#if i wanna keep things consistent with my plot plan

[heliads]

Hellloooo!!! I don’t wanna add to your workload so if this just piles on, please delete it! 😅😊 I just had an idea for a newt x reader fic where they’re in an established relationship in the Glade and during a bonfire one night the boys all ask newt questions about what it’s like to date reader and how it feels and newt just answers with the upmost sweetness. Reader overhears and fluff ensues!!!!

fluff ensues has got to be one of my favorite plot descriptions. like yeah it absolutely will do that (and no worries, nothing will stop the workload from being! newt just helps make it better <3)

masterlist

Newt is aware that he is a little bit luckier than most. This is a sentiment that he never thought he’d be caught dead believing. Not in the Glade. Not in the Maze. Not anywhere in this surreal mess of a place. Yet it’s on repeat in his head on a day to day basis nonetheless, ticking off the hours like an alarm clock consisting solely of his blessings. 

Newt didn’t think he’d have that much to brag about. No memories means no history he can mention to his equally luckless friends. Still, he’s got one important victory in his life that no one else can even dream of, and that’s the fact that he’s dating Y/N. Yeah, that certainly sets him apart in the world of good things given to kids who can’t quite convince themselves they deserve them. 

Some would say that Newt is being a little dramatic. He would argue that his response is perfectly within reason. One girl has been sent up in all the months that anyone’s been in the Glade, one girl and one girl alone, and she just happened to choose him. Around here, that’s grounds for being nominated for sainthood. 

Newt isn’t going to act like he’s not just over the moon every time he thinks about the whole situation. Against all odds, Y/N fell in love with him. That’s so unreal that Newt has to pinch himself every hour on the hour just to make sure it isn’t a dream. He never tries too hard, though. Just in case. 

He didn’t have many thoughts on love before she came up. There wasn’t really time now, was there? It was just him and the scores of other stragglers making do in their bloody terrible world. You don’t spend much time lingering over potential sweethearts when the closest thing to a Romeo is Gally yelling at everyone in the Glade except his friends.

Not great dating material, to say the least. Even when Y/N came up that one month, though, he still hadn’t fallen for her from the start. He liked her, obviously, she was nice and didn’t test his patience, but he was perfectly content to keep her as a friend, just that. Great expectations have a way of letting you down. Newt’s learned that if you keep your eyes on the ground, stop looking up at the sun and stars, you’ll be able to deal with it a little easier when all your brightest aspirations go away.

He’d done that before and he planned on doing it again. Even as time passed and he realized that his heart had a funny way of speeding up whenever she was nearby, when it occurred to him that his daily routines always had a way of working in chances to see her, Newt forced himself to ignore everything. Maybe he liked the way the morning sunlight always played on Y/N’s face, maybe he could have spent hours wondering over the way her eyes sparkle when she laughs. It was nothing that he could ever commit to treasuring above anything else.

It took several rounds of self-talk and about a dozen different interventions staged by his friends for Newt to get up the courage to tell Y/N how he felt. Hell, it took at least half of those interventions for him to even admit how he felt to himself. Newt had been internalizing for so long that bringing some of those emotions to the forefront of his attention was damned near impossible. Minho, Alby, and a few others, however, were so sick of seeing him ‘mope around like a lovesick fool,’ to quote them specifically, that they were dedicated to the task of getting him in order.

It worked, too. Newt had run through what could have been a hundred speech variations in his head, all mentioning her character or her sense of humor or any one of the millions of things he liked about her best. In the end, he didn’t choose a single one. The second Newt pulled Y/N away from a crowd of their friends for ‘something he needed to say in private,’ every single whirlwind of thoughts storming through his head came to an abrupt stop. He totally blanked out. 

Newt wouldn’t even know that he managed to force any words out at all were it not for the fact that the effects of that interaction are quite obvious. Somehow, Y/N ended up returning his affections, and they’ve been doing pretty well ever since. Newt doesn’t like counting his eggs before they hatch and all that, but he’d go so far as to say that he doesn’t see it ever breaking down for quite some time, if ever. They’re alright. They’re great, and they’re happy, and in a place like this, you take that and run with it for as long as you can. Maybe it’ll ruin itself someday, but Newt plans on pushing that off to the distant future for forever and a day.

In the meantime, Newt gets to think about how lucky he is. Despite the fact that Y/N’s apparently been crushing on him for just as long as he started liking her, and despite the fact that Frypan proclaims on a daily basis that he’s never seen two shanks more alike, Newt still feels like all of this is just one great coincidence. Maybe it was never supposed to happen, but it did, and he’s going to love that and her for as long as he can.

She’s waiting for him now, he thinks. Work is over for the day, and there’s a Bonfire Night happening this evening too, courtesy of the shivering Greenie fresh out of the Box who still can’t seem to keep his shock from showing. The fool to whom this celebration is owed looks like he’s going to keel over, what from the way he keeps half doing a backbend from continually craning his neck up to stare at the Walls, but the rest of them can get drunk and fuck around and generally have a good time. 

Greenies never appreciate their Bonfire Nights enough anyway. It’s up to the rest of the Gladers to show them what it’s like to have fun. Who knows the next time they’ll be able to stop stressing over the ruins of their lives anyway? Newt’s heard half a dozen Gladers proclaim that they only live bonfire to bonfire anyway. They might as well prove it tonight.

Newt meets Y/N on the outskirts of the bonfire just as the dark starts to fall. Dusk kicks up its heels, keeping watch over the revels and hiding the sun, which can never bear to see whatever mistakes they’re going to make next. Y/N holds out a hand to him, one Newt gladly accepts.

“I can’t believe it’s been six months now since I first showed up,” she grins, gesturing towards the Box with her free hand, “Feels like just yesterday.”

Newt snorts. “Time flies when you’re having fun, huh? Trust me, the Greenie Days get faster and faster. I swear I just finished touring the last kid, and now we’ve got another one to keep pestering us with questions.”

Y/N shakes her head, considering this. “Nah, I think this one will be better. He’s too scared to speak above a whisper. If you try, you can just ignore him.”

Newt chuckles. “I’m not supposed to be bullying the Greenies. Alby says I’m meant to set a good example.”

“I saw Alby telling Minho to trip the new kid to see if he’d finally make a sound if he bit the dirt,” Y/N comments, “I don’t think kindness is really in our books.”

Newt arches a brow. “I could see that happening. Did it work?”

“No,” Y/N says, disappointed, “Kid was so scared to move a muscle that he didn’t fall at all. Just kind of stopped walking like he’d hit a wall instead of Minho’s ankle.”

Newt tries to bite back a smile. He’s only half successful. “Shame. That would have been fun to see.”

Y/N laughs. “That’s what I said. Anyways, they’re all over there, near the fire. I think the next strategy is to give the kid some of Gally’s brew in the hopes that it’ll coax something out of him other than his dinner.”

Newt shudders. “Best of luck to him.”

“And to me,” Y/N replies, “I think I’m going to get a glass of my own. See you in a second.”

Newt waves a casual hand in goodbye, watching as his girlfriend weaves through the steadily forming crowds of Gladers in an attempt to track down a drink. He takes a seat near an overturned log, staring into the fire as it disappears into sparks. Six months since Y/N appeared in the Box, so it’s been indeed.

Newt can’t decide whether that feels like a long time or not nearly long enough. Y/N’s changed him in almost every way, that much is obvious. Sometimes, in meeting someone you know will impact you forever, you almost want them to have been around for much longer. Strangers aren’t meant to become your best friends, not until you’ve known them for years and you have scores of memories to share. You want to give them decades in your mind, centuries, as a sign that they’ve been so important to you. Mere months aren’t enough. Surely it should be more.

It isn’t, and maybe that’s for the best. Newt has no memories save for when he came up his own share of months ago. All his friends are new, all his enemies still more recent. Maybe the girl he loves has only been in his life for a short time, but his recorded life is short indeed. Everything is modern. That’s just how it is.

Newt becomes aware of eyes on him and realizes that he might not be the only one reminiscing about when Y/N came up in the maze. A few Gladers have come up by Newt’s side, steadily appearing out of the gloom and smoke to stare at him.

Newt glances at them questioningly, and a few moments later the bravest of them dares to voice their collective thoughts. “What’s it like dating Y/N?” The boy asks, “you know, since she’s the only girl?”

Newt smiles to himself. “It’s great,” he says.

This clearly isn’t the response the other boy wants. “Yeah,” he repeats, “but what’s it like? It’s not like the rest of us have our own girlfriends to compare it with.”

Newt bites back a laugh. “Well,” he begins, noticing out of the corner of his eyes that the other boys draw closer to him expectantly, “it’s like having a best friend, but even better. She’s someone I can talk to at any time, but I don’t have to worry about seeming uncool or weird around her. Y/N knows exactly who I am, the good and the bad, but she’s chosen to be with me anyway. It makes you feel like you can do anything.”

The boy nods, accepting this. “Are you ever worried that she’s going to get tired of you and leave you for someone else?”

“If you’re asking me if I’m worried about competition,” Newt says slowly, “I’d say, don’t think you even have a chance. She’s my girlfriend, you bloody shank, not some object you can steal away. Anyway, obviously I’d like it if she stayed with me a while longer, but I’m not scared, no. I know that we’re happy, and that’s enough.”

The boy’s face flushes scarlet when Newt calls him out, but he seems to have made his peace with it at the end. Newt’s half expecting more questions, but all of a sudden they scatter to the corners of the celebration. A few moments later, the cause of the disturbance becomes obvious:  Y/N herself takes a seat next to him, glass in hand.

“It seems like you had a score of admirers,” she says, lips twitching up into a smile.

Newt groans. “More like your admirers, trust me. They wanted to ask about what it was like to date you. Not something I thought I’d be discussing with the Slicers-in-training, but why not?”

Y/N laughs. “Oh, I know. I have to say, though, it was very sweet. Being with me makes you feel like you can do anything?”

Newt feels his entire face heat up, and he briefly ponders launching himself into the fire to escape it. “I didn’t realize you were eavesdropping. That’s rude, you know.”

Y/N just grins. “I do apologize. It was very sweet, though. I appreciated it.”

Newt rolls his eyes, but he can’t keep a smile off of his face for long. “Does that mean you won’t leave me for some random boy who showed up a few months ago?”

“I’ll consider it,” she assures him, “like you said, though, I wouldn’t worry much. I happen to like being with you quite a bit as well.”

Newt reaches over, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to pull her close. Y/N leans her head on his shoulder, and they stay there for quite some time, watching the embers of the fire curl into ribbons of smoke up in the darkest reaches of the sky. The bonfire dances, their friends shout and clap and laugh all around them, and through it, they keep going. All is well.

tmr tag list: @rogueanschel, @ellobruv, @retvenkos, @neewtmas, @thatfangirl42, @hiya-its-amber, @gods-fools-heroes, @hope92100, @23victoria, @w1shes43, @ilovexavierthrope, @fadedver

[mattsboldyy]

till the stars burn blue | nico hischier

summary: waking up late, chocolate chip pancakes, movies, matching, devs events; all with the love of your life, nico hischier.

words: 2.1k

authors note: it has quite literally been over a year since i’ve written + posted a fic on here. this one doesn’t really have a plot but, i just had the motivation to write something so i wrote this all in one night. i miss my tumblr friends. i’m so so happy to be back. love u so much! thank u for reading - enjoy enjoy enjoy! xoxo

warnings: fem!reader, i can’t really thing of anything else!

you opened your eyes to the bright, sunlit room, feel a pair of strong arms wrapped around you. you took a deep breath in before slowly turning and facing your boyfriend of two years, still sleeping. you closed your eyes, leaning into the crease of his neck. he smiles sleepily before putting his head on top of yours, tightening his grip on you.

you rarely have mornings like these with nico. most mornings are him being at practice before your feet even hit the floor. even thought it was an off day, there was still an event at the prudential center later that provided a chance for the devils players to get closer to the fans. you were still as thankful for today though. as the captains girlfriend, you always organized and planned a ton of charities for the players and fans to get involved in. it could be stressful at times but honestly, you didn’t mind. you always had a special place in your heart for the devils organization and their fans, and they had one for you too. you had been around for a while so mostly everyone knew of you. you really enjoyed going to devils events.

after twenty minutes of dozing in and out of sleep, you agreed to go make breakfast while nico took a shower. you started by putting on your “morning” playlist on the small speaker that sit atop the kitchen counter which consisted of a lot of ‘the lumineers’, ‘hozier’, and noah kahan and really anything else to that effect. you then got out the ingredients to make chocolate chip pancakes, requested by nico himself after coming to the conclusion that today is like a holiday, considering he rarely gets to sleep in. you were focused on mixing the batter when you felt strong arms wrap around you, pulling you deeper into his chest. “you’re so pretty” he said, as he kissed your cheek. you feel your cheeks heat up as you keep mixing the contents of the bowl. “i love you a lot.” he whispers in your ear as you drop the whisk gently, leaning in it on the side of the bowl before you turn around to face him, reaching up and snaking your arms around the back of his neck. “what do you want?” you ask looking up at him. “what? am i not allowed to be nice to my girl?” he asks with a laugh, looking over your shoulder to the bowl. he lets go of your waist and starts mixing the batter with your arms still wrapped around his neck. he starts humming along to the music before you move your hands to wrap around his body as you lay your head on his chest. you feel his heart beat speed up which makes you laugh lightly, “why’s your heart beating so fast?” “you still make me nervous.” he says, making you pull your head from his chest, “nuh uh” you say looking up at him with your head tilted to the side. “yeah huh” he says looking back down at you, making you laugh.

after eating the pancakes, the two of you make your way to the couch, nico sitting down first and opening his arms as you sit to the right of him, pulling your feet up and leaning your back to him, putting your head in his lap. “what do you wanna watch?” he asks, clicking the power button on the remote, pointing it at the tv. “hmm..” you pause, “mean girls!” nico goes quiet. “babe.” he says looking down, making you tilt your head up to look at him. “what! you asked what i wanted to watch!” you exclaimed, laughing. he rolled his eyes before pressing play. “i love you!” you say as you focus in on the movie. “you’re something else.” he says before moving his hands to your hair.

after laying around for the majority of the day, you decided to get up and take a shower while nico spent time watching highlights on the bedroom tv. coming out of the bathroom, you rummaged through nico’s t-shirt drawer, pulling out a devils development camp shirt back from the summer nico was drafted. you put it on before going back into the bathroom to brush out your hair. you sat down on the bed to watch nico go through his closet, pulling things out and asking if they match. “neeks, honey, black pants match with anything.” you say, trying not to laugh at your boyfriend. “oh. good to know..” he says before turning on his heels and going back into the closet. you got up and quickly picked out a red knit sweater from the hanger in your closet, then some loose fitting black leather pants. you sat there in your phone, listening to nico complain about apparently not having anything to wear even though you had to but more clothes hangars for him just a few weeks ago.

“is that what you’re wearing?” he asked after walking out of the closet for the millionth time in ten minutes. “yeah” you said, still looking down at your phone. he paused for a minute before speaking. “can we just match?” you perked up before smiling and jumping up. you squealed, “you wanna match with me?” he nodded before you ruffed his hair and ran into his closed, he turned toward his closet and smiled as he watched you search for his red sweater. “you know the boys are gonna give you a hard time, right?” you called from the closet. “i know, i don’t care.” he said, digging through his drawers, looking for a pair of black jeans.

you decided to curl your hair and do really neutral, soft makeup and put on plat formed black sneakers. you walked out of the shared bedroom to see nico leaned over the kitchen counter on his phone. he stood up when he saw you walk out. he whistled and walked over to you, meeting you halfway, “look at you,” he says grabbing your hand and spinning you. nico never failed to make you feel like the prettiest girl at all times. he always had your face turning red. “thank you for letting me match with you.” he said wrapping his arms around your waist and putting his chin on the top of your head. “thank me? this is like christmas morning for me. i always want to match with you.” you said, swaying back and forth in his arms. “i’d match with you any day schatzi. i’m a lucky man, not every guy gets to go out and match with the most gorgeous girl in the world.” he kissed your head then lifts your face and kisses your lips, “you ready baby?” he asked.

he gets in the drivers side and starts the drive to the home of the new jersey devils. the sun had gone down and the moon had come out. something about night drives in new jersey were so fun. nico had gotten ahold of your hand, leading them to rest in your lap. after the previous song had faded out, along with the radio hosts voice, desire by cannons had come on. nico looked over at you. “what?” you ask, looking at him as he looks away. “i’ve only heard this song a few times but whenever i hear it i think about you.” he said, taking your hand up to his mouth and kissing it repeatedly just as the chorus started.

