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pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer · 7 months

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[Games in 2023: Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon]

Following Sonic Frontiers’ release in late 22, Sega announced a DLC roadmap consisting of three waves of content that would be released over the next year, all of them being completely free. I’ve been meaning to summarize my thoughts on them as they’ve rolled out, but uh…the third and final wave has released, so I guess I’m going to cover all of them in one post!

I’m definitely going into spoilers, so tl;dr: if you already loved Frontiers, there’s now even more to love, and if you were on the fence, know that you can now get a significantly improved and expanded experience at no extra cost. Frontiers is bigger and better than ever, and while the challenges of the newly-added Another Story can be quite frustrating, I absolutely still enjoyed the overall experience.

If you’ve been here for at least a while, you probably know that I fucking adored Sonic Frontiers. I’ve been getting back into the series over the past few years, and this was the first major new game to release since beginning that process; Frontiers was designed to be the beginning of a new era for Sonic himself, so it all seemed to line up quite well. It certainly helped that the tone of the game was highly reminiscent of the “Dark Age” titles I grew up with. The game has its problems, certainly—performance issues like pop-in and some loose seams that show Sonic Team needed a little more time than Sega was ultimately willing to give them—but for me, the positive immensely outweighs the negative. Frontiers is fun to play, ridiculously cool, and not afraid to be itself the way Sonic games of the past decade-ish have seemed to be; seams be damned, I love the story dearly, and I’m excited to see how it might be followed up on. Frontiers was the exact kind of Sonic game that I personally needed at this point in my life.

Wave 1 of the DLC introduced a variety of new features with the theme of enhancing the “sights, sounds, and speeds” of the game. One that I still haven’t messed around with much is the new photo mode—I’m glad to now have the extra freedom in setting up screenshots, but it just didn’t occur to me to use it yet. Honestly I don’t think I’ve played many games that have a photo mode, it’s not something I’m personally used to thinking about. Several gauntlets were also added, featuring both the Cyberspace stages and combat challenges. It seems odd that the Cyberspace gauntlets are separated from the Cyberspace arcade mode: if I had spent a bunch of time perfecting runs in arcade mode to then find out I had to do it all again, I imagine I’d be rather annoyed. As for combat challenges, simply providing a way to refight the Titans without going through the whole game again is enough to count as a win in my book (though being able to do so without the “warm-up” rounds would be the most ideal), and if you enjoy the combat, this is the best way to get a nice helping of it all at once. I’m told that completing these modes unlocks the ability to use Power Boost in Cyberspace stages, and an Extreme difficulty setting, but I haven’t felt a desire to push for either of those myself yet.

My favorite addition of this wave is the Jukebox. By tracking down Sound Memories scattered across every island, you unlock a few dozen songs that you can play while running around, these being pulled from various games all across Sonic’s history. Most people know Sonic music tends to be pretty good (putting it mildly). Having so much of it on-hand is a wonderfully tantalizing prospect. The Sound Memories are all on the map, just like every other collectible—this is good, because it would’ve been frustrating to find them otherwise…though, it did enable me to run around and grab all of them in one sitting, which may have been an error on my part. I’m eager to see what it’ll be like finding this as you go through a fresh game; I imagine it’ll be a very welcome additional reward for player progression. Nevertheless, it was still fun to run around the islands and figure out how best to reach each Sound Memory and discover which new song it unlocked. There are some great picks! I’m also really glad that some of the songs are found on Rhea Island—for as large as it is, there was no real reason to explore it before since it was totally devoid of life and collectibles outside of the towers you progress through one after another. But now, taking a quick stroll around its lovely locales rewards you with Open Your Heart and Stardust Speedway and Flying Battery! It’s obvious that the devs spent a lot of time building Rhea, and nice to know that more players will be able to appreciate it now.

On to wave 2, released in celebration of Sonic’s birthday. I was expecting only some small cosmetics, but it’s FAR more substantial than I was expecting! The birthday cosmetics actually change a lot in the overworld, really changing the atmosphere in a fun way. New Sound Memories were added, these being the themes that play while exploring the islands: they each have various “stages” that progress as you fill out more of the map (if I recall correctly), and every single one of them can now be unlocked for the Jukebox. There are also several new Action Chain Challenges that lead to unique Koco which, when returned to the Elder, extend Sonic’s Boost Gauge! Fantastic as this sounds, these challenges were a bit too much for me, though I’d like to think this is at least partly due to my being so rusty at the game. I’ll have to try these again sometime, because on top of more Boost, completing all of them apparently unlocks the Spin Dash, and without even searching I’ve seen some sick-looking movement you can do with that. The other big addition is New Game+, and though I haven’t used it yet, I am absolutely going to replay Frontiers at some point and this will probably be the way I do it.

It, uh, seems there’s a trend of me not actually going deep into a lot of the new stuff. It’s good stuff to be sure, just primarily groups of small things that probably are designed to be done bits at a time as you go along like the other collectibles. Since I’ve already completed the story, maxed out Sonic’s stats, and gotten the Platinum trophy, I suppose my sense of direction has been lacking. I do my best when I have a specific, overarching goal to work towards.

Which brings us to wave 3, “The Final Horizon”. Just about everything here is contained within a new episode referred to as “Another Story”, accessed through a big Warp Ring that appears on Ouranos Island; it seems like this becomes available as soon as you reach the island, but I won’t be able to verify that until my next playthrough. This mode also has its own separate save slots, which is nice…because it’s really freaking difficult and I’m glad to know I can go back to the main game if it becomes too much. But we’ll get to that. Essentially, Another Story puts you on a completely revamped Ouranos with its own platforming bits and map challenges. I didn’t see much in the way of standard enemies (maybe because I was playing on Easy?), but there are a handful of enhanced Guardians roaming about: Master Ninja+, Spider+, even more Ghosts! I accidentally ran into one and had my ass promptly handed to me—they’re not messing around—so they’re still on my To Do list. The map challenges can also be surprisingly tricky, from a ball and hoop puzzle with entirely too many hoops, to a time trial that gives you less than 10 seconds to run to the goal. Another Ouranos is tough as nails, which will either delight or frustrate you…or some combination of the two. Of note is that Sonic gets the Spin Dash for free upon starting if you haven’t already gotten it the hard way; it’s fun, but I’m not sure I’ve passed the skill floor yet lol.

But that’s not all! Another Story kicks off with Sage proposing a new plan for taking on The End: taking on a new set of towers a la Rhea Island so that Sonic can learn to not only control his cyber corruption, but actually harness it to increase his power. They’ll still need the Chaos Emeralds of course, so Sage uses her own abilities to keep Sonic’s corruption in check and brings back Amy, Knuckles, and Tails so they can cover as much ground as possible. That’s right: for the first time in *checks notes* nearly two decades, these three characters are playable in a 3D Sonic game!! Each of them get two segments of gameplay hunting down Emeralds interspersed with Sonic dealing with the towers, and after clearing the final tower you gain a method to switch characters at will. Everybody has their own unique Skill Tree with a few standard abilities (like Cyloop, Boost, Spin Dash) as well as several unique ones (including character-specific variations on Parry that inflict debuffs), and I’d say everyone feels suitably distinct without having too steep a learning curve. So, what can everyone do?

Amy is the one who surprised me the most, in that she only uses her hammer for two abilities. Everything else involves her Tarot Cards. I do like how hard they’ve been leaning into the cards in recent years, and they do predate her hammer; I imagine another concern was that a hammer-focused playstyle would be a little too similar to Knuckles, and yeah, the card-based moveset is very unique. I’ll admit to finding it a bit jarring due to how long the hammer has been Amy’s weapon of choice, but I’m sure I’ll get over it. Her Double Jump is far more substantial than Sonic’s, and if that wasn’t enough, she also gets a third jump that puts her into a hovering state, giving her enhanced aerial mobility in the same vein as Knuckles and Tails. Another move is functionally similar to the way the Homing Attack in Lost World could lock onto multiple targets, letting her zip along an entire line of enemies in a flash. If I had gripes they would probably be that she can’t wall run or Lightspeed Dash, but her insane verticality makes up for a lot of that.

Knuckles is the most in-line with expectations: he punches, he glides, and he doesn’t chuckle. In addition to climbing the same green walls as Sonic, he can also climb exclusive red walls—though, again, no Lightspeed Dash. The gliding is…let’s say contentious. You need to Double Jump before you can glide, then it plays a short animation of Knuckles getting ready to glide, and then you have to try to figure out how to steer the damn thing. It’s not ideal. While that is a bummer, you can unlock a Power Boost analogue that lets Knuckles glide infinitely without losing altitude (while he has max Rings), and that’s a lot of fun even if the glide is a bit unwieldy! He’s got a charge attack drilling strike that’s pretty cool too. I’m kinda just glad to get to play as Knuckles some more tbh.

Now Tails! Tails is interesting. You’ve probably seen the wrench throwing memes by now—what’s nice about this ability is that it and another move where he uses a blaster make Tails the best character for ranged combat/interactions. I’m a fan of them using wrenches rather than the ol’ dummy ring bomb, it’s a much better fit for the kid. But what throws me off the most about playing as Tails is that he’s the one character who doesn’t have a Homing Attack. Turns out I got real used to using the Homing Attack on springs and such, because I keep hitting the button and being confused when I start throwing wrenches at the spring instead. I wouldn’t call this an issue, honestly, and I don’t think it ever even really messed me up, I just need to learn to suppress my muscle memory. Of course, Tails can also fly! I find takeoff a bit tricky: you need to Double Jump before you can use it, and when Tails starts spinning his tails he falls a short distance before they get going and he shoots straight up. Definitely manageable, just feels a little weird. He has limited stamina as always, but it seemed to me that he could keep flying for a good long while before he started to drop, no complaints there. As for other moves, Tails uses some gadgets like a blaster and a giant pile bunker…and, also, there are abilities that let him summon the Tornado to fly around and attack enemies. I haven’t unlocked them myself yet as I had other priorities, but just seeing that pulling out an entire-ass plane is an option makes me smile.

There are several challenges around the island designed with each character in mind, as well as some “Map Koco” that are like map challenges but can only be activated by a specific character. They each have their own color-coded skill pieces too, which you mainly get by finding Koco with giant backpacks who give you a few thousand at a time. Stats need to be leveled for each character separately, but to help with this, the Starfall in Another Story fills the island with Koco and seeds instead of gems for the purple coin gacha. There are even plenty of new, optional conversations for each character, and they don’t even require certain amounts of Memories to access! I wouldn’t say the implementation of the new playable characters is perfect, but it’s clear that a LOT of effort was put into them, and I’ve been able to have a lot of fun with them too. As far as I’m concerned, this is a win.

While those three are off collecting Emeralds (and dealing with their own instances of cyber corruption), Sonic is climbing “Trial Towers”. They can get pretty intense, but it seems playing on Easy gives you some advantages here and that was appreciated. It’s irritating that there are no checkpoint pulleys like on Rhea, barring one at the top of the very last tower since the NPC there has the vital functions of both switching characters and starting the final boss battle. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves! The towers, while they can be tough, aren’t the hard part. The hard part is getting to the top of each to speak with the Koco housing the soul of one of the Titan pilots, only for them to send you into a combat trial where you’re locked to level 1 stats and have a very strict time limit. Shockingly, the easiest one for me was the trial that just had you fight a pack of Wolves! The hardest one was Snake’s Trial, where you have to beat four shielded enemies within the time limit and with most of your skills taken away. Apparently the intent is to parry the shields when they’re thrown to keep the enemy vulnerable, but I couldn’t pull that off. You can still Cyloop these enemies to knock their shield away briefly, but when I say briefly, in this case I mean extremely briefly: they seem to regenerate their shield after a mere second passes. If you time your loops and combos just right, you can barely take them all out in time this way, but yeesh, if any of the trials get nerfed I hope it’s this one. Though there’s also the fifth and final trial…a boss rush of the 3 earlier Titan fights. Doesn’t sound so bad? You’re again locked to level 1 stats, and the Parry can no longer be held indefinitely—Easy gives you some leeway, but you still need to be fairly precise. Still doesn’t sound too bad? Well, the 400 Rings you start with when you spawn in Giganto’s arena? Those have to last you the whole gauntlet. There are NO other rings Sonic can pick up. Since Super Sonic loses 1 Ring every second, assuming you don’t take any hits in the segments where you climb to the final Chaos Emerald, you have just over two minutes to wreck each Titan. With level 1 stats and a nerfed Parry. I didn’t realize just how essential Parrying was to these fights, especially Wyvern. After a single attempt, I knew I had to put the game down for the night and search for tips online. Thankfully, if you focus on Cylooping and Stomping the Titans, you can get by in decent time so long as you don’t botch too many Parries. IMO Wyvern was the toughest part and Knight was actually the easiest. But yeah, if you were wondering why people we so up in arms about the difficulty, these trials are the biggest reason of why.

Anyway. Amy, Knuckles, Tails, and Eggman gather up the Chaos Emeralds, and Sonic learns to use cyber corruption as a power-up. First, you have to go through the standard Supreme fight, but after that (and regardless of difficulty), The End descends onto the battlefield and connects itself to Supreme, causing it to grow five more arms and go absolutely feral to really drive home the Evangelion reference. The title card for Supreme comes back up, but then glitches out before changing to say “The End”—I love shit like that, really slick. After a short period where you can’t damage the boss (Supreme End, as I like to call it) or block its projectiles, Sonic unleashes the power of his cyber corruption, and transforms…into Super Sonic 2. (In-game it doesn’t really get named but apparently the files literally call it “Super Sonic 2”, and that’s hilarious and rad so I’m going with that.) I’ll go more into the form itself later—in terms of the fight, Super Sonic 2 is able to damage Supreme End and use the Perfect Parry to deflect its shots. However, this is where things get…tricky. The End is able to constantly refill Supreme’s health no matter how fast you deplete it, so you need to sever the cable connecting them. Alright, so maybe try a Cyloop? No? What about a Grand Slam, will that make it vulnerable? No, not that either? Turns out the plug is a separate target that you can only hit by targeting it specifically. In spite of the fact that the game always automatically targets the head. Well, once you figure that out you can actually deplete Supreme’s health, but you still need to get to the next phase. With no indication, you need to figure out that you can target the gun holstered in Supreme’s back, use Cyloop to pull it out, and then Cyloop the gun again. I’ll admit that staying focused on depleting Supreme’s health and ignoring the gun after getting it out was a dumb mistake on my part, but there really isn’t a lot to let you know you can Cyloop the gun out in the first place, made worse by the way the trees surrounding the arena tend to obscure the camera. Whatever—you Cyloop the gun (twice), and then a scene plays where Eggman grabs it with his own giant cable while Sage and Sonic’s friends form a barrier. At this point, Supreme End can attack the barrier, and you lose if it breaks it. I kinda lucked through this part, but if you attack the head, then dodge, you end up above the Titan, and after it flails its arms a bit you can Parry and Grand Slam to keep it from attacking while you finish whittling down its health. After some awesome QTE attacks, Sonic loads himself into the stolen gun and brings out the full power of his cyber corruption, turning cyan and black with glitch effects and fangs and crazy eyes. (Again, saving that for later.) Eggman then shoots Sonic through Supreme and The End, obliterating them both, and this time Sage gets to go home with her father without needing to sacrifice herself. Which I do like. But anyway, the boss fight? Epic scale, cool as shit…clear as mud. If you know what you’re doing it’s a real fun power trip, but it’s more difficult than it needs to be to know that. I dunno, maybe it’s just a skill issue, but I’m simultaneously frustrated and gleeful over this fight.

Not sure where else to put this, but Another Ouranos has its own set of Cyber Space stages—you can completely avoid them if you want to, but these are actually rather inventive! One has a radar that tells you if you’re close to invisible landmines; one has capsules that give you a powered up Rocket Boost; apparently there’s one that switches the Boost Gauge out for a Gear Shift mechanic. I haven’t been able to beat any of them. Yet. BUT, it’s still cool to see Sonic Team already experimenting more within this framework, with both these stages and the playstyles of the different characters. Frontiers is meant to lay the foundation for the next era, after all, and I’m excited to see where these experiments lead.

Right though, those new forms! We have to talk about the new forms! Super Sonic 2 is visually very similar to base Super Sonic, which is a bit disappointing even if it does fit the reference. Still, Super Sonic 2 does manage to be a more noticeable change than Super Saiyan 2: his eyes turn from red to blue, his body has a red outline, and he has a double aura somewhat reminiscent of the Super Saiyan Blue Kaioken. What really sells it, though, is the way Sonic acts in this form. As one last addendum to the DBZ comparison, his demeanor and movements invoke Ultra Instinct Sign to a certain degree: a casual and cold fury as he nonchalantly sidesteps and pushes aside the attacks Supreme End lobs at him. When his Cyloop expires, he adds a finisher to it where he snaps his fingers and the light constructs he summoned crush the Titan. The Grand Slam for this fight? Sonic floats in close to the charging Supreme, arms crossed, then the screen goes black with golden slashes like the fucking Raging Demon from Street Fighter, and after watching Supreme hit the ground, we get a low angle shot of Sonic, arms still crossed, glaring over his shoulder at it. Fucking sick. For the final QTEs, he does a barrage of punches and kicks that launches Supreme into the sky, floats in place and slowly raises his hand as Supreme falls, and then slams one last punch into it the instant it comes close enough. This could actually be the coolest Sonic has ever been. And then there’s the glitchy blue form he uses for the finishing blow: the game’s files call it “Super Sonic Cyber”, and while the eyes and teeth are taken straight from Fleetway Super Sonic, the full-body cyan makes me think of fucking Nazo. The Koco who gives him this power-up says that if he goes all out he’ll lose his cyber corruption power permanently, and he does revert to regular Super Sonic after going Super Sonic Cyber, so both 2 and Cyber could be one-offs seen here and never again—which would be just fine! But I see two ways they could possibly make a reappearance: firstly, maybe Master King was just wrong, and Sonic is able to retain the cyber corruption power and reawaken it in a later game (I would not be upset with this); secondly, though, the text in-game refers to Super Sonic 2 as “the hidden power of Super Sonic”, making it seem like this power or something like it already lay dormant within Sonic, and maybe there are other ways it can be brought to the surface. I dunno, if Hyper Sonic and the Storybook forms are anything to go by, the best we can hope for is 2 and Cyber units in mobile games if anything—again, I would not be upset with this. The fans, however…they’re going to have fun with this. (I request Burning Blaze 2. Please.)

This ending was definitely a happier one, though I don’t think it hit me quite as hard. The only real difference is Sage’s survival, which again, I’m a big fan of; but that being the main win we’re focused on while she also gets much less to do in the final battle feels a bit odd to me. Well, maybe that’s a nitpick. I’m not sure if it’s been stated whether or not this new ending officially replaces the old one? Either way we’ll have Sage going forward, so maybe they can skirt around the details if they want. I’m definitely interested to see what direction they take her in, and how her continued presence affects Eggman. I’m also curious to see what Amy, Knuckles, and Tails get into on their solo adventures. The main plot also raises some serious questions regarding the Master Emerald, so I’m hoping those get dealt with. Also…those meteors raining down…those are pieces of The End, right? Are those, uh, safe? Even if the moon form is gone, there’s no way that’s enough to permanently kill a godlike personification of death. Honestly, I am hoping we get to see more of The End in some form: their philosophy of equating “order” with destruction and death is a great antithesis to the power of Chaos that Sonic and his friends wield. The End, who embodies order, versus Sonic, who embodies chaos…there’s a lot of potential there. And, even if Frontiers maybe doesn’t completely stick its landing, you still have that mountain of potential it opens up waiting for you at the end of the exhilarating ride it takes you on.

#Sonic the Hedgehog #Sonic Frontiers #Games in 2023 #Game Night

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miraculouscontent · 3 years

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*rubs hands together*

The first thing to talk about with this episode is the pacing, and I think this might contribute to why people think it’s the best/least bad of Season 4 (personally, I’d rather watch “Furious Fu” but that’s just me; also, this isn’t the only contributing factor as to why I think people might feel this way, but I’ll get there later).

The episode has a very serious pacing issue, particularly with its more intense scenes. There’s only one minute of time dedicated to Ladybug landing on her bed, de-transforming, and her snapping at her friends plus them leaving. More time was spent on Chat Noir and Ladybug in the movie theater and Ladybug storming out.

I particularly remember watching the episode and getting eighteen minutes in, at which point I had the realization of, “It feels like nothing’s happened?”

This episode is supposed to be a big gut punch, but the season has been going by at the speed of sound, like they’re trying desperately to play all their cards at once (Lukanette break-up, Adrimi break-up, then Alya is told Marinette’s secret identity). Instead of letting things build and play out for a while in the interest of suspense, the show just throws whatever will get a big reaction out of the fandom (whether positive or negative) and it doesn’t care how shoddily put together everything is. The first two episodes feel like hastily put together drafts, and while this one is technically more put together, it still feels like a draft.

