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scoonsalicious · 3 months

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Unsatisfied, Pt. 2

Pairing: Bucky x Avenger!Fem!Reader

Summary: After game night, Bucky promised to ruin you come morning. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be.

Warnings: Language, adult themes, Explicit Sexual Content: Minors: GTFO; I don’t serve your kind here (FaceTime sex, hand stuff), Pocket still not being over her trauma, mentions of past injury.

Word Count: 4.5k

A/N: Hi, besties!

It's me, ya gurl, with Part 2 of the post-Unwanted one-shot that's become a three-shot, lol! I fucking missed the absolute hell out of these two, and I'm so happy to be back with them for a little bit. Writing for Pocket and her Bucky is just like... I don't know. It's like I'm not even making stuff up, just channeling it, because it comes so easily, unlike literally everything else I try to write. I can't say when I'm going to resume WFLT. To be perfectly candid, I might put it on extended hiatus while I work on other things that seem to come easier right now. I don't know yet. I just want to be up front with everyone.

Here's where my attentions are currently focused: Finishing Unsatisfied, an untitled collab with @mrsbuckybarnes1917, writing Hunted, and plotting Unbroken. For some reason, there is just a giant Gandalf standing between me and WFLT, waving his staff and shouting "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" I'll let you know when I whip him into the abyss. And yes, that does make me the Balrog in this scenario, and I, too, fall to my death in the depths of Moria. It's an imperfect analogy, okay? At least I'm not Sean Bean, dying all over the place.

Anyway, enjoy more Pocket and Bucky! I know I do! xoxo

“I miss you,” you moaned into the screen of your phone. Your voice sounded pitiful, even to your own ears, but you were lonely and you didn’t have the shame to hide it. Especially not from the man you were talking to.

“I miss you, too, sweets,” Bucky said with a dejected sigh that let you know your feelings of misery were mutual. “It shouldn’t be longer than a few more days, then I’ll come back home to ya, and we can pick up where we left off, yeah?”

You smiled and nodded eagerly, his promise setting your skin awash in goosebumps. ‘Where you’d left off’ had been finally, finally, coming back together after nearly twelve months of self-imposed celibacy, spending the first night together, in your new apartment, wrapped in each other’s arms, with his co—

“At least we got our bubble bath before things went fully to shit,” Bucky added, a smile playing on his lips from across the distance, as though he knew exactly where your thoughts had taken you.

“Yeah,” you sighed, remembering the feel of him, so warm and solid, against your back in the tub. After he’d kicked out your friends from the impromptu game night they’d decided to throw at your new place, and you’d gotten over your freakout when Sam had inadvertently joked about Bucky ‘cheating’ at a card game, the two of you had spent a much needed evening just in each other’s company. Intimacy, but not sex, the way your therapist had recommended, with Bucky promising to ruin you come daybreak.

Instead, though, a call had come from Fury in the middle of the night. A group of terrorists, counting some several enhanced among them, had stolen a biological weapon and were threatening to decimate the population of Shanghai unless the Chinese government gave into their demands, and so, The Avengers, Bucky included, had been called away.

You’d offered to go, just so you could stay close to him. You’d never even leave the Quinjet, you’d promised, out of the action, but neither Bucky nor Tony was eager to see you back on the field, not after what had happened the last time. Even though you’d had your last reconstructive surgery months ago, and your doctors had given you the all clear, between your boyfriend and your pseudo-brother, you weren’t leaving New York anytime soon.

That had been over a week ago. Negotiations with the terrorists had not gone according to plan, and they were probably going to have to fight it out. And as for you? You were ready to climb the fucking walls.

“How’s wedding stuff going?” Bucky asked, referring to your role as Maid of Honor in Pepper and Tony’s upcoming nuptials. “Keeping you busy?”

“Don’t you dare try to change the subject, Barnes,” you practically growled at him. “I am so fucking desperate for your cock, I swear to god–”

From somewhere off camera, you could hear a cacophony of sound– a combination of Sam and Clint’s uproarious laughter and Tony shouting “JESUS CHRIST BARNES, USE YOUR FUCKING HEADPHONES!”

Bucky’s face had turned crimson in the video call, and you couldn’t suppress the laugh that came bubbling from you as he abruptly stood up and removed himself into a darker, quieter area.

“Shit,” he exhaled as he got himself re-situated in the new, hopefully more private, space. He ran a hand down his face in embarrassment. “Didn’t mean for them to hear all that, doll.”

You laughed as you twisted a strand of hair around your finger in the way you knew he liked. “What happened to your earbuds, baby?” you teased.

Bucky reached up and pulled an airpod from his ear, looking at the small device as though it had personally offended him. “I thought they were on!” he exclaimed. “If I’d known I’d been broadcasting you for the whole fucking team to hear, I woulda gone somewhere a lot more private to begin with.”

“The whole team?” you asked, cautiously. You didn’t want to say any names, but you needed to know if he was there, too. If he’d heard you.

“Yeah,” Bucky sighed, catching your meaning and lowering his voice. “Rogers is here.”

You swallowed and nodded solemnly. You hadn’t spoken to Steve Rogers since he’d made his horrible confession to you in the hospital, of the ways he’d manipulated your life to keep you and Bucky apart. All culminating in Bucky’s betrayal, your temporary death, the loss of your unborn baby.

“Are you alright?” you asked, thinking only of Bucky in the moment. It was easy for you to stay away from Steve, to ignore him– your anger toward him had far surpassed any level of fondness you’d once had for Captain America, but you knew how much harder it was for Bucky to break a bond of nearly a century. Not that you would have ever forbidden him from reconnecting with Steve, if that was what he had wanted. No, Bucky had decided on his own that some things couldn’t be forgiven. No matter how many decades of friendship might lie behind them.

“Yeah,” he sighed, though you could tell from the look in his eyes that it was harder for him than he was letting on. “It’s awkward, but if we keep it strictly to business, it’s manageable. It’s just…” He rubbed the back of his neck, and you wished so badly that you could be there to smooth the lines from his distraught face. “It’s just… sometimes he makes it hard to remember what he did.”

You nodded, feeling guilty that you were the reason the two were no longer friends. That Steve had betrayed Bucky because of his desire for you.

“Don’t go blaming yourself, sweets,” Bucky chastised you knowingly. It was like he could read your mind. You opened your mouth to protest, but he cut you off with a look. “I know how that pretty head works, doll, and I know you’re blaming yourself. Stop it. He made his own bed, now he gets to lie in it.”

“I know,” you lamented. “I just hate that you have to pay the emotional cost of his bad decisions, that’s all.”

Bucky frowned at you. “Just like I hate how you had to pay the costs for mine, doll,” he said softly. “Our actions have consequences. We have to live with them, so we don’t make the same fuck ups again.”

You subconsciously let your hand drift to your abdomen, your fingers delicately tracing over the scar that was the only external reminder that you’d been shot. Had technically been killed. Had lost a lot more than your life. You were grateful Bucky could only see you from the chest up.

“Well, this conversation took a turn,” you said, trying to get off of subjects you’d rather not dwell on. “Can we go back to talking about how fucking horny I am for you?”

Bucky barked out a laugh and god, how it warmed your heart that you could still get that reaction out of him after everything you’d both gone through. His blue eyes seemed to darken as he adjusted himself in whatever seat he was in. “If it helps, I’m horny as hell for you, too, sweetheart.”

“Oh yeah?” you asked, tugging on your bottom lip with your teeth as he nodded his head. “Yeah, hearing that does help. Show me.”

Bucky’s eyes widened through the screen. “Show you?” he breathed, clearly not having anticipated where you were about to take the conversation. “What do you mean, ‘show you’, doll?”

“I mean,” you said, leaning back against the headboard to make yourself more comfortable, “show me that pretty cock of yours, Sergeant. Take it out. Stroke it for me. I wanna see what I’ve been missing.”

You watched as Bucky’s eyes went back and forth between the phone screen and the door that separated him from the rest of the team. You could tell from the way he was gnawing at his bottom lip that he was seriously debating it, but that he had some real reservations. “Doll,” he whispered, sounding scandalized, but excited, “they’re right outside. They’ll hear me.”

You smirked at the way he’d suddenly become shy. “I wanna hear you, Sarge,” you pleaded in a breathy whisper, and from the way he closed his eyes and moaned at your words, you knew he was so close to giving you what you wanted. “Come on, baby,” you cooed. “Can’t you show Pocket that pretty pink cock she’s been wanting so badly? Can’t I watch you choke it with your big hands while I imagine my mouth wrapped around it? Pozhaluysta, Soldat?”

“Fuck,” he muttered, and you knew you’d won when he hopped up from where he’d been sitting. Though you couldn’t see it from the way he was letting the phone dangle, you could hear him lock the door. “You know I can’t resist it when you speak Russian, doll,” he said as he sat back down, propping the phone and its camera up against something so that you could see his entire body stretched out before you.

“YA rasschityval na eto, detka,” you said with a grin. I was counting on it, baby. You could see now that he was in a bedroom of what looked like a standard SHIELD safehouse. It was small– only one twin-sized bed, so you weren’t worried about anyone else barging in to need the space.

“So, how do we do this?” he asked, and you could hear the nervousness mixed with excitement in his voice. It struck you that, throughout your relationship, and all the time you’d spent apart while one or the other was away on missions, the two of you had actually never done this before. Phone sex, yeah, but never on video, together. It was going to be new territory, and it thrilled you.

“We?” you asked playfully, pretending you had no idea what he was talking about.

Bucky looked at you sternly though the screen of your phone and you involuntarily shivered under his gaze. “Don’t think for a second I’m not going to see that sweet, dripping cunt of yours tonight, doll. I’ve been fantasizing about it for ages. Got just a taste of it the other day, and it wasn’t nearly enough.”

Fuck, you could feel yourself dampen and your nipples harden just from his words alone, not to mention the memory of the brief moment on your terrace, before the movers had arrived, when he’d had his deliciously thick fingers pressed inside of you.

“Baby,” you moaned, not even realizing you were trailing your fingertips over the pebbled flesh of your breasts under your shirt, imagining his rough, calloused hands on you.

“Take off your clothes, Pocket,” Bucky growled. He didn’t ask; it wasn’t a request. It was a command, and you were ready to obey.

