#FURIOUS at V's character arc

[saintescuderia]

pancakes: the recipe!

for the version of pancakes published here, i have tried to make the character as generic as possible in terms of reference (pronouns etc.) however, the one thing i have kept is the last name: tessio.

should you be curious as to find out more about the character, here is some more information which is used for the alternate version of pancakes (linked here: coming soon!)

NOTE: this story has additional fics that are a part of the 'pancakes!universe.' these supplement the overall story arc. also are just a bit of fun, really

+++ ANTINAL // CS55 AKA carlos gets sick in jeddah - complete (read here) +++ LOS BLANCOS // CS55 AKA the first time carlos sees you wearing a real madrid jersey makes him question everything

+++ STOMACHING YOU // MV33 AKA max comes to you after winning abu dhabi 2021 - complete (read here) +++ JUST AN INCHIDENT // MV33 AKA you hurt your wrist - and jos verstappen's face

+++ STUCK ON THE PUZZLE // DR3 AKA how daniel's famed 2018 monaco win was the beginning of the end

+++ HILLBILLES // OP81 (ft. kendrick, keem + tyler) AKA you help increase oscar's street cred by getting him into a music video with a bunch of rappers

+++ SIL16 // CL16 AKA - charles debuts in F1 and almost says i love you

+++ FAST AND FURIOUS // LL40 (ft. LH44) AKA - now that both your calendars line up, you and liam can finally go drifting in japan

FULL NAME: elena marie 'tezza' tessio DOB: 6/3/97 PLACES: born in monaco. raised in australia. lived in america. FAMILIAL SITUATION: auntie nadia is the goat. and just not because her brother is football's Don. GENERAL: gymrat. hip-hop head with far too many shoes. introverted. monolingual. 400mg of caffeine is a guideline. bryan o'connor was a sexual awakening - to boys and cars. burned too many times. protein pancakes are the goated form of breakfast.

a pancakes moodboard

the pancakes 'let him cook bake' playlist

note: there is no correlation where certain songs are for certain scenes. these are just the songs i listened to when i wrote this story.

too many nights - metro boomin

no eres tu (soy yo) - kali uchis

is there someone else? - the weeknd

benthi - khaled + melissa m

avec moi - PLK

ma bansak - zeyne (colours show ver.)

miami - kali uchis ft. bia

self love - metro boomin

in my head- tertia may

no ordinary love - sade

smooth operator remix - sade (ofc)

bonbon - era istrefi

4eva (extended mix) - shygirl

don't forget my love - diplo

slide - HER

bathroom - montell fish

p power - gunna

trance - metro boomin

orange soda - baby keem

realism v idealism - $uicideboy$

shook ones pt. ii - mobb deep

link here

taglist:

@eugene-emt-roe @spookystitchery @vicurious28 @taytaylala12 @c-losur3

@hiireadstuff @samantha-chicago @fionaschicken @casperlikej @bookstore-of-dreams

@itsjustkhaos @sam-is-lost @laneyspaulding19 @formula1mount @bokutos-babyowl

@stampiej @alilcloudy @bingussthirdtoe @lilymurphy03 @inlovewmarlenemckinnon

@charllleclerc @richardniixon @sp1rl @nikfigueiredo @lozzamez3

@butterfliesflyaroundmymind @vellicora @ellen3101 @michelleyw81 @samantha-chicago

@bloodyymaryyy @a-beaverhausen @bokutos-babyowl @tsireyasgf

message me if you would like to be added :)

[generic-sonic-fan]

Why the heck E-123 Omega fascinates me so much

Look I'm not going to lie to you the reason I love Omega so much is that his canon writing is actually pretty lazy. They needed a "Heavy" character to pair with Shadow and Rouge so the writers had them stumble into a robot in the basement who's Gamma's half cousin-brother-something.

Hey player, remember that robot who had an arc and turned good in Sonic Adventure? let's just do that but again. don't worry about it don't think about it too hard.

Except the writers got even lazier this time around and his ENTIRE POTENTIAL CHARACTER ARC is summarized in one line by Rouge's dialogue, "You're mad at Eggman for sealing you in this room" (Sonic Heroes, 2003). Gamma's entire character arc, summarized neatly for the player, so they can start the platforming sections as soon as possible. It's videogame writing. It's not supposed to be a literary masterpiece, so it makes sense that they're borrowing on a concept that a fan of the Sonic games would have seen before if they'd payed Sonic Adventure.

Except, in the attempt to be as lazy as possible, they accidentally created a new type of character that hasn't been explored before??

Because Omega is NOT Gamma. Omega couldn't possibly be more different from Gamma! One destroys Eggman robots to bring about peace, the other as an act of war. One is quiet and contemplative, the other loud and brash. One chooses to cease existing, while the other so desperately wants to live. One is gentle and kind, and the other is just so angry.

In a franchise full of themes about the responsibility of creators to not cause harm with or to their creations, it's baffling to me that Omega is just dropped into the narrative and then promptly forgotten about. There's so many implications with Omega that would be fascinating to dig into from a fan perspective!

What made him the way that he is? Why is he so different from Gamma, so furious?

Now that he's out of the basement, how will he learn about the world outside?

How does his perspective of his origin from Eggman color his experiences and beliefs about things?

This guy has never had a friend before. How does he react to that?

How does he, an ex-Eggman robot designed to kill supersonic hedgehogs, interact with Sonic, the person he was likely designed to kill? Moreover, how does Sonic react to him in return?

Does Omega ever get lonely, as the only robot amongst organics?

How does he relate to Shadow, who was also made as a living weapon?

Meanwhile, trying to get him to show vulnerability is like pulling teeth. It takes a herculean effort to get him to show anything other than the front he puts up. Why's he putting up this front? What could get him to let down this front, even if just for a moment?

(for fuck's sake he's a tsundere. This should be at least a popular topic to explore, shouldn't it?)

And look, I understand. The reason that Omega hasn't been explored nearly as much Shadow is because he's been in less games and, when he has been in games, he's written as a one-note comic relief. But. . . so has Knuckles. So has Amy. So has Sonic. So has Rouge. . . the list goes on, yet the fandom lovingly embraces complex fan characterizations for them. But some fans continue to see Omega as a non-character. Which, as I've just explained, is baffling to me, because this guy has so much potential and transformative fan works are a place to explore that potential.

TL;DR: funny gun robot spin in my brain like he's in microwave despite the intentions of the Sonic Heroes writers. hehe. Go vote for Omega in the Team Dark poll.

MLA Citation for Fern:

Sonic Team, "Sonic Heroes". Sega, 3 December 2003, as cited from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6-SWVIr274

@fernsnailz

[melrosing]

ngl jace's feelings kinda came out of nowhere cuz like in s1 he seemed to understand harwin was his biodad and reassured luke that it didn't matter what people said about them, but suddenly he's furious with rhaenyra and is insecure? i know the watsonian explanation is they needed him to hate the dragonseeds for whatever reason but there was absolutely nothing indicating jace ever had these insecurities. he had only been frustrated with rhaenyra coddling him. what gives?

I think it would’ve been fine if in peacetime where his inheritance feels like some distant thing he puts it to the back of his mind and yet in wartime it feels urgent and disturbing and consumes his thoughts, but I do feel they failed to show the journey between point A and point B. the problem w hotd s2 for me has been they haven’t really been showing effective character or plot development, there’s a lot of telling and not a lot of showing and it doesn’t make up for all the times the characters have felt static and unresponsive to the situations surrounding them. and Jace is v symptomatic of that imo. they are trying which is more than I can say for D&D who thought skipping over character development was a clever sleight of hand so that when the character did something wildly OOC they could say ‘aren’t you surprised!!’

but I think the hotd team have one thing really working against them here and that is that the source material requires them to make shit up, and so naturally results in audiences drawing contrast with GRRM’s own character craft in his main series. in F&B the characters largely lack arcs or interiority, and it’s meant to read like a history rather than a story, so the hotd team don’t have the character templates that D&D did (and still managed to fuck up lol) and lack a plot with appropriate arcs and beats. so they have to change a lot. but ASOIAF is known for its remarkable character work and plot twists and GRRM is a generational talent and you’d need some pretty strong writers to pull off something that measures up or even comes close. and I think the craft has been way off this season so. now we have characters like Jace who just feel like every interesting thing about them has come too late and underwritten at that

[frasier-crane-style]

I think I cracked Gal Gadot

She's the twin to all those 'character actors in leading man bodies' like Chris Pine and Brad Pitt--she's a girl next door in a supermodel body.

She was so good in Wonder Woman because she got to play the character girlishly. She was happy, sad, afraid, concerned, lovey-dovey, hopeful, dispirited. Seeing her express strong emotions made you empathize with her and feel what she was feeling. The same principle as Luke Skywalker in ANH: he may be disparaged as whiny, but he didn't get to be one of the biggest pop culture icons of all time because people didn't relate to him.

The problem is, in everything else, Gadot is either playing a stoic, driven Strong Female Character (Fast & Furious, Heart of Stone, Justice League) or maybe a vampy girlboss (Death On The Nile, Red Notice) and it's just outside her range, not letting her show any of the charisma that made her so watchable as Wonder Woman.

Even in the DCEU, post-origin story, she's generally played Wonder Woman as brooding, reserved, stoic... a little like Luke in Return of the Jedi.

Now, that worked there because it was the end of his arc and he wasn't quite a Jedi. He still had to defeat Vader and the Emperor, he was conflicted, he got angry. Now imagine if they made a Star Wars movie set after RotJ, with Luke as a Jedi Master, and he was still the protagonist. It'd probably be a little boring, right? He'd be all-wise, all-knowing, infinitely patient. A good mentor, sure, but as someone relatable? No, I think it'd be a bit dull.

Which is the problem with Wonder Woman. Yeah, she can't stay a naif forever, but her as a perfectly poised, perfectly controlled badass just isn't much fun.

I think Patty Jenkins realized this was a problem with WW1984 and tried to course-correct, with an overlong first act that gave us Diana in love again, smooching with Chris Pine again, and having internal conflict again, but it didn't work. It was trying too hard to take Diana back to who she was and doing so in a not very effective way. Right idea, but poor execution. Especially since they wanted to start off with Diana brooding, sad, et al, so that her character arc would end in her being happy.

