#I just didn’t give him one cause the puppet in the beginning of the movie didn’t have one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

franki-lew-yo · 3 years

Text

The Romantic (2009, R, Gothic Fantasy/Horror), aka the most forgotten animated film in the world

What if I told you there was a movie under serious threat of becoming lost media with no clear reason as to WHY it's been lost other than no one has apparently watched it besides me and a few people on Reddit? What if I told you that movie wasn't half bad and would no doubt have some interest peeked if anyone DID know about it?

The name of that movie is The Romantic.

It was released in 2009 and it's Rated R for nudity and sex scenes [insert Robbie Rotten meme here], though none of it too graphic. It was a pet project created by animator Michael P. Heneghan, originally starting as a flash project for his animation class before he expanded it into a feature film. The film was inspired by movies such as The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, but what I see every time I look at it is a touch of Jhonen Vasquez, Tim Burton, and Roman Dirge- the guy behind Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl. It's flash animation especially remind me of the puppet-rigged toons of the 2000s (again like Salad Fingers or Lenore). It's not bad, it's just not inherently 'feature film' quality flash, nor is it exceptionally artistic like Sita Sings the Blues in it's simplicity. Like, really, if you happen to find this thing it's not the worst animated project at all it's just amateur for a professional production. I've seen worse flash movies. Heck, if The Romantic were released in separate parts on youtube or Newgrounds as a series (ala Homestuck) I'm sure it would have been really successful and totally in it's element. But it wasn't.

Because next to no one has seen it and I'm lucky to have not only ever seen it when it was available for free but have also found it recently (hush hush, I ain't telling you how) I'm going to actually give you all a plot synopsis under the cut. There will be some details I leave out and I think I've spelled some characters names wrong. It's a bit of a surrealist film as well, so you might need some things explained.

Spoilers ahead:

The Romantic is set in an autumnal, surrealist world inhabited by humans and monsters and ruled by three gods; Po the goddess of love; Pik the god of Hate; and Pjorrc the god of time though Pjorrc was made to live inside a pumpkin moon as everything he touched rabidly aged and died.

((Tapestry art featuring the main three gods of the film.))

A young man (called “Romance” or “The Romantic” by the other characters) performs a bull sacrifice in order to summon Abbledepopa, the unseen creator of the other gods and ‘storyteller’ of the world. The sacrifice does not conjure Abbledepopa but, when Romance spares a monster that was ready to eat him, the monster tells him of a profit named Patience. Patience is a foul-mouthed dwarf living alone with an army of babies who points Romance in the direction of Po.

((Romance outside of Patience's house.))

Romance wants the god’s help because he has fallen out of love with his girlfriend. Po grants him his desire and restores his love only for Romance to return home and find his girlfriend with another man. Blinded by heartache and rage, Romance kills her. He then swears vengeance on the gods for ‘making’ him do it. In the midst of this vow, a corrupt prophet called Fat Daddy kills the queen of Vauxhaul (Romance's home) and her guards, and forges a new body for his newborn son with their bodies. Fat Daddy rallies the townsfolk behind him in supposedly finding the Queen’s murder into follow a new religion called "The Poetic End".

((Romance (right) besides the monster he spared at the beginning of the movie.))

Patience accompanies Romance on his quest and tells him to take Po’s mask, which hides her true face, once he kills her. Romance buys Po’s trust by weaving her a tapestry that tells her story: in the dawn of time Po and Pjorrc were in love. However, Pjorrc gradually became distant and Po became resentful when their daughter, Love, earned Po's original title as the god of romance and love.

In the present day, Romance sleeps with Po for over a year before finally killing her and taking her mask. He and Patience return to his home of Vauxhul only to be chased out by Fat Daddy’s personal army. They flee to Marshallton, the town nearest to the god Pik.

((Romance's hometown of Vauxhul. ))

The king of Marshallton, King Crookie, tells Romance of a prophecy he, Patience, Fat Daddy and all the gods are a part of and that the world is soon to change. Romance then fights and successfully kills Pik when he shows the god of hate his reflection in a mirror King Crookie gave him, but not before losing his hand to Pik.

When Romance comes down the mountain he learns from Patience that nine years have passed since his fight with Pik began. Patience reveals to Romance what Pik saw in the mirror that allowed Romance to take the killing blow; after Love had grown up and married, Po asked Pik to tell her where her husband was always running off to. Pik reluctantly revealed Pjorrc was disguising himself as a human and married a mortal woman. Po found Pjorrc and his pregnant second wife, forcing Pjorrc to leave his human family behind, but not before asking his wife to name their son “Patience”. In retaliation for his treachery, Po proceeded to sleep with fifty men and produce the fifty bastard children in Patience’s house.

((Fat Daddy, the main villain.))

Marshallton and the entire rest of the world has fallen to the rule of Fat Daddy, who captures Romance and Patience. Fat Daddy tortures Patience into telling him how to get to Pjorrc but is unable to convince Romance to take part in his ‘new world’ or give him Po’s mask. Romance and Patience escape and leave the village to be torn apart by the fifty babies Po had, now transformed into veracious monsters after Patience didn’t feed them for the past ten years. Romance confronts Patience when he realizes the latter is Pjorrc’s son. Patience calls Romance out on his mantra of vengeance and points out that all his decisions are his own, not the gods, and instructs him to seek Love herself in Po’s basement. Patience then attempts to confront Pjorrc but is cornered and killed by Fat Daddy before he can do so.

In Po’s basement, Romance finds Love nailed to a wall, her face torn off and half eaten by her deformed husband. Love tells Romance that Po ripped off her daughter’s face in rage over Pjorrc’s infidelity and Pjorrc did not intervene fast enough. Po then threw Love into her basement, turned Love’s husband into a monster, and wore her daughter’s face as a mask - which Romance had broken into pieces moments ago after Patience had shown him his face in King Crookie’s mirror. Romance then finds Pjorrc hanging himself. As he dies, Pjorrc tells Romance to take the hand Fat Daddy had cut off and sew it onto himself, which will in turn help Romance defeat Abbledepopa.

Romance traverses the wasteland and does not find Abbledepopa, but instead a golden loom. Having seen all the destruction he and others had caused, Romance sits upon the loom and accepts his fate as the new ‘storyteller’ of the world, as he begins weaving a new one...

---

I mentioned before the animation quality of the film and why maybe that caused people to overlook it. The only other thing I could complain about on a technical level with The Romantic is it's sound design. Some of the voices and music is a little too quiet and so all these key details I had to go through the film a few times to really piece together. But that leads me to the thing I like about this movie and I'm sure others would to: the lore.

It's very hard to create a new fantasy world w it's own customs, religions, history and rules out of the blue as any YA Harry Potter/Hunger Games ripoff book could tell you. The Romantic is so unique in how it handles the pantheon and culture of these three gods and their kin; really only four or five characters throughout the entire story aren't connected to the gods or prophecy in some way, as there's the main three gods, Abbeldepappa, and the prophets Patience, Love and Fat Daddy, who make up your main cast besides Romance. There's a lot that's intentionally left unexplained and other info that must be explained, like Pjorrc and Po's marriage and Romance's feelings towards the gods, if we want to understand the former. The movie is paced pretty well and knows when to follow up on what, it's just that again some of those animation and editting shortcomings might make it hard to understand...but I don't think THAT hard. Look, if someone can enjoy Starchaser: The Legend of Orin or even better surrealist world-building films ((Fantastic Planet comes to mind)), then I say there's no reason The Romantic wouldn't have a following. There's no other way I can articulate why and what doesn't work about the story except just to recommend you watch it yourselves, but before I get into that I want to talk themes...because I love the themes and tone of The Romantic.

I revisited The Romantic a week before I made myself watch Centaurworld and The Owl House for the first time...and what a week that was~! The Romantic has the vibe of those kinds of shows along with Adventure Time and Infinity Train ((so I hear, I haven't watched the latter)). It's surreal and you'll only marvel at 'woooah wut an acid trip' for so long before you get into the vibe of the universe. It also reminded me substantially of the Broadway musical Hadestown and not just because this movie is also a self-contained, somewhat self aware fable about the relationships between humans and gods - it's very raw in how the characters talk. It's very emotional and blunt in how kind and how cruel they can be, and it doesn't make excuses or really worships any one of them. Romance himself is the world's most likable Incel: he murders a woman he thought he needed to love and blames his emotions on the gods of those passions...except the gods AREN'T the manifestations of love, time, and hate - they simply dictate and oversee it in the lives of men. It's a dynamic I really like in religious works where Gods are powerful but not all knowing or puppet masters to everyone's design- they have morality too and there is only so much you can blame and get from them.

"You made your gods into excuses and your excuses into gods!"

-Patience. This here is a cool quote. I like this quote.

No matter what, The Romantic is not gonna be a film for everyone. We all have our tastes - I think I'm drawn to it and accepting because I've come to love these kind of worlds that used to keep me up at night - these trippy 70s inspired fantasy landscapes given a whole Avatar: The Last Airbender degree of worldbuilding and character worth. It also doesn't feel exploitive in it's violence, it's sexuality, it's grimmness - it doesn't feel like it's trying to hard or going over the top because it happens to be an adult animated film, something that I love in movies like 9 or Hair High but really turns me off in stuff like Sausage Party or Wizards. Whatever go watch The Romantic...

if you can.

-----

When I first saw this film in 2016 it was actually very accessible and was even uploaded to youtube by the creator himself. I don't know WHAT happened to Michael P. Heneghan, but simply put, the man's disappeared...like...REALLY disappeared.

Lookit his IMDB. He has The Romantic and a wapping two other projects to his name. His Twitter isn't very helpful either. He last updated in early 2020 and he says next to nothing about The Romantic. It's so odd that he would one day be happy with the film enough to host it on Vimeo and Youtube but then just cop out.

According to a Reddit user: "On Valentines Day 2011, Heneghan released the film for free online through all kinds of platforms including direct download, bittorrent, Vimeo, and even directly through Archive.org. He even joked about releasing a 300 gig uncompressed version.

I know I watched it on Vimeo probably as recently as 2016. Now I can't find it anywhere. The website is dead, the Vimeo video went private, even the archive.org version has been taken down. It really looks like he wanted to wipe it off the face of the internet. His newer website mentions it, but again, the Vimeo link is dead and even that website is closed for business."

It's weeeird. What happened Michael?

And yes, obviously, other people worked on the movie.

No - I can't find out anything about them either.

I'm betting on three theories at the moment: 1) this film is an SCP or some Candle Cove weirdness with only me and a handful of people ANYWHERE remembering it, 2) something weird is going on w Michael Heneghan and it involves too something about this film. It was a scam or a scheme or a hidden agenda weirdness, 3) Heneghan's doing okay he just doesn't like this film anymore and wants it hidden while he takes a break.

Look, I get it Michael! What was once our life's worth can become cringe as you improve as an artist - you're not the person making the stuff you were ten years ago...but you should still have the film kept alive somehow. Someway.

I'm seriously the only person to have ever made fan art of this movie on the internet. That just doesn't happen, and I don't think I like being in a fandom of one. The Romantic is a testament to the power of design and storytelling > animation quality itself. Too often I see people equate good animation with smooth animation, with a budget with squash and stretch. These animations are good but art is diverse and there's so many kinds of films out there, the value of the medium can't just be in one style/form. There's a lot of honestly wonderful pieces of art out there if you know where to look and you're willing to see where it leads you.

Don't let The Romantic be the most forgotten movie of all time. Reblog this post. Show it to your friends. PM the animation community reviewer people like Saberspark and someone who isn't Saberspark and smuggle them a copy.

Keep telling the story...

#Franki's Features #The Romantic #The Romantic Michael Heneghan #The Romantic 2009 #animation #animation community #underrated animation #lost media #horror animation

114 notes · View notes

danielxricciardo · 3 years

Note

Can you do one with Max, with 46 and 55 from angst list?

Summary: You are suffering from depression and Max tries to be by your side

Warnings: angst, swearing, mentions of suicide, depression

Word count: 3.6k+

46. “I’ll leave, and the world will move on. I just wish I could see it. See how much better everything is when I’m gone.”

55. “You’re good at finding things. Find me a reason to stay.”

Depression feels like a lot of things.

It feels like sadness, which is what everyone will tell you. It's a pretty common thread.

"I'm worthless."

"Everyone thinks I'm a horrible burden."

So on and so forth.

Everyone in the world is happy but you, and in the end, you are a worthless piece of shit that doesn't belong in this otherwise glorious and happy place. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and you are lying there on your bed in the same unlaundered pair of pajamas, wondering why you are even allowed to keep living any longer. Some meteor strikes or lightning bolts should be reserved for people like you because you are taking up space and oxygen and food and other resources that real, happy, productive people need.

It feels like emptiness. You have all these possibilities and none of them seem interesting. You could do some art, or play some music, but that just doesn't feel right. There's no joy in it. You could have sex with your significant other, but you can't muster up the desire. You could play video games, or read a book. But what's the point? There's no real benefit to all of it but passing the time. You could get up and make lunch. But no, you're not that hungry, and if you close your eyes, time will pass a little faster. You can lie there. That works. It doesn't require active effort to do something fruitless. Everything is as empty and fruitless as lying and staring out your window at the clouds and the shifting shadows of tree branches, and so why do anything else?

It feels like fatigue. Standing up out of your bed requires the same amount of bodily effort as climbing several flights of stairs. Managing to get dressed and walk outside is like running a race. Heaven helps you if you try to go to the store or a friend's house -- that may as well be on the other side of the continent. Every step is heavy. Every muscle motion requires ten times the work it used to. Exercise becomes difficult, and control over your body expires quickly. You become clumsier, so heavy lifting is right out. You daze out randomly, daydreaming, even dozing, so biking or running is hard. You feel most at home when you are entirely relaxed, so you lie down...and don't get up again until something like your bladder compels you.

It feels like a loss of control. You have no idea why your brain and body are doing this. You don't want to feel sad. Nobody wants to feel shitty and tired and empty all the time. People will look at you and say, "It's like you don't want to get better." Those people are idiots. You truly, deeply, from the bottom of your soul, have no idea why this has happened or what to do. It's not logical. It makes no sense. You woke up like this, or it crept in overtime or something like that. It's like a fog, a force of nature that sweeps in, occludes everything, and there's not one thing you can do about it from where you stand. Trying feels like taking a paper fan outside and trying to blow away the morning mist. Someone has tied puppet strings to your brain and is playing this hideous dance with it, and you don't have the scissors to cut them away. The dance doesn't make sense; it's arbitrary and rhythmless. If you had any sort of reasoning behind it, you could take control. But you don't.

It feels like desperation. You can't find a way out. You lie there at night, keening into your pillow like a wounded animal, making all sorts of noises that no human being should be able to make. You claw and scratch at the sheets, or at yourself, as the pain wrings itself out through bodily expression. The tears won't stop. You don't know why. All you know is that it hurts, it really and truly hurts, and you think if it goes on any longer, you're going to die. Right there. Bleed out on the floor. So you grab up your phone, and you call someone at 4 AM, and you beg them to please just make it stop. You bury yourself in books and movies because at least then you can imagine something else than yourself. You read nonstop. You have to have your fix. It's like an addiction, no, more like a life support machine. Otherworlds, fantasies of happiness, and real experiences that aren't your horrible existence become the iron lung keeping air flowing in and out. You are alive because you can stop thinking for a while. Your friends come over to comfort you. Their stories keep you sane and well, like dialysis for all the toxins in you. Your mind has failed at being independent, and now it relies on a thousand little machines to keep itself running. You rely on one machine until another comes to save you. You read books until your friends come by. You stretch out your time with friends until you have to bury yourself in a movie again just to keep the thought of real-life away.

It feels like untamed anger. Your friends can't keep this up forever. You fall further and further, and you eventually start dropping commitments. You have become That Person, the flake that everyone knows will back out. People start getting annoyed at you, annoyed at how they have to spend so much time just keeping you afloat, annoyed at how often you're causing them trouble by constantly disappearing and backing out of appointments, and so on. Your workplace gets annoyed at your lack of productivity. And then you can't take it anymore, and you want to scream at them, grab them by the throat and shake them because IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT! You start having twisted fantasies, the ones where you walk up to that person who keeps telling you he can't do this anymore, you're just too unreliable, putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger. Just to make him know, for once, that FUCK HIM, your problems are REAL, DAMMIT, REAL, and he better FUCKING RESPECT that. And when you're gone, he'll fall to his knees and cry, and he'll say, he wishes he had understood, that he didn't mean to be so unkind, and the scar on his heart from his own failure will remain fresh and knotted for eternity. And then you shake yourself out of the daydream, and you wonder why you have turned into such a horrible person, someone who even considers ending their own life just to spite another human being. Then it creeps back in, the knowledge that the world is getting fed up with you...and the cycle begins again. You start thriving off these daydreams, because at the very least if you can't be happy, you can throw caution to the wind and get the petty, oddly satisfying revenge buried under all those layers of morality that are becoming worn and flaking away. It's just a fantasy, right? And it helps pass the time...

It feels like forever. You have forgotten what it's like to truly be joyful. You can imagine it, but it's not really you in those thoughts. This is who you are. This is your life. This is you.

It feels like you have only one thing truly under your power: your existence. You cannot choose what life throws at you. Your brain and body have betrayed you. Your friends have worn away, and you've fled from your job and any commitments you have.

It feels empowering. You can jump whenever you want.

But he accepted you the way you are. He never reproached you for negatively influencing his mentality or life, even though you knew he felt it too. He always listened to you, he was with you even at 2 in the morning when you were crying on the bathroom floor with your knees to your chest, and you knew it wasn't right. It wasn't right for him to go through, basically, what you were going through. But no matter how much you told him you could do it without his help, Max was coming back more insistently than ever.

He came up with the idea to start therapy. "You have to find out why you feel this way. Go at least once, see how it is, if you don't like it or feel that it doesn't help you, you will give up, okay?" That was a year and a half ago.

The psychologist gave you a diagnosis from the first session: Major Depressive Disorder. Sure you knew what the three words meant, but you didn't know what it meant to have a label on your condition.

"A major depressive disorder is characterized by one or more of these depressive episodes. the diagnosis of major depressive disorder requires depressed mood or anhedonia which is the loss of interest in pleasure and five or more signs or symptoms for the SIGECAPS mnemonic for a 2-week period. (SIGECAPS) Sleep Disturbance, loss of Interest, feeling Guilty, feeling fatigued and low in Energy, having decreased Concentration, decreased or increased Appetite and been agitated and slow and having Suicidal ideation."

It sounds incredible to you. Suicidal thoughts? Not everyone has a thought, somewhere, behind their mind 'What if I disappeared?'

You were prescribed Prozac and Zoloft and it helped. You weren't always sad anymore, you could go to the races with Max and support him as a normal girlfriend does. You apologized to my friends who tried to help me and whose lives you made impossible and you managed to get back to work, from home anyway. Sure, you still had moments when you felt like you weren't 100% yourself but not like before. You did therapy twice a week and the psychologist was happy with your evolution.

But being the stupid ass that you are, you stopped taking the medication. You took the last pill on Friday. Because you were fine. You felt ok, everyone around you told you you were better, you were doing amazing, so you were cured, right? Or so you thought. Saturday was normal. Sunday was not. Your mood and energy were very low. You woke up at like 2 in the afternoon. That is not unusual for you. You’re used to it. You were sad. You were exhausted. You knew that feeling like this was “no excuse” so you tried to force yourself to do it anyway. Typical of your life. You feel like you had already taken so much off work because of the triple-header, you were for three weeks attached to the hips with Max.

The only thing you thought of was dying. And that terrified you. And Max senses something was wrong. But he didn't want to tell something and ending up being wrong and you being upset by his misinterpretation. But, yes, he sensed that you were becoming your old self.

