#develop my boy on screen cowards

[aspennntree]

I have been watching you for a long time... Since the beginning I have been here... So I must know.. If you could change one part of Rwby What would it be

i’d like to see like. onscreen development for oscar. very annoyed about that

also i have to say this was an extremely threatening message to receive

[chezzywezzy]

Yandere Birdbox (3/5)

Word count; 3.8k

For the first time, Y/n had the concious thought about whether they could use their ability to see their surroundings. They always thought their blindness was a curse, but in the apolcolypse, it had come in usefully. Whether this was only an ability in their sleep, Y/n had yet to determine, but they hoped it wasn’t — Y/n didn’t see any other way to survive.

Y/n laid their head against the counter. They plugged their phone in, dreading the day when electricity was no longer available and Siri — Y/n’s only friend — was silenced. And then came the issue of food. They were stuck. Y’n couldn’t help but ponder death. They were aware of how generally awful they were as a person, and that kept Y/n with a will to live and a will to die.

Y/n was selfish, rude, and a coward. They were bitter at the world for being unfair and punished the people around them the same. Too selfish and afraid to die, but too hateful toward the world to live. It was a conundrum. Y/n figured, though, that their general confusion would be the death of them, as they were too confused on what to do. Y/n had their talents in a paintbrush, not a weapon. Y/n couldn’t see. Y/n hardly knew the area because their father often shipped groceries to their doorstep so Y/n only left the house for exhibitions, interviews, and art supplies. 

Their father. Y/n sat up, grabbing the phone. 

“Hey, Siri. Call dad.”

The phone began ringing. The screen was slightly cracked, but its not as though Y/n cared. The phone rang. And rang. And rang.

“The person you are trying to reach is unavailable. After the tone, please leave a message.”

A wave of sadness and worry washed over Y/n. They recognized that their father was the most important person in their life. Perhaps his phone was dead. Perhaps it was lost. Perhaps he was asleep.

Or perhaps he was dead.

For the first time since hell had descended on earth, Y/n began to cry. They wandered over to the couch to lay down, curling on their side. For the first time in a while, they thought of ‘Last Look’s dreadful day.

“Doctor, why can’t my child see? How can they get their sight back?” their father pleaded.

“Sir, I’m sory, We’ve ran several tests, but sometimes, things like this happen. A hidden gene. A faulty switch in the occipital lobe. Although there is still no noticable differences in their brain development, nerves, or blood work, cases like this happen. It’s unfortunate, and unfair. Sometimes, the eyes shut down entirely overnight from unknown causes. And, currently, we don’t have the technology to do anything about it.”

Their father’s eyebrows furrowed. Although Y/n couldn’t see it, he was losing hope. He wondered if he had somehow failed his only child. 

“I… I did some research. They somehow made a young boy see again —“

“That was a scientific anomaly, sir,” the doctor argued desperately. “And anyway, this clinic is incapable of giving that kind of treatment.”

Y/n’s father began to sob. They are crying, too. The doctor’s words scared them. They clawed and rubbed at their eyes, but their father grabbed their hands, squeezing tightly. He comforted them, whispering sweet words that everything would be alright. That they would make due. That there was nothing wrong with being blind. That it wasn’t the end of the world.

But Y/n was only a child. Their entire future had been robbed. Y/n didn’t know of any blind heros. Anyone out there that made a living or lived independently. Y/n was uneducated. All they knew was that their world had ended, and that they wanted to see again.

And see they now did. Y/n shot up. It was but a blink, but they saw. It was like they physically transcended their body and walked to the door, going right through it. They reached for a canvas, their fingers tracing it like a memory. A man. Middle-aged, beer-bellied, straggling jawline, balding. Pale eyes with a daze. Pounding, over and over. His knuckles bleeding. His clothes torn and bloody. The woman’s corpse beside him, eyes torn open and from her skull, as though his fingers had dug into them to remove them personally. In the woman’s chest, there was an iron rod.

Y/n could still see it clearly. The man was really there, still pounding ruthlessly. Y/n had blocked out the knocking, but with sudden focus, their ears returned to the sound.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

They dropped the brush and went over to the kitchen. They pulled a knife from the drawe, removing the blade cover. The wind was still howling outside, pounding at the windows. They went over to the door.

Y/n suddenly found courage and a voice.

“How are you alive? Why are you here? How did you know I was here?”

The knocking stopped suddenly. With its absense, an eerie silence followed. Y/n suddenly regretted speaking up.

A gruff voice, enchanted yet ery, very dry and cracked, answered. “They showed me true beuty. They want me to show you. Let me give you my eyes, Y/n. I want to give you my eyes —“

“Why is everyone else dead but you? What’s doing all this?” Y/n’s voice was shaky yet steady. 

“…Sinners. All of them. They did not want to see. But I do. You do. They want me to show you it all. Open the door, Y/n. Let me give you my eyes.”

“That’s impossible. I am blind. Please, leave me alone —“

“But you have the sight!” the man suddenly boomed. “They gave it to you a long, long time ago. And now, they will show you everything great and beautiful. Open the door. Open the door. Let me give you my eyes.”

Y/n only grew more confused with every sentence. Nothing made sense. 

“How will you give me your eyes?”

Manic, cracked laughter ensued. “I will tear them from my skull and hand them to you. You must see it, Y/n. It is beautiful! Beautiful, I tell you! Open the door!”

“Leave your eyes at the doorstep. I will take them that way.”

“I wish to see you myself. They speak so highly of you. You are the most beautiful landscape of all. I must see you, Y/n. I must see you and hand you my eyes —!”

Shivers rolled down their spine and they took a step away from the door. Y/n was left with more questions than answers. The whole endeavor was pointless. However, Y/n knew that they couldn’t stand the knocking anymore. And they didn’t trust that this man would just die. Something supernatural had consumed the world. The man’s eyes weren’t normal. Perhaps his biology wasn’t, either.

With that, Y/n didn’t let the fear take over. They unlocked the front door and swung it open. The voice was no longer muffled. They aimed to stab, but the man suddenly bellowed and collapsed to his knees. The man was far more vocally gruesome with a door no longer seperating them. The man bowed.

His scarred, bloody hands touched Y/n’s feet. He scrambled and panted. Y/n is left stunned, allowing the man to grovel at their feet. 

Sobs echoed the empty hallway.

And Y/n was shaking from head to toe.

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” he cried. “They were right! The most beautiful thing in creation!”

His praises fell on deaf ears. Rough hands squeezed Y/n’s feet and they felt overwhelming disgust, overpowering the fear. The hands clawe at their calves and then their thighs. Suddenly, he withdrew, falling silent. His face was drenched in sweat. He glistened with salt and oil. Tears continued to fall, and although Y/n did not know, his eyes were glued to their figure in awe.

And then, he began to claw. He dug his thumb and pointer finger into his eyelids. Y/n stumbled back, hearing the squelch. The man released painful gurgles. Slowly and painfully, he removed his eyes. The man sobbed desperately, and yet all he cried was blood.

Y/n felt a spray against their pants. Y/n had enough. Their selfish, angry side kicked in, adrenaline suddenly bursting through their veins. Gritting their teeth, they stabbed the man in the neck, somehow knowing exactly where to aim. The man gurgled out a cry, dropping his eyeballs and collapsing to the welcome mat. Y/n kicked the man away, feeling their socks get drenched with liquids. The man’s thud was the last sound he made. 

Y/n felt around the corpse for the knife, disgusted. They removed it. 

They slammed the door shut and locked it again.

The corpse sat there. The man lay there, decaying and wet. The eyeballs were completely seperated and long cords spun out from his eyes. Despite the pain he and Y/n had caused, the man was smiling.

Y/n was rattled to their core, turning and sliding down the door. Their hands had intense tremors. They knew damn well they couldn’t stay stuck. The wind was howling, harder and harder. The beast was near. And the insane missionary had found them once. Another one surely could. 

Y/n stayed frozen on the floor, cradling the moist knife like a child, for a very, very long time. It was slowly settling on them that they had commited murder. It didn’t feel like self-defense. The man had worshipped them, for christ’s sake. They couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened, had they taken the eyes? What would they have seen?

They decided to think it over in the shower; they knew they had to move while they had the resources. Siri wouldn’t live forever. Their food supply wouldn’t last. They needed to find a grocery store to camp in — one that wouldn’t be too populated with hypothetical looters.

They also needed resolution on what happened to their father.

When they hopped out of the shower, they began to pack the essentials: their charger, phone, cane, clothing, food, and paints. Everything they’d need to survive, but also live. 

Y/n’s first thought of where to go was the corner store down the block. It’s where they often went for an easy snack. Y/n took their cane and turned Siri on to the corner store. They shoved the phone in their pocket after plugging in earbuds. 

They felt their way toward the elevator. Their ears were keen, but the hallway was silent.Usually, their apatment building was full of hustle and bustle, especially at… god, Y/n didn’t even know what time it was. So, they asked while in the elevator.

“Seven-thirty-three.”

The elevator beeped and the doors opened. More silence. Siri repeated directions, but Y/n knew the way to the front entrance. 

They paused. The beast seemed to follow their every move; it was everywhere. It was the air Y/n was breathing. That much they knew. They hovered, afraid to leave. But Y/n’s will to survive and be selfish was the most important part.

