicated at best because it depends on how much we’re willing to compromise for the sake of story vs our own amusement.

Other examples are MC’s own career in #Love Hacks, when choosing to take Leah on that lunch date/hangout while they were still at Click It in order to win her over really doesn’t matter. At the end of the book, your MC chooses to quit anyway and so does Leah – rendering that choice useless. I’m mentioning it because I was very bitter over it but again I’m faced with the same burning questions of how much am I willing to sacrifice for the sake of the story and characters? If everything worked out the way I as the player wanted to – would I really be happy, or actually disappointed?

TLDR: This started off as series of thoughts that I’ve been having over the course of months, after seeing the amount of dislike, like and hate towards diamond choices. I began writing this as a way to figure out where I fit on that line, only to realize I’m probably somewhere in the middle. This isn’t to say I’m nowhere near done thinking and writing about this in length because honestly, there is a lot of factors to consider when you think about what makes a diamond choice a diamond choice – and why should it matter. I’m going to make a return to this but I just thought giving some of my very brief thoughts was a start.

Thanks for sticking with me to the end if you’ve read this. 😊

#candid essay #there is a lot i haven't touched a lot #and maybe i will #but i figured i could start somewhere #thoughts #long posts #and lots of examples i could include #maybe even screenshots next time #endless summer #lovehacks #the royal romance #it lives in the woods #home for the holidays #playchoices #choices stories you play #review of sorts #what i did instead of reading #I also ran out of time to catch the bus #please feel free to ignore my tags

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madminniefics · 7 years

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2017 writing in review

all answers should be about work published in 2017

@nocontrolforlouis tagged me in this about my 2017 writing 💕 i added the title bc i like when posts have a title lmao purely aesthetic reasons anyway here we go list of works published this year:

on pins and needles

now that you’re here

resolutions

hot chocolate with a side of you

across mountains

glass slipper

when time froze

can’t pretend anymore

stargazing

bright eyes

still life

teasing

it escapes definition

below zero

icebergs in ireland

evergreen

work you are most proud of (and why):

i’m most proud of everything that came after glass slipper. those are all things i wrote after i finished writing my first book and, honestly, it felt like i turned the corner in my writing ability. there’s more depth and nuance and voice in those pieces than in my other pieces. if i had to pick one out of those specifically it would have to be still life. i was rereading it today in preparation to write a drabble and i was just amazed at how well it stands up and how much i still like it. that, alone with when time froze, are some of my favorite things i’ve written this year.

work you are least proud of (and why):

ugh don’t do this lmao. i’m going to go ahead and say my baby on pins and needles or glass slipper. with opan i got stuck into a certain way of writing and it reads back now as slightly juvenile. and glass slipper just feels very rushed. i should have taken more time and maybe written two more chapters instead of just the four.

a favorite excerpt of your writing:.

i shared some favorites earlier today so i’m gonna pick some other favorites lmao.

this part from chapter 1 of it escapes definition:

Frowning, Daphne stood only to fall back onto the chair due to her weak legs. The Man In Red walked forward and held a hand out to her. She took it because she knew she wouldn’t be able to walk without help after being attached to that chair for so long. When their hands met, an electric shock passed between them. Brown skin met tan skin with a red spark aligning them together. It was unlike anything Daphne had ever experienced. The spark left her open mouthed and blinking rapidly.

“Sorry,” His voice sounded robotic. “I’m still trying to figure the whole superhero thing out.”

He laughed and it hit Daphne straight in her chest. His laugh sounded familiar. It was the only thing that had passed his lips so far that didn’t sound mechanical. Daphne tilted her head and watched him, hoping that he would let his guard down. His vague features shifted from a smile to a straight face as he cleared his throat and held his hand out to Daphne again.

“I promise I won’t shock you again,” He tilted his head from side to side. “Actually, I can’t promise that but I need to get you to safety so can you please…”

He wiggled his fingers and Daphne took a deep breath before placing her hand in his. It was there before they even touched. The red spark moved back and forth between them until, finally, their hands touched. It made Daphne feel faint. She blamed it on the blood loss.

and this part from the teasing one shot

Or, continued. Clem couldn’t see the end of this relationship like she had with all the other relationships she’d been in. They’d all had a clear beginning and end dates. This thing with Liam? This thing that they’d been cultivating for years, that they treated like the precious gift it was…Clem grinned. She loved being with Liam. Loved it more than she loved reading the next installment of her favorite graphic novel about the group of magical girls that kicked ass and trailed glitter behind while they did it. Loved it more than she loved seeing the look on her parents’ faces when she surprised them with a visit. Loved it more than she loved the feeling of lying in her bed after a 12-hour shift.

In short: Clem loved Liam.