"Hey, babe," he snapped you out of your daydreaming. A tragic one, where you were finally at peace and Max was crying for you. You were on the verge of crying yourself at the mere image of Max in your head. But you pushed it far from your mind, somewhere in a dark corner for you to find it at an appropriate time to fantasize about your dying. "How about we go to a picnic? It's sunny outside."

Yes, the wheater was amazing. It was finally summer and you could go outside and spend some time with Max. But your brain literally is tricking you into thinking you don't deserve to enjoy the sunny day. Why? You don't have an answer.

"I'm not really in the mood, Max. Sorry."

You are not in the mood. That was his affirmation. You are not ok.

"You feeling good?"

"Yeah. Just tired I guess."

"But you just woke up."

You shrugged. He was right. You just woke up, so why do you feel like you were carrying a ton of bricks on your shoulders? You couldn't walk. You almost felt like 18 months ago. And that is when it hit you. And Max, at the same time.

"Still taking your meds, I hope."

Silence. Your mind was like overcrowded and you couldn’t take it anymore. You grabbed your head and pulled your hair because you wanted it to stop. You were thinking that you didn’t know what to think. You didn’t know how to think. You didn’t know how you felt. You were like anxious-depressed-angry-miserable-irritable all in one. Your head was spinning with thoughts. Thoughts were talking over thoughts. So fast that you couldn’t even make out one complete sentence. It was just too much for you to handle. You just wanted someone to kill you.

Max came to you and he hugged you so hard you thought he could crush your bones right there and then. You calmed down eventually. But now you were embarrassed. Because Max saw you, again, at your lowest. Because you promised you'll get better, and for a while, you were better, but now you are fucked and back into square one. All those money on therapy and your pills, for what? For you to stop taking them because you thought you were feeling better? Well, you definitely were not ok, nor you'll be. So, yeah, being fucked sounded good.

Max brought you the medicine and a glass of water. Taking the pills again? For what? The pills only fuel the feeling that everything is fine and that you are a normal person. Nothing was good and you were not a normal person.

But you took the pills. And you looked Max in the eyes and you wanted to die. He seemed crushed. He was sad, devastated, maybe angry but definitely disappointed. In you. Because maybe you don't realize this, but while you were doing good, he was doing great. He knew you could be on your own so he stopped worrying that much, and that could also be seen in his driving. He was winning more races, he was at his best and now he was at his lowest. Because you were at your lowest; co-dependency and shit.

"I'm sorry, baby. I thought I was doing well enough to stop taking the meds," you say in a broken voice but the tears are yet to appear. He stroked your hair and kissed you on your forehead.

"You should have told me. You don't have to go thru this alone. I am here."

"Yeah, you are here. But you don't have to be!" you snapped. Irritability, one thing your depression came with. "I am just a burden for you. And no, this does not come from the fact I stopped taking my pills. You took care of me like I was a child, and, fuck it, you don't deserve this."

"Stop talking like this, alright? If I would suffer from depression you would have done the same thing. You would have taken care of me. Or am I wrong?"

"You are not wrong. To be honest, I don't think I would be here if it wasn't for you, but I don't want you to be. It's obvious that I would never get better. This is me. I am fucked in the head, half wishing I was dead and I am just bringing you down."

"Don't tell me this is a fucking break up, Y/N." he narrows his brows and looks at your features to make sure you were being serious.

“I’ll leave, and the world will move on. I just wish I could see it. See how much better everything is when I’m gone.”

"What the fuck are you talking about? Is this a break-up or a suicidal vocal note?"

You broke down. Crying can be cathartic and healthy, but if it goes on too long it can lock your body in a feeling of despair. Even if your mind works through the problem that caused the crying, because your body is still feeling the physical effects it will cause your mind to revert to the negative state. It's not sadness. It's dread and paralysis. You had a certain feeling of emptiness and purposelessness.

“You’re good at finding things. Find me a reason to stay,” you say between sobs.

"You want me to find you a reason to stay alive or to stay in this relationship? To be frank, I can name a thousand reasons, but it all depends on you."

Max hugs you from behind and you lay your head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat that was stronger than ever. You allowed yourself to inhale Max's scent, a soothing scent you could get drunk on.

"I want to believe you love me. I mean, I love you and I consider you the love of my life, you know? We are so young and I know it doesn't feel like it, but I promise you, I'm gonna marry you someday, even if right now you don't think you're gonna make it till tomorrow. So, yeah, this is reason number one," he said and pressed a kiss to your cheek. "This is not the worst you have been through in life. Remember where you were 18 months ago; you had no idea what was wrong with you. Now you know and you know you can be better. I know you get sick of those pills, but maybe, in the future, you won't need them. Isn't that exciting? This was reason number two," he said and pressed another kiss to your cheek. He was going to do that every time he would give you a reason. "Have you been to all the beautiful places around the world? Sure, you came to a few Grand Prix, but you never saw Great Ocean Road in Australia, you know Daniel promised he would take us there someday. You never saw Pamukkale in Turkey or Japan in Cherry Blossom season or the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. There are many places you need to visit, baby. So, yeah, this was reason number three. I don't know if you want me to continue but I can give you one more reason. Reason number four. Do it for you, baby. You deserve to live and be happy. I know you can be happy and I promise you I will do my best to help you. You just have to take it one step at a time. You just have to let me in. Let me help you, baby."

You turn around, facing him now. You loved him, with all of your heart. You love him for who he is. You love him because he literally came into your life as your lifeline. You love him because he helped you crawl up the deep bottomless abyss of depression. You love him because he had the patience and the audacity to bear with your depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, your phobias, your mood swings, your temperamental and short-tempered nature, your overthinking, your being overprotectiveness, and possessiveness. You love him because never once he thought of giving up on you in your hard times. You love him because he stands by you like a rock of unwavering support and he’s someone you can fall back on. You love him because he listens to you talking non-stop about your past, your pains, your fears, and your losses without complaining even once. You love him because he rediscovered you and helped you find yourself again when you were lost in darkness. You love him because he filled you with confidence and hope and strength and belief and determination. You love him because he believes you are the best when you set your mind on something and no one can stop you from achieving your goals. You love him because he is protective, caring, understanding, loving, and easy to be with while never being too suffocating or taking up your space. You love him because sooner or later he does everything you ask of him and does with his whole attention. You love him because whatever endeavor he engages in, he likes to give his 100% and hates doing half-hearted things. You love him because he can decode the nuances in your voice and judge your mood just perfectly. You love him because he read you like an open book and he can hear your silence. You love him because he never doubts your loyalty, your intentions, your hard work, and your million issues. You love him because no matter how busy he might get he never forgets that you are waiting for his message or his call. You love him because he keeps you in his priorities. You love him because he gave you a passion you never knew you had. You love him because he very strongly believes that you deserve the best of everything. You love him because he is empathic, kind, magnanimous, thoughtful, and down to Earth. You love him because he has eyes for no one but you. You love him because he wants to see you healthy, wealthy, prosperous, famous and he wants you to hold back at nothing, for no one, he wants you to be a Go-Getter. And most importantly you love him because no one ever loved you like he did.

"I will let you in," you say and you kiss him hard. "I'm sorry for the scene I caused."

"Don't be. It happens."

#max verstappen imagine #max verstappen oneshot #max verstappen #f1 fanfiction #f1 oneshot #f1 one shot #f1 2021 #f1 #f1 fandom #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #formula one oneshot #formula one imagine #formula 1 oneshot #formula one #formula 1 #red bull racing

151 notes · View notes

suchalonelysunflower · 3 years

Text

Tell Me What You’re Thinking (c.h)

Pairing: Calum Hood x Fem! Reader

Summary: You overhear something you shouldn’t hear. But Calum will make it right, won’t he?

Warnings: ANGST. Language (including insults), mentions of alcohol, drugs and cheating. MC with low self esteem. Some grammar mistakes (English is not my first language, I’m sorry)

Word count: 4 k

Author’s Note: hi I’m back with the angsty shit. This is very self indulgent, and I put Mitchy as a bad guy here, so sorry if you like him? Reblogs, Commets, Feedback and likes are very welcomed and encouraged! I love to hear from you guys ❤️ hope you like it and Happy Reading ✨🦋🌻

My materialist // wanna be part of my tag list?

You sighed as you finished your last paper. It was finals week and you were officially done with your exams and term papers for the semester. The last couple of weeks were rough and no one knew that more than you and your boyfriend Calum who has been by your side through this whole stressing process.

You smiled to yourself as you remembered the encouraging words that Calum often said to you. He knew how hard you worked in school and at your part time job in a law firm, and you appreciated how much he cared for you in times of stress and frustrations. Always cheering you up from the bleechers as you made a name for yourself.

Calum promised that once you were done with school for the semester, he was going to take you out on a well deserved Holiday, just the two of you and Duke as you celebrated another six months worth of work done. Everything was already planned for the next weekend and you couldn’t wait.

You reread your final essay one more time and decided that it was enough for today and if there were any mistakes left, then you’ll deal with them tomorrow. Now the only thing in your mind was a cozy blanket and a feel good movie. But first, you needed to get some food and drinks for your mini celebratory self care session.

The thought of asking Calum to come join you crossed your mind, but you quickly remembered that tonight was boys night. Every couple of weeks Calum and his friends have a little night out to catch up and decompress all of the stress of the week. Tonight was Calum’s turn to host boys night as they decided to have a quiet night in, so they must be having a good time downstairs and you didn’t want to ruin the mood.

With that thought in mind, you carefully placed your laptop on Calum’s side of the bed and carefully untangled your legs from under the covers so you wouldn't wake up Duke, who snuggled with you every time you had to work to keep you company. You put on one of Calum’s hoodies and headed downstairs trying your best to not make any sound.

Before you even reached the last step of the stairs, you could already hear your boyfriend’s laugh and it made your heart flutter. Even after almost three years of being together, his laugh still gives you butterflies every time you hear it, falling even more in love than what is possible.

Once you were in the kitchen, you started looking into the cupboards as you searched for your favorite snacks, but in the end you were unable to find any, thinking that maybe Calum has hidden them somewhere on the top shelves where he knows you can’t reach.

Letting out a small huff, you debated with yourself the option of climbing up the counter or admitting defeat and go ask your boyfriend for some help. Luckily, you didn’t have to decide as you heard a familiar voice behind you.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite scholar” Said Ashton with a light chuckle “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be out tonight since it’s boys night”

You smiled as you let him wrap his arms around you to give you a hug. Ashton was the first friend you made when you moved to LA a couple of years back, he was the one who introduced you to Calum in the first place, and you were very thankful for having him as a best friend.

“I had to finish up some term papers, so I had to reschedule my girl’s night for tomorrow” You explained to the black haired man “And what are you doing here? Need a refill?” You ask, pointing to the empty glass he was holding.

Ashton nodded, “Yeah, but I also needed a time out. Mitchy is kinda being very obnoxious today” He said with a sigh.

Mitchy Collins was a close friend with the boys for many years now, but you can’t say that he is a friend of yours. It’s not like you haven’t tried to befriend the singer, on the contrary, you both had multiple chances to get to know each other but he either ignored you or made things very awkward between you. And, to be honest, you were not that excited to become his friend either. There was something weird about him, a bad vibe per se, that made you not trust him at all. He was always very loud, obnoxious and downright rude sometimes and it made you very uncomfortable. Both Calum and Ashton knew about your uneasiness with Mitchy, so they didn’t push it too far and you were thankful for that.

“Oh?” You asked, trying to mask your discomfort “What is he saying this time?”

“Just a bunch of bullshit, to be honest. He is very high right now and thinks he’s above everyone else” Ashton said, taking a seat on one of the kitchen island stools. You did the same as you offered him a glass of water.

“Are you high right now?” You chuckled.

“Nope. Calum and I decided to stay clean tonight cause tomorrow we start early in the studio and the weed kinda messes up our pipes” He explains.

“What about Luke and Mikey?”

“They are not here yet, they said they needed to finish up something for a song and then they will meet us here” Ashton shrugged, not giving it too much importance “And what about you, darling? How was your day?”

You began to tell Ashton about how you finally finished the semester and how excited you were for your little getaway with Calum next week. However, every couple of minutes you were interrupted by a loud laugh or an obnoxious comment coming from the living room where the rest of the boys were sitting. Sometimes their loud comments started loud conversations that neither of you could help but overhear, but you did your best to ignore them. But some things are easier said than done.

“I’m telling you man! You can do so much better” You heard Mitchy’s voice echoing through the house, followed by a chuckle from Calum who mumbled something among the lines of “Fuck off”

You furrowed your eyebrows as you stopped the conversation you had with Ashton in order to pay attention to what was being said down the hall. You looked at Ash with a confused face, wondering what they could be saying but at the same time not knowing if you should continue listening to their private affairs. You were about to open up your mouth to continue what you were saying until another comment made by Mitchy caught your attention.

“You have to admit she is the worst sometimes. All she does is boss you around like you are some kind of puppet. She is the definition of annoying”

You sat up straight as you looked at Ashton, who mirrored your puzzled expression.

“Is- is he talking about me?” You asked in a whisper.

Ashton shook his head “I don’t thi-”

“I swear! What does she even do besides work and study all the time? She barely has time for you. You said it yourself! And when she’s not doing any of those things? She’s nagging around and clinging to you like you’re a damn purse! That’s who Y/N is”

You froze in the spot. So they were talking about you… and did Calum really say you don’t have time for him? You don’t even get time to yourself and he knows that! He said he was okay with it, that he understood and supported you through and through… Guess not.

“I still don’t know what you saw in her, dude. She’s just plain boring, playing to be a good girl when in reality she has zero personality” He continued his rant “She does nothing for you! Honestly! I’m surprised you made it this far with that bitch”

You knew that wasn’t true. He never really made an effort to get to know you! how could he be saying all those stuff? You did everything for Calum, all your goals, your plans are for the both of you. How could he know that if he never really talked to you? But you had to admit that that first comment really hurt. You were always doubting yourself at the beginning of your relationship with Calum, always feeling like you weren’t good enough, or pretty enough, or smart or fun or hot… To fight off those kinds of feelings was a difficult job to say the least, but Calum was always there to fight them with you, reassuring you that he loved you. He loved every part of you and he will love you forever.

“Is she at least a decent fuck? Cause I don’t see her doing anything remotely interesting in bed” Mitchy laughed “If she’s not she’s just wasting your time”

You noticed how Ashton suddenly stiffened next to you when he heard Mitchy’s comments. His knuckles turned white as he gripped his fists at the side of his body “Okay, that’s enough” But you were quicker, grabbing onto his shirt as a sign to make him stay there with you and not cause a scene.

His eyes found yours and you could see the anger build up on them, you knew that he would defend you no matter what and you loved him for that. But you knew Calum would defend you over there, he wouldn't let him talk about you that way.

“Ash, please” You pleaded, tugging on his shirt for him to take a seat again. But he preferred to stay standing next to you, almost like guarding and shielding you from any other comment that might hurt your feelings.

“I can’t let him talk about you like that!” He hissed. But you just shook your head.

“I know, Ash. I know. But Cal will handle it” You said confidently, trying to keep yourself together.

You knew Calum would not let those comments slide. Even if you weren’t in the room with him, those comments were awful and very hurtful, no one deserves to be treated like that, especially by someone as close as a friend of his.

You waited for his intervention, but your heart crushed when the only thing you heard from him were laughs.

“She’s a good fuck” That’s all he said.

The grip you had on Ashton’s shirt suddenly flattered as you fought the lump in your throat “Y-you said he wasn’t high” You whispered to Ashton, who was just as frozen as you were after hearing his best mate’s comment.

“He’s not” He said, standing tall next to you. As much as he wanted to go in there and give the guys an earful, he knew you needed him here with you.

Out of all the things Mitchy has said, out of all the insults and belitments, that’s what he says? That you’re a good fuck?

You knew that you could be annoying sometimes when you got happy. You just wanted to share that happiness with everyone around you and you thought… you thought that Calum liked that. You were not a bad girlfriend, you always tried your best to make him as happy as he makes you; to love him as much as he loves you, cause he loves you. Doesn’t he?

If he loves you then why is he letting his friend say all of this stuff about you? Why is he not saying anything? Does- does he agree with him?

The tears started rolling silently, half of you not believing what you were hearing while the other half clang to the idea of Calum defending you at some point.

“Oh I know!” Said Mitchy after a while “I can introduce you to someone! Right now, actually. Her name’s Vanessa and she’s crazy hot, dude”

He can’t be serious.

Ashton looked at you with pleading, furious eyes. Almost begging you to go and let him deal with them. But you grabbed his hand and made him stay. This has to be it. This has to be the chance for Calum to say something.

“You’re kidding right?” The curly haired man asked. Making you let out a breath of relief.

“Not at all! Think about it. We go, you meet her, you fuck her and done!” He said like it was nothing “Y/N will never find out cause she’s stuck up her ass. Your fans will never know or they won’t care cause they don’t even know you are in a ”relationship” to begin with! You are single to their eyes. And you get a decent fuck from someone who looks the part and knows how to have fun! It’s a win - win!”

Your heart stopped as you waited for Calum to answer. To tell Mitchy to go fuck himself. To tell him that he loves you and would never do that to you.

“I don’t know, man. I’ll think about it” Calum shrugged “Plus, if we go out I’ll have to tell Y/N. She’s upstairs finishing some shit for her university”

“Fucking hell… see! I told you! A stuck up bitch” Mitchy said, making Calum laugh.

But their laughs and the rest of the conversation grew numb to your ears. Your body trembled as the tears came flooding in, holding in the sobs that were tearing up your throat. How could he? He was really thinking of cheating on you.

You could feel every little piece of your heart shattered as you search for some kind of leverage that could hold you still so you don’t fall and break. You felt ill, disgusted and heartbroken.

As you tried to get up, you felt your knees buckle and almost fell to the ground if it weren’t for Ashton holding you up. He was still there and you knew by the look in his eyes that he was not going anywhere.

He was just as disgusted and angry as you. He couldn’t believe all the things that were said tonight, all the things that Calum failed to make it right and hurt you in the process. He knew that if he were in that room that the conversation would’ve died the moment it started. He would never let them talk about you that way.

“I-I can’t-“ You cried, moments away from hyperventilating “I can’t stay here, Ash”

He nodded, pulling you into a hug and kissing the top of your head for reassurance “Go upstairs, love. Grab your stuff and we’re getting out of here. You’re staying with me tonight, okay?” Ashton let go of you and started walking towards the living room where the rest of the guys were still talking.

“Ash” You called, making him turn around “D-don’t make a scene, please”

He sighed as he muttered a quiet “okay” before turning around, leaving you alone as you went upstairs to grab the bare necessities to spend the night, you’ll figure out the rest later. Right now you just needed to get out of here.

You opened the bedroom door and almost collapsed at the entrance. Duke came running towards you, sensing that there was something wrong as he started to whine and tried to jump into your arms. That only made you cry harder as you realized that you were leaving him too. You fell to the floor and patted the puppy as he tried to wipe off your tears with his tongue, breaking your heart even more.

A loud voice cut you out of your thoughts. You could hear Ashton yelling, although you couldn’t exactly figure out what he was saying. This meant that Calum knew you heard everything and that, if he had at least some decency left in him, he would come and get you. You needed to act fast.

You stood up and grabbed the first big bag that you could find. Inside of it you threw your laptop, your books, your charger, some clothes and some bathroom essentials. You debated on whether or not to take with you a picture of you, Calum and Duke… it was your favorite memory with them. But the damage was stronger than the nostalgia, so you threw that picture to the ground before you left the room that once belonged to you.

You were running down the stairs when you passed Calum running up them. You ignored him as he stopped in his tracks and followed you to the hall.

“Y/N!” He said, desperate to try and stop you “Y/N, baby, please! Hear me out!”

“Hear what?! I already heard enough!” You said as you turned around.