It's a thorny problem. They have Chris Pine die to give her angst, but Wonder Woman with angst isn't very engaging and they can't give him back for realsies and they have to line up with Batman V Superman at least a little. I don't know, I don't think they ever figured it out, even though they devoted the whole plot to fixing this and trying to show off Gal Gadot's very real charisma.

I don't really have a solution myself, I'm just a guy on the internet--I'm saying the problem is that Gal Gadot has gotten so big she can only take A-list parts and modern Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking says that Strong Female Characters can't be too feminine or show a lot of emotion or be vulnerable--the only emotion they're allowed is to be smug about how awesome they are--and Gadot is notably bad at playing these badly-written parts.

I think she'd actually be great pulling a Leslie Nielsen and making fun of herself, at least a little, but that requires more wit than an algorithm is capable of generating, so I don't think we'll see that for a while.

[promptthebear]

I'm so excited to read your easter askbox game 💞 no pressure but could I please request🐰4, with Tyrion Lannister? 😉 Also, you are one of my absolute favourite game of thrones writers, I hope you are feeling better! 💖 😄

Hello! This is v late, but hopefully you enjoy it all the same! Thank you so much for your kind words, you've got me blushing honestly! I'm doing much better now, and ended up being able to go see my family around the end of April to have a "Easter" dinner of sorts, and I'm supposed to see them again this weekend!

Easter Askbox Event 2023- Tyrion Lannister x Reader

Prompt: “Let’s just kiss and see where it takes us.”

TW: Mentions of drinking/drunkeness, a little bit of dub con between some of the characters, reader!character is tricked into kissing someone, some canon typical misogyny. 2nd person, reader referred to as "you", fem!reader. If I miss anything let me know!

A/N: This is set somewhere in the third book, but like if you squint. Idk, it's a bonfire party and I just wanted everyone to be there, once again I don't give a fuck about canon.

Drinking had been Tyrion’s idea. The game had been Jamie’s.

“It’s simple” he said, with a wide grin “You spin the bottle, and whoever the spout end points to either has to kiss you, tell you a secret or accompany you to that corpse of trees over there. The choice is yours to make. If they forfeit your decision, then you both take a drink.”

You regarded the knight uncertainly, not trusting the glint in his eye or the knowing glance he exchanged with Tyrion. When the two of them were scheming, somehow you always ended up being the one in trouble.

“It’s an amusing enough diversion” Cersi’s tones were as cool and elegant as always despite the bottle and a half of white wine you’d watched her consume moments before. “Unless anyone wishes to protest?”

This was directed at you, with a gaze so sharp you could almost feel it cut against your cheek. You gulped, and took a small sip of your watered down ale before shaking your head. Those around you did the same, regardless of their true thoughts on the matter. An evening of mild discomfort or embarrassment was nothing against the wrath of the Queen.

Since the whole thing was Jamie’s suggestion, he went first. He spun the bottle with an easy sort of confidence, as though he couldn’t give a shit where it ended up. The way the firelight cast shadows upon his skin made your breath catch in your throat. As one of Cersi’s ladies, you only knew the man in passing, but there was no denying he was handsome. A kiss from him would make you the envy of many maidens across the kingdom, provided that was all he wanted. While members of the kingsguard swore vows prohibiting them to father children, Jamie also never really struck you as the type to be mindful of any rules but his own.

A series of hoots and jeers went around the circle when the bottle’s smooth arc finally reached it’s end…pointing at none other than Brienne of Tarth. The maid blushed crimson, her wide scowl doing few favours for her already homely face. Jamie seemed to smile even wider just to spite her, pushing himself to his knees so he could lean across the circle to reach her.

“Well, my fair lady” he proclaimed, clearly taking some joy from Brienne’s obvious discomfort “I shall give you a kiss, for it is like to be the only one you’ll ever have!”

Brienne seemed as though she was going to protest, but Jamie was too quick. Before she could react, Jamie had grabbed hold of the back of her neck and pulled her mouth to meet his. Brienne wriggled free in seconds, redder than before and clearly furious. She lashed blindly out at Jamie, the flat of her palm making contact with his chest in a shove that knocked him back on his ass. The knight roared with laughter, head thrown back and chest heaving. The crowd around you did the same, happy not to be the butt of the joke.

“Fool!” Brienne managed to sputter out, before rising to her feet and turning to leave. She stormed off without a glance back, most likely too embarrassed to even consider it. You made to follow her, knowing Jamie had been much too cruel to the poor girl, but another glare from Cersi kept you seated on the grass.

As the evening went on and the moon rose, kisses and bawdy comments began to flow as freely amongst the group as the wine. The bottle had landed on you more than once, though those on its receiving end had not asked much of you. Sansa Stark had blushed prettily when you’d kissed her on the forehead, though more likely from the stout red Tyrion had poured her rather than anything else.

Bronn of Blackwater had also asked for a kiss, and then turned his head at the last second so you caught his mouth instead of his cheek as you had planned. He’d been much rougher with you than you’d liked, biting at your lips and forcing them open with his tongue before you managed to get free of him. Those spectating seemed to love this as much as they had Brienne’s torment, cheering for Bronn and admonishing you when you’d slapped him for his insolence.

“Well, now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings” the sellsword said, though his broad grin seemed to suggest he wasn’t hurt in the least. You were grateful when a maid with Tully hair and brazen eyes asked him to accompany her into the woods. Based on the way they’d been looking at each other, they were not like to return any time soon, which at least saved you from being paired off with Bronn again.

When Oberyn Martell’s turn came around, you found yourself staring at him down the bottle’s end. Immediately, your heart went to your throat and you held your cup in a white knuckled grip, the forfeit waiting on your tongue no matter his request. It was not that you feared the man, so much as the rumours of his prowess. A thousand lifetimes of lovers would not have prepared you for even an hour in his company.

“Tell us a secret, pretty one.”

He, and the woman tucked beneath his arm, stared at you with matching pairs of dark, shining eyes. They were almost snakelike in appearance, which may have been why the couple had such a hypnotic effect on you. Your mouth seemed to open of its own accord, divulging something you swore you would tell no other but your future husband.

“I’m still a maiden.”

A wave of quiet, yet excited whispers, rose and fell amongst the group like the soft hush of wind through leaves. Until now, you had not been worthy of any special attention. You were nothing more to these people than the Queen’s pet, a lady from a minor house who got lucky enough to curry her Majesty’s favour this week. Your confession, however, had changed all that. You were now a conquest, something to be sought after and coveted simply because you had yet to be spoiled by anyone else.

You felt your cheeks grow hot, and you ducked your head down, trying to hide from the hungry eyes that watched you with much anticipation. You knew that it would not be long before someone tried to steal you away into the woods, whether you wanted to go with them or not.

Thankfully, Jamie’s next turn drew some of the focus away from you. The knight had given and taken his fair share of kisses throughout the evening, and each one had provided plenty of amusement for the increasingly drunken crowd. You could almost feel the group holding its breath as the bottle spun in the dirt, nearly writhing in anticipation at the possibilities to come.

Much to everyone’s shock and delight, the bottle’s tip finally came to rest in front of Tyrion. The small man immediately reached for his goblet, expecting a forfeit when Jamie suddenly raised his hand.

“Come now, my dear brother, it would be a poor evening for everyone if you were denied a bit of sport. Save your wine, for I have other designs in mind for you.”

“Surely you do not wish to take me into the woods, Jamie?”

Tyrion’s voice was sardonic as ever, prompting the crowd to erupt in gales of laughter. You felt a small smile playing about your lips, which you hid by taking another sip of your drink. You had always found Tyrion to be a source of mirth, though now that he was married, you didn’t think it would be proper to openly laugh at his gybes any longer.

“Unfortunately not, darling Tyrion, you are far too handsome for my tastes. However, since you have yet to capture the maidenhead of your young wife, perhaps you will have better luck with this sweet girl here.”

Before you could protest, rough hands were grabbing at your dress, hauling you ungracefully to your feet and shoving you in Tyrion’s general direction. For a moment, you were reminded of the bedding at Cersi’s wedding, and at the thought of what followed, you felt bile began to rise in your throat.

“Jamie, you’re taking things too far!”

If anyone was of like mind with Tyrion, they kept it to themselves. The two of you were half pushed, half drug from the circle of party-goers and sent towards the trees. Now ousted from the glow of the firelight, your eyes struggled to pierce the gloom ahead. You lurched slightly forward, trying your best to escape the hooting and ribald calls that followed, when the toe of your shoe caught a small divot in the path. You stumbled, reaching out to break your fall, only to be stopped by a pair of stout hands that caught your waist.

You glanced over your shoulder, and were met with a pair of mismatched eyes that seemed to almost gleam in the flicker of the distant flames.

“Are you alright, sweetling?”

There was nothing but concern in Tyrion’s voice, and yet the pet name made you blush.

“I am fine, my lord, thanks to your quick thinking.”

Tyrion smiled, and you felt your heart skip a beat. He’d been part of your life in some way or another since you’d started working for Cersi, but your contact with him had been nothing more than the expected politeness between an employer and servant. You’d never been close to him, not like this.

The sound of someone shouting his name made Tyrion release you from his grasp and turn back towards the fire. Immediately, the smile he’d given you fell and was replaced by a disapproving scowl. It was difficult to say for certain among the drunken racket, but Jamie seemed to be the one calling for his brother. Whatever he said and whatever lewd gestures accompanied it only seemed to garner further disgust from Tyrion, who let out a derisive snort and jerked his head back in your direction.

“Idiots, all of them.” he held his hand out to you, palm up “Come. We won’t know peace until we leave their sight, at least for a little while.”

The walk to the woods was silent, and more than a little tense. You clung to Tyrion’s hand, the warmth of his skin pressing against yours doing nothing to calm your fluttering heart and shaky breaths. Eventually, you came to a small clearing, which was ringed with tall birch trees and dappled in silvery moonlight that played amongst their leaves. From here, the fire was only a faint glimmer in the distance, the voices of the party members lost among the other night sounds. It would have been almost peaceful, until you remembered why you’d been brought here in the first place.

