#and like. making certain paths become real bc they believe one more over the other

[georgieluz]

'giving nix a hot mess of a boyfriend (oliver)' please bc i wanna hear abt your ocs (...sorry for asking for like three, i got very excited abt them all)

of course!! thank you for asking about them and being interested in any at all bc my file names are such a mess!!

so i wrote a short introductory post about two of my ocs (oliver being one of them) the other day, so if you didn't see it then it's over here but i'll talk a bit more about the fic itself under the read more

in my earlier post, i briefly mentioned oliver's disdain for being given orders due to his situation with his parents, and whilst nix outranks him at a certain point and is technically his superior, he's also a lot more casual about how he treats oliver and his approach to their intelligence work together. oliver is initially drawn to nix because of this, he's not really like the other officers oliver has met. he also believes they have a shared attitude towards the rules, authority and living in a state of permanent denial as much as possible. so there's an element of mirroring between them, conceptually at least, but it's a distorted mirror really, if anything. they aren't real reflections of each other, and oliver sees that as a betrayal of sorts. anytime nix goes against his projected act of carelessness, oliver feels slighted in some way, like nix is leaving their little two-person "us against authority" club and joining the rest of the bootlickers (yes oliver would be dming nix calling him a bootlicker on twitter dot com all the time if he were alive in 2023). oliver had this idea that they were gonna burn up together in some kind of dramatic explosion, but lew starts to realise what oliver actually needs, himself too, and decides he's the man for the job of fixing them both.

there's a lot of friction and tension between them but also a lot of love and understanding and trust. oliver doesn't really think of it as trust, not at first, he's not sure he's even capable of it. but it's there.

nix really struggles with oliver's irresponsibility toward his own wellbeing and safety. he'd never put anyone else in danger and he's not incompetent, he's very smart and is actually good at what he does, but his own life isn't a major priority for him. dying at war would be far too satisfying for his parents, though, so he's also not going out of his way to die somewhere his parents would interpret as heroic. and nix tends to use this to his advantage trying to keep him safe. nix isn't perfect either and has his own demons, so it's not exactly an easy path for either of them. but it's fun for me.

oliver's relationship with his parents is a major influence on his attitude toward the world around him and frankly, it's skewed his entire outlook on life and his own self of sense. and it'll become clear why he's so hellbent on defying anyone and everyone.

sorry if most of this doesn't make much sense out of context, but his backstory and upbringing will explain a lot of it.

here's another pre-war moodboard for him:

[rainbowsky]

More on the Fan Fic issue

I have a few more asks about the issue raised the other day, some of which are long and go into detail on the 'wars' that have been happening on Twitter and AO3.

Sorry for grouping these but I wanted to put it all under a cut because these are long, and also in case people don't want to dig into these issues (which would be understandable).

Anonymous 1 asked:

"I am very strongly of the opinion that the BJYX term is still a fandom umbrella term" I agree. Mainly because Bjyx is the most popular. Many antis always say bjyx, and have no idea the others. So sometimes it's easier just to say bjyx instead of explaining all three. I myself more like "who cares as long as they happy." So I enjoy Yizhan in all contexts. Many bxgs I know also like that, mostly ibxgs. I think deep down all bxgs (no matter which position they prefer) just want Yizhan to be happy

Not sure we can be so certain about that last part, Anon (I think for a lot of people GG and DD are just characters in a smutty story they have in their heads), but I agree about the term being popular regardless of the type of fans people are.

From what I can see the BJYX term seems to be used 80-90% umbrella, 10-20% dynamic in both international and c-social media (for every 10 times you see the term used, only one or two of those usages - probably less - are referring to a dynamic). This is my totally unscientific estimation, but I think even 10-20% dynamic is being generous. The number of people who are fixated on a sexual dynamic aren't nearly as large as they'd like to believe.

Anonymous 2 asked:

about the promptfests - i’ve been on twitter since early 2020 and what i’ve noticed is that this influx bjyx-only promptfests started gaining speed once lots of rational voices started leaving the fandom recently either because a) new interests have caught their attention or b) the toxicity of the popular bxg circles on twitter have become too much to handle.

gdgdbaby was usually the organizer of dynamic-inclusive events, and she’s received lots, and lots, and lots of backlash by bxg, sometimes even by accounts with thousands followers, for using bjyx as a catch-all term. and as her interest in yizhan has since waned—hopefully for reasons unrelated to fandom toxicity—many of the people who were attracted to the welcoming environment she created distanced themselves as well.

zsww/lsfy fans have become an outnumbered circle who try their best to create exclusive events to avoid the “is bjyx a catch-all term” discourse, but never seem to gain as much traction as gdgdbaby (who has a sizeable following) or those who host bjyx-only events (who also have sizeable followings).

meanwhile the dynamic war has only become more and more hostile and bjyx is clearly the more populated group… ao3 is simply a battlegrounds, if i may dramatize the situation a little for the sake of humor, and the promptfests are a reaction to this irritating t/b discourse that has made bxg twitter completely inhospitable for me…and lots of other fans too.

(i’ve also noticed a huge reinforcement as of recently where ppl will call gg laopo, a milf, an omega, etc even outside of rpf (i.e. posting pictures of him at events and saying he looks pregnant or he’s going into heat) and it’s just… uncomfortable.)

(also please note i have a biased account of all of this drama bc many of my friends were harassed over it, and anyone who disagrees with my take may feel free to interject.)

I took the liberty of adding paragraph breaks because they are pretty important for some readers, particularly ND readers like me.

It's sad to hear how fucked up everything has become, but I'm not even remotely surprised. Toxicity leads to toxicity, and the whole idea of dividing up a RP fandom by sex position was misguided from the outset - no matter why it was done or how good the intentions might have been.

And yes, like I said, these people aren't just framing things this way for fan fic. This is how they talk about IRL GGDD.

I had written a lengthy essay here about homophobia in the fandom but deleted it all. Perhaps I'll post it separately at some later point. Suffice it to say that this stuff creates a climate that's often hostile for queer people. So much of it is deeply homophobic, whether people are aware of it or not.

It's really sad to hear about gdgdbaby being mistreated in any way. Anyone who steps up and sticks their neck out to help organize and coordinate activities that benefit a broader group of people should be celebrated and supported, not run out of town by an angry mob.

I've read some of her stories and even have one or two on my rec list. And here's someone who is not only writing good works, but also supporting others to write more good works. Such a shame.

Anonymous 3 asked:

Hello Mr. RBS! I think I can chime in a bit about the fanfic topic as I’ve watched this all unravel on twitter (where a majority of authors/readers are). I apologize if this gets long but it’s been something that’s also been on my mind.

I want to preface this by saying that I’m not a fan of the distinctions of dynamics as, like you said, the supposed line between real life and fanfic is long gone, so I’m not trying to be biased against one group over another.

Short answer to the question of, “is this retaliation?” : I do believe it is. (From here onwards I’ll be using bjyx as the dynamic term just for the ease of simplicity.) To understand why, I’ll have to explain with a bit of background info. On twitter, I’d say that there’s a quite large divide between bjyx and zsww/lsfy. That itself isn’t really a problem because people are free to like what they like and associate with whoever.

However there is a big problem where bjyx people are not just bjyx but also anti-zsww/lsfy. To the point where I’ve seen people say that they feel physically ill when they accidentally read zsww. I don’t think this type of behavior should exist in any dynamic bc in the end GGDD are real people with a real relationship behind this content and it’s just a gross fetishization at that point.

With all this happening, zsww/lsfy people have gotten more outspoken on how GG is often portrayed in those types of scenarios, mainly the over-feminization of him, bc it’s not just done in the context of fanfic but regular discussion of GGDD at this point. This tension between the dynamics kind of boiled over when the pregnant xz fest was announced, as you can take a guess at how that went over with zsww/lsfy people. lol.

But around that same time, another zsww/lsfy event was announced (I’m not sure if it’s the one anon was talking about) but the creator of the event suddenly got a ton of backlash for excluding bjyx, with the reasoning that bjyx is technically a part of lsfy. But the event was done to highlight zsww/lsfy (as all specific events are) bc the community and content for these dynamics are much less than bjyx.

Which is how we come back to the starting point of, is all this recent bjyx stuff retaliatory. I believe so bc the events (preg fest, dark event) are very specific prompts that target exactly what zsww/lsfy people have been outspoken against.

As to the point anon made about trying to drown out the tags, keep in mind that zsww/lsfy content is very minimal compared to bjyx and has only just recently started to gain more traction. I think most people would love to just peacefully exist in their own circles but I don’t see this problem between dynamics disappearing anytime soon.

Like I said with the above Anon, I've added paragraph breaks for ND readers.

What a mess.

I have absolutely nothing useful to say here about the fandom on AO3 and how it's managed by community members, but I do think it's unfortunate that people choose to be war-like rather than make space for diverse voices, and I think it's a real shame that some people have been essentially run out of the fandom because of this garbage.

Thanks for giving some context for how/why the major shift in tone of fan fic lately. I had no idea any of this was going on.

I urge people to work hard to give space for all voices and perspectives, and not just the ones they favor. I'd also urge people to reflect on how their thoughts, behavior and actions in the fandom might affect queer people in the fandom.

As always, we have no control over what other people do, say or think. All we have any control over is how we respond to what other people do, say or think. Hopefully we'll chose the path of peace and try to avoid fan wars or fights that only ruin the experience for everyone.

I guess one thing I'd ask any of the Anons who have written me about this issue - or anyone who has thoughts about it - is, what can we as readers/fans who care about diversity of voices and perspectives do to support that here and on AO3, without getting involved in any kind of war?

[mjvnivsbrvtvs]

hi! so we have established at this point that you have A Lot Of thoughts about antony and brutus. but how does caesar (julius, not the little bitch octavian) play into that? bc like. my knowledge and impression of them is very limited and mainly constructed from watching hbo rome and idk. i think it'd be fun to throw caesar in the mix. love all the art and writing on your blog btw! have a nice day.

Hey, okay! So this used to be over 30 pages long (Machiavelli and Caligula got involved and that's when things got out of hand), but through the power of friendship and two late night writing dates fueled by coffee, I’ve cut it way down to under 10. Many thanks to the people who listened to me ramble about it at length, and also to a dear friend for helping me cut this down to under ten pages!

Also, thank you! I'm glad you enjoy the stuff I make! It makes me very happy to hear that!

And quickly, a Disclaimer: I’m not an academic, I’m not a classicist, I’m not a historian, and I spend a lot of time very stressed out that I’ve tricked people into thinking I’m someone who has any kind of merit in this area. It's probably best to treat this as an abstract character analysis!

On the other hand, I love talking about dead men, so, with enthusiasm, here we go!

For this, I’m going to cut Shakespeare and HBO Rome out of the framework and focus more on a historical spin.

Caesar is a combination of a manipulator and a catalyst. A Bad Omen. The remaining wound that’s poisoning Rome.

Cassius gets a lot of the blame for Brutus’ turn to assassination, but it overlooks that Brutus was already inclined towards political ambition, as were most men involved in the political landscape of the time.

Furthermore, although Sulla had actually raised the number of praetorships available from six to eight, there were still only two consulships available. There was always the chance that death or disgrace might remove some of the competition and hence ease the bottleneck. But, otherwise, it was at the top of the ladder that the competition was particularly fierce: whereas in previous years one in three praetors would have gone on to become consul, from the 80s BC onwards the chances were one in four. For the senators who had made it this far, it mattered that they should try to achieve their consulship in the earliest year allowed to them by law. To fail in this goal once was humiliating; to fail at the polls twice would be deemed a signal disgrace for a man like Brutus.

Kathryn Tempest, Brutus the Noble Conspirator

The way Caesar offered Brutus political power the way that he did, and Brutus accepting it, locked them into the assassination outcome.

Here is a man who’s built his entire image around honor and liberty and virtu, around being a staunch defender of morals and the republic

In these heated circumstances, Brutus composed a bitter tract On the Dictatorship of Pompey (De Dictatura Pompei), in which he staunchly opposed the idea of giving Pompey such a position of power. ‘It is better to rule no one than to be another man’s slave’, runs one of the only snippets of this composition to survive today: ‘for one can live honourably without power’, Brutus explained, ‘but to live as a slave is impossible’. In other words, Brutus believed it would be better for the Senate to have no imperial power at all than to have imperium and be subject to Pompey’s whim.

Kathryn Tempest, Brutus the Noble Conspirator

and you give him political advancement, but without the honor needed for this advancement to mean anything?

At the same time, however, Brutus had gained his position via extremely un-republican means: appointment by a dictator rather than election by the people. As the name of the famous career path, the cursus honorum, suggests, political office was perceived as an honour at Rome. But it was one which had to be bestowed by the populus Romanus in recognition of a man’s dignitas.69 In other words, a man’s ‘worth’ or ‘standing’ was only really demonstrated by his prior services to the state and his moral qualities, and that was what was needed to gain public recognition. Brutus had got it wrong. As Cicero not too subtly reminded him in the treatise he dedicated to Brutus: ‘Honour is the reward for virtue in the considered opinion of the citizenry.’ But the man who gains power (imperium) by some other circumstance, or even against the will of the people, he continues, ‘has laid his hands only on the title of honour, but it is not real honour’.70

Brutus may have secured political office, then, but he had not done so honourably; nor had he acted in a manner that would earn him a reputation for virtue or everlasting fame.

Kathryn Tempest, Brutus the Noble Conspirator

Brutus in the image that he fashioned for himself was not compatible with the way Caesar was setting him up to be a political successor, and there was really never going to be any other outcome than the one that happened.

The Brutus of Shakespeare and Plutarch’s greatest tragedy was that he was pushed into something he wouldn’t have done otherwise. The Brutus of history’s greatest tragedy was accepting Caesar’s forgiveness after the Caesar-Pompey conflict, and then selling out for political ambition, because Caesar's forgiveness is not benevolent.

Rather than have his enemies killed, he offered them mercy or clemency -- clementia in Latin. As Caesar wrote to his advisors, “Let this be our new method of conquering -- to fortify ourselves by mercy and generosity.” Caesar pardoned most of his enemies and forbore confiscating their property. He even promoted some of them to high public office.

This policy won him praise from no less a figure than Marcus Tullius Cicero, who described him in a letter to Aulus Caecina as “mild and merciful by nature.” But Caecina knew a thing or two about dictators, since he’d had to publish a flattering book about Caesar in order to win his pardon after having opposed him in the civil war. Caecina and other beneficiaries of Caesar’s unusual clemency took it in a far more ambivalent way. To begin with, most of them were, like Caesar, Roman nobles. Theirs was a culture of honor and status; asking a peer for a pardon was a serious humiliation. So Caesar’s “very power of granting favors weighed heavily on free people,” as Florus, a historian and panegyrist of Rome, wrote about two centuries after the dictator’s death. One prominent noble, in fact, ostentatiously refused Caesar’s clemency. Marcius Porcius Cato, also known as Cato the Younger, was a determined opponent of populist politics and Caesar’s most bitter foe. They had clashed years earlier over Caesar’s desire to show mercy to the Catiline conspirators; Cato argued vigorously for capital punishment and convinced the Senate to execute them. Now he preferred death to Caesar’s pardon. “I am unwilling to be under obligations to the tyrant for his illegal acts,” Cato said; he told his son, "I, who have been brought up in freedom, with the right of free speech, cannot in my old age change and learn slavery instead.

-Barry Strauss, Caesar and the Dangers of Forgiveness

something else that's a fun adjacent to the topic that's fun to think about:

The link between ‘sparing’ and ‘handing over’ is common in the ancient world.763 Paul also uses παραδίδωμι again, denoting ‘hand over, give up a person’ (Bauer et al. 2000:762).764 The verb παραδίδωμι especially occurs in connection with war (Eschner 2010b:197; Gaventa 2011:272).765 However, in Romans 8:32, Paul uses παραδίδωμι to focus on a court image (Eschner 2010b:201).766 Christina Eschner (2010b:197) convincingly argues that Paul’s use of παραδίδωμι refers to the ‘Hingabeformulierungen’ as the combination of the personal object of the handing over of a person in the violence of another person, especially the handing over of a person to an enemy.767 Moreover, Eschner (2009:676) convincingly argues that Isaiah 53 is not the pre-tradition for Romans 8:32.

Annette Potgieter, Contested Body: Metaphors of dominion in Romans 5-8

Along with the internal conflict of Pompey, the murderer of Brutus’ father, and Caesar, the figurehead for everything that goes against what Brutus stands for, Brutus accepting Caesar’s forgiveness isn’t an act of benevolence, regardless of Caesar’s intentions.

On wards, Caesar owns Brutus. Caesar benefits from having Brutus as his own, he inherits Brutus’ reputation, he inherits a better PR image in the eyes of the Roman people. On wards, nothing Brutus does is without the ugly stain of Caesar. His career is no longer his own, his life is no longer fully his own, his legacy is no longer entirely his. Brutus becomes a man divided.

And it’s not like it was an internal struggle, it was an entire spectacle. Hypocrisy is theatrical. Call yourself a man of honor and then you sell out? The people of Rome will remember that, and they’re going to make sure you know it.