Calum’s face was almost unrecognizable. The fear in his eyes, the desperation in his voice and his close off body language was not something you’d normally see in him. The “I fucked up” expression showed all the regret in the world, yet you didn’t seem to care at the moment.

“I. Heard. All of it, Calum” You cried through gritted teeth, anger boiling inside of you as you stared at the man you thought you’d marry “All of it and not once did I hear you say something to try and defend me. How do you think that made me feel?!”

“Baby-“ He tried, but you cut him off.

“I work my ass off all day and night for you, for us. For me to go and see you on tour like you ask me to, knowing damn well I would go to the ends of this fucking earth for you! Catching up extra classes and shifts so I can go with you. I cancel everything to be with you. I gave up everything for us to be together. I barely even have time for myself as I try my best to be something worthy of you!” Your tears were staining your face, but you pushed away the pain for a moment, knowing that once you break down it’s over “I try my best to be a good girlfriend, a good friend! I loved you with all my heart and this is what I get after almost three years? A good fuck? That 's it?”

Calum’s world fell to the floor as he tried hard to fight off the lump in his throat, whispering in a broken voice “Loved?”

“That’s all you get from it?” You ask defeated “Calum I would’ve never let my friends call you names, insult you or offend you in any way. I would’ve gone to the ends of the world for you, defended you till the day I die. All because I trusted you to do the same for me and you failed me, Calum. You broke me. You let him call me a bitch, a stuck up, worthless, stupid, bossy, annoying… should I go on? Cause those words are now printed in my memory, next to you agreeing to all of those things. Is that what you think of me?”

“Baby, I swear it’s not like that!” He said, grabbing your hand and trying to make you stay “I fucked up! I know! You are right, I failed you and you don’t know how much I hate myself for it! But please, love. You know I could never think of you like that… you are the most wonderful person there is! You are kind, smart, loving, beautiful-“

“Did you cheat on me?” You ask bluntly.

“What?”

“Did you cheat on me?”

“No!” Calum said instantly “No, I would never!”

You nodded “Yet, you thought of it.”

Calum opened his mouth to say something, but you cut him off again “Is that why you never made our relationship public? So you could have a free pass whenever you want to? Cause I thought it was to protect our privacy, for us to have a normal life in the midst of the chaos that is to date a celebrity. When you told all of that I thought “wow, this is a guy with integrity and with values” Yet I don’t know what to believe now. I thought you loved me-“

“I do love you-“

“I thought you loved me” You said, the tears were already dry as the anger came flooding in “But you don’t hurt the people you love. You don’t break them like you did to me. You don’t let anyone hurt them, even if they are not in the room with you. And you don’t cheat on them like you were going to tonight with that girl Vanessa while I waited here like an idiot for you to come home and spend some time with me”

You pull your hand out of his grasp, holding onto your bag as you heard Calum cry “Y/N-“

“You are free to do whatever you want now, Calum. Cause to the eyes of your fans you are single, and I am as well”

You turned around and saw Ashton waiting by the door with his keys in his hand. He opened up the door for you as you walked by, ignoring all of Calum’s pleads for you to stay.

“So you are just going to leave?!” He yelled, not knowing what else to do. “Whe- Where are you taking her Ashton?”

The black haired man made sure that you were already sitting in his car before turning around to face his friend “I’m taking here with me and away from you cause that’s what she needs now. So don’t bother calling or showing up cause you are not welcome right now. And don’t even try to call Luke or Michael cause they already know and we won’t support you on this” Ashton said as calm as he could. He already told him off, but the anger of seeing you cry in front of him still resided in him.

“I- I love her , Ash! You can’t just take her away from me. I’m her boyfriend!”

“Correction, you were her boyfriend. And I can take her away and I will cause she asked me to” He said taking an intimidating step closer to Calum “Cause while you were here talking trash about her behind her back, planning on how to cheat on her. I was back there, holding her while she broke down crying cause she couldn’t believe that her boyfriend didn’t stand up for her and let a fucking stranger insult her all night long! You weren’t there to see her eyes water or her lip tremble. You weren’t there when she begged me with tears in her eyes to not make a scene cause all she wanted to do was to get out of here. She is the most amazing person ever, she is a light in all of our lives and you extinguished her without a second thought. You might be my friend, but she is too and I love her and I will defend her no matter what, she doesn’t deserve this kind of crap you just showed to her. So don’t count on me to try and help you get her back, I won’t blame her if she doesn’t”

Calum felt small as Ashton walked away from him, closing the door with a bang and leaving him all alone in his big house. Well, almost.

“Dude, that was intense” Mitchy laughed as he placed a hand on Calum’s shoulder “So, wanna go now?”

A blind rage fell over Calum as he heard the mocking laughs of his so-called friend, acting like his life just didn’t fall apart in front of him.

Calum grabbed the singer by the neck of his shirt and pushed him forcefully against the wall “You are going to get out of my house and never come back. You hear me?!” He yelled to his face, almost letting out steam from his nostrils as he was sure he could kill him right now.

“Dude, what’s wrong with yo-“

Calum quickly grabbed a bottle from his nearby mini bar, suddenly gaining all the courage he should’ve had hours ago, and throwed it to Mitchy’s feet, making him jump “Get the fuck out!” He yelled, grabbing bottle after bottle, glass after glass and throwing them into the ground “OUT!”

Only when the last bottle was smashed into pieces did he realize he was completely alone.

And only then did he allow himself to cry for the loss of the love of his life, walking away from him and leaving him to pick up the pieces of two broken hearts.

part 2

Tags: @iknowyouthinkimbulletproof @talksoprettyjjx @mystic-232

695 notes · View notes

papers4me · 3 years

Text

Fruits Basket Manga Review, ch (92-93)

That was painful & so well-written! This analysis will focus on kyokyo mainly & faintly on her effect on kyo. Although, her story affects tohru’s life immensely, I won’t analyze tohru’s part & will wait until it’s a tohru’s chapter to use the knowledge of kyoko’s past to better read tohru’s mind & understand her decisions! Can’t wait! after all, that’s why I’ve read the manga to begin with!

-Kyoko’s Atonement: (the weight of words):

Kyoko breaks down after she learns she’s expecting. Why? cuz she hurt her mom. The notion that “yeah my parents caused me emotional trauma & so I’mma hurt them as well” is toxic & burdening as it starts a cycle of pain. Kyoko was right. She had no idea how her mom felt seeing her rebel, or follow violence or hear her harsh words. I’m not cleansing the mom from guilt nor responsibility. I’m just saying since the mom’s pov is blocked from us, assuming shes similar to the dad is wrong. kyoko’s fear of being punished with a child similar to herself is genuine, realistic & refreshing to see expressed in anime! usually character like kyoko are cool & brave, but here she’s humanly weak & doubtful. LOVE IT!

Moreover, in furuba words weigh on ppl & have consequences. We see this with kyo. His dad destroyed him verbally with words “ not my fault, it’s yours” that kyo echoes back to yuki! meaning the consequences of the dad’s words cause harm to his wife, kyo & even yuki!. Kyo was tormented with his own words for long time & clung to them even more in order not to resort to suicide! “ not my fault, it’s the rat’s” . Words can crush you down so bad if you hear them from loved ones, & worse if you utter them back to other loved ones! here kyoko learned that just the mere thought of her future child echoing her words back to her would torment her to death! Excellent writing!

-Katsuya invented Furuba’s vision (Accepting weakness & moving on):

The teachings of kyoko & tohru were really katsuya’s after all. I’m fne with that. These teachings are the core of Furuba’s vision. He tells kyoko to accept that she’s weak, afraid & doubtful. it’s okay. But gives her tools to move on. Your kid isn’t you. They’re an individual person. As parents all we can do is give love/hugs (sth kyoko’s parents didnt do), listen to them (sth yuki’s parents didnt do) & if they do sth wrong will explain it & teach them well (sth kyo’s parents didn’t do, his wrong deed was being born a cat spirit & he was hated for it with no explanation, mom gave lots of “fake” love & escaped by death, dad became a raging monster). Accepting weakness & moving on is what the cursed sohmnas needed to do to heal & what tohru taught them. Off course, tohru herself struggled to follow her own teachings & that’s amazingly realistic!

-Kyoko’s guilt (punishment brings ease):

Kyoko wanted to be punished so harsh for her husband’s death. The gossip got to her. She failed him as a life’s companion. Taking care of our loved ones is a duty we carry with much love & care. Them slipping away is perceived as us failing by none than ourselves. The thing is, death comes with no warning at times. It was his time to leave. Accepting it or not, wont bring him back, but accepting it will help kyoko deal with pain while not accepting will cause more pain for her & tohru.

One of the most painful things abt grief is that it’s personal. Life continues around you. Only you feel it. “didn’t the world end when katsuya died”. No kyoko. Only you died emotionally. Only him died physically. Kyo once said “ mom why didn’t you kill me instead”. A different reaction to grief, guilt & pain, but same conclusion: neither katsuya nor kyo’s mom are coming back no matter how much pain kyo or kyoko felt.

Kyoko found ease in emotional death, neglecting & refusing life, punishing herself for staying after him.

kyo found ease in rage & blaming others as he his father did, later he’ll escape to emotional & physical slow death “ cat cage/confinement”.

tohru... found ease in pretending "I’m okay” & her mom is alive.. but not physically.. emotionally, so she’ll ignore the truth & live only for her.

Didn’t I say grief is harsh, weird & very very personal. It’s hard to explain, deal with & heal. The mere words of consolation hurt cuz the grieving ones dont want to accept loved one are really gone. Her dad’s harsh words cemented the “emotional death” that kyoko felt. I’m not needed. neither katsuya. nor parents in general. depression. misery. sadness. emptiness.

-The tv show helped to trigger kyoko’s desire to “meet” katsuya. She has already reached the conclusion that she isnt needed. So, the tv show with their words of the deceased wanting you to be happy. triggered her into misinterpreting the words as to mean her death NOT fuel her to live in his memory as intended.

- “Loosing your way first before finding your answer” is okay & so human!:

Ironically..Tohru... was the person Kyoko was punishing NOT herself: By being emotionally dead, kyoko neglected her daughter. Her world shouldnt be just one person. There are others. Katsuya himself gave her a person to love. Tohru. Kyoko chose death & unintentionally set tohru into a world of loneliness 10 times harsher thsn what kyoko faced. She was about to do, but was saved by a nameless child who reminded her of tohru. She chose wrong first but later saw her answer. Kyo chose death by accepting the confinement & he, too, unintentionally set tohru into a world of loneliness 10 times harsher if he wasnt with her. He chose wrong first but later saw his answer. Off course kyo’s story is more developed & complicated as he dealt with bigger issues than just tohru & his answer wasn't just loving tohru alone but also loving himself & choosing to live for them both: himself & tohru.

-Kyo’s guilt is a concussion thought eating him alive:

Part of why kyo’s story was one of the most human & complex is due him loosing his way first, failing, repeating mistakes “ I always though that hurting ppl was the only thing I was good at, after all, isnt that why mom died?” Kyo’s nightmare being a conscious effect of hearing tohru’s talk abt “ videos & memories of loved ones” is 1000 times stronger & more human than a cliche effect of seeing a “ hat” & to revive a a blocked memory... What the hell!! truly disgusting how the emotional weigh is reduced for stupid cliche drama !!!!!! ..

Anyway, kyo actively & consciously wanted punishment .He was sure that kyoko blamed him” I wont forgive you” can only mean what it literally means. The purpose of the nightmare is to cause kyo to seek “ emotional death” like kyoko & to loose his path more. It is meant to prepare kyo to refuse tohru even more. Therefore, the pay off at the climax will be better & stronger.

Reading kyo’s inner thoughts will never not be refreshing!!! Also, the slow burn is cooked on low , hot fire , so the pay off will be the most delicious there is!

Side Notes:

I’ve stated my feelings regarding the age gap between kyoko & katsuya in last chapter’s preview post. I’m done with it & won’t let it interfere with my analysis of kyoko nor tohru.

The idea of just being together as a fun hanging out activity without being bothered much of where reminds ms so much of kyo & tohru!! we see them being happy together in the anime in kazuma’s house, shigure’s rooftop, cooking pancake in the kitchen! I really like this domestic feel of romance! it contradicts the notion of expensive restaurant with the girl wearing a breathtaking dress to woo the guy for it to be utterly romantic as we see in movies, & other stories.

NGL, katsuya looked sexy waiting home.. damn it! >_<

I cried watching tohru between her parents, how they acted & how loved she was! T_T. it reminded me of my niece How her dad’s death affected her! She was the apple of his eyes.. T_T.

Tohru is indeed a rice ball! her dad gave her a masculine name while tohru is so feminine! his reasoning is “finding salty taste in sweet things make the taste better & stronger, kinda giving it a hidden flavour”, the rice ball has a pickle inside it & it’s what makes the taste so savory & delicious!

Grandpa’s “ chance meetings could lead to variety of outcomes, good or bad” YES! kyo/tohru/yuki meeting each other by chance. Fiction make it look weird, but trust me, real life has those by dozens!

“ i wonder how lost you’ll be, how much time you’ll need to get your answer”. He will screw up so bad, kyoko! it will be so good! one of the best screw up’s I’ve seen! so painful for him & tohru & amazingly written!

Kyo’s nightmare being connected to him remembering/dreaming of kyoko’s story is bigger effect than opening the ep with it & having the cause be sth that happened last ep, a week ago... the effect is NOT the same.

Momiji is so cute!!! did his curse break here or not yet? he seemed as tall as tohru.

Writing tohru worried abt kyo after seeing him pale is the tohru I know!! Not that stupid girl who watches the guy she loves have a panic attach in se3, ep6, then goes in ep 7...” dahhhh.. Jeez.. I duno why kyo is sleeping until now.. better laugh & make cute rice cakes” giggle giggle...That scene got me so furious even when I first saw it!! THIS IS NOT TOHRU! tohru cried for a stupid story that haru told abt puppets!! she’ll forget the person she challenges herself for is sick?! ugh!

I love seeing yuki & kyo chill & cool around each other.

Kyoko being fully dependent on katsuya can be a factor in her grief, but I’ve seen cases where both partners are independent but still be completely broken after the others’ death. Grief isn’t logical at all & is extremely personal.

#Fruits Basket #fruits basket manga #ch 92 #ch 93 #sad paper #Anime Only #manga spoilers

95 notes · View notes

pla-teau · 3 years

Text

WANDAVISION EPISODE 6 THOUGHTS

SPOILERS AHEAD. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

GOOD GOD I HAVE A LOT OF THOUGHTS

GIF NOT MINE

pietro maximoff as ‘himself’ | in the opening credits, pietro is introduced as playing himself? this just made me more suspicious about him and who he really is. it’s like wanda (since she’s the one broadcasting her show) trying to convince us, and herself, that this is her dead brother.

billy talking to us | i know tommy talks to the camera at the beginning for a brief minute but it’s mainly billy talking. i think this was a hint at his incoming powers. plus, in promo trailers for the ‘modern family’ episode, wanda’s the one talking to the camera. i bet we’ll see the kids talk to the camera in that episode but i just find it interesting that billy’s the one leading us through the beginning of the episode. plus, in rewatching the episode, pietro seems to be aware of billy talking to us and reacts to when billy talks about vision and wanda’s relationship going through a rough patch.

haydick hayward’s an ass | there’s no denying that hayward has something up his suspicious ass. first with showing the footage of wanda stealing vision’s body. then, putting in a missile and planning on killing wanda. yea, the five years were hard for everyone - no one’s denying it but there’s just something that isn’t right. we clearly see that he’s hiding something when darcy finds a file of sorts that only hayward can see and that he’s been able to track vision without telling the team. either he’s got a personal vendetta or he’s covering for something more sinister. personally, i think he’s just pissed that wanda, one of the most powerful beings in the universe, took away vision’s body when he needed it to create more weapons and whatever else he was planning. i wanted monica to punch him in the throat when he told her it was better that she wasn’t around when her mom died. bless monica for keeping her cool.

wanda’s interaction with herb | their brief interaction makes me believe that herb is just as aware as agnes (if she happens to be a victim in all this and not agatha harkness) about what’s happening. we got a hint about it in episode 3 when he tried to tell vision what geraldine’s purpose in westview was. we see him mimic agnes from the previous episode when he asks wanda if there’s anything she wants changed. he looks to her the same way agnes did when she was thrown off script. both these times involve vision throwing everything off. vision’s the one that’s been off script from the beginning of the episode this time around instead of after a weird event.

residents being in a loop or immobile | as vision gets farther from wanda and explores westview, it’s evident that there’s something off about the people. we get that shot of the woman and presumably her husband stuck in a time loop of hanging decorations and putting a pumpkin on the front steps. the woman not only sheds a tear but her hands look purplish presumably because of the cold or being stuck doing the same task for god knows how long. clearly, the woman’s in pain and is aware that she can’t break free. as vision gets closer to the loop, residents are completely immobile and stuck wherever they stand. it’s eerie and further proves that this may be wanda’s doing and wherever she is, it’s easy for the residents to be active or for her to control those near her. it could also mean that the closer you are to the hex’s border, that you become immobile as you’re farther removed from the fantasy life wanda has created.

yo-magic commercial | by far the creepiest and most disturbing commercial in the series. i’ve seen people theorize that this commercial is referring to wanda’s detainment on the raft in civil war. it would make sense since the yogurt could represent wanda’s powers and opening the lid should be simple and easy, just like using your powers. on the raft, wanda was detained with a straitjacket and a collar on her neck so she couldn’t use her magic. the island could represent the raft since it was in the ocean. ‘yo-magic, the snack for survivors’ could represent wanda being a survivor in many instances: strücker’s experiments, the battle of sokovia and the lagos incident.

pietro’s ‘part’ | when wanda questions pietro, he gets defensive about how he’s just trying to do his part: come unexpectedly, create tension with vision, stir up trouble with the twins, and ultimately give wanda grief. grief holding a double meaning. obviously, pietro did bring wanda grief when he died in 2015 but it also means to cause trouble which he has done since his arrival to westview. whenever wanda questions him about their childhood or tries to trip him up, pietro retorts with a question or makes rather meta remarks about westview.

the details are fuzzy | the comment pietro makes after a moment of silence between them. he claims he got shot in the middle of the street and next thing he knew wanda was calling her. i think when ‘pietro’ was brought into the westview reality, his memories mixed with those of wanda’s pietro or skewed them at least - it’s probably why things seem hazy to him and can see that wanda doesn’t believe him to be the pietro she remembers. pietro knows he looks different to wanda and it’s like a comment to us because even though pietro only appeared in one movie with wanda - we the audience know he’s not the same actor. this could also be mephisto really mind tripping wanda because she would remember what her brother looked like but the memories are remembered differently. enough to keep her on edge with him and make her suspect but not want to because he also says “i knew you needed me” no stranger would say that right? of course, siblings and family can tell when another member needs them. this episode really makes you laugh at pietro’s antics but go down a rabbit hole with every line he says.

the hex’s effects on people | when darcy explains to monica that her cells have been greatly affected by her entrance and departure from the hex, it doesn’t seem like monica is surprised. maybe this is hinting that monica already has her powers or simply mean that she’s putting on a poker face to hide her fear (or astonishment) at wanda’s level of power. it’s interesting to see if wanda’s gonna be responsible for birthing some mutants or at least awakening the x gene if it hasn’t already. does it mean that anyone can simply leave or that if you leave, you’ll come out with serious side effects that are possibly life threatening? monica states at the end that she’s seen cells in remission which makes me believe that this is hinting at the x gene. we’ve seen what the hex does once you go in, but what happens if an ordinary westview resident leaves?