“I beg you, do not dishonour me, my lord.”

The words slipped from your lips before you really knew what you were saying. Immediately, your cheeks began to burn with a combination of shame and guilt. How could you have been so stupid? Tyrion had been nothing but kind to you ever since you’d met him, and yet here you were, behaving as though the rumours about him were true.

Thankfully, however, Tyrion did not seem the least bit bothered by your comment. Instead, he let forth a soft chuckle and released your hand. You watched him walk over to a patch of grass at the centre of the trees and lie down with his back beneath him. When you didn’t follow, he turned his head to face you, and patted the empty space next to him.

“I will not harm you, darling. All I want is some pleasant company, for a short while at least. There is so little of it in my life.”

You did as he asked, and went to lay beside him. The grass was cool and refreshing beneath you, a welcome distraction from the heat of Tyrion’s body so very close to yours. In spite of his reassurance, you could still feel the bundle of nerves twisting away inside your gut. Everything you had been taught told you this was wrong.

You were a lady, you had no business being alone, in the dark with a man who was married to someone else. Anyone else in your stead would have run off if only for the sake of her reputation, and yet, here you were. Perhaps this thing that writhed and wriggled in the pit of your stomach wasn’t fear…but rather excitement. But excitement for what? Tyrion already said he had no intentions of touching you…even if you found yourself wanting him to.

A glance at the sky above finally pulled you free from your swirling thoughts. It was a warm, clear night, with nary a cloud to hide the moon or the stars. And what stars they were. It seemed as though each constellation was on display, especially for you. You stared in awe, mesmerized by the way they seemed to dance and shimmer against a blue velvet sky.

“Beautiful.”

You turned your head to the side, preparing to agree with Tyrion, when you realized he was looking at you instead of upwards. You tried to remember the last time anyone had given you a compliment like that, and fell short. The only time anyone spoke to you in such a fashion was because they either wanted something, or they were teasing. The way Tyrion said it, however, made you almost believe he meant it.

“Thank you my lord, but I am not worthy of your praise. If you’ll pardon my saying so, it is really Lady Sansa who should-”

“She doesn’t want to hear that from me.”

The hard edge that crept into his voice made your eyebrows jump upwards.

“So, all of Ser Jamie’s talk?”

Tyrion sighed, then grasped the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger as though the conversation was paining him.

“I’m sorry to say my beloved brother was telling the truth, for once. Sansa had no desire to be my wife any more than I did to be her husband, and yet that didn’t seem to matter the least bit to anyone when we were wed. The poor girl has made it clear she does not want me to touch her, and I’ve respected her wishes. In fact, we both agreed that it was probably better for the other if each of us took a lover and remained married in title only. I do believe she’s had more luck than I have in that aspect, actually. Young Pod seems very keen on-”

He stopped, suddenly, as though he remembered he was divulging all this to little better than a stranger. You turned onto your side, trying to see Tyrion properly before you reached for him in the almost darkness. He watched, motionless, as you brought a hand up and stroked his cheek. His beard was softer than you expected beneath your fingers, given its untamed appearance.

“Tyrion…if I…that is to say we…”

Try as you might, you couldn’t keep your voice from trembling slightly. You hoped Tyrion understood, even though you were making a mess of things. You couldn’t make the world kinder, or make him taller or undo his Mummer’s farce of a marriage. You weren’t Sansa Stark, beautiful, highborn Sansa Stark who refused to see what a gift she’d been given. But perhaps offering yourself in her stead would be enough.

Thankfully, Tyrion seemed to know what you were getting at. He gently took hold of your hand that had cradled his cheek and pressed his lips against your palm. You gasped, softly, amazed at just how much reverence could be put into one kiss, as though he had been waiting to do it for ages. He continued to trail his mouth down the inside of your wrist, pausing between each kiss as though waiting for you to protest.

When no protest came, he tugged you closer, until your foreheads were almost touching. You could smell the wine on his breath, though that wasn’t why you were feeling drunk.

“If you don’t want this, tell me no, before I break my own heart.”

You swallowed, hard. No was the last thing you ever would’ve said, but you weren’t entirely certain you were ready for yes, either. What you wanted and what your body could handle in the course of one night were unfortunately two very different things.

“I want this. I want you only…”

You ducked your head, cheeks burning, and tried to hide from that piercing gaze. He’d been there when you’d confessed to your innocence, and yet you wished, not for the first time, that you had more to offer him. But the words wouldn’t come. Your heart had leapt into your throat and was holding your tongue for ransom and making you look more the fool with each passing moment.

“Sweetling, look at me.”

You did as you were asked, though it was agonizing to finally bring your eyes to meet his. When you did, you all but melted. The expression on Tyrion’s face was one you had never seen before, though it suited him very well. He looked…softer, and happier than he usually did. You realized that from here on, you’d do anything he asked if only he kept looking at you like that.

“Let’s just kiss and see where it takes us.”

[skiitter]

The Cyberpunk endings are fucking stupid.

V, regardless of the life path, starts the game with a new chance at life. They meet Jackie, take this insane gig, and are aiming for the big leagues. And then it all goes to hell in a handbasket and suddenly, V is being punished for her hubris, for playing Icarus a little too well. Saddled with a nightmare engram and a rapidly approaching end, V is forced to handle these things AND work through whatever Night City throws at her.

And she fucking nails it.

Panam and the Aldecaldos are 100% better off after meeting V. Everyone is. She strives to help, to earn her place at the top, and does it with compassion. It’s not easy, either. Fucking serial killers, rogue AI, corporate espionage, and Relic Malfunctions are literally being thrown at her and V takes it in stride. She bruises and bleeds, but gets the fuck back up. 

She manages to singlehandedly do the one thing no one else could: force Johnny Silverhand to contend with what he’s done, and atone. Takes this symbol of rage and hate and violence and makes him sit there and realize that living that way is not a way to live. He doesn’t regret the places he’s burned, just the people. She teaches him humanity and humility and what it means to be vulnerable and how stupid he was for thinking he was better than those that chose to love him.

V befriends nearly everyone she meets, including a dishonored corporate body guard and a fucking vending machine. She performs emotional labor for 90% of the characters in this game, including allowing her literal, actual body to be used purely for the benefit of someone else. Changes Kerry’s entire life, sets him back on the path he lost so many years ago. Gives Rogue a chance at closure from the most destructive relationship she’s ever had. 

The only person V feels that she has ever let down is Jackie and we spend the whole game carrying that weight. Her entire quest for fame, the whole reason she keeps pursuing the Big Leagues, is for her dead partner. A partner who she never replaces, by the way. Johnny Silverhand becomes her angry, jaded and wise consciousness but never her partner. V does everything she does alone, save for her ghost who no one can see. 

It all compounds. Helping Claire with the drag races. Rounding up Delamain’s feral children. Letting River’s niece and nephew win at the stupid game. Telling the new mayor he’s actually being brainwashed by an AI. Catching SEVENTEEN cyberpsychos. All of that takes time. Time V could spend chasing down a million leads to save her life but this is a game of choices and she chooses to help others.

And this all feels normal. That’s generally what these branching, massive RPG type games play out as. It’s not new, but we all love playing a hero. And make no mistake, V is a hero. She’s not some merc, who bends her beliefs to the highest bidder (this is also why Johnny loves her tbqh. its about the conviction). V has a moral code she will not work against and we as players must work within that code, somewhat. 

The story plays out with V taking on these roles of cleaner, helper, friend, lover, confidant. Its beautiful and immersive and V feels better for it. I felt better for it. And all of that culminates in a massive Fuck You. Fuck you for thinking that, at the end of this, there was any chance of saving yourself. Fuck you for building these connections, loving these people, trying this hard. Fuck you for believing this had a happy ending.

The only person, the only fucking person, who is given a chance at salvation is Johnny. And it is exhausting watching yet another female character have to give her life away so that he can learn a lesson. Putting V back into her body to go rot from the inside out for the next six months is so insulting it borders on cruelty. 

The “best” ending, the Star, where V goes off into the sunset with Panam and her clan to hopefully find some miracle cure is such a slap in the face. Why was this option not available before V dragged her body through Arasaka and into the heart of Mikoshi? Are we to believe that suddenly Panam found something out and only now is it worth pursuing? The only “good” ending is Temperance in that at least something comes from V’s sacrifice and I hate that its to uplift Johnny. 

V did so fucking much for others, emotional, physical, and mental labor, all because that’s the person she is. Runs through the fucking gauntlet of Night City. And, in the end, she earns nothing for it. Fuck your happy ending, fuck your hopes. You can kill yourself on the rooftop, take a suicide mission into fucking space, break out of your own narrative constructs to chase a wild goose, or give your body away entirely. Unsatisfying doesn’t even begin to cover it. 

The Cyberpunk endings are Fucking Stupid.

Edit: I just wanna briefly say that I don't inherently blame Johnny for the loss of V's body in the final missions. In every instance that he gets it, he vehemently expresses not wanting it. It's not his fault that he's the Male Character all the women must die for. It's the writers who fail V, not Johnny, Silvermerc ship be damned. Johnny is canonically loyal to V and taking her body isn't something his character does lightly, at all. Just really wanna stress that here.

[infernal-general]

@count-v-dracula mixture of smol headcanons, plots ideas, random things; disorganized because I'm living in a constant panic attack. Anyway- did we just create an accidental enemies to lovers/friends to lovers arc? Feel free to reblog and/or add your own thoughts💖😄

⚔ I've darkened her character a little instead of 'just' night terrors: more PTSD, actual signs of semi serious split personality disorder, her remaining struggle against the Hellfire since she did not sign up for this shit

🔥 Rozy doing her own version of 'raging on the ceiling' at the mention of Van Helsing, because she considers herself the better Hunter, superior in combat and loathes how her achievements have been swept under the rug, how the crimes against her have been erased & him basically 'taking her place'-

⚔ I absolutely adore the idea that after more spending together Vlad can see the ghostly outlines of her harpoon horns, Rozy is the same with his hellbeast wings

🔥 Just them walking together, looking like they stepped out of a fashion magazine. Giving bisexuals heart attacks left and right XD

⚔ Rozy, disheveled and furious but not at him for once, breaking into his current place, declaring “Fight, fuck or dance?”