“Sir, yes sir, Sergeant,” you said, and you were sure you looked anything but graceful as you sped to pull your top over your head and shimmy out of the pair of cheeky panties you wore. The cool breeze of the air conditioning danced along your flushed skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

“Fuck,” Bucky groaned, his eyes following the path your fingers traced along the contours of your body. You watched hungrily as he absentmindedly palmed himself through the Tac pants he still frustratingly donned. “God, you look even better‘n I remember, sweets,” he grunted. “Better than I’ve been imaginin’ all week. How the fuck’s that even possible?”

“Buck,” you warned, your cheeks flushing with embarrassment at his obviously false praise as you turned to hide your face from his gaze. “Stop. I know you don’t mean that.”

Frowning, Bucky leaned forward, picking up the phone so he could bring his face close to the camera, scrutinizing you. “Pocket,” he said, but you refused to look at him. “Pocket!” he tried again, his voice a little firmer, but still gentle. “Why the fuck would I not mean that, sweetheart? You’re gorgeous.”

Scoffing, you rolled your eyes. It was kind of him to lie to spare your feelings, really, but you didn’t think you could take it. Not from him. Not after everything. Without thought, your hand moved to cover your bullet wound from his gaze. “Come on, Buck,” you said, your tone implying that you weren’t buying his bullshit, no matter how sweetly he was selling it, “we both know you weren’t imagining me with all these new scars.”

“Baby.” Bucky made a noise somewhere between a choked laugh and an incredulous groan. “You can’t seriously think I, of all fucking people, give a shit about a couple of tiny scars?” He put the phone down, and your view of him was obstructed for a moment while you heard the rustle of cloth. When he lifted it up again, you saw he had taken off his vest and Tac shirt. He pointed to the ruined skin of his left shoulder.

“Look at these and tell me you think I’m gonna be turned off by a coupla’ scars, Pocket,” he said, and you could detect the hard edge to his voice.

“It’s different, Buck,” you told him, your voice cracking. “You already had those scars when we met; they were a part of the man I fell in love with. You…” you hastily wiped at the tear that was suddenly threatening to fall from your eye. “Mine… mine weren’t. You didn’t get a choice in them.”

You watched as the look on Bucky’s face morphed into one of pure confusion. Of course he didn’t fully understand– you weren’t just talking about scars, after all. He… just didn’t realize that yet.

“You didn’t have a choice in them, either, sweetheart,” he said softly, eying the way your hand protectively rested over your abdomen. “And if you’re talking about the scar from when you got shot… well, fuck, if that scar’s not my favorite thing.”

You looked at him in wide-eyed disbelief. “How could this… disgusting reminder…” you choked out, “of everything that happened last year… how could that be your favorite thing, Bucky?”

“That scar means you’re alive, doll,” he told her. “That you’re still breathing, still with me, in spite of all of it. So forgive me if I think that makes it the fucking sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

You closed your eyes and exhaled, his words momentarily taking away the sting of the inadequacy you’d felt ever since the doctors had told you about the extent of your condition. It wasn’t something you were purposefully keeping from Bucky… You had just been too terrified to say it out loud. You were going to tell him. Just not yet.

"Look at me Doll,” he said, getting your attention back onto his face, “I don't like that I have to tell you this at all, but I'm gonna do it, as many times as you need, as many times as it takes for you to believe me. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

You felt your face soften, the tension of insecurity drop from your shoulders as he looked at you through the phone screen, eyes blue pools of adoration. You wanted so badly to just get lost in him, to let him consume you until you were capable of thinking of nothing but him.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

“It’s something more than just the scar, isn’t it, sweets? You’ve never been ashamed of showing me your body before.” You weren’t vain as a rule, and Bucky knew this about you. You had other scars, worse ones. Uglier ones, but none had ever bothered you the way this one had. None had ever carried the same degree of psychological and emotional baggage.

You just nodded, afraid that if you spoke, you’d reveal what you’d been keeping from him, blurt it out before you could stop yourself, and it was not the kind of thing you wanted to do over video with thousands of miles of distance between you.

“You don’t have to tell me, doll,” he said, the understanding in his voice so pure that it made you ache. “I know so many of my actions have hurt you; I get that there’s still some trust–”

“Baby, no,” you interrupted. “I trust you, I do. I want to tell you. I’m just… not ready yet.”

“Tell me what I can do for you right now, then, sweetheart,” he offered. He’d brought the phone close to his face, his gaze on you intense and burning through the screen. “What do you need?”

You exhaled, the sight of him so focused and sincere making your knees feel weak. “Just you, Buck,” you whispered, the words coming out in a breathy sigh. “I just want you.”

“I’m right here, doll.” His voice turned low, darker. A soft purr that vibrated your insides. “And I’ll be home with you real soon, but you gotta tell me what I can do for you right. now.”

You sucked in a shuddering gasp of air, indulging in the way his words swept over your body like a languid kiss. Without even thinking, you felt your hand drift down your abdomen, your fingertips dancing along the top of your thigh.

“Buck,” you found yourself whining as you squirmed your ass across the mattress, searching for any inch of friction you could find.

“Yeah, baby,” he grunted, readjusting the camera so it was once again propped up and you could see the length of him pressing against the material of his tac-pants. “Tell Sergeant Barnes what you want so he can give it to you.”

A beat of silence passed between you before you both started laughing, your hand coming to cover your face as you suppressed a snort. “Oh my god, Barnes!” you wheezed.

“Yeah, that was awful,” he laughed, palming his face in embarrassment. “Did I kill it?”

You wiped away a stray tear that had leaked from your eye in your laughter. “You’re lucky I find your bad jokes to be such a fucking turn on,” you told him with a grin.

Bucky frowned. “Wasn’t supposed to be a joke, doll,” he grumbled, a pout forming on his beautiful pink lips. “‘S supposed to be sexy.”

“Oh, I found it very sexy,” you assured him. “You make me laugh, Barnes. That’s the hottest fucking thing I can imagine. Now take off your pants.”

The look in Bucky’s eyes turned from playfully annoyed to seductively heated in the space of a nanosecond. He reached for the zipper of his tac-pants and you licked your lips at the sound of it coming undone. “Get the camera all set up, doll,” he said as he shimmied the pants down his legs. “I want to see every inch of you.”

With a grin, you propped your camera up between your legs, giving Bucky a front row seat to your dripping core. “This work for you, Sarge?” you asked.

“Fuck, sweets,” he began, palming at himself through his boxer-briefs. “Yeah, that works for me.”

“Show me,” you commanded him, bringing your fingers down to lightly trace the outer edges of your lower lips. “Show me how well this view works for you, baby.”

Bucky scrambled to pull his boxer briefs down to his thick thighs, and you watched with bated breath as his cock sprung free, its beautiful, pink tip already glistening with precum. Your entire body erupted in tingles at the sight of him. He was so fucking gorgeous, and he was yours.

“Jesus,” you hissed, bringing a hand to your breast and gently squeezing the flesh. You could feel your mouth thicken with saliva at just the idea of having him down your throat.

“Just Bucky’s fine, baby,” he teased as he grabbed a hold of himself, and you rolled your eyes. “No need to bring God into it.” Slowly, he began stroking his length. You watched in awe as he seemed to grow harder with every downward pull, the veins in his thighs bulging as he thrust his hips up against his hand. If anyone was going to be compared to God during sex, it would and should be Bucky Barnes.

“Touch that pretty clit for me, doll,” he grunted. “Pretend it’s my fingers on you, getting you all warmed up to take my cock.”

“Fuck, Buck,” you whimpered, your fingers moving frantically over your bundle of nerves. You were already soaked; just the sight of him had sent another wave of arousal gushing through you. “Want your dick in my pussy so bad, baby. So fucking bad, it hurts.”

“Soon, sweetheart,” he grunted, watching your fingers strum your clit with wild eyes. “I’ll be home soon, and I’ll fill you up so good, you won’t be able to walk normal for weeks.”

You arched your back and moaned, the memory of the way he stretched you as he entered you, opening you wider than any other man you’d ever had, flooded your mind. “Nothing fills me like you do, baby,” you panted. “Nothing hits me so deep.”

“Yeah?” he grunted, and you could hear the delicious slick, slick sound of his hand moving through the precum that soaked his shaft. “Not even those fancy toys you bought?”

Bucky chuckled when he noticed your eyes pop open and stare at him in surprise. “Oh, I know all about those, doll.” Slick, slick, slick. “Found ‘em when I was helping you pack for the move. All of them.”

You felt a blush rising to your cheeks, and if you didn’t already have your hand on your pussy right in front of him, you might have been embarrassed. “All those toys, and none of them gets me off as good as you do, Buck,” you breathed. “None of them reach that spot the way you do.” It was true– it was the one thing you had desperately searched for during your time of Bad Decisions– someone to hit that place deep inside of you that set your every nerve ending on fire, that made you shiver and convulse with pleasure with each thrust. No one had ever brought on that full body climax that left you shaking and weak like Bucky had.

“Fuck, doll,” he grunted. “No one touches your A-spot but me.”

“No,” you gasped. You loved how he knew your body so well, knew what he did to you, how you longed for his touch. “No one touches me like you, baby.”

“Put your fingers in, sweets,” he commanded. “I wanna watch you fuck yourself on that pretty little hand while I pretend it’s my cock.”

You did as he asked, bringing two fingers to your weeping entrance and plunging them inside you. They would never feel as thick or go as deep as any part of Bucky, but for now, they were all you had, so you made the most of them, driving them in and out of your cunt with abandon.

“Fuck…” you grunted as you felt the coil in your belly begin to tighten, sweat glistening off your brow. “Baby!”

“I know, pretty girl,” Bucky said between grunts of his own. “Tell me how good you feel.”

“So good, Buck,” you moaned. “So fucking good. Want you so bad, Bucky! So fucking bad!”

“I’m right there with you, doll,” he panted. “I’m so close. Gonna blow all over and imagine it’s inside that pretty pussy of yours. Gonna come home and bury myself in your cunt, sweets! Not gonna come out for days!”

“Oh shit, Bucky,” you cried, your release a hare's breath away. “Wanna cum with you, baby.” You curled your fingers inside of you, stroking your G-spot again, and again, trying to imagine it was his thick, calloused fingers inside of you.

“Just a little longer, sweetheart.” Bucky was yanking at his member now, his pace quick and frantic.

You felt yourself rising, clawing to the very edge of the precipice, but before you could hurl yourself over the edge, you accidentally hit your phone with your foot, sending it falling to the floor.

