#the good boy scene was deeply influential. To me.

[thebluestbluewords]

The Same Coin

I’m still having fun with the Valentine’s ficlets, so have some benlos! Set in no particular timeline, but there’s a nod to poly ot5 in the background.

+

“We don’t celebrate valentine’s day. On the Isle.” 

Ben tilts his head. His face is set into one of the middle levels of the Neutral Face of Acceptance, one of the ones that means he’s genuinely listening, not just trying not to look horrified while he thinks about other things. “Oh?” 

“It’s about feelings,” Carlos says slowly, trying to come up with a way to say the next part that won’t sound horrible. “And like, love, and stuff. And. We weren’t exactly. Allowed. To do that.” 

Ben cocks his head somehow further into the Neutral Acceptance Position. “What, to love people?” 

Nail, head. 

“Uh, yeah.” 

“I’m…” Ben trails off into silence for a moment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think this would be so different for you four. Valentine’s day is so…” 

“So commercialized?” Carlos says, before he can think twice about how mean it sounds. He’s supposed to be having a meaningful moment where he gets to help the king reach some sort of shared cultural understanding with the poor sad Isle kids he’s so kindly pulled out of their pathetic former existence, and instead of being sincere, like an Auradon kid should be, he’s making fun of Ben’s beloved holiday. And like, family tradition. Probably. He should just stop thinking. “I mean, uh. Not that buying your girlfriend stuff is a bad thing. It’s fine. The more stuff you buy here, the more junk people have to donate to us, so. I’ll just. Uh.  Stop talking.” 

Ben smiles, but his expression had slipped into something more like a strained grimace, all tight and fake around the eyes.  “I was going to say ingrained in our culture.. We’re taught to value love, so I assumed that the same would hold true for you. I should have known better.” 

“Ouch.” 

Ben goes red. “Not that you four don’t feel love!” 

It’s easier to look at Ben now that they’ve both put their foot in it. “I feel rage,” Carlos offers, softly. “If that helps at all.” 

“It’s not quite the same thing.” 

“Two sides of the same feeling,” Carlos says, feeling the weight of the words as they leave his mouth. “My mom’s not a great example, but she told me that you can’t hate something if you don’t love it, at least a little bit. They come from the same place, y’know. When you feel so much that there’s nowhere else for the feelings to go. They either come out as love, I guess, or if there’s too much, or the love isn’t reflected back…” 

Ben nods, and reaches over to take his hand. “Rage?” 

“Hatred, anger, jealousy.” Carlos ticks the feelings off on the fingers of his free hand as he goes. He doesn’t exactly like holding hands, because there’s too many opportunities to get distracted and leave yourself open if you’re walking hand in hand with someone, but it’s okay right now because they’re not moving, so there’s no way for Ben to pull him down and make it look like an accident, and they’re alone enough that nobody’s going to shout at them for doing it, and it’s still light enough that they could see anyone coming and let go before they’d get in trouble. “They’re all the same feeling. If obsession is good you end up in love with the thing, and if it’s bad you end up hating it with the same enthusiasm.” 

“I don’t think I could ever hate you,” Ben says softly. He’s doing a distracting thing with his hand, a little squeeze that’s drawing all of Carlos’s attention to where they’re connected. “Do you ever think that maybe your mom was wrong?” 

“About dogs, and driving cars, and how much pepper should go on food, yeah.” Carlos says. “But not this.” 

“Oh.” 

“Not–”  Carlos stutters around the words. He’s not sure what he even wants to say, but he’s so sure of this one. He used to hate Mal, back home when she was the one pushing him into closets and lockers and stealing his inventions, and then it was like a switch got flipped and all the times he’d followed her around to make her day worse, to try and spit gum into her hair from rooftops, and drop salt into her coffee when she left it on her school desk all seemed petty and stupid in light of how much he was suddenly devoted to her. He’d hated Jay too, up until the moment when he looked over at the wrong time, and all the feelings switched over into confused-hungry-aching, and he couldn’t stand to look at him, until his feelings for Mal settled into place and he fell in love with the both of them. 

He’s never not loved Evie, but Evie’s special. 

“Not like that.” Carlos says, finally. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just that I don’t know how to have emotions like normal people do, and for me, they’re sort of the same thing.” 

The callouses on Ben’s writing finger slide against the rough skin on Carlos’s knuckles. The places where he’s split them open from hot water and abrasive chemicals don’t hurt anymore, but they catch, against the rough pieces of Ben. 

He’s wearing them down. Evie’s helping, with her potions and chemistry. They’re working on it together. 

“Okay,” Ben says, and he’s not looking at Carlos. “Is it okay if I say I love you anyway?” 

The horrible-wonderful feeling that’s somewhere between fear and anger and love bursts hot and painful in his chest. 

“Yeah,” Carlos whispers. His voice cracks anyway, because it’s stupid that way. “I can’t– I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to say it back. But I don’t hate you.” 

A squeeze. 

“I love you too.” 

[sp0o0kylights]

I started writing an enemies to lovers Steddie fic that starts off as Tommy/Steve/Carol with this prompt except Im tired and I lost the plot lmao so instead let me float the images of:

Modern college town AU featuring frat president Steve, who's been convinced no one will ever really love him by his parents, his past relationships, and Tommy & Carol. The latter not only "date" him but regularly use him and his money by utilizing his self worth issues against him.

Hes barely scrapping by in class, kind of wants to pick up a side job to get out from under his parents financial thumb, and enjoys talking shit with his sort of new friend Robin at a retro vinyl store, but with Tommy and Carol reporting back to his parents/the frat he's not able to take up Robin's offer to work there with her.

The frat keeps him busy the rest of the time--he's a legacy, and several members are deeply entrenched into a competition against the other fraternities that frequently cause problems on campus due to their pranks, parties and general bullshit. Steve has to run shoulders with the college Dean and such a LOT to peace keep.

Eddie works at the major game shop across the road from the vinyl place, which helps pay for the automotive program he's in part time at the college. He runs all the D&D campaigns, including several for adults and kids. A lot of the events he tries to get going on campus get shut down as the school and police target him and the "scary kids" in a show of misdirected anger at the frats they can't touch without risk of losing out on their parents money.

Eddies particularly pissed at Steve after an infamous incident involving Eddie spearheading a pokemon go event that came into contact with some kind of frat beer run, which led to Eddie being wrongfully arrested.

Their enemies piece began with Eddie storming into Steve's frat, demanding he do something as he's one of the more influential presidents and Steve, goaded on by Tommy and Carol, refusing.

This is further cemented when Eddie finds out one of his favorite high school players, Dustin, is close with Steve and defends him constantly, refusing to elaborate much when pressed other than to tell Eddie that Steve used to watch Dustin a lot as a babysitting gig and he's a "really good guy under all the frat shit Eddie, seriously."

(Dustin does not elaborate that his mother was on the PTA with Steve's mother and that she clocked his parents abuse, and used the babysitting angle to get Steve out of that house as a kid, and Steve sees Ma Henderson more as a proper parental figure than his own parents.)

Throw in some light sub/dom dynamics, Eddie breaking into Steve's room as revenge only to overhear Tommy and Carol being downright vicious to him, and a "who did this to you" crying in the rain scene before the prompt line finally kicks in.

I wanted Tommy and Carol to be fucking gagging crying throwing up furious when Steve finally blows it all up, and for the fallout to be so insane for Steve that he ends up either starting his own frat with Eddie or throwing away his title entirely and having several of the not shit frat boys follow him out.

[dballzposting]

The way that Mr Satan, at such a time of acute crisis, was able to see the good in Majin Buu ... really makes me think.

At first, to be honest, it's a little unnerving the way he quickly adapts to the domestic life of cooking and bathing with Majin Buu. Like, you know that a lot of people are still dead, right? So what is this? Are you just going to live like this forever? What's the plan for tomorrow? The day after? It feels a bit like stockholm syndrome, it feels like denial - just the way that the situation is SO grave and SO dangerous, but like a desperate child, he clings to and perhaps exaggerates what little good there is. Is this his having a sensitive heart and being perceptive? Is this the best way to go? Or is he being delusional? Why is he so quick to throw his heart mind and soul into this, even when his fear for Majin Buu is still evident? Is doesn't seem smart. But I guess this isn't about being smart, but about surviving.

Alternatively, times of crisis can pull to the forefront a person's deepest and most influential foundation, so perhaps Mr Satan really does just have the biggest heart out of anyone here.

This really is profoundly stressful for him. Later on he rationalizes that this is all just a dream, clearly. Fucked up beyond measure.

Later, though, when Kid Buu spits the first Majin Buu out, Mr Satan runs over to him and is distraught to see him so close to death. He comments, in tears, that Buu was just too good for a world like this.

The sheer amount of feeling and importance that Mr Satan has wrapped up in this perception made something click for me. I think that Mr Satan sees himself in Majin Buu, and that's why things went the way they did.

Here was the scene - one World Champion, the ultimate Good, VS the biggest assailant the Earth has yet to see, the ultimate Bad. In that way, they are matched in (assumed, perceived) gravity.

Mr Satan is like King Leo the Lion, the biggest figurehead, the loudest show pony; and wherever there is such a loud ego, there is something small underneath. He can be brash, he can be cocky, he can be judgemental, he constantly discredits others to keep himself on top - because on the inside he is fragile, and he cares too much, and he really does love helping people, and he does love being important, and he does want to be loved. He has to keep himself on top so that he can keep being loved unconditonally.

It seems to me that on the inside he's just a sad and lonely little boy who wants to feel important. So he puts on a huge show, and that tends to drive away authentic connection, but he gets to be seen. And hes in it too deep now, by reputation and lifelong habit. But he's really not that vapid inside, not really. He loves his daughter and later on his granddaughter so damn much, and he's perfectly capable of carrying around a crushing amount of care and love.

Love can be a tango of vulnerability and strength, and Mr Satan's relationship with both is definitely spotty, but again, he was strong (or dumb) enough to extend compassion to Majin Buu just based off of how little good he had seen.

I think that he saw something familiar in Majin Buu: somebody whose shadow far preceded him, somebody with strength that bested all competition, somebody loud and known and kingly - and somebody deeply misunderstood. Somebody who was just misguided. Somebody who had the capacity for gentle sweetness, somebody who was just a kid inside, somebody who just needed a friend.

I don't think that Mr Satan was aware of the personal resonance, but I think it was there. And even when the end of the world was impending, Mr Satan couldn't turn a blind eye to what made the most sense to him.

I think that Mayor Dewey from Steven's Universe is very similar to Mr Satan in this way which is why they should get married and be husbands

[darishima]

With the Mashle post, I agree with some parts that the show (at least the writing) is just.... not good at all. If you've read the manga... it doesn't really get better(? Kinda? As in, there is no development between any characters lmao, but more concepts for the world itself kinda gets added).

For me, what drew me in was the comedy of the first chapter before it got very repetitive with its jokes and humor because the world itself seemed fascinating to me. The idea of magic marks, markless people (what is basically eugenics), and then this one person who by all counts should be the least powerful among an entire population is fascinating.

The writing is just not it in the slightest.

Characters are very one dimensional (shown with Lemon being the worst of the main 5, Mash is right next to her). The only ones I saw with the slightest hint of development would be Finn towards the end of the series.

Like I said, many things that are just thrown out there and then left in the wind that could've been more deeply explored, the actual role of a Divine Visionary because (lowkey what does head of Talent even mean??? Is their most influential really just some kids who were the best of the year??? Why aren't there more of them??? How are they given their roles???)

I'm rambling so hard, but I think I'm honestly interested in how you saw the series (or at least the anime) since I'm trying to do more on its world in a personal rewrite project 😅

thank you so much, i'm so glad someone agrees!!

i'm gonna try to break why i don't like it into sections so this doesn't get too rambley

the stuff it steals i'm using "steal" pretty lightly here, taking inspiration from another work is fine and i dont even know for sure if the creator was familiar with these other properties, but still. i don't know if you're super familiar with one punch man, mob psycho 100, and harry potter, but mashle is basically if you took all of those, squished them together, and then made it bad. he's basically just saitama (mc of opm) mixed with mob's personality (mc of mp100) and dropped into harry potter. (and i know "a magical school setting" isn't unique to harry potter but the house system and that one broom scene are WAY too specific to not be explicitly taken from hp. if it was supposed to be a parody/satire of harry potter or western fantasy in general it could have worked, but rather than making any kind of commentary on that it just... stole it. but i digress.) "insanely overpowered anime protagonist" is a typical cliche and i often find annoying (if your mc is too powerful, there's not much evolution/development to be done) but the thing that made saitama's strength work in opm is that he doesn't LIKE his strength. if you're at the top, there's nowhere else to go. he feels unfulfilled and is constantly searching for an opponent as strong as/stronger than him, so he can finally have a real fight that doesn't end after a single punch. mash.... doesn't have that. he's strong, but nothing interesting is DONE with his strength. he just Is Strong, period. no commentary on how it makes him feel, no impact on his personality, nothing. there is a commentary that could be made (and is kind of made) about the world as a whole but i'll get to that later. basically, he's just saitama but without understanding why saitama works.

the characters the characters feel like they're created to fill archetypes rather than actually be people. they're all completely one-dimensional, as you said. i can't speak for finn's development because i haven't read the manga, but at least in the anime he's the same. lemon is definitely the worst, i agree, and mash is right next to her. abyss razor COULD have been interesting i guess but he was just a throwaway villain. dot is the stereotypical guy-obsessed-with-women because of course he is. lance is the attractive bad boy with a really creepy thing for his sister (because it's not a shonen without something deeply uncomfortable and unnecessary). the only character i liked was cell war but only because he looked cool. i don't think i've ever seen a more boring cast of characters tbh, they're just... Nothing.

cynical cash grab honestly a lot of what made me angry rather than disappointed about the show was that a lot of it seemed to be, like... designed specifically to be popular, if that makes sense. the world copying harry potter, the main character copying mob and saitama, two beloved shonen protagonists, the characters filling all the shonen archetypes, all of it just felt like it was made in a lab to be the most stereotypical easy to watch shonen anime. i don't know if that's actually true- maybe the creator is really passionate about it and loves it. but it felt like a soulless cash grab.

the potential this is what REALLY pissed me off. i've seen plenty of bad animes, and they're always fundamentally flawed. they have bad plots or bad settings and everything based off of that will be bad as well. it's not a problem with the execution, it's a problem with the basic concept. but mashle is not that. the idea of it is brilliant, and that's why i wanted to watch it in the first place. there's so many interesting angles to be taken- for example, mash mentions at the beginning that magic users have grown physically lazy and complacent, because they can achieve anything they want with magic. and that is SO INTERESTING !!! i've never considered the realistic consequences of magic like that before, and i was so excited to see that concept explored... and then it was never brought up again. mash's strength, like saitama's, could've had really interesting effects on his character.... never addressed! the eugenics aspect, like you mentioned, could've been really interesting, especially with the way it affects some magic users too (namely abyss razor and his evil eye or lance's sister), but nope, it's never fully touched on. rather than dismantle the system entirely and save all non-magic users, mash is content to work within the system to achieve freedom for only himself. rather than commit to any interesting commentary or fascinating angle, the story is content to ignore all those things completely. there is endless potential, and it's all wasted.

the comedy there isn't any. it's not funny. the slapstick comedy of mash breaking everything at the beginning could have been funny but it's never used for anything besides doors (and also, is he never scared he'll accidentally hurt someone? has he ever hurt someone he loved? more cool strength-related character commentary that was never even touched on). the only part of the show i found funny is that one time he tried to cook but everything just ended up as a cream puff. i really liked that actually. all of the running cream puff gags i found funny but they aren't enough to carry the rest of the show's non existent jokes or the jokes that completely fall flat

the fight scenes not much to say here, which is the problem. the animation's decent but not outstanding and the fights are lame as hell. "strong magic user thinks he's badass and can kick mash's ass but mash just like, punches him a couple times. the end." they were cool to look at sometimes, but again, so many cool things could've been done with the magic and they refused to commit.

that's pretty much all of my points. usually i hate the term "shonenshit" because it's just used to discount actually good shonen like one piece or demon slayer but honestly i think mashle is the epitome of shonenshit. full of potential yet mid in every way, the most average and boring characters imaginable, zero impactful emotional beats, it just tastes like air. i cannot fathom how this anime has a 7.58 rating on MAL, it blows my mind. i'm not shitting on anyone who enjoys the show, i think if you turn your brain off (and haven't seen one punch man or mob psycho) it is, at the very least, popcorn entertainment, and i can understand why someone would like it, i just think it's poorly written and disappointing.

thank you so much for sending that ask and giving me a reason to rant all my thoughts, i've been waiting for an excuse to do it lmao. sorry it was so long </3

manga spoilers under the cut bc i have one more thing to mention.