🔥 Vlad telling Rozy's origins, because she isn't aware the 70% of it, including that one of her ancestors became a queen AND he knew her throughout her life.

⚔ Queen Rozy, now Raia deciding to drop by. Because death definitely didn't grant her peace. Currently as Heaven's soldier. The change from the always straightforward, honest Countess-Captain-Queen to history's most dangerous double/triple crosser is indeed quite shocking. Not mentioning the uncanny amount of how much she took after Vlad's worst traits. Swords and fire start flying between the two distant sisters when Raia chuckles “Hell and Heaven are waging a little war yearly, and from now on I'm in charge of it. General Véghváry has a nice ring to it, don't you think?”

🔥 A little reminder that the Hungarian Viper will always be a part of her, despite now she walks her own path. Sometimes shielding the so called monsters from Hunters, sometimes killing the ones seeking revenge for their distant family members presumably killed by her, often toying with the Hunters sent after her. She will always be a master assassin & she is still capable of blessing weapons, although not that strong.

⚔ Hellfire acting out of control, her shadow, her mirror image doesn't lining up with her movements or looks & I'm curious about his reaction to her struggle to remain human instead of succumbing to her curse

🔥 That being said....them doing the horizontal tango while they are both transformed👀

⚔ Rozy once asking Vlad to call her Bellum. The first hint of what will she end up

🔥 A small moment of planning, she tried to protect, to balance humanity by jumping headfirst into every war since the 1848-49 one, but she sees all her efforts have been wasted. So she considers a full on cleanse fire; give me unhinged Rozy.

⚔ Follow up thought: someone, either an argument seriously gone out of hand with Vlad, or a horde of Hunters coming for both of them, or Raia fucking with them again but for the first time unleashing her full potential. Raising a hellfire infused army from scattered remains along with opening a vortex of a portal to Hell.

🔥 ...Comfort after it? Because that stunt would leave her drained and frail for weeks

⚔ Vlad trying to come up with a hair care routine for her after her endless complaining about how dry it is. And moments after his hard work is finished with actual results, something happens & her hair is ablaze, ruining everything :,). Rozy absolutely adoring his hair, it is so s o f t. Her fingers are almost always carefully woven into it when they are having a rare calm moment.

🔥 After the Apocalypse has ended, Raia became Queen of the new realm emerged after the brutal destruction, Rozy in charge of the defense and they still can't help their sly digs at each other. Enter Karma while Vlad is witnessing the current chaos from the sidelines and pat his shoulder in sympathy. “Yeah trust me I know. Rozy is my cousin.” The third Véghváry who also ended up as a Horseman of the Apocalypse (she is Death). This bloodline is fucking cursed.

⚔ The Queen's true personality revealed itself when she was fencing. Rozália's is when she's dancing. Dance with her. Either a wild tango full of passion, a showoff cha cha cha or mambo in the most flashy outfit possible for an actual dance competition, or a soft waltz under the stars.

🔥 Rozy and Vlad ending up owning a house together. Because either she seeks him out or he does and none of them are masters in the art of knocking. So this solution would make it easier. Yeah. Toootally that's why. It has two bedrooms in case of arguments so he doesn't sleep on the couch instead. A room full of light where Rozy can practice both dance and combat in peace. A large room for them to dance. She shouldn't be let near the kitchen. A basement for...secrets and victims. Neighbors frequently complaining about the noise they make because of the music, arguments or 🔞 matters- An old lady is convinced that the charming man is a large hellish bat when calling the police.

⚔ Just their usual banter💕😌 + opening up little by little 🥺?

🔥 Them trying to learn/adapt to modern technology. She is ridiculously terrible at it.

⚔ Just wait till I find an irl faceclaim for Rozy.

[erumai-maadu]

what are your feelings on *that* konoha 11 members death?

I HATE IT! and I shall rant under the cut but it got really long lmfaooo

Neji’s death was so stupid and went against his entire character arc.

Hinata jumped in front of Naruto to take the blow, and that’s in-character for her since that’s also what she did during the Naruto v. Pain fight, so I have no problems with that part. Then Neji jumps in front of her to take the blow in her stead, and that’s where the issues start. Naruto’s line as Neji is dying sums it up perfectly.

“Why? Why did you do this here? You were going to change the Hyuuga!”

From the beginning, Neji’s arc has been about rising above his place as a Branch member. One of the things members of the Branch are expected to do is sacrifice themselves for the Main House. Branch members’ lives belonged to the Main House, and that’s why Neji called himself a caged bird. He would only be free of belonging to the Main House if he died. After his fight with Naruto, he started to live for himself and his goal became changing the Hyuuga so that he (and other branch members) could live for themselves. 

And for a while, that happens! He makes jounin, gains Hiashi’s favor, and even becomes commander of the Hyuuga clan during the war (which should normally be done by the clan head). He seemed to be well on his path to his goal of changing the clan.

And then he sacrifices himself for Hinata, a member of the Main House, literally tossing his entire arc out of the window and just proving the earlier version of himself right. Good job Kishimoto. Splendid writing.

And then the naruhina moment after his death. 

Listen, I love naruhina with all my heart (canon did them so fucking dirty but that’s a different rant) and I’ve shipped them since I first watched the original Naruto. 

That being said, having that naruhina moment RIGHT AFTER NEJI DIED was so unbelievably stupid that it’s no wonder a good portion of the fandom hates them for that. You kill a beloved character and then go for a ship moment right after? Hello? Who okayed this??

Side note: I hate Neji’s death but I just have to appreciate how Obito fucking wrecked Naruto afterward. “Didn’t you say you wouldn’t let your friends die, Naruto? Those words, ‘I’ll never let my comrades die’... now look around you and say them again!” that was fucking brutal. Just threw Naruto’s words right back in his face while he looked around at a battlefield of dead bodies.

I understand that someone had to get Naruto out of his funk after Obito literally destroyed his worldview but did they have to hold hands? Hinata should have pulled him out of that without the romantic framing, because she’s grieving too! She lost her brother! It’s a disservice to Neji’s whole character and especially to his bonds with Hinata and Naruto to turn his death into the setup for a ship moment.

Then, Team Gai’s reaction. Lee’s reaction was fine, but I’m furious about Tenten’s. She was upset that Neji died... because now she has to deal with Gai and Lee alone. And then sheds a single tear.

What. The. Fuck. 

It doesn’t matter who you ship Neji with or who you ship Tenten with, if anyone, you can acknowledge that at the very least, those two were close friends with a strong bond, just like Neji and Lee. 

So then why the hell didn’t Tenten get an impactful scene about Neji’s death? Sure, she can repress her emotions, they’re in a war, after all. It was the same sentiment Hinata expressed to Naruto, that there will be time to mourn later. So at the very least, Tenten should have gotten something after the war, or during a lull in the war where she breaks down and cries about the loss of her friend and teammate. 

Instead, she got a single fucking tear and a complaint that she’d have to deal with Lee and Gai on her own. Bullshit.

You know who should have died for Hinata? Hiashi. It’s the perfect conclusion to her familial arc that was abandoned in favor of Neji getting an apology from Hiashi (ah misogyny, you rear your ugly head once again).

Hinata’s familial arc was that her father and the Elders thought that she was worthless and would never be strong. Her father passed her over as heir and said all sorts of terrible things to her, but he never apologized or even acknowledged any of that!

Because of all the stuff  that he’s done to her throughout her life, treating both his daughters like shit, but especially Hinata (I’m willing to bet her anxiety and low level of confidence are from him), it would have been a good moment to have him die for her. It wouldn’t have redeemed him, but at the very least, it’d be him acknowledging that he was an awful father to his daughters and trying to make amends in the only way he knew how.

Hiashi sacrificing himself would complete Neji’s arc too in that a Main House member (actually, he’s THE main house member, he’s the head of the whole fuckin clan) died for a Branch member, and would have been the perfect catalyst for dismantling that system entirely, which should have been the conclusion of Neji’s arc.

Long story short, Neji’s death is a terrible thing and it fucked over the arc of every member of the Hyuuga family. 

In the end, Kishimoto just proved Neji’s old beliefs right: That it is the fate of the Branch to die for the Main House.

[a34trgv2]

In Defense of Kung Fu Panda 3

For the past 5 years, I've never quite agreed that the 3rd (and possibly last) Kung Fu Panda film was the weakest of the trilogy. Many people hail the first 2 movies in such high regard and not many people talk about the 3rd movie in the same light. Having rewatched the film recently, I still think this is a very well made film and a more than satisfying conclusion to the Kung Fu Panda trilogy.

The story this time around focuses on Po learning to master chi. This is complicated when the villainous Kai shows up and starts wreaking havoc with his jade zombies (jombies as Po and Monkey calls them) of kung fu masters. In addition to that, Po reunites with his biological father, Li Shan, who offers to teach him chi if he agrees to spend time in the panda village first. These plotlines seem like alot, but they come together naturally due to the film not loosing focus on Po and the threat of Kai.

One element people seem divisive on is the humor, which I didn't have a problem with at all. Many of the jokes range from slapstick, clever one-liners and smart word play, and they all got a chuckle out of me. A running gag that always got a laugh out of me was every time one of the panda kicks a sack and it knocks an old lady panda out.