“here’s the thing,

i can’t stop thinking about you

can’t stop thinking about you

here, just thinking about you

till the stars burn blue”

“i love you.” you whispered. “i love you more, beautiful.”

pulling into the prudential center, you saw fans all along the outside, waiting for their beloved devils players to appear. “you know, you should come with me to sign stuff. the fans would be happy to see you.” nico said, pulling into the parking spot and switching the car off. “you think so?” you ask, looking at him. he leans his head back on the headrest of the car before rubbing your knee. “of course schatzi, they love you.”

you walked along the line of fans, smiling at every fan that you made eye contact with. nico stopped at a pair of siblings: a younger brother and a older sister. the boy was calling nico’s name the whole way down the barrier. “nico i’m such a big fan! you don’t understand-“ the boy excitedly rambled. “how are you buddy?” nico said, signing his #13 jersey and a hat. you laughed, watching the little boy’s excitement. just as you had turned to walk away behind nico, the older sister spoke up, “oh, uh.. hey y/n?” you turned, “yeah?” you said with a smile, nico stopping and turning along with you. “do you think i can get a picture with you?” she asked looking down at her phone. your face lit up, “really?” you ask before correcting yourself, “i mean, of course you can!” you said while turning to look at nico. he had the biggest smile on his face and winked at you. you leaned in as she held her phone horizontally, snapping a few pictures. “thank you so much y/n. i means a lot!” the girl, no older than 13, smiled. “of course sweet girl! it was so good meeting you!” you wave before latching onto nico’s hand. nico continued signing and taking picture the whole way down the barrier.

ten minutes later and you two were at the entrance of the rink. “are you ready?” he asks, offering you his arm, which you take, “yep!” walking into the rink, nico starts introducing you to some people you’ve never met before that worked on the business side of the devils organization, nico starts talking very passionately about hockey, and his role on the team, squeezing your hand every now and then.

after talking with a lot of the “important people” - as you and nico called them - you two decided to go your separate ways. he went to talk to his teammates and you spotted some of the other wifes and girlfriends. “i see your matching with your lady,” jack teased, walking up to the group of devils players, “that’s cute.” jack finished, laughing. nico smiled, “where’s your girlfriend jack?” nico asked, looking around. “oh whoops. sorry bro. i know it’s a tough topic for ya.” he says, jokingly pushing jacks shoulder, laughing along with the other guys. “alright cap, i see how it is. just wait. my time is comin’.” jack joked before starting up a conversation about the curling activity that was set up in the middle of the room. you had been talking to your friends for a while before you noticed a few of them focus on someone behind you. before you could turn around, you felt familiar arms wrap around you that had done the same thing plenty times earlier that day. “hi. jack, luke, and me are wondering if you can join our curling team.” he asked. “yeah i can!” you smiled, “i’ll see you guys later.” saying bye to the group of girls.

you intertwined your left hand with his and wrapped your right hand around his upper arm as he lead you over to the group of people circling the ice. you reached down to your write to get a hair tie, quickly realizing you don’t have one. you turned around to nico, “i don’t have a hair tie and i wanna put my hair up.” “here ya go.” he says pulling the one that belonged to me off of his wrist and giving it to me with a smile. “thank you.”

you surprisingly did pretty well. after the game was over, nico reached up to give you a high five before lacing his fingers through yours. you and nico walked back to the combined group of wags and players, luke and jack following behind you two. you stood there in the circle of people, looking around before you gasped. “oh nico! there’s a photo booth! can we go?” you looked at him. “i was hoping you wouldn’t notice that.” he laughed a little before he was pulled toward the booth.

after the photo booth, you waited for the photos to come out of the slot. after they finally fell, nico immediately took his wallet out of his pocket before taking one of the four strips of paper and sticking it in the clear part.

he pulled you in for a hug, kissing your head. “thank you for being here, schatz. it means a lot. “always, neeks.”

[genshin-obsessed]

Him As a Fake Boyfriend | Genshin Impact

✧ So, my inspiration is from a movie, there are so many like these and they're always fun to me, sooooo I wrote about it! I hope you like it! The "plot" is generic, don't mind me. Also, usually I'll have a template for consistency but I didn't really come up with one here- sorry, I just really wanted to write it lol.

✧ Characters: Diluc, Kaeya, Thoma, Wanderer, Tighnari, Kaveh

✧ Extra: As per usual, (w/n) stands for wanderer's name in the event you wanna use the one you chose

Your sister is getting married, so of course you would be attending. The problem was... your ex was going to be there as well. As much as you disliked them, you had to attend. You had already lied a few times to your family that you did, indeed, have a boyfriend and planned a whole breakup story before actually attending the wedding. That's when your sister mentioned to you that your ex was attending.

Of course, she also told you to bring your boyfriend so that you could show him off. One problem: you didn't have one. So what was your plan?

You were going to hire one.

✧✧ Diluc ✧✧

Well, you're bold to approach him to be your fake boyfriend. You two were... barely friends, really. So he flat out rejected you the first time you asked.

You had to give him a whole explanation, practically begging him to reconsider. It took a while, but he finally accepted, declining when you said you'd pay him.

He told you to consider it a favor, and that he'll definitely be asking for one back in the future. You agreed- seeing as how you had little choice you had.

Diluc is pretty good at faking it. He's the type that keeps around you, comes up with replies really fast. He's good at remembering everything- all the information you gave him.

Definitely a no-nonsense boyfriend. If you're lying to yourself, he'll let you know. He also makes sure to remind you that you lying to everyone won't help either and it's best to resolve the issue quickly.

However, he also plays his role really well. There are no slipups, he's super confident, and he definitely scares your ex. The glares he sends your ex's way are just... so good.

You can help but be attracted to Diluc toward the end... he was pretty amazing...

✧✧ Kaeya ✧✧

He is definitely smirking and making assumptions on why you came to him, specifically. Of course, he teased you for a few minutes but eventually agreed. However, you'd owe him now.

He sat you down somewhere private and asked you seriously why you were asking for this. You gave him a quick rundown of the situation and he listened quietly before affirming that he'd be helping.

He's good at memorizing all your family members names, their faces, likes, dislikes, all that. You give him a lengthy speech before getting to the town where the wedding was going to be.

Kaeya is really good at calming you down, making sure to say the right things when any family member upsets you. He's not all that intimidating at first glance and he's ok with that.

He keeps your ex away by being all over you. The second your ex is even approaching you, Kaeya's arm is around your waist, pulling you against his chest, and kissing your cheek.

Honestly, your entire family is convinced Kaeya is so head over heels for you and keeps telling you that you should marry him soon. Of course, Kaeya happily agrees to it in front of them, but says nothing afterward.

At the end of the day, this was just a fake boyfriend situation. Or was it?

✧✧Thoma✧✧

You and Thoma weren't the closest, but you knew of him and so... you tried anyway. Thoma was shocked for sure and a little unsure at first. But you needed help so... he agreed. He wanted you to keep the money, but you insisted, telling him to just treat it like a job since you two weren't that close.

He had little to no trouble remembering names, likes, dislikes, and problematic people. You explained that some family members were really obnoxious and sometimes got into arguments with one another or insulted you.

Thoma memorized everyone and assured you it would be fine. You also gave him an explanation on that dumb ex of yours. Thoma picked up on your discomfort and touched your shoulder. "Don't worry, we'll be fine."

You two were staying in a family member's large home, in which you and Thoma shared a room. He offered to sleep on the floor but you didn't mind sharing the bed.

Everyone LOVES him. He's entertaining, kind, sweet, and very comforting. If someone says something that upsets you, he makes an excuse to pull you away and immediately says the opposite. Someone makes fun of you? He's telling you how gorgeous you look.

Your ex can't even get a minute with you. The second they look at you and are coming over, Thoma's grabbing your arm and taking you somewhere else.

He's the comforting boyfriend and it almost makes you a little sad when you're both heading back because you know this charade will be over soon. But it was definitely fun while it lasted. Maybe.. you might ask him out to a real date soon.

✧✧Wanderer✧✧

First of all, why him? Second, he wants that payment upfront. Every mora. He's rolling his eyes the entire time you're explaining why you wanted him to help you.

However, he does listen well when you're telling him names and personalities. He asks questions and makes sure he remembers everything to keep from embarrassing you.

He... doesn't stand for anyone making fun of you. Old friends, family, that dumbass ex. Right now, you're his and no one's gonna insult what belongs to him.

It was actually endearing. He may have been a bit too aggressive, but the way he defended you almost made you feel sad you weren't actually with him.

He's, of course, the no no-nonsense boyfriend, letting you know if you're being a doormat for everyone. He is, however, encouraging. Telling you what to do to actually be happy- as an unbiased party watching you crash and burn. That made you laugh for sure.

Your ex had managed to pull you away for a minute, telling you that they were better than (w/n) and that's when your "boyfriend" swooped in. Pretty much insulted and threatened your ex before dragging you off.

All in all, you enjoyed the wedding with (w/n)- a lot more than you thought you would. You were almost tempted to ask him out on a real date. He might've even said yes, who knows...

✧✧Tighnari✧✧

Tighnari thought it was a joke at first and actually laughed before his smile faltered and he apologized. You explained the whole reason- practically holding nothing back.

Tighnari felt bad so he agreed, he also insisted you keep your money. You explained that you'd need to stay at your family's home for a few days and he agreed to that too.

You two went through the family names and all that- but he almost made a point to ask what you were comfortable with. Hugs, kisses, PDA- all that. You knew there wasn't much of a choice, you two needed to look like a genuine couple... so everything was ok.

Tighnari's interactions with your family made him seem like he fit in almost perfectly. Your family loved him, but there were some that were skeptics. Especially your ex. Tighnari simply explained you were a new couple, so you two were still getting used to one another.

He took really good care of you. He made sure you didn't drink too much, he kept you from anyone who didn't like you, countered any insult that was thrown your way, and was just so perfect.

He showed his affection through touches and light kisses, rubbing your wrist before grabbing your hand and placing a kiss on your knuckles. The event went so smoothly with him there.

At the end of it, you were quite sad that you weren't actually with him. You made sure to thank him repeatedly but he only chuckled and waved it off, saying he had fun. You heavily debated asking him out right then and there.

✧✧Kaveh✧✧

Kaveh... wasn't sure. Pretending to be your boyfriend? That would just lead to more problems. Especially if he slipped up. He refused at first, but you really asked him.

He was dead set on rejecting you but when your eyes met his and he saw that desperation in there, he kinda froze up. You really needed help and what kind of man would he be to turn you down? So, he agreed- but he didn't want to be paid for it.

Learning about your family was hard, especially in one day. Of course, that didn't mean he didn't give it his darndest, but he couldn't remember them all before the day you were supposed to be at the family home.

Even if he couldn't remember them all, Kaveh has a very shiny personality and easily won your entire family over. He was so easy going, such a goof, and really kind! Your ex, however, didn't like him.

That was the entire point, every time he talked near your ex, Kaveh just went on tirades about how perfect you were for him and how lucky of a man he was to have such a sweet person loving him. Honestly, your family was already planning your wedding while still at your sister's wedding!

He was definitely the sweet, touchy boyfriend. He always had an arm around you, he often gave you kisses, don't forget dance practice! Honestly, he had so much fun- even if half of it was fake. Before you two knew it, the wedding was over and you were headed back.

You really had fun and throughout the party you kept comparing Kaveh to your ex. He was so much better- kinder, more fun, more loving, even if it was fake. There was a dull ache in your chest as you were going home and you were heavily debating on whether or not you should ask him out for real.

[ilynpilled]

i feel like ive seen too many very odd reads of this whole thing, so i do wanna go through jaime & the brutal murder of rhaegar and elia’s children situation.

first of all, we know jaime’s main function as a kingsguard at 15: he is a pawn in aerys and tywin’s beef. he is a hostage and a means to rob tywin of an heir

this is what rhaegar tells him too. despite jaime’s guilt, it was not a “i am leaving everything in your hands 💔 you are my most trusted knight” being said to an unseasoned teen, rhaegar isn’t dense, but a: “he is tywin’s son, he is the ideal hostage to keep him under control. a crutch for aerys and his dangerous paranoia (even if just to satiate him, which is why he was kept close, again, people knew that aerys was erratic atp.)” we have the actual conversation. rhaegar is open about this, he isnt really tricking jaime here. they also emphasize that he has to stay near aerys. that is his primary role, not anything else. what rhaegar didn’t take into consideration is that tywin, when it comes down to it, will sack the city anyway (neither did he know what would happen at the trident, and how badly the tides will turn, how it will affect aerys and how he will think he was betrayed by lewyn and dorne, how he will not let elia and the children leave etc), the stakes are too great for house lannister and we know tywin will not pick the losing side. it is already a pretty grim situation for jaime, who had witnessed the brutal executions of a bunch of people at this point, to be left alone in the hands of a mad man as someone who eventually becomes solely responsible for the red keep, while also being functionally a hostage while his father decides to betray the crown, but of course, aerys has a bigger plan to retaliate and therefore jaime also has bigger things to worry about.

jaime feels guilt and responsibility about the whole thing anyway, and the way it is read in the most bad faith way imaginable is kind of odd to me. the dream is extremely integral. it reveals things to us that jaime pushes down as a narrator. it peels off the layers. first of all, jaime is explicit about ned’s judgement, the kingslayer complex, and the role that played, and his concious expects ned to show up in the dream as well, but it is revealed to be not actually about that. he, and that external source of judgement and scorn, is not the thing that haunts him. we see that it is a deep sense of failure over being unable to triumph over contradictions. he reflects on this after the dream too: “it was not him. it was never him.” and the message is deliberately delivered by the ghosts of the people that embody that initial quixotic view of the world that he had as a boy.

i have seen people claim that the “light dimming” is meant to indicate jaime lying about not knowing (being aware that tywin can be very brutal and is capable of hurting innocents is different from jaime knowing or suspecting this order). even if that wasnt contradicted in the text (ill get to this), it doesnt seem to work with the dream? the fires also gutter out when he gets condemned for killing the king right after, there is no clear him “lying” consistency here. and even if you go by that interpretation, the flame is unaffected by the claim of “i was with the king”, which would then have to be true (and it is—so again what is jaime meant to do here?) because we know the scaling of maegor’s holdfast was happening simultaneously with aerys being murdered and the wildfire plot being stopped. the main function of this part of the dream is jaime’s light, a “romantic burning out” as george puts it, being destroyed by contradictory oaths and a fundamentally unjust and cynical world. the light being withered is about losing hope & purpose, and failing to keep vows that actually matter. rhaegar’s children, his guilt over them, and the oath they embody (protect the weak, defend the innocent) plague his mind. the “I never thought he’d hurt them” is relevant in a different way. jaime is guilty of being an extension of the lannister regime. he is guilty of enabling it. and this is more relevant to him after this event, in the present. the whole dream operates on three levels: past, present, and future.