You scrambled for the phone. It had landed face-down in the dark, making it harder for you to find, but you followed the sounds of Bucky’s grunts and moans until you made contact. Turning the phone back over, you watched as Bucky, eyes screwed closed, reached his peak, ropes of cum erupting from the tip of his cock and landing across his stomach and hand.

And, as surely as if someone had doused you with a bucket of water, the spell was broken. You were painfully reminded that he wasn’t there with you. He was half a world away, still out of your reach.

You sniffled, and Bucky opened his eyes at the sound. “Sweetheart,” he began, his voice laced with concern, “what’s wrong? Did you cum?”

You hitched a breath, holding back a sob, and shook your head. “You’re not here, Buck,” you cried. “It’s not… I thought… I just want to be with you. I miss you so fucking much!” You knew you sounded petulant, like a child, but you were at your limit, truly. You wanted nothing more than to be back to normal with him. A better normal, even, now without the shadow of Carthage looming over you both.

“Oh, doll.” Bucky picked up his phone and brought it close to his face, his now flaccid cock out of frame. “Baby, I’m so sorry. Do you wanna try again? We can focus just on you. Make sure you get off nice and good.”

You shook your head, feeling the tears of frustration and longing slide down your cheeks. “No,” you

whimpered. “I think… I think I just wanna go to sleep.”

Bucky frowned at you, the look in his eyes sorrowful. “I fucking hate that I’m too far away to help you, Pocket,” he said. “I can’t stand seeing you like this, knowing you’re hurting.”

“It’s just been so long, Buck,” you whispered to him as you buried yourself under the blankets of your bed. “I feel like every time we even try, something keeps getting in our way. What if it’s the universe, trying to tell us we shouldn’t be getting back together?”

Bucky sighed, thick and heavy. “I know you don’t believe that, sweetheart,” he said. “It’s just been some bad timing; we got out of our groove, is all. I promise, things will go back to the way they were. The way they’re supposed to be.”

Not long ago, you told him that his promises didn’t mean shit to you, but now… now, you wanted to believe him more than anything.

“It’s just a little longer,” he clarified. You nodded, swallowing down any remaining tears that threatened to fall. You wanted to believe him. You needed to believe him, but the part of you that had been irrevocably broken when he’d hurt you couldn’t help but whisper that, maybe, in some way, he’d always leave you unsatisfied.

<- Part 1 / Part 3 ->

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pillow-anime-talk · 5 months

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HIII I HOPE YOU'RE DOING WELL

may i please request prompt 49 and 51 for William James Moriarty from mtp?

Like the reader is as smart as william and helps him with his plans and stuff and they both fall for each other but can't be together?

Thank you, have a great day!!

# tags: scenario; kinda lovers/enemies; unrequited love; light romance; mostly drama; also angst; reader as police inspector; mention of murder and blood; nsfw

includes: gender neutral reader ft. william james moriarty {mtp}

author’s note: long time no see. sorry for that but thank you sm for your request; due to the rules i only chose the one number you asked for :) i hope you like it, love u all

49. “I told you this is how it ends.”

You looked with visible regret at the figure sitting across from you, on an uncomfortable chair in a cramped room lit by dim white light. Next to you stood your friend and co-worker, who is a five years older than you, and opposite your person, with a calm expression on his face, sat William, who just a few days ago was drinking tea with lemon with you, and today he was accused of murder. And with particular cruelty.

The young man, however, didn’t reveal anything; no sadness, no bitterness, his eyes showed no positive or negative emotion. Just plain emptiness, interspersed with the flash of a lamp above the three of you.

“What made you kill Sandy Moriarty, née Lonewood?” Asked a young policeman, also a profiler by profession. “She was your sister-in-law after all.” Your eyelid twitched with slight sadness. Sandy was Louis’ partner; they had been together for over two years. You even had the opportunity to meet her – she had foxy hair and calm eyes, and she was a talented painter. “Moriarty answer to me.” The uniformed man’s voice was low and firm. Unlike your expression: soft, full of despair.

“… Well. I had my own reasons, sir.”

“What reasons?”

“It’s all my business, sir.” Your co-worker just sighed, looking at the accused with a disbelieving expression. His nose wrinkled and the whiskers beneath it twitched slightly.

“Y/N, I’ll be right back. I’ll go get some papers and things. Keep an eye on him.” You only nodded at his words, never taking William out of your sight. His long blond hair fell unruly over his forehead and his chest slowly moved back and forth.

As soon as Alois left the small room, devoid of furniture and color, your hands trembled slightly and your eyes turned to the right wall.

“Who are you protecting, William? Tell me.”

“… For your safety, let it go. It’s not a matter of solving the mystery of who stole the little child’s candy and why. Just accept it all that it just had to be like that and let it go.”

“Why?” You repeated in a slightly more confident voice, and your eyes met the ruby ones.

“I told you this is how it ends.” He whispered. “I’m not from your world, Y/N. And I never will be. You wanted to protect me, I appreciate that, but it won’t always go your way. We’re too different.” He added, and after a while the door to the room let in a bit more cold and light. Your work partner stopped next to you again and threw a few photos and descriptions from the scene on the gray table, pursing his lips at the same time.

The photographs showed the silhouette of a woman in a beautiful yellow dress, with a large smear of scarlet blood and several bullets around her.

Whatever your intentions were, you certainly wouldn’t be able to help William anymore, who in your eyes at that moment was just a murderer hiding behind a mask of a calm smile and pale skin. Although your heart was obviously burning like a hot coal, you couldn’t do anything more than look at the photos and move one of them closer to the blonde male.

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raayllum · 7 months

Text

Time to be wonderfully self indulgent and talk about a scene comparison I've wanted to for a hot second (while pointing very decidedly to This Post for posterity's sake).

So let's talk about the hostage exchanges for Callum and Rayla in 4x09 and 5x08, shall we?

First, let's look at the scene setup.

In 4x09, Rayla is very much the aggressor and pursuant, and the one who — initially — has more power. She has her sword up to Terry's throat, neither him nor Claudia have strong reason to think she wouldn't go through with it, and she explicitly threatens Terry's life precisely because of his importance to Claudia. This is similar as to why Finnegrin threatens Rayla (though there are differences, which we'll get to in a moment), so both elves start out as the aggressor in each scenario.

However, there is soon a shift. Callum's "deal" happens because he escalated violence against Finnegrin (the infamous punch), a tad more similarly perhaps to how Rayla is only threatening Terry because she believes Claudia and co. are a threat to the whole world. Now to be fair, Claudia is only threatening Rayla's parents because Rayla is threatening Terry, but we can assume she had the realization of their connection to Rayla a while ago and has been sitting on it just in case she needed leverage, given that she doesn't seem to need a second to consider. I also think we're inclined, typically within the show, to see the person offering up Options / a choice to make as the one who holds more power in the immediate situation (i.e. Karim's whole sun seed for Janai debacle) even if it may be 60-40 the way it is here.

Not a huge power imbalance, but enough that people are being pushed into corners, and that's exactly where Claudia and Finnegrin attempt to do, and arguably do more successfully, to Callum and Rayla respectively.

We've talked a fair bit about Claudia, so now I want to talk about Finnegrin, simply because he gets a whole episode of corner backing, and therefore there's more stages.

The first stage is Finnegrin attacking Callum as an individual — "Look at you: slave to your friends, your loyalties, your pride. I can give you your freedom though" — and it's the least effective, as Callum never budges or shows any real hints of budging even under torture. However, Callum's admission that he has indeed done dark magic before ("I did one spell. One. I had to, to save my friends") gives Finnegrin the tools he needs to create the next prong of his approach.

Stage two is attacking Callum through his friends, and is far more effective. This is why he sets the hand cutting challenge, and Callum buys into it, i.e. the idea that he has to choose, over the idea that Callum could conceivably offer up his own hand instead. This is not to say that he wouldn't — there's little doubt in my mind that Callum wouldn't have seriously considered if not outright done the chain spell up on deck if Rayla hadn't tried to intervene, since as Finnegrin correctly assesses, "They would do anything for you, so clearly you'll do anything for them" — just that his own hand didn't occur to Callum as an option the way it might've to someone like Rayla.

The third stage, of course, is the one that's most interesting to us, simply in how Callum's "hostage deal" differs from Rayla's in both its construction, their assumptions, and their responses.

Claudia: One thing I don't know though — if I threw the coins in the lava, would it release your spirits? Or would they be trapped in some kind of eternal burning agony? Let's trade. You let him go... and I'll give you the coins.

Finnegrin: The cave is for his protection. This way, he lures us a leviathan but doesn't get eaten. The one getting thrown into the sea serpent's hungry mouth is your elf girl.

Claudia's offered deal is different from Finnegrin's in a few ways.

1) Claudia's deal is explicitly stated in not just the text, but the scene itself ("Let's trade") meanwhile Finnegrin, unlike the two stages prior, does not offer Callum any notion of freedom this time around. Even though neither ends up being a fair deal regardless, the setup of said deal is different. Rayla is being legitimately offered; Callum is making a (desperate but understandable) assumption.

2) Exemplified in a drabble I wrote in which Finnegrin was bluffing, I think it's worth noting that the peril Rayla's parents were in was much more apparent. They were completely defenseless, Claudia was already holding them over the lava, and just one quick throw would be enough to potentially leave them in an "eternal burning agony" (which sounds worse than death by sea leviathan to me; at least that decidedly ends at one point). Rayla could see and hear all this. Callum, by contrast, did not see Rayla tied up, or in distress, and Finnegrin had no proof other than his word. That's not to say Callum was wrong to believe him — he'd just watched Finnegrin torture her, and Finnegrin was very much not bluffing in canon — but that normally Callum is a bit more skeptical and wants a bit more proof in regards to things, and this was a time where emotion really pushed him forward. The immediate consequences of however Rayla responded would be seen with her own eyes, where it's unlikely Callum would've even known precisely when Rayla had died/been eaten with any of his senses or knowledge; it's arguably the one 'mercy' that Finnegrin provided him.

3) And as stated, both Claudia and Finnegrin end up being disingenuous. It seems likely that Claudia always intended to trick Rayla, even if she'd let Terry go, given that while we don't see her slight of hand in general on screen, it doesn't seem like it would've been possible for her to take the coins back out again and switch them before tossing the pouch. That seems like a one and done type of thing earlier on. Finnegrin, of course, takes Callum to task for his assumption ("Oh my poor lad; that deal was no longer on the table") and given his choice to feed Rayla to the sea leviathan anyway, I don't think Finnegrin was ever telling Callum about his plans in order to get him to give up the info. I think it was just supposed to be a punishment, plain and simple, for the literal blow to his pride.

