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#showing my blorbo to my friends and having them go 'i do not know him but i agree that he is a sub' is the only validation i need actually
insecateur · 2 years
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yeah
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antimony-medusa · 11 months
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One of the things that I think sometimes gets lost when we talk about what's appropriate in fandom spaces is the notion that things can be appropriate in one space, but not for another. And that doesn't mean that the thing that's inappropriate in that setting is wrong, it just means that it's rude in that space. I think people want a single set of rules that's appropriate everywhere, but the thing is, you have to be able to assess the situation, and adjust your behaviour accordingly.
So an example. I have a fairly popular text post that was me asking about c!phil and religion in all innocence, and someone said "the only thing I have to say about c!phil is that he worships on his knees, thank you and goodnight". And I reblogged it like "I can't believe I forgot about how this fandom does phil analysis", cause it was at the height of the dilfza memes.
Anyways that's obviously a phil-is-happily-married/oral sex joke, in an oblique innuendo way, and on this site, where Phil is not here, and his friends are not here, with it being clear I was talking about the block man character, and we make jokes about sex and profanity (a very popular url scheme for a long time was "[name]shugecock" (or smalldick, depending on the joke)— that's a fine joke to make. I'm an adult, I can make sex jokes about fictional characters on the sex joke fictional character social media site.
If I was to make that joke in Philza's twitch chat, a) in his face, b) with his wife modding, c) in an enviroment where people aren't prepped for sex jokes, d) with it being not clear if I was talking about the cubito or about the real guy, that would be wildly inappopriate. I would be banned in every chat Philza mods in and I would deserve it.
That doesn't mean that it's inappropriate to make the joke in the first place though, just because I wouldn't do it at a Phil meet and greet. It means you gotta learn to read the room. (And like, sometimes it's hard to learn to read the room, but you can do it by pure brute-force memorization. I did.)
This is the same theory that underlies the fact that you can call your friends a bitch in a friendly way, because you are friends and you know each other's boundaries, but if you call your boss a bitch, you will be fired. There are rules about workplace appropriateness, and there are rules about what's appropriate in front of kids (I teach teens, I do not swear in front of them, I swear a LOT in front of my roommate), and there are rules about what's appropriate in different fandom spaces. Participating in an exchange about pregnancy and babies with your favourite blorbo of the moment? Great. Showing the actor gift art you got of him pregnant? No. Bad. Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
The thing that concerns me is that I think there are slight signs that as we get more comfortable with sexy jokes and offcolour remarks as a MCYT fandom (QSMP is the big banner example but it happens with other smps), we're taking what's appropriate in one space (tumblr, home of the brain worms, where I have seen the blog "philzaswetpussy" on my dash), and we're bringing it into places that it's not appropriate (sure, slimeariana is clearly canon, but maybe don't put the actual dicks-out fan art in the art tag on twitter that slime checks). Cause we can obviously tell that the rules twitter is going with are silly for here, so it's full speed ahead for roier/spreen etc, but the trick here is that it's full speed ahead HERE, or in fandom servers, and not necessarily in the streamer's faces.
We have a bunch of situations where creators have said that it's not their place to weigh in on shipping or nsfw etc, and people have taken that as a go ahead and that's fine, but thats still something where I'd like, caution people that just because they said "not gonna look at it not my deal", that doesn't mean that like, you should make it difficult for them to avoid looking at it. Talking about scitties is an honourable tradition, but telling scar that he makes you question your sexuality in his TTS— I made a horrified noise in real life and the cats came to look at me.
And I'm talking about the shipping, but this is also a thing with like— sometimes I see a streamer and I go "my friend you just vividly described neurodivergent symptoms" but it is ABSOLUTELY not my place to say that in their chat. It might not even be appropriate to make comments about it on my blog, with the amount of followers I have. I have to keep the "streamer just described the ADHD experience again :pensive:" comments for the group chat. And we all nod and go "yeah sounds like streamer", and we do not put it in his face, cause that's inappropriate.
We get to have fun with the fictional characters, including off-colour fun, but we still have to remember that there are real people who don't know us who are steering those fictional characters around, and it can be profoundly weird to see some of the (stuff that is appropriate in fandom spaces!) just up in your face in the regular fan art tag.
Just think about the space you're in, and who you're in front of, and if a CC notice is actually likely, and if a CC notice would be Very Bad actually with what you're doing, and keep the "world's sluttiest absent father" bracket (with associated slutty fan art) for here, not with the streamer tagged on twitter.
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tteokdoroki · 2 months
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so jock yuuji and weird girl reader right? am i right?
weird girl who is the one who initiates any form of hostility. jocks arent jerks by defaults, yuuji definitely not. weird girl sees the world in popular / unpopular, uninteresting / interesting, pretty / meaningful, and general black / white thinking. extremes.
yuuji would just have no idea any of this is going on. like why is she mad at me. i wanted to ask her about the keychain on her bag. whyd she accept my follow request but not follow me back.
i love the dynamic of jaded reader x clueless blorbo!!! where they are both somewhat attracted to eachother the more they observe eachother around campus, but one pulls closer and the other pushes him away!!
jock yuuji def hangs out in the gymnasium instead of going to class btw. plays music out loud on his speakers thru the halls. if u even care. he carries around one of those big ass water bottles and he never got a backpack w him. just showing up to econ with nothing but a drawstring bag of ground down pencils and vibes
𖤐๋࣭ — JOCK BF!YUUJI ENTRY #9. first meetings.
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about. a scenario in which the campus’ favourite jock lays eyes on his future freaky girlfriend for the first time.
warnings. minors, blank and ageless blogs do not interact! sfw, fluff, meet cute, jock bf!itadori, weird gf + fem!reader.
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imagine yuuji signing up to one of your classes and he kinda makes a fool of himself on the first day. like he shows up late because practice ran over, his laptop his dead and he doesn’t have a pen but your professor (and it’s taken like two years for you to have gotten on his good side) just lets it SLIDE !!! so you’ve already got your back up with yuuji — thinking he’s some dumb jock here to mess around in your class !!!
he takes the seat right next to you of course, introduces himself to you with a sunshine smile that keeps on burning even when you cut your eyes at him and ignore the poor guy. yuuji even goes as far as to ask you for a pen half way through the lecture — and your heart stops when your fingers brush as you pass one to him. he’s a stupid jock, you remind yourself, he’s probably just making fun of you.
the pink haired jock never leaves you alone after that day!! he says hi to you in the halls at dorms he visits or on the way to the library — his music playing obnoxiously through the speaker he carries even when the librarian politely tells him to quiet down.
yuuji sits with you at study cubicles every week even though you’ve made it clear that you don’t want anything to do with him — but he follows you on Instagram, and asks you for notes from your shared classes, texts you about the socials coming up (even though you never go to them). and even though you think that he’s annoying… itadori is charming in a way.
he’s good to his friends, knows all of his teachers by name, he even studies hard — despite you thinking that he doesn’t.
maybe you misjudged itadori, maybe you were a little too harsh.
maybe you’re starting to think better of him, and he can kind of tell when wave him over to sit next to you during class and lend him the same pen you gave him when you’d first met.
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꒰ end. — all rights reserved © tteokdoroki 2024. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.
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tavina-writes · 2 months
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I have been pondering the recent rash of "post canon NHS and LXC would never ever reconcile bc even if NHS wanted to have Er-ge back, LXC would never ever forgive him for [insert reason of choice here]" type of posts + the "do you think NHS thinks very hard about how much Da-ge would hate him for becoming [the way that he is now] by choosing to seek vengeance" type of posts, and I think fundamentally the reason these posts do not jive with me is that we have no indication, in the show or in the book that uh, NHS gives a shit about either of these things very much anymore?
The first type of post is predicated on the assumption that LXC's forgiveness or lack thereof some some sort of either extension of mercy (which NHS obviously does not deserve <- or so assumes the post) or some form of punishment (which is obviously the correct answer) but the last scene we get with NHS both in the book and the show make no indication that this is a thing he wants? Or cares about? Book NHS has *sauntered off* with his little hat trophy and Show NHS walks off screen after saying something along the lines of "What is my responsibility I won't shirk, what isn't my responsibility I won't care about." Now, arguably, show NHS is having a worse go of it emotionally, but shows no real inclination or interest in either apologies or making up and being friends again with LWJ, LXC, WWX, or other people. Book NHS seems pretty pleased with the outcome of the events as a whole?
The second type of post is predicated on the fact that NHS finds Da-ge's judgement a horrible burden to bear at this stage in the game, which! He might! But again especially in the book we get no indication that he has any fucks left to give about what Da-ge may or may not have wanted since Da-ge is dead. In both the show and the book, NHS went about revenge taking very specific and complicated actions with the desired result of JGY dying, but he certainly took the scenic route getting there, which, he didn't need to? As I've written about before, JGY didn't see him as a threat. If he wanted JGY dead he could've arranged to poison JGY's tea like, 10 years ago and had done with it instead of his complicated Rube Goldberg life ruining scheme. If he is still sickly anxious about how Da-ge might feel about the scheming and the trouble causing and the whole everything, that's certainly possible, but he must've decided it was worth it anyway regardless of that, and I don't know that it necessarily would've changed just because he got what he wanted at the end.
Overall, I think as a fandom we think a lot about like "will and should this relationship ever be repaired or similar to how it used to be?" and "does this character deserve/not deserve the forgiveness of people they've hurt or abandoned?" which can be interesting questions! I do feel like these are often taken as "is a character morally good (deserves to be forgiven) or morally bad (deserves to rot in hell forever never forgiven ever ever)" and based entirely on if Character is the meta writer's blorbo. Under this paradigm the concept of "Character did bad things to get exactly what they wanted and were happy about that and no relationships were ever repaired and the emotional detachment of people they used to care about no longer matters to them!" is uncomfortable.
It's just that for NHS I've increasingly come to the conclusion that canonically, I don't think NHS thinks he has anything to apologize for, nor is he super interested in being forgiven! He got what he wanted the way he wanted it to happen. Which is potentially supremely unsatisfying but I think is very sexy as a narrative concept.
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inventedfangirling · 2 months
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My friends i watched love for love's sake and I swear i don't have a fckin clue where even to start.
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I know a lot has been said about the show already and i know a LOT more would be said about in the future, but i just can't help adding my own two cents to one of the most thought-provoking, moving and brilliantly executed pieces of art i have ever seen.
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I'm not gonna go on about just how much I loved Tae Myungha's character and how he is one of the most interesting people I've seen on screen in a long time. I'm not gonna talk about how unbelievably squishable Yeowoon is and how his duality totally ruined me that I need him to get into my pocket and NEVER leave. And oh I need him to put Myungha in his pocket while at it. I'm also not gonna talk about precious 'of course i'm gay, i've always liked girls, you don't know how to be loved' Sangwon is to me, cos if i start I can promise you I will most certainly never stop.