it is why this idea comes up with the tysha situation as well. whether he knew or considered it at the time (and i do not personally think he did, or it was compartmentalized) or not is not whats truly relevant. i think the point that is being emphasized is that tywin and his legacy is something that has to be rejected entirely in the present. he knows by now inarguably. no more “looking without seeing.” this justification does not work anymore. anyway, the point is that his light goes out because of the terror of being confronted with these contradictory oaths and impossible situations where these heavy choices have to be made, with devastating costs. the vows cannot compromise. these are situations and choices that destroy a nonexistent ideal that he had always romanticized in every aspect of his life. it is a culmination of the build up of everything jaime held close to his heart being torn down during those two years serving in the kingsguard. it is about the conflict between ethics and morals: “In some queer way, that had been worse than Lord Chelsted’s screaming. “We are sworn to protect her as well,” Jaime had finally been driven to say. “We are,” Darry allowed, “but not from him.” & “After, Gerold Hightower himself took me aside and said to me, “You swore a vow to guard the king, not to judge him.”

but this situation is intentionally impossible in every aspect. morals and ethics conflict. we have the obvious of what do you do when killing the king breaks the oath you swore to protect him? what if not doing it means breaking the oath to protect the innocent? what if your heroes condemn you despite you telling them the full context of this dilemma and make the fire gutter out permanently? what if being with the king (be it to protect him or kill him to save a city) means you are not there to protect the children from your own father (who you are also sworn to obey)? the moral constructs that this society operates with is nonsense, and it is not confronted by people. can the horrors be fought at all? this is how you have someone described as a “very idealistic young man” by george turn into the amoral bitter cynic we see in the actual series who proceeds to revolve his life around another delusion instead, the only one that remains to him, and loses his own moral code due to how extremely it all conflicts with all code of ethics. it results in a cowardly acceptance of the horrors, his selfishness and faux nihilism, and leads to the enablement and perpetuation of evil.

there is a reason this whole thing haunts jaime and his narrative, and starts blending together with the starks in adwd (something jaime is directly accountable for), and is a huge factor when it comes to jaime effectively contradicting tywin’s dogma when he goes with brienne. jaime became that “knight” in many ways, he, by his own admission, became the smiling knight, who he later also labels “the mountain of my boyhood.” but he is not anymore, which is why there are notable anti parallels in that chapter.

when it comes to how much jaime knew back then, i think the text is pretty clear:

1. if jaime knew or suspected that tywin had the massacre of an entire family already in motion the hope of “leaving to make terms” would not really be there. 2. after he is found, crakehall informs him that they secured the city and the castle. jaime points out in retrospect that this was only half true, and that he couldn’t have known about the scaling (and other things) still happening by this point. jaime is under the impression that everything is secured as a result. he orders everyone who yields to be spared. he is also under the impression as per his narration that aegon is still there, safe and alive, and could be a potential king. however, he does become concerned about the possibility of another aerys. there is a reason he climbs the throne here imo. i never read this as “jaime too busy fucking around lol” or “is intentionally letting them die because his blood is in both of them.” again, he orders everyone who yields spared, and is under the impression that the castle is already secured. he even entertains the possibility of tywin being hand to aegon as king (clearly not possible with what is in the middle of happening —and if he even suspects this threat, why is this considered a possibility by him?) until he gets an aerys flashback, and decides against it despite it serving his family. he has a lot of things on his mind right now anyway to figure out tywin’s current strategy when it comes to house lannister (not to mention this is not really how jaime’s brain works, he is not very machiavellian minded) considering he just damned himself by committing one of the most significant oathbreakings in history, and that someone will fill the hole left by the person who had the power to nuke a city, something that jaime has nightmares about nearly 20 years later. and even if he was aware of this threat that he clearly wasn’t, considering the fact that it was happening simultaneously with jaime killing aerys and being found, if he knew and tried to rush over there after killing aerys, judging from the distance, it would have been too late. hence “i was with the king…” in the dream.

[eerna]

Oh that ask you answered about how you would rewrite Callum and rayla's relationship in the show without changing major major details was really interesting and you liked of hooked me with the idea of trying to keep your rewrite within canon realm.

So I wanna ask what would your rewrite be for tdp in general outside of canon realm and do you ever plan on making a fic on it?

Ayy I'm glad, thanks~ I am totally up for some outside-of-canon idea throwing, sounds fun! However, keep in mind I am not saying my vision is what the show should have been like. I am not a professional writer. I can only give some ideas for how to fix the stuff I didn’t like and what would make the story engaging for me personally. And no, I would never write a fanfic based on this. I already have an unpublished 40k+ word TDP fanfic I can't complete because I lost my passion for the series, so going on an epic fantasy writing bender is definitely not in the cards for me. If any of my ideas sparkle anyone's fix-it wires, I give them my blessing to go forth and write it instead of me :) 

You asked for outside canon, but we gotta establish some rules first, because if I turned TDP into a story I PERSONALLY wanna tell, it wouldn’t resemble it at all, so we gotta keep it at least a little canon-consistent. In addition to that, this series’ refusal to disclose important worldbuilding info within the main storyline means my knowledge of its lore has enormous gaps shaped like tabletop guides and video game dialogue screens. I will rely on the wiki for this to the best of my abilities and if most of the lore is totally dropped, don’t blame me. In this rewrite I will establish THEMES, WORLDBUILDING, and CHARACTERS, and then even a bit of the PLOT. I will do my best to adhere to the existing themes and the worldbuilding. I’ll only use the characters already created for the show (while giving them a few new characteristics) and the plot will be only hinted at because dear lord I can’t map out 7 seasons of a TV show in a tumblr post. I am also gonna stay in the Y7 rating range because eff you people who think kids can’t handle interesting stories. There’s gonna be lots of ATLA comparisons because this show insists on trying to be ATLA and I can’t ignore that. Continuing under read more because this got LONG (I had to stop myself almost 8k words in. Someone save me). 

THEMES

TDP is trying to do way too much when it comes to themes - it wants to be complex and nuanced, but it doesn’t walk the walk. ATLA did it best, they kept it simple, but added a hint of complexity. We will do the opposite: we are concentrating on ONE big, nuanced concept that we will be writing around, and peppering in the other stuff as character garnish. The one big theme we will be concentrating on is THERE IS NO TRULY GOOD GUYS IN A WAR. We will be sacrificing the “How do we forgive and forget after the war?” theme because it would require starting the show after the war is officially done, as it is far too large of a concept to be used as a second-act theme (also, I was born first generation after a war, and my answer to that question is not the correct tone for an epic fantasy quest). Instead, we will make it a smaller scale character garnish of “how does this character put aside their hurt and work with the people who have hurt them?”. 

Secondary themes will be: You have to keep your mind open and learn from everyone you meet. Our planet deserves to be treated with respect. Everyone has a place in this world. Love can make people do vile things. Nature VS nurture. Divine right VS meritocracy. Plus other Truths that will be discussed in the following sections.

WORLDBUILDING

Again, ATLA made a very simple system of four (or three) different countries and then went ham with it. We can’t do that because I am not redoing the entire universe, but let’s try making it less overcomplicated while keeping the map sort of the same. The two nations at war are Xadia (as seen in the show) and the Neolandian Empire (includes all the human kingdoms). The areas are generally the same as they are in the currently available lore of the series, unless stated otherwise.

Magic

First, we gotta establish the magic system. The whole arcanum setup can stay the same. The world is made up of six primal sources: the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Earth, the Sky, and the Ocean. A deep connection to one of the primal sources is called the arcanum, and an arcanum means you understand what this primal source brings to the world, and the Ultimate Truth behind it. Once you understand this Truth, you can use the spells (in draconic language) connected to it to manipulate the world around you acting in accordance to this Truth, and this makes you a mage of primal magic. So it isn’t just controlling the elements, the Truths are applicable to a wide range of situations (for example, if you break a plate, you can put it back together by connecting to the Earth arcanum which understands that all things that are now broken used to be of one body and spell it back together). Creatures born to one of the primal sources understand this truth perfectly from the get-go, but they still have to learn the draconic incantations to effectively use spells, which is why not every primal source creature is also a mage. The more difficult the spell, the deeper your understanding must be - the most powerful mages live solely according to their arcanum’s Truth. But since the Truths can be contradictory or uncomfortable to tie to each other, the deeper you are connected to your Truth, the less chances you have of understanding other Truths. Creatures born to one of the primal sources don’t have the ability to fully commit to any other primal source - they can get it in theory, but can’t tap into its magic naturally. They all live in harmony with one another, balancing the world and its inhabitants. But there is one creature in the world born without a connection to any one primal source, but with the cognitive abilities to learn to understand them. That’s right, ALL humans have the potential to understand multiple arcanums, and are only limited by their philosophical abilities. This means our magic system is based on philosophical thought. Magical creatures are naturally predisposed to it, but it limits them, and are the equivalent to people who limit their worldview only to their personal lived experiences. Humans have the potential to gain limitless knowledge, but the difficulty of that path and the disadvantage with which they start out often discourages them from even trying. Magical creatures tend to view humans as inferior because they perceive them as incapable of living the same blessed balance as they do. They see their potential to learn multiple types of magic as a transgression against the ways of the world, and have outlawed any magic done by humans. This means humans were completely dependent on magical creatures for things such as shelter, physical defense, food, et cetera. And if you repeat to someone enough times that they are a parasite on the world and have no right to live in harmony with it, they are going to try and live as separate as possible in their own way.

And here we reach the dark magic. Dark magic can perform the same spells as primal magic - and yes, every single dark magic spell has its primal equivalent. They are simply different means of getting to the same end. However, dark magic skips the “needs a connection to the arcanum” part, and instead consumes the amount of primal magic energy proportional to whatever you need to do. To fix a broken plate with dark magic you need to say the spell, and provide the appropriate amount of primal Earth magic, through a plant or a creature connected to the Earth arcanum. Primal magic is lots of spellbooks, conversations and philosophy. Dark magic is necromancy, recipes, potions, way more scienc-y, as it requires a lot of experimentation and trial and error to determine how much magic needs to get used in spells to achieve the desired effect. Primal magic is borrowing, manipulating, and returning the magic around you to reach the desired effect. Dark magic is taking the magic and consuming it to reach the desired effect. Once you spend all the magic in one area, it takes centuries for it to get replenished again. The only effect it has on the user’s physical appearance is the black eyes for the duration of the spell, but none of that “gray white corpse” look (it looks cool but is way too on the nose). Dark magic use is strictly regulated and its secret closely guarded to ensure it is used only “in service of the Empire”. The humans use magical items in their everyday lives, which the show should showcase - we need to understand how much these people rely on the magic. I am trying to format it as the equivalent of plastic in our world, if you can’t tell - something helpful that’s not bad in small doses, but once you base your system on it, it totally ruins everything. 

History and geography

Xadia was once one land where humans and magical creatures lived together. The archdragons were never rulers - they were revered as gods by Xadians, seen as the embodiment of the primal sources on earth, but they stayed in their heavenly abodes, perfectly in-tune with their arcanums, above all squabbles of mortals. There were no countries, the nations organized in settlements according to their arcanum, but that doesn’t mean there were no conflicts. The primal tribes understood they had to live in harmony to keep the world balanced, but their opposing beliefs kept them at each other’s throats if they got too close to each other, so they all preferred to stay separated into societies that functioned according to the Truth of their primal source. Humans had no tool to deal with the dangers of survival in the dangerous magical wilds, so they too lived in these societies, protected by the primal magicians, but also seen as lesser beings in a magic-oriented world. Deviation from the laws and beliefs of society, including humans doing magic, was seen as a danger to the balance of the world, and some humans preferred to leave and start their own settlements. The settlements were small and fell quickly, but the largest of these was Eboreus, all the way to the inhospitable desert in the northwest of the continent, where dark magic was discovered. Empowered by this new power source, it grew into a kingdom named Neolandia, a safe haven where the humans despised by the magical creatures could find refuge. The dark magic ensured humans held resources for their own survival for the first time, and as their numbers grew, they needed more and more access to magical resources once they spent the ones already in their possession. At first expansion was easy, since the area was all wilderness, and Neolandia grew in strength. By the time they spread to the first Xadian settlement, they were powerful enough to take it on in battle once negotiations fell through, and thus the big war started. The territory ruled by humans split into kingdoms to make it easier to govern. The expansion was stalled over the past 500 years because their numbers stopped increasing, and also because the forces reached the Breach, the mountain range separating the continent in half, which is almost completely devoid of magical properties (aside from the Xadians guarding it). Conquering it would take a long time and a lot of resources that couldn’t be replenished until it is completely passed, so the Empire has to change its war tactics. Katolis, the youngest of the kingdoms, partially resides in the Breach and marks the frontier of the war. Katolians are soldiers, their culture devoted to defending and expanding the Empire. A year ago the king of Katolis and his High Mage did the unthinkable - they snuck into Xadia and slayed Avizandum, the sky archdragon who resided in the Breach. This sent the continent into an uproar, Neolandians empowered as god killers, Xadians angered at the defilement of their most sacred beliefs. Both await what magnificent magic will be unleashed upon the world now that Katolis has such a powerful resource in its hands.

MAIN CHARACTERS

Callum. The fourteen-year-old adopted son of Harrow, the king of Katolis, he doesn’t fit his country’s warrior ideals and feels rejected by both the society and his family. His mother, a Katolian general who famously perished in service of the Empire, married the king when Callum was very young. He is no good at fighting and is scared of war, so he prefers to spend his days hidden alone in some nook, reading poetry and drawing. He has an interest in magic from a lore standpoint, he doesn’t want to try it himself because it’s not something you just dabble in: if you decide to become a dark mage, you stay a dark mage until death. He is kind-hearted and emotionally mature, his mind open to any and all ideas, but this also makes him anxious and insecure - if anything is possible, the world feels unstable. Callum is going to be our protagonist, who we accompany as he learns lessons about the world and himself.

Ezran. We are rewriting the heck outta this little dude. He was supposed to begin his education as the crown prince of Katolis this spring, as he has just turned 10, but for some reason his father delayed it. Ez is very glad for this, as he quite enjoys being a carefree little kid with no responsibilities. He is everything Callum isn’t - social, silly, optimistic, and energetic. He loves the entire world and tells stories of the most basic things with the wonder of a fairy tale. This means that when he tells people he can talk to animals, they smile at him indulgently and marvel at the prince’s creativity. Ezran as a character is supposed to embody a child’s lack of awareness when it comes to differences between people - he sees everyone as his friend, and believes everyone is the same. The Earth arcanum follows the same principle, and here is where his ability to speak to animals stems from, even if he is totally unaware that he is doing magic. He is the kid in the zombie apocalypse - you don’t want him to be corrupted because he symbolizes the potential of future generations. However, at no point are we making him a monologuing mouthpiece or the best king who ever lived, since his story is in his potential to grow, and not his perfection as he is. I am writing Bait out because I honestly hate his role as an useless damsel in distress, and the role of the animal companion is already filled by the title character, and it’s not like I can write HIM out.

Harrow. The king of Katolis is meant to be Ezran 30 years into the future, an optimist who forgot how to believe in a better world because he was pressured to grow into the role expected of him. His wife, general Sarai, and his High Mage, Viren, supported (read: pressured lovingly) him and made him into the brave, fierce king he is today. A year ago he led a bold invasion into Xadia which was meant to turn the tides of the war - the plan was to kill Avizandum and harvest his body for magic for years to come, even subduing the Breach along the way. However, once the archdragon was slain, his body dissolved before it could be transported back to Katolis. Viren predicted the reason - archdragons were manifestation of primal sources on earth, so when all that magical energy was released from its physical form, it must have reformed somewhere. The answer awaited them in Avizandum’s nest, the Stormspire (now located within the Breach) - an egg of a newly reincarnated sky archdragon. Harrow and Viren took the egg and hid it from the world, buying time until Viren figures out what to do next. However, this close encounter with a god left Harrow’s faith in his life’s path shaken. Who is he to meddle in affairs he can’t even comprehend, such as the laws of the universe? Could it be that the survival of his people doesn’t have to be achieved by destroying the existing world? Did he choose wrong all those years ago? Looking at his small son, he can’t force himself to force the same choice upon him, not yet, so now Harrow is stuck in a limbo of his own feelings and re-examining his entire life with no one to confide in. 