AND APPARENTLY INNOCENT ZERO THE BIG BAD LEADER GUY IS MASH'S DAD ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. i was spoiled on this completely accidentally, i just googled innocent zero to see what he looked like and saw that spoiler. and my god that is the most generic stupid boring ass twist they could POSSIBLY have done. and not only that, it ruins whatever good was left in mash's character.

mash is the "everyman" type of character. he's just a regular normal guy, he is nothing special, in fact he's literally the opposite of special. he's the complete opposite of a "chosen one," and that's why his character works (i'm saying "works" loosely because he's boring but ykwim). so to make him the son of the Big Bad turns him into the chosen one that he's not supposed to be. chosen one narratives do work, but only if done right, and his story from the beginning is not supposed to BE a chosen one narrative. but they throw all of that out the window for the sake of a cheap twist. keep in mind i havent read the manga so i dont know anything about the way it was revealed but i would bet money they didn't set it up or execute it in any kind of interesting or well-done way. i hope i'm wrong about that, but i doubt it.

[amanihiphop]

Amani: From NYC to the Rio Grande Valley — Unveiling the Musical Journey of a Rising Star!

Who is Amani?

Amani /ah-mah-NEE (born August 25th, 2003) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, CEO and record producer. Born in the diverse borough of Queens, New York, Amani was surrounded by a vibrant and influential music scene from a young age. He developed a passion for Hip-Hop and rap music, and began writing and performing his own tracks as a teenager. Now he is 20 years old and ready to take over the world with his music. After relocating to the Rio Grande Valley, Texas (also known as “The Valley”) in 2010, Amani was inspired by the unique culture and sound of the region, which he incorporated into his music. He began performing at local clubs and events, and steadily gained a dedicated following of fans who appreciated lyricism and flow that had an “old-school” influence.

Amani is deeply grateful for the support of his fans, and credits them as one of his biggest sources of inspiration. He loves the Rio Grande Valley and its rich cultural heritage, and is dedicated to using his music to bring people together and make a positive impact on his community. At the same time, he never forgets his roots in New York and pays homage to the its influence on his sound and style. Amani is a talented and dedicated artist who is committed to creating meaningful and authentic music for his fans.

Music Taste & Inspirations

Amani’s music tastes and influence has always changed throughout the years. As a kid, artists such as Jay-Z, Big Pun, Fat Joe, and Kanye West were mostly what his dad had on CDs. During middle school, Amani was heavily into Eminem and Macklemore. During high school was when Amani was introduced to Kanye West’s (Ye’s) discography by a good friend of his. This went on to be Amani’s primary music taste and inspiration for years to come. Other various artists that Amani draws inspiration from include Travis Scott, Childish Gambino, Freddie Dredd, and the Beastie Boys, as Hip-Hop artists & Cuco, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd as Indie/Alt Rock/Alternative artists. Although Amani had been making music years prior on SoundCloud, he didn’t really take it seriously nor did he consider himself an artist until the year 2022 when he released “Perfect” (which was the first song he had ever fully produced, mixed, and written himself). Following shortly after came “Hop Out” which was his personal favorite due to the insane bars and lyricism. Amani was off to a great start and was even performing at venues but sadly after his release of the “Hop Out” remix, he went on a musical haitus for the rest of the year. He was still making music and performing, but hadn’t released any for his fans for he was working on his sound and wanted his next appearance on his music pages to be even more successful. 2023 rolled around and Amani immediately began the year with a bang. He dropped two highly anticipated songs that were originally teased back in October of 2022: “You Don’t Know Me” and “Lonely Freestyle” was very quickly loved by his fans and became a favorite for many. These songs share a heavy Freddy Dredd influence and “Lonely Freestyle” still remains to be Amani’s top song with over 70,000 streams. In just the first 3 months of 2023, Amani had the most streaming success he had ever seen in all of his years doing music combined. Now that Amani had accomplished his goals for 2023 in Hip-Hop in a much shorter time than he had expected, he decided to experiment with other genres, mostly being indie/alt rock/alternative. Aside from the “You Don’t Know Me” remix, Amani dwelled in these genres for the next 4 songs until he finally felt the need to return back to rapping and work towards his goal of discovering his sound within the world of Hip-Hop and establishing a strong and widespread fanbase.

NEW EP, “CAPITAL” RELEASED AUGUST 25th!

It being another month since his last music release. Amani decided it was time to step back into the the Hip-Hop genre with a 3 song EP with the working title, “CAPITAL”. The forthcoming EP draws inspiration from two revered rap artists, JPEGMAFIA and MFDOOM. Renowned for their bold and innovative approaches to rap, these icons have left a profound impact on Amani’s artistic vision. Listeners can expect an exhilarating blend of lyrical prowess, unique soundscapes, and thought-provoking themes that mirror the legacy of these rap royalty. The EP featured three powerful tracks, each offering a distinctive glimpse into Amani’s creative genius. As you journey through “WAKEUP”, “GIMMEMYMFGRAMMY”, and “DESIGNATEDVILLAIN”, you’ll witness Amani’s commitment to innovation and authenticity. Each track offers a unique glimpse into his creative mind, and collectively, they form the heartbeat of “CAPITAL”. This EP is a testament to Amani’s willingness to defy conventions, explore uncharted territories, and present his audience with a sonic experience that resonates on multiple levels. “CAPITAL” is not just an EP; it’s an artistic manifesto. Through tracks like “WAKEUP,”“GIMMEMYMFGRAMMY,” and “DESIGNATEDVILLAIN,” Amani challenges the status quo, blurs genre boundaries, and invites listeners to join him on an immersive musical journey. As you listen, allow yourself to be enveloped by the intricate layers of sound, the emotive storytelling, and the unwavering passion that define Amani’s artistry. “CAPITAL” is a testament to his growth, innovation, and determination to leave an indelible mark on the world of music.

Contact:

Instagram: @amanihiphop

Email: info@amanihiphop.com

[i-can-bench-220]

what if the cyber chase was a fred-centric film?

i recently read the essay from this fantastic post about how the cyber chase could have, and should have been a fred-centric film, and i can’t believe i didn’t put two and two together about it sooner!! the cyber chase is one of my absolute favourite scooby films because it just feels like a big love letter to the franchise as a whole, and so i’m ok with it not focusing on one single character in that respect. but i’m still so sad that fred was the only character to not receive any development in this fantastic and incredibly influential era of scooby films! but that sadness is currently the fuel to my thoughts, and boy have i been thinking. so… what if the cyber chase was a fred-centric film? i’m going to explore that! i hope you enjoy this post with a bit of analysis and a whole lot of what-ifs, and how much i believe in fred jones’ potential to continue growing and developing as a character.

eric staufer’s friendship with the gang is left pretty vague within the film, so let’s say that he is fred’s friend specifically. eric is his old friend, one he’s known since middle school. he’s also his only true friend at that (besides the gang, of course). both were social outcasts and had niche passions that they absolutely devoted themselves to (coding/video games and traps/mystery solving respectively). eric was quiet and reclusive while fred was much more cheerful and outgoing, but didn’t fully realise that he didn’t fit in with others. and even if he did, it wouldn’t dampen his spirit.

i’d like to think that eric was very much drawn to that about fred, and probably also had a crush on him for a while (that he doesn’t really have as much anymore, but the embarrassing memories are still very much There. maybe he can have an OH NO HE’S HOT moment when he sees him again for the first time in ages. as a treat.). but the point is that they’re besties now and you can’t take this away from me. look at them.

the pacing of the film is one of its biggest strengths, but i think i would give the gang just a little more time at the university before they’re transported into eric’s game. this would allow the boys to catch up, their friendship can be established (with some flashbacks maybe?), and we can have fred properly introduce eric to the gang.

now here’s the thing — fred’s development. for daphne, velma and shaggy, their stories within the other three films have of course been focused on them as individuals, the things they’re passionate about and the people that change them.

for fred, i would love an arc about his role as the leader of the gang. he received this position not just because he’s logical and decisive, but because he knows how to divide up bigger tasks according to the skillsets of his friends, and is of course the most enthusiastic about, well, everything! but this role naturally brings with it a lot of pressure, mostly self-imposed. fred cares for his friends so deeply, and would do anything to keep them out of harm’s way. he is constantly throwing himself straight into danger for their sake, because… ♪ he’s pretty sure he’s worthless if he can’t be of service ♪. (i used a scene from the cyber chase in my surface pressure post for a reason!)

what’s new, scooby-doo? came out a year after the cyber chase, and good lord is fred ever this series’ punching bag (physically, that is. he gets to be the emotional punching bag in mystery incorporated!). he gets thrown, breaks bones, is knocked out and kidnapped… you name it. and it’s all pretty inconsequential as the show has a more light-hearted tone. but i still think about it a lot.

because a few of these instances are just him being impulsive and trying to take on monsters that he can’t realistically fight alone. but a lot of them are also fuelled by his wanting to protect his friends, such as when he jump-tackles the zombie gladiator because it was about to hurt “[his] pal” (shaggy). he frequently bites off so much more than he can chew in this regard, to the point where others have to reel him in… like scooby.

have i mentioned that scooby saves fred’s life twice in this series? because it never fails to make me cry. i think that fred would feel so, so guilty at the fact that scooby would risk his life just to save him. so there’s a super fun internal struggle for him to have. because of course his friends are aware of the crazy things he does. of course they’re frustrated with and worried for him. of course they want to stop him. but of course that will lead to them getting into even more danger, and it’ll be fred’s fault — much, much more so. the cycle continues…

going back to the cyber chase, the game eric creates is, of course, based on the adventures of mystery incorporated. the next time somebody asks who the biggest scooby-doo fan is, i’m going to say eric staufer. anyway, as i’m developing eric as more of a timid character, i’d like to think that the gang are a big inspiration to him, and were the ones who made him want to use his talent at coding in order to bring joy to others’ lives just like they do, but in his own small way.

i think that fred should be going through a period of doubt and insecurity when this film begins. maybe a member of the gang got hurt in their previous mystery, and he thinks it’s his fault, that his leadership was flawed and he was so focused on his plan that he failed to think about his friends (spoiler alert: he is always thinking about his friends!! he is just way too hard on himself!!).

but being transported into the game, although perilous, affirms his role as leader. the gang and eric help him to realise that none of these adventures would be possible without him — he was the one to bring the gang together, he was the one who always came up with the plan and ensured a successful case, and he was the one who just genuinely wanted to help the victims of each villain’s plan. he isn’t perfect, and he can’t always think about everything. sometimes his friends will get hurt, but that’s not his fault. they have minds of their own, and will sometimes act foolishly or have a spell of bad luck. it’s all part of the job. and it’s a job that they all love, due in no small part to fred’s infectious enthusiasm constantly rubbing off on them.

i’d also really love to see a heart-to-heart between fred and cyber fred. this would be a way of showing how his character has grown and changed over time, much like daphne and cyber daphne’s scene (one of my favourites ever!). maybe cyber fred looks cheerful and collected, but is noticeably highly-strung, and much more serious. this is the final stage of fred’s development here, as he expresses everything he’s realised over the course of the film and reassures his cyber counterpart that yes, sometimes his plans will fail, sometimes his friends will be in danger, and things will never be perfect. but fred knows that all cyber fred can do is his best, and that’s enough. he doesn’t have to shoulder every responsibility alone, and he can afford to relax and simply enjoy the thrill of a mystery. he deserves it.

i think that the only other thing i would add/change that is isn’t directly related to fred is bill’s character and motivation for creating the phantom virus. maybe he’s actually an expert hacker disguising his underhanded work beneath the façade of a brilliant student. maybe he sees eric’s talent and is trying to subtly manipulate him into following the same path behind professor kaufman’s back.

but maybe he’s also just… lonely. overlooked. he was never deemed good enough, so he took to hacking and eventually creating the phantom virus as this big catastrophic thing by which he could finally gain some recognition, positive or otherwise. he’s so proud of the phantom virus because it’s finally something he can control. worst of all, he’s so wrapped up in this terrible pursuit and so conditioned to others dismissing him that he doesn’t realise that professor kaufman and eric do respect and believe in him.

i absolutely love how the other three films in this series have a running theme of “classic guy in a mask plot but then then they realise that there is also an actual supernatural entity”, so it’s a shame that the cyber chase didn’t do this too. to capture that theme, i think i would have bill accidentally reveal himself as the culprit while the gang are still in the game. the professor and eric get him to reveal his motivation, allowing them to give him the reassurance he always needed. he is genuinely repentant for what he’s done… but it’s too late. at this point, the phantom virus has gone completely rogue and turned against even its own creator. this would raise the stakes of the finale even more, while still keeping the themes of the joy of technology versus the danger of technology balanced.

it would also still give the gang a chance to have that big epic final battle where they’re all connected, ready to face the threat, trusting one another fully and following fred’s lead of renewed confidence. because if there’s one thing a fred-centric film should do, it’s emphasise the bond between the gang as a whole as well as just exploring his own character and struggles. because at the end of the day the gang are a part of him, and the most important thing in his life.

(and yes, from here eric would become an honorary member helping them out from the sidelines much like marcie in mystery incorporated!)

if you’ve read this far, thank you so, so much!! it means the world that there are people who are interested in my ideas. as i said at the start, i truly believe in fred’s potential as a character, and that hope is always fuelling my ideas. this film is still one of my absolute favourites, but making it about my favourite character would have been a dream come true!

if you have any more ideas you’d like to add (about the cyber chase or anything else) please feel free to send them my way! i would love to hear what you think.

thank you again! 💙

[thestrangestriddle]

If you need an excuse to go off about Vinda you have it, because oh boy I have complicated feelings about her

HOO BOY, here we go.

I wouldn't know if I can describe my feelings towards Vinda as complicated, but I definitely have a lot of thoughts on her.

One of the problems of FB as a whole is that, since it's not a book series, unlike with the HP movies where the audience simply filled in the gaps (and holy shit, are there a lot of them - GoF and HBP gotta be the worst offenders in this, but fandom favourite PoA is not free of its many faults) with lore they had from the books, we have, well, nothing to fill gaps with. One of the gaps is that, as of now, Team Gellert feels about as flat as a flounder - and now that two members dropped off and are back at Team Albus, it looks even worse.

Vinda could've been a good candidate to put a bit of flesh on their bones. After all, she is supposed to be Grindelwald's second-in-command (Poppy Corby-Tuech describes her as his "queen-woman", which I love. If Credence was the ace up Gellert's sleeve, then Vinda is the "good ol' reliable" who's got what it takes to get the job done.) She is what Bellatrix was to Voldemort without the obsessive love but, it seems, rather a genuine mutual trust between the two of them.

She is interesting in that she is very much an archetypical femme fatale with her good looks, dark and form-fitting attire, and being a powerful Dark witch (again, if she weren't talented, I doubt Gellert would have her as his lieutenant). At the same time, and that's why I took notice of her is that she is so very... queer-coded? In her first proper scene where she recruits Queenie, she practically lures her in for Grindelwald to talk to her. She is cordial and superficially friendly (as vulnerable and naive Queenie may be, I doubt if she had seen any red flags from Vinda that she'd have gone with her to what she thinks is her house) but there is also something predatory in how she watches Queenie. Then of course there is the whole "Are you married?" "Let's say deeply committed" exchange between them where Vinda is throughly amused by Queenie - of course because she knows that they succeeded in bamboozling Queenie, but also because it humours her that she thinks Grindelwald and she are romantically involved, when the truth couldn't be further.

We mostly see her in dresses except for two occasions, under interesting circumstances: when Team Grindelwald show up at the German Ministry of Magic where Big Daddy G officially is not a wanted felon anymore, and before that in CoG when Gellert shows the pure-bloods his not-so-good vision of the future, Vinda chose to skip the dresses and goes for a suit and trousers respectively. Seen by the entire crowd and she picks pretty unconventional attire for a woman in the early 20th century; and it is at least unusual for witches as well, given that the only one we see in trousers other than her is Tina, and Tina wears trousers out of practicality, whereas Vinda almost does so as a sort of statement piece. Interesting...

And still, we know nothing about her as a person besides that she is from an influential pure-blood family with branches in both France and the UK, is most likely very skilled at Occlumency (note that Queenie hears everyone's thoughts even if they're in French - she gets zilch from Vinda, only absolute radio silence), got a good relationship with her boss and is very dedicated to his ideology, although she would go the extra step and kill all Muggles, and got major lesbian vamp vibes.

Now, I don't want to have her entire backstory to be laid out in front of me nor do I need that because filling out the gaps is just fine enough and fun but... she is still barely two dimensional, and that is a general problem of movies like FB (bc it's hardly the only ones w that problem), where they pretend to be ensemble pieces but really only a handful get characterisation worth anyone's money and the rest just floats around in the ether, being pushed from A to B to C bc the narrative requires it. I don't want the chronicles of one Vinda Rosier, but I want her to feel like a complete character.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Could you talk about the Statute of Secrecy? Or the Ministry’s corruption in General :)

Well, those are two different things. Given that I believe I have an ask floating somewhere in my inbox on the Statute, I suppose we’ll talk about the Ministry of Magic today.

I feel like this is such a broad topic though that I’m not quite sure where to start. I guess I’ll just throw spaghetti at the internet wall and see what sticks.

The Ministry is a Reflection of Society Who Never Admitted They Were the Death Eaters

In the ministry of Harry Potter’s era the Ministry is hopelessly corrupt and filled to the brim with spies (more on this in a later section). Lucius Malfoy, very high up in an unofficial capacity in the Ministry and owner of the Ministry’s mouth piece: The Daily Prophet, was a known Death Eater with a very flimsy excuse.

How is he even able to wield so much influence, you ask? Well, I think it’s not just because of Fudge picking the wrong friends.