It bears repeating that Jack Black is the ONLY man to do Po justice. Jack Black once again brings his A game to this film, making him not just a lovable goofball, but also an experienced kung fu warrior that still has more to learn. The chemistry between Po and his biological father, Li (voiced by Bryan Cranston), feels very genuine and believable. Li himself goes through a real character arc throughout the film, as he had to lie to Po about knowing chi to make sure he never lost his son again. After being called out for his deception, he agrees to help Po in anyway he can to stop Kai and by the end performs chi with the entire village. Mr. Ping is also given a more prominent role tagging along with Po and Li to the panda village because he was afraid Po would favor Li more. By the end though, Mr. Ping and Li agree to work together and do what's best for their son. Then there's Kai, the film's villain voiced by the brilliant J.K. Simmons. Not many people like Kai as much as Tai Lung or Lord Shen, but to me he checks off all the boxes for a final boss. In addition to being an old friend of Master Oogway, he also poses as a true threat for our heroes as he transforms kung fu masters into jombies. He also takes great pleasure in destroying everything Oogway has built and takes in chi like a drug. The other supporting characters such as Master Tigress, Shifu and the other pandas bring out the best of Po and have their own funny moments.

It should go without saying that they really upped their game in terms of visuals. DreamWorks Animation's Chinese division (now known as Pearl Studios) helped bring the animation quality to the next level. The characters still maintain their iconic looks from the first film, yet are more expresive and lively this time around. The action scenes are also very well animated and creative, particularly during the panda village's fight against the jombies. I especially love the backgrounds and the look of the panda village. The true highlight of the animation though is during Po's battle with Kai in the Spirit World in which Po channels his chi to form a glowing golden dragon to defeat the dastardly villain. Now that is what I call dope if I ever did see it!

The only down side I could see to this film is the Furious 5 are sidelined once again. It's unstandable as the film's focus is on Po, though I think 1 or 2 more scenes like Mantis and Crane talking about the latter's battle cries would've been appreciated.

Overall, I think Kung Fu Panda 3 is a great film and a more than satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. It still delivers on what's expected from Kung Fu Panda such as amazing animation, very funny humor, well developed characters, and an amazing vocal performance by the one and only Jack Black. If you haven't seen this film since it came out, I highly recommend giving it a rewatch.

[springki]

Isu 8

heyy i found paragraph to be more comfortable, so yeaa i will continue with this format :D spoiler ahead <3

The episode starts with Papazola and ochobot struggling to get away from the plant monsters that attacked and bind the ship with vines. Ochobot then saved a message to bbb to come save them. The scene then moves to our gang who were hiding inside a big trunk. While in hiding, Ying tried to search info about the monsters only to find out that there are nothing about the monsters in their database. Gopal then named them as Tumbosaur (Tumbuhan+Dinosaur) in which Ying disagreed and thought that the name he gave is ridiculous lol The others started using the name to refer to the monsters tho.

In the midst of it, bbb did not forget their purpose in coming there and asked about the location of pasubot. Just then, the tumbosaurs detected them and invade into the trunk. Our gang fought the tumbosaurs back until the monsters suddenly ran away terrified due to a strong roar (?). It came from a gigantic triceratop-like tumbosaurs that were heading their way! Gempa protected the gang using earth shield ( gempa is really cool in this scene <3) Then, they head to the direction of the pasubot.

On the way, they need to pass through a long trunk that acts as a bridge, connecting two cliffs. Upon reaching halfway, a T-rex tumbosaurs appeared at the end of the trunk :O to make matters worse, the triceratops followed them and were at the beginning of the trunk. So, they are trapped between the two monsters. They have no choice but to fight and prevent the tumbosaurs from stepping onto the trunk, or else they will fall. bbb turns into 3 (duri, hali, solar), Hali and yaya (and gopal too but yknow :v) handled the triceratops while ying, solar, daun handled the T-rex.

The interaction between solar and daun is the highlight in this issue XD as yknow, solar and duri: light and plant fighting a plant monsters. You can already guess the outcome lol. Duri;s power has no effect on the plant and solar's power only make it stronger! These two roasted each other for their fail attempts XD The now stronger T-rex steps on the trunk causing ying, solar and duri to fall. (Yaya was quick enough to save gopal on the other side.) Ying and solar failed to save themselves because they fainted due to being hit by some branches, leaving our boi duri to save the two :D

On the other side, the three successfully stop the triceratops but then were attacked by other tumbosaurs. The monsters binded them with tree vines. Just then, the sun goes down, and the monsters turn into normal plant. The plants only active during the day. The three of them were then approached by a group of indigenous people that said 'jaba'. Bbb tried to communicate with them but they became even furious, and take the yaya, bbb and gopal with them. oh and actually their real langauge is 'baja' (fertilizer) not jaba hMmm

Now to the other side, Ying woke up in the middle of the night, on a leaf boat created by duri. Duri proudly said that they are now sailing on the sea and he had saved them with his power (He looks so proud btw haha) There are bit where solar argue with duri on why he make the boat WITH THORNS, and ying was basically stuck with the two. These three decided to head to the pasubot first.

Back to the other three, They were put on the chair and given fruits by the indigenous people. Then, they heard the laugh of Adudu. Adudu explained that the indigenous people are not cannibal and they only eat fruits and veggies. Surprisingly, Adudu became the leader of the indigenous people?? He then stole the said 'oakuat seed' from bbb (because he wants to ruin bbb's plan and awaken power inside of him) and said that he plan to take the pasubot as well. Yaya questioned why he became the leader, but he won't tell. Then, he and probe head to pasubot location.

Btw, yaya was funny because she keeps on being calm and husnudzon optimistic from the start about the indigenous people even when these three were buried in the earth (only their head is on the surface) while gopal was freaking out the entire time. They were buried to become the 'fertilizers' for the tumbosaurs when the sun rise.

Meanwhile, ying, duri and solar already reached a pyramid that had pasubot inside. In the last panel, duri talked about how excited he is to get the third tier, and solar mentioned that they should quickly get the power sphera and unite with hali or else they will forget again o.o (oh so he still has that problem?) the enddddd

.

.

note: IM SORRY idk how this turns out so long gg andd i might post some cute solar and duri in a separate post later ehe

imo: This is actually one of my favourite issue ?? like, I love the interaction between the characters in this issue; the interaction between gopal and ying, solar and duri, ying with solar and duri, yaya and gopal :D there's not much fight in the issue but the plot progression is there. I have noticed a pattern where monsta tends to separate our gang ever since the movie 2, and spoiler! it might happen in the third arc as well. I kinda like it because it feels like many things are going on and the characters' roles are more efficiently used that way i guess :o

[jostenneil]

i sent an ask earlier but i have no idea if it went through or not since my wifi cut out, so just in case i’m going to send again 😭 basically what i said was that i’m interested in a writer, ideally ram v, hopefully taking the time to explore roy and jade at present. it’s going to be interesting to see where they stand now considering that roy is back from the dead, jade is about to start a redemption arc, and their daughter is back in the picture. in general their relationship hasn’t never been the focus of a story (largely due to roy never being more than a supporting character) so i’m hoping it’s given that opportunity in the future

it’s a good thing you sent this again bc ig it did got lost the first time! and yeah omg i am very curious to see where he’ll take them when they reunite like i want to see them contend with the trauma of losing lian and finding her again esp since jade was furious with roy when lian died right, and that really got to him emotionally? but obv jade saved her and having that knowledge while rebutting roy like that is going to hurt so much when the truth comes out. . . hope ram v delivers on the tension and the strained communication i shall be anticipating 👁

[arthurdank]

So I am gonna take a break cause the wait is killing me for 139, also I wanna make a post that is the epitome of reaching

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrQ0zZArUV8 AnR Music video.

I find this music video for linked horizons song akatsuki no requiem video very compelling even tear jerking, linked horizon knock it out of the park as always but listen I am not a believer of the AnR ending as canon and with one chapter left I think we can safely say its not, but with one chapter left I wanna play devils advocate in the unlikely chance AnR will be canon. (I am hoping im wrong before you read further)

I wanna point out that I can see why we would think this video was about Eren being victorious, maybe isayama wanted us to think that...

The video could apply to a few characters, I mean it could just as easily be about old armin and the bum leg was a misdirection on purpose.

Hear me out, historias arc has not been fully resolved and as we know she knew about erens plan and while guilt ridden about it she gave into it cause it was easier instead of embracing her pride as ymir hoped she would (im not calling historia bad) so many lives and families lost and friends as well, armin knew about the farmhouse or finds it out (they said a select few knew the location she was in while pregnant) as of 138 armin furious at erens choice, what if he found out historia knew the plan post rumbling, his fury still bright and his fear of a fragile peace being damaged by someone who approved of erens genocide looming over him. He sneaks in via cover of night, murders the farmer and reluctantly murders historia and takes the child to raise as his own out of guilt or purpose or both (the bow could be symbolic or thats what he uses as he was friends with an archer which was sasha)

armin is not evil but has a ruthless streak just like annie does (this has been foreshadowed and demonstrated countless times), the ball of feathers that i assume to be a child in the video is hisu’s child, it sees him breakdown in the cemetary while visiting the graves of his old friends (possibly Eren and Mikasa much later) but overhears something he mutters at one of the graves, when they go home they’re greeted by what i assume to be armins child and his wife annie (a hint to this is the black cat that greets hisu’s child, annie is a cat lover) the child touches armins shoulder when he grieves in his study and via royal blood within them sees what he did, ultimately wanting to hate him after overcoming their disbelief but ultimately relenting due to the world he and the others helped to create and the loving home this child was doubtless raised in, the arrow the child holds is dropped, refusing to succumb to anger and hate.

armin dies much later and the child leaves a bouquet at his grave implying forgiveness

yes its reaching, likely BS it was just a thought I had and you can see just how easily the events of the MV can be twisted to be about someones victory, when it could have just been random or misdirection to be about erens victory when it wasn’t about anything while still conveying some of the series deeper themes, love, compassion, forgiveness, friendship, loyalty, honor, such traits will be the only thing to end the slaughter

anyway im taking a step back for now, the less I think about AoT the quicker the final chapter comes out, hope this is fascinating if nothing else

[sherry-l]

Why YGO Vrains is such an immeasurable disappointment: a list

First of all, I need to make it abundantly clear that Im a big fan of Vrains – I love Yusaku, Ryoken, Ai, Kusanagi... you see them very often on my dash. I fantasize about the ideal version of Vrains that’s written well, the Vrains that’s fully exploited its potentials, every night in my sleep. I wrote this list PRECISELY because I love Vrains. That’s why I got so frustrated with its cardinal writing issues (and production issues). It physically pains me to hear people calling Vrains the worst and most boring series of YGO – but the fact that I couldn’t argue against that because it’s true pains me more.