So for the sake of the rest of this post, I'm moving on. (NOT REALLY THO)
I just LOVE LOVE LOVE all the interpretations that people are coming up with, LOVE LOVE LOVE the show for filling in the gaps but LOVE it more for still leaving room for pretty thought-flowers to bloom around.
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You know those artworks or puzzles that have something obvious hidden in a maze of confusion and haze until somebody points out the pattern, you zoom out and realize wow it was this clear all along?? That's a LOT of what watching the show felt like to me. The pattern being how inexplicably inter-connected Myungha and Yeowoon are. Not because they are each other's blorbos, but because why they are eo's blorbos. Why they don't care for each other from a sense of sympathy, but from empathy, despite not knowing the depth of their connections explicitly.
Eventhough we do see glimpses of it from the start, it only gets more clear later how Myungha and Yeowoon really are mirror versions of eo. How the first time Myungha sees Yeowoon he's stopping him from killing himself, and then we later find out that Myungha ends up killing himself. How both of it was triggered by a series of disappointments in life, starting with a troubling family and ending with a grandmother who passes away. Of how both of them seem to really have no one else to call their own in the world. Of leading very lonely depressing lives, that seem to never have a glimpse of hope. How both of them seem closed off, but inside they really are so fragile it hurts to perceive the depth of their feelings. It all comes and hits you once you've taken the whole show in and have gotten a few 1000 seconds to think about it.
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We start off with myungha's character wanting to make his blorbo's character happy, and he's in it cos he cares about him, he doesn't have to think about himself. A 'pathetic' character experiencing a lot of pain, what's not to love, Myungha thinks, not realizing that it's his own mirror self that he is feeling so much for. Myungha sees Yeowoon's problems as someone from outside and is therefore able to objectively look at it, and approach it proactively, taking so many steps to help him, my favourite (and arguably most important) of which is the effort he puts in to help form yeowoon a friend circle. Something that he couldn't do for himself cos he never even considered a possibility of that. Why would anybody want to be around him? He ruins everything right?
And then to go on despite believing that, to falling in love, to deciding to choose to save both his grandma and yeowoon, finally FINALLY taking control into his hands even if for a bit to say what he wants, to spending the last few days together, to breaking up cos he just thinks the worst of himself, cos he doesn't know better. And then to the eternal darkness, where moments before leaving, just like in his real life, he realizes he wants in, he wants to live, he wants to love, but more importantly this time, he wants to try being loved. Even if it's difficult, he wants to try.
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I love how eventhough the show is heavily Myungha focused, we get meaningful dynamics with multiple characters. Round eyed gasp inducing moments dont just belong to the two mains but also to sangwon whose line to myungha post the stalker incident just ruined me and really set the tone for whatever the show was later revealed to be all about.
I love how complicated the narrative got while still telling a more or less coherent story, how in hindsight, a lot of it makes even more sense now. How as Myungha gets closer to yeowoon his self-hating tendencies manifest in the form of debuffs and errors, because of his own brain's inability to perceive himself as somebody deserving love. His childhood trauma and the numerous rejections life has given him, because of the kind of person he turned out to be because of those rejections, all appear to stand in his way of happiness, as if he can't help being a bundle of sadness and a harbinger of problems. Even as he says he doesn't believe in destiny or fate. Or as we initially are made to believe in the game as, yeowoon's happiness, when in reality this was never about yeowoon at all. Yeowoon never existed in the first place and in "real" life, he never does.
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I was blown away by how Myungha is in fact no longer in the mortal world but that fact doesn't hurt as much as that he would have to leave a world where he could finally feel happiness, feel loved, feel cared for, even if he consciously tried avoiding them. They still came to him, they still cared for him, they still fiercely wanted to protect him, (Cos he is just a tiny meow meow, who has been hurt a lot in his life, who wouldn't wanna caress and nurse him back to health HUH) just as much as he wanted to protect them.
And coming to the question of what's the game, where is it happening and who orchestrated it? It's definitely set in the afterlife or the limbo between life and the life after. It could be the author friend doing it, or the author friend has given myungha's brain the power to control the game OR of course the possibility that this has all been happening in myungha's head the whole time.
Whatever it is, the whole point has been to take Myungha from a person not wanting to live his life, feeling so devoid of love and happiness, to a journey of love and friendship, of the importance of fostering connections, of making efforts, of helping others, but equally of letting others help you, of putting your hand out and asking for that help. And in my head I love it most when I think of it as entirely Myungha orchestrated. Of it being a desperate cry of pain to himself, from himself, to save himself. Yeowoon and the game and the missions and all of it was for him to see himself in ways he never allowed himself to be seen as, to take care of himself in ways he never has, to love himself like he has never known to. To finally run towards himself, even if pathetic and sad, the Cha Yeowoon of the game, the person waiting at the end of the finishing line was the Tae Myungha in him all along.
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You know that tumblr quote 'do it for her' but its about your future self, right? Myungha rooting for Yeowoon is sort of like that? When he's protecing him, he's protecting himself? When he's cheering for him, he's actually cheering and rooting for himself? When he's loving him, he makes space and place to love himself?
I just love the idea of a (self) love story.
Eitherway Yeowoon x Myungha supremacy.
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Extreme(ly accurate?) Interpretations apart, Love for Love's Sake is truly one of the, if not THE finest (self) love story I might have ever seen.
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As a person who avoids fics/books with mcd or shows with tragic endings, it felt absolutely revolutionary to me that my biggest joy and relief came from the fact that the main character is dead (the thought of myungha having to leave the game was too much to handle) and he gets to live in this game where he has a cute boyfriend, a supportive, caring friend group and his grandma back. it wasn't the game that was temporary or non-existent, it was actually his life outside. And that's not bad? Cos this is a story and Myungha isn't real, but as real as he is, he got his happy ending.
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The show taught us to love, to see love, to be loved and to share that love. It told us that maybe the afterlife is a videogame simulation where we all get to live in friendship and love forever, with our blorbo and our friends. There are a lot worse lives to live. And I'm glad he found it in himself, enough love, courage and hope to write himself a better one :')
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blorbingqls · 3 months
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Blorbos From BL That Will Make Me Protect Them At EVERY FUCKING COST
so with the carnal list challenge, I think we can definitely make a list of blorbos that we would protect at all costs (and maybe have a challenge of who is the blorbest blorbo?) - so, less go
VegasPete from KinnPorsche
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this scene says everything. if i can intuitively say, each one of us will have at least one of them on the list. we all know they are morally grey characters but something about them just clicks?! (i have read too many fics on AO3 on them to support my theories of KPTS 2)
WinTeam from Between Us
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lord please kill me because of how feral i am about them.
SandRay from Only Friends
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amidst the disappointment of the show's ending, i sort wanted them as end game but with more angst?!.
also, ps, if you really thought my carnal list and this list won't have any similarities? I am sorry but you're wrong. VERY WRONG.
Oh-aew from I Promised You The Moon/I Told Sunset About You
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gays let me just go and cry 'cause i got reminded of the whole series and then him and i now need to have a box of tissues
Alan from Moonlight Chicken
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something something about First Kanaphan's characters just makes me wanna go and kill everyone who hurt him
HeartLiMing from Moonlight Chicken
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keeping the chaos of the whole show on one side, and their own little world on the other, I WILL DO EVERYTHING IN MY WILL POWER FOR THEM TO BE SAFE FROM EVERY POWER
also, this particular scene reminds of a similar scene from Manner of Death of ThatSorn?! (anyone??)
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Tiwson from My School President
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man was busy carrying the whole show with saving tinngun, soundwin, patnook and his imaginary ship with por - literally
(also this sweater and necklace is very much appreciated for its service)
Boston and Nick from Only Friends
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I WANT A BETTER ENDING FOR THEM - NICK TO HAVE HIS OWN SELF GROWTH JOURNEY AND HIM TELLING BOSTON THAT HE CHERISHED THE RELATIONSHIP BUT THEY WERE NOT COMPATIBLE TOGETHER - I WILL REFLECT THEIR HAPPY MOMENTS ONLY BECAUSE THEY DESERVE HAPPINESS
Wat from The Eclipse
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yes ayan and akk are equally there but him with understanding all coins deserves to be protected and treasured at all costs
PeteKao from Dark Blue Kiss
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excuse me while i go and kill the society for hurting them
Fong from 2gether
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man was too busy being the only braincell of this show - and this is where i'll mention about 2gether and no where else
Akk from Enchante
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I AM SORRY BUT THEO DOESN'T DESERVE HIM - PLS GOD
Naa from Tonhon Chonlatte
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YOU WON'T BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY THIS THAT NA WAS TOO BUSY CARRYING THIS WHOLE SHOW AMONGST THE TOXICITY AND I SCREAMED WHEN THE SHOW GAVE HIM A HAPPY ENDING - this is where i mention tonhon chonlatte and no where else
this list is just becoming too long and i am forgetting many others but these are my main ones (i probably will get reminded of a lot more when i see other people's list lol)
tagging @waitmyturtles @lurkingshan @slayerkitty @respectthepetty @neuroticbookworm @thisautistic @poetry-protest-pornography @blmpff @sparklyeyedhimbo @bengiyo @my-rose-tinted-glasses @sandrayy @reptileofdoom @wen-kexing-apologist and anyone who wants to do this!
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autisticlancemcclain · 4 months
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my friend @beloveddawn-blog helpfully sent me a list of questions to help me get my creative juices flowing in this massive bout of writing struggles i got going on. ily mwah.
1. Do you prefer in-denial Lance or pining Lance? How about Keith?
basic cop-out answer but it changes from fic to fic. in a more comedic fic, i like to go for lance who is both pining AND in-denial, aka he knows he’s in love and is mad at it, or i like to make keith like so painfully oblivious to lances blatant PLEASE DATE MEs that it’s funny. generally tho i go for gooey whipped mutual pining.
2. Do you prefer Keith to be baffled by Lance's flirting or just baffled Lance is flirting with him?
baffled that lance is flirting with him. the I Do Not Deserve To Be Loved -complex is my favourite complex to give keith bc i have problems and he’s just so easy to blorbo
3. What's your favourite episode and why?
i’m gonna be so real with you voltron was so bad that once i finished s6 at like 15 yrs old i vowed never to watch it again 💀💀 six years later this vow holds true. however i remember liking the first episode, the mermaid episode, the space mall episode, and the episode where keith chases lotor in the black lion and lance is like dude you fucked up. dumbass. but he’s very obviously fond and he’s THERE and they’re gonna fix it together and that is the first time keith realises that lance fully and completely has his back. that is the moment he fell in love to me
4. What's your favourite character beat and why?
i don’t know what a character beat is BUT i am a lance stan as you may have guessed. interestingly, i used to watch voltron with my siblings and as with all character things we did together, we each picked a favourite and then only that one character was allowed to be your favourite. lance was picked before i could pick him but i got keith (and thus have the most merch of him). and honestly….keith is kind of my favourite i never stop thinking about him and also i write in his pov the most (granted, about lance lol).