After this certain men at the elections proposed for consuls the tribunes previously mentioned, and they not only privately approached Marcus Brutus and such other persons as were proud-spirited and attempted to persuade them, but also tried to incite them to action publicly. 12 1 Making the most of his having the same name as the great Brutus who overthrew the Tarquins, they scattered broadcast many pamphlets, declaring that he was not truly that man's descendant; for the older Brutus had put to death both his sons, the only ones he had, when they were mere lads, and left no offspring whatever. 2 Nevertheless, the majority pretended to accept such a relationship, in order that Brutus, as a kinsman of that famous man, might be induced to perform deeds as great. They kept continually calling upon him, shouting out "Brutus, Brutus!" and adding further "We need a Brutus." 3 Finally on the statue of the early Brutus they wrote "Would that thou wert living!" and upon the tribunal of the living Brutus (for he was praetor at the time and this is the name given to the seat on which the praetor sits in judgment) "Brutus, thou sleepest," and "Thou art not Brutus."

Cassius Dio

Brutus knew. Cassius knew. Caesar knew. You can’t escape your legacy when you’re the one who stamped it on coins.

Caesar turned Brutus into the dagger that would cut, and Brutus himself isn’t free from this injury. It’s a mutual betrayal, a mutual dooming.

By this time Caesar found himself being attacked from every side, and as he glanced around to see if he could force a way through his attackers, he saw Brutus closing in upon him with his dagger drawn. At this he let go of Casca’s hand which he had seized, muffled up his head in his robe, and yielded up his body to his murderers’ blows. Then the conspirators flung themselves upon him with such a frenzy of violence, as they hacked away with their daggers, that they even wounded one another. Brutus received a stab in the hand as he tried to play his part in the slaughter, and every one of them was drenched in blood.

Plutarch

For Antony, Caesar is a bad sign.

Brutus and Antony are fucked over by the generation they were born in, etc etc the cannibalization of Rome on itself, the Third Servile War was the match to the gasoline already on the streets of Rome, the last generation of Romans etc etc etc. They are counterparts to each other, displaced representatives of a time already gone by the time they were alive.

Rome spends its years in a state of civil war after civil war, political upheaval, and death. Neither Brutus or Antony will ever really know stability, as instability is hallmark of the times. Both of them are at something of a disadvantage, although Brutus has what Antony does not, and what Brutus has is what let’s him create his own career. Until Caesar, Brutus is owned by no one.

This is not the case for Antony.

You can track Antony’s life by who he’s attached to. Very rarely is he ever truly a man unto himself, there is always someone nearby.

In his youth, it is said, Antony gave promise of a brilliant future, but then he became a close friend of Curio and this association seems to have fallen like a blight upon his career. Curio was a man who had become wholly enslaved to the demands of pleasure, and in order to make Antony more pliable to his will, he plunged him into a life of drinking bouts, love-affairs, and reckless spending. The consequence was that Antony quickly ran up debts of an enormous size for so young a man, the sum involved being two hundred and fifty talents. Curio provided security for the whole of this amount, but his father heard of it and forbade Antony his house. Antony then attached himself for a short while to Clodius, the most notorious of all the demagogues of his time for his lawlessness and loose-living, and took part in the campaigns of violence which at that time were throwing political affairs at Rome into chaos.

Plutarch

(although, in contrast to Brutus, we rarely lose sight of Antony. As a person, we can see him with a kind of clarity, if one looks a little bit past the Augustan propaganda. He is, at all times, human.)

Antony being figuratively or literally attached to a person starts early, and continues politically. While Brutus has enough privilege to brute force his way into politics despite Cicero’s lamentation of a promising life being thrown off course, Antony will instead follow a different career path that echoes in his personal life and defines his relationships.

Whereas some young men often attached or indebted themselves to a patron or a military leader at the beginning of their political lives,

Kathryn Tempest, Brutus the Noble Conspirator

+

3. During his stay in Greece he was invited by Gabinius, a man of consular rank, to accompany the Roman force which was about to sail for Syria. Antony declined to join him in a private capacity, but when he was offered the command of the cavalry he agreed to serve in the campaign.

Plutarch

To take it a step further, it even defines how he’s perceived today looking back: it’s never just Antony, it’s always Antony and---

It can be read as someone being taken advantage of, in places, survival in others, especially in Antony's early life. Other times, it appears like Antony himself is the one who manipulates things to his favor, casting aside people and realigning himself back to an advantage.

or when he saw an opportunity for faster advancement, he was willing to place the blame on a convenient scapegoat or to disregard previous loyalties, however important they had been. His desertion of Fulvia's memory in 40, and, much later, of Lepidus, Sextus Pompey, and Octavia, produced significant political gains. This characteristic, which Caesar discovered to his cost in 47, gives the sharp edge to Antony's personality which Syme's portrait lacks, especially when he attributes Antony's actions to a 'sentiment of loyalty' or describes him as a 'frank and chivalrous soldier'. In this context, one wonders what became of Fadia.19

Kathryn E Welch , Antony, Fulvia, and the Ghost of Clodius in 47 B.C.

Caesar inherits Antony, and like Brutus, locks him in for a doomed ending.

The way Caesar writes about Antony smacks of someone viewing another person as something more akin to a dog, and it carries over until it’s bitter conclusion.

Caesar benefits from Antony immensely. The people love Antony, the military loves Antony. He’s charming, he’s self aware, he’s good at what he does. Above all of that, he has political ambitions of a similar passion as Brutus.

Antony drew some political benefit from his genial personality. Even Cicero, who from at least 49 did not like him,15 was prepared to regard some of his earlier misdemeanours as harmless.16 Bluff good humour, moderate intelligence, at least a passing interest in literature, and an ability to be the life and soul of a social gathering all contributed to make him a charming companion and to bind many important people to him. He had a lieutenant's ability to follow orders and a willingness to listen to advice, even (one might say especially) from intelligent women.17 These attributes made Antony able to handle some situations very well."1

There was a more important side to his personality, however, which contributed to his political survival. Antony was ruthless in his quest for pre-eminence

Kathryn E Welch , Antony, Fulvia, and the Ghost of Clodius in 477 B.C.

None of this matters, because after all Antony does for Caesar

Plutarch's comment that Curio brought Antony into Caesar's camp is surely mistaken.59 Anthony had been serving as Caesar's officer from perhaps as early as 53, after his return from Syria.60 He is described as legatus in late 52,61 and was later well known as Caesar's quaestor.62 It is more likely that the reverse of the statement is true, that Antony assisted in bringing Curio over to Caesar. If this were so, then he performed a signal service for Caesar, for gaining Curio meant attaching Fulvia, who provided direct access to the Clodian clientela in the city. Such valuable political connections served to increase Antony's standing with Caesar, and to set him apart from other officers in his army.63

Kathryn E Welch , Antony, Fulvia, and the Ghost of Clodius in 477 B.C.

Caesar still, for whatever reasons, fucks over Antony spectacularly with the will. Loyalty is repaid with dismissal, and it will bury the Republic for good.

It’s not enough for Caesar to screw him over just once, it becomes generational and ugly. Caesar lives on through Octavian: it becomes Octavian’s brand, his motif, propaganda wielded like a knife. Octavian, thanks to Caesar, will bring Antony to his bitter conclusion

And for my "bitter" conclusion, I’ll sign off by saying that there are actual scholars on Antony who are more well versed than I am who can go into depth about the Caesar-Octavian-Antony dynamic (and how it played out with Caligula) better than I can, and scholarship on Brutus consists mostly of looking at an outline of a man and trying to guess what the inside was like.

At the end of the day, Caesar was the instigator, active manipulator, and catalyst for the final act of the Republic.

I hope that this was at least entertaining to read!

[furyfought]

abernathy is a small town, surely you’ve met AGATHA KLEIN ; they can be a little IRREVERENT & OPPORTUNISTIC but have no fear , the TWENTY SEVEN year old definitely makes up for it by being IMPISH & SENSITIVE . most of the time anyway .  they’re usually seen around KLEIN & ASSOCIATES, LLC , as a CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY . you know, i hear they’re affiliated with the local mc, iron kings as an ATTORNEY . they’ve got this vibe of A HEART GROWN RAVENOUS, A CYANIDE CENTER ENCAPSULATED BY SACCHARINE FRUIT, AND A SOUL IN THE FORM OF A SCRIBBLE WITH FANGS going on , makes them easily recognizable.

loosely inspired by jennifer check (jennifer's body), wendy byrde (ozark), ginger fitzgerald (ginger snaps), elizabeth sloane (miss sloane), john silver (black sails), & BBHMM.

+ pinterest, stats.

hey, friends. i’m devin (or dev) & very tickled to be here. agatha’s a combination of two of my favorite muses, and i can only hope that you’ll love her as much as i do. 🤎

"𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄, 𝐈 𝐀𝐌 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒. 𝐍𝐎. 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐒𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓."

agatha’s story isn’t one that she likes to tell anymore. she feels it’s useless: to be defined by the actions of others, to attempt to battle the preconceived notions that run rampant regardless of what one says or does. she doesn’t want to beg for understanding anymore, or to claw her way from beneath the filth she’s made of her life. all that most know is all that she can bear to have known. the rest? it’s confetti; a meager concession in a game of chess. if you know her, is that a fact or a weapon to be used against her?

when it comes to the stories that can be told, however.. perhaps the most important is background. agatha’s an abernathy native: raised in grandiose park, flew the coop for college, only to settle back down in bordeaux apartments. klein & associates, llc. has been in her family for generations, each forefather serving increasingly questionable clients. agatha’s life, like that of many kleins before her, was already planned before she’d ever even been a thought in her parents’ minds. under her mother’s rule, there wasn’t any room for straying from that path. agatha would be smart; she would be clean; and she would be, without fail, someone. in other words, she would be her perfect replica. imagine the disappointment when agatha was anything but. 

agatha’s childhood can be summed up by three things: a door slammed shut in her face, an ear-piercing howl, and the chronic longing to go home — wherever that was. it’s another thing she doesn’t talk about, another thing she tries not to think about. those three things have followed her into adulthood, but they’ve taken different forms now. no longer is agatha a child screaming her throat raw — no; now, she cries out in other more productive ways. if you were to ask her, she’d tell you that she’s a woman grown; the past is behind her, buried in the sand where it belongs. the truth is trickier, less absolute. agatha is a child in the form of a woman; forever in the midst of a metamorphosis, unsure if for better or worse. she lacks foresight & lives largely in the now. she can’t imagine a future for herself and her choices in life reflect that.

agatha succeeds because she’s pretty, powerful, and convincing. wherever she falls short, her father is sure to more than make up for it. it’s amazing what people will do for the right price, and when they want to keep certain secrets from ever seeing the light. nepotism & immense privilege have done wonders for her, but she does.. actually work hard, too. she has an incredible memory & is really good at digging for more information & making her case. if she tells you that she’s going to do something, then she’s going to do it right no matter what. she’s dogged in that way, blinded to the outside world by her stubbornness. she works long hours & values her career above all else. she thinks it’s the only sure thing she has & views it as the one stable, secure thing in her life.

agatha is lonely to the point of defect. she lacks a sense of security in her life, which is why she’s so career-focused. she genuinely thinks that the only person ever looking out for her is her dad. she becomes very predictable once you realize that she will always pick the winning team; that she will forever follow the money; and that she is always going to make the decision that most benefits her. that isn’t to say that she doesn’t have any friends omg, but.. she doesn’t really trust easily. if she trusts you and considers you near and dear to her heart, then she’ll choose you. but until she has that reassurance? you’re on your own, bro. 

but like.. you literally would not know that unless you got burned by her. agatha is really good at listening and really good at playing parts for people. the thing with having no story is that she’s free to create her own. if you need a hero, she can be that. if you need a villain, she can definitely be that. she’s eerily good at getting chummy enough to make people think she’s close, only for them to realize.. they don’t actually know anything real about her? fun stuff. 

i think.. her entire life is a vie for power while also wanting to let go of that desire while also being afraid of what might happen if she were to let go of that desire. she’s not tht bad. she can play decent, be a guy’s guy. and she does come off tht way. it’s jus.. underneath there’s tht like .. tht rot tht she can’t scrub away. n it rears its ugly little head smtimes. but. :^) she can be cool n shoot the shit u kno.. heheh.

anyway.. lighter stuff<3 puts the gaslight and gatekeep in girlboss. talks just like her daddy, except for when she’s in the courtroom. egocentric without ever meaning to be. (spoiler: it’s a smoke screen.) she can, must, and will find a way to twist your words into something she can make sense of. believes in mixed drink supremacy. will absolutely smoke all of your weed + play dumb about hogging the blunt. plays dumb a lot actually, until it’s time to be smart. she’s touchy-feely, but freezes up whenever someone touches her. stares — a lot. can’t ever be the person to pick you up after a rough night out, because she’s likely there with you egging you on to do one more shot. every event is a tits out event / she has to be the most overdressed person in the convenience store at all times. can, must, and will be your unsolicited sugar momma. YOU SPIL-DBFDHFDJHBF LIPSTICK IN MY VALENTINO WHITE BAG? energy. thinks everything is a competition because it is. if she loved you once then she loves you forever. thinks going 20 over the speed limit isn’t speeding, actually. a bit of an emotional anarchist. can’t actually take what she’ll dish out. teases u if she likes u. teases u if she doesn’t like u. doesn’t care abt the feud as long as she’s gettin’ tht shmoney. big fan of an emotional sucker punch. 

"𝐌𝐘 𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐄𝐄𝐌𝐒 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐋, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐈 𝐀𝐌 𝐀𝐋𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐋."  + below are some ideas open to any & all muses no matter the age, gender, affiliation, etc !

i’ve left how she got involved with the mc totally absent from this intro bc i was hoping to plot it out! i’d love it if someone wanted to be her “in”. could be they were a childhood friend in need of help, a client she got close to, jus smth tht happened by chance.. whtever we come up with works! <3

if anyone needs an evil ex gf .. She’s Here. she will lie, cheat, scam, trash yr car, empty yr bank account.. whtvr you need, baybee<3

conversely.. not-so-evil ex gf? agatha can be nice & caring without there being a catch sometimes. maybe they still talk. maybe they’re friends. u tell me.

fwb / ex fwb? she do be sending them ‘u up?’ texts. 

someone tht agatha only got close to bc she wanted them to testify/be a character witness in court oopz<3

omg actual friends pls.. ppl tht Know her. tht See her. ppl tht she cares abt n would actually do anything for. friends!!!!!!!!!!!!

agatha has “get off my lawn” energy so i think it would be very funnie if someone needed a place to crash n she let them stay at hers thinking it was temporary n then they jus.. did not leave. n she’s like 🤨 hello?

an almost smth? anything weird n awkward n unspoken tht maybe fizzled out or maybe still lingers under the surface?

agatha doesn’t have a budding drinking problem but if she does no she doesn’t but if she does then<3 drinking buddy? someone that she’s gotten into questionable shenanigans with? poor bartender tht has to deal w her trying to “help” them as she waits for her uber to come? the possibilities are endless.

agatha’s all bark n very little bite but i still think it’d be funnie if she had a hateship. jus putting tht out there<3

if yr muse wnts an ego boost via unrequited crush.. lmk. i’m willing to hulk smash all of agatha’s dignity jus for u.

omggg a dealer? >.> who said tht omg #hacked.. 

on n off again thingz? lorde wrote tht "i am my mother's child i'll love you til my breathing stops / i'll love you till you call the cops on me" line abt her</3

budding friendships!!!!!!! ppl tht she goes to pilates or yoga with; people she gets brunch with; ppl she keeps running into n its like heeey u :); little platonic crushes jus . all of the cute platonic thingz tht make her go wtf is this 🤨. 

i mean.. if anyone wants a sugar momma.. I MEANNN..

college friends!! law school friends!! ppl she met over the summer while interning somewhere!! i left tht purposely vague, hint-hint.

tinder dates gone wrong. ghosted tinder dates. tinder thingz.

agatha’s been attending galas / banquets / office partiez for ages now so if anyone wants to be her plus one or her lil fake date... :^) could be cute. cld be angsty. world is our oyster. 

speaking of which.. coworkers n maybe even a lil personal assistant would be so sexie.

[percilout]

Why I think Jaskier is queer-coded and also bi/pan: An Essay

Earlier today I made a post [x] asking for opinions on Jaskier being queer-coded and now I’m presenting you my 1.5k word long essay on why I think that’s the case and why I also think that Jaskier is bi/pan (even though the character most definitely wasn’t planned that way).

I used lots of gifsets and Tumblr posts as inspiration and sources and humbly thank everyone who has made my life much easier with those.

Okay, so, let me start this off by saying that the showrunners don‘t and most probably won‘t want to make Jaskier queer in any way. But there‘s a bit of a problem there because there‘s a good chance that the actor (Joey Batey) is going to go against that with his personal choices in acting the character out.

It doesn‘t help that there‘s an interview in which he actively goes against calling Jaskier a womaniser and says that he is just „falling in love with everyone“ as soon as he sees „them“, he spots „someone“ and is obsessed with „whoever“ is in front of him. You can see it in this post (https://heydrichmuller.tumblr.com/post/189946596054/my-brother-played-the-pronoun-game-wound-up) in which what the actor does is called „playing the pronoun game“. That‘s what lots of queer people do when talking about their love life/sexuality/partners/etc. I say it doesn‘t help because it actively paints the character he‘s playing as bi/pan, especially with the „he just loves everyone“ comment.