agnes and vision | we see agnes in her car supposedly leaving town or as she claims, she got ‘lost’. when vision takes her out of her trance, agnes seems shaken and even questions if she’s dead. she also seems to confirm that wanda is the one controlling everyone because she doesn’t even let them think about leaving westview. we see more of where vision’s memory stands because he doesn’t remember (or know) that he was an avenger and that he died (twice). when she says that all is lost, she quickly starts laughing maniacally like a witch. this again makes me think that agnes knows more than anyone what’s going on. assessing what she got from vision, she’s probably laughing because it’s amazing to her that wanda’s gotten so powerful and maybe everything is going according to plan - she just possibly couldn’t overcome wanda’s control and only has a heightened awareness of the situation. there’s no mention of ralph this episode and you would think she’d bring along her husband to leave and go to her desired destination in town. i don’t know, i still think she’s got an ulterior motive and plays a bigger part in all of this.

the twins’ conversation | after sharing a sweet moment, pietro quickly calls out the obvious - the kids. only in episode 3 did children finally come into the show through billy and tommy. now, for halloween, all the kids are out and enjoying halloween. pietro, like rapid fire, remarks that wanda probably kept them peacefully asleep in their beds and didn’t wake them until now for the “occasional holiday episode cameo” so as not to traumatize them even more since she’s always been the “empathetic twin”. he seems to know that this is all in a television reality which gives him even more awareness than any other supporting character we’ve met so far. he even goes into assessing (and somewhat praising?) wanda’s handling of this whole westview reality as ethically possible. he knows that wanda wouldn’t rewrite everything: couples and families stay together and personalities aren’t far off from what they are. with this, it heavily hints that this isn’t the pietro we’ve known in the mcu or the peter from the x-men universe. to me, this furthers the point that this ‘pietro’ is just a puppet for whoever is behind all this (or just a multiverse version of piet) since he seems more impressed than anything by wanda’s powers. also, he’s been the only one to ask what we’ve all been thinking since the first episode: how the hell did wanda do this? once again, wanda doesn’t remember how all of it started which still makes me thinks she was probably taken advantage of by someone and earlier in the episode when recounting a childhood memory, pietro comments that she’s probably suppressed the trauma hence why she doesn’t remember it the same way. at the end, this could all be wanda’s doing due to her feeling so alone and grieving that she may have suppressed that memory of how this all started.

pietro’s corpse | again, us the audience and wanda are reminded that this universe’s pietro is dead. it’s another person closest to wanda that isn’t alive - harking back to her comment about feeling so alone and endless nothingness. this may just be that when wanda lets her guard down and is possibly at peace with a situation, this one being of her accepting that this is the pietro that’s going to be her brother that sticks with her moving forward, she’s reminded of the truth - none of it is real and she can’t bring them back.

vision’s breakout from the hex | as we’ve seen in promos, vision is able to break through the hex. what we were hit with was vision nearly getting killed...again. it seems that he can’t live beyond the hex either due to him just being parts when wanda recovered him or because wanda won’t let him go. either way, vision can’t live outside of westview. it physically seems like wanda can’t let him go because as he steps out of the hex and is being torn apart, the hex looks like it’s trying to pull him back into it. i know the hex was wanda’s doing but this physically makes it seem as if wanda can’t let him go and is holding him back. it’s kind of true because since vision became more aware, he’s been breaking away from wanda and she’s been trying to keep him in place and on script so that they can be happy together. in their fight in the previous episode, she says that all of this is for them as to say that everything she’s doing is for their happiness. it’s a twisted way of showing how vision can’t live without wanda since it seems that she’s the one keeping him alive.

wanda expanding the hex | wanda’s clearly gotten more powerful over the years and this episode really shows us how fucking powerful she is on her own. it’s hysterical that the base and the most of the agents are turned into circus acts such as clowns. i’ll admit i’m upset darcy got sucked in and not hayward. i’m very interested to see who monica’s guy on the outside is. with wanda expanding the hex, it’s becoming more evident that wanda may be the ‘villain’ of the show or if there is someone else behind all of this, we may not see them until multiverse of madness. still, i believe wanda is victim in some capacity - even if it means she’s fallen victim to her trauma and grief.

#wandavision #wandavision spoilers #scar’s theories #scar tries to piece together what she can each week #wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #peter maximoff #vision #mcu #marvel #monica rambeau #jimmy woo #darcy lewis #billy kaplan #tommy shepard #speed #wiccan

248 notes · View notes

artobotsrollout · 4 years

Text

Headcanon that Starscream has a tendency to just sorta perch on things sometimes.

Megatron has a standing order that if anyone tells his Second in Command about how it's 'unusual behaviour' they are to be immediately executed because he absolutely loves seeing the unnerved expressions everyone gets from this cryptid gargoyle of a mech just chilling on high objects.

This is not a seeker thing but exclusively a Starscream thing.

Dreadwing almost had a spark attack once when he heard Starscream cackle and call him a showoff from god only knows where during a battle where he swore it was just him and one autobot in the area. Sure maybe he was doing more sword tricks than strictly necessary but HEY RUDE!

Breakdown asked Megatron about it once and the warlord couldn't really give a solid answer beyond 'I think he enjoys feeling tall.'

It's not super goofy looking either he somehow manages to make it look elegant and intimidating. Knockout asked Breakdown to boost him on top of some spare energon cubes once because he was curious and... even he looked goofy as all hell. How the ever loving hell Starscream pulls it off is a mystery.

Starscream got super drunk on high grade once and perched on high, but fairly well hidden spots in the rec room and other communal areas and whispered the dumbest rumours during crowded hours to make it seem as though anyone could have said it. He also chucked small rocks at crew members every now and then and quietly cackled at the baffled and slightly offended confusion. He still refuses to correct the rumours he started and it takes all his willpower not to laugh anytime he hears them. Some of them have evolved too and he thinks it's the funniest shit.

Rumours that are absolutely made up but Starscream refuses to correct:

-Knockout is the reason Soundwave wears a mask all the time. Soundwave should never have scratched his finish. (Knockout actually appreciates this one for the fear factor it instills and Soundwave hasn't corrected it cause he thinks it's hilarious. He may have once or twice even stoked the fire of this rumour)

-Megatron and Optimus are secretly an item currently and just good at hiding it. (cue knowing looks and nudges from vehicons whenever Megatron tries to get Optimus's attention.)

-Megatron was never actually a gladiator, he just was super into fighting movies and payed for body mods to look cool.

-Optimus was not an archivist but the real gladiator who just liked to read a lot.

-Megatron is a lightweight. (Megatron enjoys proving this rumour wrong to the shame of the asker. It's still around cause no one wants to admit how Megatron absolutely decimated them in drinking games like they were a beginning game NPC who challenged Megs and his level 100 Charizard.)

-Megatron is Breakdown's brother. (Cue a seriously confused Breakdown.)

-Ratchet was always that strong and good a fighter. Synth-en had nothing to do with it beyond making him more impulsive. Team Prime had to nerf him so their medic didn't make them all look bad.

-Soundwave is basically the cybertronian equivalent of a demon. Only a select few cybertronians can see him and if you can see him don't look at him or talk about him unless you want him going all enderman on your ass.

-Humans eat Dark Energon being the spawn of Unicron and everything.

-Airachnid is what happens when you mix spiders and bad energon.

-Breakdown lost his eye because he looked at Soundwave and Soundwave went all enderman on his ass.

-Starscream has already killed Megatron and taken over. Megatron is actually just a cloned puppet that Soundwave and Starscream use to keep subjects loyal.

-Knockout personally did the Empurata procedure on Shockwave (the whole remove head and replace with single optic deal ) . Shockwave never should have scratched his finish.

-Megatron and Optimus are secretly the same guy.

-Starscream is Amalgamous Prime in disguise

-Megatron once punched his own reflection because it 'looked at him funny'

-Knockout and Bumblebee are the same guy.

-The human Illuminati conspiracy is actually Soundwave brainwashing popular humans to do his bidding.

-Megatron eats humans sometimes.

-Megatron eats vehicons sometimes

-Megatron is a bad dancer (No one knows if this is true or false, not even Starscream. Drunk Starscream just thought a rumour about it would be really funny.)

-Megatron is bad at math.

LISTEN Starscream started so many unflattering ones about Megatron.

#Starscream #Megatron #Transformers Prime #My headcanons #Tfp headcanons #He is an absolute menace #Bastard man causes problems on purpose #Tfp

547 notes · View notes

mst3kproject · 3 years

Photo

The Neanderthal Man

Since I'm taking a break from fishmen, I might as well let Bigfoot catch up a bit. The Neanderthal Man isn't exactly a Bigfoot movie, but it’s along the same lines and its entire starring cast has MST3K pedigrees. Robert Shayne was in Indestructible Man and Teenage Caveman. Richard Crane was Rocky Jones, Space Ranger! Beverly Garland was in Swamp Diamonds and Gunslinger. Even the composer, Albert Glasser, wrote music for Invasion USA, Last of the Wild Horses, and almost all of MST3K’s Bert I. Gordon movies.

Some little mountain town in the middle of the Sierras (which the Portentous 50's Narrator takes some trouble to tell us is a primeval place where 'the defacing hand of civilization has fallen but lightly') is having a rash of saber-toothed tiger sightings! At first these are laughed off, but when the game warden himself sees one cross the road in the middle of the night, it's time to do something about it. The warden shows a cast pawprint to Dr. Ross Harkness in Los Angeles, who is interested enough to come up and see for himself. Local Mad Scientist Dr. Groves pooh-poohs the whole thing, which is enough to tell me that we're not dealing with a local cryptid here. Somebody is making prehistoric monsters.

So... I may not have actually run out of movies, but I seem to be running out of plots, because this is a remarkably similar movie to Monster on the Campus. The major difference between the two films is that Dr. Blake turned himself into a caveman by accident, while Dr. Groves here is doing it on purpose.

Another difference is that Monster on the Campus' story, while silly, was linear – events escalated in a way that felt logical, and there were reasons why things happened when and where they did. By contrast, The Neanderthal Man feels like a first draft. At the beginning of the film, we're dealing with the saber-toothed tigers that Groves has been creating by injecting cats with his de-evolution serum. We hear about these slaughtering game and livestock, and it seems like only a matter of time before they move on to human beings. The beginning of the film is quite upfront about the fact that Groves is responsible, too, as it is only mildly mysterious in its depiction of one of the creatures escaping his lab.

Sometimes the saber-tooths are represented by an actual tiger, usually filmed from behind or at a great distance so nobody has to put the prosthetic teeth on it. They do have prosthetic teeth, but they're only visible in a couple of shots. Imagine being at a bar and some guy tells you his job is sticking fake fangs on real tigers for a caveman movie! For close-ups, there's a hilarious puppet head that looks like the sort of thing you'd see mounted on a frat house wall as a joke. The director had the sense not to linger on this in motion shots, but later we see still photographs Groves has supposedly taken of his experimental subjects and they're even stupider-looking than we imagined.

Anyway, this goes on for a while with rising action, as the game warden goes to get Harkness and they manage to shoot one of the animals, only to have it vanish from the kill site when they try to show it to Groves (the movie never bothers to explain how that happened, incidentally. The ending suggests that the creatures change back when they die, but there's definitely no dead kitty cat at the scene, either). The whole movie could easily have just had the cats and their creator as the antagonists, perhaps even ending the same way as Dr. Groves proves his work to the other characters by injecting himself. That's not what happens, though. Instead, the story mostly forgets about the cats one we find out Groves has also been carrying on human experiments.

(Before himself, Groves' first experimental subject was his disabled Latina housekeeper. Another series of photos show her half-transformed into a cavewoman who for some reason is wearing drag queen false eyelashes. And as long as I'm talking about the movie being gross and bigoted, there's a bit where a woman is violently raped. This happens off camera, but the audience is not allowed to entertain any illusions about it.)

The problem is that before we see him give himself an injection in the arm, we have had absolutely no indication that Groves has been giving his serum to anything besides the cats! Cats are stealthy, cryptic creatures and if one of those has been seen wandering around killing things, then surely a full-on caveman beating people to death would not be able to stay out of sight! If what we were seeing were the first time Groves had tried the formula on himself then that would be an explanation, but his notes reveal that he's been doing it for so long that he's on the verge of losing control of the transformation and permanently reverting to a pre-human status, as indeed he does for the climax. Much like the stupid dinosaur in The Beast of Hollow Mountain, the movie's main monster is given no build-up whatsoever!

There's worse yet, though. The main characters, Dr. Harkness and Groves' daughter Jan, are barely involved in the 'caveman' part of the plot. They get phone calls about the various murders that Groves is committing in caveman form, and they snoop around the lab to figure out things the audience already knows. The same story could have been told without them, perhaps with the game warden and the hunter as protagonists, and it would probably have been more interesting. The script also repeatedly has Dr. Groves wander in and bluster about how the tiger sightings are hallucinations and tall tales, which seems a little unnecessary when we already know he's responsible. The film-makers can't seem to decide whether they want us to know that or not.

Dr. Groves wears glasses. Maybe the reason his primitive alter-ego is angry and breaking shit (although it does politely open and close the window it climbs out of, which made me laugh) is because it can't see. This is also my theory about why the Hulk smashes, and what do you know? In Avengers Endgame he's got Hulk-sized spectacles and only smashes when he's told!

The direction of The Neanderthal Man can probably best be described as 'serviceable'. It shows us what's going on, but doesn't particularly add anything to the proceedings. The 'Neanderthal' mask is immobile and uninteresting, not much better than somebody's Party City Sasquatch costume. Even the eyes are just painted on, meaning the poor guy in the costume can’t do much because he can’t see where he’s going.

The dialogue is often very strange, with characters talking like they're in a Jules Verne novel. If only one person did this, it might seem like a character quirk – it works for Dr. Groves, for example – but it's everybody. Seeing the cat carcass is gone, Harkness declares, “I refuse to believe in the supernatural! There must be some logical cause and effect to this unholy adventure!” Groves' fiancee Ruth berates him for ignoring her, saying, “I want you, the man I once knew! The good companion, the cheerful friend. I want the happiness we once found in each other.” It's bizarre to listen to, and often audibly awkward for the actors.

Monster on the Campus was kind of trying to be about how humanity must choose to evolve away from our inner savage, although the finale didn't bear that out. There's a scene in The Neanderthal Man in which this movie seems to be trying to go in the opposite direction, saying that we were never savage to begin with. Dr. Groves is speaking to a panel of scientists about the size of the brain in various 'primitive' species of human. He points out that by the time we reached Homo erectus we were already working with four times the cerebral jelly of a chimpanzee, and argues that our ancestors would have been recognizably human in their behaviour and problem-solving capacity.

(Amusingly, his chart of human evolution includes Piltdown Man, which was proven to be a hoax literally a few months after this movie's release. What makes this even more tragic for the writers is that their list of primitive humans seems to be the only place where they actually did any research.)

The problem with Dr. Groves' theory is that he already knows it's wrong. We soon learn that he's been experimenting on himself with his serum for a while already, and his notes show that he knows very well he regresses into a near-mindless animal. The movie does not even try to reconcile these ideas. If Groves were continuing his experiments in the hope that perfecting his serum would give him a more accurate reconstruction of ancient man, that would be one thing, but the script never goes there.

So now that we've had two 'man turns into caveman by injecting science juice' movies, of course I have to ask which one is better. Monster on the Campus wasn't a good movie but it was definitely an improvement on The Neanderthal Man in several respects, and although I don't have any way to find out for certain, I suspect it was an intentional remake. It's definitely more entertaining and gets bonus points for including the Meganeura dragonfly, but nothing in it is nearly as funny as The Neanderthal Man's fake tiger head. I guess if you're gonna watch one or the other, stick to Monster on the Campus, but if you're gonna watch both, start with The Neanderthal Man and do them in chronological order, the better to spot the inspirations and references.

Before I go, a fun paleontology fact: current thinking is that the saber-toothed cat's eponymous fangs actually didn't show when it had its mouth closed! There are zero cave paintings or ancient sculptures of a saber-tooth cat with teeth visible, and when scientists looked at the structure of the enamel in the canines, it suggested that in life the teeth were hidden by big, fleshy, St Bernard jowls. Google 'smilodon lips' and behold how this looks fully three hundred percent more ridiculous than you're imagining. I love nature.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the neanderthal man #tw: rape #50s #curiously caucasian cavepeople

21 notes · View notes

mingmingfufu · 3 years

Text

Can we just talk about the ending of KawoShin open discuss. *sort of spoilerish*

I feel like I’m the only one who’s like reallly disappointed LMFAO--ya’ll there’s so much “canon” alternative universe and merchandise for Kawoshin in Evangelion that it kind of makes me upset to realise this couple just went down the drain. Yeah, I can see how people were like, “Kaworu’s toxic” or “Kaworu has a hero complex for Shinji” to which I say are valid points. But the toxic thing I feel like can also be applied to pretty much everyone around Shinji tbh, except for Rei. I did NOT, like Asuka at all but I really love her character though, and I felt for her a lot throughout the series.

I did not ship them either because honestly, Shinji and Asuka seemed better off playing the sibling dynamic instead of trying to play bf/gf which honestly is kind of forced by their living situation. Also since they’re in a similar disposition non existent father and dead mother, you’d imagine they would rely on each other for emotional comfort. Though Asuka—her personality I feel like she can’t differentiate between familial love and romantic love and the affection she wants is a bit of both. But, her character tries to be “mature”; she wants romantic love more and does this through sexual means and romantic gestures e.g. like kissing. One of my friends told me that you can’t stay friends as a boy and a girl cause eventually you catch feelings. Which I say is kinda dumb cause I have a lot of male friends, and I definitely don’t harbour those feelings, but I guess it’s a common phenomena.

I think this is what happens in this case, of Asuka and Shinji. Even after rejection of instrumentality they actually are depicted as childhood friends. But knowing how they both were before to each other, it was not good tbh. Also to mention the choking like thrice— bro if anything, this showcases a really abusive relationship and I think this outstretches the idea of their character tropes. Which I firmly stand by saying they’re superficial to each other. AsuShin were never really there for each other and are using each other in a forced situation. However, you can’t deny that they didn’t at some point catch feels, also Shinji is pretty consistent how he still cares about everyone around him. Which I really like how they add that to his character because it reminiscent of Yui, because you see a duality of both his parents personality in Shinji throughout the series—it’s a really nice touch. But bruh, if we gonna talk about that coma scene—I’m out LOL.

Thoughhhh, she is a true definition of best girl I really like her arc, fighting drive, and her skills as an Eva pilot 😭💗--but bruh she’s still a toxic and sometimes annoying tsundere trope, but still she’s 14 what can you do. So I feel like Kensuke and Asuka are actually a pretty good combo, cause he’s always been pretty mature even without parents. Also Asuka was into older guys, so I guess this is a win win?? Also Rei and Shinji, I honestly cannot get my head around it cause that’s pretty much his mom—so in a way that’s like either his half-sister or mom-ish clone?? Idk but Yui is definitely the donor LOL.

Kaworu and Shinji I felt like brought a bunch of things out of each other. I don’t know which timeline begins first, but I’d like to think the manga, the anime (plus its movies), and then to the rebuild series. Because I think that order is kind of pivotal to observing Kaworu’s character development from being a person who’s trying to understand human feelings to then the kinder person we see in the final series. You can tell how he’s changed and he knows Shinji a lot more as well as being considerate to him e.g. giving him personal space or letting him work at his own pace. Also that “we’ll meet again.” Is an obvious nod to how he’s done this before.