I think most the population probably does believe Lucius Malfoy is innocent the way Fudge does. I think it’s a very small subsection, i.e. Dumbledore’s lackies, who go “Nah, ain’t buying it.” I think that, in 1981, when it came time to reveal just how many were Death Eaters and how far this went many people just couldn’t handle it.

Because it was to the point where the nation wasn’t battling Death Eaters, Death Eaters were the nation. Look at the members, these are and were the most influential and prominent families in the country, who combined hold a non-small minority of seats in the Wizengamot. More, these were only the participants, combine those who given anti-muggle and muggleborn sentiment (which I believe are pervasive even among those who claim they fight for the rights of muggles and muggleborns) and you get a nation that is suddenly facing a huge cultural issue that was never previously acknowledged.

We’re talking an entire purge of the Wizengamot, of the Ministry, of the major families and cornerstones of this society. The Black family is completely and utterly destroyed.

People were and remain throughout the 1990′s, desperate to believe it was not as bad as it was or isn’t as bad as it is. If Lucius Malfoy says he was never really a Death Eater then he was never really a Death Eater.

The Ministry is Lousy With Corruption and Spies

What’s hilarious to me is not only is the Ministry incompetent. It is positively flooded with spies. Given the ministry’s overbloated, it’s not even a sizeable minority of employees, but nonetheless every major department has at least one person (if not more) who works for somebody else.

Most work for Tom Riddle. He seems to have intelligence in every department. Through Lucius, who is working pretty much as an unofficial aide to Fudge, he has access to Fudge, complete control of the Daily Prophet, and a voice on the Hogwarts’ board of governors.

Through Rockwood, Tom has direct access to the Department of Mysteries which Lucius is then able to take full advantage of.

Lucius is able to set up an ambush in the Department of Mysteries, getting escaped convicts into the building with the none the wiser, and, had his sole purpose not been a prophecy that only Harry Potter and the Dark Lord can touch, he would have been able to take what he liked. (Though it was always odd to me that the plan was to get Harry Potter to do it, when the better solution would have been to polyjuice Tom Riddle into someone else, set up a tour with the department, and then Tom wanders off conveniently to pick up the prophecy. My theory, I suppose, is that chasing after the prophecy was mostly an exercise in punishing Lucius. And then Lucius fucked up.)

And of course, in book seven, Tom Riddle makes a puppet minister. Point being, to me, it always said a lot that in Book Seven Tom just sort of walks into the building and says, “I’m in charge now” and everyone says “okay”. There was no second Wizarding War, it was a bloodless coup that met zero resistance from anyone but angry school children. 

But that’s Tom’s spies, we also have other spies. Who am I talking about, Dumbledore’s folks of course.

Shacklebolt, Moody, Tonks, and Arthur Weasley are all spies, they just don’t have the introspection to even realize it (which really tells you something about the state of corruption in the ministry). They all work for the ministry, yes, but they in fact pass on information to and serve another master, whose goals do not always align with the government and was a hop skip and a jump away from overthrowing the government at any given moment.

And they don’t even really realize they’re doing this! There doesn’t even seem to be a thought of “I’m doing this for the greater good”, they don’t seem to acknowledge that what they’re doing is very very very bad. Arthur, in fact, is appalled when Percy refuses to do this (well, he’s upset for a lot of reasons, such as that he thinks Percy is spying on Arthur for the minister, but in there is also that Percy refuses to help out with the Order or follow Dumbledore without question). 

Harry paints the Dumbledore’s Army threat that Umbridge saw as something utterly ridiculous, but honestly if I was the ministry I would be worried about this. Dumbledore’s people have infiltrated the ministry just as deeply and badly as the Death Eaters, Dumbledore’s known for recruiting children into his vigilante organization, I don’t know what he’s doing with an army of schoolchildren but I can smell a coup coming.

Anyway, I’m getting off track, point being though that corruption is not only expected and accepted by the ministry, they cannot recognize what it even is. They’re at the point where paying bribes is allocated in their budget.

I Don’t Blame the Ministry For Not Thinking Tom Riddle Was Anti-Jesus

Fudge is designed to get a lot of flack for his outright denial that Voldemort had returned from the dead. He, and other denier characters, are meant to be fools with their heads in the sand who can’t see the obvious.

I ask what about it was obvious?

The only witness to Tom Riddle’s resurrection, Harry Potter, has a known history of erratic behavior.

The previous year, he’d performed illegal magic on his muggle aunt and run away from home. During the previous school year, Harry was revealed to be a parselmouth in a time when the Chamber of Secrets was presumably opened and the mystery was never fully solved (remember, that it was a possessed Ginny never comes to light for more than a few people.) Beyond that, since his first day of school, Harry is routinely in and out of detention, constantly out after curfew, and only seems to not be in serious trouble because he’s openly favored by Dumbledore (who gives him hundreds of points for breaking one of his school rules, during the Philosopher’s Stone fiasco in first year). In 1994, Harry is entered into the Tri-Wizard Tournament under very suspicious circumstances.

We know why all this happens to Harry but from the outside he looks like a delinquent. In fact, he kind of is a delinquent. 

Point being, the only witness is not only Harry Potter (who is already sketch) but it’s Harry Potter holding a dead body of a rival in the tournament.

And he’s claiming that a man who has been nearly fifteen years dead, a man who held the nation in terror and Harry Potter is beloved for destroying, has returned from the grave and conveniently murdered Cedric.

Why is Cedric dead? Well, you see, he and Harry both touched the goblet at the same time because they were going to share the reward. The goblet, a national treasure, was turned into a portkey so that Voldemort could kidnap him.

Why didn’t Voldemort just kidnap him at any other point during the year where he’s guaranteed not to get tag a longs or the wrong kid? Uh... VOLDEMORT IS BACK (for the record, I think it’s because Barty got hung up on the goblet scheme and was determined to ruin his father’s day.)

Where is Voldemort at this very moment? Being evil, somewhere, that is not right here. No, Harry has zero evidence this happened.

Frankly, I wouldn’t believe Harry either.

And when Dumbledore goes about promoting this as sound evidence that Tom Riddle has in fact returned, it starts to get even sketchier. Rather than sounding the alarm, Dumbledore is using this boy’s madness to stir the public into a panic that he, perhaps, plans to take advantage of.

After Dumbledore does that, I would suspect that, even if Harry does give me a memory of the graveyard scene that his head had been tampered with by Dumbledore.

And it’s so convenient that, of all the names Harry picked, it’s Voldemort who killed Cedric. It seems like a ploy to not only deflect the fact that he murdered Cedric but 

Harry’s very upset when some don’t take him at his word but Harry’s also a dumbass and a psychopath. He hates everyone who doesn’t agree with him.

More importantly, necromancy isn’t a thing in the Harry Potter universe. People don’t rise from the dead. Horcruxes exist, but they’re extremely rare, and it seems like no one ever really makes use of them.

So, yeah, not unreasonable that Fudge didn’t immediately go, “My god, Voldemort has risen from the dead! LIGHT THE BEACONS AND SUMMON ROHAN!”

So yeah, it’d take me seeing Voldemort waltzing through the Department Mysteries to go “... Goddammit, this man is more unkillable than Sheev Palpatine.”

After the Epilogue, I am Certain It’s Still the Same Damn Ministry

People hate the epilogue, but in a way, I love it, because it confirms many of my headcanons: these people don’t learn a goddamn thing.

Nothing in their society seems to have changed. Instead of one set of families holding all the power it’s now a new set of families and friends holding all the power. The difference being that they are now all in some way connected to Harry Potter.

Nepotism’s still the name of the game, we still see only human children boarding the Hogwarts Express so you know shit hasn’t changed for the goblins, Draco Malfoy’s alive and well and holds a position in the Ministry that Kingsly graciously allows him to have, it’s just now you have Hermione writing all your laws for you.

The Wizarding World is still the Wizarding World in every single capacity. The only difference is that Voldemort is dead again. Hooray.

Harry and friends simply don’t have the introspection to even realize it.

[autolenaphilia]

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Interview with the Vampire by the recently deceased Anne Rice is perhaps after Dracula and Carmilla one of the most influential books of vampire fiction. The main viewpoint is that of the vampires themselves, not the humans who interact with them. And the main character Louis is the progenitor of the brooding, sympathetic vampire.

In fact his ruminations on morality and existential questions is his defining trait, one often remarked upon by the other vampire characters like his sire Lestat. He refuses to feed on humans for years out of ethical concerns. Louis eventually gives in to the temptation, but he continues to have massive doubts about the morality of his actions and feels he is a coward for not killing himself. The interview is his monologue, full of question about the origins of vampires, are god and the devil real and so on. He is explicitly a symbol for the existentialist anxiety of modern humans, the vampire Armand pretty much literally says that to him in one scene.

The novel has a clearly defined character arc, where the events of the plot prompts change in Louis, leading to him eventually losing his human qualities and that existential angst. Although how dead these qualities really are, since he is able to record them so vividly in his monologue interview, remains an open question.

How sympathetic he actually is a matter of debate. He is very much right that he is a coward for knowing that his life depends on the deaths of other humans and that is not right by any ethical standards, yet continue to prolong his parasitical existence. Complaining that your existence is monstrous yet continuing it is not that different from just continuing it. All this angst ends up making Louis coming across as whiny rather than sympathetic.

Still, I can’t deny it gives the novel’s character more complexity than previous vampire fiction. And the novel’s vampires are still appropriately horrific. there is still good bits of horror in the book, Lestat’s sadistic killings do have a genuine horror edge to them. The frankly pedophillic undercurrents to much of the novel do give a disturbing depravity which mere killing and bloodsucking can’t give. The novel’s most creepy character is Claudia, a vampire who is turned as a five-year old child. Her consciousness grows old but she does not. The idea of a child vampire who ruthlessly kills and drinks the blood of the living is a nicely disturbing concept. And Louis’s relationship to her is also romantic while he calls her his daughter, for extra creepyness. There are other examples, like the probably pubescent boy Armand keeps that willingly lets vampires feed on him, getting an erection as it happens. It’s super fucked-up but it is actually quite creepy and it is a horror book after all (if you want to cancel Rice, her actual actions against both fans and critics alike is a way better reason, her fanlore page is a trip).

But it is also why I wasn’t as excited by all the gayness in the book. It’s definitely there, Louis is explicitly desired by both Lestat and Armand even if his feelings towards them are more complicated. It is just that all the gayness is between serial killing pedophillic vampires. I’m not going to say it is problematic, but all the queerness being between literal monsters doesn’t sit well with me. The novel might not be written with that intention, but it is not that different from Carmilla over a hundred years earlier, which is a deeply lesbophobic text.

Probably the book’s main problem is the actual prose. Rice is trying to emulate old gothic novels, yet her prose is not just purple but imprecise. There is a curious sense of the words going in circles around its subject rather than directly describing them. Actual old gothic novels, at least the good ones, like those by Ann Radcliffe were sharper written than this.

Still I can’t deny the novel’s influence, even beyond the world of literature. The goth subculture probably took a lot of inspiration from this novel. There is a vampire society in this book, whose members explicitly say “black was the color for a vampire’s clothes” and almost “all of them had dyed their hair black”. Goth fashion has of course older antecedents, in both victorian mourning dress and fetish wear, but this novel becoming popular among the gothic subculture which came into being a few years after this book was published is not surprising.

So as a piece of pop cultural history, Interview with the vampire is of vital importance. And there is certainly a mostly coherent characterization and story here, even if the actual execution in the writing is far from stellar. And if you like vampires, and want them melodramatic existential angsty this is truly the source.

The book was adapted into a big-budget movie in 1994, directed by Neil Jordan. It had a starry cast with Brad Pitt as Louis and Tom Cruise as Lestat. I think it might be an example of a film adaptation that is better than the book. The film stays mostly true to the book, there are some changes of course but nothing major (leaving out Lestat’s actions in Paris probably being the biggest one). Yet the sheer film-making craft the story is told with probably makes it surpass the book, which is not that well-written. Still it captures the melodramatic emotions of the story really well. Having a higher budget than most horror films helps the film a lot, with some truly opulent scenes. The stars do act well, and the special effects by Stan Winston (of Jurassic Park and The Terminator fame) are great.

I might read some of the sequels in the future, apparently Lestat forms a rock band in the 80s at one point? Which sounds veryfun. Rice outrightadmitted that she stopped working with editors after the third book, which is probably where I’ll stop in any case.

[gffa]

OKAY, IF I’M GONNA DO THIS, I’M GONNA DO IT PROPERLY.  WHICH MEANS YEAH IT’S GONNA GET REALLY LONG. A couple of things to say ahead of time:  Lucasfilm’s Story Group has always said CANON > WORD OF GOD when it comes to these matters, so when I quote canon examples from supplementary materials that contradict what he says, that’s LF’s official position, but that doesn’t mean that an influential person like Dave’s views couldn’t affect how things will be shaped in the future, like Deborah Chow listening to this may be influenced by it on the Obi-Wan show, despite that Master & Apprentice contradicts him.  It’s an incredibly murky area!  Mileages are going to vary.   Another thing to keep in mind is that Dave Filoni never worked on The Phantom Menace, that was long, long before his time at Lucasfilm (which I think he joined sometime around 2007? and TPM was released in 1999), that he has worked with George more than probably anyone else, but we cannot and should not treat him as infallible or the True Authority on things, because even Dave himself has said things like: “I mean, I know why I did that and what it means, but I don't like to explain too much. I love for the viewers to watch stuff and come up with their own theories -- and they frankly come up with better things that I intended.”  --Dave Filoni, Entertainment Tonight 2020 interview Or, in the same episode as the above Qui-Gon interpretation:

So, when I dig into this, I’m not doing this out of a sense of malice or even that I suddenly hate Dave or don’t appreciate all the incredible things he’s brought to SW, but in that I disagree with his take, Dave understands that he doesn’t always get it right, that he enjoys that fans come up with different things than he does and sometimes he likes those even more.  There’s room for both of us and, for all that Dave mentions George a lot (and, hey, fair enough, the guy worked with George and I’m just quoting what George Lucas has said) doesn’t mean that this is straight from George, especially because I have never seen George Lucas utter so much as a peep about how the Jedi were responsible for Anakin’s fall.  He has explicitly and frequently talked about how Anakin’s fall was his own choice, as well as I’ve never seen him say anything Jedi-critical beyond “they were kind of arrogant about themselves”.  I have read and watched every George Lucas interview I could get my hands on and maybe I’m still missing something, but that’s literally the extent of him criticizing the Jedi I have EVER seen. (It’s from the commentary on AOTC where he put in the scene with Jocasta to show they were full of themselves, but I also think it’s fair to point out that Obi-Wan immediately contradicts this by going to Dex for help, showing that it’s not necessarily a Jedi-wide thing.) Before I go further, I want to say:  this is not a post meant to tear down Qui-Gon, he is a character I actually really do love, but the focus is on showing why the above interpretation of him is wrong, which means focusing on Qui-Gon’s flaws. He has many wonderful qualities, he is someone who cared deeply and was a good person, I think things would have been better had he lived!  But Anakin’s choices did not hinge on him, because Anakin’s choices were Anakin’s, that has always been the consistent theme of how George talks about him, the way he talks about the story is always in terms of “Anakin did this” or “Anakin chose that”, and the Jedi are very consistently shown as caring, they believed very much in love and Dave’s own show (well, I say “his own show”, but honestly TCW was George’s baby primarily and he had a lot of direct, hands-on say in crafting it, through at least the first five seasons) is plenty of evidence of that. I’m not going to quote the full thing because this is already a monster post, I’m just going to focus on the Jedi stuff, because I like the other points a lot, but if you want the full text, it’s here.  The relevant part is: “In Phantom Menace, you’re watching these two Jedi in their prime fight this evil villain. Maul couldn’t be more obviously the villain. He’s designed to look evil, and he is evil, and he just expresses that from his face all the way out to the type of lightsaber he fights with. What’s at stake is really how Anakin is going to turn out. Because Qui-Gon is different than the rest of the Jedi and you get that in the movie; and Qui-Gon is fighting because he knows he’s the father that Anakin needs. Because Qui-Gon hasn’t given up on the fact that the Jedi are supposed to actually care and love and that’s not a bad thing. The rest of the Jedi are so detached and they become so political that they’ve really lost their way and Yoda starts to see that in the second film. But Qui-Gon is ahead of them all and that’s why he’s not part of the council. So he’s fighting for Anakin and that’s why it’s the ‘Duel of the Fates’ – it’s the fate of this child. And depending on how this fight goes, Anakin, his life is going to be dramatically different. “So Qui-Gon loses, of course. So the father figure, he knew what it meant to take this kid away from his mother when he had an attachment, and he’s left with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan trains Anakin at first out of a promise he makes to Qui-Gon, not because he cares about him. When they get Anakin, they find him on Tatooine, he says “Why do I feel like we’ve found another useless lifeform?” He’s comparing Anakin to Jar Jar and he’s saying “this is a waste of our time, why are we doing this, why do you see importance in these creatures like Jar Jar Binks and this ten-year-old boy? This is useless.” “So, he’s a brother to Anakin eventually but he’s not a father figure. That’s a failing for Anakin. He doesn’t have the family that he needs. He loses his mother in the next film. He fails on this promise that he made, “mother, I’m going to come back and save you”. So he’s left completely vulnerable and Star Wars is ultimately about family. So that moment in that movie which a lot of people I think diminish, “oh there’s a cool lightsaber fight”, but it’s everything that the entire three films of the prequels hangs on, is that one particular fight. And Maul serves his purpose and at that point died before George made me bring him back, but he died.“  --Dave Filoni  I’m going to take this a piece at a time to show why I really disagree with the content of both the movies and The Clone Wars supporting what Dave says and, instead, contradicts it a lot. The rest of the Jedi are so detached and they become so political that they’ve really lost their way and Yoda starts to see that in the second film. He doesn’t explain what this means, but I’m pretty sure that he’s referring to this conversation: OBI-WAN: “I am concerned for my Padawan. He is not ready to be given this assignment on his own yet.” YODA: “The Council is confident in its decision, Obi-Wan.” MACE WINDU: “The boy has exceptional skills.” OBI-WAN: “But he still has much to learn, Master. His abilities have made him... well.... arrogant.” YODA: “Yes, yes. A flaw more and more common among Jedi. Hmm... too sure of themselves they are. Even the older, more experienced ones.” MACE WINDU: “Remember, Obi-Wan, if the prophecy is true, your apprentice is the only one who can bring the Force back into balance.” OBI-WAN: "If he follows the right path.” None of that has anything to do with being “detached” and, further, I think this is something that’s come up with Dave’s view of Luminara a lot, because he’s described her (re: the Geonosis arc):  “We were trying to illustrate the difference between the way Anakin is raising his Padawan, and how much he cares about her, and the way Luminara raises her Padawan. Not that Luminara is indifferent, but that Luminara is detached. It’s not that she doesn’t care, but she’s not attached to her emotionally.” Here, he says that the Jedi care, in the above, he says that the Jedi don’t care, which makes me think there’s a lot of characterization drift as time goes on, especially when fandom bombards everyone with the idea that the Jedi were cold, emotionless, and didn’t care.  However, look at Luminara’s face in that arc, when she’s talking with Anakin:

That is not the face of someone who doesn’t care.  She even smiles brightly in relief when Barriss is shown to be okay, that this really doesn’t convey “detached” in an unloving or uncaring way.  (We’ll get to attachment later, that’s definitely coming.) (I’m also mostly skipping the political thing, because I think that’s just a fundamental disagreement of whether Jedi should or should not lean into politics.  My view basically boils down to that I think ALL OF US should be leaning more into politics because we are citizens who live in the world and are responsible for it, and the Jedi are no different.  This is evidenced by:  - M&A’s storyline has Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan saving the day specifically because they play politics, that’s how they manage to free the slaves, through playing politics and being part of the Republic/having Senate backing. - The Clone Wars has shown that the Jedi believe “lasting change can only come from within” and “it’s every citizen’s duty to hold their leaders accountable” when Ahsoka teaches the cadets on Mandalore, as well as that politics are not inherently bad, given that Padme and Bail are working to make the system better or “create lasting change from within [the system]” - "Trying to serve the greater good does not always make you popular” says Padme Amidala in a very caring speech - Star Wars Propaganda makes the case that the Jedi might have won the war had they leaned more into politics. - Sometimes the Jedi get unfairly accused of playing politics when there’s just no good choice and they still have to choose one or the other.) But Qui-Gon is ahead of them [re: caring and loving] all and that’s why he’s not part of the council. This is flat-out wrong in regards to canon.  Mileages are going to vary, of course, on how much one takes a novel into consideration, but Dave Filoni is not a fan with the luxury of deciding what is or isn’t canon, he works on Star Wars where canon is canon.  Now, does that mean canon will never contradict itself, especially if Dave gets to write something for Qui-Gon?  Of course not, SW isn’t immune to continuity errors and they themselves have never said otherwise, even when fans want to hold them to that standard. However, this is still pretty much a big “that’s not what happened” instance.  In Master & Apprentice, the Jedi Council offer a seat to Qui-Gon on the Council, specifically BECAUSE he has different opinions from them and they welcome that.  (Excerpt here.)      “We hope it will also be our gain,” Mace replied. “Qui-Gon Jinn, we hereby offer you a seat on the Jedi Council.”      Had he misheard? No, he hadn’t. Qui-Gon slowly gazed around the circle, taking in the expressions of each Council member in turn. Some of them looked amused, others pleased. A few of them, Yoda included, appeared more rueful than not. But they were serious.      “I admit—you’ve surprised me,” Qui-Gon finally said.“I imagine so,” Mace said drily. “A few years ago, we would’ve been astonished to learn we would ever consider this. But in the time since, we’ve all changed. We’ve grown. Which means the possibilities have changed as well.”      Qui-Gon took a moment to collect himself. Without any warning, one of the turning points of his life had arrived. Everything he said and did in the next days would be of great consequence. “You’ve argued with my methods often as not, or perhaps you’d say I’ve argued with yours.”      “Truth, this is,” Yoda said.      Depa Billaba gave Yoda a look Qui-Gon couldn’t interpret. “It’s also true that the Jedi Council needs more perspectives.” Ultimately, Qui-Gon is the who turns them down and gives up a chance to shape the Jedi Council because he doesn’t like the shape they’re taking.  That he does become less political, but this is after he’s argued that the Jedi should be working to push the Senate harder, so when he has a chance to help with that, he turns it down.  It has nothing to do with caring and loving, it’s about Qui-Gon’s desire to not have to deal with the work himself, when he wants to be more of a hippie Jedi.  (I’ve written a lot about Qui-Gon in M&A, why I actually think it’s really spot-on to someone who can be both really kind and really kind of a dick, but it’s not the most flattering portrayal, even if narrative intention likely didn’t mean what came across to me.  I think this post and this post are probably the most salient ones, but if you want something of an index of the web that’s being woven with all the various media, this one is good, too.) So he’s fighting for Anakin and that’s why it’s the ‘Duel of the Fates’ – it’s the fate of this child. And depending on how this fight goes, Anakin, his life is going to be dramatically different. I have only ever seen George Lucas talk about Anakin’s fate in one instance and it’s this:  “It’s fear of losing somebody he loves, which is the flipside of greed. Greed, in terms of the Emperor, it’s the greed for power, absolute power, over everything. With Anakin, really it’s the power to save the one he loves, but it’s basically going against the Fates and what is natural.“ –George Lucas, Revenge of the Sith commentary I’ve made my case about why I think Anakin’s fate is about that moment in Palpatine’s office, and so I’m not fundamentally opposed that “Duel of the Fates” is about Anakin’s fate, but here’s what George has provably said about the “Duel of the Fates” part of the story: - In the commentary for The Phantom Menace during “Duel of the Fates” and none of Dave’s speculation is even hinted at, there’s more focus on the technical side of things and the most George talks about is that it’s Obi-Wan who parallels Luke in going over the edge during the fight, except that instead of a Sith cutting off a Jedi’s hand, it’s a Jedi cutting a Sith in half, drawing the parallels between them. - He does say of the funeral scene that this is where Obi-Wan commits to training Anakin and how everything is going to go (though, in canon we see that Obi-Wan still struggles with this a bit, but Yoda is there to support him and nudge him into committing even more to Anakin, because the Jedi are a supportive community to each other).  This is some solid evidence for that Obi-Wan is already caring about Anakin beyond just Qui-Gon. - Then here’s what he says about the “Duel of the Fates” fights and themes of them in "All Films Are Personal": George Lucas: “I wanted to come up with an apprentice for the Emperor who was striking and tough. We hadn’t seen a Sith Lord before, except for Vader, of course. I wanted to convey the idea that Jedi are all very powerful, but they’re also vulnerable — which is why I wanted to kill Qui-Gon. That is to say, “Hey, these guys aren’t Superman.” These guys are people who are vulnerable, just like every other person. “We needed to establish that, but at the same time, we wanted the ultimate sword fight, because they were all very good. It sort of predisposes the sword fight between Anakin and Obi-Wan later on. There’s real purpose to it. You have to establish the rules and then stick with them. The scene illustrates just how Jedi and Sith fight and use lightsabers.” “So Qui-Gon loses, of course. So the father figure, he knew what it meant to take this kid away from his mother when he had an attachment, and he’s left with Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan trains Anakin at first out of a promise he makes to Qui-Gon, not because he cares about him.  We’ll get to the “attachment to his mother” thing in a bit--but, for now, let’s just say, George Lucas’ words on this are not that attachment to her was a good thing. Fair enough that “not because he cares about him” is up to personal interpretation, but canon has also addressed the topic of Obi-Wan’s treatment of Anakin and Obi-Wan stepped up to the plate on this.  In addition to how we see Obi-Wan REPEATEDLY being there for Anakin and being concerned and caring about him, they specifically talk about Qui-Gon and overcome this hurdle.

No, Obi-Wan is not Anakin’s father figure, on that we definitely agree.  Anakin never really even treats Obi-Wan like a father--he says “you’re the closest thing I have to a father” in Attack of the Clones, as well as he says Obi-Wan practically raised him in The Clone Wars “Crystal Crisis” story reels, but Anakin has never actually acted like Obi-Wan is his father--”then why don’t you listen to me?” Obi-Wan points out in AOTC--as well as Obi-Wan glides past those remarks, which I’ve always taken that he doesn’t want to reject Anakin’s feelings, knowing that Anakin can be sensitive about them, but neither does he want to confirm them. This does not mean Obi-Wan was not supportive, caring, and loving.  He says, “I loved you!” to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, he asks after him and if he’s sleeping well in Attack of the Clones, and even George Lucas himself said that the elevator scene was set up TO SHOW OBI-WAN AND ANAKIN CARE FOR EACH OTHER:

PUTTING THE REST UNDER A READ MORE FOR A BETTER LENGTH REBLOGGABLE VERSION, IF  YOU WANT.

This is further evidenced by how the Jedi do see themselves as family, they just don’t need to put it into strict nuclear family dynamics:     - “You were my brother, Anakin!  I loved you!”  [–Obi-Wan Kenobi, Revenge of the Sith]      - “We are brothers, Master Dibs.” [–Mace Windu, Jedi of the Republic - Mace Windu]      - “Did your parents bicker?” she asked. “The adoptive ones, I mean.”         A slow smile broke across Ashla’s face, curling first one side of her mouth and then the other. Whatever she was remembering, Kaeden could tell it was good.         "All the time,“ Ashla said, almost as if she were talking to herself. [–Kaeden Larte, Ahsoka Tano, Ahsoka]      -  Vos, brought to the Temple even younger than most, felt that he had hundreds of brothers and sisters, and it seemed that whenever he went into the dining hall he ran into at least half of them. [Dark Disciple]       - “It was not his birthplace, exactly, but the Jedi Temple was where Quinlan Vos had grown up. He’d raced through its corridors, hidden behind its massive pillars, found peace in its meditation hall, ended-and started-fights in rooms intended for striking blows and some that weren’t, and sneaked naps in its library. All Jedi came here, at some point in their lives; for Quinlan, it always felt like coming home when he ran lightly up the stairs and entered the massive building as he did now.” [Dark Disciple] Brothers, sisters, and other more non-traditional kinds of family are not lesser and Obi-Wan and Anakin absolutely were family, just as the Jedi are all family to each other, so, no, there was no “failing” Anakin, except in Anakin’s mind, perhaps.  (In that, I can agree.  But not on a narratively approved level, canon too thoroughly refutes that for me.) Rebels as well pretty thoroughly shows that non-traditional families are meaningful and just as important--we may joke that Hera is “space mom”, but she’s not actually Ezra or Sabine’s mother, Kanan is not actually their father, and even if they sometimes stray into aspects of those roles (as the Jedi do as well in the movies and TCW), that they don’t need that traditional nuclear family structure.  Mentor figures--and Kanan is Ezra’s mentor--are just as meaningful and needful as a “dad”.  And I’m kind of :/ at the implication that anyone without a dad/father figure or mom/mother figure is being “failed”. When they get Anakin, they find him on Tatooine, he says “Why do I feel like we’ve found another useless lifeform?” He’s comparing Anakin to Jar Jar and he’s saying “this is a waste of our time, why are we doing this, why do you see importance in these creatures like Jar Jar Binks and this ten-year-old boy? This is useless.” Whether or not Obi-Wan is being genuinely dismissive in this movie (I think you could make a case either way), the idea that Qui-Gon is better than Obi-Wan about this, as shown through Jar Jar isn’t exactly very supported given how Qui-Gon and Jar Jar first exchange words:

QUI-GON: “You almost got us killed. Are you brainless?”   JAR JAR:  “I spake.”   QUI-GON: “The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.” Qui-Gon is just as bad as everyone else to Jar Jar, he’s not somehow elevated above them. It’s also baffling because, Dave, I have watched your show.  The Jedi are specifically shown to be kind to people and creatures, not considering them “useless”.  Henry Gilroy (who was the co-writer for The Clone Wars and frequently appeared in featurettes on the same level as Dave Filoni) explicitly draws this to The Jedi Way, that “life is everything to the Jedi“, when he said this about the Ryloth episodes:

(Caps cribbed from Pan’s blog, because I cannot make another gif, save me, please.)      Henry Gilroy in an Aggressive Negotiations Interview:  "Obi-Wan truly is a Jedi in that he’s like, ‘Okay, I’m not going to murder these creatures [in the Ryloth arc of The Clone Wars].  They’re starving to death.  They’ve basically been unleashed against these people as a weapon, but it’s not their fault. They’re just doing what they do.  They’re just animals who wanna eat.’     "So the idea was–and I think there was an early talk about how, 'Oh, yeah, he’ll go running through them and slicing and dicing them and chop them all up or whatever, and save his guys.  And I’m like, 'Yeah, but that’s not really the Jedi way.  He’s not just gonna murder these creatures.’     "And I know the threat is [there], to save one life you have to take one, but the idea of him [is]: why can’t Obi-Wan just be more clever?  He basically draws them in and then traps them.     "It says something about who the Jedi are, they don’t just waste life arbitrarily.  And someone could have gone, 'Oh, yeah, but it would have been badass if he’d just ran in there with his lightsaber spinning and stabbed them all in the head!’  And 'Yeah, you’re right, I guess he could be that, but he’s trying to teach his clones a lesson right then, about the sanctity of life.’       "That is the underlying theme of that entire episode.  Which is:  A tactical droid is using the people as living shields.  Life means nothing to the Separatists.  The droids.  But life is everything to the Jedi.  And even though he doesn’t have to say that, it’s all through the episode thematically.“ It’s also Obi-Wan who teaches Anakin about kindness to mindless creatures in the Obi-Wan & Anakin comic:

"These beasts are nearly mindless, Anakin.  I can feel it.  They are merely following their nature, they should not die simply because they crossed our path. Use the Force to send them on their way.” Now, fair enough if you want to say Obi-Wan was taught by Qui-Gon, but also Qui-Gon is dead by that point and Obi-Wan growing into being more mature is his own accomplishment, not Qui-Gon’s, especially given that we see Qui-Gon himself being pretty dismissive to Jar Jar in TPM. This isn’t unique thing either, Padme is incredibly condescending to Jar Jar in “Bombad Jedi” and expresses clear annoyance with him to C-3PO when sighing over him.  Jar Jar is a character you kind of have to warm up to, pretty much the only one we’ve seen consistently being favorable to him is Yoda (and maybe Anakin, though, Anakin doesn’t really interact with him a ton) and Mace Windu warms up to him considerably in “The Disappeared” and even specifically is shown to be teaching him and helping him, which is a huge theme of the Jedi and how much they care.

So, ultimately, the point I’m winding my way towards is--the other Jedi do show kindness and consideration to Jar Jar Binks, including characters like Mace Windu, so if you’re judging the Jedi based on that, the conclusion of Qui-Gon somehow being more compassionate and loving is really pretty thoroughly disproved by The Phantom Menace and The Clone Wars themselves. So, he’s a brother to Anakin eventually but he’s not a father figure. That’s a failing for Anakin. He doesn’t have the family that he needs. He loses his mother in the next film. He fails on this promise that he made, “mother, I’m going to come back and save you”. So he’s left completely vulnerable and Star Wars is ultimately about family.  You could be charitable and say this is just from Anakin’s point of view that it’s a “failing”, but within the context of what Dave’s saying, it’s clearly meant as a more narratively approved take, not just Anakin’s point of view, and I really, really dislike the idea that Anakin--or anyone, really--needs a traditional nuclear family, ie a “mom” and/or a “dad”, or else it’s a “failing” for them. Setting aside that the idea that Qui-Gon would need to be Anakin’s dad to be kind to hi (which is ?????) is contradicted by The Clone Wars as well.  Yes, Qui-Gon is warm with Anakin in several scenes, which is what Dave is presumably drawing on to show that Qui-Gon believed the Jedi should be caring and loving, but you know who else is warm to younglings?  OTHER JEDI COUNCIL MEMBERS.