But now for the difference I think everyone clicked on this meta for, realistically, are the choices that Callum and Rayla made in response to the offered Deals.

When Rayla's parents lives are on the line, she considers, but ultimately refuses.

She does not partake in the deal. Rather, she escalates her own refusal of it by pushing Terry to his knees, says so outright — "I'm not making a deal with you!" — and looks up at Claudia, watching and waiting to see how she responds. Claudia as wholly tossed the coin pouch, and Rayla is seeing it arc down towards the lava, before she finally releases Terry to go and try to save her family.

Rayla does not fold the second her parents are verbally threatened, or when there is a possibility of getting them back. Despite her wanting to stop Claudia and Viren, the bigger issue is ultimately letting Claudia escape > actually keeping Terry away from her as an ally/helper. It is only when her parents will burn to death in front of her eyes that she relinquishes her stalemate in an attempt to save them.

You can argue that Rayla going back on her refusal means she made the same choice as Callum in 5x08, and that's fine; it's your prerogative, it's your interpretation, it's cool beans.

However, that doesn't ignore the character beat that Rayla at least refuses upon the first possibility of a threat. Claudia directly threatens three of Rayla's loved ones, and Rayla doesn't budge and verbally/physically refuses to give Claudia what she wants.

And Callum does the same with Finnegrin under torture... until Finnegrin threatens Rayla. The second Callum realizes that Rayla is in danger, that she will or might be killed, Callum folds.

The parallel response here would've been Rayla letting go of Terry the second that Claudia said she might throw the coins into the lava, but Rayla doesn't. And Callum does, even though as he said earlier ("I'm not going to help you murder the Archdragon of the Ocean") this makes him complicit in murder.

And this is where Callum's assumption really bites him in the ass, because he assumes that Finnegrin is still operating under the terms of their previous deal ("Told me something I wanted and now she's free as a bird") even though Callum isn't asking for his freedom, but Rayla's. But Finnegrin's pride is wounded — this was always meant to be a straight up punishment, not enough form of coercion — the wick of his anger lit, so it makes no difference.

Rayla refuses Claudia's deal when thinking it existed, only to find out it didn't. Callum agrees to Finnegrin's deal only to find it out it no longer exists. He gave Finnegrin what the pirate wanted and it isn't even going to save the person he gave it up for.

Both failed exchanges — or in Rayla's case, a failed rescue — end in defeat and devastation: Rayla sobbing and letting out a scream of anguished frustration, and Callum laying on the floor in despair, totally sideways from how much he's pulling at his chains.

I don't think I have to say much else as these scenes and comparisons basically speak for themselves. Neither choice these two make is necessarily the right or wrong choice — for Rayla, her inability to put what she wants first could've resulted in her parents' deaths and has caused herself and others a lot of suffering; for Callum, he understandably wanted to protect a loved one at all cost, even if that left him exploitable and unsuccessful amid Finnegrin's ire, and gave the pirate a dangerous piece of information.

However, I do think that although Callum's choice spells an ominous future (and that Rayla's foreshadows the uncertainty of what she may do when Callum is, inevitably, possessed again, and their futures collide), it's worth examining it as his biggest, more positive difference from Viren, and that's what my next post will be about — so stay tuned if you like.

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swordoffrivolousthings · 1 month

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What if Percy didn't take Annabeth on his first quest?

This is a question I've been playing with for my massive canon-divergence AU, and it has quite the interesting repercussions. I mean, Annabeth is quite the essential member of the TLT quest. She acts somewhere between a wet cat and becoming-friend to Percy, and is helpful in quite a few moments. This quest is the moment when they begin their friendship, and what prompts Percy to take her with him later on. (This kid values friendship and loyalty, let's not forget.)

Please remember while reading that this thought experiment is growing around the specific needs of my plot, and not what would most likely happen!

But before I begin to explain what I think would happen, I think it would be fun to imagine how exactly this AU would come to be. The reasons that Annabeth joins the quest in the first place are 1) she is invisible when Chiron is discussing quest members with Percy, therefore eavesdropping and knowing what she needs to say 2) Chiron doesn't put his hoof down on Annabeth's improper behavior and 3) Percy kind of goes along with it, despite Annabeth clearly not having a practical quest experience.

For this AU, I will say that Percy didn't want her to join his quest. (possible reason: she put him in front of the Ares Cabin as bait so she could win a game, and not warning him beforehand).

I think Annabeth would complain to Chiron, playing her 'I've waited for so long for this opportunity and it's not fair' card, but Chiron can't force Percy to take him with her. So, who would Percy choose?

At that point in the book, beside Grover, only Luke has been kind of a friend to Percy at camp. So I tend to lean towards Percy looking for Luke's support in this case.

This could go two ways:

Luke, being scarred by his previous experience with quests (quite literally), does not take him up on this offer. In this scenario, we ignore Luke's growing loyalty towards Kronos and it would mean that he, in turn, ignores the possibility to get Percy on his side early on. (what I am using for my fic)

Luke takes Percy on his offer, but the trauma is still present. He also tries to make Percy believe in his cause, therefore making him more prone to side with Luke.

I will focus on the first way because of plot reasons. Percy does not end with Luke as a quest-mate. This means that he has to choose another camper. At this point, the question of who is hard to answer. He doesn't really interact with many campers in his first week. The only others that I can remember of the top of my head (with a positive experience attached) are Travis and Connor Stoll (?), but they don't strike me like the kind to go on a potentially deadly quest.

This leads to the question of who would Percy take with him.

In my fic this is an OC with ulterior motives that convinces Percy that they would be a good asset. I will not explore this idea because it's not why I've begun writing this.

So, let me focus on what would not happen/change without Annabeth there:

When Alecto and her sisters attack, Percy would be left vulnerable and exposed with his quest-mates trying to protect him to the best of their abilities. This would most likely result in Percy and the other getting hurt more than in canon.

At Medusa's Lair, Percy would still be unaware of what danger he is in. Maybe he would actually take into consideration Grover's nervousness, or the other quest-mate would catch on. It is not important, only that it would be considerably harder for Percy to kill Medusa because he would lack information that Annabeth provides. On the other hand, the other character could provide the information. -> alternatively, since Medusa is partially aggravated by Annabeth's presence, she could let them go easily, but that is highly unlikely. Would also mess with the final Gabe plot, which I do not quite see the point in changing since it is an important moment for Percy and Sally both.

Percy and co. wouldn't go to the Arch, so the whole Echidna and Chimera debacle would be avoided. This also deprives Percy of the information about the pearls that ultimately take them from the Underworld.

Because they didn't stop at the Arch, they end up in Los Angeles without too much fuss. This avoids both the Ares plot and the Tunnel of Love debacle but also deprives Percy of the lightning bolt. And also they don't get stuck in the Lotus Hotel, which saves them time.*

They still have to face Crusty, but this goes like in canon, mostly.

Once in the Underworld (because they still get past Charon, who would still be bribed by Percy) they come face to face with Cerberus. This complicates things quite a lot. I will take a bit of authorial liberty and say that the nameless quest-mate would think of a game of fetch, like Annabeth.

Now, the questers end up before Hades (the Tartarus pit thing happens the same way). Hades blames Percy for his stolen Helm, but at this point Percy doesn't know what that is. Hades has no basis that Percy stole the lightning bolt, but this doesn't stop him from taking them prisoner.

They would end up in the dungeons. From now on? Well, it's basically a dead end, because we haven't established who would Percy take with him. This ends with the whole plot of the series derailing in such a way that it would hurt me to write down.

I will say that it's a really interesting way in which Riordan has woven Annabeth into the plot of the first book. I'm not saying this to make those of you that want to explore her absence from the quest feel discouraged. I mean, this post started because I want to do the same thing.

It's also a very good way to visualise how to weave side character's decisions and mistakes in the developing plot! Hope this inspires someone to go and do whatever they want to canon.

*me from the future (11/8/2024). I took a closer look at the TLT plot, and I made a mistake. They would probably end up in Denver, where Percy and co. meet with Ares. This is because they haven't eaten since they encountered Medusa.

So this means that they would get the mini quest from Ares. It doesn't mean, however, that they necessarily take it up. Annabeth is the one that pestered Percy into going to retrieve Aphrodite's scarf/shawl or whatever it was.

Percy initially refuses, so maybe they don't go.

This would play out exactly the way I said before.

But it my specific AU, the other character is loyal to Hera, Ares and Hephaistos, so they would convince Percy to go and do the mini-quest.

-> they still get onto the 'Kindness International' van, so they would still end up in Vegas. Them entering the Lotus Casino is up for debate. Maybe they lose some time, maybe they don't.

->this means that at Hades', they have the lightning bolt but not the pearls. This means that they would still get thrown into the a cell. This also leads to war between the gods.

And because I'm feeling generous, lets say that the gods fighting each other leads them to being more vulnerable to Kronos' plans and machinations. They would end up being overthrown and humanity dying!

This oversight on my part kind of reduces Annabeth's importance to the well-being of the plot, but not by much. Her lack of detour to the Arch still leads to war!

#pjo #percy jackon and the olympians #pjo thought experiment #percy jackson #annabeth chase #grover underwood #pjo fanfic #cezy's insanities

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dailycharacteroption · 18 days

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Menagerie Manager (Starfinder Archetype)

(art by CazadorR on DeviantArt)

I’ve talked about them before in previous entries, but I do like the solution that starfinder came up with for creature companions, not only providing efficient rules so that anyone can make use of them, but making it so easy to create your own, which let you create any sort of alien critter (and can absolutely be used as a sneaky back-end way to formulate the price of robots for player purchase, for those annoyed that construct creation and price was something never directly addressed).

Anything from familiars to robot guardians to ferocious tamed battlebeasts are all on the table here, but perhaps one last frustration is that one cannot have more than one beloved critter buddy.

…That is, unless you take the menagerie manager archetype!

Contrary to the name, characters with this archetype need not be zookeepers or any sort of professional animal handlers (though they absolutely can be). Instead, all that is really required is a nearly empathic knack for raising, training, and caring for multiple said companions without neglect, and what’s more, they’re simply better at it than other trainers, teaching their pets more tricks and how to act more independently yet loyally much more quickly.