His literal story in every timeline is always romantic LOL, like bruh I can’t remember which game it was but basically a bad ending of Kawoshin route is that you reject Kaworu and he starts the third impact 🤡. Also I don’t know why but I started to see a weird dynamic between those two, in the manga their interactions reminded me of Asuka and Shinji—which Shinji is the tsundere Asuka here. I don’t know if this is relevant but the older character relative to the character they’re with seems to play off a mature vs a childish person trope. Asuka is younger than Shinji and Shinji is actually younger than Kaworu. Then again I could be overseeing this but istg manga Kaworu and Shinji mirror the whole Asushin dynamic. Like he’s seriously agressive against Kaworu, then after killing him he admits liking him. 🤡 I don’t know which is funnier no homo Shinji, homophobe shinji, or just closet Shinji who needs to realise sexuality is a spectrum so he could’ve idk—come out as bisexual, but whatever manga Shinji lol that timeline is over.

Anyways the development of these two is real and I think the rebuild timeline shows them at their best bringing their own personage out from each other like how they both enjoy music together--WHICH I’M SO SAD WE NEVER GET TO SEE THAT CELLO AGAIN. Then there’s those feelings of humanity, love, kindness, etc. Which yeah an angel could represent those things, but Kaworu is still his own person, self-aware of a cycle and if you think about how he initially was there to USE Shinji, but ultimately turned on that plan set by SEELE because he loved Shinji (and a bunch of other things like him showing Kaworu humanity). I also can see the argument, how “ideal” Kaworu is to Shinji, but he’s more self aware of the time he has before he KNOWS he’ll die and knows how to act for himself in that duration to make the most of it. All with Shinji. At some point, I think he fell in love with Shinji tho I don’t know where it began tbh—considering that all those alternate universes do exist. Kaworu does romantically love Shinji--so, in some universe they both reciprocate their feelings to each other.

In the last movie during that convo with Shinji. Like bREH it’s so emotionally moving because Kaworu remembers ALLLLL the timelines and how he’s been with Shinji and later Shinji himself recalls the events too. Where they show the scene from the manga and anime. Kaworu cries after being set free from the EVA cycle. Which, I definitely understood what he meant by him saying “it’ll be lonely” and how Shinji changed or that he’s actually different this time.

Either way, Shinji did right by him because it’s always Kaworu who has the purpose of “trying to save Shinji” but it always ends up the same. I thought that was really moving because Shinji tells Kaworu he’s gonna let him live a life for himself for once and he wants the same for everyone as well. Which was honestly so meaningful cause I think Kaworu’s character and like Rei too when they start to realise how to “live” like a person and not another puppet it’s truly liberating. Another thing I forgot, bruh Kaworu calls Gendo his father and ngl I feel like this is kind of a weird lore situation because I for sure don’t think he’s the donor. I think he calls him that as an insult because he knows Gendo’s whole doing and relative to Shinji—I kind of see it as a joke LOL. Like it’s equivalent to saying, “daddy chill”, or “hey look it’s daddy and his plans to end the world” also I kind of like to think of it as a father in law thing cause you know, Kawoshin *winks amirite*

The ending, I’m honestly hoping is just an open ending because it gives everything an actual start of their adult lives not being dictated by extraterrestrial forces. Though, I’m kind of wondering if the world doesn’t have EVAs does that still mean everyone else still has the same backstory, and do they remember? Maybe Mari really is just a coworker lmfao, and there’s still a chance for Kaworu and Shinji cause ngl, they did have a convo (presumably from the spoilers) about still remaining close afterwards and that stare at the ending seems very hopeful.

I call bs from Anno saying, “oh Shinji is based off him and Mari off of his wife”, like honestly any OCs made theres always some part of yourself made into that character. Which is probably why a lot of people relate to the characters in EVA because they’re based off real things (e.g. those war machines characters are named after and people around them). I think why Kaworu and Rei are together at the end, is bc they’re very much the same. They’re mass produced dolls—which oddly enough that’s the case for all the children except they don’t recall the loop. Kind of funny also how both Kaworu and Rei became farmers lmfao so ig it runs in the family (yes that’s right I like the idea that they’re siblings it was always noted that they’re like “the same”).

Another thing, i think why the rebuild really did well for Kawoshin and in my opinion canonised it—the convo with elder Ryoji Kaji (Misato’s baby daddy) that there was a time he felt incredibly lonely and depressed thinking Misato didn’t love him and so he started looking out for himself. So self love and found himself a hobby in farming which he suggests to Kaworu—basically saying he might feel like Shinji doesn’t love him but he’s gotta remember to take care of himself. if I go thru a breakup ill feel like it’s the end of the world but Kaji says y’a gotta self love broe and take care yo self gad dam fam 😭 💗.

Though, that look at the end from Shinji to Kaworu—I’d like to believe there is still hope that one day when they’re a bit stable in their adult lives, they’ll run into each other.

#Kaworu Nagisa #shinji ikari #neon genesis evangelion #rei ayanami #mari illustrious makinami #asuka shikinami #discussion #kawoshin #nge kaworu #nge shinji #nge

40 notes · View notes

xiyao-feels · 3 years

Text

Part Two: Claims about NMJ and NHS

Intro - Pt 1 - Pt 2 - Pt 3 - Pt 4

NMJ

1) NMJ wished to protect NHS from cultivating with the sabre as a youth.

I don't think he tells us this in quite so many words, but it seems implied by the flashback scenes: his giving NHS the paintbrush, the bit where he takes 修刀 and gives NHS 修心, and course him literally telling NHS that whatever NHS wishes to do, he'd support it.

As far as I can tell there's no evidence of this. Now, to be fair, we don't see them as children in MDZS, but there is not as far as I can tell any sign that NMJ has ever done anything but strongly desire that NHS work on the sabre. Indeed, even at Hejian during Sunshot, the reason he overhears MY and LXC's conversation is because he is bringing NHS' sabre to LXC so that NHS will not be able to escape practicing with it. He certainly does not renew any kind of commitment to allowing NHS to do what he wills before his death. In CQL, we see rather less, but as far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be anything that contradicts MDZS on this front.

2) In his heart, NMJ carried significant doubts about the righteousness of Nie cultivation practices, including both the sabre-curse-inducing sabre cultivation and the practice of balancing the sabre spirits via corpses in the wall

This is quite central to the movie. It's arguably implicit in his desire to protect NHS from cultivating with the sabre, but beyond that, he is clearly extremely uncomfortable at NHS' moral challenge of Nie practices and believes at least partially that NHS has a point; moreover, it's implicit in his confessions to NHS in the tomb:

The Nie family's ancestors created this family foundation with great hardships. Unexpectedly, it was cursed by the sword spirit. I practiced swordsmanship hard and thought I could find a way to solve it, but I just followed the same old disastrous road of the ancestors.

And of course, his moral arc in the movie is about embracing those doubts and rejecting Nie tradition.

There is as far as I can tell no evidence of this in MDZS or CQL; in fact we don't learn anything about the Nie burial traditions in scenes where NMJ is still alive, and he never shows any doubt about the wisdom of sabre cultivation.

3) NMJ used to be "intelligent and wise"; it's due to the effects of the sabre curse that he is "moody and brutal".

We're explicitly told this by NHS at around 32:50: "Da-ge, look at you now, you have changed. When you were young, you were always wise and intelligent. Ever since you practiced swordsmanship, you've become moody and brutal." It's also backed up by the childhood flashbacks. The sharp distinction between NMJ and sabre-curse-affected-NMJ, shown by the way sabre-curse-affected NMJ is visually marked out, also helps suggest this.

Now, in MDZS and CQL, this…is complicated. Again, in MDZS, we don't see him as a child—the earliest we see him is still well past the time he began practicing sabre cultivation. And in ch 26 NHS does indeed suggest that sabre cultivation causes increasing irritability; it certainly seems plausible, indeed almost necessary, that he had less of a temper before he started practicing, and for that matter we see his anger grow worse as time goes on.

Nevertheless, we never actually see any trace of a calm-tempered NMJ in the text. Even by the beginning of Sunshot, his reputation as an angry man is firmly established. Consider the Nie men's reaction to his anger at their shit-talking MY, in the cave:

The entire cave was in a muddle. Everyone knew ChiFeng-Zun’s personality—the more one tried to explain, the angrier he was. Seeing that they probably couldn’t escape punishment and would have to tell the truth, nobody dared to speak a word.

Even his friend LXC says to MY, “MingJue-xiong has quite a fiery personality. It must have been truly difficult for you to have earned his approval.”

And NHS, who very much loves his brother even as he is also to some extent frightened of him, is never shown pining for the halcyon days of yore. Narratively speaking, sabre-affected NMJ is the only NMJ we know. I think…this is something a Nie brothers spinoff could theoretically do something interesting with, but the way it's presented in their relationship is all wrong.

In CQL, the evidence is much the same or just not shown. NMJ generally seems less angry (though even so, we see him be angry at the Nie men for mocking MY (in subjective CQL-Empathy, but still), at WWX for saying maybe let's not kill XY immediately, at JGY for having killed the Nie cultivators, etc.), and if anything his relationship with NHS seems better than it is in the novel, although this too is well after he's begun to practice sabre cultivation.

4) NMJ respects NHS' interests

When picking NHS to lead the other team in the tombs, NMJ tells us that NHS knows most about astronomy in the Nie, and NMJ clearly considers this valuable.

If NHS did actually have significant knowledge of cultivation, NMJ would probably respect that. However, this is what NMJ has to say about the interests NHS canonically has (ch 49):

Nie HuaiSang was absolutely delighted. He greeted Jin GuangYao again and again as he grabbed the fans in haste. Seeing how his younger brother reacted, Nie MingJue was so outraged that he almost found it amusing. He turned to Jin GuangYao, “Don’t send him those useless things!”

In a hurry, Nie HuaiSang dropped a few fans on the ground. Jin GuangYao picked them up for him and put them into his arms, “HuaiSang’s hobbies are quite elegant. He’s dedicated to art and calligraphy, and has no propensity for mischief. How can you say that they’re useless?”

Nie HuaiSang nodded as fast as he could, “Yes, Brother is right!”

Nie MingJue, “But sect leaders have no need for such things.”

In CQL, I believe we just don't see enough to say, although given that again, NHS' isn't actually studying cultivation, it seems likely NMJ' attitudes are much the same.

NHS

1) NHS is profoundly morally motivated

NHS is immediately and hugely upset with the practice of using corpses in the walls, explicitly on moral grounds, even though it was the practice of their ancestors, and even once he finds out that they're not (usually) Nie men, but evildoers.

Having been told by NZH that the blades need the corpses to suppress their aggressiveness: "But isn't that just sacrificing people?" "Zonghui, the Nie family have always been righteous. If we give sacrifice to it with life, we will become evil."

And then, to NMJ: "Wait. Let me ask you. Why is here called the Sword Sacrifice Hall? What is to balance sword spirit? I didn't understand before coming what exactly Sword Sacrifice Hall represents. I know it now. This is not balance but sacrificing flesh and blood!"

NZH: Second Young Master, you misunderstood it. Those corpses belong to evil men. The Nie family's ancestors had uses their bodies to balance the sword spirit. We also follow the ancestral instructions."

NHS: (to NZH) Evil men? (to NMJ) Aren't they human beings? Are you qualified for deciding their fate?

NMJ: The sword spirit is extremely dangerous. Generations of the Nie family all balanced the spirit in this way.

NHS: Even if they were wrong, you also follow their way?

In MDZS…I went over the chapters where he shows up, and I'm not actually sure we ever see him express a moral sentiment? I could be missing something, but it doesn't seem to be any kind of fundamental part of his character.

This is his reaction to WWX's first suggestion of demonic cultivation, when they're studying at CR (ch 14):

After thinking for a few moments, an expression of envy and yearning appeared on Nie HuaiSang’s face, “To be honest, Wei-xiong’s words were quite interesting. Spiritual energy can only be obtained through cultivation and taking great pains to form a golden core. It would take I-don’t-know-how-many years to do, especially for someone like me, whose talent seems as if it was gnawed by a dog when I was in my mother’s womb. But, resentful energy are from the fierce ghosts. If they can easily be taken and used, it would be beyond wonderful.”

And—granted this is several years down the line and NHS is keeping up his cover, but when NHS is explaining the sabre tomb to LWJ and WWX in chapter 26, he doesn't seem to have any problem with the practice. In fact, he tells us that he participated in choosing corpses for NMJ's sabre:

Nie HuaiSang was already shocked speechless. Wei WuXian inquired, “Who chooses the corpses that the Nie Sect uses for the Saber Hall?”

Nie HuaiSang replied with a glazed expression, “Usually, the past sect leaders chose and stored them when they were still alive. My brother passed away at an earlier age. He didn’t have enough, so I also helped him choose some… I kept whichever corpses that were complete with all limbs. I don’t know about anything other than this…”

In CQL...mmm. I rewatched all the pre-Sunshot scenes with him in it, and I do think he comes across as, at least, less amoral. We don't have the gee wouldn't demonic cultivation be nice scene, and you could definitely interpret him as being worried about the granny at Dafan, or even the temporary-puppets; he says you have to admire Songxiao's integrity and elegance as they depart; and while we don't see him be part of the initial 'maybe we shouldn't just immediately execute XY squad,' he does go da-ge after NMJ seems irritated at WWX, and after NMJ throws MY out he goes in and is like but why!!!! That said, in both cases where he challenges (and I use the term rather loosely for the da-ge after NMJ is irritated with WWX), he immediately backs down faced with NMJ's opposition. I really don't see any sign of the character who is so morally motivated and so sure of his own correctness he challenges NMJ, /in front of all their men/, and keeps up the challenge despite NMJ's consistent opposition.

2) NHS isn't really interested in JGY's gifts

At no point is he shown delighting over or interested in anything JGY gave him (except of course the flute for treating his brother), and in fact when JGY says that after the journey he will give him gifts he replies "San-ge, I am not afraid of difficult journeys. I'm not craving for toys either." On the contrary, gifts are associated with /NMJ/, who gave him a paintbrush as a child.

In MDZS, we see him explicitly delighted in and interested by JGY's gifts. In ch 49, we see him going over a dozen gold-lined fans, which turn out to be gifts from JGY; when JGY mentions he's going to play a song for NMJ, he expresses interest and mentions "the limited edition" JGY gave him "last time," and then when NMJ shouts at him to go to his room he runs instead "to the living room for the presents that Jin GuangYao had brought him;" when JGY shows up at Qinghe after the stairs incident, NHS "beamed as he got ready to go to Jin GuangYao and see what presents he brought this time." Considering how little time they have together on the page, the gifts show up a great deal.

In CQL, we mostly don't see a lot of NHS and JGY's interactions after JGY's legitimation but before NMJ's death, so it's impossible to directly say. However, he is at least shown to delight in and greatly value beautiful things (see at least the fan flashback in ep 35).

3) NHS is motivated by a desire for his brother's respect and the respect of their men.

This is the argument JGY uses which finally settles NHS on going along on the journey, around 14:30: "Both of you are pillars of the Nie family. You should work together. You can also prove yourself." See also his pleasure with himself at solving the puzzle quickly in the tombs; it's not a purely self-satisfied pleasure, but rather, "It seems I'm not useless" (27:35ish). When NZH replies, "Second Young Master, you are definitely not useless. It's just because everyone has their own will," NHS gives a firm little nod. NMJ's respect for NHS' skills and interests is also made central to their relationship.

In MDZS, NHS really doesn't seem to be motivated by people respecting him. Consider, again, what he says about WWX's idea of demonic cultivation (ch 14):

A golden core was a core formed by cultivators after they had cultivated to a certain point. It can store and control spiritual energy. After the core was formed, the cultivator’s level of cultivation would increase at a rapid speed, and become better and better. Else, they would only be a low-end cultivator. If disciple from a prominent clan forms the core at a later age, it would be a disgrace to tell other people of it, yet Nie HuaiSang didn’t feel ashamed at all. Wei WuXian also laughed, “I know, right? No harm comes from using it.”

Even during Sunshot, he's slacking off, using the excuse of having forgotten his sabre. (ch 48)

And then in ch. 49, after NMJ burns his things:

Nie HuaiSang roared at Nie MingJue, “Saber, saber, saber! Who the fuck wants to practice the damn thing?! So what if I want to be a good-for-nothing?! Whoever that wants to can be the sect leader! I can’t learn it means I can’t learn it and I don’t like it means I don’t like it! What’s the use of forcing me?!”

I'm not necessarily saying he wouldn't enjoy it if NMJ respected him, and certainly it seems a fair read that he would like it if NMJ yelled at him less. But by and large, he just doesn't show any objection to being thought of as useless, even before his Headshaker cover—and there's a reason that cover worked, after all.

In CQL...well, again, he doesn't really show any sign of objecting to being thought useless, as far as I can tell.

4) NHS knows about the sabre curse

JGY explicitly says so at about 13:05: "You know his sickness. He didn't do it on purpose." Moreover, if NHS didn't know, the offer of flute-playing wouldn't really make sense.

In MDZS, NMJ explicitly hasn't told NHS at least as of JGY's visit after the stairs, and there's no indication he told him between then and when he qi-deviated. Indeed, it's JGY who thinks NHS should be told, while NMJ rejects this (ch 50):

Jin GuangYao, “Brother, these days you’ve been stricter and stricter towards HuaiSang. Is it the saber spirit…?”

After a pause, he continued, “Does HuaiSang still not know about the saber spirit?”

Nie MingJue, “Why would I tell him so soon?”

In CQL, we're not told either way; this being the case I tend towards defaulting to MDZS unless I have a specific reason to think otherwise.

5) NHS, though bad at fighting, is skilled in cultivation theory

Again, JGY says so, at around 13:19: "You are good at Daoist magic" (and NHS seems to accept it). Moreover this is continually backed up by the film, with NHS making good use of it in the tomb, and then of course in the last scene having put together the true effect of the corrupted passage.

There is no indication of this in MDZS. He's interested in art and beautiful things, but he struggles with the Lan lectures. When JGY defends NHS' interests, he mentions art and calligraphy, and says his hobbies are elegant; he makes no mention of any kind of cultivation theory. As WWX himself notes, thinking back (ch 21):

In the past, Wei WuXian and Nie HuaiSang studied together, so there were a few things he could comment about this person. Nie HuaiSang wasn’t an unkind person. It wasn’t that he was not clever, but that his heart was set somewhere else and used his smarts on other areas, such as painting on fans, searching for birds, skipping classes, and catching fish. Because his talent in terms of cultivation really was poor, he formed his core around eight or nine years later than the other disciples of the same generation as him. When he lived, Nie MingJue was often exasperated by the fact that his brother didn’t meet his expectations, so he disciplined him strictly. Despite this, he still didn’t improve much.

I'm not saying he couldn't have developed in this direction after NMJ's death, but there doesn't seem to be any indication he was skilled in that way beforehand. Again, there's a reason his cover as "totally useless person" works as a cover.

In CQL, again, we don't really see any evidence of his skill with cultivation. NHS is shown flipping through his book for the answer to the executioner question LQR asks WWX; he doesn't show any evidence of significant cultivation knowledge on the road trip section (although he is shown to have a good memory for things he's actually interested in, and you could argue he has good instincts!); his wish at the lantern festival is that he passes his studies at the Lan. I just don't see it.

Previous | Next

#fj negativity #long meta #anger burned in his heart #we can't change places #more than one tag could contain

22 notes · View notes

citadelspires · 4 years

Text

Ducktales AU Concept Because My Brain Runs On Concepts I Can’t Finish:

Dewey actually waits for the signal to start the boat and they actually leave for Cape Suzette without Donald finding out. He believes they’re ready to be left alone for small periods at a time and while he is still hired on with Glomgold the obvious complications there happen and he simply just goes back to whatever he was doing, because Scrooge wasn’t reinvigorated by the kids and never ended up going to Atlantis in the first place. Cut to the ambiguously set point of over a year later, and we get the return of Della from the moon, but to a drastically different world than the one she comes back to in the show. (For the sake of the au I’m just gonna say the moon invasion doesn’t happen cause the point of this is to focus on the characters and the imminent and impossible to stop moon threat would actually be impossible to stop in this au). I’m just gonna go through the characters and where they’d be at in this setting.