And now, an incomprehensive list of the faults of Yugioh Vrains.  

1.      What the fuck is wrong with the character designs (beside that of Yusaku and Ryoken???) Everyone looks aesthetically displeasing – characters in real life look incredibly boring they could easily drown in a crowd of background characters, but their avatars are OSTENTATIOUS. Seems like the character designer had no clue what “less is more” means – blue angel, soulburner, and Bohemann for example, look like they were immersed in a bucket of glue and then dumped into another bucket filled with random accessories.

(from a fan artist’s perspective…Im especially salty about takeru, akira, Kusanagi, and the Knights of Hanois’ designs…like, their designs don’t inspire me to draw. Their personalities might be interesting, but their looks lack the vibrant, enthusiastic energy that the 5Ds, Zexal, and Arc-V characters possess)

(imagine how many fanfics and fanarts of Kusanagi x Yusaku there would be had Kusanagi looked HALF as hot as Ryoken)

And don’t even get me started on the colour palette – whoever decided on the colours just cant make up their goddamn mind! Colour saturation is way off the charts, the range of colour is too wide the audience simply dont know where to focus.

2.      Forgotten plotlines. Yusaku’s link sense? Hanoi’s spy in SOL? The Queen and the rest of the chess pieces? Yusaku’s forgotten memories? The rest of the victims of the Lost Incident? Just to name a few. 

3.      Character relationships are weak to minimal to none. Bonds and friendships – the vital element in all previous YGO series – is practically non-existent in Vrains. Where’s the camaraderie between our main casts (Yusaku, Aoi, Soulburner, Ema, Onizuka, etc…)? They don’t feel like a team fighting the evil together. They’re completely separate individuals who don’t give a single fuck if one of their…acquaintance…dies in a battle. We don’t have heartwarming moments of friendship blossoming and consolidating. It’s honestly such a let down.

4.      Interesting and debatable topics thrown away. The conflict between artificial intelligence and humans could spark so many in-depth discussions, but then the writer just decided its all Lightening’s fault. No morally gray situations, no ambiguity between the line of good and evil. It’s just all Lightening and his petty jealousy… yeah.

Oh and if Ai lives on the world will blow up. Why? Do we have a concrete reason to back that statement? eh...

5.      Overall quality of the animation. I don’t know if its because the animation staff was short on time or low on budget, but for a megacorporation (konami cough cough) that makes billions every year, they certainly are capable of investing more in this anime series. I can count the number of episodes in which the characters don’t look wacky with a single hand.

6.      Character development, wasted potentials. Ryoken is the only character who received decent treatment. The rest of the Vrains cast are all disappointments. Original concepts are cool and promising – Yusaku, a victim of child abuse with PTSD, embarking on a journey to overcome his reclusiveness and learn to open up to people around him? HELL YEAH. Aoi, a teenage idol with depression developing into a more mature and responsible heroine who saves Link Vrains? IM ALL FOR IT.  Soulburner’s character arc is fine overall but personally I don’t feel like it’s expanded enough. Also, there’s the mistreatment of side characters like Onizuka, Ema, Akira, the list goes on. I got so furious just looking at these characters and remembering that they’re all wasted and sidelined.

7.      Incoherent/ random plotlines. IDK all episodes in season 1 (Hanoi’s arc) felt pretty consistent, focusing on a linear theme – Yusaku’s revenge on the Knights of Hanoi. But after that it felt like the writers gave up writing outlines and just wrote whatever he pleased/ considered more convenient for the sake of…a plot…that he had no idea which direction it was headed for. This is reflected in the amount of forgotten plotlines we listed previously.

8.      Weak villains. Kinda related to point 4. Bohemann, Lightening, Windy, and Haru are all one-dimensional, flat, predictable villains with the cliché goal of “destroying humanity cuz humans are dumb and Ais are superior”. Not likeable, not fun to watch, not morally gray (something I expect from well-written antagonists), they are just there to serve as symbol of evil for the protags to defeat.

Honourable mentions - what I personally want to see in Vrains, really. Very biased.

-        The familial interaction between Yusaku and Kusanagi? Brotherhood, perhaps? Without any mention of Yusaku’s parents, Kusanagi is the closest Yusaku has to a brother figure. I crave for some wholesome brotherly moments between these two.

-        More slice of life episodes please.

-        The friendship between Yusaku and Takeru. Please. Please. PLEASE. From the second opening we can see the animation staff CLEARLY intended for there to be a strong bond between Yusaku and Takeru – Takeru probably was written to serve as a Jounouchi/ Johan/ Crow sort of character. Yusaku and Takeru could bond over their trauma and overcome their PTSD together. AND IT WAS SO HEAVILY HINTED AT IN THE 2ND OP!!! fam what the fuck happened to that friendship, Im so robbed.

-        Yusaku and Ryoken’s duel or tag duel. These two haven’t duelled AT ALL since the first season ended. Isn’t Ryoken Yusaku’s official rival? Isn’t it Yugioh tradition for the protag and the rival to duel like, a trillion times? AND ISNT IT ALSO A YUGIOH TRADITION FOR THE PROTAG AND THE RIVAL TO TAG DUEL?????? The fact that Yusaku and Ryoken never had a tag duel haunts me every night in my worst nightmares afjw4ot9wgrk

-        Topologina Nabee

Thanks for coming to my ted talk, this marks the end of my rant on YGO VRAINS DISAPPOINTMENTS. Again, I harboured no malicious intent when I compiled the list – its more like a vent of frustration than actual criticism. I would pay billions to see a Vrains reboot or, if there exists an alternate universe where none of the writing/production issues above are present in Vrains, I would do a Kaiba and build a dimension travelling machine and immigrate there.

TLDR: wasted potentials. wAsTED PoTEntialS. WASTED POTENTIALS!!!!!!

[aion-rsa]

How F9 Brings Back Justice for Han and Asian Inclusion

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This article contains F9 spoilers.

One thing is for certain about the Fast and Furious film franchise—it has been a wild ride. Other aspects of the Fast Saga are less certain. Although the F9 title definitively labels the latest film as the ninth installment, it’s actually the 10th film. Or the 11th. You could even say the 12th if you include the short film. It depends how you want to count it. For a franchise laden with car chase clichés, the Fast Saga makes a lot of long, winding detours.

Consider how these movies treat death. Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) set the precedent by ‘dying’ back in Fast & Furious (aka Fast & Furious 4) only to return in Fast & Furious 6, working for the other side. Coincidentally, at the end of that film, there was a major reveal about Han (Sung Kang). The character was introduced in the third film in the series, The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift, but dies about three quarters of the way through the film. Yet he then reappears in the next three Fast and Furious movies, which were set before Tokyo Drift. The circumstances of his death were clarified in Fast & Furious 6. Jason Statham’s Deckard Shaw killed Han. Now those events have been clarified even more in F9, thanks to returning director Justin Lin. As it turns out, Han didn’t die at all.

F9 is the fifth Fast and Furious film directed by Lin, and by design, Han Jue’s story arc is the central thread for all five Lin installments. Tokyo Drift was Lin’s first Fast film, as well as the franchise’s sharpest turn. It was almost an entirely new cast in a new setting. Lin stayed on to direct the following three installments. To keep Han’s story going, he shifted gears and jumped back in time. Just like with Star Wars, Fast & Furious through Fast & Furious 6 comprised a prequel trilogy, so the order in which the Fast Saga films were released doesn’t match the story’s timeline. The second film, 2 Fast 2 Furious, is followed chronologically by the fourth, Fast & Furious. The next two are in order: Fast Five followed by Fast & Furious 6. Then comes the third release, Tokyo Drift where Han dies. Fast & Furious 6 and Tokyo Drift take place more or less at the same time. Even the beginning of Furious 7 overlaps with the final events of Tokyo Drift.

After stepping away from the franchise for its seventh and eight films, Lin is back in the driver’s seat in F9, which is why Han is also back. However, Han has always been riding with Lin, even predating his involvement in Fast and Furious lore…

High School Han

In 2002, Lin directed the critically-acclaimed Better Luck Tomorrow. That film also starred Sung Kang in the role of Han. It was a story about four overachieving Asian teenagers who start selling cheat sheets and subsequently fall into the gangster lifestyle of drugs and crime. It was loosely based on the murder of Stuart Tay. Tay was an Asian teenager who was killed by his fellow high schoolers when they thought he would betray a computer heist they were planning. The murderers were college-bound with Ivy League potential, and the story was branded as “the honor roll murder” by the Orange County register. In Lin’s interpretation, Han is one of the murderers.

Widely hailed as a benchmark film for Asian-American representation, Better Luck Tomorrow won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance where it was rigorously celebrated by Roger Ebert, which led to MTV acquiring it. 

When Lin took on Tokyo Drift, he wanted to add a cool Asian character into the mix. He tapped Kang to reprise the role of Han, albeit an incarnation of Han that was tailored to the franchise. The Better Luck Tomorrow Han is young and brash. Han is a teenager, although Kang was 30 he first played him. In Tokyo Drift, Han is older and wiser, a mentor to the film’s protagonist Sean (Lucas Black). Nevertheless, there are connections that make the character whole. The Better Luck Tomorrow Han is a chain smoker. In Fast Five, Han’s girlfriend Gisele (Gal Gadot in her first feature film). She attributes Han’s constant need to occupy his hand to being a former smoker. Tokyo Drift was only four years after Better Luck Tomorrow but the character of Han aged considerably.

Why Han Matters

The Fast Saga currently ranks as the seventh highest grossing film franchise in the world. And unlike the other top-earners,  these movies were arguably the most diverse and inclusive from the onset. While the MCU has Black Panther and the upcoming Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Star Wars introduced Finn (John Boyega) in its third trilogy, those casts remain predominantly white. In fact, the top 25 top grossing global franchises are all led by white casts. Fast and Furious is the exception. This makes Han the most prominent Asian character in a Hollywood franchise in the world.