But fret not, GMs, they don’t bring multiple beasts into combat at once. Rather, they train many beasts and companions for a variety of scenarios, and we’ll see exactly how below!

Starting out, these trainers learn the basics of training mounts, combat companions, or simply having a pet squox. Furthermore, their talent for raising multiple pets becomes immediately apparent, though obviously they only bring one of them out into the field at any time, the rest being stored somewhere such as on a ship or their home domicile or base.

Later on, their mastery of companions or mounts increases, and they can push them to move just a little bit faster.

Many companions are chosen for their adorable appearance and demeanor, and others for their fearsomeness, and some for a bit of both depending on what is emphasized or who you ask. With a bit of coaching, these masters can have their pets emphasize adorable or menacing behaviors to aid their master in diplomacy or intimidation, respectively.

Later on, their mastery of their pets improves, and the loyal companions learn how to drag their master to safety if they lose consciousness. (or at least protect their body).

At their zenith, they become true virtuosos of commanding their pets, and not only will they drag them to safety, but they also can retrieve an item for their master so that it is in their hand when they regain consciousness for any reason.

If you love the creature companion rules like I do and want a way to have many that you can switch between, this archetype is right up your alley! Remember that creature companions, unlike companions from Pathfinder, do require financial investment to level up, so at least some of your character’s budget is going to be focused on upgrading the companions that you use a lot. Beyond that, companion choices vary a lot in what they are good at, so consider what your character needs for different situations, such as small, sneaky companions for infiltration work, big strong ones for close combat, and so on. As for class choice, any of them can work out nicely, from the envoy operative with multiple cute but functional pets, to the mystic focused on being a far-future druid, to the mechanic with far many more robotic companions than just one drone, to the combat class with a loyal beast companion as either hunting aid or combat beast, and even various other casters sporting magical familiars.

If you’re going to have multiple companion creatures, it only makes sense to give every single one their own personality, quirks, and more to make them truly characters in their own right, but for some players that may be hard, so there’s no obligation to.

While they were once a beast trainer for the corps, Bulkas is now retired, and spends his time training animals for competitive challenges rather than outright warfare. However, the old hobgoblin still keeps his most loyal pets, which though old and scarred, are just as deadly as ever, much like their master.

The party is on the trail of a hidden jinsul enclave, thwarting their clandestine plans left and right. They’ve successfully proven to be a thorn in the enclave’s commander’s side, but they haven’t managed to catch him yet, especially since every time they see him, he seems to have a new robotic pet armed with deadly weaponry.

Tracing their history to long before interstellar travel was even a dream, the Agyi clan has mastered every single technique of survival and espionage, cultivating the very best shinobi, and later operatives in the entire galaxy. While all partake in at least the basics, some choose to specialize, such the Collar Path, which house masters of using all manner of companions for support on their missions.

#starfinder #archetype #menagerie manager #hobgoblin #jinsul #Starfinder Enhanced

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cocoa-goat · 2 years

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Reminders (Liyue men x GN!reader)

Scenario: death has taken his toll and you, passing you on into the next life. What do they miss the most about you?

Warnings: angst / mentions of death & grief. Please scroll if you’re sensitive to these stuff!

Featuring: Xiao, Zhongli, and Childe. (Ok I’m aware that Childe isn’t originally from Liyue, but he’s associated with the nation so I decided to add him. 🤷🏻‍♀️)

Xiao - your touch

He knew human life was short, but he didn’t think it would be this short. Time always seemed to fly when it comes to you, despite him wishing that it would pass by slower.

Being the type of person that Xiao is, I don’t think he’d take your death lightly. In fact, it would probably be stuck with him long after you’re gone.

He’ll struggle trying to move on. It’s almost as if he doesn’t want to, because why would he?

He doesn’t want to forget you, and most definitely not your touch. It was the one thing that lessened the effect of his karmic debt.

Despite the pain, he remembers everything so vividly. Almost too vividly. It’s because he doesn’t want to forget.

From the lightest of touches, to the most noticeable ones. He remembers it all. How could he not? After all, he could remember everything when it was about you.

He’ll miss the way your cautiously linger over his own hands, and how they delicately trace the outline of his scars. You didn’t push him away because of them, which gave him all the more reason to love you.

But as time went on, he’s beginning to forget.

It was inevitable, after all. Adepti have a longer lifespan than that of mortals, and you were no different. But he was still scared. Scared of forgetting you.

He’s watched you live and die, and there was nothing he could do but stay by your side until the end—which came all too soon.

Zhongli - your presence

He had seen this coming. He always has.

Zhongli is aware he should’ve started moving on years ago. But he just couldn’t bring himself to.

Unlike his past acquaintances, no matter how painful the farewells and departures, you were different.

The concept of death is normal for people like you. It was only natural. So why was he grieving so much?

Love.

He loved you too much, he couldn’t bring himself to let go of your memories.

He misses everything about you. Like how you’d light up the atmosphere just by your presence alone, and how you were able to brighten up his mood just by that adorable smile of yours. He misses it a lot.

But now you were gone. And for the first time in centuries, Zhongli doesn’t know what to do.

It was always you that helped him out with his struggles, listening to him rant without ever showing any signs of criticism. If anything, you only looked at him with adoration.

It was because of you that he became dependant, and he was only dependent on you. But now that you were gone, he no longer has anyone to rely on.

But as much as it pains him, he didn’t regret it. He didn’t regret a single moment with you. Nor did he regret ever choosing to drown in the embrace of your love.

He’ll miss everything about you. Your fragrance, your vibrant colored eyes, and the way your eyes squint when you smile.

He misses it all.

Childe - your voice

Your voice was his Achilles’ heel. His sole weakness. He’d surrender by the mere sound of it, all because it was what he loved the most about you.

It was your voice that lulled him to sleep in his nights of turmoil. It was what soothed him during nights where he’d have nightmares, and he couldn’t have asked for anything more.

But ever since your death, he’d been having more nightmares. And it was worse now that you weren’t beside him.

Waking up in a cold sweat, he’s search for you in your side of the bed. But in the end, it always struck him.

You were gone. All because he wasn’t enough to protect you. He somehow feels guilty for your death, blaming himself even though he knows that you wouldn’t want him to.

He couldn’t hear your voice anymore. What was left of it will forever be engraved in his mind. If he could just remember the mere tone of your voice, that would be enough for him to keep going.

He tells himself that he won’t ever forget how you sounded like, because the moment he does, he’ll completely break.

But eventually, he does.

And he feels as if his heart has completely broken—or at least, what was left of it.

He’s nothing but a hollow shell without you.

Notes: Thanks for reading! Also, I didn’t really elaborate the cause of death in this scenario because I wasn’t too sure about it. ^^;; Sorry about that!

#genshin #genshin impact #headcanons #heavy angst #mentions of death #xiao #adeptus xiao #zhongli #tartaglia #childe #genshin x reader #genshin scenarios #xiao x reader #zhongli x reader #childe x reader #tartaglia x reader #</3

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 2 years

Note

Could you give some examples of the misinformation in the English fandom? I speak almost no Japanese and even I've noticed times where the translation didn't quite seem to match up with what little I know but it seemed to me to just be adding a joke where there was none. I'd like to know lore I have wrong though.

[Referencing this post!]

A disclaimer before I properly respond to this ask; in sharing some examples and my thoughts, I am not faulting any fan translators or localizers that work on the TWST EN team. Translation and localization are very valued yet difficult tasks; there isn’t always an easy equivalent between languages, and it can be so challenging to capture linguistic nuances. I’m sure that everyone is just doing their best at what they are passionate about and/or being paid to do.

Again, I speak about this not with any malicious intent, but to elaborate on a point mentioned in my original post about differences between JP and EN fandoms (that being that misinformation readily spreads in EN compared to JP due to a significant language barrier).

It would be impossible to list off every single mistranslation or odd localization choice (both for fan translations and for the official TWST EN) 💦 They can also range in severity of mistranslation, from minor word choices which affect understanding of characters to generally confusing sentences to completely incorrect notes, lore, or story beats.

For a few detailed examples and explanations, please check out these posts:

Incorrect subject (Jade’s line on his character page on the official Twisted Wonderland EN website; all of the character lines on the website have been changed into something else now, so if you were to go check you wouldn’t find the initial error.)

Selected word does not fit the context (A phrase is used by a NPC to describe Sebek; this parricular fan translated equivalent does not quite suit the scenario/other words used.)

Misunderstanding of character’s intent (Jade explaining Floyd’s reason for the sea creature nicknames in episode 4 of the main story.)

This is a far more egregious example, but there was also this case in which an interview was translated in such a way that led to an extended period of unrest and conflict within the English-speaking part of the fandom.

Some more humorous mistranslations I’ve seen are:

“Jade drinks cannabis tea” (Jade Broom Bloom Birthday vignettes; he mentions that he uses some of the weeds (not cannabis) he picks up on his mountain hikes to brew tea. Japan still considers cannabis an illicit substance, and possession of it is illegal + punishable by a minimum sentence of 5 years in jail. Rough mistranslation aside, it’s unlikely Disney would allow for their highly marketable characters to be portrayed as using “weed”.)

“Team Puta” (main story, episode 6; the correct translation is “Team Hepta”, as Hepta is a Greek word meaning “seven”. Each of S.T.Y.X.’s teams is named similarly using other Greek words. “Puta” doesn’t make sense for S.T.Y.X.; it’s the Spanish word for a profanity. Why would one of their divisions be named that?)

“Jester Judge” (Glorious Masquerade; the title is used in reference to Frollo, the “Just Judge” of the City of Flowers. However, the adjective prior to judge has been mistranslated as “Jester”. Given Frollo’s personality and how his self-righteous actions are described, “just” makes much more sense than “jester”, which would imply that he is a fun-loving person.)

The disappearance of Cater’s sisters (main story, episode 1; when Cater introduces his unique magic to Yuu and co., he specifies that his clones aren’t his siblings. More specifically, Cater claims he “has no siblings”, which is incorrect. He canonically has two older sisters (which is even brought up in the localized version of Cater’s Labwear vignettes.) The vanishing sisters in the main story likely occurs due to a mistranslation of the Japanese phrase for siblings and relies on context to assign gender to said siblings. ***Note: the localization in general tends to add jokes that weren’t there in the original or it axes certain lines altogether.***

“The episode 6 plot twist is…?” (this is a personal anecdote; I once spoke to a fellow TWST fan who hadn’t yet read episode 6 (which was entirely out at the time) and they told me they had heard from other people that Idia’s unique magic was associated with his hair. They had also heard that he Overblots when the flames are put out and that this was what originally killed Ortho. I thought they were joking at first, but they genuinely believed it to be true 💦 when none of that is…)

I believe a lot of these mistranslations occurred due to the differences between Japanese and English. There are four separate alphabets for Japanese, whereas English only has one, and this can complicate translation. Furthermore, Japanese has certain nuances (such as omission of the subject and/or the same phrase meaning multiple different things depending on the context in which the phrase is used) which can lead to wonky translations.