5. What's your favourite line you've ever written.
oh that’s a hard one! not to toot my own horn or anything but i’ve had some stellar lines, at least i think. i have a lot of lines that are profound or whatever but to this day i’m proudest of the “i’m anaemic” “oh i didn’t know you had an eating disorder” line like i made myself laugh out loud 💀
6. What's your favourite fic you've ever written
eighty percent of my fics are my faves bc i write to indulge myself lol. BUT i’m rly super proud of my look so good longfic, i love the applebees universe, and the beauty and the beast au is dear to me. i’m also obsessed with this fic that only exists in my head bc i have typed nothing yet. it’s a theatre school taming of the shrew au.
7. What is your favourite type of AU? Do you prefer complete AUs (like BatB) or detail AUs (that angsty thing you wrote where Lance leaves after the game show)?
i love modern aus really. i’m a fan of the mundane. as a close second i like redoing movies/songs/books that aren’t usually au’ed. and i like complete aus WAY better, i just have trouble actually completing them 😭😭
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agentplutonium · 4 months
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Small Porter scene/character study because I find him very interesting. Depicts Porter coming home to Treasure after the Summit. I’m also blorbo-fying Porter here. Just a lil bit.
Porter, in an attempt to destress from the night's events, found himself at Treasure's doorstep. He wasn't sure why this was his first instinct. They technically shouldn't even have known about him. However, there was just-
The door opened, and Treasure was standing in front of him. "Are you going to keep standing there? Someone's gonna call the police thinking you're a serial killer or something."
"Maybe they'd be right," Porter said, ignoring how ironic it was to say, "You're the one that decided to stick around a Vampire."
"Get in here," Treasure said, suppressing a giggle while they reached out for him.
Porter let himself be dragged inside, the smallest of smiles stretching at his lips. Once the door closed behind him his lips were on Treasure's, causing the smallest of gasps to hitch in their chest. Their arms snaked around his neck, pulling him closer.
A sigh slipped past their lips when he pulled away, a grin on their face. "How was that family thing?" "As boring as I expected," Porter drawled. "I missed you."
"Missed me?" Traesure repeated, sounding smug.
"Or something like that," Porter teased. Treasure pushed themselves up to meet his lips again. Porter let himself sink into the feeling of it. revelled the warmth against him, how soft their lips felt, how willingly they let themselves be moulded by him.
Treasure's hands slid over his shoulders, down his chest to the buttons on his shirt, slowly unbuttoning it.
The king didn't get a chance to react to the stab before his head skidded across the floor. There was a rush of air before he was picking a fight with Vincent. All eyes were on them. Or at least enough.
'That's right,' Porter would think, 'keep looking.'
Vincent, looking distraught, almost in tears. He shouldn't have had to hear this. William should have told him something more than what he knew. William was his friend, but this seemed cruel.
"He sees me as a friend, and you as a child. His child."
Porter was taking Treasure's hands away before they could get too far. "As much as I love being able to take you," he said, "I can't tonight. It wouldn't be fair to you if I tried."
"That's okay," Treasure said genuinely, smiling at him. "Do you want to watch my show with me? I'd still love to have your company."
"Of course I would, Treasure."
It wasn't long before Treasure was curled up against him, the two of them watching whatever they had on. Porter wasn't paying attention. Not after what he's done. Treasure was oblivious to his distracted state.
He'd do anything for William. He would stand by him until the end of time. It is what Porter owed him, after everything that William did for him. After picking him off of the streets and taking him in like a feral cat. But this murder was having more of an effect on him than he thought. He wasn't sorry. He doesn't think he'd ever be sorry, but the point remained the same. Seeing Vincent react the way he did made him squirm.
'Vincent just didn't understand,' he'd tell himself. 'He hasn't been alive long enough to.'
He wasn't sure how much he believed himself.
Treasure shifted beside him, drawing his focus back to them.
"I don't know if I'll make you happy," Porter had warned them when they started whatever this was. "I'll try. For you, I will try."
"That's all I need," They had replied, that smile he loved so much showing itself again.
He doesn't understand why they did it. They were this... this force. It pulled him in, locking him in place, and he just couldn't get enough of them. This hasn't happened to him before. This amount of devotion that he felt. Was it natural? To feel this way about someone so soon? Were his feelings fake? Surely they weren't. He did use Treasure's existence to fuck with Vincent a bit, but that didn't mean they were ever part of the ruse he had going for himself. He wouldn't let them be that close. Not yet. They were still so new to the whole magic concept as it was, it was dangerous for them.
Porter held them closer, resting his head atop theirs. He can figure this out later. Right now, his job was to protect them. To take care of them.
And, by the gods, was he prepared to worship them.
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relatableblorbopoll · 3 months
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Round 1 of preliminaries, group 14
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The first two places get a place on the bracket
Little reminder: there will be 2 more rounds of preliminaries, the losing blorbos of this poll still have 2 chances of getting in the official bracket
Propaganda under the cut
Oz Vessalius (Pandora Hearts)
"Struggles with self-worth, adores books, ADHD (though that’s not canon—but he fits the diagnostic criteria), his strongest/most important relationships are platonic"
Sound (My School President)
"Lonely gay teenager who tries to be cool and sauve but gets adopted against his will by a group of losers and then falls for one of the losers who gets on his nerves a lot because he was nice to him once and then he gets all awkward and flustered around the boy and tries to avoid him and antagonize him but the boy sees through it and they eventually end up together and he becomes the most annoying person in love ever"
Luz Noceda (The Owl House)
"adhd. possibly some autism too. a weird girl who got outcasted by being herself and sure has some WACK coping mechanisms to deal with it. self worth is IN THE DRAIN. gnc and not straight. writes fanfic. artist. goes through a depression era when at her moms house. loves her mom also. this is canon stuff i'm saying"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA she is so ASDHSUJD. Okay I started watching the owl house because I knew there was a WLW couple, so obviously I had to check it out. But upon watching the show, I got so emotionally connected to it, or moreso the protagonist, Luz, that it could go beyond some people's understandings... I remember that almost any scene showing her neurodivergent traits would hit SO. CLOSE. HOME. It would be unbelievable. I literally rewatched the show more than seventeen times one summer. She is just so goshdarn relatable man. She's the weird kid, has no friends, loves making anime edits, is OBSESSED with a book series, loves witches and magic and stuff, has ADHD, an attention span that is so high when she's engaging with something she likes doing and so low when she's bored. She's just so lovely. I know a lot of people found her annoying in season one but she hit close home to me. Season two was amazing as well and she started getting even MORE relatable!! She started showing her people pleasing, how much she blames herself, it was so sad but I was glad to see a character I could relate to so much on screen. I mean i personally didn't experience the loss of my father and I personally do have one friend whom I'm able to share my life with, but she's still super relatable. She can be so silly and so cool. And her impulsivity and the way she realized she doesn't know what she wants to do when she grows up also hit close home. Mwah"
Gundham Tanaka (Super Danganronpa 2)
"Goth autistic theater kid"
Saiki Kusuo (Saiki Kusuo no Psi Nan/The Disastrous Life of Saiki K)
"He's very dead inside, especially in the English Dub, and introverted. But even so, he cares a lot for his friends, even if he never says it to them and he finds them annoying most of the times. He also be nosey and just insert himself into others' situations that don't involve him (obviously, he makes it so that nobody knows he's there and, obviously, he's also complaining about this all the time). He's canonically aroace, or at least aroace spec He's canonically trans. He was born as a girl but he didn't like it so he immediately turned himself into a boy with his psychic powers. An argument could be made about him being on the autism spectrum."
Drew (The Music Freaks)
"I don't like him actually I hate him and love him st the same time in fact but. This man is so real and such a horrible jerkwad to everyone around him. I mean I can't relate to THAT but I should mention he also gets jelous easily, he is in love with his best friend who does not like him back, he's all moody and grouchy and bratty. And so am I and I hate it lol."
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moiraineswife · 7 months
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Moiraine And Lan - The Inability To Communicate Trauma
Hello friends. It has been quite some time. Quite some time since I have: absolutely lost all my fucking shit over my blorbos at great length via a long and quotation filled tumblr meta. Fear not: the status quo of the universe returns, and I am once again: back on my bullshit (literally hours before the next episode airs and this gets drowned/replaced with New Content. Because I’m smart like that). ANYWAY.
Today we’re going to discuss: Mo and Lan and the singular moron-flavoured braincell they share, bond or no bond. More seriously, however: I’ve noticed a few bits of commentary/takes/analysis of the current state of their…well state, let’s be frank here, and realised that my contrary ass has: Different Opinions. So I figured I’d share them. Bc that’s what I do.
(Obligatory disclaimer that there is no right or wrong way to interpret something - that’s why it’s an interpretation, and this is not a call out or a “oh wow you’re wrong and here’s why!!!!” post directed at anyone or anything. Just my observation that I am going against the grain of what I’ve seen and thus throwing out: a new chew toy for us to gnaw on).
Also: please do note that this post will cover, rather extensively/in-depth, the trauma arc that Lan and Moiraine are going through at the moment and will contain trigger warnings for: depression, PTSD, trauma response, rape (in the context of the analogy that Verin presented), suicide, suicidal ideation, suicidal attempt (again: all in the context of the show/previous events), and everything related to the topics that have been raised in the first two episodes for these characters. Be safe and tap out if you need to!
So. Obligatory wiffle aside: what shall we discuss? In a nutshell (bc I’m real good at that) I’m covering how, as I see it/am fascinated by it: the responses that they’re having to each other at the moment are mirrors/insights into the responses that they’re each having to the recent traumas that they’ve both suffered. In more depth/the points where I think I differ from the norm we’re going to cover: 
1)-why Lan is: not an idiot, actually. I see it as him being still perfectly capable of READING/understanding Moiraine without the bond; what he’s having difficulty with is COMMUNICATING with her without the bond
2)- that Moiraine is actually: ALSO failing dismally at communicating with Lan, and that she’s doing: a real fucking bad job of manipulating him. (is she HURTING him? Yes. 100%. Is she MANIPULATING him into doing what she wants? Given that she clearly wants nothing more than for him to: leave her, and that after 5 solid months he has: not left, I’m just going to put out the idea that maybe she’s not quite meeting her all of her targets in this area.
3)- wow they’re both doing incredibly stupid things, and they’re doing them for the same incredibly stupid reasons, and they are, in fact: INCREDIBLY THE SAME. See: singular moron-flavoured brain cell. This manifests slightly differently, due to their own individual traumas influencing the specifics of their actions/thought processes - but the general underlying thesis is the same for both.
The TL;DR here is that: these weirdos still know each other, and love each other, and understand each other without their bond. Can they communicate any of what they want to communicate in any kind of effective way? No. No they cannot. They BOTH suck. (I say that with legitimately all the love in the world).