 Then there‘s another thing, now something that we can see in the show - movement.

Queer-coding hugely depends on clichés, I know that, but that doesn‘t mean that those clichés aren‘t true sometimes. So when I look at Jaskier‘s movements and he‘s moving his hands a certain way, cocking his hips and holding his hands there, cocking his head, I can‘t help seeing a queer person there. (https://gayregis.tumblr.com/post/189807338329/its-all-about-the-hand-gestures-joey-batey-as)

 That also brings me to the next point:

He‘s a Drama Queen. He gasps! And argues! And cannot believe the way he’s treated! He deserves better!

Now, one could say that He‘s a bard! That‘s what he does! It‘s to entertain people! But. Jaskier doesn‘t entertain people when he‘s being a drama queen. Instead, he‘s greatly annoying them with it and, at the most, only entertaining himself. This is mostly visible in the „You need a nap!“ scene, which also shows his exaggerated movements pretty well. (https://captainpoe.tumblr.com/post/189836119464/the-witcher-1x05-bottled-appetites)

 Then there are some other scenes that (to any queer person, I‘d say) just scream „this can‘t be straight, can it?“, simply bc it‘d be So Fucking Weird if it‘s actually meant to be straight...

One of those is the bathtub scene. Like, what, it‘s normal to rub your friend-not-friend‘s „lovely bottom“ with camomile? In what world??? And there‘s no reason Jaskier needs to do any of that, Geralt could have just bathed himself. (https://mrcavill.tumblr.com/post/189812738178)

From that we can go on to another part of the bathtub scene: „And yet, here we are“ (https://catness-tchalla.tumblr.com/post/his-189817475480), implying that Jaskier wants/needs Geralt.

 Jaskier‘s basically running after a fruitless friendship for over 10 years. He‘s showing real perseverance in befriending someone, while also employing excuses to do so (using the fact of being a bard and /having/ to sing about him/sharing his legacy as an excuse to stick close to him for so long). And he does try to have a kind of intimacy with a man who‘s generally seen as someone who‘s intimidating and driving everyone away. (https://thewitchersdaily.tumblr.com/post/189937577863/no-lord-in-his-right-mind-will-come-close-if)

Still, Jaskier‘s desperate to have his company and wants to continue travelling together to prove that he can be a good partner. (https://meldvnsk.tumblr.com/post/189961512351/me-when-i-see-how-desperately-jaskier-want-to-be)

 I do also want to make a point about Jaskier‘s outfits, although most of it can really be condensed into Well, He Is A Bard, So.

But I just want to state that there is no reason for him to still dress so extravagantly when he‘s just walking through the woods for days and weeks with Geralt. At first he has no other choice but, with the years, surely he can learn to have something more.... practical.... in his bag with him? But no, he chooses to keep his style and always look out of place. And, well, queer people are kinda known for the special care they take of their clothing (https://meldvnsk.tumblr.com/post/189960250906/jaskiers-outfits)

 Then I want to shine some light on the way Jaskier talks about him on their first day of meeting: https://thewitchersdaily.tumblr.com/post/189776322313/same-geralt-of-rivia-and-jaskier-in-the-witcher and https://skywalkrluke.tumblr.com/post/189956240667/the-witcher-2019. He is basically trying to please this, well, Manly Man™, with his (very awkward) compliments, akin to another scene we know - the „sexy goose“ fiasco, in which Jaskier totally fails in Flirting 101. (https://thewitcherdaily.tumblr.com/post/189811062630/the-witcher-1x06-rare-species)

 In episode 6, there‘s a scene that a lot of queer people can identify with (or at least I think so and I actually do). Jaskier is trying to comfort Geralt in a way, but also himself. He suggests leaving together, to „get away for a while“, to run away from all their problems while still sharing each other’s company. And what hits the most is the bard saying that No, he is not thinking about a new song right now, this is just about them, this is just about him trying to figure out what he himself wants. (https://skyvalker.tumblr.com/post/189947455079/the-witcher-2019-s01e06-rare-species)

 And now we come to the point where I can seriously not think anything else but „Oh boy, that guy is love with another man“: Her Sweet Kiss (https://youtu.be/NyZvWBFbIRw).

First off, the song is a reaction to Geralt‘s rejection of him and states how hurt he is by that rejection (https://captnswilson.tumblr.com/post/189886399796/if-life-could-give-me-one-blessing-it-would-be-to).

But I will go into a bit more detail, starting with the changes in the song that happened between the first time we hear it (start of episode 6) and the time we finally hear the finished song at the end of the episode.

 Firstly, „I‘m weak, love“ changed to „I‘m weak, my love“, underlining with the use of the possessive pronoun that whoever is the „I“ sings about their personal loved one.

Secondly, there‘s the line „garroter, jury and judge“.

We know that Geralt is the mentioned garroter (remember Marilka saying Geralt sounds like garroter in the first ep?). Now, what does it say that Jaskier is debating whether to use „gorgeous garroter“ or „lovely garroter“ in the song and then ends up using neither? My take on this is that the finished song focuses more on the pain he experiences than being a hymn on the heroic actions of the handsome Witcher. The idea of a gorgeous garroter has actually become, as Jaskier calls it, „too cerebral“.

 I‘ve talked quite a bit about the song now without having explained what I think it actually means, so let‘s come to that.

Her Sweet Kiss has three sets of personal pronouns - I, you, and she. I believe that those stand for Jaskier, Geralt and Yennefer respectively. Going with this choice of characters, it‘s fairly easy to see what the lyrics want to tell us.

In the first verse, Jaskier is basically just complaining about Yennefer. He paints her as the evil one, the one causing him heartache and pain.

I do not think that this verse, as I have read quite often, is written from Geralt‘s perspective. It doesn‘t make much sense regarding the use of pronouns and the meaning of the verse.

Why would Geralt complain about her and then call her his love? Why would he talk about her (using „she“ and „her“) and then switch to talking to her („Tell me, love“)?

It makes much more sense to say that this is Jaskier talking about „her“ (Yennefer) to his „love“ (Geralt), especially when one thinks about the line „How is that just?“.

 That last line of the verse shows Jaskier criticising Geralt‘s actions. It directly accuses him of being unjust towards Jaskier, something that was previously unheard of because the Witcher always does the thing that does the world justice. But in this case, the bard was left hurt by him without a good reason.

 When it comes to the chorus, there is nothing much to interpret. The lyrics plainly state that Geralt‘s relationship with Yennefer is destroying something. Looking at the context of Geralt and Yennefer „breaking up“, followed by Geralt forcing Jaskier to leave, this must clearly mean the destruction of Geralt‘s and Jaskier‘s friendship.

 The second verse starts with Jaskier warning Geralt of Yennefer, who is depicted as a dangerous current, pulling him closer into her clutches.

The verse then ends with the part we already know from the beginning of the episode.

 „I’m weak my love, and I am wanting

If this is the path I must trudge

I welcome my sentence

Give to you my penance

Garrotter, jury and judge“

 If you think this is Jaskier giving up and leaving Geralt alone after having accompanied him for more than a decade, having finally been judged and sentenced to a life without him by the famous garroter, then yes, we are exactly on the same wavelength there.

  (Of course I don‘t think that that‘s what the producers thought while making it but hey, that‘s exactly where the accidental queer-coding comes in again!

So, anyway, this is exactly why I see Jaskier as bi/pan but of course that‘s only my personal perspective.)

Tagging the people who helped me by making gifsets and sharing their thoughts on Jaskier:

@lola1b @pocketlibrary @heydrichmuller @gayregis @captainpoe @mrcavill @his-catness-tchalla @thewitchersdaily @meldvnsk @skywalkrluke @skyvalker @captnswilson 

[saltandburnsis]

wendigo, pt. 3

Characters: Reader, Dean, Sam, Hailey, Ben, Roy, Tommy

Age: 20

Warnings: character death, dead body, (flare) gun use/mention.

Word Count: 2,446

Summary: The wendigo closes in and makes an attack. After going on a search for the creature, the Winchesters are separated. Sam, Ben, and Y/N have to work quickly to save Dean and Hailey and take down the creature once and for all.

A/N: check that out; got this one finished in 3 parts instead of 4! (i was originally aiming to have them all be 3, but the pilot had me thinking they’d all be super long lmao) now i’m going to go cry for about 6 years bc of jennamarbles’s latest video! as always, dialogue taken directly from the show is in italics.

~ ~ ~ ~

“Help me! Help!”

You, Sam, and Dean shot up and cautiously but quickly walked back to the campsite. Roy cocked his gun uselessly as the three of you approached. You aimed your flashlight into the woods, trying to catch a glimpse of the screaming creature.

“It’s trying to draw us out. Just stay cool. Stay put,” Dean directed.

“Inside the magic circle?” Roy mocked. You glared at him but were quickly vindicated when the wendigo’s growl seemed to send a shiver down his spine. “Okay. That’s no grizzly.”

Hailey took Ben’s hand and the two sat back on the log they’d been occupying earlier, comforting him as they did: “It’s okay. We’ll be alright. I promise.” The wendigo ran past the circle and she screamed. You jumped back, and Roy stepped closer, gun drawn.

“It’s here.” He took a shot at the brush, then turned and shot at another spot. The wendigo howled. “I hit it!” Roy jumped over the symbols and ran into the woods.

“Roy, no! Roy!” Dean called after him, trying to stop him. He looked back at Hailey and Ben. “Don’t move!” With that, he led you and Sam after Roy.

“It’s over here! It’s in the tree!” A voice called out. Suddenly, everything was silent. The two of you stopped and looked around, but Roy was gone.

~ ~ ~ ~

The woods were silent for the rest of the night. Sam found a spot against a tree stump to keep watch hours ago, and he’d yet to move. You and Dean were up at the campsite with Hailey and Ben, ensuring their safety.

“I don’t…I mean, these types of things aren’t supposed to be real,” Hailey said. Dean moved from his place beside one of the tents and sat beside her.

“I wish I could tell you different,” he sighed.

“How do we know it’s not out there watching us?” She asked, looking to Dean.

“We don’t,” you replied, keeping your eyes out on the woods. You glanced over in time to see Dean shoot you a look before he turned back to Hailey.

“But, we’re safe for now,” Dean reassured her. You rolled your eyes and went back to being the lookout. Hailey nodded then spoke again, her voice a bit softer.

“How do you know about this stuff?” Dean looked away for a moment before answering.

“It kind of runs in the family.” Before Hailey could ask another question, Dean stood up and Sam walked over, breathing heavily..

“Hey. So, we’ve got half a chance in the daylight. And I, for one, want to kill this evil son of a bitch,” Sam said. You turned around to look at him.

“You know I’m in,” you replied, stepping away from your post and closer to the group.

~ ~ ~ ~

As Dean readied the supplies you needed, you and Sam stood with Haley and Ben, getting them prepared for what they were about to face. You held out the journal, open to the page on wendigos, and gave them the basic summary.

“Wendigo is a Cree Native American word. It means ‘evil that devours,’” you shut the journal. “They’re hundreds of years old. Each one was once a man, sometimes a Native American, or other times a frontiersman or a miner or hunter.”

“How’s a man turn into one of these things?” Hailey asked.

“It’s always the same. During some harsh winter, a guy finds himself starving, cut off from supplies or help. He becomes a cannibal to survive, eating other members of his tribe or camp,” you answered.

“Like the Donner party,” Ben spoke up. Sam nodded.

“That’s right. Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives a person certain abilities—speed, strength, immortality,” he explained. Dean, finished with the weapons, stood and walked over.

“If you eat enough of it, over the years, you become this less-than-human thing. You’re always hungry,” Dean continued Sam’s thought.

“So, if that’s true, how can Tommy still be alive?” Hailey asked. You shook your head.

“You’re not gonna like it,” you warned her. She pressed on, demanding an answer. You sighed but spoke again. “More than anything, a wendigo knows how to last long winters without food. It hibernates for years at a time. When it’s awake, it, uh…” you trailed off and looked to your brothers, silently asking them to give her the news. Dean continued for you.

“It keeps its victims alive. It stores them so it can feed whenever it wants. If your brother’s alive, it’s keeping him somewhere dark, quiet, and safe. And we gotta track it back there.” You went to the bag of supplies as Hailey asked her next question.

“And then how do we stop it?”

“Well, guns are useless. So are knives,” Dean replied.

“Basically,” you cut in, holding up a rag, lighter, and some lighter fuel. “We gotta torch the sucker.

~ ~ ~ ~

The five of you made your way through the woods. Claw marks were spotted on the trees awhile back, and you used them as your guide to the wendigo’s lair. Suddenly, Sam stopped and called you and Dean over, looking up at all the claw marks in the trees. He pointed upwards, and you looked around to see the claw marks on every single tree, circling where the five of you stood.

“You know, I was thinking. Those claw marks, so clear and distinct,” Sam chuckled humorlessly.

“They were almost too easy to follow,” you finished his thought, voice barely audible. As if on cue, the wendigo ran past, back and forth around the area. You looked around, trying to get an idea of where it could be when Hailey screamed. You turned around in time to see Roy’s body fall on the ground. Hailey fell to the ground when she jumped out the way. Sam ran to her aid, and you went to Roy, putting your hand to his neck to feel for a pulse. You looked up at Dean immediately after, shaking your head. “His neck’s broken.”

“Okay, run, run!” Dean grabbed your arm and pulled you up while Sam helped Hailey. “Go, go, go, go, go!” The five of you rushed out of the area. Dean and Hailey ran ahead, but Ben tripped and fell to the ground. You and Sam stayed back to help him up. The three of you chased after Dean and Hailey, trying to cover the lost ground. Hailey screamed. You ran faster. Sam stopped at the bottom of a small hill when Ben called out for Hailey. You watched Sam bend down and pick something up off the ground; The top of Dean’s Molotov Cocktail. Your eyes widened and you looked around the area.

“Dean!”

~ ~ ~ ~

“If it keeps its victims alive, why would it kill Roy?” Ben asked, walking through the woods at Sam’s side. You led them a few feet ahead, searching for a clue.

“Honestly? I think because Roy shot at it, he pissed it off,” Sam replied. You stopped and nervously fixed your hair before closing your eyes and throwing your head back. Sam pursed his lips then walked over to you, putting a hand on your shoulder.

“Hey, Y/N, we’re going to find him,” he assured. You quickly turned away from him and wiped your eyes, shaking your head.

“I know, I know. I just…” you sighed. “We can’t lose him, Sam. He’s all I got.”

“I’m right here, Y/N. I’m not going anywhere.” You scoffed at Sam’s words.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Sam, what’s keeping you here if Dean’s gone. He’s the one who convinced you to come. He’s the one that’s been able to talk you down. Besides, as soon as we find Dad and we get whatever killed Jess, you’re leaving, right? Right?” You shook your head again. “We have to find Dean.” Sam opened his mouth to reply, but Ben spoke up first.

“Hey, they went this way!” He called out, holding up an M&M. You went over to him, Sam right behind you. He took the M&M from Ben and chuckled.

“It’s better than breadcrumbs.” He chuckled again. You quickly began following the trail of candies, Ben and Sam on your trail again.

~ ~ ~ ~

Sam silently moved through the brush. Ben followed behind him, and you made up the rear, watching out for anything on your trail. Sam stopped at the entrance to the mine and looked through the opening in the old wooden fence. He looked back at you and shrugged before ducking under the top of the fence and slipping inside. You let Ben go in before you, made one last visual sweep of the woods, and went inside. Sam led both of you through the tunnels. He signaled for you to get against the wall then reached out and pushed Ben against the wall, covering his mouth when the wendigo walked out of the mine. One the coast was clear, Sam moved away from the wall and down to where the wendigo had emerged from.

You continued down the path for a few minutes, suddenly stopping when the wood began to creak. You looked back at Sam just as the wood cracked and the ground gave out beneath you. It was a short fall, but it still took you a minute to recover. Ben jumped away from a skull an inch in front of him, and Sam was soon at his side to calm him. While he did, you sat up and looked around. You turned your head to the right and gasped at the sight of Dean and Hailey hanging from the ceiling by their arms. You ran over to Dean.

“Dean, come on,” you softly pleaded, shaking your brother. Ben ran to Hailey and tried to wake her up. Dean’s eyes shot open and you let out a sigh of relief. “Hey, you okay.” He grunted in response. Sam went to Ben and helped him get Hailey down while you helped Dean. Once the pair were seated on the ground, Dean began groaning in pain. You looked at him, eyes slightly widened with fear.

“You sure you’re alright?” He brushed you off with a wave of his hand.

“Yeah, yeah. Where is it?” His voice was strained, but he was doing everything in his power to fake his well-being.

“It’s gone for now,” Sam answered him. With Ben’s help, Hailey stood up and walked over to Tommy.

“Tommy.” She grabbed his face, but gasped and jumped back when Tommy’s eyes opened and he took a breath in. She turned back to Sam. “Get him down.” While Sam helped her, you and Dean began digging through the backpacks beside you. Dean looked to you and smiled after a minute of digging, pulling out a gun. You smiled and pulled out one of your own.

“Hey, check it out,” Dean called over to Sam, standing up and holding his gun up.