Inputting certain phrases into Google translate or looking it up in a dictionary if you don’t know it may give only the most commonly used translation which doesn’t take the context of the rest of the sentence into consideration (which could entirely change the translation of the word). For example, やばい (yabai) is typically translated as “terrible” or “this is bad”; it has a generally negative connotation. However, it can actually have several meanings, with many of them actually being positive depending on the context.

Something that I’ve noticed is very popular in the English-speaking fandom are live reactions; they’re quick and snappy ways to get summaries of new TWST content as soon as it drops. These can sometimes be difficult for readers (who likely rely on the threads to understand what is going on) to discern what has legitimately happened in the story and what is just the fan translator having fun/saying something silly or exaggerating for effect (because they’re just as excited about new TWST content as we are to read about it!). It admittedly leads to some people taking the exaggerated parts/jokes/the fan translator goofing around as legitimate story beats. It’s understandable that the average fan would do this, as they do not understand Japanese to the point of being able to discern what is true vs what is false; of course they would put their trust in someone who does understand the language. In this case, it’s not a mistranslation so much as it is a misunderstanding. I believe this may be what Anon means when they say “the translation didn't quite seem to match up with what little [they] know but it seemed to [them] to just be adding a joke where there was none”.

A recent example of this occurred during Glorious Masquerade. In canon, Malleus outright declares that he is mad and wants to kill Rollo for deceiving him with a fake invitation. However, many excited Malleus fans added (in their initial personal reactions to the event) that it was cute that he was getting emotional because he was “mad at Rollo for trying to hurt Yuu” which… isn’t necessarily true. But since this was mixed in with legitimate summary/translations for the event, this led some readers to assume that this information was, indeed, not a joke but true while also completely overlooking the actual canon reason provided by Malleus himself for seeking devastating revenge against Rollo.

I hope that clarifies a few things!

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moongothic · 7 months

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Wait can u expand why this matters and what this means for crocodad?

For context, this is about a minor revelation in chapter 1107 that doesn't immidiately tie into Crocodile, but it is still spoilers, so under the cut this goes

Quick recap: So back on Fishman Island Caribou mentioned how he wanted to let "that person" know about Princess Shirahoshi being the Ancient Weapon Poseidon. After Wano Caribou once again was thinking about "that person" because now he could also let them know Pluton was in Wano For a long time, people were believing "that person" was Crocodile because we know he was interested in obtaining Pluton/had interest in Ancient Weapons, and some people believed the "X" on Caribou's shirt indicated he was like Mr 10 from Baroque Works or something. My personal argument against that had been that Crocodile should still believe that Pluton is somewhere in Alabasta, and made it explicitly clear he no longer had interest in that country. In other words, he should have given up on Pluton; so it's extremely unlikely he'd have people working for him looking for info on Ancient Weapons anymore, at this point. ADDITIONALLY only a few of the top Baroque Works agents KNEW about Pluton being Crocodile's ultimate goal, so even if Caribou had been a former BW member, he shouldn't know about Crocodile's interest in Ancient Weapons. There's also other shit but it's besides the point and doesn't matter anymore

But now, with this latest chapter, we know "that person" Caribou had always been wanting to go see was Blackbeard.

And just so we're clear; this doesn't prove Crocodad not one bit. But the reason I joked about it making Crocodad like "10% more real" is that... for Crocodad as I believe in it to become real, the story needs to develop in certain directions, and this turn of events is putting us on the right path for Crocodad. There's still plenty of time for the story divert away from that path, but it's the first step in the right direction

And I have vaguely discussed this before so I'll try to keep this vaguely short and simple but

If Crocodad Real (again, the way I've been suggesting it could be real), then to some degree Oda might need to make Crocodile 1) A slightly more sympathetic character, and 2) Not put him into a role where he'd be going up against Luffy and the Strawhats directly

Now needless to say, if Crocodile's goal with Cross Guild had been to obtain Ancient Weapons, create an evil military force and ruin people's lives, this would mean he's still just as much of an asshole as he was back in Alabasta (=not particularly sympathetic), and if he was going to head to Wano to try to take over the country to obtain Pluton... Yeah, he'd be making Luffy and co his direct enemies. Again. Of course, you could still do Crocodad in that scenario too, but it would definitely be in a much more Darth Vader-y kinda way. Except Crocodile would be both Vader AND Palpatine at the same time, and thus stopping him would not end in a heartfelt father-son reunion probably

BUT. Because we now know for sure that Caribou didn't want to gain Crocodile's favor with the info on Ancient Weapons, the chances the story would go down that route are far lower than before. It's not impossible mind you (like Catarina could refuse to take Caribou with them and with nowhere else to go Caribou could try Cross Guild, but what'd be the point in Caribou trying to join the Blackbeard pirates then), but it's more unlikely now

And if that story path has been essentially eliminated, that means the other story paths, including the ones that could lead to Crocodad, have become more viable options.

Of course, we still don't know what Crocodile's true goal is entirely, and we don't know how Buggy's mutiny is going to pan out. Like Buggy could potentially be forcing Cross Guild to join the race for One Piece, and if they legitimately did join the race, then yes, they'd be going up against the Strawhats. And there are people speculating if Buggy's "emotional speech" would "reignite Crocodile's dreams" and "make him legit want to become the Pirate King again". And yeah, if that was like spot-on, then that would make Luffy and Crocodile rivals. And as I mentioned, that wouldn't be great for Crocodad As I See It.

But if Crocodile's trying to mess with the World Government and doesn't want to join the race for One Piece or mess with Luffy... Then he wouldn't be in a rival/enemy role in the story, if anything he could be an ally, even. If his goal was to take down the corrupt WG, then that goal would be sympathetic. And this story path could be ideal for Crocodad. Telling a heartfelt story about a broken, traumatized man and letting him heal by reuniting with his estranged son will be much easier to do if the two characters aren't going up against each other and if we the readers don't completely hate the other character and want to see him get his teeth kicked in from the get-go.

And that's what I meant with the "Crocodad is 10% more real"

It's just a slightly more viable as an option and a path for the story to go down, but also far from confirmed yet

But hey, next time we see Cross Guild, I'm sure that'll also help us figure out how if we're heading in the right direction or not. And I'm sure that's coming within the next 13 chapters (Egghead's going to wrap up soon, I'm sure), get ready my dudes lmao

#Asks #OP Meta #OP Spoilers #Chapter 1107 #Crocodad #Moon posting

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mdhwrites · 2 years

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Enid’s Character Climax and How it Was Tepid... And How it Could Have Been Better.

SPOILERS FOR WEDNESDAY ON NETFLIX! It’s why I’m honestly less specific on what this is about than I want to be. This is your warning? Okay?

We good? Alrighty then. So first thing that I want to say is that what we got with specifically Enid’s transformation was... Fine. It was functional. But it was either flawed or misguided in a lot of different ways, at least in my opinion and I want to talk about those. If you like it though, that’s fine. It gives the hell yeah moment, allows for speculation on it and more... But I think all of those elements could have been stronger. So I’ll split this up into categories for what I think went wrong and why so below you’ll see in bold, with each also talking about a way that the specific scenario could have been stronger than what we got. I include what we got here btw just because I do need to cover that: What We Got Suspense Character Climax Shipping Bait What We Got So like I said, I actually don’t think what we got was that bad. What happens is that it starts with Enid making out with Ajax (I move it this far back for a reason), her claws come out, they blame it on the moon, Enid claims kissing helps, they get told by Thing that Wednesday is in trouble, they gather help, Enid goes with Thing to specifically find Wednesday, we get an inbetween moment of her realizing she’s wolfing out and then next time we see her is her pouncing on the Hyde to save Wednesday. SO. What does this work out with for Enid? Well... It allows an amount of allegorical ambiguity I don’t like. It’s very reasonable to have an argument saying that her transformation was just coincidence. It was the right night. The show supports it with the times werewolf-hood is framed more as going through puberty rather than being in the closet (two allegories it uses but clash against each other because I could make an entire blog about the mishandling of the werewolf allegory here) and so her time has come. There’s no specific trigger in the woods for it, they blame it on the moon when her claws get a bit feisty during the make out session and it is entirely involuntary. Enid isn’t trying to transform. It just happens. And that’s a large part of why I think this is weak. For what is poised as the season, if not just general character, arc for Enid of dealing with the problem of having not transformed... It says very little. You can infer, but you can do it in multiple directions. This isn’t depth though, it’s breadth. It allows many essays but all of them are lacking bit and real purchasing power because others have good evidence against the argument you may be making. And that sucks. It’s an extremely tepid way to write rather than sticking to your guns which is the only praise I can give the concept of “Lycanthropy Conversion Camp” which as a concept makes no sense for a werewolf to go to other than as a counselor. But before I get to allegory, I also want to talk about this from a narrative standpoint with: Suspense

Hitchcock’s theory of suspense says- Oh god, am I actually quoting this? I feel like I’ve heard it so many times. But it’s important and I will say that from a literal standpoint, the show follows it. The theory that goes that if you blow up a bomb under a table, you get the shock of it for a second then it’s gone. If you tell the audience that there is a bomb under the table and it will go off in five minutes, killing everyone there, you get five minutes of emotion and suspense as the audience hopes that someone will find and stop the bomb, with the emotions ratcheting up with each passing minute. TECHNICALLY, the show follows this almost literally. If Enid had come out of nowhere in werewolf form, it would have had some punch but not a lot. By showing us her transforming on the way there, you let the audience know that Enid is in the forest, capable of helping Wednesday and so the audience can prepare and wait for the moment she does. HOWEVER, unlike the bomb, where it’s a threat you want stopped, this is a savior coming to stop a threat. A threat to the titular character nonetheless. I would imagine a lot of people got excited but weren’t ever worried about Wednesday in part because of this inbetween portion. We KNEW what was going to save her which can actually harm a reveal like Enid’s full werewolf form because, well, it was a guarantee.