The notion hit her like a turtle shell in Mario Kart. She? Loved? Liam? His face flashed in her head as she welcomed a group of barely legal, giggly teenage girls into the store. The way his eyes crinkled when he laughed at one of her corny knock knock jokes. The way he could go from playful to sexy in a split second, that smile and crinkly eyed laughter traded in for full-on smolder and the smirk that never failed to make Clem need to change her panties. She thought of him that morning, as she was leaving for work shortly before noon when he sat at their tiny dinner table for two watching her get ready. The way his eyes seemed to light up from the inside out. She looked down to avoid eye contact with the customers as she grinned widely. Yeah. She loved him.

share or describe a favorite comment you received:

this one lmao just bc of how bold that anon was like reading when time froze at work??? with the door open??? i think about that ask a lot lmao

a time when writing was really, really hard:

there was a while there, intermittent months, where i just couldn’t muster the energy to sit up on the couch let alone pick up the computer and start writing anything. and then after i started working at the store and had less time to write that’s hard, as well, but in a different way.

a scene or character you wrote that surprised you:

rey from still life surprised me. so far, she’s the most like me and i didn’t set out to write her that way. she has so much sadness inside of her that i hinted at in the one shot but didn’t have space to add into the piece. a lot of the feelings i had while in college came out while i was writing it. also, kaia from when time froze and her outspoken self really surprised me as well.

how did you grow as a writer this year:

like i said before, i finished a book. i feel like that pushed me to my limits and seeing that i had space past my limits (if that makes sense) made me realize that i can do so much more than i know.

how do you hope to grow next year:

in original fiction, i want to finish two books i started writing late last year. in fic, i want to continue in the trajectory i’m currently on. i love everything that i’ve been producing. i think it’s good quality and if i can stay on that level, or rise above it, that’s good enough for me.

who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc):

it would definitely have to be @marisa-writes. she’s always there when i need some encouragement or an extra kick to get over my writing worries. i love her. also!! @janellewrites has been there for me in the form of messages about my writing and general writing talk. she’s amazing.

anything from your real life show up in your writing this year:

lmao what from my real life didn’t show up in my writing this year dang. family dynamics, relationship dynamics, locations, universities--so much from my real life makes it onto the page.

any new wisdom you can share with other writers:

nothing is ever as bad as you think it is. in writing or in life. cut yourself some slack and deadlines are made to be broken.

any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year

HRAU!!!!! i cannot wait to have more time to focus on the two mini fics in that series. y’all might not know this about me but i love a good historical romance novel and i can’t believe that it’s taken me this long to write a fic set in my favorite era to read about (regency england).

tag three writers/artists whose answers you’d like to read

@marisa-writes @fromherlips @lifesbetterasamermaid

#i can't even say for sure if that's all of the things i posted in 2017 bc sometime during the year i stopped updating my fics page lmao #what a mess #writing meme

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captainofthefallen · 7 years

Text

You Will Forever Stand Alone

Fandom: Knights of the Old Republic Pairing: F!Revan/Carth Onasi Warning: character death

Title comes from something Malak says to Revan: “You belong to neither the light nor the darkness. You will forever stand alone.” I wrote this, as one does, in a text message at around midnight because I wanted to give @letmetellyouaboutmyfeels some feels to tell people about. It comes from two things: an exploration of Revan choosing the dark side ending without being wholly evil (inspired by something Kreia says about Revan becoming dark lord out of necessity) and the cut dark side ending with the Carth romance.

I would say enjoy, but, well.

She’s not evil.

She’s not evil. She knows that. At least, she’s pretty sure she knows that.

Pretty sure is not enough to erase the look on his face.

Pretty sure is not enough to bring him back.

She takes a deep breath and boxes it all in. She’s not evil. None of them understood. And they were the ones who tried to kill her.

You should have run, she thinks with a small pang that marks the beginnings of regret, and then she stamps it down. She made her choice. They all did.

But she’s the one who has to live with the consequences.

It doesn’t matter anymore, she tells herself. They’re dead, and he’s gone, and now all that’s left is her and the galaxy.

Her, and the galaxy, and her best friend.

She knows they can’t destroy the Star Forge. If Bastila thinks they’re serving the dark side, taking over the galaxy, whatever it is she thinks they’re doing, then so be it. Let her think what she wants.

But Revan, she’s learning, always had notions greater than those of light and dark. There are more important things to worry about. A bigger threat.

She doesn’t know what it is. She doesn’t remember. But she’s the only one who even has an inkling. And the Star Forge might be the galaxy’s only chance to survive it.

She’s not evil. She’s just doing what has to be done.

Mission’s face in her mind’s eye, frozen at the moment the girl begged her not to do this, says otherwise. The pleading in her eyes. The disappointment in Jolee’s. The desperation in Zaalbar’s and Juhani’s. The betrayal in Carth’s.

She shuts it all down, then, because she has to. If there’s one thing Revan is good at, she’s learning, it’s doing what needs to be done.

So they tell the Republic Carth is dead. And they board the Star Forge, but not to destroy it.

She can feel the darkness there. It doesn’t concern her. She has larger concerns. Revan always had larger concerns.