Viren. I am totally stealing from The Kyoshi duology for his villain type, and I am not sorry. Viren is the High Mage of Katolis, the king’s closest advisor. He and Harrow have been the closest of friends since their youth, despite their wildly different origins. He was the son of an Evenere farmer family, and he got sent to a Katolian military academy, where he met young Harrow who had just begun his own education. The boys became fast friends, but soon Viren was recognized for his intelligence, work ethic, and high potential for dark magic. Dark magic is usually taught generationally within selected families which makes the study very elitist, but his drive and ambition led him to excel, so that by the time they finished education, Harrow took him back to his castle where he could become the High Mage’s apprentice. From the very beginning the drive behind Viren’s ambition was the knowledge that he is all that’s standing between those he loves and utter ruin - first it was the financial difficulties his family faced that were mitigated by his high paying position, and now it is the responsibilities of one of the most important men in the country. As mentioned before, Harrow faced many difficulties adjusting to the role expected from him as a king, and Viren saw himself as his compass, the one making the hard decisions that save the world until the king becomes strong enough to make them himself. And for a while, it seemed it worked and Harrow became the ruler that could defend humanity from Xadia, but ever since their return home Harrow has been growing more and more distant from Viren. For the past year Viren has been trying to figure out how best to harvest the archdragon egg. He knows he only has one chance to use its energy, because if he kills it, it will just respawn back at the Stormspire, and since Xadian forces have now been alerted and concentrated in that area, he won’t be able to get it back again. Dark magic relies on experiments, and he doesn’t have the right to experimentation. The dragon was supposed to power the Empire with magic for years, but now it turns out they get one single spell out of him. He knows that if word gets out, all of Xadia will descend upon Katolis, so he doesn’t even dare share his discovery with other High Mages. He’s been slowly breaking under the pressure, and the only other person who knows about the situation, Harrow, is of no help. Lately, he has even started saying their way of life is wrong, and they should have never stolen the egg. His strength is faltering. Viren is used to doing whatever is needed to save those he loves, but what happens when those loved ones are the ones preventing him from saving them? Harrow is a possible Ezran future, and Viren is a possible Callum future, a man who had to carve a place in the world for himself, who felt powerless until he discovered something that made him more powerful than anyone else, whose sense of right and wrong is so strong it might even overpower his love for his brother. 

Claudia and Soren. Soren is the himbo disappointment son, he inherited none of Viren’s intelligence, or magical talent. He is ambitious and a fantastic swordsman, a true Katolian, so he recently managed to score the position of the captain of the king’s guard at only 18 years old (his dad’s only comment was “Excellent, now you can report all of the king’s everyday life to me”). Claudia, on the other hand, is a magical prodigy - at only 16 years old she has almost reached the same level of skill as her father, which is something Viren is immensely proud of. However, Claudia is very chaotic and doesn’t take this entire “We’re the only thing standing between the Empire and total ruin” thing seriously, and likes to spend her days doing normal teen girl things such as inventing new potions and befriending the princes. Soren desperately wants his dad’s approval and is doing his best to get it at any price, making him a parallel to Harrow. Claudia doesn’t worry about what her dad or anyone else thinks, but she fully believes in “no price is too high to save someone you love”, making her a parallel to Viren. The siblings grew up with the princes, but Soren stays away from them (out of envy) while Claudia is friends with them. She taught little Ez the spell for speaking to animals when they were both kids, but she doesn’t know he still uses it on a daily basis in a totally non-dark way. She is the reason Callum knows as much as he does about magic, since she sees him as a cute little friend she can infodump to (as long as she doesn’t lay out the details of the ingredients needed for the spells, it doesn’t count as revealing big secrets of the dark arts. After all, what could a human boy do with draconic words??). He is of course massively crushing on her and remembering every word she’d ever uttered. 

Rayla. Our sole elven main character. The murder of Avizandum prompted Xadians to band together in a more organized manner than has ever been seen in history and retaliate against Neolandia with united forces. After a year of preparation, the first wave of attack is ready. The Moonshadow Assassins will send a pair of lethal killers to each of the five kingdoms, one to kill the ruler, the other to kill the heir, causing civil unrest and sowing fear. Rayla, the youngest of the band at 15, was sent to Katolis with the leader of the group and her adopted father, Runaan. She is everything that is expected of a Moonshadow Elf: a ruthless, fearless fighter bound by honor to serve her tribe. There is nothing more sacred to her than fulfilling the mission given to her by her elders. Any doubt or weakness is to be stamped out quickly and without a single thought. This mission marks the end of her initiation into her tribe - once she kills crown prince Ezran she will be considered a fully fledged member of the Moonshadow Assassins. Her character role is to serve as an opposite weight to every other child character, where she has already chosen her path and created a much more mature space for herself as a kid should have. She needs to learn that vulnerability is needed to live a fulfilling life, and showcase the effects of the golden child syndrome. In this, she is the foil to Callum.

Aaravos

He is gonna be the ultimate Big Bad, the god our characters deal with in the final decisive battle after all the smaller villains are done. The star arcanum doesn’t have much in canon lore as it’s meant to be a mystery, so I am about to invent a whole lot of crap. In this story it deals with the Truth of eternity, the existence of the universe as something so vast and limitless no mortal mind could ever comprehend it, and thus a “startouched mage” is an oxymoron. It also differs from other arcanums in that it’s not one single whole, but many separated ones that make up one bigger whole. Each star is a world upon itself. As mentioned, it is incomprehensible to everyone in Xadia - it is a rare thing to see a creature who comprehends even the basics of the star arcanum (which would be “I know I am less worthy than a speck of dust when compared to the infinity of the universe” - I don’t think many useful spells exist in that vein), and no elves exist of this race that are born to the knowledge. In that vein, instead of having only one archdragon, the star arcanum has as many as there are stars in the universe, and Aaravos is one of them. As opposed to the other archdragons, his interpretation of his arcanum makes him interested in mortal affairs. Sadly, this twisted interpretation also means he has interest in world domination, as he sees himself as the only creature capable of comprehending the ways of the universe, and thus that makes him the most logical choice for the emperor of the planet. As a character his role is to represent overstepping boundaries, the sin of pride, what happens when one has no limits - so the same flaw present in a lot of rulers, explorers, and desperate people, and it just so happens our main cast is filled with those. He is limited by not having a physical manifestation that can walk the earth, though, so he has to build one for himself. He infects mortal minds through star arcanum. There are no mages who are dedicated solely to star magic - the world is already filled with more secrets than one could fit in a lifetime, so why waste time searching the stars to an even more futile effect? Still, those who manage to figure out at least a little bit of the arcanum leave their minds open and vulnerable to Aaravos’ influence. He is NOT some puppetmaster who is to blame for every single bad thing that ever happened in history, though. In most cases his hosts are driven insane because they can’t comprehend the spells he is trying to teach them, so he has been searching for a suitable host for a long, long time. As there are no elves tied to this arcanum, this leaves humans as the only ones who can interact with it, be it through primal magic… or dark magic. Let me remind you, in this rewrite every primal spell has a dark equivalent, but where primal spells are fueled by mind’s ability to comprehend philosophical concepts, dark magic needs only a source of magic connected to the primal source tied to the spell. This is Aaravos’ connection to dark magic - he sees it as a possibility he’d never had before, a medium through which his hosts will no longer be driven insane before managing to build him a body. 

THE PLOT

I think the seven season, three-act structure first presented by the writers (before it went off the rails) was good, so I will stick to it! Each season will be dedicated to one of the types of magic (so 6 primal sources + dark) that teach the characters relevant lessons, be it positive or negative. However, I am switching it from a fully overarching single story to the ATLA-like episodic that builds up to a big story, simply because that is a much better format for TV in my opinion. I am gonna lay out only the basics here. You know the drill, they travel around the world and do side quests and help lots of nice people who help them in return. The fact that they are carrying around a god makes Xadians more willing to trust them, and the fact that they are missing Katolian princes makes humans feel the same. Also I am not calling the seasons “books” because this isn’t ATLA.

ARC 1 - lasts ~3 months

Season 1: Dark

Starting off with dark magic because this would be the kind most of our characters have lived their life knowing. The thesis of dark magic is “by any means necessary”. 

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The king of Katolis is assassinated by the Moonshadow Assassins in retaliation for the killing of Avizandum, the sky archdragon. The two Katolian princes and one of the assassins discover that the archdragon had been reborn as an egg, which the High Mage aims to kill once and for all. Knowing that the assassination is only the opening act of a horrifying war that could end both their countries, they steal the egg and escape the kingdom, planning on returning it to Xadians as proof that the damage Katolis has done isn’t irreversible. They reach the Stormspire, but the guardians there are unwilling to credit humans for the return of the egg, so the trio decides to keep going and find someone who shares their views.

CALLUM: He starts the season out unsure of his position within his family and his country, feeling like a reject from both. His father tells him “I used to think I would do anything to protect my kingdom, but I am not so sure that would be the right thing anymore”, which prompts Callum to think about his own position on the subject. He discovers he possesses the ability to perform dark magic. By the end of the season he concludes his little brother is what is most precious to him, and realizes that his country and empire were wrong in their approach to the Xadian issue. He swears not to do dark magic again.

RAYLA: She starts out as cold, focused and effective as possible, but the discovery of the egg and Ezran turning out to be a smart, optimistic little boy who feels no hatred towards her and could grow into a decent king makes her change her mind on the topic of bringing absolute war to the world. This enrages Runaan, who attempts to kill her for betraying her tribe. She manages to escape badly shaken by the experience, but she rationalizes it as “I am doing this for them, they will understand one day and be thankful for what I’ve done”. Her left hand is bound by a magic ribbon as a symbol of her oath, and every day that Ezran lives, the ribbon gets tighter until her hand will be severed. This too is, to her, proof of the sacrifice she is making for her people.

EZRAN: He is the only one capable of communicating with the infant dragon inside the egg, thanks to his ability to speak with any and all creatures in the world. This makes him feel responsible for something for the first time, as Callum and Rayla would have no other way to figure out if the dragon is doing ok. Other than that, his role is to be cute and optimistic while the teens are being emo.

VIREN: Viren could have saved Harrow’s life when Runaan got to him, but chose not to as the past year made him fear Harrow could no longer be a good ruler. He is well respected throughout the Neolandian Empire and has many resources, but he can’t trust them because the egg might be discovered and he might be declared a traitor. And so he sends Soren and Claudia after the princes, but gives them different jobs: he confides about the egg’s existence to Claudia, knowing he can trust her curiosity regarding magic and informs her to bring it back at any cost, while he tells Soren to kill the princes, banking on Soren’s obedience and the ability to do what is needed. In the meantime, he himself starts organizing defense against Xadia and buying time for the siblings to return. That’s his plot for the entirety of arc 1, he travels around the human kingdoms hanging out with people who respect him and grows more and more paranoid.

Season 2: Moon

The theme of the season is “Reality isn’t the only truth; you can only truly know the appearance itself, and you can never touch the so-called reality that lies beyond the reach of your own perception”.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The first stop for the trio is the only crossing into Xadia, currently occupied by General Amaya, the boys’ aunt. The boys try to recruit her to help them, but she is unwilling to let her nephews risk their lives so they have to escape her too. The finale happens in Rayla’s home village, the assassin’s hideout Silvergrove, where she discovers she has been excommunicated and won’t get any help. They tell her it doesn’t matter that the dragon has been reincarnated, this battle has been a long time coming and there’s nothing that can stop it now.

CALLUM: After the disappointment of giving up on dark magic and being unable to trust even his own family, the discovery of his connection to the arcanum gives him a new sense of purpose. I feel like this arcanum is the best intro into mastering the rest because it involves keeping your mind open to possibilities and the knowledge that you do not yet know all there is to know, so that is his arc to learn this season. Rayla helps him understand it through her own arc, and he manages his first Moon arcanum spell in the season finale. 

RAYLA: She bonds with Callum because he is open and keeps trying to get her to open up. She still has her binding on when she meets Ethari, and he sees it as a mark of shame instead of what she has been convincing herself it is. She learns that Silverglove will never accept her back or understand why she has betrayed her mission, but that she has to stay true to her convictions. 

EZRAN: Having seen his aunt turn against him and the way Xadians fear Katolis, little boy needs to deal with the knowledge that his dad was a good dad, but a bad king. Just because he knew him as a gentle, happy man, it doesn’t mean that was the full truth of it. He resolves to be a good king one day in his stead.

CLAUDIA AND SOREN: Let them meet Terry here. Terry is an Earthbood elf who has done the unthinkable - he severed himself from his own arcanum, and has left his tribe behind. He offers to help the siblings after they save his life. 

Season 3: Sun

Theme of the season: “A thing can be warm and nurturing, but given the right situations, also destructive and cruel”.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: Next major stop for the trio is a community in the Sun territory where humans and elves secretly live together, and the humans practice primal magic. This is the season Soren and Claudia catch up to the trio, and this is where they find them. The season finale is Soren and Claudia’s troops VS the trio and the human/elf community. The trio wins and the siblings retreat. The egg is damaged in the process and has to be hatched. Welcome to the world baby Zym!

CALLUM: The only thing better than discovering he can do primal Moon magic is discovering he could also potentially do other types of magic as well. In his thriving era, slightly interrupted when Rayla confesses to him that she likes him and makes things awkward for an episode or so. They deal with it with care and love. Then Claudia and Soren show up and he has to defeat his friend to protect his mission, and this is what leads him to understand the Sun arcanum. All the good things he’d admired about Claudia are also destructive because she doesn’t know when to stop.

RAYLA: She has to learn how to deal with being untethered and unlimited by the rigid expectations of her society for the first time in her life. The rules of her upbringing, which once made her feel accomplished and safe, also left her scared to make her own decisions in fear of making the wrong choice. She needs to forgive her destructive, cruel side and find the warm, nurturing one, and no longer base her self worth on her family’s expectations.

CLAUDIA AND SOREN: Claudia refuses to learn the theme of the season and instead goes the other direction: “nothing done out of love can be wrong”. From her POV, the human mages of Xadia are delusional and sitting ducks, and would be better off joining Neolandia. She is heartbroken when Callum chooses them over her and his home, and declares him a traitor. She leads a small-scale attack against the village hiding the trio in one last attempt to get the princes and the egg.  I love the canon s2 plotline with her and Soren, so I wanna fit it in her, Soren gets very hurt in this battle, Claudia has to retreat to heal him, and the siblings switch places. Now Soren is the one no longer willing to follow orders, while Claudia finally develops the drive needed of a High Mage. 

VIREN: The guilt and fear of discovery (over letting Harrow die, but also the egg scheme they kept from the rest of Neolandia) drive his actions to become more and more erratic. The confident guy we’ve known since s1 is now running on fumes. At some point he IS discovered, but manages to defeat the person who knows it before word gets out. In his prideful desperation, he manages to establish connection with Aaravos for the first time.

ARC 2 - lasts ~3 months

Season 4: Sky

The theme of the season is “You are one with the world, air is all around you, but also inside you”. 

Timeskip so Claudia and Soren can make their way back to Katolis, the community ravaged in s3 can get rebuilt, and the trio can recuperate. Maybe 2-ish months? It’s been almost half a year since phase 1 of the Xadian counter-offensive has been released, and it’s time for phase 2.  

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The trio decide their best bet to prevent phase 2 of the Xadian counter-offensive, the full-scale attack on Duren (where the Empire gets most of its food reserves) would be to go tour the north showing off baby Zym and his connection to Ez, the next king of Katolis. The queen of Duren, Aanya, is a young girl only a couple of years older than Ez with a reputation for sympathizing with Xadians, and might be more willing to listen to them than the Katolians. Now that little baby god Zym is out of the egg and they can prove he likes and trusts them, Xadians should be more willing to listen, too. The point of the season is developing the trio’s will to fix the world. Meanwhile, Claudia and Soren (plus Terry) rejoin their dad and have their arc of “Soren wants out, Claudia is digging her feet deeper and deeper into the ground”. Terry knows about the second wave of attack for some reason and they all decide to go to Duren. 