So. Let’s start with Lan. Purely because I think my takes on him are the most Spicy/differ the most from everyone else’s and, let’s be honest, everything here feeds into everything else and this is going to get complicated where I start SO. Drama first. (I think it’s what they would want).
Okay so first and foremost I want to try and establish/explain what I mentioned at the outset of this thing which is: Lan is not blind, he’s not stupid, and he is not suddenly completely and utterly incapable of understanding a single feel that Moiraine feels if he can’t feel it with her via bond.
The largest and most obvious piece of evidence for this feels like the best one to start with and, for me, this is the fact that: HE DIRECTLY AND COMPLETELY CALLS HER OUT ON HER BULLSHIT, TO HER FACE, TWICE!!! 
“Don’t smile at me. You can shut me out, try to drive me away, but don’t you dare smile at me. As though everything is fine. As though you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.”
This is from episode 1, where he finally snaps at her after she gives him that fake ass little smile and is like ‘is an aes sedai not allowed her secrets’ when he tries to talk to her/get her to explain: literally anything to him. And THAT is what pushes him over the edge. 
She has been cold. She has been dismissive. She has flat out ignored him like he’s not even present. He has taken it all. Not happily, and with obvious frustration, but he hasn’t said a peep. Not when she gives him one brusque, dismissive one-word orders (“door”) like a dog. Or when she deliberately turns away from him and refuses to so much as look at them - he endures all of that and just takes it and let’s her do it. Because he understands that this is her current expression of: not being fine. 
If she WAS fine, she would not be doing these things, and he knows that, and I think sees it as something like a storm to weather? It is something that will pass (he hopes) if he has the patience and the strength to wait it out. When she smiles at him? When she tries to make a JOKE out of what she’s doing? Out of the secrets that she’s been keeping from him - secrets like the fact that she was planning on going to the Eye of the World to die without him - THAT is not acceptable. She’s smiling at him and trying to joke with him as though they’re still capable of that - as though they can still tease each other the way they did, as though things are fine, both in herself, and between them, and they are NOT. When she’s treating him like a slave, or a stranger, or an annoyance - that is strangely better - because it’s this unspoken acknowledgement/agreement (the only one they’ve been able to achieve) that this is because things are not fine. She treats him badly because she’s not fine, he KNOWS she’s treating him badly because she’s not fine - is a strange kind of shared truth. Like sarcasm - something said/done where both parties know that the meaning/intent is completely different. Smiling, joking, pretending she’s fine? That is an insult, because he knows damn well she is NOT in that place.
Okay, so let’s look at the second instance of this, which occurs in episode 2 (oh how quaint) and is as follows: 
L: “Then tell me! You and I have walked this path together. Every step, every choice, every sacrifice.”
M: “We have never walked this path together. You have never seen the forest for the trees because I have never shown it to you.”
L: “I know what you’re trying to do. You can’t push me away.”
Again, as with the previous scene, he tries to get her to talk to him, to stop keeping secrets from him, to share this with her and let him help her carry her burdens the way they always have. She puts him walls, she, again, tries to force distance - she tells him that they have never been together as he says. And he calls her out. AGAIN. He knows what she’s trying to do. It hasn’t changed. She’s still just doing the same thing she’s been doing from the start of episode 1 - trying to force him away, because she’s desperate, and she’s suffering, and she doesn’t have anything else but this - even if he knows what she’s doing, even if it hasn’t worked so far. 
Both of them are guilty of this - both of them get one idea stuck in their minds of how to handle this situation/how to fix everything, and they both refuse to change. They both dig their heels in, plant their stakes, pick their hills to die on, and are refuse to budge for love, money, or common sense. For Lan it’s in trying to get her to talk, to open up, to push back on the destructive coping mechanisms she’s got - trying to force her to include him, tying to force her to include herself and come to dinner with them etc. For Mo it’s this: it’s pushing him away, because she is no longer worthy of him (and believes she never was) and protecting him.
(to continue this: unhinged adventure, pls continue under the cut!)
So she commits to this, even if she honestly knows it probably won’t work now, either. (she empties her entire quiver on him in this scene, and the atomic bomb she had in her back pocket too for good measure. These things she’s been holding back in reserve, the last cards to play - that she misled him about Rand’s death, that she has discovered they (and notice that she still says “we” when she talks about this - even though she went to the Eye alone, even though she made that choice alone, even though she rejects the idea that they have been together on this quest, as he says - when she is not actively choosing every word to hurt him, she thinks of them and what they’ve done as an unconscious “we” and a unit) have freed Ishamael/possibly other Forsaken - one after the other, meant to just overwhelm him and be the final coup de grace. And it STILL doesn’t work. She unleashes everything she has on him and he STILL insists that he’s not leaving her. And it’s because he knows - as he just said - what she’s doing, and why. And he will not let her. And he says that to her “I’m not letting you walk away from me again” - because the last time he did: she went to the Eye to get herself killed. And it’s only by some miracle and twist of cruelty that she was left alive to suffer instead.
Also I’m going to take a brief sidebar here, before we move on to Further Evidence/thoughts on this. But I think that it’s really important to consider LAN’S trauma in what he’s doing and why? Like, I think people are doing this for Mo already? They recognise that she wouldn’t be behaving this way if she 1)- wasn’t trying to protect Lan (her intention) and 2)- wasn’t suffering the effects of her trauma/being cut off from the Power at the Eye. Lan is a little less obvious (both in that his trauma is not a single fixed point/event that’s very obvious and easy to refer back to; and that he’s a bit less blunt Lan Mo’s “brick to the face” techniques and motivations) but, as I said at the start: his reactions to Mo are a direct reflection/window into his own trauma responses.
So, as I just mentioned - Lan is SO adamant about not leaving Moiraine, not giving her the opportunity to distance them/push him away - because the last time she did that, in just nudging him, like, an inch to the left, she used that to mask their bond and skip off into the Blight to go get herself killed with Rand. And there is: no doubt, and no question, and no room for wiggling or negotiation on this. They BOTH were FULLY aware that that was a suicide mission. The first thing he says to her when he finds her is “you’re alive” - because he was sure that history was repeating on him.
Because I think that it’s very important to not just consider Mo’s actions here, I think it’s important to remember Lan’s experience with Stepin as well. The two played out very similarly for him/parallel each other almost exactly. They both talked to him about Nynaeve, encouraging him to seek a love and a life with her. They both manipulated him/the circumstances to make it impossible for him to try and protect them - Stepin by drugging him, and Moiraine by masking the bond so he was unable to sense her, so that they could leave him. They both had clear plans and intentions - and both of their ultimate goals was for it to end in their death (obviously the REASONS behind this are very different - Mo was trying to save the world; while Stepin’s had already ended). But in both cases, Lan wakes up alone, realising that they’ve left him, realising, instantly, what they intend to do and in both cases: he was too late and he feels that he failed. Stepin he finds dead - and the only reason that he DOESN’T find that has happened to Mo is not because of something he did, it’s not because he got to her in time, it’s not because he protected her, it’s not because HE did anything at all - it’s just because some whim of cruelty decided to spare her. And these two events happen within, like, a week of each other I want to say? Like that’s…That’s an incredibly damaging and traumatising thing to go through ONCE - but back to back? How guilty must he have felt? How ANGRY with himself? Because how could he not have learned? How could he have let this happen AGAIN?
Of course he’s terrified now. Of course he’s terrified that if he leaves she’s going to die. Of course he refuses - past the point of any sense or reason - to just back down and leave. He is certain that if he does it will mean the death of the person that he loves the most in this world. And it will be HIS fault. She’s being cruel to him, she’s pushing him away, she’s ignoring him, she’s ordering him around, she’s deliberately pushing every button he’s got, and stabbing her knife in every sensitive spot she’s discovered over the last twenty years. And what kind of weak, selfish, useless person would he be to let that be all it takes for him to just say ‘well fine, I’ll just abandon you and let you kill yourself without me’. He cannot fail again. He WILL NOT fail again. He has been here, history is repeating on him again and he will not let it. Whatever she says to him. However she hurts him. Whatever he has to endure to weather this storm with her he will. Because none of this pain even comes CLOSE to what it will be like if he leaves her and she hurts herself and that is entirely his fault.
(Note: I do not actually think that Moiraine is actively suicidal at this point. As Verin notes - she chooses to fight every day. She wakes up, she fills her buckets, she puts one foot in front of the other and she clearly keeps going. It’s wobbly, and it’s messy, and she’s clearly grieving and depressed and traumatised - but she is not suicidal. Does LAN know that? Can Lan, without the bond, and with Stepin, and the Eye, haunting him even begin to scrape together the required rationality to see that? No. Lan sees Moiraine as being in just as much danger as she sees him being in and all he can do, all he has left to do in this world is protect her. And so he will).
To conclude the wrap of: the most painful breakup scene in the history of the world (for me and my present blorbos at this present moment in time, anyway) I want to just talk about the infamous “we were never equals”. And a lot of it has been covered, and I agree with the takes that Moiraine does not believe herself equal to Lan (and never did (SELF ESTEEM ISSUES!? IN MY CODEPENDENT PLATONIC SOULMATE RELATIONSHIP!? NOOOOO!!!!!!! NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)) and that is how she’s able to say this oath wise. I just want to touch on the fact that some people seem to be like ‘bro how can u not see what she’s saying DIRECTLY TO UR FACE, BRO!? COME ON LAN. LISTEN!!!!’ and like. So, to bring up a controversial and possible shocking observation: Lan is, in fact: still a human being! Emotions are messy, and logic is a fine and wonderful thing from a couch, yelling at your tv screen, and with the delightful ability to rewind and replay conversations/moments in time to be able to link them together nicely.
But Moiraine has been cruel to him for months at this point in an effort to drive him away. And, as discussed - he knows what she’s doing. He knows WHY she’s doing it. He is enduring it and putting up with it and stomaching it without throwing things at her because he knows it’s an expression of pain and is a reaction to what she’s been through. But he’s also hurt by it. Not least because: even if she’s only SAYING these things to hurt him/drive him away - she still believes them enough that they’re true for her to be able to actually get them out of her mouth. That HURTS. That’s going to break you down, that’s going to GET to you, that’s going to be thing that keeps him up at night and just echoes in his head over and over again and like - my man’s self-esteem and self-worth wasn’t actually sitting up at the peak of Dragonmount BEFORE 5 months of this, like dear Light people.
To have the person you love the most in this world tell you that “I don’t want my saddle to slip” (I don’t trust you to do this for me), to have her admit that she deliberately misled him, that she has actively kept important, possibly world-changing events from you, that she says, to your face - the thing that you are MOST afraid of, the thing that tormented him via Machin Shin, the thing that torments him still about Stepin - that he FAILED her? For her to believe that so firmly that it’s truth to her? Of course he doesn’t think he’s worthy of her? Of course he’s willing to take what she says at face value. SHE CAN’T FUCKING LIE!!!! And the set-up to this is so important, because she goes right for the jugular in this scene, and she does so repeatedly, in quick succession.