So what’s the better option if you want this inbetween moment with Enid? Simple: She WANTS to transform. She recognizes the danger and that she isn’t strong enough to fight it without transforming so you have her running through the forest, muttering to herself about it. Or shouting at Thing that she’s scared but still going to do it (put a pin it for why this matters. It’ll come up in the next section). Both times, you can allow an observant viewer to see minor shifts like her claws being out, slightly sharper teeth, maybe even shifted eyes but nothing to quite confirm that it’s happening.

This shifts the question from “When will Enid get there to save Wednesday?” to “Will Enid transform in time to save Wednesday?” That added uncertainty makes it so that when Enid appears in full werewolf mode, you get a much bigger “FUCK YEAH!” because you had a reason to be worried she might not. Her lack of ability to transform had been brought up as an issue rather than more as a gag if you count the Ajax bit as foreshadowing it. It allows for more meaningful suspense, even from a possibly cynical audience. *raises hand* It also allows it to be more from her. Speaking of:

Character Climax

This is probably the bigger reason why I wanted to make this blog because I would argue it’s the part done worst by the way they did this. In fact, I think focusing on this would have been much better even the shipping angle I’ll talk about next. I value characters over romance though, even in my romance writing, so that’s not real surprising.

How did this drop the ball though? Well... This was a big deal to Enid. Or should have been. The writers aren’t always the most clear. It’s something that makes her have a breakdown in front of Wednesday talking about during the first truly meaningful conversation between the two and it’s not without good reason. If she never transforms, she’s an outcast to outcasts and disowned from her own family. That is... TERRIFYING.

And the only mention of it, kind of, in the final episode is the bit with Ajax. Where it’s played as a joke. And maybe allegory but it’s fuzzy. And yes, she chose that she’d transform when she was ready but like... She isn’t ecstatic to be transforming when it happens, the fact that her wolf side is coming out on its own isn’t something that distracts her from making out, it’s just... There. She gives no response to it.

Worse yet is that it could have played into the rest of her character arc. People, including herself, call her a doormat, even after she stands up to her mom. She is someone who is perpetually more scared than most of the cast. Yet here we have her rushing head first into danger without any comment about it. Now that speaks to her good heart but hear me out: Skip the inbetween phase. She doesn’t know how much danger Wednesday is in after all and so only gets to witness it once the Hyde has Wednesday and Enid shows up. She can’t fight this. Not when she knows this thing is happy to kill and she’s barely willing to harm. It’s bigger, its louder, its stronger and the most capable person she knows is at its mercy.

Wednesday looks over with the Hyde at Enid, looking so small, before telling her to run. That it’s too dangerous. That she can’t do this.

And something in Enid snaps. Running before has worked for her. Being nice and just smiling along? She can do that. What will that get her now though? A dead best friend? A destroyed school? Things worse than she even understands currently?

She could run. Werewolves are fast. They’re strong. Even untransformed. She could maybe even get away and be safe from whatever is coming. She could... But she doesn’t. Instead, she takes a step forward, opens her mouth to say something, but instead an ear splitting howl comes out.

In this moment of finding her courage, in deciding to take a stand for herself and what she cares about, she transforms. In coming to be who she WANTS to be, she transforms. Episode plays out the rest of the way as it does in the show. And I think that would have done her character more justice. For something similar but for the LGBTQ+ theming though: Shipping Bait So this is the one I expect most Wenclair authors, myself included, to take a crack at eventually regardless of what the show did. I’ll also keep this brief because it’s as obvious as it is. Enid shows up, still untrasformed, and Tyler ignores her. Instead, he throws Wednesday to the ground, annoyed at whatever paltry resistance Enid gives, before smacking Enid and getting back to his real target. There, smashed a tree, Enid watches as Tyler closes in on Wednesday for the kill. You don’t really need to go beyond that other than to cut between the two and have the closer Tyler gets to Wednesday, the more wolf features come to Enid until at the last minute she pounces. Her best friend being in danger causes the transformation and she saves Wednesday in the nick of time. You get less suspense time but I say it’s well worth for it being less ambiguous and less easy to just blame the blood moon. Also, Wenclair gets an even bigger push which I’m always for because Enid is the best part of the show and their relationship is precious. In Conclusion I want to reiterate that what we got was fine. There’s still also stuff to be done with Enid and transforming. Can she do it at will? Are the side effects to her now that she’s done it? How does she feel about it? I would argue we should have gotten a little bit of that already but the final episode of season 1 was rushed enough as it was. For being probably THE main supporting character though, the fact that I can offer changes that really wouldn’t have taken a lot more time but helped bring her arc a little bit more neatly to a seasonal close (without losing the questions I started this section with) is kind of shitty. It comes off more as her transformation being used to add more action to the climax than actually being for the benefit of her character and I am ALWAYS going to be against that. Maybe I’m biased though. I do have a werewolf story of my own where the moment of transformation before her love interest meant SO MUCH, as well as the love interest’s reaction to it. It’s a topic I’m somewhat familiar with and proud of so maybe that bias is talking. (Shameless plug for that book which is EXPLICITLY LGBTQ+. No queerbaiting here.) I would hope that I’ve shown that it’s not just bias though. That there’s a reason to why I believe it could have been done better and why I’m disappointed by it not being better. No matter what though, thank you for reading and see you next tale.

#Wenclair #Wednesday #Enid #Enid Sinclair #Writing Analysis #Spoilers

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possessionisamyth · 10 months

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the previous evening i saw diobrandass make a post about their ship opinions and immediately remembered how much i hate piers, BUT i do love chris so this post will be about all the ships ive seen him in and my thoughts about them ranked, thanks for the inspo 🫡

1. Valenfield (Chris/Jill)

I'm an absolute sucker for long term friendships forged in fire blooming into the romantic. The sheer dedication Chris has to Jill does border on unhealthy sometimes. Refusing to believe she's dead, not letting anyone mourn for her to give her a funeral, and searching relentlessly for 3 years is a lot. In Revelations I we can see how far they're willing to go for each other and in Death Island too we can see how fundamentally he's attached himself to her. She's the one person he lost and actually managed to save in the end. Absolutely love the idea of Jill prioritizing her job over almost everything the exact same way Chris does, but notices that Chris always makes her the exception to the rule. Tasty dynamic right here.

2. Chreon (Chris/Leon)

I started reading fanfiction for this ship after a playthrough of RE4R and continued reading fanfiction for this ship while I viewed the rest of the games and movies in chronological release date order. Spoiled myself for quite a few things that way, but this is said to explain my implicit bias for this ship. Two broken men finding healing in each other that's either super sweet or frustratingly messy. What else can I say? It's good shit.

3. Alofield? Chreva? (Chris/Sheva)

RE5 is a shit show for many racist reasons, but Chris and Sheva were genuinely cute together. I thought it was interesting that unlike Chris' other teams or partner jobs, he keeps giving Sheva a chance to leave. He wants her to survive. It could be a result of the lingering guilt from losing Jill, but I'm not sure about that because he doesn't push her away when she chooses to stay either. There's such an even footing and sense of respect between the two because their experiences are similar, but they went through them separately meaning the threat of toxic co-dependency derived from mutual survival would be non-existent. These are two experienced soldiers going into a slightly unfamiliar warzone, and even Jill gives her blessing when they go to kill the man that's been haunting Chris' life since 98. Poetic in the manner of closing out the past to give a fresh step forward into the future.

4. Chamberfield (Chris/Rebecca)

RE1- no no, not the remake, the original RE1 where Chris was allowed to be funny and Rebecca was genuinely just a rookie where they helped each other. Vendetta was a perfect follow up to show how time and experience reflected upon their maturity. In RE1 Chris had to make himself the pillar so Rebecca wouldn't feel as scared, and in Vendetta Chris is almost so blinded by revenge it's Rebecca who steps into that role to knock some sense into him. This is another long term friendship forged in fire blooming into the romantic scenario, but unlike with Jill, with Rebecca there's a lot more playfulness there. They seem lighter with each other probably because Rebecca isn't out there risking her life in the field nearly as much so maybe Chris can breathe easier as a result.

5. Olifield? Redveira? (Chris/Carlos)

I am the local Carlos whore, and I say this is a good ship. But seriously, both of them sharing horrible fucked up experiences surviving bioweapons with Jill and being disenfranchised with their country's military? There's a lot of common ground to explore here. Despite them never meeting to our knowledge,(totally plausible event after Jill and Carlos escape RC) it just barely edges into my Top 5 because I am the local Carlos whore.

6. Chrisker? (Chris/Albert)

Not a fan, but I get it. For people who like things like Hannibal or toxic love or the "I can make him worse" dynamics, I get it. This ship is perfect for that. There's one sided sexual tension from Wesker with the reveal, betrayal of a trusted companion, the evolution of becoming someone you killed making you wonder if you ever really let them go, and so on. I understand it. I don't like it, but I understand.

7. Winterfield (Chris/Ethan)

Ethan wasn't even a character to me until halfway through RE8, so I genuinely thought this was a "you guys would fuck a fence if it was white" scenario but it isn't! Upon looking at it again, there is something interesting here especially when Chris is placed in the unrequited love position. Chris saves this man, does all he can to give Ethan the tools to protect himself and his family, and then promptly has to shit on it to protect Ethan and his family. In the end he only saves Mia and Rose, but not Ethan who may or may not be the only person he wanted to save the whole time. It's the opposite of Chris losing Jill to save her later, with Chris saving Ethan to lose him later. To discover he never saved him in the first place? That all he'd done is retrieve and fall in love with a corpse of mold? Tragedy lovers this is for you.

8. Sherafield? (Chris/Jessica)

I've seen it maybe twice? Hot girl and work-a-holic boyfriend who pays her bills maybe. I liked Jessica. Would this work? Nope! It definitely wouldn't last more than a couple months but it'd be messy af and funny to watch.

9. Vesterfield (Chris/Raymond)

Where am I??!?!! Why??????!?? What??!!!? Uh, triple agent with a heart of gold because he saved Parker meets Chris??? I'm sorry. They have zero chemistry. Why is it this high at all? I think it's funny.