Let’s just start with Chat Noir, who feels completely out of place in the episode. Not only does he imply that he intentionally calls Ladybug “Bugaboo” (which she has told him to stop doing) in order to get a reaction out of her, but when Ladybug insists that she doesn’t want to talk, he tricks her into thinking that he has a good location to do so (and my heart breaks a little at how readily she trusts him) only to then take her to a romantic movie, then shush her when she calls him out for it because she “said she didn’t want to talk.”

Gee, and people wonder why she didn’t tell him her secret (even outside of “Chat Blanc” existing)?

And... look, I know it’s a joke, but I do not find it funny. The “joke” is basically that Chat Noir is taking advantage of the situation to flirt with Ladybug, and though I find it at least mildly cathartic that Ladybug is unaffected by all the people staring at them while Chat Noir is embarrassed, this episode is coming right after the one where Kagami broke up with Adrien, and here Chat Noir is getting his flirt game on. I already talked about all my problems with “Lies” so I won’t do it again, but I’ll just say that it’s not a mystery why Ladybug doesn’t want to talk to him and would rather avoid her problems.

(Not to mention that Ladybug knows that Chat Noir likes her, so talking about her romantic problems with him is awkward to say the least and would come off as insensitive.)

Honestly, at this point I feel like they must be building to something with Chat, like Ladybug finally going off of him with no mercy and that forces him to give up/fall out of love for her because reverse love square, but if that’s what they intend to go for, then that means Marinette is going to fall for this guy who’s repeatedly disrespected her feelings for multiple seasons, almost abandoned her and let Paris drown because she wouldn’t tell him a secret that wasn’t hers to tell, and just generally all the other things he did????

Ugh, I don’t wanna think about it. Let’s just move on.

Talking about Ladybug and her rant next, it basically summarizes the whole show in a nutshell, but simultaneously casts a shadow of sorts over “Truth” for people who maybe missed the episode entirely (which is also sort of the show in a nutshell). I mean, Ladybug confirming to the audience that she was genuinely in love and happy with Luka (you can’t watch how depressed she was over the break-up and not think that) was great, but Ladybug’s dialog implies that Luka “hated secrets” and that’s why they broke up, when Luka was more just... hurt that she couldn’t be honest with him, and he didn’t actively hate secrets. Marinette broke up with him because she felt like she had to; because she had to keep ditching and lie to him.

In addition, what she says also hints to the audience that they’ve both held and kissed each other, which not only indicates cowardice on the part of the staff (”yeah this happened but--um--off-screen; we’d still like credit tho plz”), but may perhaps go back to the theory I had about how Adrimi and Lukanette were supposed to last longer in Season 4 but their arcs got cut (based on the Adrimi kiss having supposed to have gone off). This could mean that Ladybug’s statement was originally accurate to canon but the scenes got cut and the scriptwriters just awkwardly left it in, which is made more awkward by the cinema scene in “Truth” that felt like Luka and Marinette were kissing for the first time (again, alluding to the whole, “this entire season has been a draft” thing).

Also, if you think about what that actually means - that Luka and Marinette did have successful dates and kisses but they were off-screen - then all it adds up to is that showing Marinette happy and comfortable was something that the series didn’t deem as “interesting/fun enough” to show, because Marinette being happy isn’t something they want to see; only watching her be miserable, which is exactly what Ladybug says, along with how everything was “almost too simple, too easy,” because Marinette isn’t allowed to have nice things without being jammed through the wringer first.

And... sure, let’s say that Chat Noir thought the movie was genuinely a good idea; let’s assume that it could be a joke, him wanting to flirt, and him believing that it’d make her feel better somehow.

If that’s the case, then where’s the apology when it fails miserably? Ladybug goes from her semi-anxious state at the start of the episode (a little scatterbrained but ultimately just looking for a distraction), to outright enraged by the movie, and then to this upon leaving the cinema.

She just got her heart broken from being forced to break up with a boy she genuinely wanted to be with and there’s not a single, “Okay, maybe coming here was a bad idea, I’m sorry,” (which could’ve been seen as another joke with the audience like “lol no duh Chat Noir” so there’s no excuse not to have it) or, “My bad, that was insensitive of me. I really thought this would’ve helped but I wasn’t thinking about what you would’ve wanted.”

No. The only people Chat apologizes to are the other people at the theater because he’s embarrassed by Ladybug’s reactions, yet he himself feels no remorse for taking her there and has the gall to go on now about how he’s “there for her if she wants to talk.”

Again, it’s no wonder Ladybug doesn’t want to open up to him.

And I’m sorry, I just don’t buy that Marinette suddenly has all this free time. It’s one thing for her to have a little more time now that she’s broken up with her boyfriend (likely avoiding spending time with him altogether now), but “Truth” went out of its way to talk about all of the emergencies she had to deal with and how she doesn’t have any spare time. which is causing her to become forgetful and lose track of certain events (patrols with Chat, dates with Luka, etcetera), yet Marinette spends most of “Gang of Secrets” simply sulking on her bed. It’s so jarring to go from “Truth” where she was doing “too much” (which I called them out on for not describing what the “too much” she was doing was) and now “Gang of Secrets” where she’s not doing anything.

It’s almost like they invented that plot point to break Lukanette up and it served no purpose outside of it.

Furthermore, the scenes of her finally talking to Tikki and then deciding to live as Ladybug does nothing outside of making the plot more predictable, the latter because of the “Alya almost sees Ladybug” moment (an obvious indicator that Marinette is losing control and is struggling to maintain her secret identity due to her emotionally breaking down) and the former because of Tikki herself and what she doesn’t say.

Because, really, think about what actually goes on in the scene. Marinette (eyes rimmed red and filled with unshed tears, as she is for a good chunk of the episode) is venting to Tikki about - yes - her love life, but also that she has to lie to everyone in order to keep her identity a secret. The fact that Tikki focuses solely on the note of Marinette’s love life and not say a word about the identity/lying issue or even consider telling Marinette, “hey, this is clearly too much for you, you should tell someone, I think the benefits outweigh the risks right now,” really proves that the episode tried to avoid the topic altogether to try and make the ending more shocking (which ironically made it more predictable).

So yeah, not only does Tikki’s dialog with Marinette provide nothing except for a line about how she can’t help Marinette with love issues due to kwami not falling in love (alright, I guess aros can’t give good love advice then or have any input whatsoever), but Marinette’s line about lying to everyone being why she can’t pursue Adrien nor Luka is repeated in the very last scene of the episode. The only reason that scene and the scene after exist is because the writers needed Marinette to be emotionally devastated enough to leave for her balcony as Ladybug for the almost-reveal to Alya and so Rose would get close enough to the dollhouse to have an almost-reveal with the Miracle Box, making the scene feel further contrived because the emotional punch of Marinette wanting to live as Ladybug lasts for barely any time at all.

And it could’ve served a purpose, like if Ladybug had genuinely left and Alya finds her goggles and towel, recognizing them from a news story about how Ladybug had gone to the swimming pool after losing her temper at the cinema, which could’ve led to Shadow Moth making the girls believe that Ladybug was no longer heroic and had kidnapped Marinette, or... heck, Ladybug coming back inside would’ve been so much less jarring if she came back because she heard the girls’ voices talking about the dollhouse and had to hurry (but of course, then they’d have to point out the ridiculousness of Ladybug not hearing Alya calling her and the girls not hearing Ladybug literally shouting for Shadow Moth to come fight her, even though the kwami heard the girls calling for Marinette from the balcony).

But instead, the entire scene feels off and unnatural, forcing every part of it in order to get to where Marinette has to snap at the girls to make them leave.

(Oh, by the way, just a little detail to add to the annoyance: they bothered putting Tom and Sabine in the episode when the girls are leaving, clearly saddened by something that happened, and neither parent even bothers to go and check on Marinette to see if she’s upset or just to see what might’ve happened. They’re such a “blink-and-you’ll-miss it” moment in the episode and it’s not like I’m surprised because they’ve done this multiple times by now but really?)

As for the girls themselves... oof, where do I even begin?

Alright, first off is the annoyance that they assume Marinette’s problems relate only to lovesickness. Marinette has been an anxiety-prone mess throughout the entire series, and suddenly now the girls care about Marinette’s love problems on an emotional level rather than “we’ll meddle sometimes unless we don’t feel like it and be wholly inconsistent on how much we push for it.”? It’s not that I don’t see how they came to the conclusion (hearing that Luka and Marinette broke up and now seeing Marinette is depressed, it checks out), but considering they bothered noting that Marinette hadn’t told them anything, one would think they’d come to the conclusion of, “okay, we haven’t talked to her, we have no idea of what’s going on, maybe we don’t know her as well as we thought then and shouldn’t make guesses.”

Secondly is the “eternal friendship bracelet,” which comes off as a copy of the “Secrets” game from “Syren” extremely manipulative. Mylene goes on to explain that one is supposed to give a secret to the pearl “mentally,” yet when the girls actually show up to see Marinette, they expect to be told the secret directly. I’ve already talked at length about peer pressure and the mental stress Marinette goes through when they mock her and/or meddle for her, but this idea of, “well we all used this friendship bracelet after we mutually agreed to it so now it’s your turn because we said so!” just comes off really bad. I know the episode is going for this idea that their hearts are in the right place, but they’re really not. It feels like they’re the ones in denial and are trying to compensate by forcing Marinette to prove that they’re friends, unable to handle the idea that they might not be as close to her as they thought.

Thirdly, the show acts as if the girl squad are her only friends when we know that’s not true because we’ve seen episodes like “Befana” (the guys in the class), “Reverser” (Marc), “Ikari Gozen” (Kagami), and “Silencer” (Ivan) that all established Marinette having more friends than just them, but for the sake of “drama” and the depressing line of, “at least I don’t have any more friends to lie to,” the episode just pretends like Marinette’s friends are limited to Luka (who she had to break up with) and the girl squad (who she forced to leave and refuse the friendship of).

Fourthly is the actual set-up and the sheer grossness of it all. The girls call Marinette and leave a message about how they much they love her and how she can talk to them “where and when” she wants, and then - immediately afterwards - decide that they’re going to go straight to Marinette’s house completely unannounced, go into her room completely unannounced (not even knocking, by the way), and when Marinette begs them to leave, Alya basically tells her that she’s overreacting. When Marinette demands that they leave, Alya refuses and makes demands right back that they won’t leave until she tells them what’s wrong.

So much for “where and when” she wanted, right? It’s already one thing for the girls to invade Marinette’s privacy and demand/guilt-trip answers out of her, but it’s another thing to give the illusion of respecting her feelings and personal space only to actively plan to go back on it. I can’t tell if it’s a bad draft that they didn’t catch in quality check (you know, the quality check that they definitely don’t have) or just an intentional way to make them seem more sympathetic so Marinette looks worse for driving them out, but either way, it’s awful and I hate it. I would’ve rather had them be all in on invading Marinette’s privacy and learn a lesson in the end than outright contradict themselves.

There are also little nitpicks I could make (like Juleka’s constant mumbling despite Luka’s crush on Marinette playing a role in the episode, Horrificator getting sidelined due to being mute, and the girls’ akumatization ultimately being for spectacle and nothing else, serving no purpose to the plot and being furthered by the fact that Timebreaker goes after Marinette despite it being a bad idea and Reflekta’s power clearly not lining up with any sort of plan), but the real issue issue here comes down to the fact that these are Marinette’s so-called “friends” and the episode refuses to address their actual issues.

Alix, who is known for making rude comments at Marinette (”Gigantitan,” “Chat Blanc,” “Miraculous New York”) and then gives mixed messages by going along with meddling anyway.

Mylene, who is the closest thing to a background character in the girl squad but nevertheless finds her way into being definite voice against Marinette in “Chameleon.”

Juleka, who blamed Marinette for things she didn’t do in “Reflekdoll” and got huffy with her until Marinette apologized for said things.

Rose, who outright screamed at Marinette in “Chat Blanc” over a freaking stuffed animal, which pressured Marinette enough that she snuck into Adrien’s room to deliver her gift which nearly led to the end of the world.

And, of course, Alya; freaking Alya. I don’t even have to go into every single thing she’s ever done because I have a history of giving her absolutely no mercy.

...But let’s go through some anyway because I want to.

“Copycat” - Alya gives Marinette a script and tells her to memorize it, then immediately pushes the “call” button when Marinette hesitates after Marinette had just told Alya that she’s awful at improv.

“Darkblade” - Alya takes a jab at Marinette when Marinette says that she’s too busy to be class representative, implying that Alya thinks that Marinette does absolutely nothing with her time.

“Gamer” - Alya is busy recording the gaming competition when she and Marinette were supposed to be researching for a term paper. Alya then scolds Marinette for wanting to use the competition to get close to Adrien only to do a 180 and put up a fight about it when Marinette decides to quit.

“Animan” and how “The Puppeteer 2″ follows up on it - oh, I’m not going to touch that particular point right now, but keep those in the back of your mind, because I am going to absolutely go off later

“Simon Says” - Similarly to Marinette’s parents, Alya gives zero damns about whatever might be going on in Marinette’s life that's causing her to miss classes.

"Despair Bear” - Alya laughs at Marinette being forced to kiss Chloe’s cheek and then outright compares Marinette to Chloe after knocking Chloe multiple times during the episode (sure, just compare your “best friend” to her multi-year bully, how "hilarious” of you).

“Gigantitan” - Alya has no qualms about mocking Marinette’s over her failures, even if it embarrasses her and she’s been through enough already.

“Frozer” - Alya tries to find ways for Marinette to prevent herself from third-wheeling for Adrien, but when Marinette tries to show character growth by wanting to go, Alya gets into a shouting match with the other girls over how Marinette has “liked Adrien forever and isn’t going to give up now”.

“Catalyst” - Alya claims that Marinette is only salty over Lila out of jealousy when “Frozer” exists and literally is the prime evidence of Adrien liking another girl and Marinette telling Alya outright and very genuinely that she’s not jealous.

“Chameleon” - Alya doesn’t care about her best friend sitting in the back by herself while Alya herself get to sit next to her boyfriend and everyone else in general gets to sit where they want (Alya even acting confused at the mere suggestion that she’d tried to engineer things to let Marinette sit next to Adrien), then not only believes Lila over Marinette but contradicts herself twice (asking Marinette for proof when she has none herself, then claiming that she wouldn’t let her best friend sit by herself).

“Christmaster” - Alya leaves Marinette to babysit so she and Nino can go out on a date.

“Desperada” - Alya suddenly is for Lukanette for literally one episode and doesn’t know how/doesn’t even try to cover for Marinette’s Adrien blindness despite mocking her for multiple seasons over it.

“Reflekdoll” - Alya invites Adrien to something that’s crucial for Marinette to focus on after Marinette has already told her not to and continues meddling to the point where it gets Juleka akumatized (she also doesn’t get punished for it and the blame gets thrown onto Marinette).

“The Puppeteer 2″ - Alya pushes her luck with Nathalie to try and get Marinette to come with her, Nino, Adrien, and Manon to the museum, then traps Marinette in a room with Adrien to force her to spent alone time with him, even abandoning and forgetting about the child that she offered to watch for Marinette so she and her boyfriend can go off alone.

“Miraculous New York” - Alya is told directly by Marinette that she needs help seeing Adrien as a friend, which leads Alya to do the exact opposite throughout the entire special, at one point shouting at Marinette and pressuring her to chase after a car, in the rain, while there’s a supervillain rampaging through Paris, and all of this right after the scheme that Alya had set up caused both Marinette and Adrien to go missing.

And just saying, as Marinette’s supposed “best friend,” Alya sure doesn’t know how to handle her. It was acceptable back in “The Bubbler” when she asked Marinette about signing the gift too late and the same goes for “Dark Cupid,” but by the time we get to late Season 2/3 and Alya refuses to learn Marinette’s weak spots (unless it’s to mock her) and adjust accordingly (like if she’d already made sure the gift was signed in “Chat Blanc,” which would’ve prevented Adrien seeing Ladybug at all due to the time difference), it starts getting infuriating.

A best friend is supposed to cover for their friend’s weaknesses. Alya doesn’t do that; she meddles and often drives Marinette’s anxiety even further up a wall with absolutely no consideration for Marinette’s feelings (”Dark Cupid,” “The Puppeteer 2,” “Reflekdoll,” “Miraculous New York”).

And here, she and the other girls are rewarded for it. Luka actively resisted his akumatization whereas the girls gave in immediately, yet Marinette still opens up to them in the end, likely because they had pressured her and made her feel bad for the secrets she was keeping while Luka was willing to actually wait for her to be ready to talk to him. I can’t put into words how frustrating it is watching these girls trample all over Marinette’s feelings, not have their worst actions called out, and then jump cut post-deakumatization to Marinette telling them exactly what they wanted to know about her love life.

You know what this entire episode is really missing, outside of a coherent plot, properly-paced development, and a basic understanding of rewarding a character for things they’ve held firmly to?

It’s missing the apology. Chat Noir apologizes to a bunch of moviegoers and Rose apologizes for the broken dollhouse, but no one apologizes to Marinette for how they treated her, especially not the “friends” who got rewarded in the end.

“Sorry, we shouldn’t have told you that we’d respect your feelings and then showed up unannounced to make you talk about them.”

“We’re sorry we came into your room and invaded your privacy. You were right to be mad at us.”

“Oh my gosh, Marinette, we got akumatized and we’re so sorry for literally all five of us going after you and probably scaring the living daylights out of you.”

And as if that wasn’t enough, guess what else this is missing? It’s kind of important and brought up directly in the episode, yet the episode simultaneously goes out of its way not to bring it up again.

It’s the reason why Marinette didn’t tell the girls about her relationship with Luka. It’s not there - it’s missing - and the girls never try to pursue the subject. They talk about how Marinette didn’t tell them but don’t think for a second that maybe it’s them who have failed as friends. Instead, they don’t guess anything about why Marinette wouldn’t tell them (which is already strange considering how much they already assume about her) and jump straight to, “well clearly we just need to push for her to talk to us.”

Gonna just go out on a limb here and say that maybe - just maybe - Marinette didn’t tell them because they are habitually pushy in everything they do.

Because they would’ve teased her relentlessly about, “ohhhh you’ve got eyes for Luka? what about Aaaaaadrien~? aren’t you sooo tooorn between both of these cute guys?”

Because they would’ve meddled to force her and Luka together and gotten on her case when/if she ever had to bail on him.

Because their intrusion on her feelings for Adrien had caused her nothing but problems and she just wanted to be with Luka in peace without them forcing their way into things.

Because--hey, wild thought--maybe they’re not really friends???

But the episode completely avoids it, because that would’ve meant addressing it; it would’ve meant acknowledging that they messed up, which - fun fact - they actually don’t do in the episode.

They invaded Marinette’s privacy, insisted that she tell them how she feels (not about them of course because that would imply that they felt like they screwed up), and in the end it’s Marinette who gives them exactly what they asked of her, and the closest thing we get to acknowledging anything is Alix telling her/joking with her that they’ll help her confess to whoever she likes as soon as she tells them she’s ready.

That’s not an apology. That’s not an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. Even when the five of them are about to get akumatized, it’s not a circle of them saying, “here’s how I screwed up, I could’ve done better but I didn’t and I lost Marinette because of it.”

No. It’s just them talking about how sad the situation is. Mylene has the closest thing to remorse in saying, “I hoped it would work,” but where does it go? A grand total of nowhere, especially because Marinette still takes the bracelet in the end instead of the girls mutually deciding, “okay, maybe the bracelet was a bad idea; how about we all agree on making something together instead, no requirements attached?”

And then the episode has the gall to act as if Alya has gone through character growth when all they did was put Alya through the same thing that Chloe did. I’ll explain that last bit momentarily, but first let’s talk about the whole “growth” thing.

Because there’s no apology or acknowledgement of wrongdoing, all Alya does when she’s finally alone with Marinette is do a 180 from where she was at the start of the episode, going from, “friends have to tell each other everything,” to, “hey, if you don’t want to tell me, then that’s your right.”

The crucial part that’s supposed to go in the middle is missing. Instead of acknowledging her failures, Alya just cuts straight to “””being a better friend,”““ but storytelling doesn’t work that way.

It literally would have taken zero effort to fit an acknowledgement into that scene. “You don’t have to tell me everything, I get that now. All my meddling’s done is hurt you and I’m so sorry. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t trust me.”

In a world where Marinette has to apologize for everything, has to learn lessons and suffer because the narrative says so, I will not accept anything less from other characters who are trying to develop and improve. That’s not fair to Marinette, nor has it ever been.

Instead of properly developing Alya, the show does whatever it can to get its audience to root for her as Marinette’s “best friend” (ugh) without having to put in the effort of admitting that Alya hasn’t been Marinette’s “best” friend.