So she hits him with: ‘actually I lied when I said before that WE were going to the Tower - I’m going on my own without you. We yote a forsaken out into the world OOPS. -I refuse to explain anything to you. -We have never been walking this path together. -I have never showed you everything, I have always hidden things from you. -OH also ur lil sheepherder dude is actually: not dead and never was, I #lied to ur face abt that. -I am loyal to the Dragon - and ONLY him. -You can’t protect me anymore without the bond. -No, you’re not my Warder, you failed me, and I would be dead in spite of you if not for the help of people more competent than you. -ALSO here’s our good buddy Alanna and I am going to THREATEN TO HAVE HER TAKE YOUR BOND BY FORCE IF YOU KEEP REFUSING ME and I arranged this ahead of time to make this right. ALL of this gets dumped on his head in the space of LITERALLY AROUND TWO MINUTES. Like damn Mo the bloody Fades were less efficient than that.
He has just had all of that thrown in his face - the things she’s been holding back, keeping in case she needed them - her lying to him, her isolating him, her NEVER walking this path with him or ever showing him all that she saw, telling him that he is not her Warder anymore, that he has FAILED to protect her, that she will have him bonded against his will just to get rid of him. And he stands there on the ground, while she gazes down at him from on top of her horse (which she mounted - for the first time we’ve seen on screen - without his aid (which is a GUTTING little touch, because we see him smoothly and seamlessly help her mount a couple of times in season 1)) and she just says, to his face, the TRUTH, as he asked for: they were never equals.
And she can say that because she believes that he is better than her, and we know that, but can you blame him for not quite catching that in the moment????? She’s just told him that he’s a failure, that she’d be dead and he didn’t do a damn thing to protect her, that she will have someone bond him forcibly - and in this moment she just says what he’s been thinking for months, for YEARS honestly, given what machin shin torments him with “you can’t protect her. You’ll watch her die.” Of course he believes it. He is ALREADY taking an irrational level of responsibility over all of this, over what he perceives as his failures.
Adeleas calls him out for this and tells him he’s taking it too personally (and he IS) - he is assuming responsibility for not preventing something as though that means that he caused it. And again: this is a trauma response. This is an overreaction to a perceived series of circumstances that led to the death of a friend he’s had for possibly decades, to the one person he is supposed to protect, who he let go on a suicide mission alone so that he could get fucking laid, who he let slip away from him AGAIN to get attacked by Fades - where he failed her FOR A THIRD TIME. But like…He starts this little conversation off with her by apologising because he didn’t sense the Fades. He has: absolutely no way, reasonable or other ways, to sense INVISIBLE CREATURES THAT MOVE THROUGH SHADOW without the bond giving him the ability to do so. It’s a ridiculous thing to say. It has no logic to it at all and that’s the POINT. He is not capable of logic about this situation. He is blaming himself for everything - every single thing he can think of, whether it’s reasonable or not, is his fault, and his responsibility - he should have sensed the fades, he should have sensed her leaving, he should have stopped her going to the Eye, he should have stopped her from being cut off. He is trying to assert control, he is trying to assign blame and reason to the things that have happened to him - to the losses he has suffered - so that he can stop suffering them. And he can’t. He can’t. It happens over. And over. And over. AND OVER again. The trolloc blade that hit Moiraine in the Two Rivers and nearly killing her. Logain’s shield exploding and the axe handle piercing her side and nearly killing her. Being drugged by Stepin who killed himself while Lan was absent. Letting himself be distracted by Nynaeve while Mo went to the Eye. Missing Mo leaving AGAIN and her being attacked by the Fades. Actually getting there while the attack was in progress finally at LAST being able to DO something, to STOP something - and he can’t even fucking manage that. Over and over and over he fails people and he loses them and it’s his fault and he can’t stop it. He’s been retraumatised by circumstance, and is now retraumatising HIMSELF by adding even more perceived failings to the existing tally. Of course he believes her. He’s just been waiting for her to say that to him from the day they bonded. NO ONE IN THIS DYNAMIC HAS ANY SELF-ESTEEM. LIKE THEY STARTED WITH ZERO TOTAL AND SOMEHOW IT’S GOTTEN WORSE.
Okay so shifting focus slightly for the last thing I want to say about Lan, but still related, because: the problem (for me) is not that they cannot read/understand each other, it’s that they cannot COMMUNICATE with each other. And there is a distinction here. Lan’s issue is not lack of understanding where Mo is at - he sees her suffering, knows she’s not fine, understands she is reacting to the loss she endured at the Eye, he gets that. He’s known her for twenty years - bond or no bond - he knows what pain looks like when he sees it in her eyes. That’s not it. What he’s struggling with, and what he’s frustrated by is that they are not TALKING. He knows how she’s feeling - he doesn’t know what to do about that. He doesn’t know how to TALK about that with her. He doesn’t know how to fix it because she refuses to engage with it at all - and they’re SO bad at this that they don’t even get to the part where she can ignore him trying to talk abt the actual problem, bc she just nips it in the bud and ignores him/deflects him from the opening bland ‘small-talk’ set-up questions to start making forrays into that. 
Because before all of that would have happened instinctively via the bond - she feels the bad feels, he knows why, he sends the required good feels back/makes her tea/gives her an extra blanket/just responds without having to think about and, and this is the key point: without having to talk. Because, let’s be real here: these idiots BOTH suck at talking about their emotions/needs. Genuinely think they would both just lie on the ground and fucking die rather than say ‘I need a bandage because I’m BLEEDING PROFUSELY FROM EVERY ORIFICE.’ Because they’re deeply repressed, traumatised people who were never given the tools/language/space they needed to be able to safely and healthily learn to express their feels (but that…is a different piece of meta for another day). 
THE POINT IS: we’re now going to turn to my beloved, my man, my favourite, the myth, the legend, the ICON: Tomas and his tomatoes. And by this I do of course mean that we’re doing a deep dive of the scene where Tomas gives Lan some advice after they go out to the (absolutely THRIVING - good job my man) garden to pick some tomatoes for dinner (or at least….Tomas goes out to pick tomatoes for dinner; and Lan goes out to brood in his proximity while he does so. ) But eh. Tomayto, tomahto….) ANYWAY: 
So this scene gives Lan a chance to talk about losing the bond - and I think that is important as well? Likely obviously Moiraine is Going Through It here, and Lan hasn’t been cut off from the Power/isn’t dealing with that experience but WE DON’T PLAY TRAUMA OLYMPICS IN THIS HOUSE!!! PAIN IS PAIN AND IT SHOULD ALL BE VALIDATED AND DEALT WITH IN A CONSTRUCTIVE AND POSITIVE WAY. Ahem. Anyway. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: QUOTE TIME AGAIN;
“The bond made things easier. It was like a friend walking along with us chatting away so we never had to.”
I think this is a really interesting (and honestly fascinating) way to describe the bond - to personify it and see it as another individual existing between them and making things easier by doing the things that they both struggle to do - use their goddamn words. 
“She’s tired, she’s hungry, she’s angry, she’s afraid. Now silence.”
This part, too, I think is really telling. Because if I had to put money on it and pick out the Top 4 Feelings Moiraine Is Having I think I could do a lot worse than ‘tired, hungry, angry, and afraid’. He KNOWS how she’s feeling. He can read that in her still. He doesn’t need the bond to tell him that. That’s not what he’s missing. He doesn’t need the bond to point out what she’s feeling to him, and he doesn’t miss that aspect, he misses the ‘chatting away’, he misses the noise, he misses the COMMUNICATION, and he is struggling with the silence.
THAT is what the bond used to do for them - it used to ‘chat away so they never had to’. A friend, a helper, who facilitated between them and allowed them to communicate when they couldn’t speak/didn’t have the words. We see this over and over and OVER again in season 1. They have whole ass conversations without making a single peep. Most notably in extremely tense or emotional moments - Kerene’s funeral and the look they share, Lan struggling with Stepin’s grief, coming to Moiraine, kneeling beside her, holding her hand - so much happens in that scene in particular. Without saying a word he communicates an exhaustion, a fatigue, a grief and a sorrow - a need for comfort and support - and she gives it. At Stepin’s funeral - the lookk that he gives her, the way he seeks her in the crowd, again needing her strength, which she gives to him through their bond and across a room. THAT’S what’s gone. That’s what he keeps trying to get back. 
Because he gives her that same look - that same obvious cry for help and look of desperation at the end of ep 1 with the Fade battle. He is WRECKED he is DONE, he’s disarmed, he cannot stand, he can barely crawl - he NEEDS her, he needs her strength, he needs her help. She tries to channel - she reaches for the power, as she would once have reached for him through their bond - and it does not come. It is not there. It cannot help them. And the words that he speaks to her then echo a repeated sentiment he’s had for her throughout: “what aren’t you telling me?”
The bond isn’t there to talk for her anymore. And she refuses. Consistently. Verin and Adeleas comment on Bayle visiting - and Lan notes that she doesn’t tell him any more than she tells them. After Bayle is gone, Lan tries to small talk, he slaps on a casual little smile and he asks a mundane ‘let’s start the ball rolling on that conversation thing’ question, easy to answer, nothing tense, nothing painful, a very common “how did it go?” she ignores him. He presses further - asks who that person was? She gives him the bare minimum (and doesn’t answer the question he’s ACTUALLY asking) and then he tries to push again - what did she want. At which point she hits him with that fake smile and the ‘can an aes sedai not have her secrets?’ - and he’s not even really asking for much. He’s not asking what he actually wants to ask which is: how are you? Are you okay? What can I do? What do you need? What are you thinking? And this idea repeats - in ep 2, when he tries to point out it takes 8 aes sedai to cut someone off, she snaps that he has no conception of the power the forsaken have - so he snaps at her to tell him then. And she refuses. 
They are both FEELING - and their feelings are seen. Lan sees how Mo struggles he sees how she shuts herself away, he sees that she’s not eating, and not sleeping, that she’s frustrated, and she’s frightened. Mo sees that she’s hurting him, she sees that he’s frustrated as well. They know this. But they’re not TALKING. They’re not COMMUNICATING. And at the dinner sequence - this is what Verin, Adeleas and Tomas try to give them advice about - their history is the “common language” that they are; maybe he needs to listen to what she IS saying and not try and demand her to say other things. They don’t know how to talk about things like this - they’re not good at that ANYWAY - but with each other? When they’ve never had to before? When for once, for the first time for both of them, it was effortless to share these things and communicate these deep insecurities and emotions that they struggle to give to others? THAT’S what they’re lacking and that’s what the biggest problem is.
Alright let’s leave poor Lan be for now, I have tormented him enough. On to Momo. This will (hopefully, dear god) be shorter, because people have covered Mo before. We know that she’s traumatised, we know she’s trying to push Lan away to protect him, we know she’s trying to regain control, she feels powerless, she feels helpless, she is trying to deal with something life-altering, something that made her vulnerable and helpless, she’s being reckless with her safety, she’s taking foolish risks etc etc.