“Flare guns,” Sam smiled. “Those’ll work.”

~ ~ ~ ~

Armed with a flare gun each, Sam and Dean led your group towards the entrance of the mine. Like before, you took up the rear, ensuring there were no attacks from behind. You kept your flare gun ready, finger centimeters from the trigger. Dean and Sam stopped when the wendigo began growling. Sam held his gun out in front of him.

“Looks like someone’s home for supper,” Dean commented.

“We’ll never outrun it,” Hailey said, looking at Dean as she struggled to keep Tommy up, even with Ben’s help. Dean glanced back at her then looked between you and Sam.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yeah.” You nodded. Sam looked back at him.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Alright, listen to me,” Dean instructed the three siblings. “Stay with Sam. He’s gonna get you out of here.”

“What are you going to do?” Hailey asked. Dean only winked in response before walking down the tunnel.

“It’s chow time, you freakin’ bastard!” He called out. You looked at Sam, nodded, then followed after Dean.

“Yeah, that’s right! Bring it on, baby!” You yelled once you were a few feet away from everyone else. Dean waited until you were behind him before he began running.

“We taste good!” Dean yelled. You were hot on his trail, stopping once to look around when you didn’t hear any sign of the wendigo.

“You want some white meat, bitch? We’re right here!” You looked around once more then ran after Dean. The two of you continued through the tunnels, yelling out for the creature. You kept an eye on Dean as you ran, watching as he held his arm against his stomach, almost refusing to move it.

Sam screamed and shot his gun towards the entrance of the tunnel. You turned and ran towards the area, willing your legs to move faster than they ever had. You and Dean reached the area as the wendigo closed in on Sam and the three siblings. It threw its head back and roared, giving you and Dean enough time to aim your guns.

“Hey!” Dean called out. The wendigo turned and the two of you shot your guns, hitting it in two separate spots. It lit up from the inside out and fell to the ground. Once it was dead, Dean looked over at Sam and smiled. “Not bad, huh?”

~ ~ ~ ~

You and Sam led Ben over to where Hailey and Dean stood once Ben finished giving his statement to the officer. Hailey turned to look at Ben.

“Let’s go,” she said. She turned back to Dean then leaned in and kissed his cheek. “I hope you find your father. Thanks, Sam. You, too, Y/N.” Hailey smiled at you and Sam before putting her arm around Ben and leading him over to the ambulance Tommy was in. You leaned against the car on one side of Dean, Sam mimicking your actions on the other side.

“Man, I hate camping,” you said, shaking your head.

“Me, too,” Dean and Sam agreed simultaneously. Dean pursed his lips and looked down at the ground for a moment before looking over at Sam.

“You know we’re gonna find Dad, right?” He asked. Sam sighed.

“Yeah, I know. But in the meantime…I’m driving.” Sam held his hands out for the keys, but Dean stayed silent. Finally, he tossed him the set and walked around the car to the passenger’s side.

“Oh, that is so not fair!” you complained as Sam got in the car.

“You crashed her into a house,” Dean replied, sliding into the passenger seat. You groaned and got in the backseat.