Remember when I brought up Chloe? Yeah, “Malediktator” did a similar thing, showing Chloe doing something awful, then being sad (while not actually acknowledging the thing she did wrong), and in the end she was rewarded with a miraculous prematurely.

One show of character from Chloe and Marinette gave her a miraculous. One show of character from Alya and Marinette told her that she was Ladybug.

(Also, for the record, I think Chloe is far worse than Alya character-wise and I’m not comparing their characters; this is just the simplest comparison I can draw here from a narrative standpoint.)

“Miraculer” is another apt comparison, perhaps even more so. Chloe got Hawk Moth in her head after an akuma landed in her photo of her and Ladybug, but Chloe resisted and fought back, ultimately forcing the akuma out of her and freeing herself from Hawk Moth’s control.

But it wasn’t to develop her character; no, it was to convince the audience of Chloe and Sabrina’s friendship so they’d feel something during Sabrina’s happy flashbacks, then lay the foundation of tricking viewers into believing that Chloe might not go to Hawk Moth’s side.

At the end of the day, it was doing something that’s “never been done before” in order for the character to earn brownie points for something that the writers can just have them do because willpower is an easy thing to just write in. “Gang of Secrets” does the exact same thing when Lady Wifi breaks free from Shadow Moth, with Ladybug even hammering it home by talking about how no one’s ever done it before.

And the pacing is - again - awful. Not only is Ladybug banking on this working when she herself says that it’s never been done, but the conversation between her and Lady Wifi where Ladybug tries to convince her doesn’t even take a minute.

It also has nothing to do with Marinette herself; Ladybug relies on Alya’s adoration/friendship with her as Ladybug (you know, after Alya took a photo of LadyNoir kissing and posted it online without Ladybug’s consent, betrayed her by putting information on the LadyBlog that Hawk Moth was able to take advantage of, and is the only hero outside of Chloe to resist returning a miraculous) in order to break from Hawk Moth’s control, because talking about Marinette with Lady Wifi didn’t even work.

(Ladybug also uses her yoyo as a portal to the Miracle Box when this has never been pre-established to be a thing despite Ladybug acting as if she knew it was; further proof that this episode was rushed.)

And of course talking about Marinette didn’t work, because that would’ve meant convincing Alya that her reason for getting akumatized was “wrong” and the episode didn’t want to do that. It didn’t want someone else actually learning something and feeling bad; surely, this is just Alya being manipulated by Shadow Moth and having the power to break free because Ladybug “needs Rena Rouge” and not because Lady Wifi and her friends are chasing after their supposed best friend and that’s--you know--wrong???

Rena Rouge’s reappearance is also yet another thing the episode refuses to address because it avoids the topic of “but my identity--”. At least “Heart Hunter” had the tact to have Kagami question why Ladybug was giving her the dragon again, but “Gang of Secrets” treads as lightly as possible on any discussion of identities outside of Marinette saying that she can’t, as if it were Marinette who made the choice of concealing her identity and not the basic idea of heroing that has been stressed over and over for the whole show.

Even Plagg of all kwami stated back in “Origins” that no one is supposed to know about secret identities, a rule that continues becoming flaky and muddled with each passing season, almost like they kept attempting to retcon and make the audience dulled to the idea so that the reveal in “Gang of Secrets” would be more acceptable.

But now, with the way they did it and how they don’t even have Tikki comment on the matter, it once again has it look like they’re making it - say it with me, everyone - Marinette’s fault.

Alya says that Marinette has a choice in telling her secret, Marinette insists that she doesn’t and goes on and on about how it’ll change everything, and then just... tells Alya her secret in the end.

And remember all the way back in Season 2? “Sapotis”?

Alya: What were you saying about her secret identity?

Marinette: Ladybug needs it to protect her family and friends. Otherwise the villains could use them to get to her.

Alya: Well, if I knew who Ladybug really was, I'd keep it a secret. I would even help her! Like say, if you were Ladybug, I'd cover for you — when you needed to transform in school, go fight the "baddies", you know?

Marinette: Oh yeah? Well, if I was Ladybug I wouldn't even tell you, to protect you from the "baddies", you know?

Alya: You serious? If I was Ladybug, I'd totally tell you! Because I tell my best friend everything.

And now here we are in “Gang of Secrets,” as if the narrative is saying, “See, Marinette? Alya was right all along, you were just being ridiculous and making yourself suffer for no reason!”

Yet Marinette had a right to keep her secrets. When Alya and Nino learned each other’s identities, Alya took a hit for Nino in “Catalyst” and both of them fell to Scarlet Moth’s akumas. Chloe was a mess and a half because of Hawk Moth knowing her identity. Fu had told Marinette that her miraculous would get taken if she and Chat Noir learned each other’s identities.

The only ones who received no consequences due to someone knowing their identity were Pegase (who Chat Noir and Markov knew), Ryuko (who Chat Noir, Ikari Gozen, and Hawk Moth knew), and Viperion (who Adrien knew). “Chat Blanc” also exists where Marinette got the impression that people discovering her identity would be a disaster, and even all the way back in “Lady Wifi” insisted that not telling anyone her identity was “listening to her head and not her heart,” and the narrative has relentlessly humiliated her for going with her heart, so yeah, probably for the best.

I hate that the episode avoids talking about anything identity-related outside of what comes out of Marinette’s mouth to make it appear like it was her choice all along. I hate that they had Tikki fixate on Marinette’s love problems instead of having her actually support Marinette and admit that Marinette should tell someone before she has a mental breakdown. I hate that the episode inserts Rena Rouge into the plot as if to brush all identity issues away so as to make Marinette’s identity reveal seem less jarring.

Now, of course I’m glad Marinette told someone. Of course I want her to get love and support from someone. Of course I think the benefits outweigh the risks, or I wouldn’t have written multiple fix-its where her identity gets revealed in some way or someone already knows.

But I didn’t want it to be Alya, because I knew how they’d do it. I knew they’d do it wrong and I knew that they wouldn’t have the courage to address Alya’s issues properly.

Those familiar with my blog will know that I’d been taking negative predictions for future seasons for a while and adding them to cards whenever they were proven right. Does anyone remember the Season 4 predictions that were proven correct for “Gang of Secrets,” specifically these ones?

- “Alya will suddenly be portrayed as a good/worthy friend to Marinette in/if there's an episode where Marinette tells her that she's Ladybug”

- “Alya resisting Shadow Moth/fighting back against him will be used to excuse telling Alya Marinette's secret identity“

- “Alya will know that Marinette is Ladybug first because "BFFs" despite being one of the worst candidates for it“

- “The secret that broke Lukanette up will be resolved in episode 3 when Marinette tells Alya“

Each and every one of those were mine, because I knew that whether Season 4 had a proper chronological order or not, the writers would not have the guts to develop Alya first and then have Marinette tell her in a future episode after Alya has properly earned it.

I knew that they wouldn’t take time to develop Alya. I knew that they would have Alya resist Shadow Moth to make Alya look “worthy” of the secret. I knew that Alya would swoop in during the last minute and a half of an episode, insisting that Marinette “didn’t have to tell her anything” when Alya had been pushy and insistent for the entire rest of the episode and the whole series in general, and would ultimately be rewarded with the big secret simply because she’s “the best friend” and that’s it.

The Alya at the end of the episode isn’t the Alya I’ve known for the entire rest of the series before this, or at the very least they turned her into an Alya I don’t recognize.

Alya claims during the ending scene that she knows that Marinette is hiding something beyond her love problems because she - as a reporter and “her best friend” - can sense such things, and all I’m left wondering is

w h e r e ?

Where and when has Alya been suspicious or worried about Marinette keeping a secret from her? What, back in “The Pharoah” where she didn’t immediately disregard Marinette for the role of Ladybug, or “Simon Says” where she vaguely teased Marinette about having a double life, both Season 1 episodes?

Where was Alya in “Truth” saying that she didn’t know Marinette’s secret but knew that she was keeping one? Where was Alya anywhere in Season 3 being concerned that Marinette hasn’t told her something? Where was this “supposedly very observant” Alya when Marinette needed her to out Lila because Lila got her expelled--oh wait, Alya “observed” that Lila did nothing and Marinette was just jealous.

What, is it only now that Alya suddenly “knows” that Marinette is hiding something else? Now, after Alya has already not known that Marinette was literally dating someone, even when Alya had multiples pictures of Marinette and said someone giving each other heart eyes and saw Marinette leaving school with said someone riding on the same bike together, you know, like normal, typical, average friends would?

Where’s the line where Alya acknowledges the problem? Where’s Alya sitting down with Marinette and admitting, “hey, I’m sorry I haven’t noticed this stuff, but I promise I’ll do better starting right now, and that’s how I know now that you’re hiding something else, and I’m sorry it took me so long to realize that it’s been hurting you”?

I can’t tell you where it is, but I can say that it’s certainly not in this episode. 60% of the episode features the Alya we knew from the rest of the series and then switches her out the second she’s de-akumatized for another Alya who hasn’t done anything that the old one has because she pretends like it didn’t happen.

You know how I know? Because of this absolute gut punch of a line that showed that the series wanted to handwave everything away.

“I know how to keep a secret.”

...Really? Does she now? Well, I hope everyone remembered my point about “Animan” and “The Puppeteer 2,” because I’m bringing it right back.

Considering that “Truth” has been burned into all of our memories, we all definitely remember when Truth shoots Alya and questions her on Marinette’s secret, to which Alya states that Marinette’s secret is, “She’s in love with Adrien Agreste.” Now, at the time of Season 4′s airing, this is very much not a secret, as most characters already knew about Marinette’s crush, to the point where it’d been broadcast on television during Season 2.

But do you know when it was actually a secret? Back in Season 1, specifically in the episode “Animan” where Alya told Nino.

And not only did she tell Nino, but she lied to Marinette by claiming that she didn’t, acting as if Nino knew that Marinette had a crush but didn’t know who she was crushing on, which is then directly proven false as Nino accidentally implies that he does know who it is. This is also after Alya had gotten on Marinette’s case for trying to set her up with Nino, and then she had the gall to say that she wouldn’t spill Marinette’s secret because she, and I quote, “doesn't go around making decisions for other people,“ a statement that is directly contradicted by this little thing known as everything Alya has ever said and done in the entire series.

And while Marinette meddling in Alya’s love life actually ended up working out for Alya, Alya meddling in Marinette’s by telling Nino who Marinette is crushing on comes back to bite Marinette - not Alya (because of course) - in the infamous episode of “The Puppeteer 2,” where Marinette realizes that Alya really did tell Nino that she was crushing on Adrien.

Marinette: You told me you wouldn't tell Nino!

Alya: I haven't told him. Right, Nino? I didn't tell you anything. (elbows him)

Nino: She didn't tell me. And besides, I told her I wouldn't tell.

Then, when she’s called out on it, Alya lies again, and shamelessly so.

Marinette: Why did you tell Nino everything? You promised you wouldn't!

Alya: I didn't, I swear! Besides, even if I had told him everything, he would still be clueless. Ugh, who cares anyway? I've set everything up with Nino, who doesn't know a thing, so you can finally pour your heart out to Adrien, girl!

And now, here we are one season later - and not even half of a season if you go by production code order - and Alya claims that she knows how to keep a secret.

No. No, she does not. In fact, she does even worse because she won’t even admit when she’s spilled said secret. I absolutely refuse to accept that Alya is “worthy” or “deserving” of learning that Marinette is Ladybug when she couldn’t even keep a basic secret like who her friend was crushing on.

And no, it didn’t matter that Nino was her boyfriend, or that maybe she thought it would work out because Nino was friends with Adrien. By that logic, Alya would tell Adrien that Marinette is Ladybug if she heard that Ladybug is who Adrien was crushing on and we all know how that would’ve gone.

Marinette has a right to tell her secret to whoever she wants and I’m glad that a burden has been lifted from her, but that doesn’t mean I have to be happy that it’s Alya. That doesn’t mean I have to be happy that, after so many moments of Alya disrespecting Marinette’s feelings, she is the one who gets to hear the big secret that the fandom has been waiting for someone to find out about since the very start of the series.

Luka said it best in “Truth” that the truth is meant to be shared, not taken by force, but Marinette was forced to tell Alya by the narrative because Alya is her supposed “best friend.” It pushed Marinette to her breaking point, forced her to break up with the guy who has respected her agency and feelings since the day they met, and gave her a version of her “best friend” with the same name and face but with none of the responsibility from previous events so that said version was there at the right time and the right place to hear what had to be heard.

And in the end, I end up feeling nothing. Marinette doesn’t even have a “Marinette” reaction to saying it as one would expect; for her to blurt it out and then immediately start panicking until Alya hugs her to calm her down. Instead, Marinette just says it and stares silently at Alya - after blabbing this huge, very big deal of a secret - until Alya goes in for a hug (the “happy/hopeful” ending of which is why I feel like this episode also gets less flak, as the previous two ended off rather depressing/upsetting).

It’s off. Everything is off. The pacing, the delivery, and the logic that the episode uses. The emotion in Marinette’s voice when she’s rambling about how hard it is to keep her secret is so powerful, but then the ending hits and she just says it, breaking the momentum they had going. They pulled the card of Alya walking away too soon when they could’ve saved it, having Marinette go quiet and letting Alya take a few steps away in order to let the moment build before Marinette finally blurts out the secret she’s been painfully holding in.

But they didn’t, and I’m so many levels of dissatisfied. I wasn’t against the idea of Alya learning Marinette’s secret at some point (though honestly, Alix would’ve been a better pick considering that Bunnyx will know eventually anyway, and I say that not even liking Alix!), but not now; not when Alya had so much to work towards.

And now what? What happens now? Now Alya will turn against Lila, not because she learned to have faith and believe in Marinette, but because Marinette is Ladybug, which disproves Lila’s ultimate lie that got Alya’s attention in the first place? Now Alya will be supportive and less teasing/mocking whenever Marinette will be late, not because she understands that Marinette isn’t perfect and has so many other things on her mind, but because she’s Ladybug and has “hero stuff” to take care of? Now Alya will be careful about what she puts on the LadyBlog, not because she respected Ladybug and what Ladybug would want, but because Ladybug is now her best friend and that changes everything?

Because now, Alya has a free pass to all of that, the show making her spontaneously “developed” now so they won’t have to develop her later, and disappointing doesn’t even begin to describe it.

#category: salt #episode: Gang of Secrets #other: ml spoilers #category: long post #word count: over 7000 #other: ask and answer #((I know this is long so I did what I did in ''The Puppeteer 2'' where I had pictures to break it up.))

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nagasakidivision · 2 years

Text

Inter-Team Dynamics

Haruto and Shirou

Haruto’s side: The two have known each other for years as family friends (Haruto’s grandparents and Shirou’s mother having attended the same church,) but only became close after Shirou worked his grandfather’s case. Shirou was the first person outside of Haruto’s family to not just hear out that something was wrong, but to believe him and then confirm it. That alone would have been enough to make Haruto feel indebted but Shirou, being just as stubborn as Haruto is, was willing to pursue the case well after losing the lawsuit. As it stands, Shirou is now one of his closest confidants.

Given the amount of information Shirou seems to have access to, Haruto has long since began to doubt that Shirou’s claims of it coming from his connections to law enforcement. Why would he know so much about Chuouku’s activities? The idea that Shirou might be exploiting extra-legal sources and stealing information doesn’t bother him (after all, saving lives outweighs the obligation to use someone’s position judiciously and he knows legally speaking Shirou should have given up the case by now) so much as the fact Shirou is lying to him when they’re supposed to be close friends. As of the end of the first drama track, he hasn’t figured out a good way to approach this, but it has put a bit of tension in their friendship.

Shirou’s side: Shirou primarily blames himself for fumbling the case—he’s awkward on the stand, Haruto’s case was the first time he was called in to do testimony, and Hitoya ran circles around him. He sees pursuing the truth of what happened with Solaris as atonement and helping to give closure to everyone who was affected…but especially Haruto. He admires Haruto’s grit and dedication to the truth for refusing to give up on the case for reasons beyond simple revenge.

Haruto is one of the few people Shirou will let his guard down around (you can tell because he’ll actually make jokes around Haruto) and one of the only people he’s on a first-name-no-honorifics basis with. Still, he sees Haruto as a slightly troublesome but well-meaning younger brother. He needs supervision at times to take care of himself (keeping a reasonable sleep schedule, doing the work he needs to, eating…) but you can’t help but love him.

Haruto and Damien

Haruto’s side: While he doesn’t doubt Damien’s convictions, the fact that Damien is so cagey about his past does make Haruto uneasy. Normally that’d be enough to put a wedge between them, but the fact Shirou implicitly trusts Damien gives him enough reason not to pry too much. He assumes there’s an extremely good reason for it. That aside, the fact he’s inferred Shirou does know what’s going on has sparked a bit of jealousy that he’s not even aware of yet.

Still, it’s nice having someone else who’s about on the same educational level as he is and is just as familiar with advanced philosophical concepts, though it does raise some questions about what Damien was doing before showing up in Nagasaki. Damien being a bit obnoxious doesn’t particularly bother him, most philosophers are a bit weird and more than a little intense so he’s used to it.

Damien’s side: As far as Damien is concerned, they were fast friends. The fact that Haruto was willing to, sight unseen, cover for him immediately said a lot to Damien about his dedication to doing the right thing. He’s seen enough to be cautious of others’ intentions but given the stakes, he was pretty quick to trust Haruto by his standards. He likes having someone he can drink with and relax around who doesn’t mind his…various oddities, unlike other people in Nagasaki.

He’s picked up on some of Haruto’s more negative feelings and is concerned about it but, again, that’s a bit of a tough subject to breach and he’s correctly intuited that Haruto would be offended if he brought it up first (if only because Haruto’s extremely fragile pride would be broken if he realized someone else knows him better than he knows himself.)

Shirou and Damien

Shirou’s side: If Haruto is the somewhat troublesome younger brother, Damien is the overgrown toddler baby brother and needs to be looked after to keep himself from getting killed. He has no doubts about Damien’s capability, more that he correctly recognizes that Damien has terrible impulse control and is somewhat lacking in common sense while having enough intelligence to make himself unintentionally dangerous.

While he does feel like Damien (…and Haruto’s) babysitter at times, he still puts a lot of trust into Damien. He was fully expecting to have a slightly tense, cool working relationship like he does with most people he's encountered, but Damien being incredibly open and warm put him off guard and has gotten them to be pretty close considering they've known each other for maybe six months or so (any friendship with Shirou is going to be slow burn.)

Damien’s side: Damien is, by a long shot, the most emotionally intelligent and intuitive member of the group while Shirou is the least. He’s pretty good at picking up on what Shirou is actually feeling, frequently before Shirou does himself and he’s good enough at finessing things that he’s managed to needle Shirou into taking care of himself at least a little. It helps that Shirou is a lot more easygoing than Haruto is, though, so bringing up things like that is much less likely to provoke a tantrum or sulk.

The fact that Shirou is constantly fussing at him for his terrible sleeping and eating habits (and his recklessness) does annoy him since he knows what Shirou gets up to. Physician, heal thyself.

#hypmic oc #hypnosis mic oc #hypmic #hypnosis mic #fan division #nagasaki division

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ultraintrovertedgryffindor · 3 years

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hello my favorite writer it is me again i was wondering if i could have another will imagine (gn as usual) and could it be about a reader who feels insecure about being wills partner because they’re still working on being famous and feel like they’re mooching off of wills fame and end up pushing him away slightly and it’s angsty, but ends in fluff with will finally telling them he loves them and reassuring kisses <3

Favorite writer?? You flatter me, darlin', but thank you!