Those two scenes have the exact same kind of warmth to them.  Ie, THE JEDI ALL BELIEVED IN BEING LOVING AND KIND, NOT JUST QUI-GON.  The things evidenced to show Qui-Gon was loving and kind are evidenced just as much in other Council members, in Dave’s own show. As a bonus--have Mace Windu, known Jedi Council member, being super kind and loving towards a young Twi’lek girl he just met in a canon comic:

But I know that this is about the way the Council treated Anakin in The Phantom Menace testing scene, but here’s the thing--when I go back and I watch that scene and the Jedi aren’t ever mean to him, they’re neutral in an official testing situation, where they are trying to determine if he’s able to adapt to the Jedi ways.  They never once say he’s bad for holding onto his fear, only that he does--which Anakin digs his heels in and gets angry about, he can’t really even admit that he’s afraid and that’s a huge deal for the Jedi. I’ve made a longer post about it here (and here), but the basic gist is: - That scene has Yoda giving the famous “Fear leads to the dark side” speech which is almost word for word how George Lucas describes how the Force works, showing the Jedi are narratively correct - “Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi” may be from the sequels, but it is thoroughly supported by the movies and TCW and Rebels and even supplementary canon material, including that the Jedi literally design their tests around both Masters and Padawans for it (Ilum, the Jedi Temple on Lothal, etc. - Anakin cannot admit to his fears in that TPM scene - We have examples of Jedi younglings do admit to their fears and the point isn’t not to have them, but to face them--the younglings in “The Gathering” are the most blatant example of this, but it’s also pretty much the entire theme of Jedi: Fallen Order, especially when Cal goes to Ilum to face his fears and get another kyber crystal. The point isn’t that Anakin--who has very good reasons to be afraid! nothing in the story or the Jedi have said he didn’t!--is wrong or bad, but that he’s not a great fit for the Jedi life because he is “unwilling to accept [Jedi philosophy] emotionally”.  And they’re right about this, because this is how George Lucas describes Anakin in commentary: “The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he can’t hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn’t willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he’d have been taken in his first year and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he’d have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.”  --George Lucas, Attack of the Clones commentary And so this brings us to A T T A C H M E N T, which, yeah, we’ve been having this discussion forever, but I’m going to state it again:  Within Star Wars, ATTACHMENT IS NARRATIVELY A BAD THING.  It is consistently tied to possessive, obsessive relationships, to greed and an unwillingness to let things go when it’s time (letting go is a huge theme in Star Wars) and equating love with attachment is fundamentally wrong according to George Lucas’ Star Wars worldbuilding: “The Jedi are trained to let go. They’re trained from birth,” he continues, “They’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people-- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.” --George Lucas, The Making of Revenge of the Sith If attachment and love were the same thing, then he would be saying, “They should love their enemies, they should love the Sith.  But they can’t love.”  The way George makes the distinction shows that, no, attachment and love aren’t the same thing at all, attachment is not caring.  Further, there’s another instance of him showing there’s an important distinction between relationships and attachment and the association of attachmets with possession:  "Jedi Knights aren’t celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships.” --George Lucas, BBC News interview So, yes, when Anakin is attached to people, it is directly tied to obsession, possession, and greed, all things of the dark side: “He turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things. He can’t let go of his mother; he can’t let go of his girlfriend. He can’t let go of things. It makes you greedy. And when you’re greedy, you are on the path to the dark side, because you fear you’re going to lose things, that you’re not going to have the power you need.”  --George Lucas, Time Magazine  “But he has become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he’s been prepping for this, but that’s the one where he’s sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate.“ --George Lucas, Attack of the Clones commentary ATTACHMENT IS BAD IN STAR WARS AS THEY DEFINE IT. Finally, I’m going to circle back to: Because Qui-Gon is different than the rest of the Jedi and you get that in the movie; and Qui-Gon is fighting because he knows he’s the father that Anakin needs. Because Qui-Gon hasn’t given up on the fact that the Jedi are supposed to actually care and love and that’s not a bad thing. Here’s the thing about this:  You know who else, by this logic, Qui-Gon should have been a father to?  OBI-WAN KENOBI. This isn’t said as “Anakin specifically needs a father” (which I think would be an interesting idea to bandy about and I’m not disagreeing, though, it’s complicated because of what Anakin refuses to accept emotionally), it’s said in a bigger context, that Qui-Gon is better than the other Jedi because he understands the need for fathers (and thus this ties into Return of the Jedi) and he’s ahead of the other Jedi, who apparently think loving and caring about people are bad things, but Qui-Gon does not treat Obi-Wan like his son.  Or, if he does, he’s not exactly a stellar dad about it. Within Master & Apprentice, there’s an incredibly consistent theme of how Qui-Gon thinks supportive things about Obi-Wan, but never says them aloud.  He thinks he should talk to Obi-Wan about the upcoming decision to be on the Council and then never does.  He could have explained why he kept Obi-Wan training the basics but he never does.  There are multiple instances showing that Qui-Gon is actually really, really bad at actually handling a young apprentice who needs him to talk to them about important things.  Qui-Gon continues this in From a Certain Point of View where he still never talked to Obi-Wan about everything that happened, even after he became a Force Ghost.     Damn, damn, damn. Qui-Gon closed his eyes for one moment. It blocked nothing; the wave of shock that went through Obi-Wan was so great it could be felt through the Force. Qui-Gon hadn’t thought Kirames Kaj would mention the Jedi Council invitation. It seemed possible the soon-retiring chancellor of the Republic might not even have taken much note of information about a new Council member. --Master & Apprentice     That comment finally pierced Qui-Gon’s damnable calm. There was an edge to his voice as he said, “I suspected you would be too upset to discuss this rationally. Apparently I was correct.”     “I thought you said my reaction was understandable,” Obi-Wan shot back. “So why does it disqualify me from hearing the truth?”    Qui-Gon put his hands on his broad belt, the way he did when he was beginning to withdraw into himself. “…we should discuss this at another time. Neither of us is his best self at the present.” --Master & Apprentice     Obi-Wan walked toward the door, obviously outdone. “At the beginning of my apprenticeship, I couldn’t understand you,” he said. “Unfortunately, that’s just as true here at the end.”     Only yesterday they had worked together as never before. How did Qui-Gon manage to get closer to Obi-Wan at the same time he was moving further away?     Just before Obi-Wan would leave the room, Qui-Gon said, “Once, you asked me about the basic lightsaber cadences. Why I’d kept you there, instead of training you in more advanced forms of combat.”     Obi-Wan turned reluctantly to face him again. “I suppose you thought I wasn’t ready for more. The same way I’m not ready to believe in all this mystical—”     “That’s not why.”     After a long pause, Obi-Wan calmed to the point where he would listen. “Then why, Qui-Gon?”     “Because many Padawans—and full Jedi Knights, for that matter—forget that the most basic technique is the most important technique. The purest. The most likely to protect you in battle, and the foundation of all knowledge that is to come,” Qui-Gon said. “Most apprentices want to rush ahead to styles of fighting that are flashier or more esoteric. Most Masters let them, because we must all find our preferred form eventually. But I wanted you to be grounded in your technique. I wanted you to understand the basic cadences so well that they would become instinct, so that you would be almost untouchable. Above all, I wanted to give you the training you needed to accomplish anything you set your mind to later on.”     Obi-Wan remained quiet for so long that Qui-Gon wondered if he were too angry to really hear any of what he’d said. But finally, his Padawan nodded. “Thank you, Qui-Gon. I appreciate that. But—”     “But what?”     “You could’ve said so,” Obi-Wan replied, and then he left. --Master & Apprentice     "I owe you that. After all, I’m the one who failed you.“     "Failed me?”     They have never spoken of this, not once in all Qui-Gon’s journeys into the mortal realm to commune with him. This is primarily because Qui-Gon thought his mistakes so wretched, so obvious, that Obi-Wan had wanted to spare him any discussion of it. Yet here, too, he has failed to do his Padawan justice. --From a Certain Point of View, “Master and Apprentice” (Further, in Master & Apprentice, Qui-Gon thinks that the Jedi give Rael Averross--who is HUGELY paralleled to Anakin--too many exceptions, were too soft on him because he came to the Jedi later than most and has trouble thinking of them as his family, and he thinks they should have been stricter with him.) It’s also readily apparent within The Phantom Menace itself:

You can take some charitable views of this scene, that Qui-Gon was pushed into a corner where he had few other options (and this is the view I generally take even!), but this is after the entire movie where he’s never once indicated that Obi-Wan was ready, has instead indicated that he still has much to learn (not just of the Living Force, but in general), as well as made it clear that he’s still teaching Obi-Wan, like on the Trade Federation ship. And I do think Obi-Wan got over this because he understood, because Obi-Wan actually is a very selfless person, he clearly cares (which is furthered by how we see him warm up to Anakin very quickly), but look at their faces. This was not a good moment, and they do somewhat make up, where Qui-Gon says that Obi-Wan has been a good apprentice, that he’s wiser than Qui-Gon and he’ll be a great Jedi--but if we’re counting that as Qui-Gon being this great Jedi, then you can’t say Obi-Wan failed Anakin, given that we show him doing the exact same thing, except better.  He tells Anakin, “You are strong and wise and will become a far greater Jedi than I could ever hope to be.”, echoing Qui-Gon’s words, but also he never threw Anakin aside for someone else. This is kind of a major undercurrent throughout The Clone Wars, where Obi-Wan never takes another apprentice, where he continues to teach Anakin, to support him, even to the point of occasionally co-Mastering Ahsoka with him.  “This has been quite a journey for our Padawan.” Qui-Gon’s treatment of Obi-Wan in this scene isn’t the worst, he’s kind about it later (though, he never actually specifically apologizes for this), but we can see that this is a moment where Qui-Gon hurts Obi-Wan and knows it. And you know what George Lucas has to say about Qui-Gon?  This: “So here we’re having Qui-Gon wanting to skip the early training and jump right to taking him on as his Padawan learner, which is controversial, and ultimately, the source of much of the problems that develop later on.”  –George Lucas, The Phantom Menace commentary There’s nothing about Qui-Gon being right or better than the other Jedi, but instead that Qui-Gon’s actions here are a source of much of the problems that develop later on. So, ultimately, I liked some points Dave made in that speech, it’s a beautiful and eloquent one, but I thoroughly disagree with his interpretation of George’s intentions for Qui-Gon and I thoroughly disagree that that’s what the movies, The Clone Wars (DAVE’S OWN SHOW), and the supplementary canon show about Qui-Gon and the other Jedi.  I still stand by my appreciation of Dave’s contributions to SW as a whole, I think he does a really good job at making Star Wars, but he doesn’t always get everything right and this is one thing where I think the canon and George’s commentary show otherwise, as much as I love his desire to defend the prequels’ importance in the story.  Because, my friend, I have felt that every single day of my SW life.

[scrawnytreedemon]

Ooh, how about Hojo for the ask meme?

OHOOOO, I HAVE A L O T TO SAY, BABY-- Especially after seeing that final showdown, oh boy.

(hfhdkjfhjkj sorry for this being late!! had many thinsg to do <33)

For context, I know jack-shit about Dirge of Cerbeus, and I’d rather it stay that way. Vee has scarred me enough with her recollections from the wiki alone, and unless we finally do that shit-movie night we’ve been meaning to for awhile, I’m not touching it with a ten foot pole.

First impression: Horrible rat man; nasty. Your run of the mill Mad Scientist except somehow Even Worse. Perhaps a little generic at times. Pervy fuck. Probably has a bunch of obscenely lewd magazines in his study. Fuck him for fucking over absolutely everyone that’s gotten within ten metres of him. This guy fucks, and that’s how we got Sephiroth. -1/10, Worst Scientist, Husband and Father of the Year.

Impression now: I... I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I like him now, unironically. You win, Hojo Fuckers. Seeing that scene at the control panel, I think that man’s genuinely depressed-- Like, ‘I’ve devoted my entire life to my work to numb the pain but now I’ve realised it’s all for nothing and it’s fucking useless and I’m fucking useless and there’s nothing for me to do other than sacrifice myself for my son, who fucking hates me.‘ Like... Jesus Christ, I did not expect him to be so self-aware. He’s still a downright horrendous person and many of the things he’s done, if I believed in such a mindset, are downright irredeemable. Basically, I actually like his character now-- full-on -- even if he’s still a right bell-end.

Favorite moment: The rooftop scene. Jesus Christ, man, that changed my whole view on him. The way he’s actually becoming aware of how wrong he was, and how it weighs on his mind-- How, almost absently, as if he’s saying it more to himself, he tells Cloud he should become a scientist. It’s a small thing... But it speaks to a level of respect I don’t think Hojo has had for anyone in a very long time. He’s been brought to his limit, willing to give anything and everything so that the one thing he’s done right, his son who he gave up to further his now-dead career, succeeds in world-annihilation. What really gets me is that moment in the fight, where you’ve ended the first phase, when he says, apathetically, how he hopes the Mako juice is going-- And then he turns into a monster. This horrendous, twisted thing that’s barely held together by skin and sinew-- Probably one of the most downright-horrifying things in this entire game --And it’s just... like... wow... he broke.

Idea for a story: A fic where him and Sephiroth actually try and make amends. I’ve seen this guy killed off-screen so many times, and everytime, I am deeply disappointed. I get it. Hojo’s probably the worst character in the game. He has no morals and no boundaries, and he’s irritating as fuck-- I get it --But he’s also the reason all of this shit has happened, and is such a vital character in the forming of the story, in Sephiroth’s specifically, that I want him to be done justice. I want to see one of them reach out to the other, and slowly, bit, by bit, by agonising bit piece together something vaguely resembling a foundation for their relationship. I want to see them reminisce over the few good times they had together, and address deeply the many, many bad ones. It’ll be painful, and there will be many bumps in the road where they’ll feel like there isn’t even a point to this shit, and yet push on despite that. Because despite everything, they are family-- And not because they are obligated to, but because they’re choosing to. I want to see that. I really do. I’ll probably write it myself.

Unpopular opinion: I think my newfound appreciation of him in general, lmao. I won’t get into the paternity debate, as I’ve addressed that in Vincent’s post and another one. Perhaps the fact that I think it’s stupid that the scientists in FFVII get referred to by their first names-- Like, who does this shit??? Who out here thinks Hojo sounds like a first name??? It’s just... Really unprofessional and I don’t think Hojo is comfortable enough with anyone to just have them call him by his first name. Also Dr. Faremis Gast sounds better than Dr. Gast Faremis. I know it’s a pun in Japanese but I don’t give a shit. Fight me.

Favorite relationship: Him and Sephiroth, because there’s just, alot of shit. I don’t think he was ever truly close enough to Lucrecia for me to get invested-- It’s clear the relationship, though while initially stable and they probably got along well, was one mostly of work --And I don’t think there’s anyone else close enough to Hojo’s character to serve as another option, either. Maybe Vincent, but again, that was through Lucrecia. Seph and Hojo have this dynamic where strained doesn’t even begin to describe it. Hojo thinks Seph doesn’t know and Seph thinks Hojo doesn’t know that he knows-- And it’s painfully clear that had it not been for Hojo, Sephiroth wouldn’t have been so unstable. There was alot of abuse, physical and psychological, that got framed as ‘work,’ and it’s undoubtebly fucked with Seph’s very concept of ownership, and who owns another. It’s clear that on some level, Hojo feels shame for what he’s done-- Not guilt, shame --And is unwilling to let the boy(and perhaps even himself) from knowing his true parentage. Part of it’s definitely spite for Lucrecia, but there’s more. I could go one for hours, honest to god, so like, feel free to tack on your own ideas, fellow trash conoisseurs.

Favorite headcanon: Him being Wutaian. Not sure if it’s entirely headcanon, but like, it really is ironic. I personally think his family moved to Midgar while he was still young-- Perhaps due to a faction split -- so he grew up on the Eastern Continent, so he was stuck in this weird middle space alot of immigrant or descended from immigrants children where on one hand, you’ve got your family’s legacy, and you probably, if not fluently, speak their native tongue and carry out their traditions, and on the other hand you’ve grown up with people who’ve been here for generations and inevitably get moulded by their ways and their customs, perhaps to the point you’re more culturally theirs than your native land’s. If we’re going with the faction split, I think Hojo leans hard into the latter, out of a deep-seated indignance. Maybe his family were fairly influential, before they had to move to what was, no doubt, a less than idyllic neighbourhood. I think part of what made him want to become a scientist was that need to regain that honour, that dignity-- It’s very self-centred, and clearly didn’t work out.

Thank you Vee as always-- You incredible bastard --For both asking and also rambling with me about this grease-weasel for like, a good long time.

Knowing my luck I just might’ve gotten another hyperfixation. A terrible one. Fuck.

And to anyone who’s read this far, thank you! As always, feel free to throw in your own thoughts, whether they be replies or reblogs. I’m curious to know what the general vibe is about him(other than Haha Stinky Goblin Rat), as I don’t think he’s talked about all that much? Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places.

Anyhow Hojo Fuckers, I owe you a beer. Not a good one, probably tastes of piss, but knowing you lot, that’s probably just fine, lmaooooooo. Keep up the ungodly work <3

[i-am-extremely-mad]

It shocks me over and over again when I come across blogs that extremely aggressively, absolutely HATE LOK, Korra, korrasami and practically every character and aspect of the show. I have to share this horror with others because these are just a small part of the awful views from that blog (supposedly feminist and lesbian), interestingly, attitudes about LOK and korrasami were mostly positive or at least neutral in 2014-2015, and then abruptly changed sometime in the middle of last year which coincides with LOK finally being on Netflix, I will probably respond to if I am in the mood for a toxic discussion...