“It was one time!” you shot back. Sam smiled and revved the engine before speeding off out of the parking lot.

~~~~~

SPN rewrite taglist: @mrsfortune1306 @marvelous-glims

forever taglist: @griff1ndor @gothsatanicrapunzel @choosemyname @mersuperwholocked-lowlife @not-astounding @sassy-specter @vicmc624 @idksupernatural

[disslve]

𝐲𝐞𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐰 & 𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐝𝐲 ! this is nai and my cowboy ass is here to throw roxy @ u and also tell u bad jokes and cry over life is strange 2 because i’m still not over this game and I NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT. just a heads up, i came up with roxy on a whim because this rp just looked so good,  so if it seems like i don’t know what i’m talking about ... it’s most likely the case whoops . ( this is an excuse for me bringing shitty muses ). anyway, my fake cowboy ass loves to ramble so if you’re interested in plotting feel free to LIKE this post or hmu. i forgot to mention that i’m also a fake grandma so idk anything about discord at all and i still need to set it up which will happen in the next few days dsdnsdsdn. 

ps: wanted connections/plots can be find in my wanted tag ( a link is on my blog ) and i’ll also list some below !

EDIT: discord name is nai #7158

 * [ kristine froseth + cis-female + she/her ] —— have you met roxanne ‘roxy’ bailey ? they are a twenty-two year old junior currently studying romance languages and literatures. they live on decker house and word around campus is that this scorpio is compassionate + dedicated, as well as impatient + dishonest. i wonder if they’ll make it out alive. 

basics.

full name: roxanne elise bailey

nicknames: roxy, rox

sexual orientation: bisexual

birth place: valencia, spain ( but only lived there for five years ) 

history. 

one could say that roxy had lived an easy life, though her parents weren’t distinguished by their social status, it didn’t mean they lacked money which was enough to support their daughter in whatever she wanted to do.

truth to be told, roxy was indeed a little spoiled, the type of kids who would try all kind of things on the expenses of their parents only to quit a new ‘hobby’ again. she could barely stick to anything. she was some twisted kind of golden child, good at many things but never had the patience to continue something for long enough to cultivate it. 

skipping over the part where she almost tried everything from arts, music etc. she finally found her passion ( and even roxy herself was surprised ). figure skating. she didn’t know what drew her in, she couldn’t explain it, she tried it and it felt right. roxy always describes the feeling as finding a soulmate if she feels extra dramatic that day. 

unsurprisingly, she was good at it. not that kind of good at something she was at all the other things she tried before, but that being good at which stemmed from genuine interest. maybe, that is why she managed to get so far. and it didn’t take too long that people even started to call her a figure skating prodigy. 

at this point at her life, she had it all, spinning the stars on her fingertips ( or warning bad pun ahead: spinning on the ice ). until, well, her parents company was in some crisis and they had to cut corners in the meantime. also oh so ‘conveniently’ roxy lived at the arse end of nowhere and getting to her practices was now even more difficult because as mentioned before they had to save their money for more necessary things. of course, there were more things , small and big, which totally threw her off ( which i am too lazy to list rn).

roxy tried to work part time, but a) the money wasn’t enough b) she didn’t want to cut more hours of training she managed to get. AND well, here comes the turning point and roxy thinking she was oh-so-smart without realizing that it would cost her career. oh-so-smart roxy came up with the idea to , well, just steal some stuff. after all, she trained with many other wealthy peers and she could just sell off their stuff or something. 

at the beginning she only did it to afford certain things she needed, but soon it somehow became an addiction. she felt in control when everyone else in her life was an utter mess. however, the more she took things away from others the more she felt comfortable, doing it more often and sometimes taking things which weren’t even worth that much. it was only a matter of time until she was caught. and as if she was lucky for too long, the person who caught her pressured her into either giving them a hefty sum of money (which she didn’t have) or to quit figure skating. she decided for the latter.

well, here she was and her sudden departure was quite a shock. but she had no choice and stated it was for personal reasons. 

skipping over her being devastated over it, etc. her parents managed to save their company (whatever this company is) but at this point it was already too late and roxy was accepted into holloway. 

right now she actually wants to pick up her figure skating career again, however, she’s too afraid that the blackmailer is going to expose her and also she doesn’t really know who they are (lets pretend they wrote her letters, txt messages >??) and also she’s kind of afraid due to the lack of practice she had .

personality.

okay i’ll keep this short bcs i wrote way too much for her background story. but to sum it up, roxy kind of has that perfect girl facade.  considering how many friends roxy has and how social she appears to be it is odd that no one seems to be able to describe her.  roxy doesn’t want people to know who she truly is, and she keeps her distance as she actively avoids conflicts that might cause her to say something wrong and exposes herself. 

she shields her feelings by only presenting polished version of herself, the facade of the perfect girl: kind, hard-working and polite. someone whose life is easy and someone who looks like she doesn’t have any worries. it doesn’t mean she isn’t anything of that, but it’s not as if her kindness has no bounds or that she doesn’t need to put effort into the things she does. nevertheless, she believes that she must be perfect in order to make people like her. and while, she is pretty good at masking her emotions and smile along, as soon as someone threatens to see past the illusion, she will become defensive and won’t hesitate to lie in order to preserve it.

plots.

best friends: although roxy pretty much keeps her distance from everyone else, this person had always stood by her side. maybe they knew about roxy’s sudden wannabe-thief phase ( which she is still in ) and well tried to talk her out of it ( which obviously didn’t work ). also adding some drama here and maybe they had a big argument over it and distanced from each othr because of it. however, my angst ass doesn’t want to ruin it and they’ll rekindle their friendship. they might meet again at holloway and it’s awkward at first, maybe they even have some arguments but they’ll get over it because everyone loves a good rekindled friendship story.

annoyance: someone who gets under roxy’s skin.seeing past the perfect girl face and constantly calling her out on it. maybe they just have fun annoying her and want to see what she really likes or they just don’t like roxy , thinking that beneath all of this act, she is a really unpleasant person. perhaps, they’re even doing it with good intentions and want to show her that she doesn’t need to hide who she is. whatever it is, they’re determined to expose to the world who she really is. 

pen pal ??:  muse a and roxy had been friends for a very long time, yet the funny thing is that they’ve never met each other nor do they know what the other look like. all they know is their name ( or maybe they only know each other by their usernames ) and their deepest secrets. maybe they already have crossed paths many times and perhaps even know each other but don’t like each other irl. or they never had noticed the other.

blackmailer: BECAUSE WHY NOT??? the person who forced roxy to give up on figure skating. maybe, they were a rival or just didn’t like her, or any other reason. they might as well, have noticed that roxy is secretly training again and might be back at their shit again. 

exes: GIVE ME THE ANGST, maybe muse a and roxy used to be in a serious relationship and as naive they were back then both of them thought this love would last forever. however, at some point roxy started to distance herself from muse a, constantly cancelling their dates because of their busy schedule. at first muse a tried to be understanding towards her, but as time passed things only got worse. roxy hating any kind of conflict just decided to ignore the problem instead about talking about it and eventually stopped replying to muse a messages. muse a never really got to know the real reason behind their break up and was left with unanswered questions. but anything works  

unrequited love: (this is just me throwing in my favourite way to make myself suffer) It doesn’t matter who is the one with the the one sided love because i just want some good angst.a)  muse a has a crush on roxy, yet they never told her about it. yet, muse a can’t hide it and it doesn’t take too long until roxy notices it. but instead of trying to talk to muse a about it, roxy just ignores it acting as she usually does and perhaps even give them false hope that she might like them back. maybe muse a even confessed to her and because roxy didn’t want to hurt them she told muse a she’d think about it.

b) roxy has a crush on muse a but doesn’t admit it. she doesn’t want to show their vunerable side and just plays it down. maybe they’re friends and roxy doesn’t want to lose another friend. but one day she confesses to muse a on accident, making everything awkward between them.

someone she stole from: idk i thought this would be fun ? maybe she confessed to them about it or maybe they caught her but decided to not confront her about it.

fan: someone who used to watch her perfomances on their tv and is still not over the fact that she quit.

i also have a connection page on my blog if these are too specific or none of these work 

i’m too tired to come up with more dsdsdnjsd but gimme everything !! THE ANGST, FLUFF, DRAMA PLS!!! 

[phoebehalliwell]

I loved your cataloguing all of prue’s potential kids!! Like the detail that went into it is *chef kiss* I can’t wait to see what story you come with with Sheridan and Warren! Also, that post got me thinking, what do you think would have happened had Andy become a whitelighter and come back? How do you think that would have effected his and Prue’s hypothetical kids? Like would one of them been the twice-blessed do you think?

it’s 2.2k under the cut bc idk how to shut up

okay so for a whitelighter!andy & prue i think The Move would be like in the s3 finale the source has tempus reverse time but then like idk knocks out leo or whatever because he knows that without him there both prue and piper will die from their injuries what he doesn’t know is that there’s a certain other whitelighter who will watch from the fringes check in but not interfere for risk of being caught going against the rules but when he sees piper and prue inches from death and no way leo can get to them in time, andy has to make a choice. he has to heal them. oh but now we have the elders all pissy because whitelighters are only supposed to work with their own charges their not supposed to run around freelance healing other people’s charges that’d be chaos so clearly there needs to be some consequences and andy’s ready to like gracefully take whatever’s dealt out to him and prue’s like I Think The Fuck Not and like goes to bat for andy talking about how she would have been dead without him how the charmed ones would be gone without him really rains hell down on the elders so they’re like ᵒᵏᵃʸ ᶠᶦⁿᵉ ʷʰᵃᵗᵉᵛᵉʳ ʷᵉ ʷᵒⁿ’ᵗ ᵖᵘⁿᶦˢʰ ʰᶦᵐ ᶦᵍ ʸᵒᵘ ᵈᵒⁿ’ᵗ ʰᵃᵛᵉ ᵗᵒ ᵇᵉ ˢᵒ ʳᵘᵈᵉ blah blah blah so prue and andy talk in the heavens and it’s sorta awkward at first bc prue’s like so. you’re not dead. that’s good. bc you know. you’re not dead. and andy’s like yeah. but like he’s reading the subtext here bc he Knows prue and she’s saying i’m so happy your alive but i’m really hurt that you never told me. that i mourned you and thought you were gone forever but you weren’t you were right there. and andy’s not entirely sure what to say bc like. what was he supposed to do. and he understands how prue feels but he couldn’t have just orbed in like hi i’m a whitelighter and you’ll never see me again it was better for prue to mourn and move on so she that had a shot at happiness but now he’s face to face with her and what i thought it would be better for you? it sounds hollow so instead of trying to explain himself he just says the first thing that comes to mind i never stopped loving you and he’s ready to orb back into the ether or whatever bc while the elders won’t punish him for saving prue & piper they’re still not jazzed and he’s still not allowed to interact with them when prue kisses him and tell him like i lost you once i’m not about to do it again marry me. and like they’re married within the hour bc by now the charmed ones have done this before they can do it on a speed round mode and the elders are like hey we said- and prue’s like sorry i can’t hear you over the sound of holy matrimony suck my balls blah blah blah like end season 3 i’m not sure when prue would have her first child though and if it would predate wyatt bc like. y’know her career’s still very much in its early stages she’s still on the up & up and her and andy haven’t actually like been together in a minute so there’s a lot of catching up to do whereas like piper and leo have consecutively been together longer she’s owned p3 longer than prue’s been a photographer so she’s already p locked in on that & she can do her job sitting down which is a plus. so i think in a whitelighter andy au wyatt will still be born first but patricia will be born within the same year, maybe six months after wyatt and i don’t think wyatt would really be like the twiced blessed bc like patricia would be Right There and he’s just no longer special enough to really warrant a prophecy y’know? i also think in this au it would take longer for prue and andy to move out bc y’know like again they just got andy back but i think she would still be out of the house by the end of season four beginning of season five ish i also think like the thing they really didn’t consider is that their kid’s gonna be half whitelighter so when piper’s like yeah have you vomited orbs yet lmao prue’s like wait. especially bc like andy’s only been a whitelighter for like a year or two and they’re both like oh word what does this mean and like they have leo and sorta piper to answer their questions but it’s sorta like they’ve got this vibe that no matter what happens like we’re in this together we have each other’s back we can do anything real power couple vibe they’re very like sappy like they’re aware they’re sappy & they’re not gonna stop.

& then a bit on sheridan & warren bc in the specific au i’m gonna write them in it still starts the same as it did here but i am keeping prue’s canon death in s3. and so like s4 the twins are still toddlers and i think piper and phoebe would still offer to watch them on like weekdays or whatever bc they still have a bedroom in the manor and jack still sorta lives in a bachelor pad and like the kids do have magic powers and jack definitely is there more and shows up more bc those are his kids and one day he shows up and there’s a demon attack and he like knew prue fought demons but he had never y’know. been in the line of fire so to speak and he’s like does this happen a lot and piper’s like yeah sort of and phoebe’s like there’s no need to worry warren and sheridan are totally safe here and jack’s like really because the scorched wallpaper begs to differ and piper’s like we understand your panic but like we can keep them safe and jack’s like no i don’t think you understand my panic those are my sons they’re my only kids and they’ve already lost prue i’m not. i’m taking them with me. and like the girls get where he’s coming from (paige is also here she just doesn’t really know jack so she’s hanging out with leo in the kitchen like 😐) basically they bind warren & sheridan’s powers and phoebe modifies the dominus trinus (now the dominus dualis ig) and tells jack that when they’re ready this will give them their magic back. and so like he moves them into his place but it’s not built for kids and so he’s on the hunt for a new place but also like a new jobs bc like bucklands blows without prue and almost everything there reminds him of her and he really just needs a fresh start so when he gets a job offer in japan he packs his bags & the three of them are off and then it’s like maybe four years in japan and then we’ll say he goes to new york and that lasts maybe two years and now warren and sheridan are like in elementary school and he knows the hopping from place to place isn’t like good for them and he really needs to settle down for a place that’s gonna be like Home and he knows he has to return to san francisco. so 2007 he’s back in san francisco he does not cross paths with the halliwells again and he sorta feels like he should bc like sheridan & warren Are Witches that’s like part of who they are and like he and prue had agreed before that they would raise them with magic because prue wishes she had known she was a witch she had always thought that had she had come earlier to the craft she could have done more good maybe not lost as many people and jack knows he has to unbind their magic eventually especially bc that was what prue wanted and like prue was always right but like. fuck dude. his kids were wizards. witches, whatever. like how is he supposed to raise kids with magic. like should he just go back to the manor and be like hi raise my magic kids for me he doesn’t want to do that those are his kids he doesn’t want to dump them off somewhere much less the place where their mom died so basically he keeps postponing it he keeps blowing it off and the kids are growing up normal & safe but still it’s gnawing at him bc it’s not what prue wanted and he doesn’t want to send them into the world unprepared and like sheridan & warren are like sixteen now and he’s like fuck. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. what am i doing what am i gonna do i don’t know a goddamn thing so he’s like fuck it. hi god it’s me jack. i don’t believe in you and i don’t really believe in praying but here i am on my knees bc i’m lost. i think i’ve fucked up but i don’t know how to make it better, i want to do the right thing but i don’t even know what that is, would love some like. guidance. or something. i guess. and he like waits because like magic is real so like. hey god. do something please. and nothing happens and he’s like whatever this is why i never went to church blah blah blah That Night he dreams he’s at p3, which is weird because it’s been closed for like eight years and jack hasn’t thought about it in like twice that long but that’s where he is. and it’s like empty and a bit messy like there’s been a concert but now it’s late and everyone’s gone home. everyone except him, and the raven haired woman at the bar. prue. and listen jack doesn’t cry okay he doesn’t saw marley and me and like didn’t even sniffle (lie, he cried) but he sees prue and well uhh he’s crying a lil bc like fuck. he misses her. and he misses her confidence and the way she always seemed to have the right answer and could always manage to save the day and he misses her. and he’s like i hope you’re here to answer my prayers and she smiles at him bc he’s always so glib and stupid and it drives her up the wall but she still loves it about him and she’s like actually, i am. and idk she talks with him and quells his fears and he’s like how do i even bring that up to them he guys you’re wizards -witches. yeah that. like how do i even broach that. and prue’s like get the spell. and be ready. and she just sorta vanishes and he’s like cool are you gonna save the day like you always do but he can already feel she just isn’t there anymore and he’s like okay :/ and he wakes up and it’s like three am and he wants to go back to bed the whole magic thing is just niggling at the back of his mind so he gets out of bed and hunts down his old briefcase he had from all the way back at bucklands and finds just like a blank unlabelled folder and takes a deep breath and in it are some old photos of prue and him from the 90s and a thick folded up piece of paper with a torn edge and he carefully unfolds it and in like a really nice script is the unbinding spell and then like warren and sheridan are like dad? why are you awake right now and he’s like why are you awake right now? and they twins sorta share a look and warren’s like weird dream and sheridan’s looking over his dad’s shoulder and sees the pictures of prue and is like is this mom? and he takes the pictures and jack’s like yeah those are from. they’re from a long time ago. and sheridan and warren are looking at these pictures and like they wanna ask something but aren’t sure how to say it so jack goes first and he’s like your mom wanted you to have this and hands them the spell and they’re like what. is this? and he’s like its a spell. to unbind your powers. magic powers. i know i should have told you earlier and i’m sorry but i- are ghost real? what? like. can dead people... y’know... and jack breaks into a smile bc he’s so glad that they actually got to like. meet prue. have at least one memory of her. and so sheridan and warren take the spell and are like. so do we read it? and jack’s like idk i’m not a witch yeah i guess so y’know  hear now the words of the witches, the secrets we hid in the night. the oldest of gods are invoked here. the great work of magic is sought. in this night and in this hour, i call upon the ancient power. bring your powers to we brothers two, we want the power, give us the power. and like the apartment shakes and idk the lights flicker and the brothers are like cool. now what. and jack’s like i don’t know. guess we’ll find out.

[bitchiha]

Hello, may I request a matchup and be matched with a male from Naruto,Marvel and Harry Potter, please and thank you. LINK -  The first part is infoship2 (.) tumblr (.) (com) (without the parentheses). You can take as much time as you need to, I don’t mind being patient & waitiing.

A/N: Hey!! Thank you for the request, you’re honestly such a supportive person on my blog and I love you so much <3 w/ that being said, I present your ships under the cut below!

I ship you with..

Shino Auberame!

Tbh I think Shino is so underrated. Like we seen him putting fate and effort into Hinata to help her improve her skills throughout Shonen Jump and Shippuden. With that being said, I think it’s safe to say he can help you cope with and over come the challenges that come with depression and OCD. Like he is a really caring and supportive boyfriend.

He’s smart and observant, so he will be able to tell when you are okay and when you are lying. It doesn’t matter if you’re hiding it the best you can. Being that he’s smart, he won’t pry at you to tell him what’s wrong either (bc you can’t force things out of people), unless he thinks it would be damaging not too.

Working with Hinata and Kiba has improved his patience incredibly. So if you are in a crappy mood or you’re arguing, you can’t piss him off or get under his skin easily. The level headed way he goes about himself would be really helpful for yourself and the relationship as well.

You can’t expect Shino to open up right away. If you start off as friends though (which is what you both prefer anyway), once you become boyfriend and girlfriend he’s much more open. Infact he’ll probably seek you out over anyone else when in need of advice. I think he’d be also really thoughtful and helpful in terms of giving you advice as well. Hes like your personal advisor lol

You also mentioned you have this kind of melancholy temperament and I thought that was so suiting for Shino LMFAOAOAO. Anyway, what I mean by that is like if you’re in one of those moods it won’t annoy him or frustrate him at all. He’ll probably join in, he’s usually like that anyway. You two can be melancholy together. Unless he feels like the mood is unhealthy, then he’ll try and cheer you up.

He has a passion for insects, you have one for animals. You’ll have to put up with him showing you all the cool new insects he’s found and listen to him blab about ‘em to you. In return he’ll go out animal watching with you. He will get very passionate on these expeditions with you, not to mention he’s smarts really come in handy. He’ll know what type of bird likes what type of trees, how to track down a certain animal, how to follow their prints in the dirt, etc.