Also, so sorry this took so long! I've been really unmotivated/lazy lately and I wanted to write this as perfect as I possibly could. Also also, ya know how the Powerpuff Girls were made? Sugar, spice, and everything nice but Chemical X was added accidently? Yeah, this is that, but replace Chemical X with a lot of angst. My bad.😬

WARNING: Depressing themes throughout

~~~~~~~~~~

It wasn't often you felt insecure, but you figured it was just one of those days.

You hadn't been in many blockbuster films or tv shows, you were still working hard on your career. You loved the indie projects you worked on, you loved any job where you could act. It was your passion, after all.

You couldn't help feel a little bit insecure when your partner, Will, was where you aspired to be your whole life. He was brilliant, working with amazing people like Tom Hardy and Leonardo DiCaprio. So early in his career too. You looked up to Will so much, praying that you'd be just as talented as him one day. But you knew it wouldn't be easy, acting isn't exactly the easier job in the world, you knew it would take a lucky break.

You always joked that maybe you should work as a waiter in some restaurant, knowing that Edward Norton got his first movie role while working in such a place, only to move on to work beside the amazing Richard Gear.

It was just one day you felt bad about your career, but then it started to snowball into anxiety and depression. It got to the point where it was all you could think about, especially when you were out with Will. And you could tell that he knew something was up, the thousand yard stare that you often had was something that couldn't really go unnoticed.

But for the most part, you acted like everything was fine.

You hated that you let your insecurity pile on and on like this, it normally was something you could handle. You don't know what came over you, but you found yourself scrolling for hours looking at comments on any of your posts. Most people were supportive of you and Will's relationship, and you were thankful for that. But of course, there are always a few bad apples.

The wonderful and lovely, supportive comments were many, outweighing the hate by miles. But just one negative comment could throw you off, ruining your day.

You wished you could just focus on the positive, but unfortunately, that's not how brains are designed. It always has to point out a flaw, find that one odd man out, find the error in the system. Usually, most of those errors can be fixed. You spent your entire life trying to get people to like you, being somewhat of a pushover and a people pleaser, disregarding your own self in favor of praise. So seeing people online hating you for no other reason besides being with Will, seeing that they might never change their minds, it was devastating.

You knew that the hate would usually come from obsessed fans who must've been jealous of you, and you could understand that and it was fine. You remembered the younger years of being jealous of a person who dated your crush, it was something that most people grow out of thankfully. You could get over those comments, saying you weren't good looking enough or not fit enough, any comments about your appearance. The ones that really got to you was the comments about your "horrible" personality.

It was odd, people saying awful things about you when they didn't even know you at all. Most of the contradictory was were amusing. There was a point in time after your relationship with Will was made public, where you'd feel to nervous about going to red carpet events with him. The comments would say, "Y/n's not there with Will? What an unsupportive partner they must be!" or anything similar. But when you started to go with him sometimes, the comments would shift dramatically.

"Y/n's a gold digger."

"They're just using Will for his fame."

"He deserves better than that snake."

It hurt, more than you'd admit. You told Will it didn't bother you that much, just wrote it off that it's normal. Then, you never talked about it again.

You felt awful, every single day. Thoughts of self doubt clouding your brain constantly, thinking, "Am I really deserving of such a kind person like Will?" No matter how you looked at it, the answer was always no.

You started to feel like you shouldn't even be with Will anymore. There was most likely someone else out there, an actor with more talent and more self-sufficient than you were.

You and Will had been together for a couple years, you loved him so much, but when he asked you to move in with him, you said you weren't ready. The biggest lie you ever told, and you instantly regretted it when you saw the disappointed look on his face. But being the gentleman that he is, he said it was completely okay and that there was no pressure.

You absolutely didn't deserve him.

Every time Will asked you to go out with him, you always came up with an excuse to stay home. You felt too anxious about being out in public, the thought of a fan seeing you with Will brought you to the verge of a panic attack. You became distant, trying to distract yourself by throwing yourself into your work. You rarely saw Will anymore, and you knew if you kept up with how you were acting on your insecurity, you'd lose him. But you couldn't bring yourself to try and talk to him about it, you felt too embarrassed.

From Will's point of view, he thought you were becoming distant because of him. He wracked his mind trying to think what was it that he did to make you spend less time with him? At first, he thought, maybe you just needed some space. There were times where he needed to be alone, just like everyone does. But it felt like it was going on for too long. Every time he wanted to take you out somewhere nice, you'd politely decline and you'd opted for a night in.

There came a point where enough was enough, Will was determined to find out what was going on with you.

You stared at your cellphone, the screen lighting up with a picture of Will along with your set ringtone. You sighed, you really didn't feel like answering. You knew you should, but you couldn't bring yourself to. A feeling of dread washed over you, you didn't want him to think you hated him, yet you still couldn't. You rang your fingers through your hair, anxiously scratching your scalp harshly.

Your screen darkened, following with a notification, voicemail and text. "Y/n, what's going on? I've been trying...", you couldn't listen anymore.

"I'm sorry, Will..." You whispered to yourself, wrapping yourself up tightly in a blanket.

You almost screamed when you heard a rapid knock on your door, quickly tensing up when you heard Will call out from outside. "Y/n?"

You wanted to fucking scream.

"I know you're in there, just, please, talk to me."

The desperation in his voice forced you to get up from your couch, tossing away your cozy blanket with a huff. You shakily reached out and opened the door, Will's concerned face filling your view. "...hi."

Will chuckled bitterly. "Hi? That's it? You haven't talked to me in days. What's going on, love?"

"Nothing!" You explained, plastering on a fake smile with a chuckle.

Will smiled sadly. "You're lying." He said simply, pushing his way past you into your home.

"Will, please, I'm not up to talking right now."

"You know, I want to respect your wishes, I really do. But I feel that I've been patient. I've been trying to support you in any way that I can, but I can't help if I don't know what's going on." He sat down on your couch, pleading for you to sit next to him with his eyes. "We used to be open and honest with each other about everything. Tell me what's going on so I can help you."

You huffed, running your hands over your face. "It's not that simple..."

Will casted his gaze to your wooden floor, squeezing his hands together and taking a deep shaky breath. "Is it...is it because it's something I did?"

"What?"

"You're shutting me out. It's because of me, isn't it? I did something-"

"No." You quickly exclaimed, rushing over to his side when you heard his voice waver, taking ahold of one of his hands. "No, it's not you, I promise."

"Then...why? Why are you pushing me away?" Will sighed, biting his lip to keep himself from crying. "Do you not love me anymore?"

"I love you, Will, more than I can express." You chuckled bitterly. "It's hard to talk about."

Will brought a hand up to your face, gently brushing a freshly fallen tear off your face. "You can tell me anything, Y/n, anything."

You smiled weakly, bringing his hand you were holding up to your lips and kissed his knuckles softly. "Okay..." You took a deep breath.

"Take your time, love."

"Being with you, brings me so much happiness that it feels like I'm dreaming. You're so...amazing, and honestly the best and most kind person I've ever met. And I? I feel like I'm nobody."

"Y/n..."

"Compared to others, I'm no one. Just another person trying to live out their dreams that are so far fetched that it doesn't even seem possible to even come close to achieving them. You're so self assured that acting is what you were born to do and you're so talented. I envy you, and I feel so guilty feeling that way. Sometimes I feel like I wasn't meant to be an actor. I feel like...I'm trying to run towards my goal, but every time I make progress, the goal moves farther and farther away until I can't even see it anymore."

"Y/n," Will started softly, "I know how you feel. I've felt that way about my career too. I always wondered if there was going to be a light at the end of the tunnel. Yes, you can work as hard as you humanly can, but it also takes luck. You just have to be at the right place at the right time sometimes. That's why they call it a lucky break, ya know." He smiled, making you giggle tearfully.

"I know, but that's not all." You frowned. "I know you said, it's just better to ignore what the internet has to say, but...I was looking some of our comments a few months ago. And...I just went down a fuckin' rabbit hole. I know I always say that hate comments don't bother me, but...they do. They really do, and I let them get to me. I'm sorry."

"No, darling, I'm sorry. I didn't see what was really going on when I should've."

"You have nothing to be sorry for, Will. I thought I was stronger than this."

Will quickly brought you close to his chest, wrapping around your torso with one arm, the other gently cupping your jaw. "Hey, you are the strongest person I know, okay? Don't think you're weak just because you're feeling something that every human on planet earth feels. Whatever those comments said, there's no one I'd rather be with than you." He leaned forward and kissed you gently, pressing his forehead against yours.

"I felt so embarrassed, Will. I wished I had talked to you sooner."

"It doesn't matter now. You opened up and I'm proud of you for that. I love you so much. And I promise to try my very hardest to never let you feel that way again."

~~~~~~~~~~

hope you enjoyed, @fcvcritecrime ! 🖤

#will poulter #will poulter imagine #will poulter x reader

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ladyeliot · 3 years

Photo

I got you.

Request: Anonymous. Hello there, first of all I love your way of writing, the fics are great! Could I send you an request? Maybe the reader and Chris met again after the pandemic, they have an unfinished relationship and she realizes that she still loves him. Don't worry if you don't feel like it, thanks a lot!

Pairing: Chris Evans x Fem!Reader

Warning: Mentions of anxiety and the pandemic. A little angst.

Word count: 2687

Notes: Sorry for taking so long! And for my spelling and grammatical mistakes, English is not my native language, I am learning.

There had been so many times when you had imagined yourself growing old with him in that house that you didn't know how to deal with the situation right now. You were in Massachusetts, inside your car, standing in front of his house, without any warning and without knowing how he would react when he saw you after so many months.

You and Chris had a history, a short but passionate history that lasted two and a half years as an established couple and one year with comings and goings. The reason for the break-up was not the end of the love, but the time. The time you spent apart was longer than the time you spent together, your work was not very compatible with his, and although you both did your best to overcome it, it was not enough. Even so, after the friendly break-up the relationship didn't end completely, let's say it never had a point and end, becoming friends with benefits, and it was something that didn't seem to matter to you. However, there was a conversation going on between you, and although neither of you named it, that conversation was present. Every time you coincided for a short period of days everything happened except that conversation, and without it neither of you could evolve, neither of you could have freedom. You felt that you were still bound, and you both knew it.

The global pandemic did not benefit your situation, while he stayed in Boston with his family, you flew home. At first everyone thought that the situation would be resolved in a couple of months at most, but as time went on the problem became bigger. The months passed, the pandemic became uncontrollable and everyone stopped their lives. Your contact with Chris was not lost, but it weakened, there were too many things to think about and the constant fear that something might happen to a loved one made you anxious, and your priorities were elsewhere.

As time went by you discovered to value the little things in life, perhaps because of the pandemic. You realized what really mattered, what made you happy and what you were willing to fight for in your day-to-day life. Chris was one of those things. Your life with him was not perfect, like nothing else in this life, but the positives outweighed the negatives. Confinement allowed you to meditate, to consider how you wanted your future to be and to discover that the important thing was to live in the moment, because you never know what is going to happen. It was clear that during the pandemic you couldn't fight for what you wanted, nor take a plane and fly to where he was, but things would slowly come back to normal, and it would be time to make an important decision.

As you had predicted, light began to appear at the end of the tunnel. Things were relaxing again, taking on a new normalcy and you had to start to take up your old life again. Conversations with Chris had increased over the last few months, you had too much to say but it was a bit difficult for both of you to put it on the screen, so in the end you always ended up talking nonsense and getting a laugh out of each other. Maybe that was what you liked best about him, that he managed to make you smile even in your worst moments. It was comforting to discover that he was well, that he had overcome, with his more and with his less, that period and that your feelings towards him had not changed.

It was obvious that you were back to your routine, and that meant that work would barely let you take a break. The New York company had not dealt with the COVID crisis very well and the situation was quite alarming. You barely had time to reconnect with your friends, as you set foot in New York City hundreds of business problems fell upon you. Stress was trapping you, preventing you from even sleeping at night, and all you needed was to escape from that environment because your head was going to explode. You were told that several trips were planned to discuss the impact the pandemic had had on various locations around the country, and you felt an immediate relief when you were told, unless you could get away from the centre of the bomb.

Your destination was even more comforting, as it was barely 30 kilometres from your previous residence with Chris. The plane left for Boston first thing in the morning, the sky had not yet awakened and you chose to rest your eyes for the 60 minutes that the journey took. You hadn't spoken to him for the last two weeks, basically since you arrived in New York, when he called you, you were in business meetings and always came home in the early hours of the morning, falling into bed. That was your life, quite complicated to complement with external factors.

The meeting with the Boston headquarters was not too negative, which got you to relax and send good news to your company. The most positive factor you brought out is that you had finished early enough to do what you had in mind since you discovered your trip to Boston. You borrowed a car from your company and set off for the house where you had lived for almost two years. You didn't know if he would be there when you arrived or if it would be completely empty, but you erased those thoughts from your mind and just drove.

You knew the route perfectly, you used to do it every morning. It was nice to rediscover the variety of colours that those little forests could have during the autumn. You lowered the window so that the wind would fill the interior of the car, producing extreme relief in you, relaxing every limb and freeing your mind from any stressful event. That's all you wanted during the long, final months of your life. It took you just over 30 minutes to reach your destination, and when you were there the world around you came to a standstill. It had been so long since you had been in front of each other that a little worry had formed inside you.

You assumed that naturalness was the best way to deal with such a situation, so you chose to get out of the car and face what might happen. You analysed the outside of the house, there was no car in the driveway, no sign of anyone inside, but a very familiar voice, along with some barking, guided you to the back of the garden. A wistful look on your face, and your smile widened when you discovered that Dodger, hearing the rustling of leaves under your feet, had noticed you. From the distance he headed towards you at great speed, causing Chris to fix his gaze on you. As usual, Dodger lunged at you, causing you to fall backwards into the wet grass, but you were used to that.

The next few minutes hundreds of emotions met in the air. The reunion with Chris was silent, but many things were said through the eyes. First came the nervous smiles, then the excited look and then the hugs.

"It's been so long since I've hugged you... that I've forgotten how it feels to be hugged by you," he whispered those words in your ear and made you tremble, wishing that the embrace would never end.

There were no questions between the two of you, no "What are you doing here" or "Why did you come here", you didn't need an answer to either of them, you wanted to focus on the moment. You went back into that house, for the first time in a long time, accompanied by a Dodger that was fully seeking your attention and that almost prevented you from walking.

"Let's go, buddy! Let Y/N in the house," he said trying to catch him. "Oh, he just ignores me. I'm sorry you'll have to manage on your own. He has chosen, very smart."

Chris' comment made you show a sweet smile as Dodger tried to lick your whole face as you crouched at his height.

"I've missed you too, sweetie," you said, standing up as you could.

You headed inside the house, where Chris was watching you with a tender expression on his face. As you entered, a warmth and that unmistakable aroma of Chris was in the air. It was a mixture between the smell of wood from the fireplace and his fragrance. That caused your senses to come together and create a familiarity in you. You looked around curiously, quickly analysing every corner, Chris waited while you checked.

"It's all the same," you said in a soft tone smiling at him.

"Yep," he replied in the same soft tone. "Will you stay for dinner with us?"

You showed him a smile as you slowly nodded. "That sounds great."

You knew you had one night before your plane back to New York left the next day. There was too much to do and too much to say for just one night, and neither of you were likely to start that conversation, you were experts at it.

Both of you got down to work in the kitchen, as if you were back in the past. Neither of you were experts in that field, but you used to let yourselves go. Dodger, calmer, took a seat in his basket and watched you with curiosity.

"Beer?" asked Chris, approaching you with a bottle.

"Thank you," you took it and took a little drink, imitating him.

The situation was common, two people cooking, but for you it was not at all common where you were. Chris was a person who did not hide his emotions, and you had seen this during the time you had spent together. In the relationship it was much harder for you to express what you were feeling, but at that moment it was perhaps not too much for you to be back in your old home, with the man you had loved, after a year of not seeing each other and having a relationship that was not quite closed.So you finally put down the knife you were cutting onions with and threw yourself away, knowing that everything could go wrong.

"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?" You frowned softly and looked at him.

Chris was caught off guard by the question, as he watched you and arched his eyebrows, while leaning against the refrigerator.

"Okay," he nodded across his arms. "Why are you here?

You remained pensive, you had gone into the lion's den, because even you did not know very well how to answer that question. Why were you there? You opened your lips to look for a coherent explanation, but nothing. Chris was waiting for the answer, but he realised that you didn't know what to say, so he approached you. "It's okay," he said, taking a lock of your hair and putting it behind his ear.

"No," you frowned. "It's not okay."

"What do you mean?" he asked curiously, returning to his previous position.

"To us," you pointed. "I don't know if it's right what we're doing to each other.”

"What are we doing to each other?" he asked gently, trying to get you to express what was on your mind.

"This," you raised your voice a little. "We didn't finish. We have no end..."

"That's why you came," he crossed his arms at a considerable distance. "To put an end to it?"

You asked yourself if you had come to that, and the answer was obvious, no, you had not come to that.

"No", you whispered looking into his eyes, then you put your hand to your face. "God, this is too complicated."

"Hey...", he came up to you again and took his hand away from your face. "If it wasn't complicated it wouldn't be us."

Those were the truest words he had ever said. You both had a magnet for complicated situations and were the first to try to deal with them.

"Try to tell me why you came here," he kindly insisted again. "I have a clear idea, but I need you to confirm it.

You remembered how you felt when you got there, when you drove there, when you discovered that the business trip was taking you to Boston, where he was. All your happiness in those days was for him. During the pandemic you told yourself that you needed a change in your life, that many things had been lost because of your previous priorities, and your mood had also changed.

"I have come... ", you sighed, emptying your lungs and taking in air again. "I'm here... During the pandemic, I realized what really makes me happy, how things can change from one day to the next and that you have to fight for what you want." You felt a little embarrassed. "God..."

Chris knew how complex everything was for you, that you only extracted your sentimental feelings and thoughts when you were angry and had an argument, so that was a big effort.

"Please Y/N, continue", he gave you a soft smile.

"In short..." you started.

"No, don't summarize", Chris cut you off with a little laugh, which relaxed you.

"Okay," you leaned against the kitchen island and took a breath of air. "It's simple, I've decided that I want to be happy, and you make me happy.”

When you released that sentence you felt an inner relief, you freed yourself from a great weight that had been with you for a long time, and now Chris had everything in his hands. The next ten seconds were the longest of your life, you waited to see Chris' reaction, who was just a few meters away looking at you with a little smile on his face, that you didn't know how to take it.

"Well?" you whispered expectantly. "Are you planning to say something?"

The smile on Chris' face widened and he slowly took a step towards you to shorten the distance, standing face to face, finding you between the kitchen island and his body. He didn't say anything, it was what he did that made you realize his opinion. He stretched out his arms to take your face in his hands and approached you very slowly to kiss your lips. Your heart gave a return when you felt him so close to you again, testing his taste on your lips again, rediscovering the touch of his beard. A bark from Dodger came in the moment, but you barely noticed the event, as you were too busy meeting again.

You split up by cutting off the kiss and frowning.

"Wait. You haven't said anything, what do you think?"

"Come on honey, isn't it obvious?"

You arched an eyebrow waiting, Chris rolled his eyes and caught you sitting on the kitchen counter, you being taller than him.

"You're going to make me say it," he said, looking at your smile. "If I tell you that I love you, so that I can kiss you again and then later develop the answer, will that help?”

Those were the things you loved about him.

"It depends on the kiss."

Chris soon had you in his hands again, more firmly than the previous time. You let yourselves go forgetting everything around you, as if you wanted to make up for all the lost time, all the time apart. Chris lifted you off the counter again and you wrapped your legs around his waist.

"I got you," he whispered against your lips.

"You've always got me."

Tag list: @imerdwarf @mycosmicparadise @lavendertales

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#chris evans x reader #steve rogers #request #writing #ff #fan fiction #fanfic #marvel #mcu #y/n #female reader #chris evans imagine

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floating-in-the-blue · 3 years

Text

So about the whole Anti-Willie thing ...

This is going to be long but it’s been stewing in me and wants out...

Okay, not gonna lie, the very idea of Willie-antis gets me enraged. I came across this post in the willex tag and because I didn’t want to hijack it or object OP to potentially negative reactions, I decided to make my own post but quote the anon message they responded to:

The JATP fandom is so toxic only because you guys support a toxic relationship and hate on everyone who points out the falls of the relationship it’s not racist to say that Willie takes advantage of Alex’s anxiety

And the longer I look at this anon’s message ... I’m not only completely baffled at how they could arrive at this reading but also seriously concerned?

Because, let’s assume for a minute here that they aren’t being racist and truly, completely believe that this relationship is toxic ... then what does that mean?

It means purity culture has turned this person’s head so much that they see a caring relationship between two people and label it toxic because one of them made a mistake. It means that they are so far into the rabbit hole that a real relationship will never be achievable because how do you hold up this ideal of never making mistakes, of staying “pure” without crashing and burning?

I may no longer be in academia and it’s been a while but during my time there, I did engage with reader response theories and fandom theories and Death of the Author and textual analysis and deconstructive readings etc. and basically have been very interested in how people read texts and derive meaning from them.

So I’m really curious how people like this anon arrive at a notion of a toxic relationship and one where “Willie takes advantage of Alex’s anxiety” when they watch the show.

And I’m trying, really trying to understand it and so I’m trying to play devil’s advocate for a minute. So let’s look at the scenes they have and see the pro and con Willie arguments that could be made out of them (though I admit, I really have to stretch my imagination with some of those cons!).

This is gonna be long so (also I’m making it up as I go so ...) stuffing this under a cut.

But also, let me preface this with: Willex is my main ship but I do not hate Lalex! I like them in the past, I like them as exes (it’s not my reading of canon, but whatever, ship what you like) and don’t think liking them and shipping them automatically means you’re racist or a bad person or anything like that. Maybe you just like best friends to lovers as a trope more. Or are really into Luke. Maybe that accidental hand-holding scene sparked something. Or whatever. So, me doing this analysis is not because I want to shame you for shipping Lalex. I’m trying to have an open conversation because anon is right in saying that the Willie defense squad is quick to hate on anyone not of their opinion and we’re not getting anywhere if both sides just keep yelling at each other.

Anyway, on we go.