The first, and arguably one of the most affected is Scrooge: He never got back into adventuring due to the absence of the kids pushing him back into the business. He continues to be profitable and avoid Glomgold’s attempts on his life but he’s generally less cheery and interested in the world than he is in the show. He cares about money and he only cares about money. Everything and everyone else are a second thought to him. Like she does in canon Della makes for McDuck Manor immediately upon return to earth only to find that the only one waiting for her is Scrooge. He opens the door to find her and his initial reaction is joy at seeing her but a secondary reaction he feels poking at the back of his mind is one of shame that this is the state he’s in for her to return to, particularly when she asks him where her kids are and he just tells her he doesn’t know. There’s a look of betrayal in her eyes when she realizes that he just abandoned everyone and cut off every aspect of the life he used to have and she doesn’t even try to hide it. Scrooge wants to offer to come with her to find them but something holds him back and he doesn’t. She runs off to find them herself and despite everything he wants to the contrary Scrooge just goes to his office like he would any other day, knowing that the person he’s been missing for over ten years now is finally returned after he thought she was dead and here he is acting like nothing is different.

Launchpad is fun because he never has any reason for Scrooge to find out he’s a pilot. He tries to mention it to Scrooge occasionally, like we see in the first episode, but just like in that episode he’s always ignored. Not that Scrooge would have any adventures for Launchpad to take him to anyway. So Launchpad continues being nothing but Scrooge’s driver. And that’s enough for him because he’s Launchpad you know? And he still looks up to Scrooge a lot, but he’s never given the opportunity to grow close to him, or anyone really. Fittingly enough for Launchpad, he’s just been living life on autopilot for a couple years, not really expecting anything to ever change.

Webby has two distinct directions you can go and I chose to go for the sadder one. She continues to be shut in the mansion. I choose to take her speech in the first episode about how she hasn’t ever left literally and say that Beakley kept her there her entire life. The possible other direction I mentioned is one where she only grows more anxious and hopeful to see the outside world and she’s basically just even Webbier than she already is. But that’s less angsty and enjoyable for me to mess with so instead I’m gonna go with she hit this wall at some point in the year or so between when she would have met HDL and when Della comes back from the moon. The weight of being alone starts to get to her and she starts to wonder if all her optimism and hopes are just a poor defense system put up to let her pretend she’s gonna have a better future than the life she’s got. She also makes continuous attempts to interact with Scrooge but the more he lets age settle in and distance himself from adventures the less she feels engaged with his existence. He starts to feel to her not like an idol or a model to live her life by but like a living, breathing symbol of how her hopes and positivity are shallow and baseless. Cause Scrooge McDuck was the only thing that kept her going for years and this is nothing like the hero she read about. But that’s the thing. She’s only really read about him. As far as anything heroic goes. So she reaches the final breaking point of all of this and decides that Scrooge is a fake and leaves behind her signature bright, bubbly attitude on life. This is the state she’s in when the story starts, to the point where a scene happens at some point after she gets drawn into the plot where she’s been outside of the manor now and Dewey offers her a hamburger and she says it looks disgusting.

Lena never got the chance to become friends with Webby and get her route into McDuck Manor. But that also means she never got the chance to learn about being good from the literal goodest person in the universe. She isn’t interested in doing the right thing and not hurting Scrooge or anything she’s just following Magica’s orders cause that’s what she’s being forced to do. But as part of the whole thing where she hasn’t got an in route into the manor she also hasn’t gotten any means of being successful in really any capacity in this endeavor. As a result Magica has... not. been kind to her. So while she isn’t evil she’s been living as magica’s meat puppet with the witch constantly in her head tormenting her for her failures for months on end and she was already morally ambiguous to begin with. So she’d take out Magica in a heartbeat if she could but there’s nothing that says she wouldn’t just explode afterwards.

Mark Beaks never had his B.U.D.D.Y. contested because Launchpad was never told about the self driving car and even if he had been he didn’t have the standing with Scrooge to make a difference and he didn’t have Dewey to help him make the declaration. As a result the product went up without any hitches. It was a massive success until BulbTech kicked in, turned evil, and suddenly it wasn’t. Anyone who could afford a B.U.D.D.Y. was using one, and the results were catastrophic. Not even Beaks had enough good press and money to pay for all that. He narrowly avoided prison but he was never taken seriously or given any chances to build up a company again. He still lives his life stealing technology and messing with inventions as he always did but now he does it a lot more illegally, a lot more dangerously, and a lot less sanely. Most devastatingly though, he gets like, no good press. People won’t even be caught dead following his twitter. He’s living his worst nightmare and he’s going to do whatever it takes to change that.

Gyro fires Fenton for leaking BulbTech on the internet and never looks back. He continues the work that Scrooge wants him to do and Fenton never drives him to push the envelope or do anything even close to what Gizmoduck becomes. He continues with his own dangerous projects and ideas but he does play it safe for some time. He’s content to just be making stuff, and Scrooge is content to just have stuff made for him. But he also never really gets to unleash that, well, part of Gearloose where he’s got a gear loose and it seems like he might just snap and make something really wild any day now.

Fenton never had to become Gizmoduck that iconic first time, so he just. Didn’t. The armor was left in its development phase as it was, and Fenton was never even considered to be the man in the suit when it reached testing. And it was only used for the menial tasks Gyro originally designed it for, as Fenton was the only one who had come up with the idea to use it for Gizmoduck at all, and he’s not there anymore, not that Gyro would listen to him anyway. Though it wasn’t as if Scrooge was in any state of mind to be hiring any superheroes in the first place. So Fenton continues trying to find some way to make a difference in the world with his intelligence but it... never really pans out.

Drake gets the role in the Darkwing movie, as in canon, as Scrooge is still interested enough in money to listen to the proposition for the film and try it out. The visit Launchpad has with Jim goes as his visits always do, and the fact that Dewey isn’t there to assist with Launchpad and attract Jim’s attention means Jim just gives up and leaves as soon as Launchpad faints, not even listening to what Drake is trying to tell him. So Jim never finds out about the movie until it’s already released, and Drake experiences no opposition in the filming, barely even remembering his one interaction with Launchpad at all. Scrooge cuts the budget for the finale but lets the movie go through anyway, despite his better judgement, mostly because he already spent the money. It’s a commercial and critical disaster and Drake’s acting career never gets off the ground, and he never has the inspiration to become Darkwing for real.

Donald continues to live just as we see him in the first episode, doing his best to support his kids while bouncing from job to job because he just can’t hold one down for any length of time. Life is hard for him but it’s the same as he’s always known it for the past ten years so he’s used to it, and having the kids with him is always enough for him.

Huey continues to make a name for himself in the Junior Woodchucks (i.e. robotics champion four years running) but he never really gets the chance to light the fire under his curiosity and love of knowledge. He learns as much as he can but it’s only as much as he’s ever been told he can. He learns within the boundaries of school and the Junior Woodchucks and that’s kind of enough for him because he never considers how much he could learn beyond the boundaries of how things have always worked.

Dewey is as desperate to be famous and appreciated as he always is, and Dewey DewNight is most certainly still a thing, but it’s even less viewed and interesting than it is in canon. He’s not letting himself get disheartened but he looks at the way Donald lives on a boat and can’t hold a job and wonders if that’s what he’s gonna be someday. If despite all of his efforts and aspirations he’s going to end up falling at every turn and there’ll just be nothing he can dew about it. He doesn’t let it weigh him down too much but he’d be lying if he said it didn’t keep him up at night sometimes.

Louie is actually doing amazing. He’s living his best life. He’s lazy and scheme-y, still doing things like plotting that venture to Cape Suzette we see in that first episode, but he never has to wonder about his usefulness or place in the family, cause it’s just him, Dewey, and Huey, along with Donald. Donald is unemployed half the time, Huey is gonna be some big genius scientist guy sure, and maybe Dewey’s gonna get big someday but right now they’re just kids, and there’s absolutely nothing that makes Louie feel like that’s not enough. He doesn’t do as much here, there’s not any schemes that will make him rich or any Louie Inc, but the seeds of those ideas are still in his soul somewhere, he’ll find them when he needs them he’s pretty sure.

And that’s all the characters that I can think of to get into off the top of my head. I really just did this for fun so I don’t know if I’ll ever be doing anything else with it but these are all the ideas I got. Feel free to ask me about them or anything I’m just havin fun with it.

101 notes · View notes

carryon117 · 2 years

Text

Chapter Twenty-Five:

We are sitting around a table in some damp underground facility that looks more like a cave than any true base. As everyone settles into their seats, I stand and walk to the head of the table. Loki-wolf settling in at my feet.

“Okay, some of what I have to say or show you will be upsetting or really hard to take. I just ask that you think before you act on any of it.”

I make eye contact with Steve, who gives me a confused but confident nod. I let out a shaky breath and extend my hands in front of me.

“I’ll show you what I can and explain.”

Flames erupt from my palms, creating a screen of fire in front of me. I dig through my memories carefully choosing which ones to show. The first image flickers to life. In the fire, Steve is standing on an elevator, still in uniform, while members of the Strike team board and surround him. The Steve in the image casts a knowing glance around before the fighting starts. As the fight unfolds, I speak up, “Hydra has flourished within SHIELD. Their members walk among your agents, and will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals.” I shift the image to one of Fury being shot in Steve’s apartment. “They will stop at nothing, eliminating those that stand in their way.” I change the image again to Natasha and Steve speaking to the computer version of Zola.”With Project Paperclip, Hydra scientist Arnim Zola has been with SHIELD since its founding, pulling strings from the shadows.” The image in the fire explodes into a blank flame. “Zola is partially responsible for Project Insight, having created the algorithm that will systematically murder millions. But he wasn’t working alone.”

I take a deep breath and will myself to relax, knowing this will only get harder. The image flickers to reveal Pierce talking to a figure sitting in the shadows. “Pierce and Rumlow need to be handled, they will both cause so much damage and so much heartache, more than they have already caused.” I look between Fury and Hill. They nod at the statement, eyes determined. I let a small tear escape for the next image as it takes shape. Pierce and Rumlow stalk into a bank vault. Before the angle shifts, I pause the memory and directly address Steve. “Don’t feel guilty, you didn’t know. And anything he has done was not of his own doing. He was brainwashed, turned into a puppet, his free will shattered and turned into a shadow of his former self.” I choke on a silent sob as Loki-wolf leans into me, glancing between me and the paused image.

The one who needs our help?

I nod and unpause the picture. The image turns from the sneering face of Pierce and Rumlow to a forlorn and confused Bucky Barnes. I hear Steve gasp,

“Bucky?”

I nod, unable to look at him. The memory continues, showing Bucky getting shoved into the chair before the device lowers itself to him. Just before the shocks start, I extinguish the flames.

I collapse into the chair behind me, silent tears streaming down my face. This was heartbreaking, watching it for the first time in a movie theater, but that was when it was all fictional. Now that it is real, now that they are real, it seems soul shattering.

A large hand sets itself on my shoulder. Looking up, my eyes meet the blues of Steve’s, unshed tears gather in their depths.

“How?”

“During the war, before you rescued the 107th from Hydra,” I begin, placing a hand over his hand on my shoulder, “they were experimenting with the recreation of the serum that Dr. Erskine had given you. They used a human test subject, Sergeant Barnes… He was a super soldier when he fell from the train. It’s what helped him to survive the fall, but Hydra found him. They… they continued their experiments. They made him into a puppet, an assassin with no free will… They took away his memories…”

I choke out the last bit, unable to contain my grief. I pull my face into my hands to hide the tears, with my shuddering sobs, I can’t rein in the gusts of wind that almost lift me out of my chair.

“Hey,hey.” I lift my face from my hands at Steve’s voice. “If I’m not allowed to feel guilt when I was there, you aren’t allowed to feel guilty either.”

The Captain of Righteousness is correct, darling. It isn’t your fault. Loki-wolf’s green eyes look up at me from my lap. You didn’t do this. You’ve done nothing to harm him.

“Y/N, we can get him out of there, we will. I have to. Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.” Steve says the last part under his breath in a whisper promise.

“Now that we have talked about our feelings, let’s make a plan.” Fury’s remark causes Steve to snap his head around to look at the group.

“We’re not salvaging anything. We’re not just taking down Hydra, Nick. We’re taking down SHIELD.”

“SHIELD has nothing to do with this.”

“I have a mission. This is how it ends. SHIELD’s been compromised. Y/N has proven it. Hydra grew right under your nose and nobody noticed.”

“Why do you think we’re meeting in this cave? I noticed.”

“After being told. How many paid the price before you knew?”

“Look, I didn’t know about Barnes.”

“Even if you had, would you have told me? SHIELD, Hydra, it all goes.”

“He’s right.” Hill murmurs, glancing between the two men. Fury looks at each of us in turn.

“Don’t look at me. I do what he does, just slower.” Sam nods to Steve. Fury turns his attention to me.

“I’m sorry, Director. But he’s right.”

“Well it looks like you’re giving the orders now, Captain.”

#marvel reader insert #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #ao3 writer #ao3fic #marvel #marvel fanfic #marvel fanfiction #marvel fanfic writer #reader insert

4 notes · View notes

max-is-tired · 4 years

Note

bad things happen request: A1 + roceit? -ren

Remember me (for centuries)

Pairing: the AU is queerplatonic Roceit and romantic Analogicality, but the ships are not very prominent in this installment

Characters: Roman Sanders, Janus Sanders, Remus Sanders, Patton Sanders, Virgil Sanders, Logan Sanders

Words: 3.835

Warnings: superhero AU, implied morally grey Janus, Remus and Roman, superpowers, swearing, a muzzle is used, fighting, there’s a character (OC) that has very black and white views and definitely goes too far because of it, if I need to add anything else please tell me

Notes: guess who’s back babey!!!!! After two months of writer block, I’ve managed to churn out this little monster in less than 3 days and I’m honestly lowkey real proud of it sjkcndjkscn it’s inspired by this idea I had the other day and after I remembered this specific prompt I just went full feral writer mode. I even have a few ideas for a sequel, so there’s that I guess!!

First fic for the @badthingshappenbingo!! The red squares are prompts that have already been requested, feel free to send more in though!! I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get to them but hopefully you won’t have to wait too long. Hope you guys like the fic!!!

Commission me!! Buy me a coffee!! Join my Discord server!! AO3!!

Once upon a time, there was a King.

He was as regal as he was mysterious, powers so strong he might as well have been able to make literal mountains kneel before him. Everyone knew of him, from the filthiest criminal to the richest man. He saw everything, heard everything, nothing and no one could escape his power. He was the judge and the executioner, protected the city in the way he saw most fit with the Puppeteer and the Duke standing at his sides.

The government called him dangerous. The people secretly called him a hero.

Once upon a time, there was a King. Until one day, he was no more -exactly how Roman had wanted it to be.

+++

Parting ways with Janus and Remus hadn't been easy. They'd been at his side since the very beginning, from the first appearance of his power to his decision to do whatever it took to protect those who couldn't.

"I'm always down to fight the government," Janus had said with a smirk, easily slipping into his Puppeteer alter ego as Remus simply swung his morning star around with a feral grin.

In the end, though, the King had had to go, and even then those two had supported his decision. What Roman had done to deserve his brother and his partner, he still had to understand. And besides, it wasn't as if he had had to cut them out of his life or anything! They still hung out lots during the day, either at the twin's apartment or at Janus' penthouse (being the only heir to a very rich family could have its perks, he supposed).

But at the end of the day, when the sun left the sky and the cover of the night fell over the city, it was the Puppeteer and the Duke who patrolled along the dirty rooftops, taking on those crimes Lady Justice seemed to overlook -Roman was nothing but a college student now and could only watch from afar, some part of him stubbornly longing for days that had since come to an end.

Or at least, that had been the plan. Then, well, Patton had happened.

They had met during a Psychology class they were both taking -for Patton, it was for his major, while Roman was just there for the credit. They had hit it off almost immediately, the both of them bonding over the pain that were morning classes and bemoaning how much money they were probably going to spend at the local coffee shop in order to survive the semester.

As much as he prided himself of being way smarter than people gave him credit for, Roman couldn't say he had figured his classmate's secret identity out immediately. It had taken him a few weeks and even then, he had needed Janus' help for his brain to click the dots into place.

Well, actually, it had been thanks to the recordings of one of the Puppeteer and the Duke's patrol sessions, during which the two had managed to stumble upon the new ragtag trio of superheroes, Storm, Heart and Logic, taking care of a small robbery downtown.

Janus and Roman had been analyzing the video, with Remus unhelpfully chucking pieces of popcorn at the back of their heads, when video-Heart had thrown his head back and laughed, grinning from ear to ear as Logic seemed to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration.

Roman had frozen, the laugh ringing clear as day in his head as the last piece of a puzzle he hadn't known had been there slid into place -he knew that laugh, heard it every Tuesday and Friday morning before class as he sipped at his coffee and watched Patton try to fit as many puns as he could into a single sentence.

Patton was Heart. His friend was a superhero. Well, shit.

So yeah, Roman had figured it out and immediately started panicking about the newfound information. Janus and Remus, of course, had found the entire thing hilarious, teasing him about having somehow managed to stumble upon and befriend a superhero without even knowing it.

In the end, though, what exactly could he do? Roman was only a college student, and it wasn't like Patton was doing this alone -he had Storm and Logic by his side, keeping him safe and watching his back. His friend would be fine.

Then, of course, in came Virgil and Logan, the infamous roommates Patton had wanted to introduce him to since day one. In less than an hour, Roman had managed to help Pat gently bully Virgil out of his binder for the night and start a debate with Logan about the scientific accuracy of Elsa's powers and just how theoretically powerful she could have become based on the abilities she had showed in the movies.

(Olaf's existence had sparked a whole other tangent about conscience and the existence of souls on a metaphysical level, but Roman was not going to think about it lest he ended up having another existential crisis).

The real plot twist had happened much later into the night, when Roman had woken up to frantic whispering and soft rustling coming from somewhere to his right. Still keeping his eyes shut, he'd managed to catch the words "robbery" and "be careful" before hearing one of the windows gently slide shut.

Making sure to not alert anyone about his eavesdropping, Roman had waited until all he could hear was steady, even breathing before quietly sitting up, eyes shining gold into the darkness for a second before spotting Logan and Patton's figures on the ground -as for Virgil, he seemed to be nowhere to be found, the apartment being completely silent beside the two sleeping soundly beside him.

Roman had a suspicion. A very nagging suspicion in the back of his mind that was probably going to bother him until he got to the bottom of his. So, in the morning, he'd said goodbye to his new friends and headed to Janus' place, pondering over alternative explanations on the way over. Not that it would have been of any use since Janus did confirm that a robbery had taken place the night before, and that it had been halted by no other than Storm himself.

So. Virgil was Storm. Which, by taking the most logical leap, meant Logan was no other than Logic. Cool cool cool. No doubt no doubt no doubt.

… There was no way Roman could sit back and watch, was it?

And so, Prince stepped into the light, flames dancing on his fingertips and on the blade of his katana -a gift from Janus, who had reacted to Roman's sheepish smile with an eyebrow raise- and a bright red sash crossing his chest.

Logan and the others had been rather welcoming to the new superhero amongst their group, if not a little skeptical about his motives -Roman could not quite tell them he was doing all of this to give them an additional layer of protection, since he knew from experience just how dangerous the superhero gig could be. They thought all he wanted was to protect the innocents like a knight in shining armor, and he just never bothered to correct them. It wasn't like that was a lie, anyway so he didn't really feel guilty about it.