And then they hear it: a screaming woman. Y/n dashed out the door, selfishly believing this was their chance. In Y/n’s mind, the wind would divert its attention, even if it was an entire entity. The screams echoed and grew louder. The wind was bustling and squealing in their ears. They could hardly use their cane, relying solely on Siri’s directions.

“Turn left to reach your destination.”

Y/n skidded to a stop, losing their footing. Y/n grunted loudly, knowing they would probably be left with a nasty bruise. They scrambled onto their knees. They dropped the cane, but as the wind whistled and bustled, the cane was the last thing on their mind. In their world of darkness, they crawled forward, finally feeling at a glass panel. Y/n scrambled to their feet, gripping the handle.

They pulled at it desperately, almost falling again as the door swung open. They felt papers adorn the inside, and a wave of relief washed over them as they pulled the door shut. Y/n was shaking in their boots as they held the position, feeling the wind beat against the door. 

Click.

Y/n tensed, turning wildly and reluctantly releasing the doorknob. Their voice came out as a squeak.

“Who’s there?”

“Don’t move. Hands up.”

A man’s voice echoed in the otherwise silent corner store. The man sounds gruff, and Y/n can tell that the man sounds rather redneck. And by the clicking, the man held a gun. Y/n complied.

The man emerged from behind a shelf, crouched slightly, and had a pistol aimed directly at them. Y/n panted, unaware of the man’s exact location. Their head turned every which way, attempting to locate the man. The man wore a dark leather jacket and was somewhat older. He had a peppered beard and a big bald spot on his head. He wore glasses and ripped jeans, giving off the general aesthetic of a retired biker. 

“Now, what’s it like out there? Have you seen it?”

“I - I don’t know. It’s quiet, sir,” Y/n stuttered. “I’m blind — I can’t see the monster —“

“Bullshit.”

“I dropped my cane right outside the door —“

“I know you’re just like the last guy. Trying to fool me, are you —“

“I’m blind! I’m Y/n L/n — I’m famous, haven’t you fucking heard of me, you fucking loser?” Y/n exclaimed, almost insulted. “Just look out, and you’ll see you fucking cane —“

While Y/n had been ranting and tossing insults at the man, he had progressed silently. Y/n stared out blankly, expression angry and unchanging as the man snuck up on them. Y/n paused, breathing heavily. All they saw was darkness, unaware of whether a gunshot would shoot them dead.

“Boo.”

Y/n jumped wildly, flailing to the ground. They burst into tears, which made the man laugh. He glanced out the paper, noticing the cane. “By golly, I guess you are blind. Or one hell of an actor. You don’t got the same eyes as them, either.”

“Jesus, fuck you —“

The man lowered his gun and chuckled gruffly. “Yeah, yeah. If you saw the world we were living in right now, you’d understand. Now, get away from the door and behind this here counter.”

Without asking, the man grabbed and pulled them. Y/n frowned firmly but allowed it to happen. Behind the counter was a small pile of wrapper trash and a torn up sleeping bag. The man beckoned to sit, but they gathered that once they felt the counter. Their movements were still skittery, untrusting of the man before them.

“So, let’s exchange stories.”

“Stories?”

“My name is Mark. I’m the owner of this establishment, although that doesn’t mean much these days,” he explained. “I followed the news religiously, waiting for something like this. Then, I noticed reports of mass hysteria starting in Italy. I shut down shop immediately, and not even an hour or so later, the news turned to shit, and so did the world outside. I learned that whatever’s out there cannot be seen and all that shit, so I’ve got my trusty blindfold around my neck just in case. And finally, I guess it’s safe here for now, but we sure as hell can’t stay here. It’s a fucking corner store. The supplies aren’t endless.”

Y/n listened intently to his ramblings and, deciding to suspend distrust, nodded and replied. “Yeah, okay. So, I’m blind. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me. I’m the ‘blind painter.’ I had a gallery that day and was heading home when it all started. Uh, and I was fine until I started having… dreams. Seeing things that were there. Like this cult guy outside my door that wouldn’t leave me alone. I actually saw what he looked like in my head. I killed the guy and he was fucking worshiping me. Something about how he wanted me to see. God, he pulled out his eyes —“ Y/n stopped, replaying that moment in their head and shuddering. “Uh, and I came here… Oh. And I’m Y/n.”

“The fuck?”

“I guess this plague affects everyone differently, but if I’d known that, I sure as hell wouldn’t have let you in.”

“It’s a gift,” Y/n insisted anxiously. “A stupid one. But my father always told me god gave me eyes in my dreams. The truth is, I think I’ve seen the monster in my dreams. And when I focused, I could see the man outside my apartment. But only when asleep.”

“Prove it. Show me some of your drawings. You obviously brought the fucking supplies.”

“I haven’t used this notebook in years. It’s only old drafts,” Y/n answered, withdrawing the notebook from their bag. 

“Well, if you’re some fancy painter, it doesn’t really matter.”

Without warning, the man snatched the notebook from their grasp and started going through the pages. He slowly goes through them, ignoring Y/n’s angry expression from the invasion. Inside the notebook was several drafts of pretty locations. Some faces. The occasional animal.

Mark paused at a page, his brows crinkling. “This the monster you saw in your head?”

“What is it?”

Mark described it to them.

“Yes. Although that could have been my imagination.”

Mark continued to stare at the scribbles. It was somehow made of clean yet untidy scribbles. There was a large circle surrounding a large head that had long, spindly tendrils, leaving a cavernous mouth. The thing had slits for eyes, and there was a gleam to the flesh of the beast. It was like a halo over it, and Mark couldn’t help but admire the drawing. 

Then, he turned the page to find another one. He was suspicious, but the drawings were aged and marked with a date from several years ago. This drawing had a clearer face image, showing the tall, slimy forehead. The slits for eyes were open, bulbous, and consumed with black charcoal. The tendrils leaked down the paper like Y/n had switched to paint halfway through.

After that sketch, it returned to an image of a mountain waterfall.

“…Huh. So you’re telling me you saw this shit coming too?”

“Hardly. I thought they were nothing but recurring dreams until now.”

“Well, let me get some food. I think there’s a spare sleeping bag in the back, too.”

Mark rose and weaved around Y/n. Y/n remained still, grabbing their notebook back and getting lost in thought.

They thought about how long they would be able to stay, especially in the company of Mark. Another person meant the distribution of resources, but Mark could also see and shoot. Y/n figured their thoughts were selfish, but the world would probably be much prettier without fellow humans polluting it. Yn didn’t care much bout life, but cared enough that they refused to commit suicide. Y/n wondered if their father was alive —

Y/n heard a door open and assumed Mark was returning. Mark returned with a box of Frosted Flakes and a rolled-up, far newer sleeping bag. 

A sense of safety and exhaustion reached Y/n as they silently munched on Frosted Flakes. The taste was slightly stale, and despite their typical pickiness, there was a sense of comfort. They came to terms calmly with the fact that the apocalypse was upon them. That meant that stale cereal, a warm sleeping bag, and a man with a gun weren’t the worst things in the world at that moment.

“You sure you aren’t possessed?” Mark yawned, perking up and cradling his pistol.