Season 5: Earth

The theme of the season is free real estate because the wiki says there is no arcanum data for Earth yet. I am giving them the “already dead” thing. See, the mountains and the earth are stalwart and unchanging, the same as they ever were. Why worry about paths well established, your life is the same as another’s, it begins and ends the same way. This can also be interpreted as stubbornness, but mainly it is the arcanum used for mending and healing, as it deals with returning to true form. “To know yourself is to be unshakeable, we are all made of one.” 

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The “hits the fan” season. Rayllum gets together. Aaravos is invested in helping the Empire succeed because he needs his dark magic worker bees. Soren betrays his family’s secrets and helps the heroes before he dies, sending Viren and Claudia into hiding. At some point Callum used dark magic again out of desperation, and it was a star adjacent spell. However, Duren still falls, and it’s both side’s fault. Turns out that the kids really can’t do anything unless they have some kind of a power, and they are now willing to take it. With Aanya’s support Rayla and Callum decide to return to Katolis, which has taken the opportunity to sever itself from the Empire now that there are no easy ways to access it by land, and try to bring some order to the country and prepare it for Ez’ rule. Ez and Zym escape into hiding in Xadia with Terry’s help (he realizes that maybe seeing the world burn would NOT help him feel better), as it is obviously far too dangerous to keep them in the public eye right now, since that was the reason Duren fell in the end. Aaravos’ existence is now known to everyone. Sad sad sad. 

ARC 3

Season 6: Ocean

2 year timeskip. The theme of the season is “One is not in control, there are parts of yourself that you cannot understand, there are things that cannot be controlled, you cannot control everything, no matter how hard you try.” 

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The war has stalled for the moment, as the spectacular failure at Duren rearranged the map and introduced Aaravos’ existence into the world, so the game has changed now that both sides share an opponent and it is a god. Ez and Zym feat. Terry are on a quest to figure out wtf is an Aaravos from the Xadian side of the border, as they are probably the only incorruptible team in the game. Callum, now the High Mage of Katolis, is still guilt-ridden over how Duren slipped from him, and how easy it was to return back to dark magic. Rayla is dealing with trying to help a country that obviously doesn’t look too kindly to her existence. Viren finally reaches Harrow’s s1 arc and realizes this whole thing has gone too far, but Claudia keeps marching on, and he is determined not to lose his second child as well, so he stays by her side. The season is dedicated to Callum and Claudia both dealing with similar vulnerability to Aaravos and the story could really go either way, but ultimately, Callum learns to deal with it by letting go of control, while Viren kicks the bucket and sends Claudia straight into Aaravos’ waiting arms. He has a physical body and is ready to party.

Season 7: Stars

The theme of the season is once again free real estate, this time because the characters don’t have the ability to comprehend the arcanum of the season and have to make up their own, and it’s “You are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and that is okay. Better to focus on doing your best regarding your own life and be happy than to perish in delusions of grandeur”.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: The Final Season. It’s Neolandia and Xadia being forced to unite against the same foe. No one side will ever get to claim to have won the war that was going on for thousands of years, and that’s great. The ban against human mages has to be lifted, the ban on dark magic has to be established. Those who couldn’t put their pride aside perished in Big Pride’s AKA Aaaravos’ party zone. I am intentionally avoiding writing character arc endings because I am trying not to reach 8k words on this thing, but you know enough by now to be able to tell what happens next. The divine right of kings is bullshit, we are all just regular people, and the divine is too smart to worry about our little lives.

And they all lived happily ever after~

[yuckie-obsessive]

Did You Miss Me?

Remembered ADWM when Dark says, “Did you miss me? I missed you- very much.” And now I wanna make a drabble on it.

Maybe a little variation on what happens in ADWM. Thinking of making a new HC where he can’t touch you unless you give him permission or initiate it first. Of course he can ask for it or give vague gestures in hopes you will accept him.

Darkiplier x Reader (gender neutral)

Set up: essentially the same intro as ADWM, but a little more intimate. Sfw only tho

~★~

You had become extremely disoriented from the rough switch in atmosphere. The ringing that echoed within your mind was not helping either. Your date was no where to be found and neither was the stage.

“Hello, darling.” A disembodied voice greeted. Then a monochrome figure appeared in front of you, though it was difficult to keep eyes on him when he was surrounded by blue and red doubles.

He straightened at your distress and the visual glitching subsided slightly.

He cleared his throat, “I missed you, dear. It’s been quite some time wouldn’t you say?” He took a step forward, extending a hand, only for you to take a step back in confusion. He clenched his hand and let it fall.

“My apologies, this must seem rather forward. Though I must admit,” his jaw clenched, “I’ve grown tired of this perpetual game we’ve been forced to play.”

He straightened his already perfect suit and sighed, “It doesn’t matter… surely you must be aware of this cycle by now?”

You had felt rather caught off by the consistent, repetitive actions you had been forced to perform. You slowly nodded.

“Then let me further enlighten you,” he waved his hand to summon different visions of your adventure so far, even things that have yet to occur. “You must understand this was all his plan (y/n). I have simply disrupted this game, if only momentarily.”

“How did you-“

“This isn’t our first encounter. We have met many times in the past.” His expression shifted, but returned so quickly that you thought you imagined it. “It was brought to my attention that he decided to drag you along once again. A shame he continuously removes your memories of his games… our little meetings. Manipulating the plot to suit his needs,” his sudden harsh tone and odd shattered reflection startled you. He took a breath so steady himself and moved closer, now towering over you. “I can take you from this wretched cycle… to show you what we had together,” once again, he offered his hand.

“Please, (y/n)…” His voice grew strained, “Let me in... Let me be everything you need,” his head tilted to whisper softly into your ear. Dangerously close yet still refraining from contact.

You looked to his hand and cautiously moved to take it, but hesitated.

“I promise you this, your every need will be met. Your heart’s desires fulfilled… Let me protect you now where I couldn’t before. Let me amend my mistakes…”

You felt a great sadness from his words. Letting your naive trust get the better of you, your hand lightly accepted his.

The moment your hands connected, he rushed to embrace you causing you to gasp. He buried his face into your neck, reciting apologies and promises of loyalty. The air grew lighter, and for the first time since you could ever remember, you felt lucid.

He removed himself and held your shoulders. His smile filled you with warmth.

“Let’s catch up, old friend.”

[artists-ally]

I wanna start a blog but I’m not sure how to start off, I know I want to write and have some vague ideas but not sure what to do.

Any ideas or tips?

Alright get comfy I have so many things to say.

Above ALL. ELSE. for the love of god, do not give in to the pressure to constantly write. One day things will click on Tumblr, and asks and requests will start flooding in. You’re gonna get hundreds of likes and comments asking for more parts and whatnot. Do. Not. Give. In. To. The. Pressure. You’re going to get really excited, like “oh my god, finally I’m getting noticed and appreciated let me give them more!!” No. You will get burnt out and will hate it. Do it on your own time, whenever you want. Write what YOU want. Use that excitement in a way that has a positive impact on your work.

When it comes to planning what to write, just keep it simple. It doesn’t have to be some elaborate top to bottom detailed guide. I personally just use bullet points. And trust me, none of it has to be cohesive. It can literally just look like this:

Reader goes to a party

Azriel is standing mysteriously in the corner

They catch eyes from across the room

Reader is dancing with friends, and some rando dude comes up and starts feeling up on them

Reader tells him to back off

He doesn’t

Readers friend goes to intervene

Azriel comes from the corner and takes the guy outside to show him what happens when you disrespect a woman

Az makes sure you and your friend are okay

You two get talking and plan to go on a date

It can just be something like that. Or sometimes the best plan is no plan and see where your brain takes you. Whatever you do, just make sure you’re writing it because YOU want to write it. That it’s the kind of context you’d like to read, and everything else will fall into place with time.

3. Write whatever you’re feeling. If you’re sad, write whatever you need to make yourself feel better. Whether that’s fluff, angst, or something else. If you want to be comforted, write something about a character taking care of you. If you’re angry, write a crazy betrayal. It is just you, your mind, and google docs.

4. Don’t be worried if your writing doesn’t INSTANTLY take off. THATS just not how shit happens here. And here’s a little tip, depending on your timezones, you’ll want to post at different times. I’ve found that posting later in the evening, at like 6-8pm on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday will yield the best results. It’s when people are settling in for the night and want to relax and read some good shit. But honestly, post whenever, people will find it.

5. Make yourself a rules/who you write for and post it on your masterlist. By all means, go ahead and look at mine for inspiration. When you find your audience, they will ask for more. Let them know what/who you’re comfortable writing for.

6. MAKE FRIENDS. Having some support when you’re stuck on a plot point and don’t know where to go from there is so nice!! We have such an amazing community of writers here and I have made lifelong friends on this app. Everyone has their own bits of advice they could give and having a different perspective or fresh set of eyes is really helpful.

7. Model what you see. Everyone has to start their writing journey somewhere. I’m not sure if you’ve ever written fanfiction before, but the first couple you put out there are definitely not going to be your best work. And be okay knowing that. The more you read, the more styles of writing you look at to develops your own is how you get to that sweet spot where everything you write is consistent and good quality. It could take months and years, it certainly took me a long fucking time to be able to produce the work I do, and that’s just how it goes. I’m proud of the work I post, no matter if it’s for Suits or ACOTAR, I love everything I put out. Be patient with yourself and allow room for mistakes.

8. Have a note in your phone for all your random ideas you come up with while out and about. Happens to me ALLL the time. I constantly have new ideas and having one collection of them all, that’s easy to access anywhere, is so smart.

9. Let’s talk about the layout of your blog!! The number one thing you should have is a masterlist! A collection of all your links to your writing. Take a look at mine and any of your other favorite writers to see what aspects you like/dislike. It should be organized and easy on the eyes, try not to have a billion things on there that are unnecessary. You can link who/what you write, all your fics, and whatever else you wanna post about!! Whether your requests are open or closed. Stuff like that. Make it to your aesthetic and exactly what you want. It’s like decorating your room, it can be anything.

10. Last but certainly not least, welcome to the tumblr writing community. We are so excited to have you here love, and I cannot wait to see all the amazing work you put out. If you’re nervous, don’t be!! We’re all here to lift each other up and help along the way. If you ever have questions, feel free to reach out!! All of us had to start somewhere. We know what it’s like to spend weeks and months posting stuff to only get 30-40 likes. But it’ll happen one day. With one re-blog everything will change, you just have to be patient

I’m going to tag some of my besties and hopefully they’ll re-blog or comment some of their advice and welcome you in!!

@thelov3lybookworm @sarawritestories @readychilledwine @berryzxx @bubybubsters @claireswritingcorner @milswrites @fell-in-luvs @riddlesb1tch @pit-and-the-pen @thehighladywrites

[shenlis-spear]

THE LEGEND OF SHEN LI 与凤行, 2024

⇢ starring: zhao liying, lin gengxin

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. (I'm talking about The Legend of Shen Li)

Let me preface this by saying I'm biased. And it's been a million years since I tried to put my thoughts into writing so this is gonna be all over the place and long-winded. And probably wouldn't make any sense. So here it goes.

I really enjoyed The Legend of Shen Li. Do I love it? With all my charred heart. Do I think it's the best drama this year? It's still April. It's hard to say. Are Shen Li and Xing Zhi the best power couple? This shouldn't even be a debate.

Honestly, I didn't even plan to chase this drama while it's ongoing because I binge watching drama is what I enjoy best. However, I was bored. And The Legend of Shen Li's trailer looked interesting. And my heart still needs healing from the mess of an ending that is Princess Agents. I needed closure. So I started watching the drama, and boy oh boy did it drag me down one hell of a roller coaster ride of emotions every single night. (No, I'm not complaining.)

However, before I talk about the things that I really loved about the drama, I have some things to say about the stuff that kind of irked me. Because no drama is perfect (unless it's Nirvana in Fire).

So let me get started on the things that I feel like the drama could've done better.

Musical scoring - the OST's? Chef's kiss. However, they way they're putting music on the scenes are a hit and miss. Most of the time it just distracts me from the scene and I just get bored with the mv-ish scene. I wish cdramas especially custom ones would stop this. I don't need 5 mins of the leads staring at each other in all angles accompanied by a really nice song. I'm here to watch a drama. Although, I kinda did get used to it in the latter episodes (specifically ep35-38) because I definitely needed a minute or two to process the emotions.

The progression of the story - One thing. I'm confused. Not to the point that "I don't understand the plot confusing" but still confusing nonetheless. There was no consistency in the scenes and the dialogues. (Ex fishing village). There was no flow. I feel like someone messed up the storyboard and when they edited the scenes they were also confused. Or maybe this is the issue of the translation of the dialogue? I don't even know. Still, I definitely think this part could've been done better.

The internal monologues - sigh when I said the thing I love most in dramas are their dialogues I don't mean what's happening in The Legend of Shen Li. The characters just talk (or think?) too damn much I can't keep up. They're supposed to be the characters whom their actions should tell the story but the way they're narrating the whole plot to me is just so jarring. Am I watching a drama or listening to an audiobook? Sometimes I can't tell. I wish they'd tone it down but it just got worse with the later episodes.

The camera - this is just me being nitpicky but there are some random camera angles especially the spinning ones that probably is supposed to make the scene dramatic but all it did was make me wanna vomit.

This is not in any way, shape, or form hating on the drama because I genuinely enjoyed it. I've deluded myself into waiting for a Princess Agents S2 but I got a better deal and had Zhao Liying and Lin Gengxin to reunite in a new project which is better in my opinion because Princess Agents is a hot mess. There was really no saving that one.

So moving on to the things I like! But like, where do I even start?

First of all, Zhao Liying and Lin Gengxin. Chemistry so good, they had to be casted in another drama. Everything about them was just so perfect for the drama and the role. Could not ask for a more perfect casting than them. The 7 year wait was almost worth it.

The WOMEN! - so much room for improvement regarding the characters but I loved that the women were not treated as damsels who always needed saving. I have to say 5 1/2 braincells were working throughout the drama, 2 from Shen Li, 1 from You Lan, 1 from Jin Niang Zi and 1 from Shen Mu Yue (1/2 from Xing Zhi because he's too unbothered if it's not related to Shen Li).

Shen Li - might not be the best female character in cdramaland but I think she can hold her own place. She's stubborn, a bit reckless but she's loyal and righteous. She's a strong woman without being a stereotypical cold and ruthless strong woman. Shen Li is a strong woman at the same time also a mad woman in love. She does not have to be one or the other. The more I write this the more I'm falling in love with her character. You just don't find a character like her. She is Shen Li. A capable general. A strong leader. An empathetic comrade. A respectful student. A woman in love. She is not just one of them but all of them.

Lin Gengxin is pretty believable playing as an ancient god. He has that air around him that screams your highness. He played the lofty and aloof Xing Zhi to perfection.

And what can I even say about Zhao Liying? As always miss ma'am played Shen Li perfectly. Whimsical, stubborn, in love and devasted in love, you can feel all those emotions just watching her eyes.

It has angst but not too much that we as viewers would spend multiple episodes pulling out hair of frustration about the misunderstandings and accidental killings. (Not a shade to any specific drama but just to the xanxia genre in general). It has the perfect balance of angst, romance and comedy. You laugh, cry and giggle all in one episode. The comic relief scenes are naturally funny and doesn't feel forced. Zhao Liying and Lin Gengxin's comedic timing are 👌.

The conflict was handled maturely and the confession was direct but still heart fluttering. Throughout the drama, they both got their heads perfectly placed on their shoulders.

The last episode! Let us talk about the last episode because when has a drama provided that kind of fan service just making one whole episode of shenanigans and fluff. After going through the angst, the reward that is the last episode is just too good and definitely worth all the tears.

Also, can we talk about Dong Jie's guest role? I know miss ma'am is good but when I tell you I cried for a minute because of her story arc? Just hands up and mic drop. So so good!

Now that all of these are out of my system, hopefully I can move on to the next obsession, whatever that may be. I'll still probably watch episode 39 on a daily basis though. It's just too enjoyable and it makes my day. Will probably, revisit this "review" in the future and update it because I'm aware that at this point it's not making a lot of sense.