… Okay, maybe he felt a little guilty about keeping his former identity a secret. So what? It wasn't like he could go to his new friends and say "Hey, remember that one dude that scared the shit out of everyone? Yeah, that was me, fun times am I right??". And besides, it wasn't like King was going to do a comeback anytime soon, if ever. Right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

+++

It had started as a normal night-time patrol around the outskirts of the city. Roman had been joking around with Virgil, jumping easily from rooftop to rooftop as they exchanged dry remarks and teasing nicknames with Logan and Patton watching on in amusement.

Then, suddenly, an explosion.

They'd all frozen, exchanging quick glances as a cloud of smoke started to rise into the distance. Without a word, the four had bolted, the easy atmosphere that had surrounded them up until that moment gone in an instant as they prepared themselves to deal with whatever was expecting them.

They reached the plaza in a few minutes, immediately setting out to assess the damage. Strangely enough, there didn't seem to be much out of order -there were no civilians around, the few that had been around at that time of the night having been probably startled away by the explosion -which had probably gone off at the center of the square, judging by the debris and fairly-sized hole. Though the cause of it didn't seem to be anywhere to be found.

At least, until an amused chuckle resounded from behind the four.

They turned around, ready for a fight, only to be met with a grinning Nautilus.

"Oh, how nice of you guys to drop in!" the hero chirped, his grin only widening even more -Roman did not like the crazy glint in the other's eyes, his hand moving to hover a little closer to the hilt of his sword as a bad feeling started to pool in the pit of his stomach.

"Hello, Nautilus!" Patton greeted, his smile now a little tense around the edges -Roman couldn't help but feel glad he wasn't alone in his distrust, not missing the way Logan and Virgil also seemed to be a little more on guard.

It wasn't like Nautilus was a villain or anything, at least not for the public opinion. He meant well, Roman knew that, but the way he viewed the world -black and white, good vs evil with no space for anything else in-between those extremes- was something Roman just couldn't trust, knowing all too well how such a way of thinking could very easily skew someone's morals way too close to ruthlessness and self-justified cruelty.

So yeah, Nautilus might have been a hero, but Roman wouldn't trust him with the life of the most innocent of kittens.

"Nautilus, do you know the cause of that explosion?" Logan spoke up, his expression unreadable.

"Oh, that was me, nothing to worry your pretty brain about my dear Logic," Nautilus responded, waving the concern away with way too much nonchalance for Roman's liking. "I was just taking care of some little pests, nothing to worry about."

"By making the fucking square blow up?" Virgil asked, scoffing.

The other simply shrugged, once again dismissing the remark. "Sometimes you gotta do some harsh things to get rid of a problem, don't you agree?"

Oh, Roman did not like that smile one bit.

"What do you mean?" he asked, forcing himself to keep his voice neutral as his grip on his sword tightened.

Still smiling, Nautilus snapped his fingers, a water tendril appearing from behind him. And in its grasp, a familiar figure uselessly struggled for freedom, brown eyes glaring daggers at the hero's back. Faintly, Roman could easily picture the snarl currently adorning the Puppeteer's lips.

Lips he could not see, because Janus' mouth was currently being covered by a muzzle.

"Pretty cool right?" Nautilus grinned, stepping onto another tendril to let himself be carried at Janus' level. "A friend of mine made it, perfect to stop our local charmer from using his nifty powers."

Ignoring the way the other heroes were staring at him in various stages of horror, he grabbed Janus' chin, tugging his face forward until they were barely inches apart.

"Not so cocky without that silver tongue of yours, uh?" he purred, before pushing him back. "It's high time you face the consequences of your evil doings, you slimy snake."

But the Puppeteer's eyes were no longer glaring at Nautilus. No, they were trained on Roman's form, on his clenched fists and the way his eyes kept flashing a familiar golden color.

"Well, look who's gone and fucked up!" a voice chirped from above, attracting everyone's attention to the top of one of the surrounding buildings. The Duke gave the heroes a toothy grin and waved, legs swinging into the air with his signature morning star resting idly on his shoulder.

"Ah, the Duke," Nautilus hummed, crossing his arms with a cocky smirk, "I was wondering when you'd show up. Are you here to rescue your dear teammate? Please, do try, I'd love to bring down two villains in one day."

For the surprise of almost the entire square, the Duke let out a hearty laugh, throwing his head back as his whole body shook with the force of his cackles.

"Oh, please! As if I'll need to do literally anything," he said, amusement lacing every word. "This is your funeral, dude. You really angered the wrong royal."

Nautilus frowned, opening his mouth to reply -probably to ask what in the world the other was talking about- but all that left his lips was a startled yelp, fighting to keep himself steady as the earth started to rumble and shake beneath his feet. Because of the sudden distraction, all the tendrils of water broke off, included the one holding the Puppeteer. Without missing a beat, Remus jumped down and grabbed Janus before he could pummel the ground, holding him bridal style while sporting his best shit-eating grin.

"Told ya!" he sing-sang, sending Nautilus a mocking glare. Not that the hero was looking at him, mind you. He was more focused on his fellow "hero" standing just a few feet to the center of the square, his eyes blazing golden.

"Duke," called Roman, his voice clear and authoritative as it carried all around the plaza, "get him out of that damned muzzle, would you?"

"Aye aye sir!!" Remus chirped, easily ripping the piece of metal away. "Do you think you could leave a few bones intact for me to break? I wanna have some fun too!"

"Sorry, Duke-" the other chuckled, the sound sounding almost haunting to everyone else's ears- "but I don't know if I��ll have enough self-control left to do that."

A circle of golden light appeared at Roman's feet, rising up in the air and enveloping his body as it went. And then it was gone as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind a vision no one had ever thought they'd see again.

Bright, golden eyes. Hair as dark as the night. The uniform of a royal, a burgundy sash crossing his chest from shoulder to hip. In his hand, a familiar sword glinted under the artificial light of the street lamps, the hilt the same golden as its owner's irises.

The Prince was gone, lost in a circle of golden light. And at his place stood a very angry-looking King.

"That- that can't be!" Nautilus exclaimed, taking a step back. "You're gone, you can't be here!"

"Can't I?" The King -Roman, the King was Roman- asked, cocking his head to the side. "Who are you to tell me where I can and cannot be, Nautilus?"

"I'm a hero!!" the other snapped, his words laced with the desperation of a man who is standing face to face with his impending doom. "I'm a hero, you rotten king, and I after tonight I will be remembered as the one who wiped you and your villainous reign out of this city!"

Roman hummed, looking absolutely unimpressed as he calmly inspected his sword.

"You call yourself the hero… and yet, you are the one using downright torture-like methods to try and squash down those who don't fit your narrow view of good. All the Duke and I did was rescue our companion form your grasp. So tell me, Nautilus -are you really sure I'm the one you should call "villain" here?"

The hero growled at those words, eyes flashing in barely contained rage as tendrils after tendrils of water rose up behind him. "By the time I'm done with you, you'll be begging for forgiveness at my feet."

"Oh honey," the King drawled, lips stretching into a feral grin, "at the end of this, I won't be the one begging for their life."

And off they went, crashing into each other in a whirlwind of water and metal.

Taken as they were with each other, the two supers barely spared a glance to the huddle of five people looking on from the side of the square.

"What the fuck." Storm whispered, staring shell-shocked at the scene in front of him. "What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-"

"I know, right?" the Duke exclaimed, completely ignoring the hero's obvious growing panic.

"Duke, play nice," the Puppeteer drawled, with the heat of someone who had had to deal with the other's antics for way too long to really care anymore.

"Storm, please take some deep breaths for me," Logic said, stepping into Virgil's line of sight. "Do you remember your breathing techniques, yes?"

Storm nodded, visibly trying to get his breathing under control to do just that. Heart, obviously worried, moved to sit beside him, resting one hand on his shoulder to tap a regular rhythm there.

Virgil looked up at him with a small, grateful smile, raising his own hand to cover Patton's before closing his eyes to focus on his breathing.

Once it was clear Storm's panic wasn't going to advance any further and risk affecting his powers, Janus let his eyes wander towards Logic's standing figure, the hero's gaze fixed on the ongoing fight.

"You don't seem too fazed with the revelation," the Puppeteer pointed out, arching an eyebrow. "I mean, it's not every day you find out your teammate is actually the very ex-vigilante that used to terrorize the city."

"If I remember correctly, the people targeted by the King's actions were almost all corrupt politicians and crooked cops," Logic pointed out, turning his head to look at the vigilante. "And besides, I already had my suspicions."

Janus couldn't help but let out an amused chuckle. "What was it that tipped you off?"

"Honestly, I started growing suspicious during the Prince's first day on the field," the hero shrugged, pushing his holographic glasses up his nose. "He looked way too familiar with fights involving supers to be a newbie. Add in the pseudo he chose, plus the somewhat similar outfit… once the doubts started creeping in, it was relatively easy to connect the dots."

"Roman," the Puppeteer piped up, "I know you guys know him outside of the mask, so we can use his name -all the royal pseudonyms can get real old real fast."

Logic gave the vigilante a long look before nodding, letting out a soft sigh. "I suppose that makes sense, since you all were allies prior to the King's disappearance. I suppose you won't be sharing the reason of that, by the way?"

Janus shook his head. "It isn't my story to tell -I'm a keeper of many secrets, Logic, and I'm not about to go divulge them without a valid reason to. If he wants to tell you, he will. In his own time."

"Normally, I would point out that we cannot be sure that Roman will even be able to tell us, since he's currently going against one of the heroes with most raw power," Logan pointed out, "but I have heard enough stories about the King's power to be fairly optimist about his odds in this fight."

Janus chuckled, nodding in agreement.

"Case in point-" he said, gesturing back towards the square- "it looks like the winner has just become clear."

Just as he finished speaking, Nautilus came skidding on the pavement towards them, bruises and cuts covering his whole body as he struggled to get up again.

"Told you I wouldn't be the one praying for mercy on my knees, hero," the King drawled, his uniform looking barely crumpled by the fight.

"I will never bow to you, villain," Nautilus growled, fighting to keep himself upright.

Roman arched an eyebrow, an infuriatingly amused smirk tugging at his lips. "Are you sure about that? because you look just about to fall over."

"You may have defeated me, but soon the entire world will know the truth!" the hero shot back. "Their beloved Prince, hiding such a rotten secret… how do you think they will react? Every hero will not rest until you and your companions are locked shut behind bars. Your time is coming to an end, King, and I'll make sure to save myself a front-row seat for the day you'll finally be kicked down from your throne of evil."

"A very poetic imagery, I'm sure," the Puppeteer drawled from behind them, gathering everyone's attention on himself, "though I'm afraid you won't be able to reveal jack shit, you pompous asshole."

Nautilus frowned in confusion until he felt a slight tugging at his hand. Eyes widening, he snapped his head down, eyes zeroing on the yellow string wrapped loosely around his wrist.

"Sleep now, and forget," Janus ordered, eyes flashing bright yellow, and down Nautilus went, knocked out cold.

Silence fell, only interrupted by the faint sounds of sirens approaching from afar. After a few seconds, Heart went to open his mouth, hand outstretched towards the King's back, only for the vigilante to suddenly bolt without a single word and disappear into the night.

Janus and Remus exchanged a look, obviously debating something between themselves without using any words.

"Go," Logic called, catching their attention. "We won't tell, we promise."

The two vigilantes looked at the trio, watching as both Storm and Heart nodded in agreement. Then they smiled, saluted, and took off.

"Do you think Ro will come back?" Heart asked worriedly, eyes traveling from the direction the three had taken to the quickly-approaching blue and red lights in the distance.

"He better, or I'll go and find him myself," Storm muttered darkly, biting at his thumb.

"Only time will tell, there is no use in worrying about that now," Logic sighed, just as the first police car drove into the square. "For now, we better come up with a believable story. They'll want to know what exactly caused the square to blow up in the first place."

"Why lie?" Heart asked, giving his friend a small smile, "after all, Nautilus was the one who did it, wasn't he?"

Logic smirked lightly, nodding. " I suppose that is true."

"You know, sometimes I forget just how much of a little shit you can be," Storm commented, tone laced with amusement. "Then you go and pull things like this, and I get reminded all over again."

"Kiddo, language!" Heart gave an exaggerated gasped, eyes twinkling in mischief. "I just don't like lying, you know that."

Logic watched as the two snickering heroes approached the police, shaking his head with a small smile. Tonight might have raised quite a few questions, but he had no doubt the answers would come, eventually.

All in due time, he supposed.

(ask to be added to the taglist!)

@virgilmydarkstrangeson @sidesroleplayblog @im-patton @creativity-killed-thekitten @mijako98 @romansleftshoulderpad @really-sleep-deprived-nerd @unlikelynightmareconnoisseur @tigertigertigger @suspicious-sweaters @unring-this-bell @heck-im-lost @m-kai-png @ihateitwhenyourejustvague @logicallycrofters @keithkhoegane @analogical-mess @agatheringofbees @darknightvirgil @minninugget @mydicegotcursed @gattonero17 @demigodbookdragon @itgetzweird08 @melodiread

(asked to be tagged)

@ratherstarryeyed @gr3ml1n-loser @purp-man @meowthefluffy @knightinsoftpastels @sleepy-sphinx

#sanders sides #superhero au #roman sanders #remus sanders #janus sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #virgil sanders #heroes of our time #hoot #anon asks #maxisanswering #bad things happen bingo #ts fanfiction #sanders sides fanfiction #maxiswriting

110 notes · View notes

like-rain-or-confetti · 3 years

Note

Can you do a little text with your opinion about the Volturi members? What you like and dislike, they personality, they story... Would be interesting! Kissessss and have a great day! 💜

Imma have a little fun and throw the very young me into the mix to. Let's see child me vs adult me's opinions on the Volturiiii.

Fun fact: I wasn't team Volturi until I was like fifteen. Before that I was team edward... I don't want to talk about that 🤔😒

Also I'm a sucker for villains. If it isn't obvious already, I like the villains more than the heroes. (We all love a bad boy though, don't we?--- TIK TOK NOW IS NOT THE TIMEE.)

So everything i say is just my opinion and should be taken just as that.

Aro: Younger me was like "this...is a terrible person. There really is no need to expand on this." However adult me has been like "GUYS this guy is possibly the SCARIEST character. This man rips off heads AND SMILES ABOUT IT." He gives me child snatcher vibes (from the movies in particular). I thoroughly enjoy the power hungry persona. He's really fitting to be the puppeteer behind the Volturi. Even if he makes it seem it's a group effort with himself, Marcus and Caius. Realistically, Aro gets what he wants and isn't afraid to do what it takes to get it...sorry Didyme. What's even darker about it, WHICH I LOVE, is that he isn't heartless. Smeyer wrote that Aro genuinely loved his sister. It's all good to have a character that's a evil heartless monster but what's more terrifying to me is the ability for someone to do evil despite their love and emotions. It doesn't hold them back and that's what I find particularly frightening now that child me didn't comprehend. Micheal Sheen, from what I remember of his interview years ago, played on the idea that vampires of Aro's age kinda begin to lose their mind. Which, hell freaking yes. However there is one thing I hate for Aro's character that happened in the movies. Breaking dawn part 2. That fucking laugh. Don't get me wrong, hilarious. I can't not laugh but for his character I felt it was too 'hey hey I'm a crazy man hehe'. It was a but too much, even for an eccentric Aro. However, I'm not to mad at it because again, it was funny to watch. I thoroughly enjoy the ‘friendship’ Aro and Carlisle share and i love that it is ‘maintained’ throughout the books. I think it’s just a really nice detail. (I love lore. I am a sucker for it.) The one thing that didnt sit right with me is Aro marrying someone so that he wasnt the alone one whilst his co-leaders were very much in love? Was a little off for me but i suppose that just adds to the character.

Caius: child me would shrink into the seat because what did I do to this man? High key still think I wouldn't want to be Caius' child because imagine doing something wrong and you get that glare? No thank you! Scary angry man. As an adult... "He's an angry boi but...DAYUM WHY IS HE SUDDENLY SO HOT?" Just...don't get angry with me. You'll get annoying real quick and you're too pretty for that. I enjoy the taking-no-shit attitude he has but felt it could have been a little more prominent in BDP2 where Aro asks if Caius' is challenging him. I full believe Caius to an extend would be like "yes, yes I am. Don't be an idiot Aro. Use that braincell!" Which is why I adore the meme vibes I see every now and then of Caius hating Carlisle because why does Aro love that blonde so much? CAIUS HAS BEEN NOTHING BUT LOYAL-- Anyways, I can totally get why Aro wants him on his team. Caius is so angry and has so much hatred that he’s a good asset to the coven, even if not having a special ability.I do find it hard to imagine that Caius is a century older than Aro though. Although I cant picture him over forty years old lol. Although i do personally enjoy the whole Caius x Athenodora route. IT’S TRUE LOVE! Okay so maybe thats a little dramatic but its better than Aro’s lmao.

Marcus: movie Marcus is absolutely not nineteen years old and that's just a fact. If anything, he's the forty year old one lmao. Child me couldn't care about this man. He was the man who said nothing and slumped on a throne. That was Marcus. That was his character summed up. Then adult me rolled in and OMG NO DON'T DO THIS TO THIS SWEET MAN. LET HIM BE IN LOVE. As an adult i definitely became more attached. I feel like i was too young back then to get why Marcus was in the Volturi. He seemed very out of place and like a filler co-leader more than anything. However as i’ve gotten older (and written for him), I recognised that's the point. That’s Marcus’ evident grief. He isn’t there by choice and losing Didyme caused him to fall out of line with the coven. He’s lost point or purpose. Almost like its become meaningless because the love of his life was gone and he couldn't save her.So what was the aims of the Volturi to protect vampire kind when they couldn’t protect their own? He couldnt protect her. I had never heard of anything like bond identification and once i had- i was shook, like it became clear why he had been so necessary in the first place. That really is handy to understand everyones bonds in a coven, he could direct Chelsea and the two alone could destroy covens by bonds alone. Marcus makes the Volturi more realistic in a lot of ways. Like in a family, there is the happy times, goofy people like Felix, the twins representing a close bond. Afton and Chelsea, love that cant be divided. The list really goes on. Marcus represents love and heartbreak, pain, loss grief, the sad moments every family goes through. In that way he makes the coven seem less invincible, a group of people who at the end of the day, have their own weaknesses and immortality doesn’t mean a perfect existence. Especially when, in my opinion, Bella fantasized about immortality and how perfect it would be. Even after her change, she waited for her happy ending because that was somehow guaranteed in some level. Which in the end, she got but not everyone gets that happy ending we all want. I also personally think Marcus is the most feeling of the Volturi, despite being apathetic. A result of heartbreak. It’s shown he can still feel more in his own ways when he voted against Renesmee being destroyed. Furthermore, he advocated that vampire hybrids were a lot like vampires. He made that relation openly before anyone. Its almost as though losing Didyme helped him value a life?

Jane and Alec: Child me thought these two were badass...and that still remains in my adult life. It’s always been uncomfortable to me that someone so young is so sadistic and powerful. Jane is the older twin with the ability of pain illusion...yikes. Her ability was evident in her human life along with Alec’s. His gift is sensory deprivation and these two were my favourites in the whole Saga. Still kind of are if im honest. I thoroughly enjoy the twins backstory. It has the most detail. I have a tag for the twins. Canon!twins is the tag for the twins in their book age. Unless this tag is present, the twins have been aged up :). They are very much canon but I put a bit more emphasis on tantrums. If they get angry, they both have tantrums. So whilst (unless tagged) they aren't children they can be very childish and these tantrums are pretty deadly. They’re also very possessive? I dont even know if thats the right word i’m looking for in all honesty. Lets say they get very attached if they like you. These two are probably the most secluded out of the whole Volturi.