“He said ‘they’’ wanted to give me my eyes back. To give me true sight. The ma worshipped me as a god,” Y/n recalled with a pause. “I wish I was possessed because whatever they are seeing… it must be incredible.”

~~~

Y/n was awoken from a deep, terrifying slumber with animated shaking. “Wake the fuck up!” Mark bellowed. “What are you seeing?”

Y/n scrambled, sleep in their eyes. Mark was on top of things, scrambling for their paint palette and notebook. Y/n felt at them. Some terrified tears escaped their eyes as they scribbled roughly on the notebook paper. Mark was silent and watched carefully as Y/n drew, their gaze staring up fearfully and unknowingly making direct eye contact with Mark.

Y/n suddenly dropped the paint brush and panted. “This. I saw this.”

Y/n handed the notebook over. Some time had passed; according to Mark, they had rationed well, and a week or so had passed. Trust had formed between the two of them. Sometimes, Y/n dreamt and they drew. But based on the violence in their head, Mark must have known something was especially wrong with this one. Y/n often woke up with the sun, according to Mark, but Y/n had the sense that the sun was not up yet.

“I… hope I drew it right. I saw many, many people. A mob. They were walking down a road, dazed and enchanted. They’ve seen it.”

Mak analyzed the work intensely. He was still amazed at his comrade's ability and figured it would be his demise. But at least it kept him on his toes. It made for conversation, too. 

The image depicted rocky, cold, and dying terrain with stale grass and swamplands in the distance. A few abandoned, rotting cars were on a large, spacious road, which was covered in oddly detailed figures. The mob was walking, dazed, just as Y/n had described. The mob was thick, and despite their harmless and dumb expressions, they yielded weapons — anything from crowbars to hammers to guns. 

“That’s Dale. My coworker,” Mark stated, pointing to one of the figures. “We worked at the same local construction company for a while.”

“Local?”

“Local.”

The realization dawned on the pair. Mark examined the road further. “That same road. It’s the main road leading into town.”

“Fuck.”

“Do you know what that means? Why are they coming here?” Mark inquired carefully, perturbed by the situation.

“They’re… coming for me, I think. It won’t take a genius to realize that I moved. Please, we have to go somewhere else —“

“Jesus, I get it. Let’s pack what we can. We can go out to back. And, Y/n, I want you to wear this blindfold. Just in case.”

[misguidedasgardian]

My Last Kingdom's line of thought

Alright... I have a Last Kingdom One-shot published.

I'm not gonna lie, at first I thought (before I saw it), that it TLK was some low budget copy of Vikings, so I never payed any mind to it

UNTIL OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR EWAN MITCHELL APPEARED IN MY LIFE IN THE SHAPE OF AEMOND TARGARYEN

Then I was like... alrighttttt lets give this a shot

AND I LOVED IT, of course not just because of him, but the story and the characters, they are great!

Anyhow... of course the engine in fanfictional mind started turning and of course, I was like... JUST WRITE THIS ALREADY!

Of course in my mind reader had to be a cool warrior, a viking, shieldmaiden.. anyways, but as the story progressed, int he screen and on my mind...I tried to picture her in a relationship with Osferth and... it didn't happen!

I don't know why, I don't see it working, I wrote that one shot... she is the daughter of Bjorn Ironside... (who was a Dane/Swedish, I got it wrong, he is not from Norway)

Anyhow... in my mind the story started to develop quite different... Osferth doesn't dare to formalice things with reader, in the show we see him courting ladies of the night, but nothing too serious, because he can't truly get married....

So he strings Reader along! it got all twisted, he didn't want to marry her, and then their relationship kind of fizzled... then reader can tell she is pregnant, by that point, she leaves Osferth, she wants to settle and farm, Osferth wants fame and fortune, woman and adventure....

So reader goes on her own, maybe settling in Mercia near Aethelfaed,.... anyways... she had twin boys...

At some point, after that huge time jumps between seasons, she meets with Uthred's pretty boys again, she has a hall with her boys... Osferth doesn't know how to deal, (he is a coward)

AND BJORN APPEARS

All his children are dead, reader is the only one left, she is his legacy, Bjorn can tell there is no one of his blood to succeed him as king of Sweden and Denmark... so he goes to find his daughter

AND SURPRISE

He realises his legacy are this two boys

Reader didn't want to tell him who had fathered them... but Finnan ran his mouth... when reader realizes Finnan opened his big mouth to defend the honor (or lack thereof) of Osferth, reader runs to her home to find out her father had stolen her children

WHO HAVE ROYAL BLOOD ON BOTH SIDES, Bjorn goes onto saying to his people his grandchildren are the ones who will unite both saxons and danes and some other delusions of greatness

And then I put Uhtred in a closet and reader starts a quest to retrieve her children...

Of course she seeks help in his father's natural enemy... the Norwegians... and their King Harald (Leo baby I'm coming), Uhtred, FInan and Sithric follow, but just as spectators as reader fights her own father and country to retrieve her babies (four year olds or so)

Harald offers her the Danish and Swedish crown, but she says she is only interested in retriving her children, so he can do as he pleases

They attack Kattegat

She ends up offing her father... and Harald present her as the Queen of Sweden and Danmark

So it evolved in something else! jajaja enterily!

[trashc-anon]

Disney PJO is mellow

post with spoilers, duh. srly I doubt I'm thinking anything new, but I need these thoughts out of my head!

i recently watched Season 1 out of curiosity (i know, so late) and wow! first impression is how they mellowed out almost everything. I'm re-reading book 1 to double check my impressions and coulnd't get past chapter 3 without writing this post, because the changes in tone are so drastic!

HUGE POST BELOW kinda rant-y

First things first: I adore they decided to cast age aproprite actors, make the insanity they go thorugh obviously insane! (im englishing well)

That said: Percy in the books is an angry lil shit! Boy was ready to throw down with anyone and everyone. Series!Percy barely has a funcionting personality. Not dishing on the actor! When the character is supposed to be angry and angst-y, I can see him doing his best <3 My critique is with the writing. It seems they decided to make Percy more approable and relatable as a "good kid" as opposed to a traumatized ADHD student with consistent behavioural issues. It happened in the movies too. Movie!Percy got to be snappy because the actors and audience were older, but not nearly the level of rage and disrespect a 16 year old could have.

Given how mild series!Percy home life is vs book!Percy I don't mind as much as the the series develops because it looks like character development after repeated murder attempts.

Which brings me to point 2 - the reason I can't get past chapter 3: SALLY FUCKING JACKSON! She's a saltless cracker, overgrown teenager still wheeping over her summer romance with "the guy"! I knew the fandom had glorified her, I've seen some posts "hey, did you actually read the book?" And I hadn't since middle school, so my memory was clouded, but fucks sake! I was drinking the emo Kool-Aid to forget that mess of a plot hole. Thank fuck they rebranded series!Sally. She actually has a personality and seems like to know what is what and try to prepare Percy as a demigod who will outgrow her protection.

The diner flashback scene in which she talks to Poseidon helps her "I knew all along" know it all attitude, which doesn't work in the books because as far as she explains it: she and Poseison did the do, she got pregant and they never saw each other again. No reason to be greek mythology geek, definitly not enough to know about camp and the lastest breaking news in the mythic world.

(Poseidon's involvement creates some morality questions for me, some "how are we going to handle some topics later on" issues when episode 3 comes up, but more on that later)

I blinked and missed the reveal that she married Gabe to protect Percy, and the cascading logic of how her different personalities affected that marriage is mindblowing.

It affects the type of Gabe she married, therefore, how much of his abuse was Sally's fault. Series!Sally has agency and talks back, the kind of woman I can see attracting a god. More importantly, if she's making the decision to deliberately put her beloved son in contact with a nasty person whose smell will deter monsters, she won't put up with a monster herself, rather a loser who might as well be stanky trash sitting in the corner for too long. B

ook!Sally just doesn't sell that kind of confidence and since the books are first person POV we have to postulate that over the years Sally fell victim to Gabe's abuse (resulting in her lack of outstanding personality) and justified staying in the relatioship as "protecting Percy", which makes her complicit. Which is not great mom. And I do remember later in the books its resolved off screen and she "marries a nice guy, florishes as a person and has his baby". Errrr.... It's fiction, and I don't care for the mother character abused for the sake of her child to be saved by another marriage and have another child.

3: don't have much to say about Groover, I love him every time. <3 Book!Grover whines more and is a bit of a coward, while series!Groover is more like the sweet resilient pacificist that chooses non-violance. (and a twelve year actor saying "I'm 24" to Ares was hilarious!)

4: WILL ANY INSTALMENT WILL EVER SOLVE THE MYSTERY OF CHIRON AT PERCY'S PRIVATE SCHOOL?

He is the one functioning "trust worthy" adult in the entire camp and he leaves for months at a time to teach at private schools? Leaving behind, I don't know, teenagers and a drunk god to look after the smaller ADHD kids with powers all year round? Does no one see a problem with this? *side eye*

As a plot device it only serves to give Percy A SUPER POWERFUL SWORD WITHOUT HIM EVER HAVING BEING TRAINED FOR IT, and to have Percy trust him before arriving at the crazy camp that regularly send children to their deaths.

(AND THEN THAT PONY HAS THE AUDACITY TO PIKACHU FACE WHEN PERCY IS REAVALED POSEIDON'S KID WHEN ITS IMPLIED THE ONLY REASON HE WAS AT THAT SCHOOL, AWAY FROM HIS OTHER HUNDRED UNDER AGE CHARGES, WAS TO PROTECT PERCY THE BIG THREE KID NO ONE KNEW WAS A BIG THREE KID)

*inhale**exhale* I'm cool I'm cool

I will probably have more thoughts as I reread the book. I think I will write my impressions of series!Annabeth before she turns up in the next chapter so I have a more controled before and after impressions.

so far, overall, I was bored up until episode 3 with Medusa, and boy! that's when you can tell Uncle Rick is involved in the production process. After the first book series being critized for lacking diversity, he did his homework on many polarizing subjects which I appreciate being talked about in middle grade books/ series. And I think that will bite him in the ass when it polarizes the fandom in coming seasons and Disney cuts him out.

See ya!

[botanicallyinclinednerd]