RATING: 9/10 REWATCH VALUE: 10/10 definitely would watch again! ACTING: 10/10 CATEGORY: GUILTY PLEASURE

[half-dead-ham]

Friends of a future

Soooo, instead of making continuations of all of the rest of my fics, I have instead decided to write another plot bunny!

I think this'll be my last bit of writing for now, as I wanna prepare for ship week. I got a few interesting things planned for it, so keep an eye out for some cool fics!

Ao3; [here]

~~~~~

Danny didn’t know where he was.

  Not that that was completely abnormal for him. He’d been tossed through enough portals and rips in space-time that at this point he didn’t question it too much. But this was a little different, if the similar consistency of smog and looming neomodern architecture was anything to go by.

  Not to mention that this shift was completely out of left field, usually he had some idea of how he got to a different time and/or place. Danny did think his being here in what he could only guess to be a future Gotham had something to do with where he was before, at least. So what happened before?

  Well.

  Danny had gotten a call. A call from the Justice League. A call to help deal with one of Lex Luthor’s newest inventions to deal with Superman and his posse of super friends with some sort of annihilation ray. That was pretty normal, as Danny had been on the roster for about a year and a half by now.

  They had beaten Luthor and his goons with only a little bit of a struggle, as alongside Danny, they had also called Shazam and a few other unorthodox heavy hitters to help deal with whatever Lex had up his sleeve. They had taken out Lex early on, and after they did the men Luthor had hired ran for the hills. Hopefully they still got their pay for this job.

  What else… They had just regrouped, and were waiting for the B team to come and safely dismantle the device Luthor had paraded around when it went off… Oh.

  It must’ve hit him.

  Or he moved someone out of the way of the beam? Everything was a little fuzzy at that point.

  What did Luthor say in his villain monologue about what his newest death ray did? Something about transferring particles to a dimension where they couldn’t arrange into anything of substance? Something along those lines. Maybe. Danny wasn’t really listening. But he does remember a stray magic blast hitting the machine, with some worrying sparks coming off it for a bit afterwards, so maybe its function was messed up a little because of that. Also Danny being made of an extradimensional substance that spans the multiverses might have something to do with it…

  The pain in Danny's back flared, reminding him where he was currently. Right. Gray sky, smells of smog, tall glass buildings and flying cars, billboards for unrecognizable products. Focus Fenton, focus.

  Reaching up, Danny grabbed the ledge of the crater he must’ve made as he fell. He sat up, noticing that he was currently on the roof of a building. Ancients, he hoped he didn’t have to pay for that. He peeled himself out of the Danny-shaped hole and stood, taking a better look astound with his better vantage. It seemed to be almost sunrise, if the mornings here were anything like the mornings in his Gotham, the smog that constantly covered the sky turning a lighter shade of gray to his right. So morning, maybe. New dimensions had weird natural laws sometimes, but for now let's go with morning.

  The flying cars were new, nothing like anything Danny’s seen while universe hopping for the League or CW, so another checkmark for this being a reality he hadn’t been to yet.

  Letting his feet leave the ground and turning invisible, Danny floated off the roof and towards the street below. Not many people were out walking at what he could only guess to be god awfully early, so the streets were quiet. The multi layered roads threw him off for a little, but he supposed if you had flying cars you didn’t really need roads. He wondered if this was actually the future, or if this was just some place more technologically advanced. (Did that matter? Was there a difference? Why was Danny so fixated on the fact there were flying cars here when he regularly meets with superheroes in a satellite?)

  “Good morning Neo-Gotham! Beautiful weather we're having, expect  partially cloudy with a seven percent chance of rain!”

  Danny’s head snapped to one of the display TV’s on the other side of the street, the announcer reading off the morning weather report. The TV display gave him good information within a few minutes of listening in after moving nearer to it.

  He was in Gotham, at least, a future version of it.

  It was a Tuesday.

  And he was at least thirty years ahead of his own time.

  Thirty years… Danny shook his head, no time to run down the rabbit hole of where he and his family might be at this point. For all he knew, he might not even exist in this universe.

  He flew straight up to better get his bearings. Even with the different look, Gotham was still familiar to him. Practically a third home away from home with how often he visited the city. A final look across the horizon and Danny started flying. There was one more thing he had learned from that TV.

  There was a Bat in this Gotham too.

     The trip to the Wayne estate was easy, though its look in this dimension was noticeably more gothic than the one he was used to. Even in the morning partial sun the house's figure cast an imposing shadow in the grounds. Still, the place said Wayine on the gate, so he knew there was someone in there he could plead his case to. Maybe he’d even get to see a grown up Damian. Now wouldn’t that be fun, a Damian Wayne all grown up and CEO of Wayne Enterprise. Danny had to snort at the idea.

  He floated himself through the front door, taking a moment to observe the almost familiar surroundings. Everything was… off. It was like someone had someone read a description of the manor's interior, then built a new manor off the description alone. It was large, with cavernous high ceilings in neutral grays, with entrances leading off to a sitting room and study. There were stairs and a hallway leading further into the manor and to the second floor, and Danny knew if he phased down he’d find a bat-shaped secret hiding in the basement.

  The whole place was eerily quiet though, and empty, and if Danny looked close enough he would be able to find dust on the frames hung on the walls. Alfred would never let it get dusty in here, and there would always be at least one person up by now. Maybe they’d all moved out? They weren’t really the ones he was here to see anyways.

  Now… would a certain Bat be up and about in the cave by now?

  Knowing Bruce, probably.

  Danny let his feet drift to the floor, then through the carpet. He sank through the ground, until he hit the pocket of caves hidden underneath the estate, illuminated only by the monitor and display case lights of Batman’s souvenirs.

  “Damn, even the cave got the uncanny valley treatment…” Danny grumbled to himself.

  He must’ve come at a bad time, as just before he regained tangibility a batarang flew through him, rebounding on one of the stalactites behind him.

  “Woah!” He exclaimed as he watched the throwing weapon clatter to the concrete floor. Danny whipped his head around to where the batarang had come from, only to see-

  “Holy shit, you’re so old!”

  A glower was all Danny received for his comment from the man sitting back down in his chair. The man -who Danny really hoped was Bruce, or his comment would be really insensitive- was built, wide in the shoulders and bulky, like he worked out regularly. Despite this he was hunched, shoulders slightly dropped as he held a cane in one hand. His gray hair and wrinkles made sense for his age, but Danny jokingly wondered just how early he had started getting that colour.

  “Phantom,” Danny perked up at that. Bruce knew who he was, that was a good sign.

  “I thought you said you wouldn’t come back to the mortal realm after you died,” Bruce added as he turned back to face the batcomputer.

  That was… Damn.

  … At least he knew there was another version of himself in this universe? Positive thoughts, Fenton, think positive thoughts.

  “Yeah, uh, ‘bout that, Bruce…” The older man kept his chair at a half turn, keeping one eye on Danny from his periphery as the ghost descended to the floor.

  Danny scratched at the back of his neck as he walked forward, stopping just far away enough that he wouldn’t make the bat overly paranoid. He didn’t know where to look as he explained this next bit, so he let his gaze wander over the memorabilia as he spoke.

  “So I’m not the Phantom you know?” He started, getting a single raised eyebrow in response. “Like, I’m probably at least somewhat similar since you recognized me, but… Y’know… League stuff came up, and I got hit with something…”

  “You’re saying that you are a Phantom from a different universe to this one, that was most likely hit with something that transported you here, to this dimension?” Bruce filled in. Danny smiled at that, letting his gaze rest on Bruce again.

  There was one thing you could always count on a bat for; their sharp minds and ability to read inbetween the lines.

  The half-ghost snapped his fingers and pointed at the seated bat, “Exactly!”

  Bruce just narrowed his stare as he inspected the being before him, taking a more in-depth look with their decreased distance. One long inspection later and the bat finally asks, “Why do you think I can help you?”

  Slightly confused, Danny deflated. “Uhhh, ‘cause you’re Batman? Even if you can’t help, there's still the League we can contact. One of the magic users has to have a spell that could send me back, right?”

  Bruce swings his chair back to face the batcomputer, hiding his expression away from Danny's view.

  “The League disbanded years ago, Phantom. I’m retired.”

  “What‽” Danny exclaims. “How are you retired‽ Everyone thought you’d be the caped crusader till you keeled over, and even then you’d fight out of your grave if you had to!”

  A huff was heard from behind the back of the chair. “I had a minor heart attack,” Bruce lied. Danny could smell the lie too, which meant that even for Batman it wasn’t good.

  Danny sighed. As much as he knew that was a lie, he also knew that right now Bruce was the only one that could possibly help him at that moment. He didn’t know what had happened to the other members of the League, and if what the man in front of him said was true (and that is a very real possibility) he wouldn’t even have a good way to contact them if he tried. Danny could let a blatant lie slide if it meant getting help.

  “Okay, so I got no Batman, no League, and no sure way to get home. My only options are to try a random portal in this dimensions’ Zone or wait to see if someone will come to my rescue.” Even as he mumbled them Danny knew neither option sounded good. Going into this dimension's version of the Ghost Zone would run the risk of not only him getting lost but also him finding himself from this universe. Danny didn’t know what this dimension’s version of him was like, but he could think of a few reasons for why he would swear off the mortal realm, none of which he particularly liked. As for getting lost…

  But the ‘stay where you are till help arrives’ method might not work in his favor either, if it was just that one blast that hit him that was changed by the magic, and not the whole weapon. Using the thing again would run the risk of someone ending up in a dimension they couldn’t be in, a thought that did very unhappy things for his core. That leaguer would effectively die trying to save Danny, and it would eat him up inside if that ever happened. Even if they did manage to get someone to this dimension using the weapon, that still left them with no way out. The person that came here to get him would be stuck here, same as Danny, unless they come with a fix-it to bring them home too.

  Who knows how long that would be in the first place. Days? Weeks?

  “Phantom,” an unusually soft tone broke Danny from his thousand yard stare. The ghost refocused to see Bruce giving him an uncharacteristically soft look. He tried to give a smile to the old bat, but he was sure Bruce wasn't fooled by it.

  “What’s up, B?” Danny asked with forced levity, to which the softness only grew.

  “You don’t have to figure this out on your own, you know. I may not be Batman anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m above helping someone in trouble.”

  “Even for someone you don’t actually know?” Danny hated how wet his voice had suddenly become.

  “If you’re anything like the Phantom of my universe,” Bruce gave a small grin. “Then I’d really just be returning the favour.”

  There were things behind that smile, stories and memories shared with someone who shared Danny’s face. If it were anyone but Bruce offering aid like this Danny would almost say it was out of pity. But Batman didn’t pity people, not like this.

  Danny chuckled wetly, clearing his throat before he spoke next. “Heh, you must be getting soft in your old age, B. I gotta remember to tease my Bruce about it when I get back.”

  Bruce rolled his eyes at the joke as he hefted himself out of his chair. “Come on, Phantom,” he called behind him as he shuffled to the stairs. “We need to get your cover story set up.”

  Danny just grinned away the damp in his eyes as he followed behind the older man, changing forms as he walked up the stairs.

~~~~~

     Terry had just come through the door to Wayne manor when he heard a voice. It was unusual, as regularly he met Mr. Wayne in the cave or outside when he had to chauffeur him to Wayne Powers Enterprise. The voice sounded young, maybe just a bit deeper than his. Terry followed it through the halls, keeping quiet in case it was just some robber trying to make a quick buck of a billionaire's stuff.

  “So you really think you can get paperwork for me while I stay here? Wouldn’t it be harder to forge an identity in the future than easier?”

  “You’d be surprised, technology has only gotten easier to hack into as advancements continued, and Wayne-Powers is usually at the forefront of that development nowadays.” That was… Mr. Wayne? And he sounded almost… Happy? Terry turned the corner to the kitchen, very confused at the tone his employer was using for the unfamiliar voice.

  Two heads turn to him from a small table by the window, two mugs of coffee steaming in front of them. Mr. Wayne was probably the most relaxed Terry had seen him outside of his public persona, just ‘cause he was sitting next to this, this, this guy.

  The dude was tall, and skinny. But like, the kind of skinny you get when you run or swim a lot? The kind of skinny that gave a guy lean muscles, even if said dude was trying to hide those muscles under a baggy sweater and loose jeans. Honestly he looked like he came out of one of his mom’s old yearbooks, with the old clothes and haircut, would fit right in with kids from when she was young, it was weird. The guy looked him over, eyebrows raised in mild surprise before turning to Mr. Wayne, eyes still trained on Terry.

  “So this is your new assistant? He looks… different to how I would imagine.” Terry bristled at the comment, and this guy just smirked at him in response! The nerve of this guy!

  “Terry,” Mr. Wayne redirects his gaze warning laced in his tone. “This is Danny Fenton, he’ll be staying with me for the foreseeable future and starting as my bodyguard.”

  Bodyguard? Bodyguard‽ Mr. Wayne doesn’t need a bodyguard! He was Batman! The guy could still throw Terry on his ass on a good day! Why would he hire this skinny dreg to be his bodyguard?

  “Is this telling me you’re replacing me, Mr. Wayne? Cause I’m sure I can take this dreg any day of the week, just give me a chance!” Terry begged as the two sat at the table just looked at him. After a few beats Danny burst out laughing; fully clutching his gut, tears in his eyes, gasping laughing.

  It was a little insulting.

  “Ancients! Oh Ancients, it's just like what I heard about when Tim and Jason met! Holy crap!” Danny managed to squeeze out between gasps as Mr. Wayne pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. This didn’t relieve Terry, but it did make him so much more confused.

  “Terry,” Mr. Wayne huffed as Danny’s laughter started to die out. “Danny isn’t replacing you, he has his own hero persona. He’s simply going to be staying with me until he’s able to return from where he came from,” He explains.

  Well that was a relief, Terry dropped his shoulders as he relaxed slightly, still staring at the guy sitting with Mr. Wayne. Now Terry just had questions, like what did Mr. Wayne mean by ‘returning Danny to where he came from’? And who was Jason? 

  Mr. Wayne stood, moving to put his coffee mug in the sink for washing later while Danny took a sip of what was left in his. Silence fell on the kitchen then, Terry stewing in his questions, Mr. Wayne shuffled off to his study, leaving Terry and Danny in the kitchen alone.

  “So,” Terry drawls awkwardly as he moves to take up the spot on the table vacated by his employer. “You’re a hero?”

  Danny snorts into his mug, “Yeah, I am.”

  “Anyone I know?” Terry asks curiously. He’d met a few heroes since he started working for Mr. Wayne, but someone matching Danny's ice blue eyes and messy black hair didn’t fit anyone he knew.

  “Not likely,” Danny replied with a huff. “Apparently in this dimension I’m a dead recluse, so even if you had seen me, you wouldn’t’ve recognized me.”

  … What?

  “The hell you mean ‘I’m a dead recluse’? You’re either one or the other, no way you can be both.” A ‘dead recluse’ made zero sense, maybe he died a recluse? Or he’s so reclusive that everyone thought he was dead?

  Dany chuckled at the face Terry was making, laughing at his confusion. “Oh no, I’m definitely both,” he remarked. “Or, well, just one right now, I haven’t gone recluse yet and I hope I don’t for a while.” He added, glancing away with a thoughtful expression. Terry just scrunched his face up.

  “No offence, dude, but you don’t look dead?” Could he take offence to that? Terry didn’t know how someone could look so alive while dead (or is he just messing with him by saying he’s dead?) but Mr. Wayne had mentioned in passing a few of his old colleagues that have come back from the dead, so maybe it wasn’t that rare?

  “Also that doesn’t really answer my question,” he adds. “You’re a hero, and I’ve met a few heroes, so do I know you? Or of you maybe?”

  Danny tilted his head in thought, twisting his lips as he considered. Terry waited on baited breath as the teen across from him thought.