Malak, though. Malak tried to consume the darkness. And in turn, it consumed him.

She doesn’t feel evil, or dark, or any of that. In the moment, she just feels… sad. Because whatever he became… he was her friend.

She wonders if she could have made him understand. That darkness wasn’t their goal, that they needed to stay above that conflict. That ultimately their aim was to protect.

She doesn’t know. It probably doesn’t matter. But she still wonders.

Somehow, she’s not surprised to see him, here at the end. She wishes he’d stayed away. She wishes he hadn’t loved her.

It would have made everything so much easier.

But he’s here, and he’s looking at her in that way he has, and she can already feel cracks forming in her walls of it has to be done.

Because of course her one weakness had to be someone who loved her so much he’d chase her into hell itself.

“I love you,” he says. And he means it. Still. After everything. Even after he believes she’s gone and sided with evil, he still loves her. Another crack fractures through the wall of her carefully constructed defense.

“You may not love me, you may not love anything anymore now that you’ve gone over to the dark side–"

Not true. The dark side, or the loving bit. She’s doing this because she loves them. The Republic. The galaxy. And because, if Malak is any example to go by, she may be the only one who can use the Star Forge without losing control.

”–but I believe that there’s still some part of you that I can reach. There’s a part that believes in… in hope. And mercy. And love. And that part knows that it will soon be gone forever.“

….is he right? If she goes through with this, if she takes the Star Forge, if she conquers the Republic to save it…

She might not be evil, but she’s been down this path before. And this path is a cold and lonely place. She does what has to be done, but…

Revan never wondered if the price was too high. Revan never made any apologies for what she did. But she… she’s different now. And she is wondering.

Bastila’s there, then, and she’s trying to be all tough and dark side and she sounds so much like Malak did, before he had any real blood on his hands, back when he still acted like they were Padawans playing at soldiers.

Revan would have done what had to be done. Revan would have killed him where he stood, because he was her weakness, and she couldn’t afford weakness.

Revan never would have loved him in the first place.

But she’s not Revan. So she lets him speak.

End this here. Kill Bastila, and the Republic can destroy the Star Forge. And both of them along with it.

Tactically it makes no sense. To lose two such valuable assets in one go… so why is she considering it?

He’s not wrong when he calls the Star Forge evil. She’d have to be Force blind not to feel it. And in the wrong hands… well, look what Malak did with it. If someone could get the better of her again… is it really worth the risk?

She realizes after a moment that she’s almost trying to reason with Revan. With the part of her that still is Revan. But she–they–both she and Revan know the reason. The real reason.

She can’t kill Carth. And Revan would have thought that maybe he knows that, and he’s using it against her, but she doesn’t believe it.

Because she can see the raw emotion in his eyes, and for better or for worse, she knows Carth. At this point, she knows him better than she knows herself.

She thinks maybe he knows her better than she knows herself too.

"If you don’t, all you have is… is emptiness and darkness."

He’s not wrong. She’s been down this path before. She knows how it ends. Or rather, how it doesn’t.

"You don’t want that. Please don’t want that. Stay. Let’s end this now. Together."

And Force help her, but his fists are clenched at his sides like he’s fighting his every instinct just to keep from reaching for her, and she just breaks. And that wall shatters into so many useless shards.

Because she’s not Revan. And she does love him. And she can’t walk Revan’s path again. Not alone.

If there’s another way, someone will find it. For her… this is all there is.

Bastila doesn’t see it coming. She’s so confident in the power of the dark side, so sure that Revan has been seduced by its power just like the rest of them, so utterly certain that she can’t turn away.

But she’s wrong. And then she’s dead.

She closes her eyes, deactivating her lightsaber slowly as she thinks of all the lives she’s taken, trying to do what had to be done.

"I’m sorry.” It’s half a whisper, more of a quiet plea than anything, and then his arms are around her and she feels she’s done the right thing.

Maybe there is no right thing. Maybe the galaxy is doomed. But he’s with her, and he loves her, and he believed in her enough to follow her here and risk his own life.

No, not risk. Sacrifice. And with that thought she pulls away enough to look him in the eye. “You could still save yourself,” she reminds him quietly.

The look he gives her breaks her heart all over again. “There’s no point. There’s no place I’d rather be than here.” He takes her in his arms again, holding her close, and murmurs into her hair, “You’re very brave to make the decision you did. I… I love you. You know that, right?"

"I love you too.” Her voice is barely a whisper, muffled against his chest, but as his arms tighten around her, she knows he heard.

There, at the end of the universe, it’s all that matters.

#kotor #knights of the old republic #kotor fic #claire writes things #revan x carth #see madison look i posted it #i'm actually quite proud of this one #i mean it's probably the saddest thing i've ever written #but i cried a little writing it so that must mean something #i love carth onasi okay #so damn much #and i love this version of the ending even as it rips my heart out and sets it on fire #his lines just break me #anyway #revanasi

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