Felix: Felix! High ranking guard due to strength and speed. I am a major supporter of Felix being a gladiator when he was human. He as a lighter grey cloak meaning he isn’t as high ranked but is so good at what he does that he’s been kept for centuries...and a lot of them. Personality? FINALLY, WE’VE GOT ONE WITH PERSONALITY!! (Im writing these out of order and i’ve just finished a chunk of Volturi members who have personalities as invisible as Afton.) Flirtatious and Light hearted, we love flirtatious and light hearted! Basically a comedian! Helllll yes, keep it going! Extremely vicious and highly aggressive? You know what? I still like it. He wouldn’t be a Volturi without a dark side. Cold blooded murderer. Yes. 10/10. Finally, someone Smeyer seems to actually care about. He flirted with Bella a couple of times in the books and i was FOR IT ALL THE WAY. I was very sad i saw none of it in the movies but im used to heartbreak by now. Im in this fandom after all. We were robbed of a lot. Strongest vampire in the world? I believe you, he’s also a hecking treeeeee. HE DO BE A TALL BOI. He actually makes Demetri look small and that’s still hilarious to me. Demetri is actually tall. However, if it isnt obvious we clearly traded backstory for personality. I cant get both smh. So...as i said before I fully believe Felix was a gladiator back in the day, hence his physique and height and excellent fighting abilities he has even as a vampire but then it kind of ends. I will say from the dawn of time, i don’t think Felix is the most academic man, just because of his era. I also think majority of the Volturi couldn’t read of write in their human lives and had to learn much older, most learning as vampires. Felix was one of these vampires, Although even now he isnt the most great at it. Then a wonderful writer known as @wallwriterstuff included it and now it’s canon in my eyes. I fully believe Felix is a slow reader and writing isn’t his strong suit either. Wallwriter also includes the possibility that Felix could be dyslexic which im all for too. For a very long time i’ve considered writing a dyslexic reader with the Volturi but have always hesitated because i don’t have it and wouldn’t want to upset someone for any misunderstandings or inaccuracies. However what i will say is that i think vampires would be the most understanding to humans with dyslexia. Learning things like that in later development or as an adult is difficult and they wouldnt think any less of you for struggling with reading, writing, numeracy- you name it. You’ll probably find they’re with you in the struggle at least half of the time. He’s also the goofball of the Volturi, even though he’s not really a goofball in our eyes, he’s the closest to a goofball out of the whole Volturi ...Emmett beats him in the Goofball wars.

Demetri: Oh yeah, it's Demetri's turn! So Demetri was previously in Amun's coven. When Chelsea gave him the old razzle dazzle...I've said Chelsea's gift so many times at this point it's getting old. I have two characters left after Demetri 😂😂 Anyway, with that Demetri was like "welp, I'm in the Volturi now." And now that they had a better tracker the previous one was kicked out. He isn’t much of a talker, polite and formal. He’s elegant (more graceful than i could ever be) and charming...yeah he is, you can say that AGAIN. He is also very calm, when next to Felix, i think everyone is calm but you know, we’ll say he’s a very calm person. I like how he was originally in the Egyptian coven with Amun. Given Amun’s goals this a pretty nice detail. NOW LETS GO TO MY VERSION. He’s very charming, calm, polite, formal and even a lil’ but quiet, i kept him pretty canon because he actually had a description to go on :)))))))))) Moving on. Demetri can be a very successful flirt when he wants to be and does have a Casanova reputation. However beyond the charming Volturi guard who has a brutal side like the rest of them, he has a chewy centre, deep down. I added that he had a child in his human life, one he doesn’t remember and very few people know about. He remembers that they died of an illness very young (around six?) but can’t remember what they look like. For that reason he doesn’t like talking about his child, he feels awful he doesn’t remember them and the loss still hits a pang in his chest.

Heidi: Alright im ready for this one! Child me didn’t necessarily enjoy Heidi? I was rather passive about her. It was all ‘pretty vampire used for her looks’ in my eyes back then and i was never comfortable with that. I’ll get into my take on Heidi in a moment, roll on the backstory! So Heidi knew Victoria as they used to be coven mates and we’re going to continue on as though Heidi didn’t care when she was killed? Like...its genuinely a burning question in my mind! If she didn't care, could that show the extent of Chelsea’s power in action!? (can we tell im enthusiastic about this coven yet?) It’s quite smart to have someone lure in prey. I wont lie, Heidi has quite the badass role in the coven. I wouldn't have thought about that I reckon. I’ve always thought that showed a kind of superiority. Oh you guys need to hunt your prey? pfft, ours literally comes to us. Her backstory really starts with Heidi being mistreated in her human life...a common theme Smeyer has. It can get old- i wont lie but when i give it some thought it kind of makes sense. Rosalie said it herself in eclipse, if any one of them had their happy ending, they’d be six feet under but i’d love a little bit more creativity. I could go on about how male vampires ended up being changed in comparison to female vampires but i’ll swiftly move on because that’s a whole other thing alone. Heidi was changed out of pity. (Which kinda infuriates me just to type, a pity change? Really? Really Hilda? we’ll see why it annoys me when i explain my take on Heidi.) Heidi was happy in her coven with Hilda, Victoria etc, which is hell yes. We love that. This is around the time she discovered her gift. Vampires were attracted to her and humans fell prey to her easily. Yup okay. I’ll take that. After a newborn vampire caused ‘too much attention’ Aro spared Heidi and Chelsea used her gift on Heidi. Nice, very nice aaaaand that’s where it stops and im left hanging. Personality time with Smeyer! Lets goooo. From what i remember and can find- she didn’t fucking have one. Apparently being pretty is enough for everyone. Which in hindsight, fair enough on a human Bella’s perspective, its literally Heidi’s gift to lure you in no matter what. She could tell you she’s a serial killer (and technically is lmao) and is about to sell your kidneys on the black market as to which you’ll be like ‘sign me the fuck up, want my liver too? Here, let me lie on the table for you. I’m down.’ without even realising what just happened. But even beyond that...Heidi has no personality traits mentioned. In New Moon she appears to be a little flirty which im all for, why the hell not? But...thats it? Thats all I get? Then we get into fanfictions, because i read them growing up. Heidi was depicted as flirtatious, promiscuous and then it varied between manipulative or she wasnt very smart. Which i’m knocking absolutely no one for. I think you can get a badass character who is incredibly dumb. I think all characters are actually valid whether they’re a genius or flat out dumb. I love them all. However it never really sat with me. I was never quite satisfied which i was fine with until i started writing for myself. That’s when i knew i’d have to really think about what my version of Heidi would be or i’d never be happy with my work. That and you also begin to fill in the blanks? The more you write the more you flesh out a character for yourself and so that rolls into my version of Heidi! So for my Heidi, she often gets the same trope of ‘she’s pretty and rich, those types of girls have easy lives who always had everything given to them.’ Then when it’s discovered she didn’t have a good human life. It turns to the next assumption of ‘oh she’s pretty and stupid enough to be used and manipulated’. In a lot of ways, that’s what Heidi wants everyone to think. Underestimate her, please, its all the easier to manipulate you if you do. She’s actually very smart and her rough human life made her more tough and intelligent. She’s very manipulative and yes she’s very flirty. You can look but you cant touch! She enjoys the attention her beauty gets her but if only these people would care more about what she’s like as a person. She’s not a barbie doll she will play you if she needs to. The only one who’s actually gotten far enough to sleep with Heidi is Demetri and even then the two don’t see each other romantically. They’re good friends who thinks the other is very attractive but that's where it ends. They’re basically friends with benefits some times lmao. However, Demetri got that far because he see’s the intellect Heidi actually has and acknowledges it. He thinks shes a queen who should be treated as such. She could take anything she wanted, a storm that people can only hope to survive in one piece. Secretly she enjoys a family setting. Whilst she never really wanted children (especially when she was expected to when human), she couldn't help but melt inside seeing little human children with their loving parents. She wants that for all children. Whether that's because she lacked such affection growing up, no one knows. She’s also a really good friend, you bet she’ll have your back. Crappy ex? Well we’ll show them, wont we (Y/N)? She’ll be a bitch and enjoy every second of it. She also loves the single life, believe it or not, you’ll have more difficulty getting Heidi to settle down than you would Demetri which speaks volumes. So yeah, move past her gift and really get to know her and you might have a very good friend. I also don’t see Heidi having a preference between male or females and that’s in all honesty. Times have changed and if she is attracted to another female then she wont be ashamed of it. She never has been (Demetri was the first to figure that out, Felix may be the last.) Even when the times weren’t approving of different sexualities, she didn't care. She will flirt with you and find it ridiculously cute if you get flustered.

Sulpicia: Sulpicia was an orphan which i used to develop my own version of her. Sulpicia grew to love Aro which im on the fence about but yup, i’ll take it. You’ll see what happens with my version in a bit lmao. and that’s where it stops. I get no personality again but do you know what we do in this fandom? We create one and fill in the blanks baby! So i write Sulpicia very materialistic and vain, she’s most snobbish of the wives and due to the other two, also considered the meaner one. She didnt have such things as a child being an orphan so when she got the opportunity to have it-she jumped. She isnt easily impressed and married Aro not for love but for immortality, money and status. (He’s only married you for your money, princess Jasmine! HE ONLY MARRIED YOU FOR YOUR MONEY! Damn it tik tok, but make it princess Aro) Which works well, because Aro doesnt necessarily love her either, he just wanted a mate so he wasnt the odd one out.He literally created her because he was like “Yup, you’ll do.” The two recognised they made a great team and image so they kinda grew to love each other? A little bit? Sure we’ll say its love...sorta. ANYWAY, It’s a highlight to Sulpicia being locked in that tower where she doesnt need to see Aro every little moment, it’s better than having a husband who she’d need to see everyday. ...Yeah my Sulpicia is something else lmao.

Athenodora: Athenodora is one of the oldest vampires in existence which kinda has me shook but I'll take it. She met Caius when he was fleeing from the Romanians, the two travelled together until they met Aro. Whilst on their nomadic travels they seemingly became mates. That's all we know about that. As to which the Volturi coven was made. Athenodora is completely loyal to Caius as well as highly dependent on him and I think that's very realistic given her circumstances. That's where their story ends...maybe for Smeyer but not for me! 😁 So I picture Caius and Athenodora being different sides of the same coin. Athenodora really mellows Caius, she is no where near is violent and sadistic as he is but due to her unwavering loyalty and dependency, she doesn't feel inclination to go against him...also because of Chelsea and Corin but I've said that so many times in this post I think we get the point. I think she's actually more gentle and soft spoken but that being said. She is very reserved and if she were to be angered she'd very much change. She could cut you down with words alone. Caius loves it. However beyond this is someone who is very maternal. Caius would appreciate it more if the two had children but instead it has created empathy. Caius doesn't want that when he can rip their head off. She struggles a little more with the 'no second chances' and that's another reason why Caius keeps her locked away and away from it. These two love each other more than words can describe. After being through so much with someone, the love can only grow. The two would happily risk their life for the other. Caius is saddened that he could never give her the family she wanted. He knows that to this day, Athenodora tries to reign in that side of her. He's a very supportive husband who's very different around his wife. He's much more tolerant, and angry. Simply more at ease. If anything happened to Athenodora, to put it simply...there would be hell to pay.

Didyme: Married to Marcus and Aro’s biological sister. Cute, me likely, keepy going. Her gift was happiness induction. VERY ADORABLE- Dont be as menacing as your brother...please. She was born several years after Aro and was changed by Aro ten and a half years after he was turned. (Dont tease me with all this lore Smeyer, I know what you’re gonna do) Aro was deeply disappointed her gift was just to make people happy- its okay Didyme, we love you. Aro is just...Aro. Her gift made many fall in love with her and its so freaking cute i CANT- but she only felt the same feelings for Marcus. MY HEART IS SO WARMMMM. Unfortunately they were so happy together that they lost interest in anything Volturi and were ready to leave. (Uh oh.) Aro, being the sneaky fellow he is, was like “I’m really happy for y’all of course you can leave. I love you my babies. My best friend and my sisterrrrrrr, I am the captain of this SHIP.” but was actually like “wait, no, no, no, not my Marcus. D-D-Did-Didyme I NEED him.” Think Sid the Sloth from ice age in the first movie when Sid really wants the baby. So this man is like...gonna have to do it to em and murder. He killed Didyme secretly (dunno how he pulled the secret part off- like i know how he did it but how did no one hear or see anything or even suspect anything IT WAS LITERAL FRIENDLY FIRE but we love the drama so continue.) Ironically enough she was very close with Aro and the two actually did love each other, Aro is just...murderous apparently, to the extent that even his sister isnt safe. And that’s it. That’s Didyme. Which im like...alright Smeyer i see you. I like this and expanded on this with my Didyme. i get the vibes that Didyme is the most innocent and kind of all the Volturi. Losing her meant losing the consciousness within the Volturi making them all the more ruthless because there was no one to say. “Guys, maybe lets rethink this? and quickly because i cant get Caius to put down the torch thats currently on fire.” Losing Didyme made Marcus mostly become passive and would rarely stop anything that happened. I often wonder if that provoked a lot of guilt for Marcus later on. (However thats a spoiler for something im currently writing...;) ) I also think of her as a major daydreamer and the most soft, gentle person anyone will ever meet. Like its difficult not to like her despite being in the Volturi, even the Romanians would have struggled if they met her. So in the long run...i hate nothing about Didyme, only find more and more love lmao.

Corin: So im going to be honest and tell you i have no idea what Corin would look like. I’ve got nothing and when i was younger i wasnt even sure if Corin was male or female. Like a lot of these names, i had never heard of the name ‘Corin’. I dont write for her as of yet because im still trying to figure her out. I think she’s quite quiet, she lets her gift do most of the work for her in keeping the wives, Chelsea and Caius when he doesnt get to go on a rampage, content. She was brought in also after Didyme died but Marcus refused her gift.That’s all i’ve got for her. Her gift is amazing, pretty underrated in my personal opinion since like Chelsea, she really helps keep the Volturi unified but other than that, I dont have much to say about her. :(

Afton: Another character i basically filled the blanks in for myself. So what we’re told is that he’s Chelsea’s mate and has the ability to disappear . Whilst thats a pretty cool trick...the volturi dont necessarily need it but they have to keep Chelsea happy and she demands that Afton stays so welcome to the family Afton! I also recently learned that if you hide behind Afton and he goes invisible infront of an opponent, you too will also be invisible. I figure that is until the opponent moves and basically changes their perspective but i could be wrong with that last part. That’s all we get so time for my unnecessary input! SO AFTON IS A TOTAL SWEETHEART. He’s very shy but polite. This is a complete opposite to his mate Chelsea. It’s actually what she liked about him. At first is was just be flirtatious to the shy vampire but when she actually got to know him... she fell hard. It was also Chelsea who had made the first move since Afton was so shy. Of course she’d never say so and Afton would never want to embarrass her so that was never really disclosed to anyone who wasn’t around at that time. She brings Afton out of his shell a lot and it wasn’t long before the two were mates. Chelsea is the light of his life. Hands down. He puts up with a lot for her and is happy to do so. She could ask anything of him and he’d do it and she doesn’t even need to use her gift. He buys are anything she wants almost instantly. He cant help but adore her passionate personality, like how hooked she can get on era’s such as the 1920′s, her love for jazz music and her ability to gush on and on about anything. The two had what the other lacked and that made them an excellent team. I love their relationship. I cant help it. However, as i said before Afton is very shy and tends to keep to himself. Sadly that, paired with Chelsea’s demand to keep him in the Volturi has left Afton a little bit outcasted. All the other permanent guards were wanted and considered important whilst Afton...not so much. Although that isn’t to say the other guards are mean to him or anything. They aren’t! (Except the twins who are...the twins.) Felix and Demetri tried to include him a lot but it was very difficult to break him out of his shell. That doesn’t mean to say they wont invite Afton when he’s around. Chelsea always appreciates their efforts. Afton is notably good friends with Santiago, who often preferred solitude as well.

(Guard to the left is who I imagine Afton is)

Chelsea: So supposedly Chelsea’s original name is Charmion? When i was younger i didnt really care much about her. I only really knew her gift and that she was the reason Afton was kept in the Volturi, since they were mates. From what im aware Chelsea basically wasnt in the movies/not identified. There wasnt much said about her in the books either. So since then i’ve kind of developed my own persona of Chelsea that could be completely inaccurate to canon but canon was my foundations with characters like these. She was always a red head in my eyes with ringlets, a copper kind of red head. I also pictured her to be small. However the newest addition to her character would have to be the mid-Atlantic accent. I blame Poppy Hill for this one. That character screamed Chelsea to me. She was very close to how i imagine Chelsea to be. So now Chelsea has an accent that i have no clue how she managed to maintain being in Italy so long and being born in Greece. LMAO. We’ll say she was very attached to that time. However, I think the time she joined the Volturi was actually very good for the story. She first came around just after Marcus had lost Didyme and Aro had her use her ability to keep Marcus in the coven. it’s really cool how she could really make or break the coven. Although, Aro was smart enough to not fully rely on her, using Corin’s ability on Chelsea to make sure she’d be happy and stay within the Volturi. Thats where the information on Chelsea really ends Over the years Chelsea has appeared in my writing and so beyond this point, Chelsea’s character is only my depiction. I figure Chelsea is a talker, like she can talk her way in and out of situations with ease. She enjoys being manipulated and even more so, being needed.Much like her gift, she gets under people’s skin- not in terms that she’s annoying but more so she can figure out people very well. Her mate is the complete opposite and so she often speaks on the behalf of them. Chelsea is very social and charismatic. She along with Heidi are the only two Volturi members who will be out and interacting with humans if necessary. Heidi for her ability but Chelsea purely for her social skills. She’s also the most interested in human culture. She loves the parties- the 1920′s being her favourite era in terms of fashion. She has no issue changing her name and has done so multiple times when the names run out of fashion.It’s like playing dress up! I’d actually love to write more about her. I’ve really grown to love her character, even if i filled in some blanks for myself. I think she and Afton’s relationship is one of the best, up there with Carlisle and Esme- despite the two being very different. It’s a part of their dynamic!

(I always imagined Chelsea to be a red head but Poppy Hill from THOHH is a very close depiction to Chelsea in my eyes)

Renata: A stressed little bean that lives on stress. I remember thinking when i was younger she was the big threat since she was Aro’s shield but now that im older i see...a stressed little five foot bean. I have no idea what she looks like but always imagine her dark hair tied in a tight bun, looking almost painful. Another who wears heels, like Heidi but she is very rigid just as she has been described. Her uncle is a bit of an ass considering he begged her to go with the Volturi so there wouldn’t be a threat. Dude, can you not just...hand over your niece? At least hesitate! Just like that, thanks to Chelsea, she’d give her life to protect Aro and...I have nothing else. Yes it does drive me mad that there are two named guards i know next to nothing about.

Santiago:So what’s known about Santiago is that he doesn’t actually have an ability. He’s just very good at battle techniques and fighting which is why he’s kept around. If they need fighters, they’re top three are Felix, Demetri and Santiago...in that order. Santiago is also much faster than a regular vampire (as shown in breaking dawn part 2- he caught up to Jacob and Renesmee quite fast despite the two having a running start and wolves supposedly being very fast- much like a vampire) That’s all we know of him so then i got in there and this is how I write Santiago. I gave him the background of coming from a superstitious family. Like he would be told tales of demons and witches growing up as well as things like voodoo. He knew an awful lot of urban legends and whilst he stopped believing in the bad luck his family taught him, he still held interest and couldn’t help the instinct of unease when witnessing such things as rituals. It’s ironic really. However Santiago always deems that humans have it all wrong. These forces are beyond human understanding and shouldn’t be played with. In that way, perhaps Santiago still has some belief in things such as superstition. He’s very secretive about it and would never clarify it for you. Santiago keeps to himself and can be quite standoffish. He can also be blunt even if it’s insulting- he doesn’t tend to care. Although he and Afton became quite good friends since the Afton was an outcast and Santiago didn’t enjoy large groups, or most people in general.

34 notes · View notes