LMK season 4 episode 9:

Oh gosh. Imma kill some bitches, the first glimpse I get of my boy Red Son this season is him fucking captured and restrained on the ground? Someone bout to dieee

Ah fuck

"You are a groveling coward with scrawny ankles" I'm sorry why did this make me laugh. I'm going to save this insult

SANDY IS DELIGHTFUL

All his friends are dead

Yeah dude, get with the program, the name of the game is friendship

Tangs little freak out at getting a silver star was really funny

"Once yielded" okay, so she doesn't have it anymore. What the fuck happened, did they seal it away again off screen?

"A deeply caring and protective creature." Yeah that sounds like Pigsy to me

Hey Macky you dramatic bitch

Okay so the golden glitch thing happens when he's upset

Clearly Macky is suprised by this development

"Go for it guy. I don't care anymore." MK :((((

"Misery kid" Yeah that fits rn

[small-artist-oc-showdown]

And it’s Tumblr, so not only do we have to have a vampire, we have to have an object head!! It’s @lightgriffinsect’s SET NOTATION!! Yes, as in the mathematical concept. Because that’s what he is, but personified! He goes by he/him!

He has a LOT of information, despite only being 2 days old at the time of submission! You know what’s coming!

Now what could the funny math man possibly have about him?

“He's a goofy little guy I created two days ago. Set is the personification of set theory, a math principle that I am bad at and subsequently hate. His puny existence originated with a doodle I absently made in my study resource book, much to the chagrin of my maths tutor. I drew myself angrily shaking my fist at a person with a Venn diagram head, since Venn diagrams are a big thing in sets. Originally it was just supposed to be the Venn diagram, but then I added a little sweat bead in the corner and I thought it gave it a lot of personality and it spiraled from there. Now he's got a mouth and a cute little ξ next to his head since that's one of the symbols of universal set. 

His face, a rectangular translucent sort of screen, essentially IS the universal set. Within it he can display whatever he wants, because it all counts as a subset of the universal set. Set's face functions similar to the screen of a TV head character as he can pull up any diagrams or images he wants on it. The appearance of the Venn diagram typically on his face can change in the number of sets displayed and even in the shading depending on his mood. He's a very expressive lil dude. 

Set is a bit on the smaller side, at a height of 5'7" (170 cm). He also is rather thin, although his figure is more often than not hidden by his outfit. He tends to walk in a harried manner, being a nervous guy, but he can be surprisingly graceful, since he can dance. 

Set prefers wearing modest, loose-fitting clothing like oversized sweaters, and his favorite one is turquoise. He also wears a black top beneath it and black jeans. And he wears three-inch heels like the funky boy he is <3 I may hate sets but I love Set. 

Set is very timid and socially awkward, and a bit of a coward. He has many phobias, including arachnophobia, acrophobia, and agoraphobia. And those are just the ones starting with A. He speaks almost exclusively in set language, a fact that he's quite shy about. It's part of why he usually doesn't approach others for a conversation first. However, he turns out to be very kind and friendly once you get to know him. He's very quiet but likes spending time with people. He's interested in webcomics and digital art, and for obvious reasons he is very good at mathematics. As a result he works as an accountant. He also has a lot of general and practical knowledge and is a fast learner, despite seeming innocent and sheltered at first glance.”

Oh, what a funny little guy! Why should you vote for him?

“He's a silly pathetic boy! The only reason he even exists is because I wanted to make a doodle bashing the concept of sets, which I developed a grudge against in 8th grade (at the age of 13) and am now too committed to let go of. However, in the two days since I have created a persona for this maths principle, I've grown strangely attached to this little guy. He's just so dorky and awkward and timid and I can relate. I bet a lot of people can relate. Set just wants to read webcomics and draw and learn things. He likes his job, something not a lot of people get to experience anymore. I don't know, I had a lot of fun personifying a math concept and building his personality beyond "why do we need this topic". I was quickly able to come up with a fun design for Set that I'm satisfied with. He also just turned out to be very likeable even though he's based off a topic I don't even like. He fits the principle he was based on so well, but he's still got a character beyond that. Vote for him because he's a sweet, sad, and shy little dude, and because he's a character that was made and exists purely out of enjoyment and fun.”

[jadeacereigen]

16. 25 for being unique

Thanks for asking!

(original)

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

HOOO BOY THERE'S A LOT OF THEM AND I'LL PROBABLY FORGET SOMETHING BUT OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD:

-Abused Reigen (I just don't see that being the case in canon despite his fraught relationship with his family. A manga omake implies that he talks to his mom more after Separation Arc, and in the fanbook Reigen says there's been miscommunication on both sides so he'd like to try and patch things up again. To me, this sort of dynamic is a lot more interesting to explore than just "Reigen's family were abusers he'd be better off without". I wouldn't mind the trope as much if it weren't so, so prevalent in fanfic.)

-That Security Guard From S1 (I swear to god he's only so popular because people wanted to draw Reigen yaoi and Dimple was the only acceptable option but they couldn't ship Reigen with a green blob (cowards) so the "hot" security guard came into play) (seriously this guy is barely in the story and unnecessary in fanart/fanfic 95% of the time)

-Horny Reigen (this one is more of a personal gripe but he is so very sex-repulsed/sex-neutral asexual to me. Him being horny/flirtatious just feels so weirdly wrong.)

-Flanderized Terumob (I'm not the biggest Terumob shipper regardless but I feel like so much content has Teru being the flirtatious gay boy so down bad for Mob while Mob is the shy, naive boy and that's frankly not how either of them are by the end of the story. Confession Arc showed Teru that Mob has his weaknesses and that he shouldn't be put on a pedestal cuz they're the same. Mob is also not naive, he can be socially clueless sometimes but he understands basic stuff...)

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

Oof um. Perhaps complaints about how certain characters don't show up a lot towards the end and how their character development is off screen (namely Serizawa and Shou). To me their character arcs were completed satisfactorily, and they didn't need to be given much focus because the story has always been primarily on Mob.

Serizawa's character arc was completed when he joined S&S and started going to night school. We don't need to see him doing that because he's not the narrative focus. Now of course I can understand wishing we got to see more of Serizawa, but I don't feel like it's an actual flaw of the story.

Shou's character arc was completed when his father finally backed down and tried to be better to his family. Getting his father to see sense was always Shou's driving force throughout the story and he finally got that, his arc culminating in Toichiro not sacrificing himself in Confession Arc and Shou shaving his hair in a way that resembles his father, showing they've become close.

One could argue that a character arc can't be completed based on the actions of another character, but I feel like in this case that was kind of the point? Shou felt like he was the only one who could stop his dad, but he couldn't stop him. Not only that, but his dad was never his responsibility especially since he was just 13.

[meandmyechoes]

Kingohger ep19

i know i said this is the first week i hadn't felt nervous but i turned on the computer to write the little pre-essay and got myself worked up thinking about hcs lol the magic of midnights i guess also i woke/was woken up at 5am this morning

homemade extended nitiasa with Blazar-kun :)

START!!

scream JERAMIE DOES SLEEP IN A NET!!!!! HC CONFIRMED

gosh i'm like dying for more Kagu-Yanma common man combo

lmao the throne room has to have best only reliable internet reception

take the crumb of Rita naming Yanma first? But! Rita is on first-name basis face-to-face with the team now!

The OP visual is one continuous shot of them all standing together 😭😭😭😭

"You were worried about me, Kuwagon?" "I'm alright :)" talking-to-the-Shugods Gira is the cutest

Blue and White are making up? YESSSSS Grandson combi? Kidult combi? Prankster combi???

I'll never not laugh at Jeramie calling Racles 'that brat'

Racles stress relief squeeze ball… merch it bandai or you're a coward

hi jeramie you know that iiko grandson of yours called you the culprit 2 episodes ago

they don't have to be showing Jeramie and Yanma walked right past Kaguragi but it's so funny

Suzume can make outward calls the whole time??? (or she's just benefitting from the chaos)

Suzume carrying the whole Shugoddom National Theatre troupe they should've let her train one in those 15 years if only she needn't be kept secret

the reaction difference between improv theatre with kurokos vs. with Shuggodom guards lol

i'm not entirely sure but… if Suzume is helping Racles make sure his guards are safe (because they both know the guards are too loyal to leave their king)…

Douga-san… his old-fashioned loyalty + quick to adapt. lately Douga-san has been shown quite positively huh HEY WHERE'S BOSHIMARU

hi i'd like to donate to the Get Shugoddom's Green Screen A Real Carpet/Brick Road Fund

gawd did not expect my tears to break formation at the orphange reunion

fking flute ver of inferno

the people's recognition *single tear*

this ep is just full power Racles whump huh

Grandson combo

yo nkosopa bgm new arrangement

is racles overacting here 🤔 (racels's second-rate villain act, not yano-san's)

"The King will not escape"… (ep17 title)

??? who's the villain here???

did Jeramie just called Racles worse than 'what came out from the bottom' (shit. he meant racles is shit.)

so Gira doesn't want his brother dead 😏 or does he not want Yanma a killer? 🤔😏

eh iyaiyaiya kingoh can you stop with the tone whiplash??

*claps* good the script remembered to resolve Yanma and Jeramie' conflict in ep13. Grandpa-son combi YESSS

omg Rita-sama 🙇🙇 late to the group henshin and had Morfonia work over time so they can fit Ohsama Sentai into the acronym NERD

[outside the gate] Kaguragi: do we still wait for rita or go in first Himeno: well the boys can't stall much longer i'll have to make sure rita's timing is perfect

[jumping up and down from the awesome fights to OP]

this level of female-female ranger combo action… used to be the crossover extravaganza 😭😭

they can perform such a compliated choreo in such narrow space SAs saikou 😭😭

YES I LOVE THANK YOU FOR BOTH KAGU AND YANMA CROUCHING while dismissingly shooting at MOTW like the grassroots they were

they have six people but divide into 4 groups

literally i'm 3 years old again what's better than Super Sentai