The point I want to touch on here is the idea around her ‘manipulating’ Lan, because I usually see this go hand-in-hand with the Lan stuff I talked about already. Largely: how ironic that without the bond Lan doesn’t understand her/cannot read her, but Moiraine is doing it so well with him and i must: respectfully decline to go along with that perspective. And this is (I imagine u know what im going to say now) *inhales deeply* because they SUCK AT COMMUNICATING!!!! 
It doesn’t really MATTER that he is trying to open her up/communicate that he loves her, and he’s there for her, and he wants to support her; while she is trying to communicate the same - she loves him, she cares about him, she wants to protect him. They are both: failing dismally. Lan’s incessant pestering of Mo to talk to him is just making her clam up more and more because she can’t and what’s more: she doesn’t bloody want to. She wants to shove her trauma under a rug in the corner of Verin’s study, and then she wants to drag a bookshelf over the top of it, and then she wants to fill the bookcase with books, and then she wants to put a whole bunch of extra things on top of the bookcase, and then she wants to flee the country and forget that any of that ever exists because she does not want to deal with it. And Lan keeps pushing. He keeps trying to make her talk, because he’s desperate, and he misses the chattering of their friend the bond, and he wants to help, her wants her to let him back in, and it’s just pissing her off. Which is what the cottage squad calls him out for (when will Mo get her ‘come to jesus’ talk?? For Fairness? Like i need this too).
So Lan is coming at this: far too softly, and far too indirectly in a lot of ways. He never asks about what he actually wants to ask about. He talks about the weather, or how shiny Aldieb’s coat is this morning, or how nice and red and juicy Tomas’s tomatoes are. He never actually just says what he wants to say which is: “I love you, and I’m worried about you, and I’m failing you more and more every day and I’m sorry and I need you” he pussyfoots around it and avoids it and lets her shut him down because that hurts and, well, he deserves that hurt so alright then.
And then there’s Mo. Who has managed to somehow twist the logic of the universe so that she can say “I love you” by, uh *checks notes*: Not saying anything at all/ignoring him. Or by saying things like “you failed me” instead. Because she is just THAT powerful. Okay I’m being a bit sarcastic here, clearly, but she has convinced herself (based on how her trauma is affecting her) that she: 1)- does not deserve Lan/is not worthy of him and so he should leave her so he can be happy and 2)- she needs to protect him and so he should leave her and go and be safe.
Maybe she tried to articulate this at some point? Sit him and down and be like ‘okay Allan so I know u have a lot of trauma abt, like, being abandoned/being left behind so ppl u love can go do themselves great harm but…it would REALLY be just swell for me if u left me all by myself while i go through possibly the worst things that’s ever happened to me: alone. Okay? Okay.” However I doubt this. Bc, as previously and repeatedly discussed: these two can’t communicate for SHIT right now.
I think she probably made some sort of roundabout suggestion? Like she didn’t directly say ‘you need to leave me because reasons’ but she probably…asked him to go the White Tower and watch over Nyn and Eggy, or maybe go with Perrin and the Shienarans to help, or even ‘hey remember Mat? The little scrungly one?? I wonder where he is’ and he just told her ‘absolutely fucking not’ (or words to that effect) so she had to try something else instead. Which is: being mean af.
So far so good and I think we’re all (relatively) in agreement to this point. But then people think…She’s being successful here? And she’s reading him well - largely because she knows EXACTLY what to say to hurt him? And yes, she absolutely does, I will 100% give you that. Blade directly to the heart each and every time, she never misses. HOWEVER. This is not the actual point. Causing Lan pain is not her endgame - it’s actually just the painful middle step that’s hurting her too to try and get her to her endgame.
Manipulation essentially involves doing ‘y’ (in this case being deliberately cruel/causing Lan pain) to make the person do ‘x’ (in this case: push Lan away and make him leave her), in theory/if it’s super successful: without the person realising that you’ve orchestrated this/making it seem like it was all their idea/decision. This is, uh, not working too great. It’s been 5 months and Lan is probably less likely to leave her now than he was when she started (because he now has 5 months worth of knowing that she is actively trying to get him to leave so she can do the Light only knows what and if that’s what she wants him to do while she’s in this state then it’s absolutely the last thing that he feels he should do - so in that sense this has actually backfired kinda spectacularly on Mo. Because: SHE’S COMMUNICATING JUST AS BADLY AS HE IS!!!!!!!!!! Just. On the COMPLETE opposite end of the spectrum to him. Because they’re drama and aesthetic that way.
And the added bonus content of this is: she CAN do this. She can (and does) manipulate people spectacularly well. Take Bayle for example (god she needed that little win SO badly, bless her and her buckets). She wanted: to see/examine the broken heartstone - but what is she actually going to DO with it? She doesn’t want to put it in a fancy display case or collect it, she wants to know WHY it broke. So what she ACTUALLY wants from him is information. Information such as: the poem. So she haggles with him on the thing she actually wants - makes him feel like he’s getting a win when he agrees to budge on that, far cheaper, item - but then he counters and says that he won’t move on the heartstone chunk itself - which she has no interest in. So she gets her essential infodump poem for a bargain price, and takes Bayle down like six pegs in the process. 10/10, excellently managed misdirection, making him do all the work and lowering the price of the poem so she didn’t even have to ask for it, and making himself look like a plonker into the bargain. Delicious. She CAN manipulate people - she just cannot manipulate Lan (not in this instance/about this anyway) because she’s as wrongfooted as he is, and is scrambling as much as he is without the bond, to try and find a language she never thought she’d need to try and speak with him.
And so if we now consider BOTH of them: they’re in this very weird space here, where the traumas that they have suffered, and the reactions they’re having are placing them in this fundamental position of opposition. Because their needs/the things they believe/have convinced themselves they have to do put them in direct conflict with one another. They’re like an immovable object meets an unstoppable force, right? And this idea reveals itself in several smaller ways - eg: Lan thinking that Mo needs company and to not isolate herself to get better; while for Mo that just feels completely intolerable and she wants to be alone and in Her Space, her study, where she is in control and can pretend to her visitors/informants that all is well and nothing has changed. But I think the biggest point it revolves around/where it’s most obvious is that, ultimately, their absolute overall goal is to protect the other person?
The difference/tragedy of this is that: Moiraine believes fundamentally that Lan is in danger WITH her, and that she has to make him leave in order to protect him. Lan believes fundamentally that Moiraine will be in danger WITHOUT him and that he has to stay in order to protect her. And this is the hill they’ve both chosen as their last stand/thing to die for. So she is going to push him and push him and push him, and she is going to hurt HERSELF by being crueller and crueller and crueller to him to protect him. And all the while he is going to endure and endure and endure and let himself be hurt to protect her.
AND THEN IT GETS WORSE (or better if ur twisted and u enjoy these kinds of parallels the way i do) because: they are both stubbornly trying to protect the other; but they’re also both feeling like they’re martyring themselves/are hurting themselves more and more to do so. She feels like he is being stubborn and forcing her to hurt him more and more every day - which she does not want to do - when he could just go, just let this end, just leave her the way she clearly wants him to! But this will make her stronger. She will be stronger for this, for having let him go, and for knowing that at least she managed to protect him. So she will just keep going - tomorrow, that will do it, he has to break tomorrow, he has to finally break tomorrow. And this goes on. The next day. Maybe the next day. The next–
And then HE feels like he is enduring, and that the pain she is inflicting on him is his cross to bear, and he has to endure it because he will NOT leave her, no matter what she throws at him. And it’s almost a test of his will and his love and his devotion (even though I think he knows it’s not: but it’s kind of become his own little personal quest. Because yes. Yes he SHOULD suffer this way. She SHOULD hurt him like this. He deserves it after how he failed her. He has to take this pain. He has to prove what he’s willing to go through for her, prove how dedicated he is, how much he will suffer for her, how even she cannot break him). And he too is thinking that next day it will get better. If he can just endure, just survive this onslaught, it will end. It will get better. She will get better. This will pass. He just has to prove his strength and last as long as he needs to in order to see that through.
And, to bring us back to the start of this extremely long and rambling essay I present you my final, deeply insightful, deeply professional, deeply ~meta~ thought which is that: they are BOTH. SO. FUCKING. S T U P I D!!!! (in a genuinely really interesting and complex and  fascinating way, as i have hopefully discussed/explained - the idea that their lost bond/connection makes them mirror/echo each other but now in a destructive way? That instead of seamlessly and instinctively meeting each others’ needs they are both unconsciously and unintentionally triggering the other person’s trauma and making things WORSE? What an absolutely fascinating take/an incredibly subtle but profound way to show the depth of exactly what they’ve lost/how much it has affected them while ALSO rooting the entire thing in their individual traumas, experiences, and characters - like who ever wrote/conceived of this NEEDS A GODDAMN RAISE I SWEAR) But also yes they are: morons. Absolutely. Without a doubt. One singular moron brain cell that ping pongs between the two of them but is, fundamentally: the same. Absolutely fucking delighted. Can’t wait to see where this goes from here. Join me again in the future for me: ‘wow Rowyn that’s a whole lotta thoughts u got there buddy’.
Also I swear I’m friendly and I like engaging/talking with ppl! Pls feel free to comment/reblog/message!!! And do note that if u reblog i WILL read and appreciate ur tags bc im: one of those Old People. 
OKAY BYEEEEEE!!!
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sunsetzer · 4 months
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Assorted FFVI headcanons because these blorbos live in my head rent free: Edgar edition
- He became king at 17 and had to keep up an alliance with the people who killed his father alone for ten years, this man absolutely has anxiety
- Is used to suppressing said anxiety because he has to be dependable
- Definitely had a breakdown at some point in front of his friends and felt mortified; his friends don't judge him for it
- Workaholic- buries himself in his duties so he doesn't have to think about his feelings
- Tinkering as a means of comforting himself
- Actually quite the artist, especially sketching plans for machines, totally has a little notebook somewhere with rough sketches of various things and people he's encountered, Relm finds it at some point
- Doesn't hate kids but really also has no idea what to do with them if he's asked to watch them, will agree anyway (especially if it's for Terra)
- Always forgets to drink enough water
- Used to both hot and cold weather since he lives in a desert
- Outfit covers his whole body to protect from the sun but is very breathable so he's not overheating
- More of a survivalist than you'd expect him to be, especially knows a lot about the desert
- Can MacGyver the most seemingly unrelated useless objects into something useful
- The constant skirt chasing and flirting is intentionally exaggerated and he is not actually Like That to the level it seems
- Very bisexual, definitely has/had a thing with Locke or Setzer or both and also has a thing for Terra (good thing he's got two hands!)