First meeting - Sunset Boulevard

pro: Alex tells Willie about his “minor afterlife crisis” and tags on a joke; Willie makes a joke in return. Reverts back to the topic of the “minor afterlife crisis”, getting serious again when he picks up on Alex’s unease = quickly tuned in to Alex’s emotional needs

con: he skates off, counting on Alex to follow him because he has more questions to ask = establishing a hierarchy based on knowledge and possibly his own attractiveness

After First Meeting

pro: Alex looks happy when he returns to the boys and tells them about Willie, being all excited; Willie has answered a ton of questions (so more than we see, because we never get to see the “woke” thing being taught either = Willie makes time for Alex)

con: - (it could be construed that Alex is more excited about his questions having been answered than Willie himself but that’s a big stretch)

Second Meeting - Museum

pro: initiating physical contact (e.g. hand-holding) that Alex clearly responds to in an amazed but positive way (no signs of discomfort at being touched);

finds out about Alex having trouble with moving things and immediately offers to help him (sucessfully), teaching him ‘how to ghost by showing him how to ghost’;

finds out about Alex’s anxiety and shares his own way of de-stressing with him. Skating probably helps Willie, too, but screaming is something Alex can share and try as well

con: spends half their date (?) “showing off” on his skateboard; drags Alex out of his comfort zone by “breaking into” the museum (however, Alex does go with him willingly)

After Second Meeting

pro: Alex can show off his new-learned ghost skills and sounds happy about the time they shared

con: -

Third Meeting - Park/Promenade (?)

pro: Willie is happy to meet Alex’s friends; looks proud and fond when Alex explains “lifers” to the others, validating his “ghost progress”; immediately ready to help them; offers to introduce them to someone more powerful than him to help them when he sees how disappointed they are when Willie can’t help them

con: offers to introduce them to Caleb while knowing that the whole stamp thing exists (as evidenced later, “you know what that will do to them”)

This is, I guess, where the two readings of Willie’s character and complicitness diverge. I would argue that, had he wanted to get the boys to the club, he would have told Alex about it earlier, would have asked him to meet his friends (though he might have wanted to establish his relationship to Alex first, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt on that) but most importantly he would have immediately brought up Caleb and the HGC when they asked for help since it is the perfect opportunity.

Instead, he just brings it up when they’re all clearly disappointed. It would make sense in a different context, with different people to hold that back a little, if he were conning them. But you can’t tell me Alex, Luke, and Reggie wouldn’t have immediately jumped on the HGC if he’d told them about it ealier. He could have mentioned it when he first meets Alex and the boys would have come running. Instead he seems to have wanted to keep Alex to himself for as long as he could.

Fourth Meeting - HGC

pro: he is clearly startled by the interest Caleb shows in the boys with the “special table” reserved for them; excited to share the club with the boys and all the cool things about it; makes sure to ease Alex’s nerves by looks and touch and checking in with him;

he is upset and confused when Caleb orders him away at the dancing; he “confronts” Caleb after the stamp incident even though he is clearly wary of him at this point and Caleb has a certain power over him (though it’s not completely clear what that is);

the moment of “there’s a lot to, uhm, like here” shows Willie abandoning his flirty act and instead being serious and then immediately running off instead of trying to coerce Alex to stay

con: he brings them to the club although he knows the stamps are a thing that Caleb does; doesn’t ignore Caleb’s order to disappear during the dance; doesn’t stop Caleb from using his stamps

This is where it gets interesting. Clearly, Willie knows about the stamps. Clearly, he has a certain awe of Caleb and respect for him so he knows he’s not all good. And clearly, he obeyed him rather than intervening.

I would argue that it’s been made clear that he did not anticipate the outcome and as such cannot be intentionally complicit in what happened. His relationship to Caleb is shown as ambivalent. He’s clearly impressed by him (”the guy’s got skills”) and clearly intimidated by him (shown when he checks in with him if it’s still cool he brought the guys). And until he’s shood off the dance-floor, I think his admiration for Caleb outweighs the misgivings he might have (consciously or unconsciously). He’s introduced as someone who doesn’t worry too much; he’s not worried about his unfinished business. He likes to have fun and be free. He does not overthink things (like Alex, for example), so while he may have felt some unease and hesitation at introducing the guys to Caleb (hence why he hasn’t mentioned him sooner), he shrugged it off because Caleb was the only one able to help the guys.

Plus, he’s not exactly introduced as being super smart. He may be more experienced as a ghost but someone truly smart would not think selling his soul is not a big deal. So when Caleb waves him off during the dance, he might be just confused about what is going on. Uneasy and confused but not immediately clued in that the boys are in serious danger.

And when the stamps happen: we don’t know how far away he was. The stamping went really quickly, so there probably wasn’t much chance, if any, to intervene. Willie is still trying to comprehend what just happened when he confronts Caleb about it, shocked when he realises that Caleb did it very intentionally and clearly upset at realising that he brought the guys to Caleb.

Fifth “Meeting” - Coffee shop and Alley

pro: Willie wants to check on the boys even though he clearly isn’t supposed to and he now knows what Caleb is capable off

con: he hasn’t told them yet what’s going on, leaving them in the dark and he doesn’t confront Caleb again when he runs into him but plays it off like he was doing Caleb a favour by checking on the boys

Now, should Willie have acted sooner? Possibly. But from what we’ve seen, his entire world just rearranged itself. He underestimated Caleb, he’s clearly afraid of him now (trying to appease him, the strained smile) because he now realises not only the position the boys are in but also his own precarious position and he needs some time to process all of this and come to terms with everything. Which is a human response! He is a human teenager, after all, albeit a dead one. Just like Alex, he doesn’t handle change well. That may be a personality flaw but it’s a realistic one.

Sixth Meeting - Garage

pro: Willie still checks on the boys even after his run in with Caleb; is still clearly upset (a mixture of guilt and concern, probably) and wishes he’d rather not have met Alex than bring him (and his friends) into this situation, apologises

con: still doesn’t tell them and wants to avoid the confrontation; runs off even though it’s clearly upsetting Alex

So he still hasn’t found the courage to tell the boys about the stamps, which is bad. It could be due to fear about having to own up to his own mistake or because of his fear of Caleb or because he has no idea how to remedy the situation and hasn’t thought of a way out yet so doesn’t see the point.

But it’s clearly weighing on him and he’s even more upset than we’ve seen him previously so this is taking its toll on him. Plus he’s obviously very close to tearing up when he runs off. Being overwhelmed and unable to handle a situation like this is lamentable but very understandable.

Seventh Meeting - Sunset Boulevard

pro: he finally tells the boys though even talking to them puts himself in danger; he apologises and tells Alex that he cares about him; he offers a solution and possible way out even though it’s grasping at straws

con: he makes excuses for how he acted by alluding to Caleb owning his soul (which is a valid reason, though)

I would argue that Willie not urging them to just accept Caleb’s offer speaks volumes here. Now he knows what Caleb is really like, he’d rather the boys be free and move on to a hopefully better place than be tied to him like he is. He’d rather lose Alex (whom he cares about) than see him in Caleb’s clutches. It’s the total reverse of the hope he expressed in the HGC with “there’s a lot to like here”. If he were selfish, he’d nudge the guys to accept so he can spend eternity with Alex in the club. But he doesn’t even mention it. Doesn’t suggest it.

It takes a while for him to owning up to his mistake and the fucked up situation the guys are now in but he does own up to it and apologises for it.

Eight Meeting - Orpheum

pro: still feels guilty about everything; still checks in with Alex even though it puts himself in danger

con: -

I think the way his demenour changes and how he hesitates to touch Alex when he’s previously initiated physical contact all the time, says how guilty he feels. Like he has no right to comfort Alex when he hurts because he’s the one responsible for him hurting. It clearly upsets him though and he has a hard time accepting Alex’s forgiveness.

Ninth Meeting- Sunset Boulevard

pro: has taken a great personal risk in carnapping the Downslide tour bus (being absent from the HGC for a long time); would do anything for Alex; clearly values the hug

con: appears to be fine with saying goodbye

Luke being the one to “arm-bump” (??) Willie is very important, I think. Not only has Alex forgiven Willie (who is in love with him and so more likely to forgive him) but so have Luke and Reggie; showing no animosity and giving Alex and him some space to say goodbye.

The Hug! It clearly means so much to both of them and the way Willie sinks into it, caught off guard says this is nothing casual for him.

Yes, he jokes and seems unruffled at the actual goodbye but I would argue that it’s a front he puts on for Alex’s sake, to show that he will be fine and that Alex shouldn’t worry about him. It’s a far cry from the vulnerable and emotional expression we see during the hug.

So where does this leave us? In my opinion, with a character that cares deeply about Alex and tries his best to make him feel safe and relaxed (1st meeting, museum, first half HGC), who ultimately puts his own life on the line when it comes to saving Alex and the boys, who apologises for his mistakes and feels guilty about them.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t flawed, maybe a bit of a coward, not the brightest candle on the cake, and not as quick to adapt to a new, threatening situation as might be desirable. Someone who needs comfort himself but apparently rarely gets it (see his sudden change to comfortable jumpers in the emotional scenes as opposed to his more “open” clothes beforehand).

I do not see someone who “takes advantage of Alex’s anxiety“ in any way but mostly tries his best to help him with it. Luke and Reggie clearly don’t see him that way.

Willie is flawed but ultimately human.

A “toxic relationship“ boils down to selfishness because it means one partner puts their own needs and wants above the other, even though they’re detrimental to that other partner (whether this happens consciously or unconsciously - because a relationship can be toxic without malicious intent).

In all of his scenes Willie only starts to act “selfishly“ when his own life is at stake. And that only means a certain amount of hesitation before he acts, because ultimately, he does risk his own life!

So, for the life of me, I cannot see the toxicity in Willie and Alex’s relationship unless you come at it with the premise that everyone who makes a mistake is a bad person and toxic, which brings me back to purity culture and “your fave is problematic.”

The whole topic honestly drives me up the wall with how mad it makes me but in the end, I mostly feel really sorry for and worry about those entrenched in this cultish way of thinking. How stressful must it be when mistakes cannot be forgiven. When there’s no compassion and no understanding but only vitriolic hate and crusades. How terrifying must it be to live a life like that! The pressure of perfection intensified by a million because now it’s a moral obligation.

I do feel sorry for you if that is the life you live out of fear of retribution. But let me tell you: nobody is without fault. Nobody is perfect. Everybody makes mistakes, hesitates, doubts. And is still worthy of love.

So: it’s okay to prefer the Lalex ship. Whatever floats your boat. But there is no obligation to make a moral argument out of it where the canon love interest has to be torn down first.

If you want to discuss this with me further: I’m here and you can message me on anon or off and we can have an open conversation

#I really hope we get over this one day #willex #willie jatp #lalex #(I know not everyone shipping lalex is a willie-anti but still)#cw: anti-willie #jatp #purity culture #cancel culture #please cancel cancel culture #phantomfloat #yeo has a lot of thoughts #will anybody even read all of this? who knows #I /meant/ to be spending my evening writing ... just didn't think it would be this essay eating up my evening ...ah well #long post #seriously very long post

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foxanddragonbooks · 3 years

Text

Witchshadow Review and Rating

★★☆☆☆

I have thought about this rating for a long time. This was my most anticipated book of the year and my favorite series. It hurts my soul to rate it low, but anything else would be a lie. There were just so many things I did not like. Of course, there were things I liked, the writing was beautiful as always, Stix’s arc, but unfortunately the positive couldn't outweigh the negative. And I had a lot of negative feelings while reading this book.

The first thing that didn't work for me was the nonlinear timeline. The prolog takes place a few days after the last book ended. That was nice. Then the next chapter takes place one month after that event. That is already too big of a time jump for my liking. Characters were in certain places already, and you don't find out why, how, or when until later on. Usually in a flashback scene. It was so confusing. I want to know why someone is at this place now and how they get there when it happens, not through a flashback. This type of storytelling might work for movies and tv shows, but it's really difficult in books. The flashbacks also felt ill-placed. We already knew this plan went wrong because if it didn’t the character wouldn't be in the position they are in now. It could have just been described in a few sentences, instead of flashbacks that took up several pages.

Second of all, one of the MAIN characters was completely absent. This just doesn't make sense storytelling-wise. At all. He still has so much left to do and there is only one more book left. One 500 page book that is distributed into 6 povs. I really can't see how that's supposed to work. I can see how that character had to be gone for some time, given the events of the previous book, but that could have been solved with the usual 2 week time jump between books. Keeping the main character away for a whole book/movie/series just never works. Remember when Game of Thrones left out Bran for an entire season even though GRRM said that he is one of the key five? This is what this book felt like.

Another main character was barely in the book either. He was there, but he was not himself. He was literally possessed for 95% of the book, so in a way, two main characters were not part of the book.

That brings me right to my next point. Way too much focus on side characters I couldn't care less about. This was supposed to be Iseult's book but it felt more like a Hell Bard book. Again, I don't understand why. They are side characters but they felt so present in the book while other characters that are much more important to the story were absent. I wanted this to be a Nomatsi book. A book about the history of the Nomatsi. Why are they hated? How did they live before they came to the Witchlands? I was so sure that all those questions would be answered in this book but all we got were a few folktales and a history in hell bards. This was supposed to be Iseutls book, not theirs. They are not even that important to the plot and a big chunk of their plot could have been given to maybe the two missing main characters. That would have been pretty epic. The hell bard loom was never mentioned before, Midne, the first hell bard was never mentioned before, but they take up such a big plot in ISEULT’S book? Why? It felt so random. Esme’s loom was important to the story in the previous book, but it was barely mentioned in this one.

And Esme, oh God. This was supposed to be this super powerful, badass villain, and then she is turned into a weasel just like that. It felt so off and weird.

Furthermore, at this point, Safi has more development with the hell bards, SIDE CHARACTERS, than she has with any of the main characters. She had 1 book with Merik, her love interest, 1 with Iseult, her best friend, and 0 with Aeduan, Vivia, and Stix. This is the second to last book. I really don’t understand how she didn’t get to interact with all these important characters more or at all so far.

Things also didn't add up. It's implied that Safi is 18 in this book when she has been 19 for the last two books. Leopold suddenly becomes younger too. In the first book, Safi says he is the same age as Merik, who is 20, now he is 18. Or it is implied that he is. It’s confusing. It doesn't make sense.

There is a very weird scene that borders on romance and made me dread reading further. It's said in the beginning of the book that these characters are thread FAMILY. Thread SIBLINGS. Yet one thinks about the other as very handsome and they are only inches apart and holding hands in a scene. IT'S WEIRD. If they are supposed to be family then why was this scene written? If you consider someone your sister or brother from another mother you don't do this kind of stuff. The Vivia/Vaness romance came out of nowhere.

The Vivia/Stix being thread siblings came out of nowhere and made 0 sense. They were supposed to be the mutual pining childhood friends to lovers ship, now they are family. Vivia was jealous in Windwitch when she thought Stix had slept with someone. This is not sibling behavior! The set up for Vivia/Stix was right THERE and so present! Whereas Vivia/Vaness came out of nowhere. I don’t understand what’s going on anymore. Please don’t foreshadow things that you don’t mean to go through with. I hate this.

To quote Iseult: “Nothing felt real. Nothing made sense.” That sums up the entire book for me. The characters felt so off to me.

Safi comes up with this ridiculous plan to noose the Emperor while kissing him, and OF COURSE, it goes wrong. It was such a stupid plan, and Safi at this part of the story would have never done this. It felt like a step back for her and made zero sense. She is supposed to be smarter than that now.

Iseult felt so off at the beginning of the book, I didn’t even realize it was her at first. She was all ‘I kill people and regret nothing, I am the badass puppeteer, don’t fuck with me’ and then she went back to her old self in like a blink and never returned to her ‘dark self’.

There is a scene where Safi walks into the Emperor’s room while he has sex with his mistress, IT WAS SO WEIRD and uncomfortable. Literally, why was this scene necessary. Like she wanted to steal something from his rooms but she could have done this at night while he was sleeping. While everyone was sleeping.

Safi’s original plan was also to noose Henrick during their wedding night. That was so weird and made me so uncomfortable. He is 3 times Safi’s age, please. Like I get that she honestly believed she would be forced to consummate the marriage, so she thought hmm might as well get my revenge on this bitch then. But when Henrick said he had no intention of taking Safi to his bed, she was not relieved at all? She was like no, no, no, you have to take me to your bed. It felt so unrealistic. Safi is literally a teenager. Any teenage girl would be glad to not have to sleep with a man old enough to be her father. She should have been relieved that she wasn’t forced to sleep with an old man, and glad that that would mean she had more time to come up with a more fleshed-out plan to kill him. And Iseult would have never let Safi go through with her original plan. Never.

This book felt so, so different from the other books of the series that I love so much, and not in a good way. I don’t think I have been so disappointed and upset since the last season of Game of Thrones aired.

I want to go back in time when the main characters of this series were still main characters. At this point, I have so little hope for the last book. Maybe I am wrong, I would be glad to be wrong, but this book feels like a bullet hole in my chest and I am not sure it can be fixed.

#the witchlands #witchshadow #witchshadow spoilers #review #book review #books read in 2021

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samwrights · 4 years

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I’m sorry but ukai with a breeding kink😳yes PLEASE

I swear I saw another ask that asked for Ukai with an impreg kink

*ahem* anyways—WOW this one was a doozy but holy shit did I have fun writing it. 11k words you guys. 11. K. It is a lot so grab some cocoa or coffee and a blanket because this is a read. It even has to be split into two parts because I hit the fucking text limit, BUT this also means there is no actual smut in this portion. You can find that here.

If you guys need some ear candy, I recommend the following:

Day N Nite (Crooker’s Remix) by Kid Cudi

Pursuit of Happiness (Extended version with Steve Aoki) by Kid Cudi

Breaking Me by Topic

C’Mon by Ke$ha

Flannel by The Cardboard Swords (it has to be sad somewhere)

Magic in the Hamptons by Social House

Fun fact: Ke$ha was actually the primary inspiration for this fic and for DJ!Ukai. God bless her.

Warnings: language, nicotine and alcohol consumption, implied drug use, implied emotionally abusive relationship, breeding/impreg kink, dirty talk, rough sex, risky sex, road head, slight dub-con, praise, multiple smut scenes, 3rd person POV reader-insert—because the word ‘you’ just didn’t seem to fit.

Without further ado, please enjoy the filthy depths of my brain followed by a relatively happy ending that I’ve titled, “Between the Lines’” :-)

“You’ve been more tired lately, and you’re showing up right when practice starts. Is everything okay?” Was the question that Takeda had asked Ukai Keishin that haunted him for years to come. Sure, he had wanted to gain more independence from his parents, wanted to start being more adult-like and take over the mortgage and the bills so his parents could finally rest. At the age of twenty-six, it seemed like a good idea at the time. With four years passing, however, Keishin was so damn tired, but it wasn’t like he could just stop working.

He was still tending to crops every morning, tending to the shop, coaching for Karasuno, but in the four years time, he had adopted one more job on the weekends—Ukai Keishin was a local nightclub DJ. He’d discovered the job opportunity one fateful night that he was out with his friends from the neighborhood association. To this day, he was still unsure of why he was approached with the job, especially considering he didn’t know the first thing about being a DJ, but the woman who had offered him the position had taught him everything he needed to know.

It turned out that he had a natural affinity for the position, seeing as he was still at it years later under the alias Spira. Ukai kept telling himself that he would quit the gig eventually because there was no way he could continue working four jobs—it was inhuman and the money didn’t even really matter to him. Okay, that last one is a lie; his DJ gig has been a substantial contributor to his savings funds to the point where he was even able to afford a newer, larger, (and slightly) used SUV in full compared to his tiny, old yellow beater. Even his mortgage bills were starting to look less daunting with the current cash flow.

Who needs sleep anyway? Ukai survived and thrived off of nicotine and caffeine anyway. Besides, sleep was the last thing on his mind whenever he set foot into the club. It was impossible to think of anything other than the writhing bodies of sweaty, young adults that were already drunk or high or were practically fucking each other with their clothes on. Perhaps that was part of the reason Keishin felt the need to quit this job—he was envious. Envious of the fact that he never got to indulge in his youth like these kids did; he started working and helping his family out right away after college. Sure, he went out here and there, but these twenty-something-year-olds were living their best life, while he was thirty and catering to their whims.

To say he was a bit bitter would be an understatement.

Bitterness aside, however, it did him good to see the youth enjoying exactly that—their youth. They got to do as they pleased between exams and becoming functioning members of society and, while he was jealous, Ukai was proud to be able to contribute to their pleasure.

He’d arrived to the club early, as he often did, to try to grab a drink before he was due for stage time. Ukai was thankful the bartenders knew him enough that he didn’t have to verbally order considering the music was too loud to hear him in the first place. A rum and coke manifests itself in a small, plastic cup that the blonde raises in thanks before weaving and bobbing around the various partygoers. For the most part, he’s successful in dodging the flailing bodies as he mutely notes the very upbeat remix of some female pop artist playing.