Loves when you get passionate tbh. You’re both pretty quiet, but when a subject comes up that you’re interested in, you can talk for hours. You two will literally blab together for hours once you’re on a subject you both like. Kiba and Hinata will be like :0 wtf bitch never talks to me that much.

You sometimes think that what you say isn’t going to be Important so you hold back and that instantly made me think of Shino. Not that he holds back what he has to say, but the fact that when he often says something, he’s talked over or cut off. So he would 10/10 understand how you feel and would make a valiant effort to make sure that your voice is heard. Like sure, Kiba can talk over him, but if he tries to talk over you Shino will box his ass. Okay, not really box him, but you get the point. He’ll probably be like “Kiba wait, she wasnt finished talking.” Or “You cut her off, she was saying something important.” Or if those are too forward he’ll probably turn to you and say something encouraging like “Dont worry, I’m listening” or “continue what you were saying” but please, for the love of god, do the same for him.

Youve talked about how you have trust issues with loyalty and relationships, but tbh with Shino you won’t have to worry at all. Like once he’s hooked on you and you’re dating, he’s sold. There’s no one else he’s gonna go to or think about. If anything, he probably has similar views to you in terms of love.

He’d play board games with you and listen to music with you a lot as well. His taste is kind of all over the place in terms of music, but he’s open to any suggestions you have. Will also lowkey be a big anime fan. Probably likes the classic kinds of animes like Dragon Ball Z, One Piece and Pokemon.

Bucky Barnes!

Bucky is attracted to quieter people, they’re just easier to be around. However, he does like talking too. Like he adores having thoughtful conversations with someone he trusts and cares about.

Honestly I think you two are similar in a lot of ways, but not too similar in the sense that things will never be progressive in the relationship, if you know what I mean. Like he has things he needs to work on and you have things you need to work on. Some of his strong suits happens to be your weaker ones, so you two help eachother out a little bit.

Like Shino, he can be standoffish and a little closed off at first but once you start to date, he’s like an open book. It takes a lot of trust to get into a romantic relationship with him, he doesn’t through the boyfriend girlfriend title around like it’s nothing. He takes it seriously.

That being said, your views on love are also very similar. He’s honestly so scared of being cheated on, but he’s also not the type to be over protective or over bearing because of it. If you’re in a relationship with him, he trusts you. He would never think to cheat, in fact, he probably doesn’t give any incoming flirters the time of day.

Honestly, you said you’re described by some as a house cat and I think that vibe is perfect for Bucky. Like he just wants that kind of life. He doesn’t want a crazy and eccentric lifestyle (he’s had his fair share of that), if you wanna laze around on the couch for a day and watch movies, he’s down.

He’ll like Anime too, once you introduce him to it. Probably lives and breathes for Naruto Shippuden. I think he’ll also like sporty anime’s like Stars Align and Haikyuu you cannot change my mind. He’ll be the emotional type when watching anime, which is weird because he’s usually more reserved in terms of emotions. Will love to talk to you about it afterwards.

You can be his shoulder to lean on and a good listener, but so is he. Since you’re both pretty observant people, I think fights can get resolved pretty quickly. Like you’ll be able to think through what happened and come to a conclusion together. Also, he’ll be able to tell when somethings off with you. It may take him a few months of the relationship, but once he’s in the swing of things, he’ll know you like the back of his hand.

He’ll definitely be able to help you stop with being a people pleaser. Like whenever you start down that path he’ll stop you and kinda get you to check yourself real quick. “You don’t have to do that for them,” or instead of you doing it he’ll do it instead, just to get you to stop pleasing that person. He knows you don’t like it yourself and can’t help it sometimes, so he tries his best to help.

He’s athletic asf and he also likes spending time with you, so he will do yoga with you. He’ll probably be so fucking awkward at it at first, like he will not know what he’s doing. Just give him a minuet, he’ll end up really liking it and will probably want to try all those crazy couples yoga poses.

Will like to have deep and thoughtful conversations with you as well. Probably about things you both like. He’s not super talkative unless it’s about something he can get into.

George Weasley!

He’s a nice break from the two more ‘emo mysterious’ types I just suggested. He’ll be a good change from the dreary moments you’ll have. If you’re in a melancholy mood I would think he’d crack some jokes and make you laugh. But sometimes he’ll let you be bc he feels you need your melancholy moments or else you’ll malfunction.

He’ll watch anime with you. To be honest I think all the weasleys would watch it. He wouldn’t mind any kind of anime as long as there is action in it. Whenever you visit him on the holidays or he visits you, you best believe there will be anime marathons. He loves Naruto. I don’t think he’s got the patience to watch the whole entire thing, but he’ll make it a good ways into shippuden before moving on.

George is smart. He is. Like maybe he doesn’t apply himself all that much into school because it doesn’t entertain him, but you entertain him. Like he really likes you. So he’s gonna put effort into you. All that being said, I think he’d be very helpful when it comes to any struggles you have in regards to your depression and OCD.

He’ll know when you’re lying about If you’re okay or not, but he handles it differently than the other two. I think he’ll take it as a sign to cheer you up. Whether it be muttering something sweet to you when you pass each other in the halls, or pulling a giant prank on the school if you are in a particularly sad mood.

He’d be interested in all your interests that’s for sure. He’s not the insecure type, so He’s willing to put himself out there. Sure he’s never done yoga before, but he will do it if you ask him too. Same thing with all your other interests.

Since he does most of the talking in the relationship, he’ll always try and bring up topics you like. That way you can be the one talking more for a change. He’s also so encouraging in wanting you to talk more. He’ll know when to leave you be though. Like if he sees your close to blowing a fuse, he’ll either try and defuse your mood, or leave you alone for some time to think.

Honestly he’s just encouraging in general so if you ever want advice he’s there for you.

Also in terms of your ideas on love, I think he’ll be somewhat in the same boat as you. Like I definitely believe he’s not the type to cheat. He’s invested in you, not the other girls. I think he has a brighter idea to love than yours though. Not that yours is dark or anything, but his is just more ambitious??

Really I think his attitude can be super complimentary to yours. I don’t think they’ll clashing tbh, I think it’s actually very beneficial.

He’s a bit of a tease, so once he first hears someone call you a house cat or describe you as one I definitely think he will call you that. He’ll be like “where’s my darling house cat?”

10/10 think he’d be a good bf to you

[legobiwan]

So i was just daydreaming of SW and fics & i was imagining two characters on opposites sides of light and dark both trying to turn each other bc they think they are right(don’t they all?). But i feel like sidious and maul and plenty of sith knew that they weren’t necessarily the ‘good’ guys, no matter their reason for why they ended up on the dark side. I think sidious knew he wasn’t a good person & was well aware of the ‘bad’ nature of the darkside and how it can corrupt a person entirely 1/

I think dooku was as well even though he thought he was doing the right thing & making change. Even Anakin knew in his own twisted mindset that despite why he turned, he wasn’t on the side of the good guys no matter their reason for why they ended up on the dark side.I think sidious knew he wasn’t a good person&was well aware of the ‘bad’ nature of the darkside and how it can corrupt a person entirely. I think dooku was as well even though he thought he was doing the right thing&making change.2/

But how would you convince someone that turned bc they thought they could keep it controlled. Revan himself turned thinking he could prevent the darkside from corrupting him entirely&we see how that turned out. What about people who just genuinely think that they are more free (they aren’t) on the darkside and just want to BE on the darkside and think that it’s not inherently bad. Bc some sith fics make it sound not that bad but we know that it actually really is very bad by nature ¾

I guess my question is how does someone who thinks they can have everything they want and not loose themselves, who is ruled by the dark side to the point of sith eyes, become convinced that going that far isn’t actually the right path to be on? 4/4 Sorry this is so long

Wow, anon, this is…a complicated question. (And off-topic, but daydreaming about SW fics totally got me through some horrible jobs a few years ago. Star Wars daydreaming ftw.)

For me, it comes down to what your definition of “light” (read, good) is. And I think either side, light or dark, taken too far to one extreme ends up wrapping back to the other, a kind of ouroboros. Too much light, as we saw with the Jedi, can lead to dark consequences. Too much dark, in a weird way, will lead to revolt, to a balancing. 

It’s thermodynamics, taken to a philosophical extent, where your variables seek equilibrium but there is only so much energy to share between them, as it cannot be created nor destroyed. 

But let’s extricate ourselves from such tangled webs, shall we, and take this analysis character by character. 

Sidious: Sidious is an unrepentant, manipulative bastard. I mean, the absolute worst, the whole shebang. I doubt there would be anyone who would have had the ability to pull him into the “Light,” just the ability to thwart his plans. Evil genius, psychopath, bereft of empathy, etc. Let’s just say Rey’s existence, at least from the first generation, was likely not an act of love. 

Dooku: Oh Dooku. My favorite bad guy is a lot more complicated. His motivations were idealistic and to some degree, justified. The Republic and the Jedi were failing certain underrepresented systems, the Republic bloated on corruption and the Jedi more and more backing themselves into a protective corner until they had no room left to move. His execution of the whole thing…well, that’s where his hubris (and nihilism) led him astray. And I still contend we see this darkening of Dooku between AotC and RotS, especially in TCW. The dark side won in Dooku, pulled him under its tide so perhaps by the time of RotS he just wasn’t able to see - or admit - Sidious’s plans for him. 

Now, would Dooku have been redeemed? Yes, but only under circumstances and I would say he would less be redeemed than returned to grey status. 

But what would possibly convince our resident iconoclast to renounce some of his ways? 

Or more, who?

Qui-gon or Obi-wan. Or both. Lineage is so important to Dooku, a man who felt the loss of his family, who felt he was alone in the universe, who, unlike Anakin, went out of his way to avoid close connections, to relieve everything of his past except his title and all the expectations that came with it. I mean, imagine that. You are raised a Jedi, taught to believe attachment is, if not bad, at least problematic. And then you leave that religious order to return to your homeworld where you inherit a title and presumably a million problems and identities and histories that come with said title. And Dooku knows none of these people but to rule them, but he does know the ones he has raised and the ones who they raised. Which leads me to believe that an alive Qui-gon (who, let’s face it, wouldn’t have been 100% light side) and/or a more convinced Obi-wan (who should have listened to Dooku on Geonosis but that is a whole other discussion because that was a Hail Mary by Dooku and the more I think about it, the more I believe it was a ballsy-as-ass move on his part) might have convinced him to realign himself.

Anakin: Ohhhh, Anakin. Anakin, who fell because he felt he had to, in order to save everyone he loved. Anakin, who was burdened with false expectation after a traumatic childhood. Anakin, who made so many bad choices and it’s both his fault and not his fault, a tragic combination of circumstance and proclivity. The thing is, we know Anakin is torn between the light and the dark, even after he turns. Anakin as Vader is kind of like the person who says, “Oh I ate 2 cookies, might as well eat the whole bag because nothing matters.” (Side note, I am a total supporter of eating the whole bag of cookies if that is the heart’s truest desire. Speaking as someone who has downed many bags of cookies in their lifetime.) Anyway, it’s the mindset that’s the problem. And Anakin does redeem himself in the end, when he finds something/someone to fight for and fight against and isn’t that so him, always fighting against something?

Look, dark side characterizations are fun. But there’s always something else behind it, and it is a big deal to abandon your principles, your ideals, your health, your everything to this festering, opaque disease that lives in your deepest gut and at times takes the controls, much to your horror (except if you are Sidious, in which case, the horrible darkness is always at the controls and that is by design). I, personally, like to explore the darker sides of these characters but also the why - what made them fall, why are they hurting, and what is the fallout of their actions?

Yes, it’s easy to hate, to fear - I mean, we see this in the real world on an everyday basis. What’s less easy is to be alone, and I mean truly alone. And I think minus extreme examples like Sidious (who, let’s admit, created clones to cheat death and kept a vast amount of servants so even he was not ever truly alone). If I might get a little existential for a moment, what I like about Jedi philosophy (and in all seriousness, I had a major breakdown about this a few years back and Jedi philosophy, weirdly enough, was a large part in saving my sanity) is that we are never alone, that we are all part of the Force, of life, of the breath and heartbeat of the universe no matter what corporeal form we take or not. The Sith see themselves as alone, but as we can observe, so many of them are motivated by connection, could possibly be spurred to change by connection in the correct circumstances. 

And by this, I don’t mean the Jedi were 100% correct. I feel like the version of the Jedi we got by TCW had been pushed to some extremes due to the Ruusan Reformation (gdi, that had better get recanonized, asap, because it is a pivotal moment and a HUGE explanation of why the Jedi ended up as they were by the time the Prequels rolled around and it makes So Much Sense), the emergence of Dooku, the war, etc.) There is something to be said about the Grey Jedi, not that they necessarily embraced light and dark - but perhaps so - but that they did not fall to one extreme or the other. And this is where I feel Qui-gon succeeded over many other of his peers, despite his myriad of other personality flaws. Possibly this was why he was able to access the Whills and pass on what he had learned, to the point of where we see Yoda in TLJ, who is a lot more philosophical about everything than he had been in life. 

So to answer your question - there is no making someone turn back to the light, as much as there is any way of forcing a sentient being to do anything. Once can only pave the way and forge relationships, and the rest is up to that person. I think a lot of our Sith friends knew they were going down a dark path but also saw no alternative and felt a need to vindicate themselves, to strike out in anger against their circumstances. I get it, I think we all have that urge sometimes. And I suppose the answer might come in having something to fight for as opposed to fight against, as ridiculous as that sounds. 

But then again, I am but a simple lego floating around the internet. :)

[shizekarnstein]

Zeke is determinated to save his brother from the shackles of Grisha's poisonous influence. If Eren is refusing to go along with their dream the only reason is more than obvious: their wretched father has brainwashed him and only Zeke himself is able to free him of that burden. Only once he manages to undo the damage will the two of them stand together as brothers and put an end, once and for all, to the cursed fate of the eldian people.

Xaver stoods in his mind as Zeke's personal saviour. From his pov he was his real father: a father who listened and played with him, an adult with whom he felt safe and comfortable. The person who finally opened his eyes to the monstruos nature of his birth parents characters, and encouraged him to turned them over to the marlean authorities instead of joining them in utopia.

Zeke has never questioned his mentor's motives or the type of person he was. He only saw one side of him: the loving man who had his best interest in mind. To this day he never pondered over the fact that this very man basically turned him into the executioner of his own parents and how terrible is to put that burden on a child. How cruel and manipulative is to tell a seven years old that his own parents never loved him.

Claiming that Grisha has brainwashed and mistreat Eren as he did with Zeke himself all those years ago, refusing to even consider the possibility that he could have been a better parent to Eren, and not even listening to Eren's thoughts on the matter, he goes ahead and brings their foreheads together. To show his brother the truth.

But forcing your ideals and pov into another person is no different from what both his parents and Xaver did to him. So I have to ask: by using the FT powers to force his own convictions onto Eren, at the end, is he really that different from those he claims to loathe? Who is really trying to brainwash Eren at this point?

The brothers enter Grisha's memories and witness how this man interacted and raised his younger son.

This quest objetive is to reveal the true face of Grisha and all his wrongdoings. But along the way I can't help but wonder if what Zeke was really looking for, on an unconciouss level, was seeing their father again. Zeke was conditionated and encouraged by Xaver to hate and despise his father, but little Zeke loved him more than anything. He tried to put up with all the things he and Dina asked of him. Even when he thought those things were wrong and put him in danger, he did soldier on. What really brought him to a breaking point was not only his parents neglect, but the possiblity of all of them together being shipped off to paradise. For someone who to this day is still craving affection as a starved animal, I have no doubts that even if he convinced himself of hating him, a part of him is still that little boy who adored him. In order to move forward he had to believe his father was a monster.

When confronted with the reality that Grisha really seemed to care for his new wife and son, his bitterness and denial are palpable. He's jelous bc some part of him still wished he could have had something like that. Eren himself is going along this painful trip down memory lane, having to endure witnessing all those dear and simpler days with a deep sense of longing.

But no matter how hard he searchs, nothing seems to match Zeke's expectations. He's desesperatly trying to find the instances when Grisha acted as a selfish man who puts his own ideals ahead of the safety of his family. The months pass and all he can find are wholesome family moments. They get to see how Eren was clearly loved and doted upon, how his father spent countless hours playing with him, taking him on walks, witnessing his very first steps. The tranquil family dinners where no talk of politics or revolution ever graced the table.

Even then Zeke keeps searching for the devious facet that he knows must exit. Grisha infiltrated the walls to locate the FT and restaure the Eldian Empire. His new family is an accessory, just like his previous one.

Eren himself is done with this futile quest. Unlike Zeke, he knows the two sides of the story. He knows his father's faults, even believed for a time the worst of him when Rod Reiss triggered the memories of the chapel massacre. He has come to terms with the fact his father was a flawed man who payed dearly for his dreams and came to repent and love his new family in all the ways he couldn't with his former one. Eren knows all about his guilt, about his sins and regrets. About how much he cherished him and his mother, and how he never forgot about Dina and Zeke.

But what good does it do to argue with someone who's utterly convinced of his own truth? Trying to force his biased version on Eren is nonsense and Eren is very aware of this fact. Of course father is a demon, isn't that what you want to hear? We can move on and euthanize our own people next now that I know your true Zeke. What an evil man! Forcing your vission onto others without giving a damn about their own side of the story or experiences is such a wonderful and foolproof plan. Can't you see how the brainwashing is coming undone thanks to you showing me all these things? It's useless to try to talk with someone who doesn't listen.

But then both Eren and Zeke learned that they didn't even knew all there was to know about Grisha and how far he had evolved from his younger self.

He gave up on his old dream. He learned from his faults. When faced with the choice between his mission and his loved ones, this time he made the right choice. He was able to cast away his old self and previous mistakes and return to his family, finally deciding what was really more precious to him and clinging to this choice.

Humans change and grow. But without taking the time to sit down and listen to other people we are unable to trully grasp who they really are as persons. We allow our own missconceptions and prejudices to blind us to the facts. What Zeke is experiencing now is a total subversion of what he was convinced was an absolute fact. But in order to allow himself to consider this possiblity, he had to witness it with his own eyes. Ignorance itself is a formidable enemy after all. That is the brothers motto, but the only one living by those words was Eren.

All the doubts Zeke still harboured and his last sanity rope was the utter conviction that his father never loved him. Mister Xaver told him so. It has to be true. Even if he changed in regards to his other son, Grisha never cared for Zeke. He was nothing more to him than a tool, a royal blood vessel that would help him to make his dream come true. Grisha found happiness with his new family, merrily forgetting all about his past one and the hell he put them through. Listening to Grisha utter "I'm sorry, Zeke" has began to utterly shatter this view.

While Zeke was blabbing, Eren noted how his father still gazed and kept close his only memento of Dina and Zeke. He never forgot about them. How could he?

Kruger himself said that anyone can become a god or a devil, all it takes is for someone to believe in it. For Zeke and Rod Reiss Grisha Jaeger was a monster who gladly crushed children and anything that stood on his way. Marley and Willy Tybur convinced the whole world that Eren Jaeger is a demon hellbent on destroying everything in his path. We as readers were convinced that the Beast Titan was a devil who utterly lacked even an ounce of human compassion. Xaver appears to Zeke as a wonderful person; we as readers know better than to believe such a thing of someone who installed the idea in a child that his parents hated him and forced him to tarnish his hands with their blood. Just going by the flashes we saw this chapter about Grisha, an uninformed party would conclude that he was a good man with not a single fault to his name. To trully grasp others we need to get rid of our bias and missconceptions and learn to actually listen and see for ourselves what's true and what isn't. That has always been a theme in SnK. Zeke's journey isn't different.

Now both brothers experienced radically differnet sides of Grisha. Just bc he came to regret his previous actions and worked to better himself as a man, spouse and father doesn't mean all is forgiven. Zeke has the right to still resent him and the way he treated him. But he can only make that choice freely once he knows for certain all there is to his father's story. And the journey has only started.