Anonymous asked:

“I think it's a bit hypocritical that you hate Korra's personality and not Zuko's.Zuko is arrogant asshole bitch and you like him. I never see you criticizing him like you do with Korra”

“Zuko is an arrogant asshole bitch, but he’s not annoying. Korra is an arrogant asshole bitch and is very annoying. Hope this helps!”

#asks#anti lok#going to absolutely BLOW YOUR MIND to find out that the quality of the media itself determines how much I like a character#as well as the quality of the characters development#also this isn't math there is no transitive property for liking characters#some hit and some don't#get over it#Anonymous

Anonymous asked:

“As soon as I heard “I’m the Avatar; you’ve gotta deal with it!” I knew I would fucking hate that show. I naturally hate people who are like that. If Bryke was still smart they would have thought to make Korra’s personality more like water similar to Aang with air, not “haha fuck you, I’m avatar haha!”

“LOL YEP like 3 seconds into the show you hear that, and understand EXACTLY what the rest of LOK is going to be like. Not only is a jarring contrast to Aang and every other Avatar we’ve seen, it directly contradicts everything we know about the Avatar cycle from ATLA. All the other Avatars have to be TOLD that they are the Avatar, and have to work hard to master their non-native elements. Korra just naturally being able to bend 3 elements when she’s like 5 tells you everything you need to know about how the creators of LOK went about making their show: worldbuilding and logic don’t matter, it’s all about flashy visuals and one-time gags.”

#asks#anti lok#DISGOSTING#'meh meh if korra was a MAN you wouldn't call her arrogant' I absolutely would#korra being a dickhead is not okay just because she's a woman#Anonymous

Anonymous asked:

“Korrasami is shit,a joke, boring af, they don't have romantic chemistry, asami acts like a big sister towards korra. there I said it for you.”

“OOP! Well, I certainly didn’t say it!”

#asks#anti lok#but ur right#ACTUALLY I disagree on one point#asami doesn't act like a sister to korra#they act like work colleagues that only ever hang out during their lunch break#they act like very distant cousins that only talk on facebook#they act like people that share mutual friends but don't know each other that well#okay I'll stop#Anonymous

“Korra: 1/10, I will see myself out the door to be CANCELLED! Not only was her character very unlikeable, but the way fandom reared up to defend this (quite frankly) terrible character under the guise of “wokeness” when it is clear that the creators sprinkled in just enough ~representation~ to get brownie points without actually saying anything meaningful is just EMBARRASSING. Korra defenders are being manipulated by those cishet white men they hate so much, and they do it gladly. Anyway, I find Korra boring, disrespectful, and underdeveloped.”

#asks#ask game#character ask game#anti lok#SORRY YALL LOK'S CHARACTERS ARE BAD#also korra gives off 'mean feminine lesbian who calls gnc women slurs' vibes#korra and asami would bully me and then call me a homophobe#and kuvira gives off such heterosexuelle vibes I simply CANNOT with her#thetpot

“IT’S SO VILE! Korra is barely even an active character in her own show! She’s just a vessel that gets beaten and broken over and over again. She doesn’t actually get to LEARN from any mistakes that she makes, she’s just forced to recover from these external traumas that have literally nothing to do with her.

Ugh, tbh I feel NOTHING for korrasami. Korra and Asami don’t speak about anything except Mako for most of the show, and only really start actually TALKING to each other in the last half of season 4. None of Korra’s friends really spend that much time together throughout the runtime of the show tbh.

But yeah, it’s frustrating that people tout LOK as this amazing show staring a queer WOC, but the people making the show HATED Korra and HATED developing her in a meaningful way.”

Anonymous asked:    

“Korra was like Zuko at the beginning of the show, now she in season 4 is like Aang. Bryke gave kuvira a redemption bc team avatar was missing a Zuko. now she is the new zuko and not Korra.”

Sorry, my brain short circuited. You think Korra???? Is like Aang???? That might be the most offensive thing I have ever received in this askbox.

#asks#anti lok#KORRA IS LIKE AANG#IN WHAT UNIVERSE#HOW DARE YOU INSULT MY BOY LIKE THIS#I WON'T STAND FOR IT#Anonymous

“also lock me in lesbian prison but korrasami is WEAK! they didn’t have a single conversation that wasn’t about mako for 3.5 seasons!!! they had zero moments together to indicate that asami would be the only person that korra would write to!!! yall tricked me, I thought I was getting some gay shit.

#anti lok#I SAID WHAT I SAID#korra had more chemistry in her one scene with opal than she ever did with asami”

Anonymous asked:

What do you think of korrasami?

no thank u, I don’t feel like being called a homophobe by a bunch of straight women today.

#asks#anti lok#a hornet's nest I will not be swinging at on this Monday lmao#I hate everything in lok you do the math#I'm sure I've talked about my issues with korrasami on my blog SOMEWHERE#have fun!#Anonymous

Not me seeing posts giving LOK and Korrasami credit for queerness in animation when Steven Universe, Adventure Time, and She-Ra were doing it unapologetically, openly, right from the very beginning....

#anti lok#TESTING MY GODDAMN PATIENCE#if korrasami was individually influential for you as a queer woman that's FINE#but do NOT give this insane credit to the cishet writing team of LOK!!!#not when these other shows were made by ACTUAL QUEER WOMEN#DISGOSTING

Anonymous asked:

if ur looking for an actual well-written canon wlw pairing in the atla verse, there’s rangshi. fc yee works so hard to fix all of bryke’s garbage, bless his soul. i have no hope for anything avatar studios related, but if fc yee is in the writer’s room, then there may be a very marginal chance that the stuff coming out is at least somewhat worthy of being associated with atla. the worldbuilding that he’s done in rise of kyoshi is insane.

I have heard good things about the Kyoshi novels! Unfortunately, LOK is the drop of shit that has poisoned the entire water supply. All ATLA-related works are going to have to be LOK compliant now, which is so deeply restrictive and contradictory to what I liked about ATLA in the first place. I feel like pre-canon stuff is safer (and again, heard AMAZING things about what FC Yee has done with a pre-ATLA world), but I guess I’m too cynical to get really invested in any more ATLA stuff anymore.

#asks#atla#anti lok#put Nat in charge of Avatar Studios and THEN we'll talk#finally get the thotty aang and amazing worldbuilding THAT WE DESERVE#Anonymous

I know, this was awful to see...

[chimswae]

BTS Caretaker CH43

Summary: She may think she has Bangtan Sonyeondan wrapped around her fingers. She may think it is easy to love the members equally without hurting any soul. She may think the boys wont fall head over heels for her. She assumes it is okay to show a little love and affection towards the boys, what if she gets it all wrong? What if it only brings more complication to her already complicated life? Can she survive their charms? Will she be able to resist them? What if they just wont let her go?

- Pairing: BTS x Oc ( Yoongi x OC, Jungkook x OC)

- Genre: Fluff, Slight Angst, Romance, Idol!au

- Word Count: 3,043

- Author Note: Happy Musters i hope i am not too late <3 But yes i have bene busy with Musters and BTS 8th anniversary in general! i hope u guys had a blast while watching! it is day 2 today so yay!

Previous | Next

Chapter 43

“Can you reach her Yoongi?” Jin’s voice brought him back to reality. Slowly, he shook his head in dismay. The crease on his forehead was evident causing the older man sighed in frustration.

“I wonder where she is” Jin muttered as his eyes scanned the area diligently in hope to catch the girl between the huge crowd.

Supposedly today, Seul would be joining the team to USA for Billboard Music Awards. However, she didn’t show up even until now. The plane would take off in thirty minutes but she’s nowhere to be found. Yoongi clutched onto his phone helplessly, hoping to hear a single ring at the end of the line. Then again, he was greeted with a small beep and the usual robotic woman asking him to leave a message.

Frustrated, he stroked his hair back with a small groan. He tried for the umpteenth time to reach Seul again but to no avail.

“Hyung, maybe something come up. She’ll be alright” the leader reasoned.

“This doesn’t sound like her, Seul would never bail on me without words. Something happen to her, I can feel it” he got up, resting his forehead against the cold wall.

Namjoon heaved a heavy sigh “Maybe she needs to take care of Ahjumma?” “Impossible- her mother is in Jeju with Hoon. Something is off. I need to find her” he exclaimed with so much determination.

“You can’t do that. We need to get into that plane in few minutes. You can’t bail the award Min Yoongi for a mere girl” Manager Sejin stern voice sounded as though he’s challenging the older guy. It somewhat triggered his anger.

“That girl happened to be my girlfriend” he hissed lowly, offended by their manager’s remark.

Yoongi shot his manager a dissatisfied glare “Are you saying I should ditch my girlfriend and pretend this never happen? You got to be kidding me” he scoffed.

“Min Yoongi, she will be fine. I have asked someone back in the office to check on her, so please don’t do something stupid” he warned.

“Sejin hyung is right. Let’s not jump into conclusion first. I trust Seul” the tall guy gave his shoulder a light squish in attempt to calm piss off Yoongi. “Please, hyung.. Trust Sejin hyung’s words, Seul is okay. We’ll know what happen once we touch down. It is enough time to find Seul” Namjoon continued.

For some reason, that didn’t sound like an assurance. He couldn’t help this uneasiness inside him. “This isn’t right. I need to find her” he mumbled with a hint of desperation.

“And, they will find her. Let’s be positive for now” their manager patted his back-signalling others to get ready to board the flight.  Seeing how Yoongi make no effort to move from where he stood, Jungkook approached the man stealthily “If Seul were here she will go berserk if she finds out you are planning to ditch our schedule for her. So, trust Sejin hyung, someone will help to find her alright?”  if there’s one person would do stupid decision like Yoongi then it would be Jungkook. For now, the youngest in the group tried to reason before they ended up regretting their rash decision.

Sighing in defeat Yoongi grabbed his black leather bag and went to line up following others. There’s no way he could betray his own bandmates, his only hope lied with his company to make sure Seul was safe and sound.

 ---------

“Shall we begin?” his rough voice brought the timid girl out from her daydream. She stared at him in daze as if trying to read through him but no avail. Glancing at the clock, she chewed her lower lips feeling guilty for bailing on the boys and her job. What was she supposed to do? Amidst all the crazy things happening to her today, she couldn’t ignore the fact that this nasty old man was trying to ruin her family.

Gathering her courage, she looked straight into his eyes “You don’t expect me to agree doing this just because I am related to you. Your name is not on the paper. My birth certificate doesn’t have your name” she scowled.

He pressed his lips into a thin line, tugging a small smirk at the corner of his lips “ Yes I don’t see my name on the paper when your mother carelessly put Ji Hoon’s dad name on it. You do realize you are not related to Ji Hoon or his dad by blood, right?” he chuckled.

Seul curled her small hand into fist feeling the anger sipping inside her. If and only she could murder this man right away, she would do it in a heartbeat.

“And..” she heard him continued. “No matter how hard you try to deny me, it is a matter of a fact that I am still your father Ji Seul. I bred your mother, well technically” Seul hissed harshly.

“Don’t you dare to use those filthy words on my mother! I might be your daughter by blood but never by heart”

“Don’t flatter yourself young lady. You are not my daughter by heart either. You still need me though if you don’t want your boyfriend to suffer. I bet it won’t only hurt your boyfriend but also the whole band” he was so shameless when it was down to professing his intention in making Seul to agree on the terms he had just offer her.

Sighing deeply, she shook her head weakly “Don’t touch them, even a strand of their hair. Leave Yoongi alone” her voice turned rougher emphasizing her warning. There was no way she would allow Mr Kwon to ruin their career after all they did to get here. As selfish as it may sound, she’s willing to stay away from Yoongi and the rest of the members if that’s the best for everyone.

“Alright, now we are talking. I will keep the video for now. But if you try to back off, I will release it to those thirsty medias. I am sure they would enjoy to see the downfall of Bangtan Sonyeondan. Everyone does anyways”

Shivering in fear, she understood exactly what she meant by that. The release of the footage of Yoongi and her would shake entire country not only it could tarnish Yoongi’s image but also Bighit reputation as now they are at the peak of their success. What a perfect time to crash one’s happiness wasn’t it?

“So are we in the same boat?” he leaned forwards, rubbing his chin with a proud smug.

Hesitate with the decision that she’s about to make, Seul took a deep breath before nodding in agreement. This was the best for now, she will figure out how to get out from this mess later.

“Good” Kwon arose from his seat making his way to his secret vault holding a brown envelope before throwing it on the coffee table startling the girl. “The address to the private party and money. Use the money to buy you a dress. Doll yourself up, we don’t want the heir to the greatest billionaire in the country fall for another woman. I want you to grab his attention” he shoved his hand inside his pocket looking arrogant as always.

“How is that even possible? I am nobody!” bewildered by his demand, Seul couldn’t fathom the idea of grabbing someone’s attention with her look and status. Moreover, they’re talking about a son of a billionare.

He laughed half-heartedly “You are not nobody. You are Kwon’s and you will be surprised to see how influential I am. I don’t care how and what you do to get his attention, just do it” sipping his whiskey from the glass, he eyed the dumbfounded girl sternly.

“Will you be there tomorrow night?” she murmured under her breath.

“Yes I will be there. Make sure to not cause scene if you don’t want me to release the footage”

She cringed at the thought of the dangerous footage that he possessed. The idea of how her most personal life with Yoongi to be revealed that way to the world made her nauseous. Kwon was a freaking creep, like how was it possible to install cameras in Yoongi’s private studios just to catch a glimpse of their most private moment there.

Seul knew she screwed up big time for doing this without asking Yoongi or anyone, but like she had a choice. Yoongi was off to something big out there and nothing could top it. She wasn’t planning to ruin his moment, their moment because of her problem. Even though she wanted to go to Bang PD to seek help considering this had something to do with his artiste, who’s going to trust her? With all the evident in Kwon’s hand, he couldn’t manipulate and used it against her. Because after all, she was told that his reputation would surprise her.

“You can go now, you don’t want to be late”

‘Why am I doing this. This is not right’ she didn’t dare to take one last look at Kwon afraid that she might threw her fist around carelessly considering the amount of anger bottled up inside her was enough to trigger such violence.

Before she could push the door open, his voice once again halted his action “By the way daughter, I enjoyed the tape. Yoongi really know how to fuck. I get it why you are willing to do anything for him” Seul jaws clenched in anger upon hearing his rude remarks.

Pushing the door hastily, she stormed away before she started a nasty cat fight which might turn into murderous.

 -----------

Three hours since their plane landed. But, still nothing from Seul.

Yoongi couldn’t even sleep during their flight which worries everyone. They knew how Yoongi took things too hard on himself sometimes that could jeopardize his health in the end. Namjoon on the other hand was trying his best to talk it out with their manager, finding possible ways to exclude Yoongi from the award shows at least until he’s in the right mind.

Namjoon knew Yoongi was not irresponsible when BTS name was in line, but he also wanted a healthy work environment for his bandmate. Plus, they’re only human. Sometimes unexpected things happen, though how much they tried to endure it whilst they tried to get into their roles as BTS members, it wasn’t healthy.

If it was possible to get Yoongi back to Seoul as soon possible, that would be the best decision for everyone.  Yoongi might refuse to blow up this one chance for everyone to perform on AMA’s stage but Namjoon didn’t want him to feel remorse over his decision if something happen to Seul.

After a deep discussion he had with his managers, they finally came to a decision that if they couldn’t reach Seul until tonight, they’re sending Yoongi back to Seoul.

“I don’t agree with this idea! Whose idea is this?” his eyes widened upon hearing the news from Manager Sejin.

“It is my idea. Hyung, you know I want what’s best for you and everyone right?” Yoongi’s eyes snapped right towards the tall man who stood across him with a concern look plastered across his face.

“Kim Namjoon” he hissed. “What’s best for me is to stay here and not to hurt the band. Are you fucking serious right now? This is my life and I get to decide!” his deep voice raise one octave causing the younger members including Jin to seal their mouths tight.

It was intense considering Yoongi and Namjoon barely got caught into a serious argument these days. Namjoon pushed his glass at the bridge of his nose while emitting a deep sigh “This is important, but Seul is important too. If..if anything happen to Seul, I don’t want you to blame yourself for not be able to do at least something to find her. We promote self-love hyung, however you are yet to find a way to love yourself. Seul is part of your self-love” the young man really preached it this time without fail awing everyone in the room.

“I cant do this just because you put that idea in my mind. This is crazy” the pale man looked ten times paler ever since they reached USA three hours ago. Looking as if his soul was sucked out from his body, they couldn’t ignore the fact that Seul was part of the colours in Yoongi’s life.

Yoongi mumbled before Namjoon could even reply “I was overreacting, I am sure she’s fine like you guys said. She’ll be fine…” his voiced faded away showing his faith was shaking by the belief he projected.

“We’ll wait until tonight. If there is no news from her, we’re sending you back to Seoul Yoongi. End of discussion” Manager Sejin frowned patting the sombre man’s back making his way out the room.

Namjoon took a step closer to Yoongi, squishing his shoulder “Trust me, this is the best decision for everyone. Get some sleep hyung, you don’t look yourself. We’ll keep an eye on our phone in case we heard something from Seul” he gave him a small smile as an assurance.