But only remotely successful as Keishin attempts to salvage his drink from spilling as he raises it over his head as one of the partygoers is pushed into him. “Hey, careful!” He snaps toward the younger, [hair color]ed woman. She only looks half-offended by the scolding, but otherwise unperturbed. If anything, the dominating expression on her face was confusion.

“Coach Ukai?” He’s surprised to hear both his given name and his title, let alone coming from a club patron, as they all knew him as Spira. Recognition slips his mind entirely—he’s never met this girl in any way that he can remember. Certainly, he would never forget crossing paths with this beauty, even if she was dressed in a similarly juvenile fashion to the other ravers. Tight crop top tee cinched together by a knot at the midriff, with army green high-waisted shorts attempting to cover the bare skin, face painted with makeup, glitter, and sweat; even underneath the garb, she brought forth no recollection. “Uh, d-do you remember me?” It’s a challenge to hear over the music, but she presses forward close enough that her lips are right in Keishin’s ear.

“Can’t say that I do,” he yells right back into hers.

“Karasuno class of twenty-twelve, I was Sugawara’s girlfriend.” Oh.

Oh.

Now he remembered, vaguely, but he doesn’t ever remember her looking like this. The last four years had been incredibly kind to her, in more ways than one. Back in her Karasuno days, [name] had always looked pleasant, for lack of better term. But there was always a lifeless, matted, dull glaze to her eyes that screamed she was searching for something more. While it was still somewhat present, there was a substantial joyous air around her. It looked good on her. However, as much as Ukai wanted to stay and admire, he had to go get set up for the evening. Or rather, that was the excuse he used when he said he would catch her after the show. “[name], did you know who that was?” The woman in question gives a nod, confused at the sudden star struck gawks that her friends held.

“Uh, yeah? My ex-boyfriend’s volleyball coach?”

“No dude, that was the DJ, Spira.”

“What?”

Being the closing act meant a lot of different things to Ukai Keishin. On the negative spectrum, it meant he was going to have to tend to crops as soon as he finished cleaning up his set. That also meant he wasn’t going to get to go to bed until nearly eight in the morning after his shift at the farm. Yet, for him, the positives greatly outweighed the negatives. For Keishin, watching the audience lose themselves in euphoria, albeit probably a drug-induced one, just hit different for him. It was a sense of satisfaction that only came from a select few activities, with coaching volleyball being the other major contributor. There was just something about the way the crowd was overwhelmed and screaming the second underground remixes of old Kid Cudi tracks with his own twists overtook the speakers that granted Keishin a sense of enlightenment.

For him, being a DJ allowed an audience to flow and vibe with the journey of his life and all its constant up and down motions while under the guise of anonymity. As Spira, Ukai opened up the complexity and conflicting feelings of his inner mind and brought it to fruition through his mixes. He felt that in his soul, he’d done his art of storytelling justice. The audience felt it. Hell, his mom at home probably felt it. Perhaps it was one of the main reasons this dingy, hole-in-the-wall club kept asking him to come back every weekend.

His mind wanders further as he clutches an electronic cigarette in his hand, mixing beats on the turntable while taking hits of nicotine in between. He wonders if the girl he had ran into just a few minutes prior had been frequenting here as often as he had. Then, thinking back to what little information she supplied earlier, Ukai’s mind drifts off to the former third-year setter from when he first started coaching. Sugawara was a nice boy with a firm, almost parental, hand that walked dangerously along the lines of being a partner and being a control freak. When it came to his relationship, things had to go his way. And while his girlfriend that came to every tournament was much more outspoken yet easy going, she was opinionated and didn’t shy from confrontation.

Now that the coach had given it more thought, it was a wonder that one tolerated the other at any point in time. If anything, Ukai imagines the two of them would typically be at each other’s throats. From the few times he had interacted with her, she was always more free spirited and couldn’t be weighed down by any one else’s opinion, but seeing her now was different—she was in her element in the dingy, dark club with the glitter on her cheekbones refracting light off of her face. There was laughter and true, unabashed joy on her face. She had a light of her own—like she was ray of sunshine in the center of a storm.

Three hours past midnight when the club closed was always Keishin’s sign to leave, regardless of the countless attempts to attend the after party he’d been invited to. He had to go to work, after all. Sure, a part of him had always been a little green with envy at all the DJs that got to hook up with club patrons after, but after being at this gig for a few years, he figured that the right girl for him would eventually come to him if he continued working on himself. After all, he didn’t want to just have a string of one night stands with a bunch of fresh adults that could barely function after the small drop of Malibu rum—he was too old for that.

“Uh, coach?” [name] felt strange calling him that, but she didn’t feel familiar enough with him to address him otherwise. He was halfway in his car, the blonde ready to leave for the weekend to go back to his regular day-to-day work. “You coming to the after party?” [name] asks when Keishin only looks at her in question, cigarette hanging betwixt his dry lips.

“No, I actually have to go to work right now.”

“Oh,” she doesn’t mean to express her disappointment, but it slips anyway, “guess I’ll catch you later then?”

“Uh, yeah.” A tight lipped hybrid of a pained grin and grimace crosses her wet, gloss covered lips. Without another word, Ukai closes his car door, a little more brusquely than he intended to, before backing out and leaving the young woman to her own devices. His mind wanders once again with him humming absentmindedly to the soft acoustic punk playing over the car radio. His eyes are focused on the passing greenery, the cars that are weaving and bobbing off the freeway—hell he even noticed the way the tendrils of the sun are just barely starting to peak over the horizon because it reminded him of her. A thought he banishes immediately because he feels creepy for even thinking that.

Yet no matter how much scenery flitted through his honey eyes, his mind keeps traveling back to one thing, or rather one person, only.

Goddammit.

On Monday’s practice, Ukai Keishin’s mind is flooding and drowning in memories of his first year as the volleyball club’s coach. It was as if his mind was coercing him to attempt to reach out to the girl that plagued his mind for the last forty-eight hours or so. Though, he had no way of contacting her. Instead, with every step along the wooden floors, he can remember the way she would walk Suga to practice, almost physically seeing her standing in the doorway to kiss the third-year setter goodbye. As if he could see her sitting underneath the third window from the left, quietly doing homework and exchanging small talk and airy laughter with Kiyoko and Daichi. As if he could see the same sunny smile she gave in the audience from Saturday night at the club between the lines of the woodwork in the floorboards.

It was a repeating pattern day in and day out that was beginning to make Ukai question his sanity.

“Hey, man,” his assistant coach and fellow Karasuno alumni, Tsukishima Akiteru, places a hand on his shoulder and looks at him in worry. “Are you okay? You’ve been out of it all week.” In what world did a week translate into three days, the older blonde coach didn’t know.

“I’m fine, just tired,” Keishin all but bites back. He didn’t want to admit his conscious had been running rampant with thoughts of a girl he’d briefly met at a club. It felt almost as disturbing and perverted as it sounded in his mind.

“The team’s worried about you. Why don’t you take an early weekend and get some rest? We’ll see you back on Monday, yeah?” Normally, Ukai would have vehemently refused. However, his circumstances were far from normal and he was gracious for an assistant coach he trusted wholeheartedly to do the work that needed to be done. And so, Ukai heeded Akiteru’s advice and went home before practice even began on Thursday afternoon.

It was slightly disorienting for him to go home and nap, but he was incredibly thankful for the gift. Waking up just before he was technically supposed to start his shift at the shop, Keishin jumps into a cold shower to bring him to life before heading downstairs. A bellowing yawn passes his lips through his teeth as he starts his evening. Maybe his team was right—he really did need a break. Thankfully, he knew that the second the doors to the Sakanoshita were locked, he was done for the evening and wouldn’t need to reawaken until three the following morning. Just a few more hours until then, he thought.

With it being a slower evening as well, Ukai was able to kick his feet up on the counter as he always did, pull open the newspaper from earlier in the morning and casually flip through. Briefly, he considers giving up one of his four jobs because this was something he missed doing. But consideration aside, he was far too in love with the cash flow and the thought of paying off his mortgage to entertain the thought for long. Maybe one day, he would finally sell the Sakanoshita store or quit helping on the farm—

“You still work here?” Huh. Her voice sounds different when it isn’t drowning under the speakers of a nightclub.

“I do own this place, you know.” Ukai snarks at the woman who’d been consuming his brain for the last week. She looks different without glitter reflecting off of her unreal cheekbones or the heavy layers of foundation and eyeshadow. Even more than before, Keishin definitely recognized [name] now. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“Shopping,” she snorts as if it were the most obvious thing, “why else would I be at a store?”

“Dunno, maybe you’re just here to see me.” Ukai responds without skipping a beat, turning the page of the paper to play into his guise that he wasn’t the slightest bit surprised at [name]’s presence.

“Uh...actually...” her voice is quiet, prompting the coach to quirk a brow and fold up the paper he was now pretending to read. It wasn’t like he could focus on anything right now outside of the woman standing before him, spearated only by a thin counter. Without talking again, his brown eyes lock with hers, silently goading for her to continue speaking. “I-I just...I don’t know. It was just really weird to see you at the club and then to find out that you’re Spira on top of that. I haven’t seen anyone from Karasuno since I graduated and—“

“Woah, kid, breathe.” Ukai interrupts her before she can continue spewing word vomit at a hundred miles an hour. “So what if I’m Spira? Though, you better not tell anyone that. My stage name is a secret between us, alright?” For a moment she’s quiet, gears turning in her head. The secrecy didn’t make sense to her because, if anything, he should be proud of the fact that he’s rather well known in the underground electronica scene. Or at least, she was in his stead, because [name] would have been proud of Ukai regardless of whatever occupation he held.

She supposed it came with the territory of having an unrequited crush on the coach years ago, that continued well beyond high school and even university, back when she was still dating Sugawara Koushi. It was the reason she had even bothered to come sit in on his practices and partially the reason she would come to his tournaments and matches. Not that she didn’t want to be supportive of her then-boyfriend—it would have been a fight had she not—but seeing the hot older coach was definitely a bonus in her book. “But why?” She offers, not wanting conversation to end despite her not having actually bought anything.

“If the school ever caught wind of me doing that, I could lose my position as the coach. Some shit about Karasuno’s image or whatever.” [name] gives a small nod, fidgeting subconsciously, as an attempt to shake her nerves and anxiety, by sifting through various candy bars that were in front of her before grabbing her favorite. Without a second thought, she peels the wrapper before placing the candy between her lips, the puffy pink skin greatly contrasting the chocolate coating. “Ya gonna pay for that, kid?” Ukai irks, his honey brown eyes steeling over in irritation. The nickname she’s given hits the final nail on the coffin and seals away [name]’s trepidation. Instead, her own sass comes out to join the fun.

“Nah,” she hums playfully, the chocolate-covered wafer cookie crunching between her teeth. “Quit calling me kid, coach. I’m a lady,” the irony isn’t lost on either of them as she speaks with her mouth full.

“Still a kid, kid. And quit calling me coach, I’m not your damn coach.” The familiar, grumpy attitude of his brings [name] back to the Ukai she knew back in high school. In a mix of nostalgia, warmth washes over her as the haughty tone in his voice sent shivers down her spine like it did a few years back.

“Sure thing, coach,” she teases again before tossing the wrapper of the stolen candy bar into the nearest bin. “You’re at the club tomorrow, right?” The question adds a bit of context and confirmation to Ukai—it seems she knew when Spira was performing, meaning she must have been a patron for a decent amount of time. Part of him wonders how she never realized who he was before, another part wonders how he’s never noticed her considering she could make all traffic stop if she stood in the middle of a freeway. At least, that’s what looking at her did to his heart.

“Yeah?”

“Maybe this time, you’ll join us at the after party.” Without another word, [name] pushes herself away from the counter she’d been leaning on while talking to the blonde man. With Akiteru giving him the weekend off, he actually entertained the thought of attending this time. Even if her invitation was rather blasé and indirect, he didn’t see the opportunity of him attending one presenting itself any time soon. He may be old, by his own standard, but there was a unknown allure to the thought of showing up to a wild party with a woman that was so adamant of his attendance.

Or rather, adamant in his mind. Whether she actually wanted his company remained to be seen, but the curiosity was gnawing at him, and was something he would have to unearth sooner rather than later.

Having an entire night, or a day’s worth, of rest was a rather disorienting, yet pleasant feeling for Ukai. After tending to crops and returning home in the early hours of the morning, the blonde coach was able to catch a solid nine hours of sleep before his shift at the Sakanoshita store with another chance to nap before he needed to head to the club. Despite knowing he had the ability to do so before another restless night, his mind felt the need to keep him awake and alert. Even after showering and styling his blonde tresses into their usual mane—mundane acts that usually came to him automatically—he was hyper aware of the slightest unruly flyaways.

Ukai Keishin was nervous.

He didn’t know what to wear or if there was a dress code or if anything he typically wore would be deemed worthy of an after party. A part of him wanted to leave it alone and let him sport his usual white track pants and tight, maroon muscle tank, but that part of him immediately drowns in the ocean of his anxiety. Another string in his brain prompted him to dress up just a little bit to help him look the part—it had nothing to do with impressing a certain club patron, no—he tried to convince himself. A miserable attempt, but still one nonetheless.

Eventually, he settled on crisp, dark-washed jeans that hugged his muscular legs without being suffocating, paired with a vibrant, crimson muscle tee that hugged his biceps all the same. Ukai still felt a little out of place in the attire, as he often had back when he first assumed the alias Spira, but headed out the door of his apartment before his conscious could dispute it.

He was early again, even more so than normal. Desperate for a drink to calm his nerves and replace his blood with liquid courage, Ukai worms his way around to the bar, signaling the attendant for his usual. Rum and coke in hand, the DJ stands off to the side, hiding like a wallflower, while he studied the sweaty, dancing bodies. Did he know why he was looking for her—no. Maybe partially to tell her she owed him for the candy bar, maybe to tell her he was joining in on the after party this time around.

Maybe to just see her.

Keishin banishes the last thought with a shake of his head before skulking off to the attached patio to smoke. Pulling a cigarette from his pack and a lighter from his pocket, the flame torches the end of the filter at the same time the blonde inhales. Forcefully pushing the smoke out past his lips, Ukai takes a hearty sip of his drink until it’s nearly gone. He was going to need something stronger tonight.

“Is it that time already?” The older man’s head snaps to the voice that had been haunting him subconsciously.

Part of him wishes he didn’t look.

As if to play into her question, [name] checks the large, rose gold watch on her right wrist—an incredibly stark contrast to her outfit for the evening. Maybe it was a hunch when Ukai felt that he had been underdressed, as if his intuition knew that she was going to be dressed to the nines in a black skater dress. Even with a modest neckline, the lace cut out detailing on the sides of the dress accentuated her curves impeccably, playing well with the volume of the skirt, while the open back she was sporting dipped dangerously low.

It took everything in Ukai to not throw every milliliter of restraint and inhibition out the window and fuck her right then and there.

Taking a lengthy drag of his cigarette to hold himself back, Keishin inhales deeply, the smoke billowing past his lips emerging densely and grey in color. “I’m a little early—needed an extra drink today.” The man manages to choke out, downing whatever is left in his little plastic cup for added emphasis.

“Need another?” [name] chirps politely; almost too politely as if to deliberately dispute the salacious thoughts flooding the coaches mind.

“I can get—“

“I owe you anyway,” she reminds him, alluding to the candy bar she had eaten without paying for from the previous night. “Pick your poison.”

“Double rum and coke.” He concedes. [name]’s lips twitch upward slightly at the corner before she plucks the empty cup from Ukai’s hand. He doesn’t miss the way the shellac on her nails grazes against his skin, leaving the whispers of contact to run warm. Immediately, the blonde man uses the nearly dead cigarette between his teeth to light a fresh one—heaven or hell knows he needed the nicotine right now.

Given the silence, Keishin takes the opportunity to absorb his surroundings. From the general direction that [name] initially came from, she wasn’t around any of her friends or really anyone that he knew. That was good at least; there wasn’t anybody else that knew of his presence. [name] returns, two clear plastic cups in her hands and surrenders the darker of the two to the man awaiting. “Hold mine for a sec?” Without thinking, Keishin holds his cigarette between his left index and middle fingers, his drink in the same hand, while taking hers. To his surprise, she pulls out her own pack of menthols and a torch lighter, setting the leaves ablaze before taking her obvious vodka cranberry back.

“You took up smoking?” The older of the two asks in surprise, noting the way her lipstick leaves the slightest bit of residue along the brown filter. [name] gives a shrug.

“Surprised you didn’t notice it sooner, coach. I’ve been smoking since second year.” Ukai gives a roll of his eyes at the use of this strange pet name he’s been dubbed by her. But he thinks about it, thinks about how Suga must have felt probably knowing that she did. Thinks how it just added to this strange, sassy yet happy, wild and free exterior she now had. And [name] notices instantly the very same look Ukai had in his face when he was trying to strategize, trying to figure out a way to navigate a conversation with his team about becoming better—she knows what’s coming next. “Yeah, yeah, I know I should quit or whatever. Suga lost that argument a long time ago.”

“Can’t really tell you what to do when I’m just as guilty.” Ukai gives a laugh—one that is embedded with bitterness and envy at the mention of the third-year setter—yet is just as vivacious as he is. A sound entirely different than she’d ever heard leave his lungs before. She likes it.

After finishing his smoke, Keishin gulps down a hefty swig of his drink before patting [name] on the shoulder before announcing his departure. “I’ll see you inside,” the girl, woman, calls out thoughtfully as she gives a small wave with her cigarette filter between her fingers. Ukai doesn’t verbalize the same sentiment. He doesn’t want to slip up and admit he’ll be looking for her.

But it’s painfully obvious that he is when he takes over the booth. Unable to hide the fact that with every chance that he looks into the audience, he’s searching for that black skater dress that hugs her all too perfectly, [hair color] locks swaying as she moves in the crowd. Ukai can’t hide it at all—not behind the turn table or new remixes meant to get the crowd moving.

He can’t hide the urgency he feels to find her outside in the crisp evening air, smoking on the back patio of the club after his set. [name] is talking and laughing with her friends while thin grey smoke billows from her open mouth before her eyes land on him. Some of her friends take notice to the tension and their shared gazes, some of them whispering his alias in excitement. But [name] just smiles knowingly, if not a little cocky, because she can see that urgency, that desperation, that Ukai was trying to hide. “Wait, [name], do you know Spira?” A bystander asked. Clearly, they weren’t present the last time this was brought up.

“Yeah, I may have met him once or twice,” the woman in question snickers as she strides over closer and closer to the aforementioned DJ.

“Cute,” Ukai sneers teasingly at her jab before instinctively reaching for the half-gone cigarette she pulls to her stained lips. At first, she thought he was going to put it out, considering their little conversation from a few hours ago. Instead, the volleyball coach puts the filter to his own lips, noting the damp fabric probably from her freshly applied lipgloss, and takes a drag. It tasted like watermelons and mint.

“Cheeky,” [name] returns, plucking her cancer stick back from the blonde man. While her friends are still behind her murmuring about the familiarity between the two of them, Keishin and [name] are lost in their own little world. “So since your set is over, and considering you’re still here, I’m assuming you’re joining me for the after party? Or do you have to go to work again?”

“I told them I’d be out of town this weekend,” Ukai tries to play it off as nonchalantly as he could, ties to swallow it down his nerves with rum and nicotine. It proves rather difficult considering the coy smile on [name]’s face is wearing and cracking through his resolve rather quickly. But at least, to him, he could confirm his mind was not playing tricks on him and [name] was just as adamant about his attendance as he initially thought. Even more so with her next statement.

“Cool. Your car or mine?” It took him a minute to process her words even—lust thickening and constricting the flow to his brain at the vague question. Ukai was getting far too ahead of himself, but goddammit how could he focus when the fabric of her skirt hit her mid-thigh and framed her like a Venetian goddess—“I don’t mind driving there.” She adds to coax him away from his silence.

“Nah, I got it. We’ll take mine.”

“Lead the way,” [name] chimes sweetly as she wraps an arm around the coach’s forearm. The physical touch is everything he’s been fantasizing about for the last few days—hellfire and brimstone and sunlight and goddammit why did he wear jeans that were only getting tighter and tighter?

Ukai opens the passenger door to his SUV, supporting the woman as she clambered in cautiously so as not to stumble from her heels. Getting settled in, the coach surrenders his unlocked phone to allow her the entirety of his music library. The irony of the DJ surrendering DJ rights to the passenger was not lost on either of them. Much to his surprise, [name] put on soft acoustic punk as he usually did on his way home from the club. The kind of softness one would turn on to accompany the fragile pitter-patter of rain against the windshield. “Cardboard Swords?” Ukai asks in surprise, more than familiar with the band.