I find intriguing how at the beginning it was Zeke who command the pace of their journey and kept selecting to continue. Now that his convictions have been shaken, and not Eren's, is Eren himself who seems to be in charge of the itinerary.

If inside paths realm the stronger mental will is the one who prevails, then the outcome of this little journey is very much on Eren's favour.

What's Zeke going to do? It's there a way to make him give up on his dream too? Or is he still fully convinced of the true of Xaver words? Memories of the previous shifter have a degree of influence on the current one. If Zeke can say with security that Eren was being controlled by their father, then how deep is the real hold of Xaver in all of this? Is this really only Zeke's dream? Xaver shared this dream with him when he still lived, and the two of them agreed to make it a reality. Even now he remains a dear person and highly respectable in Zeke's mind and heart. At the end I don't think it trully matters if his hold on Zeke is being reinforced by his memories living in him. The only one who can decide what to do is Zeke. Time may be infinite inside paths realm, but even so the clock is still ticking.

This chapter was monumental and has so many things to comment upon. I plan to do another post pondering over something I've been wondering for a long time: can shifters actually sense when someone down the line is witnessing/reviving some of their memories? Going by Frieda and Grisha this chapter, my tentative answer is yes. Hint: Grisha sees Zeke in front of him, but there was someone else behind Grisha who had the same view as him, and that someone would later be the vessel that holds all of Grisha's memories.

[thegeminisage]

i have deep and conflicting thots about the gilli episode (3.11)

they’re long (they’re LONG!!!) so here’s a cut. you’re welcome

good things:

this is the ANTITHESIS to everything i was complaining about last night. this is what i was CRAVING. this show did me so good (and yet, so bad - more on that in a sec)

there was a touch of outside pov here (my weakness) since we got to see who merlin was from gilli’s point of view

and when i say we got to see who merlin was i mean we really for real got to SEE WHO HE WAS oh babey

something gilli said in this episode was that merlin has been pretending so long he forgot who he was and i think similarly he pretends so well that we the audience (me anyway) also kind of forget who he is because we see it SO rarely

but we saw it here! in this episode merlin was SMART?? those aren’t two words i’d normally use in the same sentence without sticking a “is not” between them but he WAS - he cottoned on right away that gilli was using magic, he confronted him immediately and in a way that didn’t invoke hostility (and what a nice little flip, what a TREAT to see someone else freaking out and covering their ass while merlin is keeping his cool), (some of) his normal little jabs at arthur were a tad wryer/slyer on the delivery, and he figured out, ON HIS OWN, how to save both gilli and uther, and used his magic in front of ALL THOSE PEOPLE without getting caught

and speaking of that, merlin being like “he’s braver than me, using magic in front of all those people” and gaisu going “brave or stupid” like... ok, at first my reaction was: come on, merlin uses magic in front of people ALL THE TIME...but when i think about it, my very own self was complaining just yesterday that he was keeping his shit buttoned up way too tightly. and i did notice merlin himself waiting until backs were turned more often, incantating aloud less often...he ACTUALLY HAS gotten less stupid, JUST a smidgen. i didn’t even realize

merlin seemed more grown-up and serious in this episode than he has in the entire series. maybe it’s the fact that he had someone younger and dumber to play off of (and i don’t think gilli was a strong enough character to carry an episode, but maybe it was enough to give us an excuse to develop merlin so much) but he did in fact seem WISE, and he seemed TIRED, which is a thing grownups usually are... the way he talked to the other characters seemed different too - he spoke to the dragon as an equal (last dragon & last dragonlord), not as some dumbass in over his head asking for help (very nice also that he didn’t go to gaius for advice but someone more on “his level”). he gave arthur clear and frank advice on how to go about fighting his dad, he STUCK UP FOR GILLI AGAINST GAIUS (backbone! compassion!) and then STUCK UP FOR HIMSELF against gilli!!!!!

(i like a slightly more serious merlin because while quirky dumbass country hick merlin IS charming and endearing that charm can only carry him so far without more meat involved, especially after some of the terrible things we’ve seen him suffer through and all the experiences he’s had to grow and change)

i have mixed feelings about merlin showing his magic to this particular person at this particular time, but i do also like that he was willing to open up about WHO HE IS if it could potentially save a life. that shows backbone. and it shows integrity. two things i was sorely missing from merlin before now

speaking of merlin’s integrity, we finally got to cover why he keeps saving uther, who he should hate and despise and want dead, which i have been DYING for

merlin and gilli have a sort of professor x/magneto stance about uther, by which i mean one of them argues that they should change things from within the system to court goodwill and avoid violence because acting violently would just make their detractors’ point for them, and the other argues that the system should be destroyed entirely through any means necessary because violence is the only language the oppressor understands

on a rewatch what really stands out to me is merlin chastising gilli at the end by saying “you’re better than that.” it makes me think of season 1 when merlin had the chance to let morgana’s allies assassinate uther and he asks gwen what he should do - gwen, who also has every reason to hate and despise uther, tells merlin that to allow him to die through inaction would be just as bad as murdering him directly, and that that would make merlin as bad uther is

i don’t want to give the people who fucked morgana over so thoroughly too much credit but it makes me wonder if that wasn’t when merlin decided that he was going to be the bigger man

he says it himself in this episode, near tears - it is LONELY, being what he is, and doing what he does. he could kill a man with a thought and he spends all his time mucking stables and polishing armor and when he gets a break from that it’s to save someone’s life without endangering his own. it is dangerous, tireless work for which he believes he will NEVER get any thanks. and what i was so frustrated about before was not understanding WHY - did he care THAT much about arthur’s feelings, that he couldn’t stand to watch arthur lose a father? was he just THAT afraid of uther and what uther would do to him if he found out?

but i get it now - it’s because he CHOOSES to. not to protect arthur or to protect himself but because he wholly believes that he’s playing the long game and he’s on the correct path to seeing a future where what he is is no longer outlawed - god, his FACE when he says “when that day arrives, we WILL be free” 

again not to overcredit the writers bc i DON’T think they were smart enough to do this on purpose but like in my heart he decided all the way back in season 1 that he wasn’t going to take the easy way out and just let uther die because THAT’S NOT WHAT MAGIC IS FOR. he’s stronger than everyone else around him and HE CHOOSES to keep his head down and wait it out because in his OWN WORDS “magic is not meant to bring you glory.” even gilli agrees - when used for personal gain, it is very easy for the power of the magic to corrupt. i thought merlin was weak, to have saved uther’s life so many times - but to resist that kind of temptation and corruption over and over, he’s actually the opposite. he doesn’t try so hard to protect the monarchy because he lacks self-respect or integrity, he protects the monarchy BECAUSE OF his self-respect and integrity. all along, he’s been fighting for a better future too - just in his way, not the way gilli or morgana would

and speaking of morgana...here’s the bad:

i. am. LIVID!!!!!

that merlin would tell this boy he BARELY KNOWS his secret in order to maybe possibly save this kid’s life and NOT TELL MORGANA in her worst hour of need when she most needed a friend

merlin got a whole lot more respect from me today but the fact remains that he’s a LYING LIAR WHO LIES and he has tried to kill morgana two and a half times (the poison, the bump on the head, knocking her off her horse) and as of the end of season 3 also MURDERED HER SISTER THAT IS APPARENTLY ALSO LOWKEY HER GIRLFRIEND (i know)

which really clashes with his whole deal that i just described above, of using his magic for good and not evil purposes, for trying to win over hearts instead of win battles. and it’s funny that it’s ONLY morgana that merlin acts out of character for...i think it’s because! and this is a crazy concept! the writers hate morgana!

morgana in season 1 and most of season 2 was a kind and loving person. she was a true ally to gwen and often used her status as the king’s ward to stand up for gwen when gwen was in trouble. the first time she tried to have uther killed it was because of what happened to gwen’s father. she was more than capable of feeling love and knowing right from wrong and doing what she believed was right at any cost as evidenced by her helping to sneak the little druid kid out of the castle at risk to herself

morgana in season 3 does nothing but smirk evilly. and while it’s a good look on her and she’s MORE than valid in wanting to fuck up merlin and uther and maybe even arthur too from a certain viewpoint her aggression against gwen is ENTIRELY unwarranted

even trying my BEST to be sympathetic towards her and remember what she’s gone through and that her bad characterization is the fault of the writers and not morgana herself it is VERY hard not to hate her when you see her delighting in gwen’s misery and watching her PANIC about gwen’s future as the queen was FAR more satisfying than it should have been because i was then delighting in MORGANA’S misery and that is NOT a feeling im comfy with

in fact! im furious! the fact that this gilli kid got a more sympathetic portrayal than morgana ever will makes me SEE RED!!! imagine if the professor x/magneto vibe had been played out with merlin and morgana throughout the entirety of season 3! imagine morgana still had feelings other than ~edgy evulz~ and kept trying to kill uther BECAUSE SHE BELIEVED IT WAS RIGHT but had no quarrel with people like gwen who had always loved her! imagine her being conflicted when there was every chance that gwen would die during the takeover! imagine how her feelings could have become even more complicated when she found out she had living family - a father and brother, one of whom she is plotting to kill! imagine her NOT wanting harm to come to gwen or arthur and trying to persuade them to her side with good yet flawed arguments! imagine uther having to face the fact that the daughter he dotes on is also the thing he hates! people talk about arthur’s conflict if he realizes merlin is magic, but he’s known merlin a lot less time than he’s known morgana and merlin’s not his sister, imagine arthur had to deal with that conflict of interests! we could have HAD IT ALL in season 3 and instead season 3 MOSTLY SUCKS

what if morgana had remembered how fucked up arthur was about learning about the true circumstances of his birth? what if she had persuaded him that uther’s stance against magic was wrong? what if she knew merlin had magic but she hated him so she blackmailed him with it? he could have told her and then spent the ENTIRETY of season 3 shitting himself about it and it would have TOTALLY JUSTIFIED how shifty he got later after gaius taught him how to lie.what if he had SEEN what choosing to hurt other people had wrought in morgana and truly felt remorse and it informed his character for the rest of the show and that’s why he’s always choosing the moral high ground! there were SO MANY possibilities that could have opened up by having morgana be even just a little bit 3-dimensional!!!

which brings me to my next complaint: as good as this episode was, as much as i loved it, as glad as i am to finally understand merlin or at the very least have an interpretation of him i’m happy with, i should not have had to wait ALL SEASON to get there. i know what kind of show this is but they could have slipped some of this stuff in WAY EARLIER so i didn’t have to spent the entirety of season 3 and quite a lot of season 2 thinking merlin was just some spineless fuckup

also i will say it again, gilli was NOT strong enough to have carried this episode. the work on merlin’s character was INCREDIBLE and it was fun enough to see gilli mirror who he was in early season 1 but imagine how much better it could have been if he’d gotten to play off of someone like morgana - gilli’s a one-off character, and he has to tell us about his history and struggles, but morgana’s struggle is something we’ve witnessed firsthand. when she makes her own arguments about how hard it is to be magic under uther’s rule it comes from a place of deep pain that could have and should have resonated with merlin just as deeply as gilli’s.

morgana works MUCH better as a foil to merlin because all the way back in season 1 when they were both angry on gwen’s behalf and both wanted uther to pay for what he’d done so that no more innocent people would die it was MORGANA who chose the magneto route and merlin who decided to go professor x. they had the potential to make something REALLY COOL out of that AND THEY DIDN’T and what makes me so mad about this episode is that the sheer CONCEPT of this was good enough to have carried the entire season and yet they crammed it into a single 45-minute block

here end my thots i guess, in conclusion morgana deserved better

[asillydreamer-on-a-crazyworld]

I like that they will get a divorce but I hate that is was Dean that handed it over. The last few episodes the writers are trying really hard to make Dean look like the good guy, even though he has been the worst husband ever. I hate we never got an argument about the cancer lie and it looks like it will never happen now. Dean always talks about how it is her fault that everything bad has happend, like wtf? Also I kind of had to cringe when I saw the new promo with Beth hugging Dean.

You know… I wish it was her too, just bc I would feel better watching Beth hand the papers to him. But this is me saying what I wanted, however, this is not my story, it’s Beth’s. I understand why the writers chose to not follow that path, bc I get it. She wouldn’t ask for a divorce now, bc like we saw later in that scene of her laying on a bed with Ruby and Annie by her side, her only worry was about her kids and about not having anything of hers to get from this divorce.

Where would she live if he took the house? How would she support herself and the kids? What if HE TOOK THE KIDS FROM HER? 

Like me and other ppl always talked about, Beth doesn’t have anything on her name. It’s all Dean’s. She was trying to take her own steps into life by herself again, be someone that could provide for her kids alone. Until Dean forced her to give up on this dream bc of jealousy. How could she be the one asking for a divorce now, if she just found herself in debt with Rio again? 

and look, I don’t see how this could have happened in a different way, how Beth could be the one at this point of the show to ask a divorce from Dean when they both care about the kids a lot and these children have gone through a lot lately. We know Beth would never put her children on the terrible situation of having both their parents fighting over a divorce like I think it would happen if Beth snapped and told Dean to leave.

I mean, he would probably take the kids away from her bc rn he has control of the money they have and everything else. Right now, Beth has nothing, no money, no properties, nothing on her name. How would she fight over the custody of her kids?

I know we wanna things to happen in a certain way, one that pleases us but one thing I love in this show is how even though there are a lot of crazy things and circumstances happening in the women’s lives, many things happen just like real life… Especially the relationships in this show. One proof of that is how I’ve seen posts here, some I wrote myself, about how we all related to some things that happened to these women. Hell, some even could relate to MP as well.

so, it made sense to me that, in the end, he was the one to ask for the divorce and I was glad that the first thing she asks or talks about is the kids. When she said “but I’m trying”, I don’t think she was pleading for another chance on their marriage for him, but for her kids.

That is why I loved how she went and told him she liked to have sex with Rio ( we could argue it was not bc of that at all only bc it was just 2 times but this is for another post). It must have hurt a LOT to Dean, bc I believe one thing he hated the most was the fact that Rio had Beth, more than once in his head ( well, now it is true lol). We all know he rly didn’t care for the criminal activities she was getting herself into, bc he even offered to help. U can argue with me about his motivations but we all know he really gave her an ultimatum and started talking about “Worrying for the kids’ safety” after he realized Beth and Rio had sex.

That being said, I do believe that Dean finally realized himself that forcing Beth to accept his terms wouldn’t do any good in the long run. He knows she would keep cheating him with crime/ Rio in his head ( he has been there himself lol). And for a man like Dean who couldn’t stomach the fact that it was his wife now cheating on him.. Doing something he knew it was not fair to someone u were supposed to love? He couldn’t deal with that. He is still such a misogynist man bc I think he couldn’t make himself play house with her knowing she would probably come back to Rio in his head and keep fucking him, like I believe Beth would, happily, if so to keep her kids with her.

Classic  White male. I had this theory that maybe he would flip and blackmail her and well… In a way he did but I think that it was better this way. Beth didn’t become weaker in my eyes just bc she wasn’t the one to ask for a divorce and less of a boss bitch.

 I understand your frustration about the lack of confrontation about the cancer lie but I agree with @bensonstablers about the reasons why this didn’t happen. One of them is how Beth felt guilty herself that he was shot and probably that she didn’t know how to feel… If she was relieved or disappointed that her husband almost died. Beth is not a mean, evil person and even if I agree Dean is not the husband of the year, far from it, he is not a monster. He is good with the kids ( even if he lost his own in his damn house) and I believe that he cares for Beth, even in his twisted way. So I think deep down, Beth couldn’t wish for Dean’s death or be happy about it bc she is not a selfish person. She probably thought of her kids, without a father they certainly love and how close they were to lose him.

It doesn’t mean that all the things left unsaid between them can’t come back later… I doubt this season will be the last for Dean / Matthew Lillard. And the last episode showed us that the writers don’t forget things…So, I also wouldn’t say they are gonna try to make Dean look good… Or bad… I mean, I know there are characters we all hate with a passion, but underneath it all, at least I know that everyone in this show is not all black or White… They all navigate in between, meaning that none of them are sinners or saints. They have good and bad sides and they make a lot of mistakes, and some are leaning more on the dark side than others.

That is sometimes I say that I love to hate a certain character, but I’m mostly just kidding. I know that we need to see these characters with an open mind bc they are complex, beautifully written characters and that is why I love this show so much and why I have so much Faith in the writers of this show. 

They are not perfect and maybe they can disappoint me in some way - bc let’s face it, it happens!-, but right now I’m liking the direction they are taking things.

And about that hug?

I wouldn’t worry about it. I mean, I reblogged a post here talking about that hug and I meant what I said: it’s not bc they are divorcing that they need to be enemies now. These two share the same love for their children and they know each other for more than 20 years. Also, I don’t think Dean hate Beth enough to not offer her some kind of comfort when she is so worried about going to jail and be separated from her kids.

Again, I understand ur dislike or even disgust for that scene, bc like urself I’m not blind to Dean’s faults ( they were many after all), but again, he is not the monster of the story. Not right now anyway.

[loisfreakinglane]

cordelia chase

i tried and failed to restrain myself

favorite thing about them

her character arc. fucking flawless every single step of the way. from bitchy rich mean girl to a full fledged selfless self sacrificing hero. my favorite fictional character of all time.

least favorite thing about them

she made some ridiculous aesthetic choices on angel. god help me she’s an amazingly beautiful woman at all times but some of those hair and makeup choices were not great bob. also she uses the r word at least once and i am very uncomfortable!!!!!!!! aaaaaaaaanddddddddddddddd……… okay. i think it was horribly ooc when cordelia got all heart eyes for lindsey mcdonalds performance at caritas. but i have to I HAVE TO sweep that aside as them pandering to christian kanes music career bc otherwise my eyes would roll so far back into my head i’d pass out. cordy is very often shallow which i love about her but THAT???? lmao that was weak, so very weak and if you disagree and think it was in character well i still hate it. (and i think gunn also said it was cool? which. BIGGER LMAO)

favorite line

god she has so many epic lines, can you really expect me to pick one?????? okay i’m gonna force myself to be restrained here and just pick the very first one that comes to mind

“Why is it always virgin women who have to do the sacrificing? […] This has nothing to do with purity. This is all about dominance, buddy. You can bet if someone ordered a male body part for religious sacrifice the world would be atheist like *that*.”

ALSO HONORARY MENTION that time she’s talking about airpockets being filled up inside her when she started doing good and being a good person in disharmony and it gets laughed off but i love it and i understand what she means so much and i’m so happy for her that she got to that point in her life

brOTP

buffy!!!! and also gunn and connor. buffy and cordy being so clearly paralleled with each other but their heroic journeys going at different speeds? the privileged popular girl past, the call to heroism (slayer, visions), the self sacrifice for the greater good, even the falling in love with a fellow soldier that ends in loving tragedy and sacrifice. they never got to be great friends, but they always understood each other on such a deep level. all their interactions were amazing and we deserved them becoming besties. AND GUNN!!! he and cordy were always harsh opposites but their friendship was endlessly fun and interesting and it’s disappointing they stopped getting duo time together. AND CONNOR. a controversial choice bc of season 4 events (and well. connor being a controversial character at all times). but they srsly had a really sweet friendship that could have been everything if cordelia hadn’t been so quickly snapped up by possession.

OTP

ANGEL ALWAYS!!!!!!! ETERNAL OTP!!!!!! but in another life, buffy or gunn. and in another OTHER life, maybe she and groo could have been a lot. he was very very sweet but she was in love with angel by the time he came back, and connors kidnapping and return rightly shifted all of her focus to angel (so it was bad timing even if she hadn’t been in love with him already) so they didn’t get a for real fair shot for me but it could have been good. but yeah honestly this answer is really just ANGEL with fifty million rows down these three other options. (or buffy/cordy/angel as an ot3 bc i have thoughts!!!!)

nOTP