He made his way weakly into his room, shutting the door behind him before throwing his tired body on bed. Yoongi knew this was unprofessional and very childish of him for letting his personal feelings got into the way, yet what else he could do? He’s too tired to deal with this shit by his own till he needed Namjoon to jump into the scene to make decision for him. Pathetic.

‘Just where on earth are you Seul? Why can’t you just say something?’ he slid his thumbs across the screen in hope to hear Seul’s voice at the end of the line. To his dismay, he was greeted by the robotic woman once again.

 -------------

“Yoong, wake up… Why are you so sleepy?” his eyes fluttered open at the sound of the familiar voice. He loved the way her fingers moved in between his hair, smoothing away all the worries inside him.

The smell of her intoxicated him ‘Just like us’ like he usually described it.

“Mmmmm.. I miss you and I am sorry that I didn’t show up” her lips pursed into a pout, fluttering his heart like she always does. “But, I promise to make it up to you okay? Don’t worry about me, I am fine” her lips move at its own accord across his soft skin.

“I miss you too” he reached out to stroke her hair, making the girl to lean her cheeks against his palm liking the warmth that she gave him.

“I am no longer scared when you are here with me” said Seul sweetly along with her bright smile.

Confused by her statement, he tilted his head in confusion “What do you mean by that babe?” she only laughed it away saying it was only a random thing coming from her mouth. Liking their close proximity, her confusing words slipped off his mind.

Seul returned to leave fluttering kiss at the corner of his eyes and ended up on his lips. He was about to move their lips together as she quickly pulled away glancing around in fear. “Babe are you okay?” he sat up, reaching for her shoulder.

Her fast reflex halted his move, as Seul arose to her feet with her tears cascaded down wetting her rosy cheeks without warn scaring the shit out of the man.

“Seul-ah what happen? Tell me!” Yoongi followed her action, and he didn’t back down, taking few steps closer to his lover. His heart ached to see how scared she appeared to be “Baby girl, tell me please” she raised her palm to stop him from coming close.

“I am sorry Yoongi. I am sorry Yoongi” that’s all she abled to say in between her sobs.

She took a step backwards before sprinting away making Yoongi restless, he tried to chase after her with all his might. The image soon fades, and darkness engulfed the area.

“SEUL!” he called out her name looking around in daze.

“JI SEUL!” Yoongi never gave up until he could find way to her again.

“Hyung. Yoongi hyung, wake up!” another familiar voice rung in his ear but this time it is not Seul. He shut his eyes together using his strength to shrug away the painful ring in his ears. He clasped his ears kneeling in pain, while his world started to spin around.

“MIN YOONGI. YAH WAKE UP!”

“HYUNG ARE YOU OKAY? HYUNG…”

 “MIN YOONG-“ panting heavily, he sat up abruptly causing Jin to stand up.  Yoongi touched his head, groaning in pain after the confusing dreams that he had. “Yah, are you alright? You’re calling for Seul’s name non-stop” Jungkook and Jin eyes were puffy from the lack of rest.

“Hyung, we’re trying to wake you up. Are you seriously okay? You are scaring us!” said the golden maknae, as he handed a glass of plain water to him which him gladly took it. Steadying his heavy breath, he drank the water and broke the silence “Seul. I dreamed of her, she looked s-cared…She seemed-“ “Yoongi hyung you need to hear this” Namjoon barged into the room cutting off his sentence.

All eyes were on the leader, and stood behind him was Jimin, Hoseok and Taehyung looking as anxious as Yoongi. “What is it?” he gulped hoping to hear something good instead of bad one. After what he experienced few minutes ago, he feared it was a sign to this news that he about to hear from Namjoon.

“It came through your voice mail. I am sorry that I go through your phone. But I wanted to make sure that I keep an eye on it while you are resting in case Seul contacted you” Namjoon voice sounded different almost like he’s hiding something big from him.

“Namjoon.. what the hell is happening?��� he got up from his bed, making his way to him.

The leader pressed his lips together in fear, as he slid his thumbs across the screen.

“Y..oongi… H..elp..me..I ..am scared..Please..help me” Seul’s voice filled the room halting Yoongi’s step towards Namjoon.

“Yoon..gi..I am s..cared”

This work belongs to  Chimswae © 2021. All Rights Reserved

[courtneystriker]

My Thoughts on the HG Prequel

I just finished reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and I got to say, my feelings are mixed. Below I have an entire review  for the story which included how I felt, the expectations, the biases I had going into the new book, and how I felt after reading. Please note there will be spoilers. Also this review isn’t meant to hurt anyone and if you absolutely love the book so far...good! Enjoy it fully! As an aspiring writer myself and someone who studied in college/loves creative writing I’m well aware that people just have different takes on writing. Glad you are enjoying it :)

Anyways, here it goes…

The Expectations

As the Hunger Games series is one of my favorites of all time, I had a strong bias to like this book. Since it was first announced, without knowing any details, I was extremely excited and optimistic. I re-read the entire Hunger Games series twice beforehand in preparation; once with my fiancé and once on my own. The only thing I really wanted, knowing that it took place during the tenth hunger games, was that the arena reflected how new the hunger games were. Then, when we learned what the series was about, people started voicing some concerns or were disappointed by the plot, instead wanting it to be something like Finnick’s arena, Haymitch’s, Mags’, etc. etc. I was not among this group. However, I understand where they were coming from, because I always thought the idea of the first Quarter Quell (the one where the districts voted for the tributes) was an extremely interesting concept. 

Yet I think these things are best left explored in fanfiction as they add nothing to the series and Suzanne Collins did an excellent job just giving us enough information to get the idea. At that point it’d just be a book on details, which could fall short or be a gimmicky, cheap way to keep people reading the series and keep her name relevant. And wasn’t that part of the message in her series, the thing Katniss so heavily criticized that gave a great irony to the books? Who would watch children killing each other for entertainment? Meanwhile, we as the reader are reading these books as a form of entertainment. Plus, Suzanne Collins so skillfully painted the illusion of knowing but not fully knowing their stories that it’s haunting, and I think that is one of the many reasons (along with the battle royale trope being naturally compelling, liking the characters, etc.) that a lot of us are more drawn towards these stories rather than (at least for me)  a book on Snow. 

That being said, I was not against the idea of a book on Snow because I find villain characters, especially grey ones, to be very interesting to read about, and I was pretty certain Suzanne was going to handle this beautifully, especially since you could already feel this atmosphere coming off of Snow in the Hunger Games series. I know some were really concerned about a Snow redemption arc, but to me it felt very obvious that it couldn’t be and it would be more of him sliding into evil.

I did have other concerns when I read the description for the first time. I could not believe they went with the whole tribute from District Twelve thing again. I loved Katniss and District Twelve, but I did not want Katniss 2.0. I said right from the beginning to my fiancé that she’d have to make the tribute from District Twelve extremely different for me to get on board (though I was holding on faith that Collins would). It just felt cheap and gimmicky to rehash the District Twelve thing, it sort of made me feel the same way I would have if she had written about one of the games I mentioned above. Sure, it’d sell, but it wouldn’t add anything to the series. I was thinking she better not hunt, sing, or have any qualities resembling Katniss really.  

Another thing I worried about was the love story they hinted at in the description. It just didn’t make sense to me. Because how was Snow going to ever support the games if from an earlier age he fell in love with a tribute and vowed to protect her? Then later he’s all like pro-hunger games? Just this itself could weaken the entire series if done poorly, because it would weaken the main antagonist’s motives for not only the prequel but also the Hunger Games series as well. I kept thinking either the girl has to die in the arena betraying Snow somehow (which is what I was hoping for), Snow will have to betray her, or perhaps he would have been faking love for her for some sort of personal gain I couldn’t imagine. Either way, I thought it weakened the story's appeal to me. Yet overall I was still excited, desperately waiting for the book’s release. 

And now that I have read it, I have to say it felt forced at a lot of parts and lackluster overall…

*Spoilers start here*

My Review:

Suszanne Collins’ writing style is one I’ve always loved and has consistently appealed to me. Even though this book is written in 3rd person (which some may like less if you don’t particularly like third person) it holds up well against the original series. So I really had no complaints in this regard besides the excessive use of songs (felt like fanfiction a bit). I think if you liked the original series and don’t mind third person you’ll feel right at home with her style.

The concerns others had about Snow’s redemption are completely dismissed in this book. Like I had predicted, she writes about his fall into evil, and although it’s not black and white evil (as I don’t like anyways) you can very much tell he’s a bad guy and that the hardships he faced in life only further pushed him towards obtaining status and power. Overall, he feels true to the character when we end up seeing him in the Hunger Games series, and his journey to power fits the images Finnick painted in Mockingjay. He is very well characterized in the book and perfectly unlikable while maintaining an intriguing internal dialogue (although it does occasionally feel tedious, but not enough to bother me; others may feel differently).

 The way he is written is very much in line with Collin’s great characterization, one of the reasons I always loved The Hunger Games. All the characters felt like real people. They all had an extreme depth to them and I felt they all resembled people I had actually met in real life. There were little to no characters that relied solely on gimmicky personalities to get by. Even very minor characters that seemed depthless and swallow at first--like Katniss’s prep team--had more to them. So I thought going into this book I had nothing to worry about in that regard. I didn’t even really spare it a thought, but boy was I wrong. 

I think Snow and Lucy Grey were the only characters that had (at least partly) the depth that the original Hunger Games cast had. I’ll discuss Lucy Grey later but first let me talk about some side characters. Where to even begin really? There’s a LOT of characters in this book. Frankly, way too many, which I think contributes heavily to the lack of depth in the characters. Honestly there’s so many that the names of characters were hard to keep track of while listening to the audiobook (my hard copy of the book was still in the mail and I didn’t want to wait). Things got a bit clustered in my mind quickly. There were twenty-four tributes, twenty-four mentors,  Snow’s family, The Dean and Drs at the university, Snow’s Peacekeeper crew, and the Covey, and those are just the groups that I can cluster together. At least, the ones I remember having names and getting introduced, but I think that’s everyone really important. There was no real time to develop or get to know them really, which made the tributes’ deaths more meaningless as I could barely recall their names. It caused impactful scenes to weaken significantly overall and it made characters serve only to characterize and amplify Snow’s fall into evil. 

Here’s what I mean by that. The head Gamemaker, Dr. Gaul, really was the character I hated the most while reading this. She was just evil without reason (one of the weakest villain types with little to no personality besides being evil). She even made creepy rhymes as if she was in some sort of horror movie, and the entire point of her character was to contribute a lot to some of the forced plot points driving Snow’s moral decline. For example, there were all her tests, which seemed contrived and all directly connected to getting Snow to think the Hunger Games was a good idea. She was seemingly supposed to be a Dr. Mengele type character, as this book has a lot of Holocaust-esqe imagery. I’m fine with irredeemably evil villains, but instead of getting the depth that a Dr. Mengele character could offer (as some may know, many children that were part of his experiments actually said he was kind and gave them candy, and I find that deeply haunting to this day.) She is a flat, one-dimensional character whose entire personality could be described with one word: sociopath. Evil people are master manipulators, which is how they get away with evil things. I think at one of the funerals she puts on a good public face, and she seems to have power, money and influence. Yet the book doesn’t show this seemingly present quality nearly enough to make her a haunting character. Instead we get nursery rhythms and clearly driven lessons towards evil at are contrived. Like “Write about what you most liked about the war” or the assignment to improve the hunger games? Like what class is this? Why are they taking it? And why are the young kids of the influential deciding this instead of the influential people themselves?

Another character I feel was just there for Snow’s development and to represent an opposite viewpoint but lacked Collin’s usual depth is Sejanus Plinth. As a District 2 citizen whose family got rich off the war and moved to the Capitol, he is the main opposing viewpoint of the book, presenting Snow with a chance to do the right thing. I’ve seen people say he’s a Peeta-like character, but I completely reject that idea. He lacks in the charm Peeta has, relishes in self-pity (although he’s completely justified in his sadness and has a right to be upset), and while he has a heart like Peeta, he ultimately doesn’t know how to use it. Instead of working within his position to get influence like Peeta so masterfully does, he’s hot-headed and continuously makes poor decisions that ultimately don’t help anyone. It’s like he wants to help but doesn’t know how as he’s driven completely by emotion without reason. He too contributes to some forced scenes, particularly my least favorite in the book; when they sneak into the arena. Overall, he just falls flat for me. Again, I feel I don’t know anything about him beyond what he contributes to Snow’s story line and he doesn’t come across as realistic. It’s like Collins just wrote how someone would normally react to the hunger games, slapped a district number on him and went on her merry way. 

I just wasn’t prepared for these sort of characters when the Hunger Games series made even the smallest of characters stand out dramatically. I feel neutral to annoyed by most characters in this novel. I could expand this portion, and maybe if people inquire I’ll elaborate on some of the other characters as I have strong opinions on them, but this post is already getting long, so I’ll move on to Lucy Grey.

Lucy Grey is by far my favorite character even though she is bordering towards being a character from a fanfiction. Not quite a Mary Sue in my opinion but there is a certain connection to fanfiction I made with her. You may have guessed some issues I had with her by reading my expectations earlier in the post, but that has not displaced my love for her. Her personality is very different from Katniss’s, or even Peeta’s or Haymitch’s. She had a different type of charm than all of them, is a natural performer, and seemed more extroverted. Also, the whole idea of the Covey and her “not really” being district was intriguing. It really highlighted the displacement that war can cause and how people can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Although I was confused on how much mobility between the districts there were….and did District Twelve have a fence or no?) It really emphasizes one of the main themes of the book, extreme prejudice against both Capitol and District. Her spot sort of in between really drives home the point that there's literally no difference except extreme poverty, and even then there was poverty in the Capitol, only better hidden. Her bright mood (and clothes), her poised attitude, and her optimism made her endearing. She was confident in her skin yet still held the fear of a sixteen year old going into the hunger games.

There were only two main things that bothered me about her, which was of course the direct connections made to Katniss (which I’ll elaborate on) and the forced “love” story between her and Snow. I suppose that has less to do with her and rather more to do with my dislike of that subplot. And I'm a sucker for some good romantic subplots, but yikes!

I think having one strong connection to Katniss was all that was really needed in this book. I really liked the idea of that connection being the Hanging Tree Song, as I can only imagine how it made Snow feel watching “The Mockingjay” sing it in the propo. Despite me not liking that fact that Lucy Grey is also an enchanting singer as that felt like directly stepping in Katniss’s territory, I did enjoy the little twist of Lucy Grey writing the song. Yet the connections between the two when the plot took us to District Twelve went too far. It felt like it took away all of Katniss’s special places and things. The lake, her katniss roots, her gift towards music, her fondness for the meadow, sneaking into the woods, etc. I think one solid connection would have solidified their bond beautifully. Having so many seemed like it was really trying to force the reader to make the connection when it was already painfully clear I guess? Plus, having Lucy stand out at her reaping ( the whole song part read like a bad, contrived fanfiction bit to me) and having people care about her in the Capitol while moral questions of the hunger games were still surfacing made me start to think...isn’t this how the rebellion for Katniss got started? At least partly. I get it’s a different time. Too close to the war. It just felt way too similar. I guess Collins was going for the idea of a lost rebellion that in a way Lucy Grey started that Katniss later revives. Yet it feels like that invalidates the specialness of what Katniss does in the original series as it’s already happened; it just got erased. I guess history repeats itself, but I really just didn’t like it. I could see the appeal to some extent, and it could be a beautiful connection, but it just wasn’t for me.

Now on to the plot, which is the last thing I’ll talk about as this post is getting ridiculously long. A lot of the plot felt very forced or contrived, which was another shocker coming from Collins because her pacing and plot was done really well in the original series. Of course, a lot of this was driven by Dr. Gaul and Sejanus Plinth as the entire plot hinged on the moral debate of the hunger games these two represent. Other plot points just hinged on what happened to establish the games. I mean the rebel bomb explosion seemingly only happened to change the terrain so Dr. Gaul can then bring up the idea of the different arena and how that made the tributes act differently, thus creating the crazy arenas we see later in the series. I do have some praise for how Collins established the disparities between the earlier hunger games and the ones we see in Katniss day. From the way they lock the tributes up, don’t feed them, the spotty coverage of the arena, etc. All of that was exceptionally well done. The only complaint I have was that so many tributes died before they even got to the arena (though not because I wanted to see them fight). I had been expecting one to escape or something to further establish that this was new territory and was waiting to see how they handled it in earlier times, but I wasn’t expecting that many to die before the arena got started. It just seemed like a huge Capitol failure that they advertised loudly. I really wasn’t expecting that level of incompetence, just an escaped tribute that threatened to embarrass or harm the fragile beginnings of post-war Panem. Instead, most of the pre-arena stuff felt disastrous. A lot of the mentors' deaths felt forced, and it was weird that the academy never really came under fire at all from all the rich and powerful parents whose children were getting killed because of the mentor experiment. Like it seemed there should have been some interaction there, but there wasn’t. Maybe some was passively mentioned but still, it could have been a whole subplot that further established the debate of the hunger games.

While the pre-arena up to the break-in to the arena felt like the most forced part of the book and certainly I felt it needed more workshopping plot wise, it also harbored some great and powerful scenes, like Arachne pulling the sandwich away from the tribute while she was starving and laughing about it. Basically, all those interactions of poverty and captivity meeting the citizens of the Capitol were done well, but nothing spectacular (unlike the scene of Katniss screaming at Buttercup at the end of Mockingjay which is heart wrenching.)