  “I don’t know?” He finally landed on. “Not really sure what you’re learning in school here, so I wouldn’t be able to tell you.” Danny took another sip of his coffee with a shrug.

  Well that was unhelpful.

  Terry was starting to get a weird feeling crawling up his spine, like someone pressing ice onto his back. Was he imagining things, or was Danny breathing slow? And not just like really deeply or holding his breath, no, like really slow. He just watched Danny for a minute, trying to count the seconds between the other teens' chest movements.

  Yeah, way too slow.

  Trying to forget that he noticed anything, he looked up, only to notice his hair. It was swaying slightly. The window behind them was closed, and there wasn’t a draft in the kitchen. Terry looked away entirely then, thinking he may have stayed up too late after patrol last night if he was starting to see things.

  “Okaaayyy,” Terry drawled, deciding that just looking at the guy was gonna make him question his sanity. “Who’s Jason then?” He asks instead to get the conversation going again.

  Danny froze, mug halfway to his lips. He turned to eye Terry with an odd expression, as though it should be obvious who Jason is.

  “Jason? Y’know, Jason Todd?” Danny tries, only to receive a blank look from the other teen. “Jason Todd? The second Robin Jason Todd? The Red Hood Jason Todd? Crime lord and anti-hero extraordinaire?” Danny tried to keep up the lines, but nothing sparks recognition in Terry. Was there ever a crime lord in old Gotham named Red Hood?

  “The second Robin was Tim Drake?” Terry corrects confusedly, receiving a shocked expression from the other end of the table.

  “No? Tim was the third?” Now both of them were lost. They stared at each other, confused and concerned. Terry knew there was no third Robin, unless you counted commissioner Gordon as Batgirl, but it didn’t make a lot of sense if you counted her. Danny’s face twisted so much it looked like it hurt (and hurt to look at) until something passed and the look cleared, leaving comprehension, like a light blinked on over his head.

  Terry followed as Danny stood up, heading straight for the hallway and leaving his mug on the counter, leaving Terry to clean it up. Putting the cup in the sink beside the other one, Terry hurried to catch up to the other teen, jogging as he saw Danny duck into Mr. Waynes’ study. He made it just in time to catch Danny walking through the grandfather clock.

     Danny speed-walked into Bruce’s office, eyes set on the grandfather clock against the wall.

  “Gonna go into the cave for a sec’ B, somethin’ I wanna double check.” He didn’t wait for an answer before he phased through the clock and descended the stone stairs into the basement. Jumping the last three stairs, Danny turned to face the costume display.

  The five costume displays.

  The old Batman suit, the Nightwing suit, the first Batgirl suit, and Tim’s Robin suit. The last case is empty, but that hardly matters.

  “Where are the rest?” Danny mumbles to himself forlornly, searching for where the other suits might be stored. There’s nothing. No Orphan suit, No trace of Damian’s weapons, none of Jason’s extra helmets. Just the four suits in five cases.

  “What do you mean, ‘where’s the rest?’” The new kid, -the one that looks like Damian but wrong- Terry panted as he half-ran down the stairs.

  “I mean, where are the other suits? Where’s Orphan? Signal? Spoiler? Red Robin? Even if they moved out Bruce would still have a duplicate of their suit!” Danny’s voice was rising to something slightly hysterical, but there was just no way Bruce didn’t adopt the others here. It was Bruce's thing! He had an adoption problem, everyone knew that! His kids made fun of him for that!

  “Those other heroes? I haven’t met them if they are, and I don’t know why you would think Mr. Wayne would keep their suits on display.”

  Danny felt heavy at those words. Heavier than even before he died. His knees gave out under the weight and Danny sank to the floor, thoughts going a hundred miles an hour under a sheet of ice.

  Terry didn’t know Red Robin even though he knew Tim? Did Bruce just never meet Jason as a kid? Damian’s mom just never dropped him off at the manor? Was he even born? Was Cass being used as a weapon for the League of Assassins here like she was going to be in his universe? Where was Steph? Were Duke's parents still in the hospital? Batwoman? BlueJay?

  Did they just not exist here?

  Danny’s ears were ringing too loud with his questions. He didn't notice Terry (Blue eyes, angular jaw and cheekbones like Damian but the eyeswerewrong) kneeling down in front of him, confused and worried, until he was flinching back from a hand on his shoulder. Groaning, Danny leaned back on one arm, grinding the other hand's palm into his eye to ground himself.

  Now was not the time, Fenton. You do not freak out about universal differences on the floor of the batcave with some random Bruce adoptee in front of you. Get it together.

  Taking a large breath in through his nose, Danny took a moment to clear those panicked thoughts, pushing them in a far off corner of his mind to be addressed later, preferably alone (probably while he was trying to sleep) and shutting a mental lid on them with an exhale through the mouth.

  Okay. Okay okay okay okay. He can do this. Just, breathe.

  Danny opened his eyes, not remembering when he closed them, to see Terry still crouched in front of him looking like he was trying not to look concerned. He was failing.

  “Terry,” Danny murmured, “I’m going to say some names, and I want you to tell me, yes or no, if you know them.”

  “But wh-”

  “Just, please.” he stressed, “I just really need to know if you know these names.”

  Terry’s face contorted, but he gave a nod. Giving himself a moment, Danny collected himself enough for whatever potential outcome he could receive with this. He can do this, it’ll be okay.

  “Dick Grayson-” “Yes,”

“Stephanie Brown-” “No,”

“Barbara Gordon-” “Yes,”

“Cassandra Cain-” “No,”

“Duke Thomas-” “No,”

“Selina Kyle-” “Yes,”

“Kathrine Kane-” “No,”

  Okay. That's four to three against him. Danny didn't know how to feel about that exactly, but it wasn't great. He had one more name on the tip of his tongue, but with how things were going he didn’t know if he should say it. If Damian did exist in this universe, then he had the potential to put everyone around him in danger just by saying his name, something he wouldn’t stand for. If he didn’t… Terry was loyal to Bruce, and Danny didn’t want to get the old man’s blood pressure up with any of the names attached to the youngest Robin. Damian was the last one to check, but could he deal with almost every one of the bats he was close with not existing here?

  “Damian,” he pushed out after a long moment, unable to decide on the ‘Wayne’ or ‘Al Ghul’ surname.

  “What, no last name?” Terry asked sarcastically, to which Danny gave an eye roll and a shake of his head.

  Terry sighed, standing up to let his strained legs stretch. “Then that's a definite ‘no’. Was that the last one, or are we playing more guess who?”

  Danny huffed, putting his own feet under him to stand as well. He began to walk back to the stairs, not really sure what he should be thinking right about now, so he deflected instead. “They still make that old game?”