"The only crime I should be accounted for" sigh I know this line will come back to bite us re ep1

Himeno-sama you can't keep acting cute towards Rita to get what you want… They are about to run out of social battery

WINGS WINGS WINGS WINGS WINGS WINGS [FOAMING AT THE MOUTH] WINGS WINGS WINGS WINGS WINGS WINGS [FOAMING AT THE MOUTH]

them getting in each other's way - what kind of basis is this for me to develop a partnership obesession with these two

rita scream i asked for just last night?

duel? DUEL? DUEL??? MY EPISODE 18?? brothers showdown i asked for last week??

they chose a low ground to duel this time

ohohohoohoooo WEDDING YANO MASTAO YOUR RING BETRAYED YOU

Yano Masato = Tom Holland of Kingohger

that's the same mantle as Lionel's…

ngl slightly disappointed at Suzume's boring white dress

this man's soul has left his body

[taamistuffbox]

criminal minds review (season 1 - 4)

Short criminal mind review by me!!

warning: spoilers n bad english (sorry tengo 2 horas de sueño)

season 1 - 6/10

Solid season but the weakest so far imo. The team dynamic is charming but the characters by themselves are a bit shallow. I got the impression it was like a big pilot season.

fav episodes:

1x06 L.D.S.K. - The "i was aiming for his leg" bit is one of the few things i remember from cm when i watched on axn

1x09 Derailed - A break from the usual progression of the episodes also i love greenaway .

season 2 - 10/10

I finished this season in like 2 working days idc!! Elle departure broke my heart. She will be missed but uhhg!! The character development is just chef kiss. I was HOOKED to the screen.

fav episodes:

2x5 Aftermath - May not be the best of the season but ELLE DID NOTHING WRONG!! and that's a hill I'm willing to die on.

2x11 Sex, Birth, Death - I felt so bad for the kiddo. it's so tragic to see him struggle with his mental health. I loved the empathetic take they decided to give it. The end was just raw.

2x12 Profiler, Profiled - I would die for morgan. My heart was shattered in a million pieces watching this. It left me wanting for more morgan-centric episodes. I love his character but sometimes he gets outshined. Not this time!!! the acting was amazing!! Such an intense episode... (I am a sucker for the "hard in the outside-soft on the inside" type of character)

2x15 Revelations - There was no reason to put this episode so soon after profiler, profiled, my poor heart could not take it. Again, spectacular performances!! ofc the episode was heavily focused on Spencer but they did not forget about the rest of the cast. JJ trauma and internal conflict and the crash she had with Morgan!! and the END!! good episode that impacted the rest of the series (on a side note - I would have loved they developed more on spencers addiction but I get why they probably didn't)

season 3 - 9/10

I fell in love with Prentiss!! I was a little bit worried she was going to be Elle 2.0 but I was thankfully wrong. Rossi is great too. they both have great chemistry with the team. it continues with the quality of season 2, however, some of the cases started to feel biiiit repetitive (officially tired of unsubs with "DID")

fav episodes:

3x5 Seven seconds - Interesting plot and great suspense, it deviates from the usual gory stuff and is just pure desperation instead.

3x8 Lucky - MORE MORGAN DEVELOPMENT!!! my poor sweet boy, i have too religious trauma... ik Morgan meant his best when talking to Garcia but i would have shot him if i was her lol. i honestly thought they were about to pull the jealous card for a minute, i was wrong... (sadly). Also freakyy episode. Loved the cannibalism + religious imagery combo

3x9 Penelope - Garcia is one of my faves characters, she is soo cool. finally, they gave her her well-deserved episode. It is impossible to not love her. Garcia and Morgan are dating in my head. I just don't get why the producers don't make them official already!!! cowards!!

3x20 Lo-Fi - Insanly tense, with many twists. I like when they fucked up the initial profile, it feels more realistic overall. Hotch is at his peak here, as well as JJ. Loveee her relationship with Will. INSANE cliffhanger.

season 4 - 10/10

I loved how Garcia appeared more and more. Half of the time she makes the most work. Improves the great work of season 3 but has more interesting cases.

4x3 Memoriam - The dream plot device is a bit cliche and overused, to be honest. This is not the exception. That aside, Spencer's interaction with his family (especially his dad) was so engaging! very emotional

4x16 Pleasure is my business - Aside from that one dude at the end, the unsub did nothing wrong! free my girl. Great plot, great execution. Funny how the literal killer does not seem half as evil as a group of lawyers.

4x17 Demonogy - Great episode, love the aesthetics. More religious episodes, please...? Prentiss is sooo good in this one. Loved her. The music at the end felt super random tho?? lol

4x17 Omnivore - Great twist. Twist in cm are a hit or miss: they are either super obvious or come out of nothing. (not the caseee) Great pacing too. This season did a great job making Hotch a more interesting character.

4x24 Amplification - I had a 2001 anthrax attack hyperfixation in the past so this episode scratched something in my brain.

4x26 ...and Back - Such a crude episode. A reminder that sometimes even if you do everything as you are supposed to, you cant stop certain things from happening. On another note, I am so thankful I am just now watching every criminal mind episode in order, if I had to suffer that ending i would have lost my heart. I now know Hotch obviously does not die but after all the attention he got in this season i would 100% have believed they killed him fr.

[llycaons]

lot of fun opinions on that homophobic shonen protags poll

the debates over yusuke rage. he was openly transphobic on screen, but is also friends with kurama so..hm.

#but I can't believe yusuke has votes when he canonically kissed his bestie#he's a transphobe not a homophobe

obviously there's overlap but! much to consider. he's also someone who grows up a lot during the series and is notably more chill as an older teenager. he definitely said slurs as a 14 yr old tho

ichigo is barely developed but his series is full of stereotypes of gay men as overly concerned with appearance, evilly effeminate, and sexually predatory. 'he has gay friends' says one tag but um citation FUCKING needed! wait shit

#ichigo doesn't understand but he's got the spirit you know? like he thought uryu was gay and tried to be supportive

oh fuck this might have actually happened. okay maybe ichigo isn't the worst but I'm leaving up my earlier thought bc im not a coward

#ive never seen bleach but that guy looks like he'd be an iphone user

ichigo actually predates iphones! but this is not relevant to the discussion

also the tags calling edward a smug atheist bastard vs. his 'love is love' edit lmao

#who the heck slandering Edward Tho!? This boy ain’t give a crap about homo he got better things to worry about. you go little atheist boy.#He the bane of the military existence for a reason that he works for that only keep him around because he good at alchemy. KNOW THE SERIES.

first of all the way this is written is insane. second of all what does being homophobic have to do with being the bane of the military?!

WAIT THERE'S MORE

#who the fuck is calling edward elric homophobic???? yeah he's an annoying atheist but he's so so antifa

PLEASE HE WORKS FOR THE MILITARY

The amount of people saying "edward isnt homophobic" is so funny. The "love is love i see no difference) meme is not the actual edward elric hes a libertarian military brat. Get a grip #''hes so antifa'' you gotta be smoking dick

LIBERTARIAN EDWARD ELRIC

I see why people call yusuke and naruto bi or gay but edward I never really saw it...his friendship with ling seems very hetero to me. fma always came off as a a very cishet series (lest we forget arawaka's 'men are muscular and women are va-voom' doodle + the heteronormative nuclear family ending). and deku and ichigo too I think they're just straight kids

#also izukus homophobia comes from his bully being a fruity bastard

scream?

'most of these protagonists would never be homophobic' I think you've wildly overestimated the average early 2000s 15 year old shonen boy ngl

#kirito vouldnt care less about anything but his friends/harem#he dropped fighting to live out his little nuclear family fantasy#being homophobic isnt on his radar

wow I wonder if having a nuclear family fantasy would predispose you to certain regressive ideas about gender roles and sexual orientation. it's not like most people consciously make an effort to Be Homophobic it just arises from a set of assumptions and stereotypes you're exposed to in a homophobic society....I feel like the person who wrote this may be stupid. this guy is sweeping the poll currently and at least half of the tags that mention him fucking hate him so it sounds like he's a piece of shit. some people are defending him saying he's bi tho. tbh I didn't even think people liked sword art online, famous harem incel incest fantasy about a chronically online gamer boy, in the year of your lord 2024 anymore

back and forths about deku. as a more recent shonen protag he seems less hateful to me but he also seems very het and the author is nasty so. hm

#wtf voted Luffy? he would never. he's literally a pirate

GOOD NEWS EVERYONE PIRATES CAN'T BE HOMOPHOBIC. like I agree but also what an argument, it's kind of nice to see luffy so low since I liked his vibes in the live action but WHO IS VOTING GON??!!!!! you're saying gon is more homophobic that YUSUKE??!!! I don't think gon even knows what homophobia IS and if he did he'd think it was messed up! not a single tag here is disagreeing so maybe they were mistaken votes

goku struck me as foolish yet well-meaning which is what everyone is agreeing.

#also. Goku is aroace spectrum in my hearth. just throwing that out there

god I wish I lived in a world where that meant he wasn't homophobic.

naruto seems to be a mixed bag bc he almost definitely is gay (even tho some ppl in the tags are like umm it's only POSSIBLE) but nobody can agree if he ever stopped being internalized homophobic about it or if he's a more 'confused but he's got the spirit' kind of deal

yuji ranks very low, which also makes sense bc jjk is a newer series and most shonen in the mid-00s had a lot more homophobia in general than they do now. he seems like a decent kid, tho I never finished s1. the pink hair makes him seem chiller than most

kagome is getting mixed reviews but mostly landing on the not homophobic side. having seen nothing of inuyasha I cannot comment. some tags saying she's a fujoshi some saying shes bi some say both

lots of people saying lucy fairy tale so I'm obligated to mention her but idk shit about that show except it looked kinda misogynistic so if she WAS homophobic I'll give her a pass/s

#kirito is the only answer here because everyone else is gay

im sorry but edward and ichigo are like some of the straightest guys in shonen like please

and FINALLY arguments about whether death note should be included, since it was run in shonen jump. it's not a purely action/fantasy series, so that's probably why it was left out, but it WAS targeted towards teenage boys so I guess it would technically count. anyway everyone is saying light would win by a landslide if he was listed