What’s more, Han is cool. Until very recently, most Asian Hollywood roles were stereotypical or tokens. Han a richly developed character, even if Better Luck Tomorrow is disregarded. In Tokyo Drift, he’s a wealthy elite street racer with his own garage packed with awesome cars, attached to a club where he’s surrounded by gorgeous women. That was an unprecedented role for how Asian characters were presented in mainstream Hollywood entertainment in the 2000s.

Han’s relationship with Giselle is also extraordinary. While there is a long cinematic history of white men hooking up with Asian women, it was extremely rare for an Asian man to kiss white woman in Hollywood cinema. Han and Giselle become an item in 2009 with Fast & Furious. The following year, it was a huge deal for Jackie Chan’s interracial kiss with Amber Valletta in The Spy Next Door.

Jackie claimed it was his first onscreen kiss and he was already well past a hundred films to his credit at that time, although most of them were China-made. Han got to snog Wonder Woman onscreen before anyone else, including Chris Pine, and if that’s not cool, what is?

Lin carried another actor over from Better Luck Tomorrow. Jason Tobin played Virgil Hu, Han’s cousin and another one of the murderous teens. Virgil is the biggest punk of the gang. In Tokyo Drift, Tobin plays Earl Hu, one of Han’s friends and a master mechanic. Is the Hu surname a coincidence? Not likely for Lin. Tobin also appears as Young Jun in the Bruce Lee inspired TV series Warrior, where Lin is an executive producer alongside Lee’s daughter Shannon. Again Tobin plays a punk gangster. Tobin reprises Earl in F9. 

Beyond Hollywood inclusion and representation where Han really matters is global box office. Hollywood was another COVID casualty. During the pandemic, the United States was dethroned as the biggest box office in the world. As of right now, China claims that title. Perhaps this is one reason F9 premiered there first, as well as in other Asian regions along with the Middle East.

Read more

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It’s been out for over a month and has already grossed $203 million in China alone, plus an additional $8.8 million in the other markets at the time of the U.S. premiere. Thanks to this, F9 is already the fourth highest earner in the world in 2021. It is right behind Godzilla v Kong, but both of them are trailing behind two Chinese blockbusters that most American are completely unaware of yet, Detective Chinatown 3 and Hi, Mom. 

The Fast Saga’s rise has a lot to do with its international appeal, culminating with winning over Chinese audiences. It was under Lin’s steady hand that the franchise became a global player. Adding Han brought Asian representation to an already diverse cast. Tokyo Drift passed an international milestone where the film made more outside of the U.S. in the foreign markets—$33.9 million more. This disparity widened with each successive movie, so by the time Fast & Furious 6 rolled around, the international earnings accounts for nearly 70 percent of the total box office, and the door was open to that lucrative Chinese market.

Furious 7 was the first of the franchise to be shown in China and blew up there with a record-setting $390 million take, earning the title as the biggest non-Chinese film in the country at the time. That helped to elevate the worldwide box office past $1.5 billion, with over 76 percent of it coming from international earnings. The Fate of the Furious did even better, breaking its own record as China’s top-earning foreign film with $392 million, and the international box office accounted for 81 percent of the worldwide take. 

Lin is smart to bring Han back. And if he really wants to appeal to that Chinese market, he’ll boost Virgil Hu’s role in F10. Han is Korean. Hu is Chinese. Tobin has appeared in Chinese films previously, including Jackie Chan’s Rob-B-Hood so the Chinese audience is familiar with him. 

Justice for Han

At the end of the previous installment, The Fate of the Furious, Shaw is awkwardly accepted into Dom’s cookout. Fans of Han Jue and the franchise were outraged. How does Han’s murderer become part of the club? This triggered the Twitter movement #justiceforhan. Now that we know Shaw didn’t murder Han, it’s up to Lin to decide what happens in F10, which he is slated to direct next (it still doesn’t resolve Shaw’s acceptance at the barbecue because Dom’s gang still believed Han was dead then).

Perhaps it’s all some grand scheme by Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell). With the Fast Saga, so much is uncertain, even Han’s name.

For F10, a confrontation between Han and Shaw seems inevitable, especially with F9’s post-credits cameo showing Shaw. Perhaps the next film will finally give enough closure for Shaw to earn his seat at the table, or for Han to banish him from it.

At the end of F9, when the car drives up to fill the empty seat at the barbecue table, it’s uncertain who the driver is. Maybe it’s Jakob (John Cena), Dom’s newly introduced brother in F9. Maybe it’s Shaw coming back for seconds, or maybe Brian O’Conner (although reviving the late Paul Walker digitally again would be tacky now). Maybe it’s even Giselle (sure, Giselle ‘died’ in Fast & Furious 6 but if Gadot came back, just think of how many tickets they’d sell). Fast and Furious is full to twisty turns, like any good car chase. But with Lin in the driver’s seat, Han is sure to get the justice he deserves.

F9: The Fast Saga opened only in theaters on Friday, June 25.

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[notbecauseofvictories]

Theoretically, this should be a very long, involved meta and the title would be “Kentucky Route Zero and the End of the Road” or something equally ridiculous. I imagine I’d quote Wendell Berry liberally. However, I am not particularly good at meta, and definitely not about video games---so instead you get this, an elegy for the one and only video game I love and how I am somehow both furious with it and think it did a good thing.

As a bit of background: I don’t like....games. I’m just not a fan of cards, dice, boards, joysticks, or any and all permutations of sportsball, war, and antitrust violations. However, there are two games that serve as the exception to the rule: my annual scrabble match with my grandmother and Kentucky Route Zero, a point-and-click from Cardboard Company. 

It counts as a video game only in the technical sense that it uses “video” and is sort of a “game.” Otherwise, it is mostly poetry and ruminations about rural American life, journeys, transience, and debt. 

I love it an unreasonable amount.

[ spoilers for Act V ahead ]

Going into Act V, I admit there were things I wanted. I wanted Conway back. I wanted Johnny and Junebug to de facto adopt one (1) human child and one (1) giant eagle who is inexplicably the human child’s brother. I wanted Shannon to have closure with Weaver. If Consolidated Power Co. was somehow razed to the ground and everyone’s debts erased and liminal, magical realist Kentucky freed from the looming specter of corporate interest, you wouldn’t hear me complaining. I wanted, to be blunt about it, resolution.

Act V gave me exactly none of the above. 

And so, my first reaction was a kind of aggrieved fury. How dare Cardboard Company not give me (and these characters, who they made me love and want nice things for) a proper ending? Am I just supposed to let Conway drift away into debt and servitude? Am I supposed to forget that Junebug and Johnny are a bit ambivalent about bringing someone new into their dynamic? Shannon is just supposed to---supposed to what, go on? Not knowing what happened to Weaver? Not seeing justice done for her parents, or anything more than a memorial floating in Echo River?

Even worse, playing the game with all the spliced-in extras makes me care about Emily, Ben, and Bob, Ron and Rita, and all the residents of that place where the roads don’t go and the ghost of a girl haunts the public access studio. All those people whose entire lives are washed away in the course of a night, forced to decide whether to stay and rebuild what can’t be entirely reconstructed or leave for some other, equally strange place.

None of it is goddamn fair, and when “THE END” showed in that white serif font I was so unutterably angry that I had to stand up and pace around my apartment until the emotion wore away.

But beyond that first shock, I’m not sure where Kentucky Route Zero ended up is...actually bad. When I first played through Acts I-III, I described it as a game “about things that are Gone, and things that are Gone-but-still-with-us, like families and history and debt.” I don’t think that’s incorrect---if anything, Act V reaffirmed this as a central theme. Act V said, very clearly, that things change, people leave, debt is sold, towns give up the ghost (or are already occupied by them) and survival is definitely more fraught and complicated than you might imagine. However...things very rarely go. Even the Neighbors don’t leave, when they are memorialized and the inhabitants of a nameless town (living and dead) come together to mourn their passing. 

It’s not death but it is also, still, death, because change (things going away, other things coming into being in their place) is always a sort of death.

Which unfortunately means I was right. At the heart of Kentucky Route Zero is transience and memory. refracted through a hundred different lenses---some good, some bad. You have the Museum of Dwellings taking people’s homes out of context and “remembering” them, the Bureau of Reclaimed Spaces kicking out the congregation to turn a cathedral into office space, and neatly removing the center of gravity from their world. (Doolittle laughs about how Consolidated Power cheated Earl out of his beehives.) On the other hand: Will is the living embodiment of the Echo’s history, recipient of unknown persons’ first memories. Every time she encounters someone who also remembers Weaver, Shannon melts. Conway remembers Ira and Charlie and the truck, the furniture shed, even if Lysette doesn’t. Memorials---everything from official monuments to discarded trash and gravestones, signs, and broadcasts---play a significant role in the unfolding arc of the story. 

Things that are gone, but not gone.

Which means that while I might feel deprived of a happy ending, an easy ending, the ending I was given was...right. Watching June and Johnny go back and forth about Ezra, as Shannon and Emily waver about whether to stay or go was real, and honest. Knowing that nothing could be done, really, to save Conway from the debt he incurred and the job he consented to, other than finish his delivery was right. There is nothing to be done for the Pueblo de Nada, for the Neighbors or the dead or the Gone, other than to recognize that they were there first. Other than to remember them, in their fullness.

(I kept thinking about the folktale, about how Solomon in his wisdom was asked for those words that would make a grieving man happy, and a joyous man sad. According to legend, he sent the ring engraved with the phrase: "And this, too, shall pass away.")

At the end of Act V, our heroes gather in a house that is not a house, which looks both forwards and backwards, and is full of music, or maybe a workshop, and they watch the sun set. And it wasn’t the ending that I wanted, but maybe it was the one deserved.

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?

[devourer--of--books]

Something obvious I noticed about Agatha

Context:

I’m doing a small side-collection of my favorite scenes from WSF that I had to cut off, because just editing them out was making me sad. The first one of those (which should be up soon on AO3, under the name of ‘every memory of the sweet sunshine’) is a scene in which I have Sophie doing a bit of introspection on Agatha’s so-called ‘goodness’.