  There was a set of eyes boring into the back of his head, Danny could feel them, but he ignored them as he started trudging up. A grumble from behind him, followed by soft steps and Terry was on his right, looking every inch the irritated teen he probably usually portrayed to others. There was still that undercurrent of concern, but it was mostly covered by the glare he was shooting Danny’s way. Danny didn’t mind, this new kid had yet to master the bat-glare, so he was basically trying to melt a glacier with a hairdryer.

~~~~~

     Mr. Wayne was still in the study when the two came up. Terry was trying to glare a hole into the side of Danny’s face, with little results.

  “Ah, Danny, Terry, I just got a call from Wayne-Powers, there's going to be an urgent meeting there in about half an hour, so I need you both to get ready.”

  They watched as Danny gave an absent nod as he walked out the door and down the hall, silent as a mouse and deep in thought.

  Terry turned to Mr. Wayne, who let out a huff at the other teen. Teenagers.

  “So,” he drawled, “you gonna tell me what his deal is? ‘Cause that guy is seriously cryptic.”

  “Not surprising,” Mr. Wayne replied with a small shake of his head. “Do you know why he needed to go down there all of a sudden?”

  “Not really,” Terry turned his head back to the doorway, trying to listen for the other teen moving through the house. He couldn’t, and that unnerved him. “He just looked at the suit displays, had a bit of a meltdown, then asked me if I knew a bunch of names.”

  “And did you?” Mr. Wayne asked in the way he did when he started getting into detective mode.

  “Some I did, some I didn’t. I already made a file on the computer you can take a look at later.”

  A hum made its way from the space behind Terry, then the creak of the old chair sounded as Mr. Wayne heaved his way out of it. He shuffled his way over to Terry, placing a hand on his assistant's shoulder.

  “Be careful Terry, he may be friendly, but he isn’t from this dimension. There's no telling what he could be keeping from us. Make sure to take note of everything, no matter how small it may seem.”

  Terry nodded, taking a second to process what his mentor had told him as he watched the retired vigilante shuffle out the door. His brain finally caught up with what was said as Mr. Wayne rounded the corner.

  “Wait, another dimension? Mr. Wayne wait!-”

[gods-graveyard]

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My current works include-

"Ill Never Wear Your Broken Crown" Plot summary- Fix it AU w/ Slytherin Morally grey Harry trying to navigate the extended HP world and survive the constricting fate tied to "the boy who lived" Ships- Percy/Oliver/Marcus (ask about the rest due to spoilers) Length- Currently at 80k but planning to cover every book, realistically this will probably end up a stupidly long fic which is exactly why I want someone to bounce off of and keep track of all the strings im lining up. Need- Someone to bounce plot points off of, due to this being an AU a lot of canon is changing and while I have established a lot of change there are some things that remain murky and I would love help in ironing them out ahead of time

______________________________________________

"Rose covered Graves" Plot summary- The Rosier twins own a mortuary/funeral home. Barty is the son of the sherrif and decides to intern there as rebellion/an escape from his "fate" but of course falls in love. Lots of supernatural funky stuff and bending the laws of reality, and might lean very heavily into crime drama genre. Ships- Barty/Evan, James/Regulus, Remus/Sirius, Dorcas/Marlene and Pandora/Lily (Rosekiller and Jegulus being main while the rest are background) Length- Short fic for my standards so under 100k, for now im aiming at a max cap out of like 50 but knowing myself that might spiral Need- Keep track of ships make sure everyone gets their moment to shine and charecterization/foreshadow stays consistant rather than gimicky

SO YEAH- Trying to keep this vauge so the post isnt stupidly long but you can absolutely dm/comment asking for more info and im very open to negotiations depending on what you are down for!

[shinydelirium]

hi, just wanna say that without the essays and analysis people as you have published here, I wouldn't love Kiro as much as I do nowadays, he's my precious sunshine. I don't really expect anything from Papergames as a company, so I'm keeping my little treasures regardless of what's gonna come out of it in the end. do you plan in the future to explain what you think ended up going downhill with the direction of the game you have briefly mentioned?

Hello @ladyjune26! Thanks for the ask and being so very patient with me on answering. Here are the major complaints/pet peeves I have with what Papergames has done and continues to do to lessen my love of the game and their treatment of Kiro as a main love interest: *WARNING* LOTS OF RANTING AHEAD

Kiro always being the "odd one out of the bunch" in regards to karmas: Honestly, why did Papergames think it was a good idea to do this? I can tell which love interest they favor most over Kiro just from looking at the karma illustrations during group events. It's almost like they use a different filter on them or use a different artist completely to draw his karmas cuz his stick out like a sore thumb. A perfect example would be from last year's Xmas/New Year's event (Modern Rhapsody) where all the guys get stylish hairstyles and Kiro gets the short end of the stick. They forgot he's a main love interest and now he's just an afterthought. Another example is the Valentine's event where all the guys get kiss karmas and say "I love you". All the guys have open-mouth kisses with their eyes open and once again they don't do that with Kiro. IS IT REALLY THAT DIFFICULT TO BE CONSISTENT!?!?! MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!! Plus, why can't they ever draw MC in gorgeous outfits or hot and intimate scenes with Kiro? She constantly looks plain and boring in many of them. Her relationship with Kiro is no longer friends anymore. THEY'RE LOVERS!!! Also, no creativity. There's a lot of karmas where they draw the same old stuff in them like a teddy bear, daisies, sunflowers....COME ON!!! THOSE AREN'T THE ONLY THINGS GOING FOR HIM!!! 'The Versatile King' my ass!!! Don't make statements like those if you can't even fulfill them. If they need ideas for karmas I have plenty...no wait, they already used them for the other love interests which leads to the next point.

Kiro has been reduced to a minor character/NPC role: In season 1 main story, Kiro had the least amount of screen time. I remember a Weibo post where a CN player calculated how much total screen time he had and it was 80 minutes! I haven't exactly tested if this was true but I've seen many CN fans mention this. Also, throughout season 1, his major plot points were all put into Rumors and Secrets and they're still doing it in season 2. And don't get me started on how much repetitiveness on certain aspects of his character...ISTG, I'VE NEVER SEEN SO MANY METAPHORS ABOUT A BEAR IN MY LIFE!!! Starting to see the pattern now?

Nothing gets changed when Kiro fans address issues: There was a time when during one of Gavin's bday karmas, his fans were hounding customer service to add the gingko bracelet to MC's wrist and within a very short period of time, it was done. However, whenever Kiro fans want something changed, nothing, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, gets done. A while back, there was a magazine advertising the game and for some very strange reason, they typed Kiro's name wrong and his birthdate. The entire Weibo page was just post after post about it. There's no excuse for such a small mistake which could have easily been avoided.

His karmas are released last: Whether it's the Fragrant Sunshine ERs, solo Wish Tree events, or in general, Kiro tends to be the last one scheduled. So far, he has not had a single free SR/SSR karma this year and it's already July. When the first kiss karmas were released several years ago, Kiro was once again the last one released.

Storyline and character arc: Are they ever going to address how Kiro can change into his silver-haired Helios form? Why does he have those markings on his right arm and how can they appear and disappear whenever? Is he ever going to find his master KEY? Why does Kiro look so much like his master KEY who was the previous Helios? Does that mean KEY also had blue eyes? What is this mission they keep teasing about? HELL, HIS ORIGINS!?!? There's been no story development whatsoever and they keep reusing the same stuff in the chapters. What happened to all that awesome character development in the first half of season 2? Crumbs keep dropping but it leads to nowhere. Here's a hot take: Westmoon had a much better, cohesive story overall. I am forever sad that it's over. If it isn't already obvious, the writers are heavily milking the main story. As much as I don't like season 1, at least it was more entertaining and mysterious especially when MC "died" and ended up in Winter World where all the love interests didn't know her. They should have continued from there. It would have been interesting to see how the relationships developed and MC ended up staying despite everything? Did she have to go back to the "main world"? There's just too many questions or maybe I'm being too analytical.

That's pretty much all the major issues I've come across. There are others but I've done enough nit-picking. However, don't let my opinions sway your enjoyment of the game. If you still like it, then please by all means, continue to play. Hope you have a wonderful day and take care!

[socksandbuttons]

I HEARD WE’RE TALKING ABOUT KC USED AS CHARACTER HERE CUZ BOI FO I HAVE LOT IN MY MIND ABOUT THAT (a bit of a rant so uh yeah)

I feel like such, and I mean SUCH a wasted opportunity and potential for KC as a character. Multiple times where I felt like it just so off about how he’s been handle and how it ended. You mean to tell me, this man right here has just gotten his redemption to being good, gone for a few months away from us to see how he’s doing only for us to see one last time before he got straight kill by his own Bloody Son? I mean yeah sure, Im driven for angst but the way they did it for his death just felt not earn, i dont know how to explain it. Im glad that KC at least acknowledge about Bloodmoon’s whole issue but to just die afterwards?? And that’s it?? Yeah ok, he’s a pacifist now and a good guy, but he’s still can defend himself. Maybe came out injured from the fight but still alive. But no…. He just die. Thats it

I cant help but feel like they have been just like, throwing KC’s character around. They either dont know what to do or have other plans for him, but just the way it’s been handle it just. I dont know I gotten a whole rant about this.

I remember when they said that Moon will give KC a proper body but apparently Moon never made that happen. Now, I wanna give the showrunner the benefit of a doubt and cut them some slack cuz Im sure they have other things to do beside the show to even remember that

Idk what else to say. I know for sure there are a lot more in my mind abt this but I cant type it all out atm so take it as you will

Oh yeah no I do feel they didn't know what to do with him other than have him come in once a while and felt the death necessary rather than use him more. (The two voice actors for Sun and Moon have like three channels.) I do feel they haven't been too consistent anyway with KC (the rush of a redemption, no seeming closure for somethings, etc. I could be missing something but yeah) They could've had him for the current astral plot (Given he has star knowledge and *harnessing its power*) PLUS Earth's situation about her feelings about the Creator (I'll keep bringing it up, but Deliberately MADE to be a killing machine is right in her face. I know she has Forgor but once again her whole Need to know and uncomfortable with being out of loop. Her entire encounter with KC would be such a haze to her it'd definitely bother her enough.) KC isn't the first example of not using a character to its full (Solar Flare and Even first Bloodmoon. Literally... literally was taught magic and thats never brought up again). It's also just how numbers work on the channel too. They take most review from youtube and discord from what I understand and from what I see there is a difference with majority and what we're saying most of the time. Lunar was brought back cause he was rather popular already (also he wasn't fully killed either in the same episode).

[sarcasmandships]

his! do you have any peterick fic recommendations? i've already read all your works on ao3 and i'm waiting desperately for updates so until then i need something to read because i feel like i've already read soooo many fics and i'm running out of material plz help :)

hiiii, im glad you like my fics and I'm sorry im terrible at updating i used to be so consistent but uni is just killing me with assignments rn! but i promise the restaurant au will get an update soon and im planning to edit death by a thousand cuts before i add to it again cos im just not really happy with the quality of it, but that will also be coming soon i promise!

anyways onto what you're really asking about; recommendations. im not sure if you're looking for smut or stories with plot so here's just a mix of things i've really liked ( i suck at bookmarking things so I've just searched through my history and there's deffos stuff i've missed im sorry)

Literally just read kick me in the face & ask me how my head feels by fkingdeathwish today - devoured this in a few hours and this fic made me like stories in first person. its so good and also has the best andy/joe/pete friendship dynamics i was smiling the whole time. but also features a lot of petekey tho which might not be ur thing

(smut) going down, down by @pyrchance - i read this the other day and its 10/10

Anything by snitchesandtalkers but some of my favourites are i've been checking my list, crooked love, making out inside crashed cars (smut), silver screen dream, the antidote to everything (except for me), we're friends when you're on your knees (not finished but still so so worth reading), amateur pornographers (smut obvs), a little less 16 candles (a little more bite me)

brutal love by @notastumph- this one is so good but like i also had to take a 5 min break between chapters cos the angst and heartbreak was getting to me so much (in the best way)

and i'll burn by jiksa - just read the tags first

the house on rosewood lane by scarredsodeep - this one is so fucking good, i don't even like horror and i was obsessed with this and couldn't stop reading

hey doctor, i'm certifiable by derridoid (smut) - so good and the ending made me laugh sm

husband on the payroll by das_verlorence-kind - what can i say, i love the fake relationship trope

also ive changed my plea to guilty by das_verlorence_kind - again just check the tags incase it’s not ur thing

accidents will happen by rusty76

again pretty much everything by @annoyingpetekey but some favourites are (i just wanna) get some, so pretty (when you're on your knees), and come on (and fuck me like you doubt me) - all smut

That Schrodinger guy made some really good points, you know? by @earlgreytea68

but i'm reflecting light by looks_a_scream - this one is deffos a favourite

the purgatory of my hips by auralcosm

edgar allan potato by emeralcitydowntowngirl - another absolute favourite, i have such a soft spot for soulmate AUs but I've never read one as good as this, again features a lot of petekey but it is all in the past

to take what i'm given with grace by likeasugarcube - their whole 'marriage of convience' series is amazing but this is the main fic and it is sooo good

anything by littlesnowpea but favourites include love in the middle of a firefight, but there's no preparing for this, and nobody wants to hear you sing about tragedy (pls read tags first tho)

december is for cynics by looks_a_scream - another favourite

secrets i don’t want to keep by perceived_nobility (although i think they’ve changed their name to invisible_man now) anyways this one is only accessible if you have an ao3 account but it is so so good an hurts in all the best ways, would advise paying attention to some of the tags tho

Also pretty much anything written by appleremix or vampyerika

Ok so I have like another 30+ pages in my history but this is already so long, so i hope you enjoy some of these assuming you haven't read them already!

[trekkele]

General complaint, not directed at you:

*sigh* I know the batfandom likes to play trauma olympics, but if i see one more take that argues that the batkids have so much more trauma than bruce who has been in comics since *looks up specific number* 1939, almost a century, and has everything bad happening to him at least once. Not to mention how DC wants to keep him young, which means they condense all his stories into less than twenty years. And this is how we could have a dead batman, an outcast batman and a family dad batman all in different runs simultaneously. Dude gets tortured in one comic and has a messy love life in the next, while losing his mind because fucking... six or more entities are fighting over him in the other six runs.

What I'm getting at is, trauma olympics are not allowed unless my fave is winni-

JOKING! I'm joking!!

My real point is this: where did bruce's character trait of internalising things vanish to? Because now it's more like lashing out and blowing up all the time. Something bad happens to him, he bottles it up, doesn't wanna talk about it and pushes people away who try to push him to open up. No, he doesn't just arbitrarily lash out every chance he gets. Yes, he loses control when reaching a breaking point but that can't be happening every issue in every comic because that man has been shown to be able to work under immense pressure and not to lash out unless it's all over and some time has passed and somebody's needling him to talk about it.

This is really badly writting (my comment, not the comics, although this applies to them too lmao) and not coherent at all but if you have opinions about this, please share.

To summerize my incoherent ask: Has batman lost his character trait of internalising things and was it changed to lashing out because of literally anything? I'm aware the answer changes depending on if you're talking about Batman comics with no Robins in sight, a JL comic, or a Batman comic WITH Robins in it.

Thank you for reading this mess. Sorry for making you read this mess.

Have a great day!

Such a good point about the trauma Olympics tho, I really agree because it feels like everyone's favorite has to have All The Traumas before they can be valid for feeling some way about them which is, slow down, it's fine, they can be complex characters without the entire CPS checklist

Bruce is winning though (<- mostly joking but also seriously give my boy a BREAK)

I think you did answer your own question though, with "depending on if you're talking about a comic with no Robins, or a JL, or a 'batfamily' comic" because the problem I have with how Bruce is written a lot nowadays is that he's not so much a character as a plot device. Need an ally to betray the JL? Bruce. Need someone to misunderstood Robin? Bruce. Need someone to get all the love interests and inter-dimensional entities drooling over his brain? Bruce.

Some of those scenarios will make sense, obviously, but sometimes it feels like the writers needed a big name to act a certain way to move the story along.

Take for example the Tower of Babel storylines, where Bruces paranoia? Makes sense! He has been betrayed by allies, he has experience with mind control and the consequences of actions taken under mind control, he understands the need for containment in those situations!

His actions tho??? The contingency plans, specifically for Superman? Are torture. And that doesn't fit his personality or the purpose of his plans at all!!!!! It's about containment and harm reduction, always. Not. Whatever the fuck is going on there.

So I think the problem with Batman, beyond bad faith criticism of his concept, and bad writing, is overexposure. He should not be in so many titles, with so many people writing him, and so little care about his consistency.

Until then unfortunately, he's going to feel wildly different in every comic he's in.

[diodellet]

*slides in*

How about 3, 16, 17 and 29 for the fic writer asks?

omg i didnt think id ramble this much (thank u for enabling me ner 🤧💕💕)

3. how you feel about your current WIP

tbh i'm not super confident about my writing any time i come out from from a long long hiatus of not posting anything. also like… i'm not super confident writing other charas aside from jamil since i don't really think ab them as much… (sorry leona-natics* whenever this drabble gets posted, but like fingers crossed the sitch will hopefully be exciting enough)

*i think it might have to do with the fact that i kinda hc leona on the grayspec++have more vv specific hc characterizations i like of him, but ig i do see his appeal (one of m'oomfs is a leona-natic and well ahu her propaganda might've been subconsciously assimilated)

but ahaha i tend to write things that i'm very personally interested in so i'll find a way to have fun with it, i'll be gucci i just get too into my head, it's a vicious cycle as a writer.

16. favorite place to write

uhhh im a very sedentary person, probably a result from the pandemic, and being a thorough homebody even after that

hmm i would say id like a nice ambient public place with coffeeeee my blood my life force Some amount of people engrossed in their own work, but like in the ph, esp in a place populated by a lot of uni students, cafes end up being hella cold (im skin and bones the cold is Evil)++noisy (which i don't see as a big bad thing esp since i like socializing with my friends...at the cost of putting off my own writing oops HAHAHA)

17. talk about your writing and editing process

oh boy. here we go. one thing to note throughout all this: my only consistent practice as a writer is inconsistency. (and ig, if i try hard enough, i can usually put out a passable 200-300 words in one sitting)

sometimes i can outline a fic and take forever chipping away at it

^^(case in point: that sebek x vampire!reader x silver fic... i joked abt waiting until book 7 would drop on EN but it has been Stuck. i wanna write bi-disaster sebek so bad though 🤧🤧)

other times my actual writing veers waaaaay into a diff plotpoint instead of what i have plotted out

^^(there're these 2 now-removed bullet points in wcidfy's outline for ch 3 that went: "do i have the balls to write a fever scene… gaguhan anhirap nito pag walang ob [tl: fuck this is hard (to write) without overblots]" and "i also keep thinking of a scene in the (scarabia) gardens…and lying about bees…weird")

and sometimes i can just shit out 1k-ish words unprompted.

^^though this last example leads to my most rough writing++editing ('ily but leave me tf alone' and 'no id rather pretend'), i only look over for immediate errors, but keep iffy-phrasings and repeated words, but sometimes i still miss incomplete sentences that i jus quickly fix after posting ahahaha.

in terms of my more "polished" writing, i edit as i write (<- i do Not recommend this style. it's very unsustainable if ur planning to do more conventional writing/publishing and it's very easy to get trapped in your writer's block)

and after finishing 80% of it, i try to get a second pair of eyes on it (thanks @jessamine-rose mwaps) because validation of works in progress feels good it also helps to have a trusted outside person look at the work with fresher eyes. also smtimes we get into bouncing ideas back nd forth that we spawn new brainrot lmao like this👇

i like to call my writing a "semi-polished first draft" partly out of self-defense and self-criticism. but really, i think i'd rather have "good enough" writing posted than "my best" because i could spend forever hoarding my wips. i think i'll always have regrets over not fleshing out certain beats/using certain phrasings and references, but i also enjoy looking back on my writing and seeing the incremental, microscopic progress. it makes the process more enjoyable than self-flagellating.

on a personal note, the writing workshop scene can be brutal. with some criticism being needlessly harsh, sure it produced some of my "best" writing but the process was Not Fun. while i get that being able to revise meaningfully is an important thing, i think the endgoal of feedback (from my short exp of betaing for friends) shud always be aimed towards uplifting the writer's aim to create/improving the writer's vision of what they wanna achieve, especially in a craft that is as solitary as writing. wait ill rb a post about making ur shitty pots, very in-line with making art in general

29. how easy is it for you to come up with titles?

very hard. i hate thinking of titles, thats why i yoink lines from songs (who cares if the vibe doesnt fit im adding layers of interpretation or sumn🥴🥴). ACTUALLY wcidfy had like 3 other possible names (it was either *rolls out list* hairtie, nonequivalent exchange, or ben franklin effect* wcidfy was the most bearable one.) *i tried to look up how to distill the psychological phenomenon of someone probably liking u more after u do a small favor for them into 2-3 words, but it had to be a WHITE MAN'S NAME 🤢🤢NAW!!!!

for few other examples:

'say what you mean' was initially titled 'oh how the tables turn'

'roommates? more like roomfoes' was first titled 'pet peeves'

'hypothermia' was first titled 'frigid' but then i thought of paradoxical undressing nd stuff and da pseudo-warmth

i've also moved a bunch of other plot beats from wcidfy's main document into a file called "part 45678 of wcidfy"

as u can see i prioritize making myself laugh wid my wip titles. i wanna put the illusion that my writing's not that serious. unless it is? idk i'm not sure how to describe my writing in terms of its vibes.

(list of fic writer asks, ahaha bug me ab my wips)

[jalebi-weds-bluetooth]

Hello JWB!

I Went through your analysis and threads about ipkknd and it felt i watched a show with another perspective. Your Analysis is so beautiful that it makes me want to rethink about everything i watched. So here's a question i wanna ask, what made you watch and then get attached to it that you were able to write such beautiful analysis? Very few shows can ACTUALLY connect with people with depth that wants us to write detailed analysis. What was your attachment to this crazy ride of 300 plus episodes?

Hello there!

Thank you so much and I am so so humbled that you feel my interpretations give you a new way to watch IPK - I'm excited!

IPK executed many tropes to perfection. And their characters had solid motivations that didn't fizzle after a few episodes.

Anjali always played a prominent part in Arnav's life. We see that. Arnav had a valid reason to dislike Khushi (thankfully it was NEVER gender based - which most of the shows are. At no point of the show is any of the rage Arnav throws to Khushi stems from her being a woman. And we know that because Arnav views Khushi similar to Mool Rajani and his uncle. It all comes from the first impression he had and we all know how horrid it was.)

The audience understood why Arnav would have such a harsh opinion of Khushi and not believe in coincidences because Shyam on the other hand is doing everything Arnav thinks Khushi is doing! If only Khushi had Arnav's cynicism then Shyam would've never wormed his way into the Guptas and if Arnav had Khushi's optimism he would've accepted his love much earlier.

Also a lot of this show is written like a novel instead of 'tracks' in a trp. It went track to track post Shyam revelation. Oh here's a birthday track. Here's adopted child track. Here's a Mrs India track. Tracks often have little relevance to consistently developing a character.

But until the elopement you saw LITERAL changes in character as they lived lives. They met, had an argument, she ends up working at his place - twice, their sexual attraction is revealed at the worst moment, once he learns how deeply prejudiced he was upon learning his misunderstanding of the sheesh mahal moment he starts changing as a person, she grows more uneasy around her fiancé, omg her fiancé is the hero's very married sister's husband!, he breaks up to be a better human being for once, she keeps quiet because she fears the result of the truth and he has painted her worse for much less, slowly without any barriers they find themselves drawn to love and the fact he never apologized (hence wholly accepted his mistake of understanding khushi) to her and that she hid the truth has its results - their hearts are broken the night they're about to be together.

So you can see, it's a literal story until the night they elope - every plot line brings a cohesive change in the characters. They grow, learn, adapt, change.

Which tragically stops after the elopement. I honestly see some growth from the kidnapping track. Then during the remarriage - the charm never equals to the previous episodes but it's good enough. There's no actual villain in this show apart from Shyam. And he wasn't doing the same thing a million times.

We also saw the villain rise with the plot. He goes from hiding, to lying, to remaining dubious, to having other intentions, to threats, murder, infidelity, bigamy, manipulation, kidnapping, harassment - you would never know his plans on day one.

So this is the reason why I find IPK to be perfect to analyze because there's so much in this show. So less exposition, so much more for the audience to understand.

And they understood opposites attract. In a good way. Arnav never became religious to fit in Khushi's life and she didn't have a random modern makeover to fit in his. Also, the passion between the two stays post confession and post sex! That's difficult to achieve.

Of course the show goes downhill but because it ended so quickly after it went down the slope that it's easy to ignore those episodes!

Hope you liked the lengthy answer!

Love,

JWB

Also, Arnav was the perfect anti-hero ever made. There's not been a single character written better in grays after him in the history of Hindi tv. Aryan nearly started off in the right track but they dragged him so much down the hill that... ugh... the potential Advay had is heartbreaking but they lost the character even before they started.

Other characters have had stellar scenes but in an overall consistency point of view, Arnav always remains as the perfect anti hero. He's flawed and no one is asking you to believe in his 'heart of gold'.