thanks for coming to my breakdown I will probably revisit this in a week when the poll ends

[caesarclowningaround]

Top 5 Jafar portrayal 😜

Dylan Saunders in Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier. no notes A+ best Jafar (or Ja'far, rather)

Marwan Kenzari in the live action Aladdin. This is MY BOY. im gonna PUT HIM in my pocket and CARRY HIM AROUND. FAVORITE. Interesting with an admittedly underdeveloped if not fascinating backstory. There's a nice thin slice of ham below the surface, too, which i love. Please give Marwan something to chew on in Aladdin 2, you absolute cowards d*sney. Let my boy shine. It's what he deserves. I'd watch a whole movie about this fucker

Naveen Andrews in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. Probably the most developed Jafar ever and he's really the best part of OUATIW imo but every time he's on screen, it's really good stuff

Jonathan Freeman in the animated Aladdin. I mean, it's a classic performance! that voice~

Oded Fehr in Once Upon a Time. The writing for his episodes was absolutely atrocious but you can tell Oded is just having a fucking ball, you can't help but love what he's doing

[whatremainsafterthebombs]

Cowardice

The sound of an exploding landmine—like two wooden blocks slamming together—ripped through the air, followed by the inevitable screams. Life is stripped away from those closest to the mine while those who are lucky enough to live face a different struggle: the inner battle of how to respond to what just happened. Such moments tell you much about a person. The brave are separated from the fainthearted, the heroic from the average. In that moment, I had a chance to be a hero, a chance to be brave. Yet, I was neither. For that, I owe.

It was just another deployment to the Stan. Exaggerated bravado, the façade of machismo, served as my smoke screen, under which I strove to conceal my fear from my comrades, even myself. I was an Army Ranger, and fear could not bother me. Despite my invincibility, fear waited. I was standing near the tent in which I slept, demonstrating my fearlessness for my friends, when wood blocks cracked, shattering the peace of the night. The explosion sounded like someone hit a garbage can with a baseball bat. Then there were the screams. It was not until I got to the source of the explosion that I learned that the screams were made by a little boy. I did nothing to help him. For that, I owe.

I had never heard screams like that before. They were almost inhuman, animalistic, slicing through the air like a bullet through water. They could not communicate anything other than suffering. They were seeking an end to the pain, seeking help from anybody who could provide it. I could have provided that help, but I did not. For that, I owe.

The boy had tried to get a bottle of water by working his way through a minefield that had been set up back in the Soviet-Afghani conflict. Yet the boy did not even want the water; he could have gotten some from the river nearby. He simply wanted the bottle to hold some of his trinkets. His family stood on one side of the minefield, all too knowing of the dangers lurking below the ground. I stood on the other side, rendered immobile by my fear. Neither the boy’s family nor I made a move to help him. We watched him die together. For that, I owe.

Upon leaving active duty military service, I returned home to pats on the back and talk of my bravery. I met the woman who would become my wife and we had two children together. I developed a name for myself in college. Life went well for me. People called me a hero for my time in the military. A fucking hero. I was a hero who would not help a dying boy. I reaped the benefits of my time in the military, but could not help a little boy who needed me. For that, I owe.

I was given a chance once to do something, to be something, great. All I had to do was move and pull a boy to safety. I had a chance to be a hero, and I stood by as the last drops of blood poured from the mangled legs of an innocent child.  I had a chance to save a young boy, and I was a coward. My cowardice allowed him to die, in agony and alone. For that, I owe. 

[invaderhogtwopointohno]

Squid Game: Sang-Woo (Spoilers!)

Hahaha you wish your Fave was a Problematic is this dumb bitch. My sweet precious son and favorite character: Sang-Woo!!!

Yes, I know that my boy is trash and he deserved everything he got- but I love him and you can’t take that away from me. My boy Sang-Woo really went through a lot throughout the series and he is the example of the kind of person that is typical of these kinds of games: he only cares about winning because of the sheer amount of money he had the potential to win.

But- despite the fact that he is like that- the show and the writers didn’t depict him to be a monster. Instead, they used subtly and really great character moments to make you realize that anyone of us could easily end up like Sang-Woo.

Sang-Woo is a kid who got out of the bad life. Gi-Hun calls him “the genius” of their neighborhood and a guy who went to a good college, graduated top of his class. He went into business finance and made a lot of mistakes. And Sang-Woo’s fatal flaw as a person is that he is a complete and utter coward. He would rather pretend like nothing in the world is his fault and that things are the way they are and you can’t change them. He puts his mother into a desperate corner and lies and pretends like he is some kind of big shot and refuses to tell her to her face that he is a fraud. He lets her find out through the police.

Sang-Woo also is the one who the most invested in the Squid Game from the beginning. He listens closely to the rules and makes sure that they explain everything perfectly. He is an exploiter of the system and its rules. He uses his smarts and manipulates the people around him to get what he wants.

The biggest show of this is actually at the beginning when he is playing Red Light, Green Light, when he tells Gi-Hun that the best way to survive is to just use someone else as a human shield. THIS IS THE FIRST EPISODE!! This tells us from the beginning that Sang-Woo is not going to stop at anything to get what he wants.

His later betrayals of the group are also not Shakespearen in nature like some of the other characters- its little moments that are downright harsh and sometimes unnessecarily so. In the Honeycomb challenge, he didn’t have to let the others choose the wrong door, he could have easily told them that he thought he had figured out what the challenge was, but Sang-Woo’s need to win and his own self-preservation always wins out over whatever affection or feelings he has towards the others. He even tells them that the only reason he sticks with them is self-preservation and that if he ends up having to betray them, that’s what he has to do.

The moment that he has gone too far and the moment that really sealed his fate in the story has to be his relationship and eventual betrayal of Ali. Their developing relationship in the story was one of the highlights of the series and the actors had such great chemistry. Ali was such a good person and Sang-Woo treated him like a real friend, giving him money for the bus when he hardly had any himself, being the first to let him call him “brother” and their moments together on screen were incredibly beautiful.

That’s what made the Marbles game by far the saddest and harshest dose of reality for the entire crew. Realizing that he had to let Ali die to get what he needed to move on to the next round was incredibly difficult but what made it even more terrifying is that Sang-Woo didn’t even hesitate in his plan to let Ali die. And his cowardice was even more so because he not only tricked him, but he also left before he could face Ali as he was killed. Sang-Woo can’t bring himself to face anything he has done, even the betrayals of his friends because he is too much of  a loser.

After the Marbles game, we see him downward spiral because he doesn’t have anything left- the prize money is within their grasp. He and Gi-Hun’s relationship breaking down further cements that Sang-Woo is ready to do what he needs to win, and he doesn’t care about anything else. He even lies to himself saying that killing Sae-Byeok was in the name of self-preservation because he realized that Gi-Hun had the advantage of teaming up with her to potentially end the entire game.

On their final showdown, he realizes that despite everything that they have done, Gi-Hun is still willing to walk away from everything empty-handed because he has managed to retain his humanity through the entire ordeal wherein Sang-Woo has not. He even is surprised to learn that Sae-Byeok told Gi-Hun not to kill him while he slept because she knew that it would have broken Gi-Hun beyond repair and that he was too good of a person to do that to his lifelong friend- wherein Sang-Woo wouldn’t have hesitated if the roles were reversed.

After their final fight in the game, Sang-Woo is faced with his situation when Gi-Hun manages to defeat him and is going to claim victory. Techincally they both get to walk away with their lives, but that same problem that he has always had is his cowardice. Sang-Woo just can’t bring himself to lose the game and face his mother and consequences of his own actions. He just never takes that extra step towards redemption because he doesn’t want it. He just wants the money to fix all of his problems instead.

Sang-Woo is a great example of what a real participant in this kind of game could be. He makes a lot of great points: he was never outwardly friendly, he listened to all of the rules, and he was ready to do what was needed to participate and win. He never pretends to be anything other than a piece of shit and that is very refreshing because its really Gi-Hun’s continued need to believe in the good of people that blinds him to Sang-Woo’s serious flaws and potential for violence.

[giacomettislament]

I agree SO MUCH with that Cater ask!!! I absolutely love how you write him, especially the way he talks in an almost baby-ing tone to the reader and is very verbal, I think it fits absolutely perfectly and can’t get enough. I love the fact that he has to tell you how good he makes you feel and how you belong to him and only him. LOVE IT!!! 🥴🥴🥴🥴 I also love all the nicknames he gives you. Especially babe and baby cause it’s definitely something he’d say, as it matches with his “trendy” “f-boy” personality.

thank you so much for the praise! twst characters are always so tricky to write, mostly because many of them hide very complex sides of themselves that are difficult to fully portray in fanfiction, so im always very happy to receive any feedback regarding my portrayals.

i think one of the reasons why i find cater so intriguing to write is his flexibility. he's someone who's willing to turn himself into whatever everybody else wants him to be, just to feel like he belongs. he teeters the line between dominant and submissive constantly: always changing, always reacting, always trying to please. he wants to be whatever you want him to be—so long as he still has the upper hand in the relationship. it's that dynamic between almost shameless desperation yet obsessive insecurity that makes him so wildly unpredictable.

and nicknames!! oddly enough, i honestly havent given too much thought about his nicknames than i have for other characters, but "babe" and "baby" definitely seem right up his alley. cater plays his dreamy cute boy persona so terrifyingly well that it's deceptively easy to look past all of his warning signs.