I cut off the scene for the sake of length (why, why do I always write stuff no asked for, no cares why Agatha has no car in WSF, literally no one asked) and because I didn’t want to mess with Sophie and Agatha’s arc in the fic by making her too self-aware or highlight her opinion on Agatha’s compulsive need to help other people too explicitly just yet.

But then, it occurs to me that Agatha’s behavior is not something exclusive from my fic. In fact, is something that is classical Agatha, noticeble during the entire book 1, TLEA, and even a during QFG (I’m sure it comes up during AWWP too, but I haven't picked that one up in years so I can’t speak for it). It’s a vital part of her character and I think we all know this, but it still made me kinda sad once I started to think about it. 

Agatha has low-key (high-key) savior complex

So, I am not a phycologist. I don’t claim to be one either. But I’ve been doing some reading and my google skills pointed towards white knight syndrome? I’m linking the main sources I used bellow).

Hear me out,

- Let’s start with book 1 and Sophie, because I feel like that is the basis of this analysis.

- During most of book 1, we get many reasons as to why Agatha feels the need to go home. She has good reasons, Agatha knows the school is dangerous. Naturally you’d wanna go home, back to safety and bring your only friend (we’ll talk about this in a minute) with you, so they’d be safe too, right? Nothing wrong here.

- But one of the most frequent criticisms of book1!Agatha is that she is very persistent in getting Sophie to go back home with her. Very, with like, major V. Numerous times we see Sophie brush off Agatha’s attempts to help her (in Agatha’s point of view, helping her is getting her home), and it just frustrates her and makes her try harder, despite Sophie’s clear wishes for her to just leave it alone.

- When you read this, didn’t it make you feel tired for Agatha? Burnout and angry at Sophie for not listening to her friend who clearly has her best interests in mind?

- I don’t think we need to highlight every instance in which Sophie was an absolutely horrible friend and trash person to Agatha in book 1, and she just… Took that shit, because ‘they were friends’ and continued to help her (including helping her get with Tedros in service of saving her) because she’s good and the good forgive everything?

- Because good believes no one, not even Sophie, 100% evil, is beyond redemption? Because that’s how normal friendship works? I mean, sounds fake, but okay.

- Agatha literally almost dies a couple of times when Sophie goes psycho-witch on her, but we still see her feel like she needs to save Sophie. Notice that I say needs, and not only wants. 

- If you don’t think Agatha and Sophie had a toxic codependent friendship during most of TSY, I don’t think we read the same books?? Their codepency tends to be a major plot point in all books??

- Very rarely do we see dynamics in which one person is 100% toxic by herself. This one is no exception. It’s easy to point out Sophie’s selfish narcissistic (borderline sociopathic) behavior as toxic, because it’s so loud and in our faces, but I don’t think we talk about how Agatha contributes to this dynamic as often as we should.

- We joke about how Agatha lets Sophie get away with everything. How annoying it can be. But why does she let Sophie get away with everything? Why does she enable Sophie’s behavior (through positive reinforcement)? Especially if the goal is to help Sophie, shouldn’t she be more incisive in ‘teaching’ Sophie that her actions have consequences?

- I mostly attributed this to Agatha’s cripplingly low self-esteem. But now that I thought a bit more, I think it’s a bit more than that. Agatha’s endless empathy for Sophie is part of why their friendship ‘works’. But for something to ‘work’, it goes both ways. We know what Sophie gets out of their dynamic: she gets to be chaotic, have Agatha clean up after her and access to bottom-less empathy and love from her. What does Agatha get?

- Mostly, Agatha gets a semi-good-ish friend. Which she thinks is the type of friendship she deserves. But she also gets to serve a purpose. Her life’s work is to save Sophie, solve Sophie’s problems. In fact we don’t see Agatha try to solve any of her own problems until Sophie pushes her away. I think Agatha needs to help Sophie because she envisions Sophie as her one redeeming quality, and linked her own self-worth to how well she can take care of her friend.

- Which is why she always feels so anxious and exhausted all the time. Agatha sacrifices her own well-being in favor of saving Sophie from the consequences of her own actions, even after Sophie tells her not to, because she believes it’s her job. If she’s not saving Sophie, than why is she here at all? 

- What Agatha gets out of their dynamic is the emotional high of playing savior. She gets to be in control of something. She feels powerless and frustrated at her own issues, so she has the compulsive need to ‘fix’ others (in this case, Sophie, because Sophie is her only friend).

- Think of how Agatha tells Sophie the reason why she always let her in is because Sophie looks lonely. I don’t think this is entirely true, but there’s some truth to it. Sophie is the ‘perfect fit’ for Agatha because they’re both lonely and vulnerable. Sophie needs a getaway car from her own chaos (instead of facing it head on) and Agatha needs a purpose bigger than herself so she can feel complete.

- This is also partly why I believe she got so defensive and furious when Tedros accuses her of ‘not being able to make Sophie feel loved like he does’. Saving Sophie is a fundamental part of how Agatha defines herself so when he says this, it cuts her deeply. 

- Because being Sophie’s friend and savior is directly tied to her own sense of who she is.

- Now, lets move on to how Tedros fits in this, by observing exemples during TLEA and QFG, as well as the end of book 1.

- As soon as Tedros  becomes important to Agatha, we see a shift in her behavior. She now needs to protect him. But their dynamic differs from the one between Sophie and Agatha because Tedros not only rejects her help; instead, he wants to be her white knight. 

- It confuses Agatha, because so far, being a savior was just her modus operandi and not at all mutual. I think there’s a line in AWWP (I know there’s a comic, so I’m not sure if it’s from that book, but I think it is, if it isn’t ignore this point) where Tedros asks Agatha what she saw in him, and she says something along the lines of him needing someone to protect him the way he protected the people he cared about. 

- Tedros’ unconcious wish for someone to take care of him is what draws Agatha in, much like Sophie’s. But Tedros wants a mutual relationship, where Sophie was pretty much one-sided most the time.

- Which is why I think Agatha and Tedros clash so much, but at the same time, why they make a good pair. They’re two idiots trying to save each other. And their relationship’s life work is to figure out how to listen to what the other actually needs, not what they think the other needs. Communication is key, as usual.

- Numerous times in TLEA we hear Tedros complaining that Agatha doesn’t know how to play ‘the princess’, how she bosses him around and treats him like he’s an idiot. That, I believe, is because that is the only way she knows how to express her love: she tries to fix as many of his problems as she can, ignoring what he wants.

- She tells him she has no idea how to be anything else. Because this is all she has ever known. She saves people, they don’t save her. But Tedros wants to save her anyway. So, conflict is created.

- During part two of TLEA, we see perhaps the best example of how Agatha applies this savior narrative to benefit herself. 

- When we fall back into an old habit, we don’t usually do it because it feels good. We do it because it feels familiar. And there is comfort in familiarity, especially in familiar pain.

- Agatha is having problems with communicating with Tedros, with sorting out their dynamic and with who she thinks she’s supposed to be without Sophie. So when Sophie crashes in and asks Agatha to give him up in order to fix her problems as well as the entire Woods, Agatha jumps at the chance to play the martyr, because that way she doesn’t have to fix her own problems. Like a get-out-of-jail-free card. 

- Pretty sure there’s even a quote from Sophie in TLEA where she points out she could never play Good’s savior. It’s implicit that she thinks this role has always been Agatha’s. It’s what Agatha herself thinks.

- As soon as Tedros is out of the picture, we see Sophie and Agatha’s friendship restored to their codepency glory (that scene where they’re riding and the frog and scorpion analogy, was it a frog, I can’t remember, but you know the one I’m talking about). But somewhere in her mind, Agatha knows this isn’t how it’s supposed to be, because of what Tedros has showed her, and not only Tedros, but also Hester.

- I’ll save Agatha and Hester’s relationship for another dive, as this is already very long, but yeah, not toxic at all, just friends being actual good friends. In fact, most of the time Hester is the one saving Agatha. We’ll see to this later. Anyway, back to my ranting.

- Then we have the wish-fish scene, in my opinion the best Hort-scene in all the books. Hort goes ahead and calls Agatha out on her shit. Shit that she wasn’t even completely conscious she was doing (someone get these kids a therapist omg).

- We get to see tagatha make up, working out their communication issues (!!!!). “You catch me and I catch you” it’s literally the realization that Agatha finally can trust someone enough to ask for help when she needs it and that she can trust him to come to her if he needs her help. That she has finally understood that it’s not her job to save everyone and only Sophie can save herself.

- Why, why did it not end here.

- I’m gonna spare you the QFG bashing (see my other post for that content, lol), but that book did Agatha dirty. I liked that they didn’t erase her progress with Sophie, how they learned to be better friends for each other, but wtf tagatha

- This is an entire book of Agatha feeling like she needs to save Tedros all over again. There’s even an introspective moment in which she explicitly says that in the end of the day, she trusts no one but herself (why, why did you undo the ending of TLEA, why) that breaks my heart.

- Tedros pushing her away, her going behind his back, the internal dialogue Agatha has with herself… Look, I love chapter 6. Chapter 6? Great content. Tedros belatedly noticing he needs to let Agatha in (six months bitch I just-) and asking for her help. Agatha’s savior complex comes full force and she convinces Tedros to let her fix everything. Tedros ends up allowing her to do so because he is desperate. Lots of kissing and touching. My favorite chapter of QFG.

- But since the follow-up is basically Agatha noticing what she’s doing and doing it anyway (contrary to TLEA, in which as soon as she could no longer deny what she was doing she gets her shit together) it just feels like she’s regressing? Her self-worth is no longer tied to saving Sophie from herself after 3 books, only for it to be tied to saving Tedros?

- Anyway, thank you for attending my TEDtalk.

Sources: 

https://amenteemaravilhosa.com.br/complexo-de-salvador/

https://www.healthline.com/health/savior-complex#how-it-affects-you

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/complexo-de-salvador-como-ele-pode-impactar-sua-vida-pessoal

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/sociopath

https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-stop-being-codependent