- 100% would be down for polygamy
- Blonde hair is weird for a desert dwelling people with darker skin (related: I just cannot picture the figabros as white, they would burn so bad in the desert) but it's a Figaro royal family thing and of course Edgar is proud of it and vehemently refuses to cut it at all, impracticality be damned
- Uses some kind of special conditioner so even though the desert is hot and dry, his hair is very soft and shiny
- Figaro's native dishes can be notoriously spicy so the twins have a high spice tolerance
- Edgar absolutely deliberately chooses the spiciest dishes his country has to offer when entertaining fellow politicians he does not like, and his guests can't really complain because spices are one of those things that mean status and whatnot, so refusing a spicy meal is like slapping Edgar in the face, so he's just sitting there having a nice time and the other guy is internally on fire (yes he did do this to Gestahl and Kefka, the latter of which barely had a reaction to the pain and deeply unsettled him)
- Zero patience for nobility who look down on common folks
- Visits South Figaro incognito to check on his people, some of them have figured out it's him but they keep quiet about it
- Had the death penalty abolished in Figaro very early on in his reign
- Was personally responsible for the invention of air conditioning
- Gets adorably excited when talking about machines, will completely forget that not everyone understands technical jargon
- Very sentimental, has a collection of mementos from his travels, definitely still has the Gerad getup
- Will never admit it out loud but at least one of his friends has figured out that he can be calmed by stroking his hair, like a cat (it was probably Locke, they've known each other the longest, he definitely tells the rest of them because it's adorable and silly, yes Sabin was already aware of this)
- If he had a choice he'd be living in a little workshop building and repairing things for people instead of running a country
- A little bit vain but not obnoxious about it, mostly because he's supposed to keep up a certain image as the king
- Actually enjoyed being Gerad and not having to be proper all the time
- Is not stuck in Figaro all alone after the game because I refuse to believe they'd all just go back to doing their own things, instead his friends show up to pull him away from working himself to death and help take some of the burden off of his shoulders
EDIT: Can't believe I forgot my own headcanon I've already posted about but: migraines
Can you tell I think a lot about Figaro and the twins, because I think A Lot about them, I think the desert kingdom is very neat and desperately want to see it rendered in modern CG (I can't help imagining it would be like the desert region in ff16 every time the plot sends me there; please square I beg of you)
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jams-sims · 3 months
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I didn't think I would make another post about Dream but here I am. The video didn't need to be an hour plus some for you if you only stuck to the point that REALLY mattered.
The quackity section was and is the only part I will give credit for. Admitting you fucked up and made something public that should not have been is good. You probably should have said sorry to Quackity if hes even speaking to you.
2 no one gave a shit about the gumball situation and the giant section you deicated to it. This about you disproving gr**m allegation and being weird towards fans. The VA is grtting his own punishment.
3 don't bring people into your mess, I.e Philza, Ranboo, Tommy. Not because omg their my blorbos but because they have nothing to fucking do with you defending yourself. I know for a fact from one of Philza on stream he said he told you to get off twitter a long time ago. And im paraphrasing to stop being Chronically online because you don't know how to act. Those "friends" tried to help you before shit popped off like this. Using them weak pillars Especially Philza does nothing but piss those communitys off.
4 no one with a brain cell thinks you and your family being put in danger do to swatting is a good thing. But the people who do the swatting or think it is a good thing. This video isn't going to change their mind.
5 i don't care for dream, I don't like him. I have 0 skin in the game. If the girls he briefy mentioned said nothing weird was happening/are gone now. Thats all anyone can take. At the end of the day Dream needs to stop interacting with his fans like they are his friends. They are not. They are young no matter what you think the analytics show people can lie about their. Thats how all of this shit happened. Grow the fuck up and take responsibility and realize you can't do the same shit that you've been doing for years.
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lurkingshan · 9 months
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10 Things I Love About 3 Will Be Free
I am very late on this one, I know it! But this week I finally sat down with @wen-kexing-apologist and binged the whole thing, and had a grand ol’ time doing it. @waitmyturtles the verdict is two enthusiastic thumbs up. This was such a fun romp, and here are a few of the things I loved most about it:
SHIN MY BELOVED
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Guess who has a new blorbo!! In hindsight it is absolutely absurd that it took a Tay Tawan girlie like me so long to watch this show, because Shin is an instant entry on the all-time fav characters list. I love his sad gay ass. He’s sensitive, he’s lonely, he’s repressed, he’s far too susceptible to Stockholm syndrome, and I would protect him with my life.
Mae
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A working class trans character with an actual plot?! Thank you for your endless gifts, P’Jojo. Sure, my girl Mae made some questionable choices (just a little light murder!), but listen, I support her, in the words of @wen-kexing-apologist, embracing her feminine rage. And in the end, she figured out exactly the right target for her rage and lived her best life.
Miw
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A Survivor. Gets shit done. Absolutely will kill a man if he forces her hand. Loyal to her boyfriends even when it would probably be smarter to ditch them. Also, she so pretty.
Neo’s tanks and crop tops
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I never claimed not to be shallow.
Neo and Shin’s backstory
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Episode 5 was my favorite of the show and the moment it really clicked for me. I loved getting a glimpse of Shin’s lonely and dejected teen years (I just wanna talk, Ken 🔪🔪🔪). I loved that the basis of Neo and Shin’s relationship and initial attraction was the way they played together. Shin laughed more in his few days with Neo than he probably had in the several years preceding them. I loved that Neo gave him his first kiss and that Shin treasured those memories so dearly.
The Worst Criminals Of All Time
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Truly remarkable these three are still alive by the end of the show. Their ideas were half-baked and their execution was severely lacking. They never had a plan they thought all the way through and they never had a single scheme that went off without a hitch. Luckily, the bad guys chasing them were also thoroughly incompetent, so it all evened out. The only smart person in this show was Miw’s mom, who knew the only prudent move was to stay the hell out of this mess.
Miw and Shin’s friendship
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I just love that these two developed their own bond, even though they’re not into each other the same way they’re both into Neo. They both risked their lives to save the other. They tease and joke with each other. Shin literally wanted to bring his new bestie home to live with him. They’re adorable.
This weird little guy
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Toptap. My guy. What are you doing here and why are you being so strange? Are you good, are you bad, are you chaotic neutral? Who can tell! Certainly not me. But I enjoyed every moment your weird ass was on the screen.
There's a polyamorous relationship, and it’s depicted onscreen!
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Okay, here’s the part where I admit my expectations for the poly romance in this show were a liiiiiiilttle off base. I must gently rib the fandom for leading me to believe this show would have any actual sex in it (or really a focus on romance at all) and once again recite to myself a universal truth: gifs removed from context are so misleading. At the same time, I also must acknowledge how groundbreaking it was at the time to depict polyamory at all. I would have loved a bit more time spent on the actual relationship dynamics and the emotional complexities of this triad they formed, but I recognize that’s not really what this show was about and appreciate they included a polycule in the first place. Now that it’s 2023 and he’s been give a lot more freedom, I look forward to Jojo’s further exploration of sexy polycules in Only Friends.
Against all odds, these crazy kids got their happy ending
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When this show started I did not see any way for them to come out of this in good shape. I was going to be happy if they simply survived. But not only did they survive, they are thriving! Shin has inherited his dad’s legitimate business and discovered he looks hot in a deep V. Neo and Miw are living that beach life they deserve. Everyone loves each other and everyone is at peace. A+, 10/10, would watch again.
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lgbtlunaverse · 8 months
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I think i need to explain why this line makes me go so feral
I think the "fine! I'll kill myself after I kill you" line from nie mingjue in chapter 49 permanently altered my brain chemistry and it has something to do with precisely how i got into the mdzs fandom space in the first place.
I've mentioned it a few times but i started watching the untamed in late 2019 right as it was blowing up everywhere and, likely due to a combination of undiagnosed adhd wrecking my ability to be interested in anything for longer than 4 seconds and me very much not being used to the specific style of acting, especially during fightscenes, i never finished it. The only concrete memory i have of it is seeing wen qing's face and meng ziyi completely short circuiting my little gay brain. I remember more of staring endlessly at pictures of her than I remember of the plot. Press F to pay respects.
Flash forward a few years and a friend recommends me a fic writer for an fma fic (the fic riter in question is metisket) and i like their stlye so much i decide to read other stuf they've written. Here we get to our prime suspect: "the one body problem" a genuinely hilarious fic where jingyi gets posessed by wei wuxian like a year before the plot happens and they become awkward brain buddies. 10/10 i loved it (and still do) even though i remember huasiang showing up in my first reading and I, having fully forgotten his name, had no fucking clue what was going on. (Little did i know...)
Anyway flash forward ANOTHER year and I decide to reread that fic, and then the other untamed fic metisket wrote, a wen qing time travel fix it that's also real fun. And then i'm like. huh. that's fun. wonder if there's anything in their bookmarks.
And then, within 20 days, I had read approximately 350 fics. Many of them 100k+ words. I cannot stress enough how much this CONSUMED my brain's ability to do or think about anything else. I now think back to the early days of getting my adhd diagnosis and insisted that while i had pretty much all other symptoms, I did not get hyperfixations. Lol. Lmao, even.
I am mainly focused on wangxian and the junior quartet becuase they are my baby ducklings and i love them. I do come across some 3zun fics and I think huh... this is interesting. But the 3zun brainrot is LIGHT at this point.
The thing about reading more than 350 fanfics is that at some point you kind of piece the plot of the source material back together backwards. Especially because my favorite genre was time travel fix its, where characters relive the whole plot and like to make allusions to all the ways everything went wrong last time.
Because I'm still squarely in my wangxian + juniors (plus a heavy dosis of yunmeng sibling reconciliation) corner here... the feelings on jin guangyao in my fandom corner are. different from where I'd end up soon after. He is my special little guy though, so I do kind of immediatley develop a fondness for him, and I approach my 3zun and early nieyao thoughts specifcially from the assumption that the widespread opinion is that nie mingjue is a fine good guy and jgy is the evil one (I have not seen the bad nmj takes yet. well... I am seeing DIFFERENT bad nmj takes but they're nice to him. In, like, the wrong way. With no solid undertanding of the inherent tragedy at the heart of him that makes him so blorbo to me. But still.) major reactions to the stairs scene as I see them on twitter are "girlboss! He should've kicked him harder 💅"
And the baby jgy apologist in me goes :/ me no likey. And at this point I am also actively seeking out metas and analysis posts so i'm seeing some better opinions than that and getting a halfway solid graps on the themes. wwx and jgy being foils becomes very obvious to me very quickly. So, with my curent understanding of the plot, I go... you know all you people who are like "god i wish nmj would have killed jgy sooner" it uhh... kinda sounds like he'd have died if he did that. If he'd killed him before meng yao had gone off to spy there is a very big chance they'd have lost the sunshot campaign and most of the main cast would be dead. If he'd killed him at the stairs that's... well that's killing your sworn brother, which by the canon's own admission is a universally reviled crime, and jin guangshan could easily take advantage of this by demanding nmj's head in retribution, since he already wanted to get rid of him anyway. He doesn't give a fuck about a-yao of course but he could pretend well enough that he does. And what leg would nmj have to stand on? The jin clan is canonically both willing and able to slaughter entire clans for the murder or attempted murder of the leader or his family, and nie mingjue is the kinda guy who'd immediately offer himself up if it meant the rest of his clan would be spared.