im going to be talking about an idea i may or may not want to tease out in the future (not making any promises here), so ill be placing that under the cut.

content warning(s): explicit content, exhibitionism, possessive themes and unhealthy relationship dynamics

a lot of nsfw blogs do wonderfully at playing with the idea of cater letting his internet presence bleed into his sex life. clearly, as an nsfw blog, i find that idea so, so intriguing and would love to develop that further.

im probably in the minority here when i say that i dont think cater has the capability to blackmail his lover using nudes or other explicit content. cater's whole spheal is that he's a coward, a coward pushed to snapping, and (as ill get into this in the paragraphs following) frankly speaking, he loves you too much to let someone else see you like that for free.

to an extent, i think cater's possessive streak thrives yet also is disgusted at the thought of you being on camera with him. in some aspects, it's the perfect way of showing you off to the world: nobody else can dare to claim that you belong to anyone but him when everyone's seen you stuffed full with his cock, your mouth filled with his name, your body marked and fucked and absolutely destroyed by him. it turns him on ridiculously to think about everyone behind their screens staring at you taking his needy dick, so everyone knows that he's the one who's making you feel so good.

but on the other hand, cater can't bear that kind of sharing either. you're his, and every little thing you do should be for him. those noises that you make when cater fucks you like there's no tomorrow are noises reserved specially for him, moans and gasps that nobody else in the world has heard. seeing all the cute faces you make and the way your body shakes when he forces orgasm after orgasm out of you is the one thing he knows he can be greedy about, because while you're with him, he's the only one who can have all of it.

cater strikes me as the kind of boy where he'll fuck you for hours on camera, eagerly broadcasting it live so that he can show you off and get off on knowing that by doing this, he's forever branded onto your existence. he'll make you cum and cum and cum, until it feels like your insides have been molded to the shape of his dick, until he knows that there's no way in hell that any degree of separation can exist between the two of you.

it'll be so easy to think you're done once he turns the camera off and lets the stream end. but like a nightmare that refuses to end, when he turns to you, his cheery eyes just drop, and his nails practically dig into your skin as he grabs you and throws you back onto his bed, his body aroused and jealous and hopelessly enamored with you. the two of you are far from done: cater will fuck you even more, thrown into a fit of jealous rage as he forces you to tell him everything he wants to hear.

"cay-kun does this because he loves you, okay? you're so special to me that i can't help myself from getting all excited around you... a-and now that everyone's seen how special you are to me, cay-kun has to make you his all over again..."

his hips won't stop snapping into yours, fucking into you like an animal in heat. he doesn't want to stop, he won't stop, he physically can't fucking stop. he swears you must have bewitched him in some way—how else can he explain the burning in his heart and why his body acts so weirdly whenever you're in the equation. he fucks you like he's a virgin: sloppy, messy, cumming inside you each and every time like he's a teenager learning about porn for the first time.

please, please tell him you love him. he'll be so terribly upset if you don't. the closest thing cater has to being loved by you is having sex with you, because that's the only time when he knows your undivided attention will be on him.

and if you don't... he'll fuck the words out of you anyway.

[immobiliter]

META: robin & nancy’s dynamic in st4

okay so the first thing i really want to delve into in terms of season 4 is the dynamic that develops between robin and nancy because i love it very much and it tells us so much about robin’s character. out of everything that i’ve been given for robin this season, her friendship with nancy is easily my favourite ( even though i have blatant favouritism for robin & steve’s dynamic and loved that too in st4, the truth is that st3 was their season ) because it’s nice to finally see robin interact with a girl her own age ( bear in mind that steve was the only character her own age that she interacted with in st3 ). i also didn’t expect these two to get along at the start and i loved how their relationship developed from that.

full disclosure, this is not a shipping manifesto. i’m not really here to talk romantically about robin & nancy, this is mainly a deep dive and character analysis of how they work as a duo rather than inferring any romantic subtext.

so firstly, the most important point is that the friendship that these two develop is so incredibly important for both characters. i don’t have to write nancy to tell you that robin is the first female friend we’ve seen for her on screen since barb and that’s a big deal for her ( and probably explains a lot about how stand-offish she is in the beginning ), especially as robin/barb parallels are everywhere and the duffers are cowards for not doing more with it. then there’s robin, a closeted lesbian in the 1980s who i think has always struggled with making close friends but particularly with other girls because she is always holding a part of herself back. even if she doesn’t have a crush on a girl that she is friends with, a part of her will always be wondering what that friend would make of her if the truth about her sexuality came out, and whether it would change their friendship ( this is also why I believe that robin gets along better with boys in general ). so seeing her become friends with another girl her own age is extremely important both to her and to me tbh.

it’s also the most significant interaction we see for her outside of the steve / dustin triad. she interacts with max a little in the first couple of episodes of st4 ( and i really wish they’d done more with those two ), but it’s clear those two are at the very least acquaintances, whereas with nancy robin is starting completely from scratch. they meet briefly at the end of st3 but it’s very clear they haven’t really interacted since then and definitely don’t move in the same circles at school nor have the same interests.

they are both very different, and at their core their partnership this season fits the classic narrative trope of putting the quirky character ( robin ) up against the ‘straight man’ ( nancy ) for comedic and narrative value, and i find this so interesting and refreshing with robin & nancy because you rarely see this happen with two female characters. i just think it’s neat tbh.

they are both very smart ( no matter how neurodivergent coded robin is, she demonstrates in both st3 & 4 that she is both very perceptive and very intelligent ), but very different sorts of thinkers ---- I don’t write nancy but she strikes me as someone who approaches problems very rationally. she’s the reporter: she looks at the facts, creates a very clear plan of action and then tends to not deviate much from it. she’s stubborn and driven and is less likely to bend or capitulate in the face of resistance. robin, meanwhile, is more of a lateral thinker --- she also looks at logic and facts but she is much more likely to think outside of the box and come up with a creative and unorthodox solution to a problem. there’s a reason sherlock scan is one of her tv tropes and is essentially what happens in the scene where she cracks the russian code: she can create connections that other characters might not have thought about because she looks at things from a different angle to most people. same with the way she comes up with the idea to use customers’ rental history at family video to narrow down the list of eddie’s contacts. i know everyone equates dustin to sherlock holmes but robin is right there okay.

with nancy, this is demonstrated when robin is the one to suggest looking through the weekly watcher conspiracy theory-esque articles, and unlike nancy who dismisses the idea as soon as she sees the elvis article, robin is openminded and patient enough to stick with it until it gets them the result they’re looking for.

robin also strikes me as the better improviser of the two of them, and better at ad-libbing on the spot, as she does when it’s clear that nancy’s tactics to win over anthony at pennhurst aren’t going to work. from the beginning, their trip to pennhurst is absolutely nancy’s plan. she comes up with the aliases, she puts robin in clothes from her wardrobe, she takes the lead ---- right up until the moment that robin intervenes, and that’s also when their dynamic finally shifts into a much more equal partnership. as i said, robin is extremely perceptive when she’s focused and is very good at reading the people around her. she realises that things aren’t going well and quickly formulates a plan on the spot to try and counter it. she even uses her own discomfort with her clothing and playing a role that doesn’t suit her to her advantage by turning it around and using it to appeal to him. everything she says is grounded in truth to help make it more convincing --- even when she talks about victor creel and the ‘forgive me if i want to learn a little bit more about how his twisted, but let’s face it, totally fascinating mind works’ part. i think that is 100% the honest truth. human nature fascinates robin and she loves having the chance to put her mind at work figuring people out. cough cough sherlock holmes steve should have totally tried quoting him to robin instead.

it’s that moment that establishes robin & nancy as equals going forward, and this is where i think about how differently the pennhurst trip would have played out if robin had gone with steve instead. robin and steve are already equals, they have a very natural rapport and their minds work in a very similar way. with nancy, it gave both of them a chance to develop: for nancy, it proved that she needn’t be an independent lone wolf the entire time ( contrast nancy dragging jonathan into her investigations in st3 vs. with robin in st4 ), that she can rely on others and be more open-minded to different perspectives on the same problem. to robin, it was a chance to prove to herself to nancy and to herself tbh. she hasn’t been a core member of the party since the beginning: the only reason she’s involved at all is because she worked a summer job with steve and dustin brought a coded russian message into her place of work lmao. this season was the first season where she was paired up with the entire party ( or at least everyone still in hawkins at this point ) and i think in the face of nancy wheeler’s determination and ambition, and the way she often takes the lead role in the group, robin felt the need to prove that she was just as capable. just as smart. and just as valuable to the hawkins group as a whole.

[maxwell-grant]

What are your thoughts on Jekyll/Hyde and his archetype of the human periodically changing into a monster ?