10. Nivanfield (Chris/Piers)

This is The "you guys would fuck a fence if it was white" ship. Piers in RE6 only serves the narrative purpose to remind Chris he's stuck in this life forever. He's boring as hell. Ship wise, hero worship does not a relationship make to me. Based on all the ships in this list, I don't think Chris wants to be with someone who puts him on a pedestal. He hates being called a hero or a legend, and we've seen him deny this title multiple times throughout the entire franchise. Piers' sacrifice is at the cost of upholding what Chris represents, not who he is. I'm not sure what eats away at Chris more, the loss of another companion or the reason behind it. It would be funny to see Chris sleeping with him once, realizing Piers doesn't see him as a fully realized person and then struggling to get rid of him though. I'd read that. Someone write that.

11. Heisenfield (Chris/Karl)

STOP LYING TO PEOPLE SAYING HEISENBERG IS HOT. I'M PUTTING LIVE ROACHES INTO YOUR HOME. NO!!! NO!!!!

12. Dimifield (Chris/Alcina)

Do not put this giant lesbian vampire milf through Chris' emotional constipation. Like, please don't do this. You want a giant woman with a little man? I can show you some good ones. Come with me. Take my hand.

#resident evil #this is way more fun than re analysis #im gonna do this again with leon ships ive seen #re ships

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castlebyersafterdark · 1 month

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but the thing about fiction is that you can take everything you want to explore and exaggerate it as much as possible because it's fake and safe.

this is something else that interests me a lot because i think so many of us, especially when young, DO live real life according to things theyve learned in fiction, especially when there are few role models or education on things like sex and emotional relationships. i've seen people here absolutely say that byler is their dream relationship goal for real life, or draw from real life experience to make work. i think the line absolutely blurs as it does in all art. for example, we can probably assume the duffers' stances on things politically and socially according to the ethos of their show.

i have also seen m/levens argue that seeing as many people's relationships irl are toxic in the way m/leven's is, that makes it realistic and aspirational cos it's 'normal' rather than the 'taboo' and 'unlikely' byler :/ in this case, i think it's ok to use art as a way of showing what the world can be rather than what it is. in a story you can have both realism and idealism, i think ST mixes both in a way that works, but what m/levens seem to do is assign realism and idealism in ways that suit their own agenda. people who just watch the show and go along with what the writers give will be sad for will in s4 and happy for byler in s5. otherwise, it's just people who have already made up their minds, and there's no point discussing storycraft with them lol.

Agree! It's interesting how people and a lot of younger fans especially are engaging with media and fandom these days. One thing I've observed and definitely plays into the mlvn vs byler fight is this strange unwillingness to engage with media beyond what is spelled out on screen. Byler isn't possible or interesting to them because it isn't 'canon' yet and Mike and El are already together, why shouldn't people support it? It's 'canon' so why be against it or ship something else? Even some Bylers get upset with others for so much as mentioning an interest in a fic exploring a different pair like Will and Lucas or Mike and Max - but just in a fic. Multishipping while supporting a specific endgame in-show couple has always been super common in fandom. It's not 'you must like this, too' it's 'you don't have to judge people for exploring fictional scenarios.'

This isnt to say you must explore different pairs and the next statement is more general so don't think in terms of being strictly a Byler fan for example: What could be the reason that people are unable to wrap their minds around non-canon ideas or the fact that storylines change in TV? Is it the clichéd topic, though pretty relevant, of a lack of media literacy? An unwillingness to actually engage with what they're consuming? I D K

#Asks #Queued

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kevinsreviewcatalogue · 8 months

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Review: Don't Look Up (2021)

Don't Look Up (2021)

Rated R for language throughout, some sexual content, graphic nudity and drug content

Score: 4 out of 5

Don't Look Up is a movie that wants to be Dr. Strangelove for global warming, and whether or not it pulls it off depends on your tolerance for very heavy-handed satire. Adam McKay, the film's director and co-writer (together with former Bernie Sanders speechwriter/advisor David Sirota -- i.e. a man literally paid to write stump speeches for a politician) who had previously made The Big Short and a whole bunch of 2000s Will Ferrell comedies, wasn't shy about the movie he was making. He said point-blank that he went out of his way to write the most heavy-handed, blunt-force metaphor for global warming he could possibly think of, a comet destroying Earth that we have the ability to deflect but for some reason aren't, and the result is a pure sadist show filled with unlikable people who you're waiting to see receive their comeuppance, while the only ones who get anything resembling a happy ending are the beleaguered scientists and bureaucrats who serve as mouthpieces for the writers.

I felt it more or less succeeded at doing that, but I also felt that it, almost accidentally, stumbled into something I've rarely seen: a Lovecraftian comedy, specifically one that still goes all-in on his brand of cosmic horror rather than soften it. The central conceit of many of H. P. Lovecraft's stories, that of humanity being small and meaningless in the grand scheme of a universe far bigger than them that doesn't care about any of their puny accomplishments, is one that's usually played for horror, most notably by Lovecraft himself and the many artists influenced by him. When that kind of material is given a lighthearted touch, it's usually in the context of stories that borrow the aesthetics of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos (doomsday cults, grotesquely visceral monsters with lots of tentacles, alien gods with unpronounceable names) but give humanity the chance to effectively fight back. This movie takes the opposite track. It's a movie about a comet that's coming to hit Earth and destroy everything. It doesn't give a flying fuck about any of us; it's a comet, an inanimate ball of rock and ice randomly drifting through our solar system that just so happens to be on a collision course with Earth. The protagonists, the graduate student Kate Dibiasky who discovers the comet and her astronomy professor Dr. Randall Mindy who does the numbers and realizes that it's going to impact Earth, are framed as the kind of heroes Lovecraft would write, people who slowly but surely go mad from the revelation of just how meaningless their existence is in the face of looming extinction. In fact, the basic premise is not unlike that of Junji Ito's manga Remina, which plays a very similar scenario for some truly fucked-up horror, complete with both stories having satire of celebrity culture as a running theme.

But this movie takes that premise and, instead of using it to try and scare the viewer, uses it to mine the darkest possible laughs it can think of. Kate's breakdown on a talk show as she tries to warn the world about the comet goes memetic and is treated like Britney Spears' meltdown in the late '00s. Dr. Mindy's reaction is to dive head-first into wine, women, and song, exploiting his new status as a rock star scientist to have an affair with a morning show host and bask in the fame and adulation of the world because he knows, deep down, that anything else is pointless and he may as well enjoy his last few months on Earth. And most importantly, the film's main satirical thrust is that humanity probably does have the ability to deflect the comet and save itself, but is just too goddamn stupid and greedy to do so. The President is a vain, corrupt, bullying, media-obsessed idiot whose administration is rife with nepotism, cronyism, and graft (guess who was President when this movie was written), the "visionary geniuses" of the tech industry are more concerned with a mix of pie-in-the-sky utopianism and getting rich than in the actual, practical, day-to-day problems that most people face, and the media is chiefly concerned with celebrity gossip and other frivolous stories and buries serious issues that might hurt their ratings. Humanity as a whole doesn't go mad from the revelation of the comet, at least not at first, but that's because, as far as this movie is concerned, we're already living in a world gone mad.

These two angles -- McKay and Sirota's intended one of a satire of the world's (lack of) response to global warming, and a film that takes a lot of the tropes of cosmic horror and plays them for comedy -- feed into each other and produce a pitch-black satire reminiscent of an Armando Iannucci story, a good episode of South Park, or the background worldbuilding of a Grand Theft Auto game. This movie ain't subtle. The comet is a plain-as-day metaphor for the climate crisis that practically screams the message into your face, most notably when Dr. Mindy goes on a furious rant on a talk show that, barring the specific subject matter of the comet, may as well have come from the unshackled id of any climate scientist, meteorologist, or environmentalist who decided to one day say "fuck it" and let everyone know what they really think of all the bullshit they have to put up with. The entire 138-minute runtime of this movie is an escalating exercise in cringe comedy as Dr. Mindy, Kate, and the underpaid civil servants and bureaucrats who take them and the crisis seriously find themselves stonewalled, tripped up, and belittled by the vapid, selfish, ignorant dumbasses who actually run the show. Its sense of humor is mean-spirited and often insulting, but it saves its bile for very specific and deserving targets while still affording enough humanity to its protagonists to make me actually care about them, especially as the film rolls towards its conclusion.

Make no mistake, though, this is a very funny metaphor for global warming, much of it sold by an excellent all-star cast. Meryl Streep plays President Janie Orlean as a combination of every terrible thing that's ever been said about Donald Trump and every terrible thing that's ever been said about Hillary Clinton (again, you can tell that a Bernie Sanders advisor co-wrote this), the kind of mediagenic, charismatic politician who looks good in front of the cameras but whose administration is a pit of slime. Streep is clearly relishing the chance to play someone who'd be an unrepentant villain if not for the fact that she's also a complete fucking moron. Mark Rylance plays the President's partner-in-crime Peter Isherwell as a mix of Elon Musk and Steve Jobs who gives off the sense that he's not just a greedy robber baron but someone who genuinely seems to believe his own bullshit, that his sci-fi scheme to save the day would not only work but elevate human civilization into a utopian golden age, and that he's spent too long marinating in the stew of hare-brained Silicon Valley techno-dreamers to think about any practical problems. Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry as the talk show hosts Brie Evantee and Jack Bremmer are playing clear parodies of Kelly Ripa and Al Roker, and perfectly capture everything obnoxious and saccharine about morning talk shows and daytime news. The supporting cast is a non-stop parade of both rising stars and "hey, it's that guy!" actors, including Jonah Hill as Janie's Jared Kushner-esque son/Chief of Staff who serves as a symbol of the White House's corruption, Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi as a pair of pop stars putting on a benefit concert who contribute a hilarious song to the soundtrack, Ron Perlman as a war hero with a few screws loose who leads the initial mission to try and deflect the comet, and Timothée Chalamet as a punkish slacker whose response to the comet is to get right with God. Finally Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Rob Morgan get the "straight man" roles as Dr. Mindy, Kate, and the government scientist Dr. Oglethorpe, all of them offering up welcome reminders of why they're all considered some of the best actors of their respective generations (and, in Lawrence's case, reminding us why she was an A-lister before she did Passengers) as they have to navigate the sick, sad world around them in their long-shot effort to save it. Even here, though, they're not immune from the film's satirical barbs, each of them (especially Dr. Mindy) shown to not quite be as above-it-all as they assume they are.

The Bottom Line

It's so in-your-face with its politics and message that it risks feeling insufferable even if you agree with it. But me? I found it to be a hilarious, pitch-black, and frequently on-point satire that pulls no punches and manages to somehow combine big laughs with existential dread. I recommend giving it a watch.

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