“Flannel is a favorite of mine. I’m kind of surprised it’s in your library.” She adds after she begins directing him to this evening’s party location. From the corner of his eyes, he can see the way her full lips are moving along each word with expertise. He sees the way her [eye color] orbs soften slightly and he can tell this song hits home for her.

She’ll never say why—she’ll never tell him this was the song that helped her move on from Sugawara Koushi while restoring her inner peace.

But Keishin is no fool. He can tell that this is physically hurting her—crushing her soul into the leather seat of his car and, instinctually, he wraps a large hand around hers that’s resting in her lap. “I came out tonight to have fun with you, so don’t you go getting sad on me.” He means each word with innocent intent, yet he cannot ignore the almost hidden, salacious drip to each syllable and neither can she. How could she when his touch sent volts of electricity through her skin?

“Right, right,” she says in a conceding tone, switching the audio to something much more upbeat and a little flirty. “Why did you agree to go out tonight?” If Ukai had an answer, then it died on his lips as he let go of [name]’s hand to reach for another cigarette. The process of lighting the tube, inhaling, and exhaling bought him an extra minute to come up with an excuse; her doing the same giving him another thirty seconds.

“I don’t know.” It’s a blatant lie—a lie that [name] believes all too easily—but Ukai can’t bring himself to admit the truth. He can’t admit out loud that she’s the only thing that’s been on his mind all week or that he jumped at the opportunity, created one even, to be able to have a one-on-one moment with her. Keishin can’t admit that he can tell there are intricate webs spun in her mind and that all he wants to do is untangle them one by one.

And he certainly can’t tell her that even the mere sight of her sends his brain into overdrive and all he wants to do is repeatedly fill her over and over with his seed until she is entirely his, inside and out in mind, body, and soul. There was no way in the nine circles of hell that Ukai Keishin was going to admit to his sinful thoughts.

“It’s just up here.” [name] points with gaunt fingers, cigarette between them as her voice is half choked from inhaling her own smoke. Mirroring the man’s actions earlier, she indulged in her own nicotine habit to quell the budding disappointment from Ukai’s lackluster response. They drove up a slight winding hill and as the trees pass by, the itch for her truth and her history was gnawing at him. He wanted to know why this rambunctious party girl invited him all week to these elusive after parties. Why Flannel ate away at her insides like it did his. Why did her and Sugawara breakup?

But he decides against it for the moment.

“Where are we?” Ukai asks. There’s cars all lining the sides of the road of varying worth—he felt even more out of place than normal with his older SUV, even if it was an upgrade for him, considering the large number of luxury vehicles.

“Bevelle’s house.” [name] says simply, pointing to an empty space in the streets as she throws the butt of her cigarette into the road. The casual way she name drops the owner of the club makes him gawk, catching flies in his mouth had there been any at the hour. With a satisfied, cheesy grin, she hops out of her seat and walks in the grass to meet Ukai on the other side as he clambers out of the vehicle as well. In familiarity, she grips into his forearm once again as they walk towards the forest mansion.

Keishin wasn’t sure what to expect when the two of them walked in, but a home full of people screaming his pseudonym and her name was not on that list. Younger hordes had surrounded [name], greeting her warmly and telling her how glad they were to see her again for the evening. Others were approaching Ukai, telling them how rare and a momentous occasion that the infamous artist Spira was amongst their midst.

“Glad to see you could join us, Spira.” His boss and club owner, Bevelle, approaches the mismatched couple. Bevelle was an alias used by the middle aged woman, her real name unknown to those that didn’t know her know her, and was once upon a time her stage name. While she had chosen a quiet location in the Miyagi prefecture, Bevelle was quite known in the underground scene. Granted, Ukai didn’t know any of that when he’d taken the job. If anything, it was all thanks to her that he was able to learn for his own success as well as granting him the opportunity to learn in the first place. “Good to see you too, trouble.” Bevelle affectionately goes to muss at [name]’s hair, to which she only replies with a cheeky grin.

“How do you know Bevelle?” Ukai presses his lips towards the ear of the woman still hanging onto him as she expertly leads the way to the kitchen. The car ride left her feeling slightly uncomfortable, ashamed even though she would never admit to that, and she knew she definitely needed a drink after it. Part of her was heavily rebuking herself for trying to pry into his mind by asking why he came along, even more so when she put on the one song that shattered her heart every time she heard it. It just excited her that he had it in his library, that he even knew who The Cardboard Swords were, and that he enjoyed the same obscure taste in music as much as she did.

“She’s a close family friend!” The chirp that [name] gives isn’t entirely convincing, like she isn’t telling the truth. Regardless, Ukai washes down his doubt with the beer he was handed, figuring she probably had her reasons. And as soon as the plastic is in each of their hands, [name] downs the contents immediately, hoping to drown out the nerves ebbing from her stomach with vodka. She should have been ecstatic—her old high school crush, her unrequited crush, was here with her, drinking side by side but she can’t help but feel the tension between them—sexual or otherwise.

Just as the two of them down their second round, a piercing voice cuts through the thicket of the masses, calling out her name and capturing her attention. “It’s your song! Come on!” A shrug and a smile crosses [name]’s features as she’s all but dragged away to a different part of the mansion. Much to his surprise, she grabbed onto Keishin to drag him along as well.

The two of them are presented with a myriad of sweaty, rolling bodies—much more gone than Ukai had ever seen at the club itself. It was oddly...sensual, if it could be called that, to see the fluid movements between party goers. Sensual, intimate, strange—all of them could be used interchangeably at this moment.

[name] is dancing with another woman, mouthing all of the words to the current pop song while bobbing and jumping around excitedly before her eyes lock on his. She’s in her element now. All sunshine and smiles like Ukai had seen from on occasion from years ago or most recently at the club, but they’re directed at him for once as she pulls him closer onto the dance floor. The taunting beats and repetitive call of “come on” and the way [name] loosely wraps her arms around his neck as she dances brings Ukai to the realization that this was the end of the line.

The end of the line, because Keishin can’t hold himself back anymore.

Not with the way her hips are grinding against is and she’s laughing warmly and heartily at his slight discomfort and her teeth are glittering off the lights in the dark room like stars in the night sky. Not with the way her head is thrown back and her dress drops low enough to flaunt the expanse of bare skin of her neck and collar bones that are just begging him to sink his teeth in. Not with the way her [eye color]ed orbs are locked with his as she sings along with the music, oddly enough alluding to some form of confession of her feelings.

He can’t fucking take it anymore.

The large hands he has on her hips move just under her arms to hoist her up, [name] instinctively wrapping her legs around his waist to keep her balance. Their eyes are locked, honed in on each other with the rest of the party melting into the background. With her deepest, most wild high school fantasy driving her actions, she grins. “Hi,” is all she says before Ukai cranes his neck back to cover her lips with his.

His kiss is everything she imagined it would be after years of pining. The smell and taste of smoke and wood floods her senses as his tongue laps at the watermelon lip gloss on her bottom lip before seeking refuge within her mouth. His hands, now wrapped around her thighs give intermittent squeezes, either to keep them grounded in reality or just because he needs something to clutch at—she’s unsure of which. In response, her manicured fingernails tangle into his messy blonde locks. Their kiss pours out their desperation, laying it all out on the table for the both of them to see clear as day.

The only thing that prompts them to break apart is the ending of the song.

“You wanna get out of here?” Ukai asks as he tenderly puts [name] back on the ground. As if he weren’t just making out with her moments ago, the motion is delicate and gingerly and almost loving.

“Not yet,” there’s a knowing, smug lilt in her voice as she turns on her heel and throw herself back into the throng of party people. Or rather, attempts. While she’s attempting to flee, Keishin snatches her wrist, pulling her closer until their chests are flush against each other.

“Nuh uh,” the blonde man tuts, “you’ve been asking me to join you at a party all week, now here I am. The hell makes you think you’re leaving my side tonight?” [name]’s grin only grows wider.

“I’ve waited for years for this opportunity, coach, so if you think I’m not gonna have fun with it, you’re dead wrong.” The word ‘years’ constricts the man’s heart—forces his pupils to blow into dilation with her modest, yet blunt confession.

“Years?”

“Years,” she repeats, “ever since that first practice you stumbled into the Karasuno gym as the temporary coach. Why do you think I came to every single exhibition match and tournament? Or came to study and do homework while you guys had practice?” This girl was grinding at every steel line of self-control that was left in Ukai’s body because every word spilling past her lips added an additional ten volts to the sexual tension between them.

“We’re leaving.” He bites out despite the delicate tone. Wrapping his hand around hers once again, Keishin tugs her along time dodge the party goers that threw the two of them curious glances, wondering why they were quick to leave shortly after their arrival. Just to tease him further, [name] almost wants to offer a rebuttal and tell him that they should stay longer and enjoy the show. However, she knows she’s done enough waiting and if he was taking her home, she wasn’t going to argue.

While urgency and desperation was their game, Keishin didn’t cut corners when it came to presenting himself as a gentleman as he helped [name] back into the car. Hormones be damned—he was still going to help a lady into the passengers seat. “You never did tell me why you finally agreed to come out tonight.” She says quietly, as if the two of them hadn’t been making out and dry humping a few minutes prior. “And it’s clearly not because you knew I had a crush on you all throughout third year—“

“Don’t act like you’re the only one with feelings in this.” Ukai grits out, speeding much faster back home than he did on the way to Bevelle’s house. Paying that no mind, [name]’s ears perk up at his own wayward confession. When she asked for clarity, a rumbling groan shakes his chest as he patted down his pockets in search for his nicotine sticks. “I didn’t recognize you the first night at the club because you look different now. Happiness looks good on you.”

“Happiness?” She echos confusedly, turning to face Ukai fully after lighting her own cigarette.

“You used to always look content back then—just barely content and nothing more. And I can’t stop thinking back to those days because you’re this ball of sunshine, kid, and I can’t stop wondering what the hell Suga did to you to dim your shine that badly. I haven’t stopped thinking about you all week.”

[name] is quiet for a moment at his own rendition, his own version, of a confession and she’s stunned. And she can’t tell if she wants to cry or kiss him because this is not that way she ever fantasized this conversation going. It was going better than she dreamed. Better, because the words that Ukai is saying adds an entirely new layer to his amped up personality—he wasn’t just the sexy volleyball coach that she used to pine over. He was a person with deep rooted feelings for justice in the sense of wanting to understand how someone could inflict damage to the innocent and he wanted to rectify said injustices. He wanted to know how someone like Suga could try to dampen her sunlight instead of allowing her to thrive and bloom.

She wants to kiss him, she decides, but since he’s driving, she settles for placing a chaste one on the corner of his mouth. “Serves you right,” she jokes when she pulls away, “it’s been a long four years for me. It’s your turn to suffer.”

“Trust me, this car ride is torture enough.”

[ next ]

#haikyu!!#haikyuu!! imagine #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu oneshot #ukai keishin #haikyuu ukai #hq ukai #ukai x reader #ukai scenario #keishin ukai x reader #dj!au #haikyuu sugawara #sugawara imagine #sugawara koushi #sugawara x reader #nsfhq

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lithyena · 3 years

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What less social media is doing to me

I've deleted my Instagram app a month ago and it's been amazing. I've been using that app intensly for about 4 years, which was mostly a lot of fun, but I've also had my moments where I just wanted to delete it all. There were always things that made me stay though, like keeping up with my friends and just enjoying creating content. But I finally did it, the app is gone and I feel amazing.

The second I deleted it I was so relieved. I felt like I could breathe and this big chaotic and messy IG drawer in my head was free to go into the bin. Yes, Instagram was always swirling in my mind and ever since deleting it I've noticed just how much it's been present in there.

Chapter 1 • how social media can be toxic

I would spend so much time thinking about what I could post on my feed, what would look good, what place I could arrange aesthetically so I could take a nice picture. Sometimes taking pictures would take so much time, without even taking into account how much time I spent editing the pictures, deciding on what order I could post them in and what caption to use. Oh man, the CAPTIONS. I could not for the life of me ever come up with a caption. That shit must've taken up so much time of my life and I was often so fed up with that part of it, but I felt like I had to. It was a whole thing.

Next to that I would spend my days off doing makeup, putting outfits together and taking a million pictures just for the sake of posting some on IG. I did it solely for making content, I was setting a scene that just took so much effort. I didn't have to go anywhere or do it for myself, so it didn't go naturally, you know? It's hard to describe, but I hope you get the gist.

So like I said, I would dress up just for pictures and it would always make me so tired. It's a routine I got used to, but I didn't enjoy doing it. I'd get ready, take pictures, then edit them and be super tired because I've spent hours doing it. I never did it for myself and yes, while it is fun to look back on and see those aesthetically pleasing pictures, the joy of seeing that doesn't outweigh the negative feelings and effort it took to create them.

There is nothing wrong with taking time to create pictures of course, if you enjoy doing it, all the more power to you! It's just not something I'm going to do to myself anymore. I'll still dress up, but only if I have another reason for it, then the pictures will be a fun extra!

So yea, personally for me it's just become very toxic and it took up too much of my time. Not only because of what I've talked about, but also the fact that there's friends who post pictures and stories and me wanting to keep up with those aswell. It just became a bit too much.

Chapter 2 • the positive changes

There's so many things I want to do in my free time. Like keeping up with my hobbies, go outside and walk around in forests, doing things in life and really be present while doing so. When I was active on instagram I'd constantly think about creating content and with everything I did I'd debate whether or not it'd be fun to capture it for my story. Taking that away made me be so much more present, my mind is much more focused on the things that matter and spending my time not in front of a electric rectangle device has just become so precious.

Beautiful things I see or little moments I have are just for me now, they're not tainted by taking pictures of it and taking time to upload it to a silly social platform. It's just happening in the moment and I'm there to capture it into my memories alone. It's so nice.

Here are some things I've noticed since deleting the app:

• My mind isn't super chaotic anymore

• I register more that's going on around me, I'm more present in life

• I'm not as fussy about appearance

• I'm more positive

• there's no weight constantly dragging me down

• I just generally feel better about myself

It's the little things, like not caring as much about my hair anymore. I used to be so focused on the way it looked at all times, because you know, what if I felt like taking a picture? I just made everything so complicated for myself.

Now I care so much less about my hair and it's given me the freedom to play around with it a lot. Because if it doesn't look good it doesn't matter! The thing that matters most now is comfort and me having fun with it. But the funny thing is that it actually looks better now that I'm not being so careful with it anymore, haha!

I'm also taking so much less pictures of just insignificant shit. I don't need to keep up with an IG story or constantly search for pictures that look aesthetic enough to maybe post on my feed. I don't whip out my phone for every little thing and it just feels so freeing to not have that going on in my head all the time anymore.

Chapter 3 • put time in happy things

I was afraid of missing out, but every time I log onto Twitter now I'm just like 🤷 I really don't miss anything. It's just a lot of noise and useless information that I used to consume so much, but really don't see the need of consuming anymore. My quality of life doesn't increase from it so why would I interact with it? This doesn't apply to any of my friends though, I'm still happy to see their tweets and see how they're doing. They are the only reason I'm not off of Twitter yet too.

It's just weird. I used to be SO into instagram and social media in general, but when I think about it now I'm like what's the point. It kinda feels meaningless now. And I think that shows a lot of character development! I'm becoming a better version of myself and deciding to increase my own quality of living instead of choosing to share everything on the internet. It's one of the best things I've done for myself.

One last thing I'd like to mention is that I also have more time to read now! I haven't really done so yet, but I've started reading my all time favourite book again and it is just so nice. I've just gained a lot of time I used to spend scrolling through timelines, that I can now use to pick up reading and other hobbies I enjoy!

I'm sorry if this has become a long post! If you read it all the way through; just know that I appreciate you very much and I hope that if you're struggling with your relationship with social media you'll consider taking some time off, because I assure you that it'll be very refreshing for your soul. Even deleting your apps for a week will bring loads of change in your mental health!

The best thing you can do is to put your phone away and look around you and do things in real life! Take walks, do a puzzle you never got round to doing, start drawing things, read that one book you always wanted to start but didn't. There's lots of things to do that can make your life much more valuable to yourself. Social media is so toxic and I'm so thankful to myself to have stepped away from it.

I chose to live my life more authentically and that's such a wonderful decision I made. Life is precious and I'm here to live it! 🖤

#thoughts #social media #instagram

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bunnylouisegrimes · 4 years

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Episode 9 Review (The Future: What Does It Hold?)

Tagging @coldsoba per request

This episode was a headache for me. I was anticipating it, and although it wasn’t entirely bad and it wasn’t the worst, I think this episode highlights all the bad aspects of this season and brings them together. It brings some of the good that this season brought out together as well, but it’s evident to me now that we’re reaching the end so far that the bad is outweighing the good. This episode has me worried about the future of the series, and angry overall. I’m concerned that if this series does continue and has a season 3, it won’t be good, and it will turn into a shit show like The Walking Dead did (they want a season 3, although, based on the low ratings and low viewership, AMC might cancel, no one truly knows yet, especially if BBC and all that other stuff helps boost it).

Before I start this review, I’d like to say right here and now: this is a pretty critical analysis, and possibly has a bunch of unpopular opinions, but I’m saying it anyways. I’m mad, I’m annoyed, and I’m ticked. Last week’s episode ticked me off, this... Oh, man... just know I’m cool if you disagree with me, but I’m hoping by the end you all understand why I feel this way.

Now, don’t get me wrong: like most episodes of this show from this season, despite entire scenes and plot points being bad, it has great moments to enjoy. Did this episode contain lots of action and intensity? Hell yes, and I liked that. Did it stay true to the book ending so far? In a few ways, yes. Pretty much all the ways it didn’t due to the changes they made that were already questionable were the things I didn’t like, which leads me to this: Do I like the direction the story is going, based on what we know and have so far? Hell no. Of course, we don’t know 100% the direction it’s going until next week’s episode, but right now, I’m very on the fence.

Because there is a lot of bad I’m going to discuss, let’s get the good out of the way.

Lou and Vic in the beginning, as per usual, are sweet and I love them. Tabitha and Lou’s interaction was sweet as well. Seeing Charlie frightened and shook was oddly cute, but also funny. And Wayne and Charlie’s interaction... I’m sorry, it was just adorable. I like the idea of Maggie and Vic going to Christmasland together, that was a good choice (although now... I’m uncertain).

To begin the negativity, we’ll start with Charlie and the house scene. I like Charlie confronting his own fears, it’s a very interesting concept. I find it kinda stupid and confusing Charlie wouldn’t know this house exists in his own mind, I mean, it is a part of his own mind, even if it was in the back of it. Why would he not know? Despite that, we’re gonna move onto the meat and potatoes. Now, Cassie’s POV, based on how she was presented in the show (which I still hate, btw, and I am greatly annoyed with how she is not the abuser she was in the book, but I’ve discussed this already a million times), makes sense. We get why she’s pissed, she should be, although I don’t think she understands that her ex-husband had all of this shit happen to him as far as creating Christmasland and becoming a vampire and all that by having a mental snap. It all happened due to his mental pressure. He didn’t have full control (if any control!) over that entire situation. It happened, his life depended on souls and energy from that moment on, and he had to make do with the shitty end of the stick being presented to him. Christmasland is both good and bad, and vampirism is both good and bad, and Charlie has to try to make do with what he can to give himself and his daughter happiness, and focus on the positives. Cassie could’ve maybe given him at least that credit, but she makes it out like, “You’ve brought her happiness in presents and candy, not making her a woman.” Uh... Cassie? Charlie and Millie became vampires out of his control. All this shit happened, how the hell could he reverse all of it? Is there anyway he could? It’s not even explained if he can, but the writers ignore this fact and make it out to be like, “Look, he’s so evil!” Writers, is there anyway he could change these things, even if he wanted to? “Well, no, not exactly, but look, he’s still evil!” So... you’re not even allowing him to have an opportunity to change, and then when he’s stuck in the situation and making the best out of it, even if it isn’t 100% the best way... he’s still super heinous and evil? “Yes!” Okay... whatever... see this is another reason why it annoys me how they’re writing Charlie as “the worst person in the world,” when really, he isn’t. He’s not an angel, but he is not as evil as this show wants to present. Pretty much all of Cassie’s criticisms are valid, but she could’ve at least given Charlie some credit. Nope! But the thing that really bothered me in the back of my mind was how much better this scene would’ve been had they actually written his backstory properly. I kept thinking how much better it would’ve been if an abusive Cassie comes back to haunt Charlie and taunt him, degrading him, and mocking him, how much more sense it would’ve made. And if Millie pointed these things out to him, it might’ve changed his mind some (he would think, “oh, even my daughter kinda agrees with the abuser”). It works here with the way they portrayed her, despite the point I mentioned about Charlie making the best of shit falling flat on Cassie’s end, but it would’ve been 1000% better if they made her an abuser and she scared Charlie, then Millie brings up similar points and Charlie’s POV starts to change a bit.