Jekyll & Hyde was the 2nd horror story I read following Frankenstein, I got it off the same library and it always stuck very strongly with me even before I got into horror in general. I even dressed up as Jekyll/Hyde as a kid for a school fair by shredding a lab coat on one side and asking my sister to make-up claw gashes on my exposed arm and paint half of my face, although in hindsight I think I ended up looking more like Doctor Two-Face than Jekyll/Hyde, but I was 12 and didn't have any Victorian clothing to use so I had to make do. The first film project I tried doing at film school was intended to be a modern take on Jekyll & Hyde, and I didn't get much farther than a couple of discarded scripts

Much like Frankenstein, Mr Hyde as a character and a story is something that's kind of baked into everything I do artistically. And it's not just me, as even in pop culture itself, none of us can escape Mr Hyde. I would go so far as to argue Mr Hyde may be the single most significant character created by victorian fiction, if only by the sheer impact and legacy the character's had.

(Fan-art by guilhermefranco)

Part of what makes Mr Hyde such a powerful and lasting icon of pop culture is that the very premise of the book invites a personal reading that's gonna vary from person to person. Because everyone's familiar with the basic twist of the story, that it's a conflict of duality, of the good and evil sides, but everyone has a more personal idea of what those entail. Some people make the story more about class. A lot of readings laser-focus on sex and lust as the driving force, and there's also a lot of readings of Mr Hyde that tackle it to explore a more gendered perspective, and so forth.

I don't particularly take much notice of the Jekyll & Hyde adaptations partially because the novel's premise and themes have become baked so throughly into pop culture and explored in so many different and interesting ways, that I'm not particularly starving for good Jekyll & Hyde adaptations the way I am for Dracula and Frankenstein. The Fredric March film in particular is one that orbits my head less because of the film itself (although I do recommend it), but because of one specific scene, and that's when Jekyll first transforms into Hyde on screen.

Out of all the things they could have shown him doing right that second, they instead took the time to show him enjoying the rain.

Just Hyde taking off his hat and letting it all cascade on his face with this sheer enthusiasm like he's never been to the rain before, never enjoyed it before, and now that he's free from being Jekyll, he gets to enjoy life like he never has before. It's such an oddly humanizing moment to put amidst a horror movie, in the scene where you're ostensibly introducing the monster to the audience, and it makes such a stark contrast to the rest of the film where Hyde is completely irredeemable, but I think it's that contrast that makes the film's take on Hyde work so well even with it's diverging from the source material, even if I don't particularly like in general interpretations of Hyde that are focused on a sexual aspect.

Because one, it understands that Jekyll was fundamentally a self-serving coward and not a paragon of goodness, and two, it also understands one of the things that makes Hyde scary: He wants what all of us want, to live and be happy. He's happy when he leaves the lab and dances around in the rain like a giddy child, he's happy when he goes to places Jekyll couldn't dream of showing up, he's happy as a showgirl-abusing sexual predator. Hyde is all wants, all the time, and there's not that much difference between his wants, his domineering possessiveness, and the likes exhibited by Muriel's father and Jekyll's own within the very same film, which also works to emphasize one of the other ideas of the original story, that Edward Hyde doesn't come from nowhere. That no monster is closer to humanity than Mr Hyde, because he is us. He is the thing that Jekyll refused to take responsability for until it was too late.

(Art by LorenzoMastroianni)

While many of the ideas that defined Mr Hyde had already been explored in pop culture beforehand, Hyde popularized and redefined many of them in particular by modernizing the idea. He was the werewolf, the doppelganger, The Player On The Other Side, except he came from within. He was not transformed by circumstance, he made himself that way, and the elixir merely brought out something already inside his soul. To acknowledge that he's there is to acknowledge that he is you, and to not do that is to either lose to him, or perish. Hyde was there to address both the rot settling in Victorian society as well as grappling concerns over Darwinian heritage, of the realization that man has always had the beast inside of him (it's no accident that Hyde's main method of murder is by clubbing people to death with his cane like a caveman).

I've already argued on my post about Tarzan that the Wild Man archetype, beginning with Enkidu of The Epic of Gilgamesh, is the in-between man and beast, between superhero and monster, and that Mr Hyde is an essential component of the superhero's trajectory, as the creature split in between. That stories about dual personalities, doppelgangers, the duality of the soul, the hero with a day job and an after dark career, you can pinpoint Hyde as a turning point in how all of these solidified gradually in pop culture. And I've argued otherwise that The Punisher, for all that his image and narrative points otherwise, is ultimately just as much of a superhero as the rest of them, even if no one wants to admit it, drawing a parallel between The Punisher and Mr Hyde. And he's far from the only modern character that can invite this kind of parallel.

The idea of a regular person periodically or permanently transforming into, or revealing itself to be, something extraordinary and fantastic and scary, grappling with the divide it causes in their soul, and questions whether it's a new development or merely the truest parts of themselves coming to light at last, and the effects this transformation has for good and bad alike. The idea of a potent, dangerous, unpredictable enemy who ultimately is you, or at least a facet of you and what you can do. That these are bound to destroy each other if not reconciled with or overcome.

You know what are my thoughts on the archetype of "human periodically changing into a monster" are? Look around you and you're gonna see the myriad ways The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's themes have manifested in the century and a half since the story's release. Why it shouldn't be any surprise whatsoever that Mr Hyde has become such an integral part of pop culture, in it's heroes and monsters alike. Why we can never escape Mr Hyde, just as Jekyll never could.

It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde.

He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close… - Hunter S. Thompson

There is a scene in the movie Pulp Fiction that explains almost every terrible thing happening in the news today. And it's not the scene where Ving Rhames shoots that guy's dick off. It's the part where the hit man played by John Travolta is talking about how somebody vandalized his car, and says this:

"Boy, I wish I could've caught him doing it. I'd have given anything to catch that asshole doing it. It'd been worth him doing it, just so I could've caught him doing it."

That last sentence is something everyone should understand about mankind. After all, the statement is completely illogical -- revenge is supposed to be about righting a wrong. But he wants to be wronged, specifically so he'll have an excuse to get revenge. We all do.

Why else would we love a good revenge movie? We sit in a theater and watch Liam Neeson's daughter get kidnapped. We're not sad about it, because we know he's a badass and he finally has permission to be awesome. Not a single person in that theater was rooting for it to all be an innocent misunderstanding. We wanted Liam to be wronged, because we wanted to see him kick ass. It's why so many people walk around with vigilante fantasies in their heads.

Long, long ago, the people in charge figured out that the easiest and most reliable way to bind a society together was by controlling and channeling our hate addiction. That's the reason why seeing hurricane wreckage on the news makes us mumble "That's sad" and maybe donate a few bucks to the Red Cross hurricane fund, while 9/11 sends us into a decade-long trillion-dollar rage that leaves the Middle East in flames.

The former was caused by wind; the latter was caused by monsters. The former makes us kind of bummed out; the latter gets us high.

It's easy to blame the news media for pumping us full of stories of mass shootings and kidnapped children, but that's stopping one step short of the answer: The media just gives us what we want. And what we want is to think we're beset on all sides by monsters.

The really popular stories will always feature monsters that are as different from us as possible. Think about Star Wars -- what real shithead has ever referred to himself as being on "the dark side"? In Harry Potter and countless fantasy universes, you have wizards working in "black magic" and the "dark arts." Can you imagine a scientist developing some technology for chemical weapons or invasive advertising openly thinking of what he does as "dark science"? Can you imagine a real world leader naming his headquarters "The Death Star" or "Mount Doom"?

Of course not. But we need to believe that evil people know they're evil, or else that would open the door to the fact that we might be evil without knowing it. I mean, sure, maybe we've bought chocolate that was made using child slaves or driven cars that poisoned the air, but we didn't do it to be evil -- we were simply doing whatever we felt like and ignoring the consequences. Not like Hitler and the bankers who ruined the economy and those people who burned the kittens -- they wake up every day intentionally dreaming up new evils to create. It's not like Hitler actually thought he was saving the world.

So no matter how many times you vote to cut food stamps and then use the money to buy a boat, you could still be way worse. You could, after all, be one of those murdering / lazy / ignorant / greedy / oppressive monsters that you know the world is full of, and that only your awesome moral code prevents you from turning into at any moment. And those monsters are out there.

They have to be. Because otherwise, we're the monsters - 5 Reasons Humanity Desperately Wants Monsters To Be Real, by Jason Pargin

(Two-Face sequence comes from the end of Batman Annual #14: Eye of the Beholder)

For good or bad, Hyde has become omnipresent. He's a part of our superheroes, he's a part of our supervillains, he's in our monsters. He lives and prattles in our ears, sometimes we need him to survive, and sometimes we become Hyde even when we don't need to, because our survival instincts or base cruelties or desperation brings out the worst in us. Sometimes we can beat him, and sometimes he's not that bad. Sometimes we do need to appease him and listen to what he says, about us and the world around us. And sometimes we need to do so specifically to prove him wrong and beat him again.

But he never, ever goes away, as he so accurately declares in the musical

Do you really think That I would ever let you go...

Do you think I'd ever set you free?

If you do, I'm sad to say It simply isn't so

You will never get away FROM MEEEEEE

(Art by Akreon on Artstation)