This combined with jin guangyao specifcally dying for his murder of nie mingjue, with huaisang basically not caring much about everything else he does and wanting to get revenge only for his brother, it gives nieyao a sort of mutual doomed soulmates feel. For either of them, killing the other would spell death for themselves. They either both die or they both live, one cannot live on without the order. That's crunchy. I like it.
The fire palace though? well, on meng yao's part there is a real argument that if he'd let nmj get killed immediatly instead of dragging it out he wouldn't have been able to get wrh alone and distracted enough to assasinate him, so that's one half of the mutual doom coin, and if nmj had killed him during their fight there he's also done for. But after? Right before Xichen intervenes? I had no answer for that yet.
(You know what's coming. I did not)
It is at this point that i realize that if this is gonna keep being A Thing then i need to read the source material before I catch fatal fanon poisoning. Yes, I can piece together the plot and themes from seeing what stays consistent across fics and what are the author's own opinons. But I know just as well that sometimes fanon just agrees on shit that didn't happen and treats it like canon, and I have no way of knowing which is which. So I start reading the novel.
And of course, eventually I get to the empathy sequence. And remember, my "nieyao both live or both die" theory is heavy on my mind at this point, and the only stickler is that nmj could sort of have killed meng yao after the confrontation with wrh, still believing meng yao was actually working for him, and not a spy, and get off... not scott-free, Xichen won't be happy, but it's not gonna cost him his life.
And then I read THIS.
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Please Imagine dropping a whole block of pure elemental sodium into water. Except the sodium is this quote and the water is my poor little delicate brain. Not only is my theory right, it is ten times more unhinged than i thought it was.
And considering that Nie Mingjue does not seem like the kind of guy who'd consider something like a life debt to have an expiration date, and because after this he will link himself legally and socially to jin guangyao as family and declare that one among their brotherhood turning against the others is to be met with a painful death, I can no longer read the scene at the stairscase in jinlintai without the impression that he is still planning to die afterwards. Which, if you wanted to make that scene even more painful, this is a very efficient way of losing all your remaining hinges.
I think I'd have gone crazy about this line no matter what context I heard it in, but this one specifically? where I'm already obsessed with idea of nieyao's deaths being connected by the narrative and missing just this one piece and having it confirmed? out loud? from one of the characters himself? It's like giving cocaine to a baby.
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sparkbugs · 4 months
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Thinking bout Chip Jrwi
This has spiraled from ramblings to character analysis to whatever it has turned into. I rewatched episodes too JUST to make sure I had the right information and plot points in mind cause I want to make sure I’m not making a fool of myself in front of all of Jrwiblr.. ANYWAYS! This is a lengthy read. Total words being 1318 under the cut. Yeah, I’d say the hyperfixation is hyperfixating for sure. Chip Jrwi you are my blorbo atm and you mean everything to me <3
Do you guys think that before they went to the Black Sea, before they left Canella, before they left the town of Zero that Chip looked at his crew, his friends, and his family and wondered if he should stop? Yeah, he lost his old family years ago, and he wanted to do everything in his power to bring them back, to do something about it that his 9-year-old self couldn’t. But do you ever stop and think that maybe he’s realized that he has a family now, a new one and that he’s afraid to lose it to the Black Sea as well? But they’ve come so far now, they found Drey and Finn, hell Finn had been with them the entire time!! They’ve come so far now, and they’re expecting him to want to keep going, to find Arlin, and maybe even some of the other crew they lost as well. I think about it a lot, maybe too much at this point.
Back in the Feywild when Chip could’ve reached out to anyone, he could’ve talked with Arlin again, but he didn’t. He didn’t because he saw something in his nightmares in Liquidis while being cured of his curse. He saw Arlin, covered and surrounded by this black ichor, and he talked to him again. He saw Arlin, the man who took him in when he had nowhere to go, and he had looked at him with so much rage and hatred.. and he had attacked Chip. This would honestly terrify me if I were in Chip’s place. The person who showed me all the care in the world suddenly turned and attacked me? And saying that this has happened before? In a nightmare situation that felt so real, Chip knew it was real… I’d be terrified to find him if he thinks I’m gonna kill him, he’d be fighting for his life too, I’m sure. The Black Sea has affected Arlin too, I don’t think they’ll be able to convince him that they aren’t going to kill him unless somehow Drey and Finn can get through to him, but it seems highly unlikely. 
I think if Chip feels this way at all, maybe not like all I’ve written exactly, I think he feels immensely guilty. He doesn’t want Arlin to be trapped in the hole in the sea, but he’s also immensely terrified as to what he’s going to find once he gets to him. He doesn’t want the person he’s looked up to for so long, the person he’s risked his and his friends' lives for, to hate him. But I also feel that somewhere in his heart (or lack of one), Chip doesn’t blame Arlin for hating him, cause he’s starting to hate himself for getting his new family dragged down into this hole in the sea as well.
Yes, they all chose to come with him to the Black Sea, but if anything happens to them, Chip will forever blame himself for it. Hell, he lost his heart and he has no one other than himself to blame. Jay almost lost her leg (did she? They haven’t made it clear if she did) and I feel that Chip blames himself for that too. Yes, they helped save everyone on the island, but Gods is Chip scared he’s going to lose his family again. Being on this ocean reminds him of when he was just a scared little kid, but now he can do something about it. He’s trying but he’s still so fucking scared. 
Speaking of his heart- he’s trying to hold onto himself. He’s an undead now, and by meta the mechanics of it are roughhhhh. I rambled a bit on another post about one of my characters named Amani, an opal Tiefling whom Chip is starting to remind me of- not exactly but they both have had their hearts taken!! Doing the checks to see if he loses a part of himself terrifies me each and every time and I know there’s going to be more, we can only hope the dice are in Bizly’s favor as we do not know when Chip will be able to get his heart back. It could be months from now, years maybe. I dread the session they head back to Zero and Chip is still undead. I dread Chip reuniting with Ollie. I don’t think Chip wants Ollie to see him that way, he can hide it with the bandana as much as he wants, but the stench of rotten flesh will give it away. Ollie told him to come back alive! Chip wasn’t able to keep that promise. It kills me to think that Chip dies at 19. Yeah he wasn’t a kid, but he was still so young- yeah he might come back once getting his heart but how much of his humanity will he have lost? How much life experience would he have gained in this undead state? He hasn’t even had the time to grieve the loss of himself with everything that's been going on, and I am really hoping with the next episode of Riptide we get to see some of his thoughts on being undead. Yes, he’s made jokes about it! But I feel he still hasn’t fully processed it all and once he finally does it's going to be PAINFUL. 
He’s grown so much from this journey with Jay and Gillion, he was using them at the start, to get back his family. I mean I could be wrong here, but it certainly feels like it at the start of everything anyway. Along the way though, he started opening up a bit and he realized that while sailing and learning about the whereabouts of his family he’s lost, he’s made a new family. And it’s become precious to him. It shows how he has grown during the fights he had with Gillion, the first fight they had dealing with Chip lying and pranking him, wounding Gill’s pride. They resolved it after communicating and getting to know each other better. The second fight was initiated by Chip himself because he knew he was in the wrong and that he had hurt his friend by keeping the fact that Edyn was working with the Navy a secret. He remembered how much lying had hurt Gill, and as much as he didn’t want to tell him at the time, he wanted to protect Gillion from the truth of his sister potentially doing something dangerous behind his and his friends' backs. There hadn’t been much time in between Gillion escaping the pearl and the time that he found out about Edyn, and Chip had tried not to think about it but those damned bracelets (WHICH I WISH THEY WOULD USE MORE?? WHERE DID THEY GO-) outed him on those thoughts. He stayed up ALL NIGHT just to build the arena, just to show Gillion he was sorry and that he needed to fix it, he wanted to fix things between them both. He goes on and on about how Gillion’s actions helped him change for the better, about how he cares about him, and that he never meant to hurt him. Of course, this ends in them battling again, them starting the fight and Jay ending it like the girlboss she is, but this battle was never out of malice or anger, it is light-hearted and fun, and it shows that they’ve all grown stronger together. 
I love Chip Jrwi, I am so happy that he got a second third chance at a family- He deserves it and the world. I totally will be coming back to this at some point but this is all I have to say for now! Feel free to reply/reblog to this with ur thoughts, or even send me an ask bout it cause I would love to continue talking about this boy!
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sailing-ever-west · 3 months
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had a nonverbal episode yesterday and naturally am coping with autistic blorbos so it got me thinking about nonverbal Luffy and how that would affect the plot, especially with a character who is typically, well, yelling all the time.
like canon Luffy can't really keep his mouth shut and this causes many problems but I fully believe that he would be able to wreak just as much havoc if not more without ever talking.
him using sign language is super cool for a starting place, but
1. I'm honestly not sure who would've taught it to him because he didn't have a consistent education or guardian so what he knows is probably somewhat incomplete/rudimentary. Garp would've made a solid attempt I think but he probably would've tried to do it in like a strict lesson format and Luffy's brain would just ADHD straight outta there, but I think he still learned the basics.
2. Signing wouldn't always work to communicate because not everyone knows it so he would still often have to find other ways to get across what he's saying. The crew would learn sign and just get used to his various other ways of communicating but people all over the world when they're traveling can't be counted on to know stuff.
Random ideas I have
keeping a little flag with a jolly roger on it in his pocket and just pointing to it to tell people he's a pirate
just not bothering to try to communicate with people who have oficially pissed him off. sorry loser your privileges have been revoked I'm just gonna punch you now
marines getting really annoyed at first because they think he's staying silent to snub them and then realizing he just can't talk but by the time they figure that out he's already down to fight them anyway
stretching his arms into shapes of things to get an idea across
quickly drawing illustrations (not terribly helpful because he's awful at it, but he continues to do it anyway)
Zoro/someone else on the crew explaining things to a new person and Luffy just nodding proudly like yep that's my crewmate they get it :))
still makes Noises. nonverbal =/= quiet and boy does Luffy prove that
He used to sign "food" at Sanji but eventually he just Shows Up in the kitchen or approaches him with big eyes and Sanji knows what he wants
there's a rumor going around that he communicates with his crew telepathically because people cannot figure out HOW the ideas are getting across
asks people to join his crew by just showing them the little flag and motioning to follow him. once you come with him there's no going back he's like ok you're my best friend forever and within like 24 hours you're like well I guess I'm on a pirate crew
doesn't say gum gum when he does a move he just starts screaming. it's like far more terrifying and villains have no idea what's happening until they're being punched in the face by a nonverbal teenager in flip flops
basically take how abrupt and confusing Luffy already is to everyone else in the world and then imagine he doesn't announce anything before doing it
Thinking of doing some little fics or mini comics of major scenes in this AU idk
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