(Plus, I’d like to add that by doing that, you’re setting potential up for a Charlie redemption arch, and he wouldn’t have to die, Vic and Maggie wouldn’t have to die, and season 3 has interesting potential, and you still have your main characters that we enjoy).

On the topic of this scene, here is a take a friend of mine gathered from it that I definitely can see as well: The point they were trying to make in this scene is that Charlie is a coward. This is their interpretation of Cassie being ‘abusive,’ they didn't leave it out (her being angry at him) like we thought they would. They wanted to give her a concrete reason to hate him so much and call him out for his bad deeds. Also, this house, which was hidden away at the back of his mind, is a mesh of Charlie's fears and his guilt. Based on his facial expressions and his mannerisms, and how he forcefully held Millie, this was all out of fear and guilt for what he did to them that first time and how The Wraith pretty much consumes you. She's literally trying to tell his stupid ass that they can never leave, otherwise, they'll turn to static, which they will. Millie can't go anywhere because she's stuck there and Charlie knows because he was selfish, he robbed her of her future without intending to. Charlie is highkey a yandere, even for his own kid, but it makes sense because he's never really had anything, Also, as to why he’s sort of controlling in a sense: he's driven by fear and also anger if you think about it. Christmasland is how he projects and saving other children because he had a rough and traumatic childhood, he has some serious mental health issues. This I see 100% presented here too, which is a good aspect coming out of this scene. This season does show us a really vulnerable Charlie as they explore his past and give him a breaking point, which we like! But we both definitely agreed that they wanted to make Charlie more of a dick than needed throughout this whole season. Maybe these writers really wanted more drama, especially Manx family drama, through Charlie acting worse? Not so sure. Either way, it gets on my nerves, and it’s almost inconsistent with the narrative they want to spin. They keep going back and forth with “Charlie’s so sad” (which, I would agree, he is, but they even mess that up and somehow still make him look worse) and “Omg he is the worst person ever.” I hope I’ve explained myself well enough in this area, it’s a very complicated and convoluted topic that has me conflicted and annoyed myself.

I think most importantly, the thing that annoys me about all of this Manx family drama the most is: How tf are they gonna “live normal lives” and “escape?” Millie grabbing onto the ornament prevents her from disappearing, which really doesn’t make sense. I’m sure they’ll clarify it next episode, but how is she gonna become a woman and live a normal life? For Christ’s sake, Charlie can barely understand the modern world as an adult man! You think a kid like her is gonna truly enjoy it or understand it? I have my doubts on this and how they’ll write all of that. Plus, she’s a vampire! If she returns human and all the other kids do when their ornaments break, and this is something that confuses me even in the book... where will they go? Oh yeah, they’ll somehow find normal lives! Honestly, it would make more sense to have them move onto the afterlife. Are they gonna keep them human and alive to make them the stars of the show? That possible concept of, “Oh, the kids are gonna be the stars of the show now!�� No, writers... just no. Nobody is gonna care about that. Again, it’s a possibility, and it’s a possibility I’m not thrilled by personally. I don’t want them to be the stars. They can be awesome supporting characters, but not the main focus. Idk man, I’m just saying right now, I’m not so sure how this whole concept is gonna work and I fear how they’re going to write it.

Next up: Wayne’s shitty behavior. Wayne is acting like a really big asshole, and it’s getting on my nerves. “He’s now a vampire!” I hear someone say. “Of course he’s acting this way!” Yes, but the reason why it’s especially annoying is because Vic keeps trying and trying to get the point across to him, and it’s all for nothing. We know Vic’s opinions and her heartfelt feelings for her son, and she ends up having to repeat herself when she might as well be taking to the wall. What’s the point? Filler? We already know Vic’s determination is strong. In the book, how Wayne was acting was better. He held onto himself, but he also didn’t, but Vic’s words managed to get across to him quite a few times throughout his journey. This would’ve been much better on screen, but the writer’s were like, “HA HA NOPE!” The scene that really angered me: what was the point of Vic making her speech (which was really nice btw) only for Wayne to not listen... you’d think that’d be the scene where he changes, but the writers decided to turn it into a shock value filler moment (similar to Chris’s death, which, btw, all this nonsense is making his death for near nothing). And, let’s not forget my question from last week.. where is Craig in all of this? Hmmm... guess he decided to take a vacation from helping his biological son, because he’s just gone! Why?! What was the point?! He better at least appear next week, but even then... too late now, buster! Probably should’ve been here earlier! I mean, for real, what was the point of Craig’s character at this point? What a waste of potential...

The worst part imo from this entire episode: Okay, so the writers make Charlie an even worse villain, even giving him those subtle sadistic undertones even as Vic is trying to talk to Wayne (alright, I get it, there’s that element to “saving” Wayne that’s vengeful when it comes to Charlie, but it’s honestly just too much darkness; it’s almost out of character, especially when it’s in a scene like this. I get it, he likes the idea of getting revenge on Vic, but does he have to be THIS dark? That laugh he gave was funny, yes, and I couldn’t help myself but laugh just because of how stupid it sounded, but looking at the reason why he laughed... if anything, he would’ve stood there with a smug smile and say something like, “I told you he loves me more.” They make him way too dark and it really takes away from the fact he is a villain with moral code, but these writers have seemingly forgotten that with the exception of the one scene in episode 7 where he condemns Bing’s rape. Of course, the rapist might be getting a redemption arch anyways, not Charlie, but uh... moving on from all that past shit!). Yeah, as I was saying, they make Charlie darker. Okay, let’s forget my opinions on that for a moment: the characters have the opportunity to make him, this super evil and irredeemable villain, weak to the point he couldn’t get up at all... But Maggie stops him from being in this state? WHAT?! That shit is very out of character for her, and it’s very out of character for Vic to just stop! Vic would’ve persisted, and if the roles were reversed, Charlie would’ve persisted. That’s the thing about them both: they are persistent and protective about their kids. Why did Vic need to stop? “We need to find your son!” MAGGIE! You’ve both tried multiple times already! Focus on Charlie when you have the chance! How stupid are you two?! And better yet: Why would Vic drop the weapon?! She would’ve grabbed it!!!! What the hell is this shit?! I can’t even express how stupid this is... I get you can’t exactly kill him, but you could make absolute certain he would be subdued and unable to even have the chance to get up and grab his weapon. But nope! They need to attempt for the thousandth time to save Wayne in the exact same way, when it has shown not to work. You’d think they’d at least attempt to think of something else, even if their options are limited, but nah, we’re gonna do something very out of character instead... why?

Things aren’t looking too good for Maggie, so I have to ask: is Maggie gonna die? And if so, that is beyond fucking stupid. They set up the potential for a plot with Tabs and Mags for the third season. I didn’t pick up that they officially broke up, rather just separated for now, and... for what?! If she’s seriously gonna die, I’m gonna be extremely pissed. That wasted potential and insult to her character would be so fucking stupid. Yes, she dies in the book (in a different fashion, and it’s probably not that great how she goes there either), but look at all they’ve done for her character, especially giving her a girlfriend, a character that’s become even more important. Her death would be questionably more insulting here for sure!

Overall, while there were things I liked about this episode, I am majorly disappointed and concerned for the future of the series. I’m afraid it will take directions that are not good, and if it does continue, I am afraid it will be a living dead show of sorts. I think the only true way this show can carry on and be good is if all our main most important characters (Vic, Maggie, Charlie, Lou, Wayne, and Tabs) are all alive. Now, Vic and Charlie might be the only exception to this, just because they both do die in the book, and although even that is rough and not the best, it is expectant and I think this show can still be good with Maggie, Lou, Tabitha, and Linda taking care of Wayne (I’m not gonna go into the potential with Millie in this scenario because that’s a rocky topic lol). But if this show follows the path of TWD, where we have a whole new cast of characters you’re not really gonna care about and all the old cast you got to know and love is just gone... that’ll be the cherry on top of this shit sundae. I am excited for the concept of exploring the world of other Strong Creatives, as many rumors speculate the next season will contain, but if the show that explored the world of zombies failed by getting rid of pretty much their whole old cast... what about this show? They’ve already messed up quite a few things I don’t like this season I’ve discussed before, and if they go the route of doing anything that can get worse... I can’t describe how disappointing it would be. Not saying things have to be perfect or my way all the way, but it has to be generally good and enjoyable for everyone. Growing attached to a cast of characters only to erase many of them and focus on a new one is not a way that is good and enjoyable for everyone. AMC: This happened with TWD; for the love of God, don’t let it happen with NOS4A2.

As I said in my last review: let’s hope next week is better, and AMC, for the second time in a row, doesn’t deliver a disappointment of a show.

#nos4a2 #nos4a2 vic #nos4a2 charlie #nos4a2 maggie #maggie leigh #charlie manx #vic mcqueen

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the-sparrow-sings · 4 years

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TIMELINE FOR MY SPARROW’S HEADCANON

I want to write a LONG fic series about her life going into the Hero of Brightwall’s life; but I do not have the time/energy to commit to that right now, so here’s a vague timeline since I REALLY want to talk about it anyway lol

Pre-Game

• Her parents were infamous Pirates, Rayven(her father, Hero blood), and Catarina

• Reaver knew them as friends before the girls were born; even held Rose once as a baby(somewhat uncomfortably)

• They were forced by foul weather to dock near Bowerstone some time after Sparrow was born; Rayven was captured and hanged, Catarina escaped momentarily with the girls

• Catarina hands baby Sparrow(around 1 year old) to Rose and tells her to RUN, and SURVIVE; she is then captured; but no one is looking for the children so little Rose escapes with Baby Sparrow

Post-Childhood, Pre-Main Game

• Teresa has a hard and fast rule that Sparrow is not to leave the valley, and specifically not to go to Bowerstone. She is concerned that Sparrow will have her parents’ natural desire for adventure and sign onto a crew for a life of piracy

• Upon reaching Adulthood, Sparrow is frustrated by Teresa assuming she still makes the rules for her; and she sneaks off to visit Bowerstone for the first time since her childhood

• She spends the day/night having a gloriously rowdy time with a man she only knows as Captain/The Captain(Spoiler Alert, it’s Reaver) and she fully intends to join his crew

• He has no idea who she is, though he is immediately reminded of his old friends; and unknowingly recounts tails of her parents adventures to her. He is more than a little astonished that someone drew out the urge to discuss something other than himself

• They spend the night together above Bowerstone’s bar; waking up at the crack of dawn to Teresa standing in front of the bed

• She all but drags Sparrow home with her, leaving Reaver both disappointed and a bit relieved; he was not sure he liked that she stirred up something in him

During The Game

• Sparrow is a Rowdy Girl with a love of fine women, dangerous men, and banditry. She loves the rough&tumble bandit lifestyle, but is good hearted enough that she tends to change towns for the better; this is why she loves Bloodstone, it’s a hard town that never changes

• Feels pressured to marry Alex, and feigns happiness for his sake; trying her best to be busy with quests to avoid being near him

• The Spire all but wipes out her formally sweet nature; seeing her adopt a much darker world view; this is where she transitions to pure evil, and becomes much more direct with her wishes and underhanded with her plots

• At first, she flat out refuses to see Alex after The Spire; she doesn’t see the point of it, and figures if he had any good sense he’d have moved on, since she was never in love with him in the first place

• When Alex eventually catches up with her, she attempts to let him down very concisely, but his entitled behavior toward “his wife” ends with a knife in his gut, and a disgusted sneer on Sparrow’s face

• She recognizes Reaver right away, though she has changed too much for him to recognize her. Her heart aches for the innocent young woman she was when she last saw him

• He puts the pieces together of who she is when he first fights by her side; reminded of fighting alongside her Hero father

• The pair share a moment in that cave, seeming to begin something before the collapsing rocks urge them to keep running

End Game/Post Game, Pre Fable 3

• Reaver steals her kill from her, and she is devastated; her sad state only compounded when Hammer reacts harshly to her desire to bring back her own loved ones

• At the end of things, she finds herself alone again, Rose off who-knows-where, her dog her only companion

• Having grown up in exceeding poverty, she spends her time and her gold buying up property left and right, putting former greedy landlords to death

• On a whim she purchases Reaver’s home, keeping it clear of squatters for him

• She finds his first journal entry, and promptly seals them all away in a locked box, not wishing to invade his privacy

• By the time Reaver returns, Sparrow is Queen; and he is more than thrilled when he sees her summons, an elegantly tied scroll left on his bed; concise in her own handwriting, “Captain, I expect a visit when you return, I’m sure you don’t need my address; Sparrow”

• Now, Reaver is both intrigued and mildly frightened

• He enjoys the prospect of having a shag with the queen (and, though he won’t admit it, he has missed more than her body); but he knows she was...a bit cross with him for leaving so suddenly after that business with Lucien was sorted out

• He is concerned that she may kill him/have him put to death, but ultimately decides that the potential rewards far outweigh the risks (with a healthy dose of understanding that it could prove unwise to ignore a direct summons from the Queen)

• On first glance, Queen Sparrow is hardly the girl he remembers from the tavern, or even the shoot-first-talk-later hero who sauntered into Bloodstone a year ago

• Her rise to power coupled with her emotional isolation have left her bitter; a fair yet harsh ruler. She was loved by many for her low rent prices and the protection she offered; but she kept the nobility on a very short leash, and had little patience for those who would waste her time

• That said, she did seem to be focused on keeping up appearances; at least, Reaver could scarcely believe all the exquisite finery and pompous ceremony was her doing

• Had he not been so gifted with perception, Reaver would have failed to pick up on the tiny cracks in her collected facade upon their public meeting

• She declared him her newest advisor, citing his heroic blood, worldly knowledge, and instrumental role in Lucien’s downfall as credentials enough

• When she received him in her private chambers however, the public mask of Royalty slipped away as she all but pounced him

• After a while, Reaver playfully tosses around the idea of them having a true public relationship; and Sparrow turns him down flat; refusing to make a toy of her heart

• Reaver does not quite understand why he feels disappointed; after all, he’s got a position of High Power in Albion now, and he gets to warm the Hero Queen’s bed with very few strings attached...he should be thrilled

• Eventually, Sparrow faces pressure (both domestic and foreign) to marry

• Reaver offers his “services”, talking of what a good king he would make, but Sparrow refuses on the grounds that his former life of piracy did not amuse every foreign power, and making him king could potentially amount to a declaration of war

• She marries some nobody from the aristocracy; the relationship, as well as the king’s power, being little more than an elaborate puppet show

• Reaver absolutely loathes the king; “Sparrow only has room for one pompous, arrogant, bastard in her life; and it sure as hell isn’t this spindly Lordling”

• The marriage certainly complicates Sparrow and Reaver’s cladenstine appointments; and his unexpected negative feelings almost push him to leave Sparrow’s Court

• Until she comes to his quarters one night, looking frantic and desperate; like she had been pacing around and pulling at her hair

• The king has demanded children, and old Albion Royal Law/Tradition demands she comply; Sparrow however, absolutely refuses to birth that man’s weak and “noble” offspring

• She asks Reaver to give her a child in secret; she assures him that he will have absolutely no fatherly obligations; but if she must bare children(which she knew from her vision of the future was inevitable) she wanted them to be strong with the blood of heroes

• Eventually, Reaver accepts, and Sparrow is sure that the child inside her is his

• Reaver does his best to avoid spending time with her, he has spent centuries avoiding these connections for a reason, after all

• But he can’t shake the hate in his heart each time he sees the king look so prideful of his impending heir

• The Baby is born with a thick tuff of black hair, and thankfully, is Sparrow’s spitting image as he grows

• Reaver does his best to avoid Logan, truly stepping in for the first time when the boy comes up missing

• Sparrow puts together the ransom at once, not willing to risk her child’s life with her usual bravado

• At the same time, Reaver uses his underworld connections to easily sniff out the kidnappers; going in secret to collect the boy before Sparrow even has a chance to leave the castle

• Reaver holds his son for the first time as he ends the lives of the scum who took him with a vengeance

• From that point on, Reaver is focused on watching over the boy; if from a distance

• He becomes prone to undermining the king when he is trying to teach some bullshit Strict Lesson to young Logan; cutting the king down with remarks of how Reaver has SEEN tactics like his in action...and they never bode well

• Reaver does not truly admit to himself his fatherly feelings however, until Sparrow accidentally becomes pregnant

• A little girl with beautiful brunette curls, who stares back at him with his own eyes; when he holds her for the first time, she squeezes his finger tight, and he knows he would move the earth for this child

• Princess Ophelia is a happy girl, running around the castle with very few unpleasantries like “rules” or “structure”, thanks to her intimidating “Uncle” Reaver pushing around the king and anyone else who would dare stifle her

• The King however, does not take kindly to Reaver’s increased intrusion on “his” family; becoming obsessively strict with the children each chance he gets

• Reaver doubles down on his mischief, often making a point to whisk the children away to festivals and other fun outings

• He is overcome with pride when little Ophelia proves to be a crack shot at the carnival’s various shooting games

• Once, a tiny Ophelia ran to him crying because she wished Reaver was her father instead of the king

• Sparrow has to intervene more than once when Reaver decides he wants to outright murder the king

• The king tries to put his foot down with Sparrow; demanding that Reaver be removed from Court and sent away

• Sparrow laughs at him, before recounting the tail of her first husband; and reminds him of the very strict limits to his own power

The Death of Sparrow

• Some time after Logan reaches his teenage years, the Queen is mysteriously assailed by a sudden and dire illness

• In my personal timeline-The Sickness is actually a curse laid on her by Teresa for refusing to follow her directive any longer; but this isn’t revealed until my Post-Fable 3 Plotline

• Reaver sits by Sparrow’s bed as she lay dying- truly and wholly distraught for the first time in centuries

• She grips his hand suddenly, with all the feeble strength she can muster, and the look in her eye tells him that the time he has dreaded is upon them

• She begs-orders him to watch over their children

• He pulls her into his arms. “Sparrow, I need you to know, I love-”

• “No,” she hisses, faint as a breath. “You don’t.”

• He is devastated by her final words. For the first time in perhaps centuries, he has decided to open his heart and admit those words...and she didn’t believe him...and now it’s too late to prove it

• He spends much of his time in the days following her death obscenely intoxicated-more than usual, trying to wipe away the regret he feels for not making her feel loved while she was alive

• Reaver comes to her balcony often, to look out over Albion in the cool night air-and consider hopefully-perhaps foolishly- that the wind ghosting his hair against his cheek is more than just an act of nature

• One night, he arrives to find the king standing in his usual spot; and perhaps it is his own melancholy that moves him-but he actually believes the king has come to mourn

• Until he speaks to him of course. The king is only in the room to decide how he wishes to redecorate it for when he takes a new wife to be queen

• Reaver is enraged by how casually the king speaks; how quickly he thinks to replace Sparrow. His mind fills with the image of some power hungry political climber marrying this idiot for the crown

• Reaver was no stranger to political intrigue. How often did new royals arrange for the tragic deaths of their stepchildren, so that their own children might have a better chance of inheriting the crown? Reaver could not take that chance

• One bullet, ringing off into the night, was all it took to send the King’s corpse crumpling unceremoniously to the ground

• Eventually, Reaver is captured, and Walter(as chief among Sparrow’s advisors) personally orders(and intends to carry out) his execution; however he is stopped by the arrival of the young-now king-Logan

• Ignoring everyone, Logan crouches down to where the guards have forced Reaver to kneel, and simply tells Reaver that he knows, before ordering everyone to leave them in private

• As it turns out, Logan had taken the task of sorting through his late-mother’s things when he stumbled upon Reaver’s journals-and an entry that makes note of his feelings for her

• Following that discovery, Logan had done diligent research and digging; and had come to the conclusion that he and his sister were almost definitely the result of Reaver’s long term affair with their mother

• He demands Reaver tell him everything, and surprisingly, Reaver does. He comes clean about it all-everything from the Court of Shadows to Sparrow’s dying wish

• This is why Logan trusts Reaver to remain his advisor

• The secret of their parontage is kept from Ophelia however. After all, it was a secret for a reason, and she was so young at the time that she could hardly be counted on to protect such a secret; she doesn’t learn Reaver is her father until breaking into his home in search of information

• No longer in danger of execution, Reaver feels he has no choice but to down a bottle or two of fine wine, and write to his former companions of Sparrow’s death

• He keeps it very short. He wasn’t their friend-he wasn’t even on good terms with them

• “She’s Gone; R.” Is all the letters say, and they think him callous and uncaring for it; but they cannot see the waste bin of crumpled papers where his writing had been shaky in his grief or the tears stained the pages

OKAY THAT’S WHERE I AM GOING TO STOP BECAUSE BEYOND THAT WE START REACHING INTO FABLE 3 TERRIROTY, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR READING THIS

#fable 2 #fable ii #fable reaver #mypost #my timeline #sparrow x reaver #longpost #long post #spreaver #reaver x sparrow #fable 2 reaver #fable #fable 2 sparrow

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