i don’t know that i have hard and fast notps for her bc even her ships i’m not into were fine in their time? like cordy/xander ended on a good note for me (‘it looks good on you.’ ‘well duh!’) and cordy/doyle was onesided right up til he died so i never had to deal with what the reality of that being an actual relationship would have looked like and if i could have been into it. cordy/wesley was just funny all the way through to their botched and embarrassing kiss. i guess a lot of people would say cordy/connor here but….. that wasn’t cordelia. they kissed once while she had amnesia, but the relationship part was all jasmine possessing her and raping both of them SO. insert random guy who tried to take advantage of her and lure her to him for some nefarious scheme here

random headcanon

she’s still bouncing around doing shit for the powers that be but in a very different sort of way. maybe she travels across time and dimensions, maybe she helps guide other heroes. her story isn’t over, she’s just on a different path now, calling her to be an active participant in enacting good across different realms under the ptb’s purview 

unpopular opinion

season 4 did not ruin cordelia. there’s some debate over when exactly she was possessed (i’m personally very certain on it being the instant she got her full memories back and saw the beasts eyes), but the important thing is that she spent almost the entirety of season 4 being possessed by another being who wanted to take over the world. so cordelia chase, the actual character herself, with memories fully intact and full knowledge over her person? was last seen definitively in the season 4 ep the house always wins, when we see her in the higher plane of existence manipulating the lotto machines. then she had amnesia, AND THEN she wasn’t cordelia anymore. then ofc real actual cordelia was back in season 5 for you’re welcome. ALSO!!!!!!!! cordelia was not ooc in season 3, nor do i believe that her forgiving angel for his s2 fuckery bc he bought her new clothes was ooc. the girl likes clothes! and sometimes big gestures actually work! for an actual ooc moment SEE ABOVE. cordelia’s character arc is a big part of what makes her a phenomenal character and absolutely one of the major standouts of the whole buffyverse. she’s not written completely differently on angel than she is on buffy, she just grows and changes like a normal person, and she gets more shit for it than anyone else with significant character arcs

song i associate with them

a delightful vid rec instead :) from @mercer-queen

favorite picture of them

[theatreakasuna-store]

⊰  “ Why  does  Sasori  use  Hiruko  all  the  time  when  hes  so  ugly ” ⊱

Thats  actually  a  pretty  good  question  anon!  Like  yeah,  Sasori  is  outwardly  beautiful &  eternally  so  which  I  do  think  there  is  some  kind  of  element  of  vanity  in   but  I  guess  maybe  the  best  way  to  explain  it  is  overall,  Sasori  is  really  the  trope  of  distorted  innocence  which  is  a  heavy  theme  surrounding  objects  like  dolls  in  horror  genres  bc  we  relate  dolls  so  heavily  to  children.  Children  love  dolls  and  theyre  often  human  or  animal  shaped  objects  that  a  child  can  control  /  relate  to  since  theyre  usually  made  to  be  representative  of  or  desirable  or  just  comforting  to  the  child  in  some  way:  think  baby  dolls,  barbie  dolls,  rag dolls  ect. 

Sasori  is  quite  literally  the  Naruto  worlds  ultimate  answer  to  the  Doll  Episode  trope  which  is  very  common &  effective  in  the  horror  &  fantasy  genre. 

The  dolls  are  being  made  to  replicate/replace  a  lost  loved  one,  such  as  a  child,  a  spouse  or  a  sibling. The  dolls  are  made  from  human  components,  dead  or  otherwise.  The  dollmaker  is  obsessed  with  dolls  for  some  reason,  and  has  taken  to  preferring  them  over  humans.  Maybe  even  wishing  humans were  more  like  dolls. The  dolls  are  possessed  by  an  evil  spirit, are  Ridiculously  Human  Robots,  or  have  otherwise  become  animated/alive  and  actively malevolent.

The  dollmaker  or  collector  will  usually  be  a  madman  or  woman  who  has  taken  a  shine  to  the  protagonists  either  as  "something"  to  add  to  their   collection,  potential  parts  for  their  latest  creation,  or  threats  to  themselves  and  their  beloved  collection,  making  them  try  to  capture  or  kill  them.

Sasori  is  literally  every  one  of  these  elements  combined  &  further  he  comes  from  the  perspective  of  not  just  a  disturbed  adult  but  most  strongly  from  the  psyche  of  an  extremely  damaged  child  which  is  emphasised  by  the  fact  we  do  not  see  Sasori’s  “ true  self ”  as  a  grown  man.  Hes  forever  in  the  body  of  a  young  boy.  Trauma  in  children  manifests  itself  in  various  different  ways  just  like  trauma  in  adults  but  sometimes  traumatised  children  become  very  reliant  on  objects  or  tv  shows,  characters,  ect  for  comfort  &  emotional  support.  Things  that  arent  people,  usually  bc  they've  found  people  to  be  unreliable  or  a  source  of  abuse/pain &  thus  they  escape  into  or  hide  behind  these  ‘comfort  objects’.  Though  the  behaviour  is  normal  for  very  young  children,  children  who  never  stop  this  kind  of  behaviour  and  keep  it  going  well  beyond  the  age  deemed  appropriate  to  like  certain  things /  carry  around  stuffed  toys  ECT  are  doing  it  usually  because  of  trauma.   Sometimes  this  is  fine  and  not  a  problem  for  the  person  at  all  but  sometimes  is  deeply  unhealthy  and  does  pose  a  problem  for  the  effected  person. 

PS  don’t  take  anything  I  say  as  gospel  either !  Im  not  a  professional  or  anything. 

Sasori  is  a  deeply  traumatised  child.  Puppets  were  an  escape  &  a  happy  place  for  him.  Somewhere  he  felt  comfort.  He  tried  to  replace  his  parents  with  puppets  to  fill  the  void  they  left  him  with,  he  tried  to  make  them  love  him  like  the  real  ones  did.  He  took  them  to  bed  with  him,  gave  them  his  pillows  to  sleep  on.  He  spent  a  lot  of  time  learning  to  make  their  movements  lifelike  so  they  could  hug  &  comfort  him  the  way  his  real  parents  did,  it  wasn't  exactly  the  same  but  it  was  something  he  held  on  to  to  cope  with  their  sudden  departure.  This  is  all  canon.  In  at  least  in  my  headcanon  Sasori  believed  his  mother  &  father  puppets  did  ‘care  for  him’.  He  had  this  idea  that  there  was  a  part  of  them  in  the  puppets  he  made &  whether  that  was  true  or  not  this  idea  was  heavily  reinforced  when  Sasori  was  pushed  to  become  a  shinobi,  which  he  didn’t  exactly  have  any  objections  to  given  he  was  only  6 &  his  mother,  father &  grandmother  were  all  shinobi  so  it  felt  normal  &  good  to  be  one  himself. However,  this  is  a  massive  fault  of  the  Naruto  world,  child  soldiers  are  not  healthy  or  normal  or  good.  Sasoris  puppet  parents,  again  in  my  HC,  became  his  weapons.  It  gave  them  the  illusion  of  protecting  him  because they  literally  were  even  if  Sasori  was  the  one  controlling  them. 

Sasori  may  of  “outgrown”  these  puppets  but  he  never  outgrew  the  attachment  he  had  to  puppets,  rather  this  attachment  gradually  evolved  when  puppets  became  extremely  idealised  n  intertwined  with  human  life.  The  foundation  for  it  was  always  there  with  how  Sasori  treated  his  parent  puppets  as  “alive”  in  ways  but  the  real  problem  came  when  Sasori  started  to  relate  living  people  /  shinobi  to  puppets.  He  began  trying  to  essentially  make  them  one  because  he  believed  this  was  ideal  not  just  because  of  his  own  personal  trauma  but  because  being  a  shinobi  essentially  meant  being  a  weapon  /  object   which  human  beings  were  ill  suited  while  puppets  were  perfect. 

Sasori  was  replacing  the  weak  /  unreliable  /  temporary  /  breakable  with  something  strong  /  reliable  /  permanent  /  indestructible.  Sasori  was  deeply  effected  by  how  much  death  &  dismemberment  he  witnessed  in  the  people  around  him,  he  sought  to  eliminate  this  issue.  Puppets  were  his  answer  to  everything.  As  this  progressed  he  started  disliking  humanity  entirely  &  clinging  to  his  puppets  as  a  source  of  shelter  /  refuge  from  humanity  who  swiftly  began  to  judge  him  despite  being  the  ones  who  set  him  on  his  path.  In  fact,  in  ways  Sasori  was  basically  ASKED  to  do  what  he  did  &  when  he  did  it  suddenly  everyone  was  against  it.  Its  something  Sasori  couldn’t  understand  or  handle.   Sasori  went  from  wanting  to  breath  life  into  puppets  to  simply  wanting  to  make  humans  into  puppets  out  a  the  deep  dislike/distrust/betrayal  he  felt.  

Komushi  was  Sasori’s  first  ‘ human  puppet ’   but  Sasori  didn’t  view  Komushi  as  his  own.  He  technically  made  Kumoshi  for  his  mother.  Needless  to  say  despite  the  request  its  not  what  Kumoshi’s  mother  wanted.

There  was  a  lot  of  pressure  on  Sasori  to  “preform”  to  help  his  village.  To  protect  its  people.  Sasori  outlived  pretty  much  all  shinobi  tasked  with  the  same  job  to  the  point  where  he  started  to  believe  in  some  way  in  the  back  of  his  mind  that  he  alone  was  capable.  He  began  to  think  if  he  just  turned  people  into  human  puppets  they  couldn’t  be  beaten  or  destroyed  because  he  wouldn’t  allow  such  a  thing. 

Hiruko  was  Sasori’s  creation  for  himself.  No  one  asked  him  to  build  Hiruko,  he  didn’t  build  him  to  comfort  anyone  else. Hes  kind  of  the  first  human  puppet  Sasori  made  when  he  began  to  do  things  for  himself  &  not  to  help  his  village. In  a  way,  Hiruko  is  linked  to  Sasori’s  freedom,  to  Sasori  choosing  his  art  &  “happiness”  over  his  village’s  desire  for  him  to  be  a  slave  that  follows  orders  &  destroys  himself  for  their  betterment.  He  was  done  with  that. 

Essentially,   despite  Hiruko’s  “ugliness”  hes  Sasori’s  favourite  toy  &  Sasori  very  much  treats  him  the  way  a  child  treats  a   favourite  toy.  He  goes  everywhere  with  Sasori,  Sasori  relies  on  him  out  of  comfort.  Theres  also  the  secondary  element  of  convenience  since  he  does  mask  Sasori’s  true  appearance  giving  him  a  disguise &  hes  literally  a  suit  of  armour  as  well.   Sasori’s  aware  Hiruko  is  ugly  but  hes  fond  of  him  the  way  a  child  might  love  a  teddy  bear  even  if  it  the  bear  appears  to  others  as  gross  &  ratty  &  old  &  they  could  probably  have  a  newer,  prettier  bear  its  not  the  looks  that  are  important.  the  sentimental  value &  thus  the  comfort  it  provides.  I  also  personally  view  Hiruko  as  another  symbol  of  that  distorted  innocence  Sasori  represents  as  I  mentioned  earlier.  Sasori’s  appearance  is  that  of  a  young,  beautiful,  innocent  serene  looking  youth  which  we  know  as  his  true  form  but  rather,  I  see  Hiruko  as  just  as  just  as  representative  of  the  true  Sasori,  something  more  symbolic  of  Sasori’s  soul.  Something  frightening &  old  &  ugly  &  twisted  &  violent.  They're  both  sides  of  the  same  coin.  I  think  In  some  way,  perhaps  subconsciously  Sasori  relates  to  Hiruko  this  way  as  well.  

LASTLY,  before  I  ramble  more,  Sasori  &  Hiruko  are  both  representative  of  literally  the  scorpion.  Sasori  more  spiritually  &  Hiruko  more  psychically.  Scorpions  are  an  armoured,  intimating  animal  with  a  venomous  sting  from  their  defensive  &  offensive  tails.  Scorpions  are  symbolic  with  healing,  death,  rebirth,  passion,  revenge,  mystery.  Scorpions  were  thought  to  have  the  ability  to  heal  just  as  easily  as  kill.  Scorpions  are  both  seen  as  evil  &  demonic  as  well  as  pure  &  angelic. They’re  typically  feared  &  also  highly  sacred.  Theyre  a  symbol  of  deep  emotion  yet  being  an  arachnid  they’re  also  thought  of   as insectiod  which  simultaneously  gives  them  the  impression  of  being  simply  unfeeling  &  machine-like.  The  scorpion  represents  a  shy,  gentle  creature  that  prefers  to  keep  to  itself  yet  when  needed  its  perfectly  bold,  magnetic  &  vicious.  I  think  its  really  interesting  to  note  how  closely  fitting  Sasori  is  to  the  symbolism  of  scorpions  if  you  look  at  them  in  various  cultures  &  mythology. 

[drnucleus]

I don’t know what to expect from IX. I’m really hoping it is endgame and they don’t just drop the romance angle, but it’s also kind of what I’m expecting? Like I don’t expect follow-through from it, even though I would love it if it happened

Hi Nonnie, 

I totally get it. I understand that completely. Do I think it’s endgame? Yes. 

However am I going into IX with any expectations? NOPE. I’m a fandom granny. No seriously I have lived through so many fandoms that I simply go in with no expectations. That way if what I think might happen if even in some small way happens then I will be super happy and overjoyed and if it doesn’t I am usually able to divorce myself from my disappointment and respect the creator’s vision.

As a writer and someone who was professionally trained to do so, I know that creators have a vision. They have an endgame in mind. And they drop breadcrumbs about it from the beginning and if you’re clever enough to see them you usually can figure out any story. 

This is why I ruin police procedurals for my mom. My dad and I made a game of it watching Law and Order as a kid growing up (and I mean OG Law and Order with Det. Lenny Briscoe). Whomever could figure out who committed the murder first won. We used to keep a running tally. My dad was really good at it, but when I got really into reading and started reading mystery novels and horror novels and other stories that rely heavily on mystery boxes I started getting better at it. We also watched Law and Order because my two actor 2nd cousins have been guest stars as defense lawyers idk how many times but that’s neither here nor there.

And tbh ESB’s twist of Vader as Luke’s father came as such a shock because IDK if even Lucas really knew he was going to do it until he did it. Luckily the story was vague enough in ANH that a throw away line about certain points of view was enough to close what could have been a crippling plot hole. 

My mom is an OG Star wars fan. Mostly bc she loves the pew pew and the lightsaber battles, and secondly because Harrison Ford is a very handsome and talented man (tbh my first crush was Han Solo and second was Indy).

My mom was there when everyone was UP IN ARMS about Leia and Luke kissing. And how that was SOOOOOO going to be endgame. Which originally Lucas had intended that Leia would be a love interest for Luke and that the twin sister would be revealed in 7, 8 and 9 someday. However during writing ROTJ and filming ESB he decided to really hone in on Leia and Han’s chemistry (granted Irving was directing then) but he made the narrative choice to make Leia the sister and Han her love interest. It simultaneously elevated Leia’s narrative importance and made her the leading lady of her own story on equal footing to her equally powerful twin brother instead of just being Luke’s sidekick love interest.

Even when I was a KID and I saw ESB it always kind of made me laugh that Leia’s response to Han goading her about liking him was to smack lips with the only other humanoid male in the room just to prove how NOT smitten she was with Han. (AND if that doesn’t make her simultaneously Padme and Anakin’s child I don’t know what will convince you otherwise).

TPM came out when was was 13 and a half which will be 20 yrs ago next May - HOLY FUCK. And I’ve been an avid reader since I could read so I had gobbled up countless numbers of books by then. I was in the theater with my parents and legit held my hand up over Ian’s eyes and gasped and tugged on my mom’s sleeve. 

“Mom that’s THE EMPEROR” and she was like “No honey he’s just a senator who’s now chancellor of the republic”

And this was still in the age of Dial-up internet and no IMDB. So I did my own digging and found our VHS copies of the OT and looked at the cast listing at the end of the movie. And saw the same name playing the Emperor as the man playing Senator-Chancellor Sheev Palpatine. Now the movies in the OT never actually say the Emperor’s real name. He’s just the shadowy, scary Emperor with lightning bolts shooting out of his hands. So like we knew in TPM that Palpy was going to become the emperor. Now say what you will about the Prequels but Lucas did do a fair bit of narrative arc planning with it than what he threw together with the OT. 

He knew we had to meet Anakin as a boy, see him as a caring and compassionate individual who is uniquely gifted in the Force. And that had circumstances been different he would have probably been the paragon force sensitive and balanced the force. However due to realistic flaws of all characters, good and bad alike, including flaws within Anakin’s character himself he falls prey to the darkside and it’s temptations and then becomes the very thing he feared.

Tbh next to TLJ, ROTS is right up there with ESB as my favorite in the saga. Sure the dialogue is wooden and clunky. Lucas is not a dialogue director. He’s a vision director. He has a scene in his mind, and he wants it played like that. Which is fine. He also came from a school of thought in the 1970s where sci-fi was pure camp and overdramatic. His style never really changed. The OT is so lauded because he didn’t direct all of them. He had other people come in and he had script doctoring and his first wife in the editing room taking his vision and turning it into a cohesive narrative. We seem to forget that Lucas was a young dude right out of film school when he made ANH. He barely knew how to string a narrative together and the early cuts of ANH were terrible and nowhere near what people saw in the theater. Don’t believe me? Google “how star wars was saved in the editing room” it’s a remarkable story about how Lucas’s first wife and principal editor basically made ANH into an actual story instead of a mish mash of ideas that it was before. The prequels had Lucas at the helm for all three. Yes by then he had gotten a hold of narratively what he wanted to convey, but he still didn’t always convey it in the most efficient ways.

But there are moments in the prequels that I’m stunned by their perfection. “This is how liberty dies? With thunderous applause.” as Padme watches in horror as the Republic becomes an empire before her eyes. It’s perfect to convey the horror she feels and her disgust at what the thing she’s fought for so long to just crumble and slip away. 

Or the entirety of the Anakin v. Obi Wan Mustafar battle. Visually STUNNING, and heartbreaking. You can feel how much neither of them want to fight the other but how they both are so entrenched in their now opposite ideologies that they know they have to fight. 

I’ve also been a fan of JJ’s for a long time. 

Sure he loves mystery boxes but he usually makes the answer SO obvious that most people ignore it. 

Like on Lost which I never actually watched save for maybe a few episodes, it’s pretty clear that something metaphysical is going on in that island with the crash. And there are clues dating back to the pilot as to what happened in the finale. 

In TFA we’re introduced to Rey. We’re given a mystery box of who is Rey and why is she important and who is her family. But we’re also given the answer. She’s no one. And that’s why she’s important. She is no one. She doesn’t need to have this huge galactic sized legacy on her shoulders to be important, to be special. SHE IS NO ONE. And that’s why the Force chose her as its vessel. 

Reason why is that she’s narratively the perfect foil for her counterpart Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. He has all that legacy and weight on his shoulders. They’re equals in power in strength, in light and darkness. They are complete equals. And TFA was all about establishing that fact. Now TLJ was all about deepening that initial connection. To get them both to scratch beneath the surface of one another, and get under one another’s skin. In doing so Ben learned that Rey just wants to belong, to be loved and have a place in the galaxy. And Rey, she learned that Ben is just as lonely, but has rejected his birthright because he felt rejected and abandoned by those who should have unconditionally loved and protected him from Snoke (which granted OT Trio tried but they def didn’t have great parenting examples either sooooo).

Now as an adult Ben is bitter, full of resentment and rage because the people he should have been able to count on fucked up royally. And I love that. I resonate with it because of my own experiences as an abuse survivor too. But even more so because it makes Han, Leia and Luke less perfect legends and more human. It makes them real and relatable that they tried to do everything right by their kiddo but ended up fucking him up.  Luke’s betrayal itself was the least shocking part of TLJ tbh. Like does no one remember him going ABSOLUTELY banana balls insane when Vader threatened Leia in ROTJ?

That kind of Skywalker level extra doesn’t just go away with age. 

And yeah Ben needed someone in the fam to be like “so kid, um, lets talk about this.” No one in the OT Trio is good at talking about their feelings. Luke tries to control his by just not dealing with it - the kind of thing you’d expect from a “pray the depression away” type. Leia ignores it and bottles that shit until it comes out as thinly veiled anger. And Han is the most ridiculous of the three with his constant hot and cold routine throughout ESB.

The ST is yes about the failures of the OT trio, the failures of the Jedi and the Sith. But it’s also a story about the force and it’s two chosen vessels. A girl from nowhere and the last scion of the Skywalker line. The fact that their connections in TLJ are coded as sexual awakenings is very indicative of where I think this is all going to go. The Force is basically the Skywalker Patriarch if we’re going on the whole immaculate conception with Shmi. And Ben fell from his path for years now thanks to the other Skywalkers falling from the path and inadvertently pushing him down the rabbit hole with Snoke, manipulating everything like a master of puppets. 

JJ himself even said he was upset that he didn’t get to direct TLJ because he loved Rian’s script so much. 

I have faith we’re going to get a hell of a finish to the 9 film Skywalker saga. With Reylo as endgame or not I think we’re going to get something truly satisfying that links all 9 movies together in a way that will have meta writers writing for years to come about all the parallels and thematic Leitmotifs within the narrative as a whole that encompasses technically 4 generations of Skywalkers (Shmi, Anakin, Luke/Leia, and Ben).

When Ben killed Han in TFA and you get that focused in shot of Adam’s face as the weight of what he just did HITS him and his eyes widen and his lips part, you see the exact moment he shatters his soul realizing that he just seriously fucked up. I leaned over to my best friend that night in the midnight showing and said “do you smell redemption arc?” and I’ve been on that train from day one. 

If he were truly irredeemable he wouldn’t have split his spirit to the bone by killing his father. He wouldn’t have cared to try to convince Rey to be her teacher in the middle of their battle. He wouldn’t care that Rey stares at him like she did that night and call him a monster. A real monster wouldn’t care at being called one. And is so very shook and pained by that moniker with his lower lip quiver and his eyes red rimmed. If he were truly irredeemable he wouldn’t have killed his master just to save the girl, he’d have just usurped power and shrugged her off instead of trying to convince her to stay with him. He wouldn’t have addressed her fear and insecurity of being nothing and no one while shaking his head and saying “but not to me”. If he were truly a monster he would have pulled the damn trigger when his had the bridge of the Raddus in his sights but couldn’t because he felt his mother’s love for him even after everything he’s done.

Has he done terrible things? YES. He definitely has. But he has the equal potential for amazing things as much as he has for the terrible things he’s done. And I for one will be happy to see him begin to even slightly embrace that potential by the end of ep 9. Reylo or no Reylo I’m sure I’m going to be happy with ep 9. There’s no way Adam and so many other brilliant actors would have signed on without at least knowing where this is all gonna go. Adam himself was hesitant to take on the burden of SW but was convinced to do so because of the complexity of Ben’s character. That to me says we’re getting something amazing in ep9. And I can’t wait.