The last plot point I’ll talk about is the “love” story. I wasn’t a fan, but it was sort of what a lot of the plot hinged on and led to the great scene at the lake between Snow and Lucy Grey. How easy it was for him to betray his “love” for status. This led to some of the most interesting and evil internal monologue Snow had in the entire book. I honestly feel the ending scene, the interaction Snow had with the jabberjays and Mockingjays in District Twelve, and the lynching scenes were among the strongest and most memorable.

The love story again felt forced (sorry I’m using that word so much it’s just so accurate) into the story. This hindered the book from having a strong plot in the same way the weaker characters caused forced interactions and plot points to move things along. Yet at the same time the kind of abusive and lackluster nature of their relationship throughout the book fit perfectly with the ending. Unfortunately, it didn’t really make it very compelling for the reader. Luckily Lucy’s  personality kept my interested during these parts. I wouldn’t say their relationship was poorly written at all; in fact the way it was written makes perfect sense. I just think the plot relied too heavily on their “love”, which was gross because of the way Snow is, and the reader knew it had to inevitably end in some kind of betrayal or reveal that there was no love at all. This creates tension for the reader, but I kept wondering: if the love plot had been ditched could we have gotten a stronger plot altogether?

So overall, like I’ve said I’m really conflicted. I know I focused heavily on things I didn’t like, but honestly the book was well written in some regards, plot bouncing between really compelling and a little contrived, the two main characters being written well enough but other characters not so much. Some connections between Lucy Grey and Katniss made at the end were powerful, I loved the Covey, Collins still excelled at writing a lot of the social issues/scenes in the book, and honestly the idea of Lucy Grey being completely forgotten in the Districts that hurts my soul a little. Nothing compared to the feelings I got in any of the Hunger Games books but there’s still something there.

I really hope someone made it through this long ass post. The book was entertaining. I mean I listened to all 16 hours of the audiobook in like a day. I can’t wait until my hardcover comes so I can look through it. Maybe once I know what I’m getting into I can enjoy the book a little more than I did, because right now it’s sitting at very average for me. Maybe I went in with my expectations too high? I certainly like the Hunger Games a lot more and probably always will. Honestly, I love new content, but I’m also the type that likes firm, planned endings to stories (even though it hurts to let things end and the fandoms can suffer from lack of content). I think fans can oftentimes get caught up in what they want and pressure the writer into writing more, which ends up a disappointment since it wasn’t originally planned in the series from the beginning. While I don’t think this is by any means the case with Suzanna Collins or that Lionsgate even pressured her to write this book (I don’t like conspiracies of that sort of thing as a writer myself that plans to have a series in which a book comes out many years after the original part of the series is released), I do wonder if this is the end of the Hunger Games for good. I sure hope so, especially if she would be writing about the other victors. I love them too much and really don’t want to feel similarly about their books, and like I said at the beginning, it wouldn’t add to the series just to my guilty pleasure lol.

Hope you all have enjoyed your reading of the book more than I did :) Again sorry if I wrote anything to upset you! Please if you loved this book ENJOY IT! I’m actually kind of jealous if you did. Feels like missing out on something special.

[delightsan]

FLAME (II) | CS

⁕ genre: fuck boy!san, bad boy!au, college!au, fluff, angst, enemies to lovers

⁕ pairings: choi san x fem!reader

⁕ words: 6.4k

⁕ description: keeping the title of being the best student on campus isn’t easy for you, especially when your mind was occupied only by him and his annoying smirk, the popular bad boy who once decided to sets on fire your heart without anybody’s permission

⁕ warnings: explicit language, suggestive remarks, smoking & alcohol

read the prologue and the chapter one

The sociable cafeteria is filled with people whose names you can't remember, but their curious stares welcome you with affectionate embrace, as soon you enter the huge space of the room. The embrace you crave, since San planted the promising rays of hope in your heart, it's devastating to you, because the only concern which matters are his gleaming eyes, full of chestnut color and mischievous spark. His presence is absolutely breathtaking. You're indeed a fragile prisoner of his burning touch, and the lustful gaze, soon as you would gentle rub affectionate circles on his arms tattoo's beauty, the night before, where the only sound was your rapid heartbeats and heavy breathing. He left the blurry trace of passionate kisses down your pale neck to remind you about his intentions, when you see the purple marks of his unspoken words.

Choi San's eerie relationship with you are the cause of your ruthless nights, but you will gladly suffer for him if it meant he would hold your hand in his warm palms, and smooch your face in kisses.

Rushing at the end of long line to the bufet, you scan the surroundings in a haste glance to spot his glowing figure, seated between the rest of his friends, it's utterly mindblowing, the way your stomach churns with pleasant anxiety when his starry eyes meet with yours. San's dazzling existence throws you into the vortex of emotions, where the love is struggling against the malicious demons of your fears. He's dressed in his usual clothes, the color black highlights his sharp facial features, and the used martens on his feet shows his rebellious side. 

You bow in grateful at the elderly woman, who give you the meal of the day, thanking her for the extra portion of rice, as your stomach grumble at the lack of the daily food intake. The kindly gesture make you smile in delight, while the other students talk feverishly about the last soccer game in which the boy, whose angelic voice is like the sweetest honey, Jongho won a golden tropheum for the school's team. He becomes a hero in the eyes of the thousands of people and Hongjoong's, who is proud to call himself a father figure. ATEEZ have a lot of outstanding achievements on their side, they are a gang of gifted kids with deadly stares and auras, for example Hongjoong godly hands are great at crafting, he is a owner of his own fashion brand, called "star1117", in which "Mars" is a main model, and that's your beloved saviour Seonghwa. Yunho's long to heaven legs are born to dance on the big scene, along with Wooyoung's powerful movements and San's acute technique. Yeosang is the expanded mind behind the drones, Mingi is a soundcloud rapper, who still takes baby steps in his career, but is already famous on the campus, and Jongho is a star of the football team.

The pretty girl, who would wave in excitment at seeing your presence in the entrance to the cafeteria, before your spirit had lost his way on earth, to land in the gates of hell by San's intoxicating appearance is your bestfriend. Her name is Yeji and she is a lovable person, the definition of your half missing, with a adventurous heart and daring smile, catching the attention for her stunning looks in both genders, but the confessions of the admirers are always denied in order to search for her unrequited love in Wooyoung's sparkling eyes. You know she deserves someone better than a mere boy, but Wooyoung is a perfect example of being out of her league. The hands contaminated with sins of his could never reach her, as you protect her through the life, like a guardian angel, who failed himself agaisnt the bright side of good, as he signed a pact with the devil, to let his heart rotts in hell.

She is excessively pure to be in a dark place, the same as you, where you are fighting with your sins, doubouting the feelings of innermost love and the power of God. To be honest, you had grown to have a loads of faith in every existence, which drifts in the subconsciousness of your mind, while trying to defeat the ghosts of cruel prejudice, as you want to believe in his sincere words and his innocence. Perhaps Wooyoung's adorable giggles and goofy smiles, that creates with care his mesmerizing crescents eyes, which are underlined with smoky eyeliner, aren't plaugued with demons, maybe his easy going aura isn't fraud in lies, maybe he is way more different than you think.

Truth to be told, you shouldn't ponder over it and you shouldn't be hanging around San or his friends as much as you do, but you can't help the desire to.

You greet Yeji with a soft grin, muttering a faintly "hi", while taking the free spot beside her at the wooden table, at which she beams at you in delighment, happy about your your presence, but soon her strong gaze gets bored of you, and wanders towards the source of her happiness. "What's so interesting, hm?" you say, acting dumbfounded at her behaviour to ignore the pain inside your chest, the betrayl it is. She's long lost to the paradise of him, Jung Wooyoung is the reason behind her loving stares and fast heartbeat, you failed miserably at being her guardian angel, but maybe that's what the destiny write in their galaxies.

Yeji bites her plump lips in anxiety, curling a lock of her black hair between fingers, the feeling of infatuation on her face, and you sigh, while she spares you a glance, it's filled with deep affection, and a smile ghosts over her cherry lips. The view of the boys belonging to the ATEEZ came into your frame, as she bumps her head towards them, where all of them eating their lunch in peace, and her smile is reciprocated by Wooyoung. "Oh, Wooyoung? Is something there between you and him?"

"No, well not yet of course, but maybe soon." Yeji says with a sorrow, it's obvious, groaning in annoyance like a lovestruck teeneger, who can't decide which kind of dress would be the best option for a memorable date with a crush, a cute ribbon dress or sexy tight dress. The mischievous cupidin, who travels the world in search of his miserable victims, not only hit you both with his influential arrow, making you a fools for his entertainment at your clumsy attempts to feel being beloved.

She is dedicateted to the idea of Jung Wooyoung being selected by gods to be her first and last love, but he likes to deny the allegations of being the leading light in her life, even if she deeply cares for him and treasure the feeling of dedication to him.

You want to beliefe it also, maybe some souls are meant to be together, bound by the red thread of destiny to the end of their fulfilled life.

The obnoxious sight of the stupid girls at the left side of the room, who would swoon over the holy eightly of boys, in which Wooyoung's high pitched laugh is heard everywhere, because San's another corny joke about big dicks is hilarious to him, is a painful sight for Yeji. Her significant other is looking at the stranger blonde with a lewd eyes, the picture is what trashes violently your heart and your lungs feel as if on fire, you pity your besfriend, she doesn't deserve the treatment of feeding up with his false hope. Jung Wooyoung likes to play a sick roulette with her genuine feelings towards him, doesn't give a single fuck about the consequences of his sinful actions.

Choi San does seem to care, though, because he catches your furious stare, which could burn the holes in Wooyoung's shaky with laughter figure, the devil itself apologize for the behaviour of his beloved friend. Bad habits are tough to break, blinded by a hand of foolish lust in frail attempts to take the boredom out by being an asshole, as the bitter aftertaste of forbidden fruit never tasted so good. You smile softly to him, to reassure him it's not his fault, because he can't control the actions of the other person. Rubbing small circles on the back of your friend to lift her ruined mood, while Seonghwa notices your gaze filled with adoration towards San, he smirks in a mockery, and you make a disgusted face, as Hongjoong giggles like a sweet kid at your exchanges, but you throw at Seonghwa a middle finger, at which he gaps offended. San's concerned face is what make you bashful of your previous poor actions, as he narrow his cat like eyes at you in order to search for a cause of your outbusrt.

Fuck, Seonghwa you are dead to me.

You hide shyly behind Yeji's small shoulders like a scaredy cat, who was caught at scratching the favourite furniture of his owners, the feeling of shame is creeping at your face, while avoiding his puzzling glare. "So he likes me, huh?" you whisper in a hush, trying to convince yourself once again about the sincerity of those significant words, which sound like sweet nothings in a romantic fairytale in your mouth. The tight grip of yours at the girl's pink blouse is a definition of your tiresome doubts, you wish to the vivid stars to save you from oppression of the snares of love.

You don’t know when you fell in love with him. You don’t even know if you fell for him at some point in life or if you’ve loved him from the beginning of your life, or maybe far before the two of you existed, but his declaration of love locks you in a cage of wonders, making you a helpless bird. 

Yeji is astonished, when she comprehend your remark, and she quirks her eyebrows at you. "Wait, hold on. (Y/N) is there someone interested in you or my delusional mind is playing tricks on me, because I heard that someone likes you."

The light shade of pink adorns your face like a spreading flu, the trembling of your hands and the dizziness in your head it's the effects of your disease, which San is the cause. Unlike the flu, it won't disappear, when you treat it with a care, the only way to get rid of the disease it's by hurting him right through with a piercing bullet, but you can't do it, when he looks at you with a smile, that can melt your heart. You quickly shake your head, don't knowing about the breath you were holding, when she ask you the question. "No, what do you mean." She wouldn't let you go so easily, she do know about your defensive position, as you like to run away without  giving a proper answer.

She sighs. "Okay, listen. Maybe I'm not the smartest kid in our school like you, but I can't ignore the way San is looking at you. He is eye fucking you everytime he sees you, it's fascinating to per say." she mocks you in a childish manner. "What the fuck? Yeji, shut up! It's embarrassing, while you say it like that." "I don't care, tell me what's between the two of you." 

To fight her in an unequal battle is hopeless, because the possibility of you winning is none, the victory is negligible, as you would never win an argument with her strong points. She is like a brave lioness who defends her children against the threats by other animals, she also have a soft spot, which is Jung Wooyoung, but you wouldn't dare to touch the burning subject of her love, as you could die in the agony, and there would be nothing left but ashes of your mistake. "Fine, you ass." you roll your eyes at her, maybe admitting to your obscure desires is a good step to believe in impossible. The weight of your insistent insecurity is tugging you down, but your desire to fly between the old friends, made in heaven where the clouds are the epitome of warm embrace is stronger. "I like San." you confess. "He said he likes me, when I was with him in the library, he confessed to me about his love, and the world suddenly started to overflow with it colors.  I want to try, but my insecurities are making it hard to believe, but we kissed-" Your voice is shakier and more broken than you’d ever thought it could be.

"Hey, don't. You need to understand that you are amazing." she cooes. "I'm not surprised he likes you, you have heart made of gold and personality who shines like the brightest gem in the world, everything about you screams perfect." her reassuring words, which soothe your strained nerves in pleasure of joy, as you nod in agreement are a reason behind your shy smile. Yeji is a great friend, you believe that the only reason you became best friends was the fact that you didn’t let her vanish into the sea of doubtness, when there was no one who would extend a helping hand to her lifeless body. "Give yourself some time and most importantly trust him, everyone deserve a chance."

Your romance is not like any other love story unless you consider painful longing to the point of self-destruction as normal occurrences, he demolishes your soul and paints the idea of spending more time with him into the world of unknown, because you are, once again, convinced that Choi San was born to mess with your heart. The idea of being devoted lovers, burns the unseen scars at the pit of your stomach, because it feels distant, but also so close within reach, it sounds unfeasible, but also so beautiful, as you think about his hot touches on your skin. You care for him deeply, he knows the struggle of being misjudged just based on the foolish decisions made in past, but everyone do mistakes, which leads to a irritating effects in the future, haunting us like the worst nightmare.

We need to understand that people aren't faultless. 

The longing picture of San's getting out of shackles of the rebel, sealed by his sins, drifts into the subconscious state of your mind like a dove of hope, letting you imagine to be the person, who is willing to help him and experience his transformation, it's fullfilling your senses. To dream about the future next to him, where kisses are laced with love, the passion and where fondly words of utter adoration are whispered in the deadly night is deadlier than anything else in this world. But you pray to God, promising to be a good cause of his wrongdoings, which will lead to his change, because no suffering like this would ever break him free. "You are right, thank you."

"We are friends, it's not a big deal. Now promise me, you will never doubt yourself again." 

"I promise." you smile.

You're deep lost in the meaningful conversation with Yeji to notice the flaming presence of San, whose delicate hand touches your fragile shoulder to get your attention on him, and you melt the moment his burning touch you. He smells like cotton candy, when he wasn't smoking, and his whole aura seems to brighten entirely at the prospect of your sparkling eyes on his, and you allow a giggle to slip past your, when his cherry lips grins at you in a toothy smile, the round cheeks after the meal makes him adorable, how can he be a personification of the devil. His red hair is styled back, showing perfectly his forehead and the intensity of his eyes, the charming dimples you grow to love don't ever disappoint to take away your breath. "Be at the library at 5PM, don't be late." His tone is soft and gentle and you decide, that you hate Choi San for making you fall so carelessly in love with him. He was gone, by the end of the bell sound, and his intoxicating scent also gone with him.

And the warmth, you are already missing.

"Good luck, (Y/N)." Yeji squeezes your arm, and make her way towards the next lecture.

The rest of the day went smoothly, sharing some classes with San doesn't help you with your studies, it's a poison to your grades, but an antidote for your lonliness, as the monotonous lecture with Mr. Kim is coming to an end soon. You chuckle at his little love letters, which he puts in your sweater pocket, most of them consists of a cheesy pickup lanes, like "For some reason, I was feeling a little off today. But when you came along, you definitely turned me on." and "Kiss me if I’m wrong, but dinosaurs still exist, right?" His hot breath on your neck, makes you shiver in a pleasure, when you sit in front of him, as you decide to abandon your pet's teacher seat in the displeasure of the scolding look of the lecturer, but you couldn't care less. "Come meet me at your locker." the last letter says, and you are introduced the state of euphoria.

The bell once again rings, not only signaling the end of the lecture, but also the rapid beating of your heart.

You turn around, exited to see his beautiful face, but you are slightly late, as he are already nowhere to be seen in the class along with his table partner Yunho, who reminds you of a big polar bear. Packing your belongings, you got a message form an unknown number, which shocks you to the core, "Don't trust him, he is not worth it." those words are driving you mad crazy. What the hell. You don't think much of it, but there is an empty feeling in your chest, as if a dark force settled down your stomach to bug out your day. Choi San has turned your life upside down and has brought you onto an edge that you enjoyed more than you cared to admit, it was too late to take a step back.

"Fuck this." you curse under your breath, exciting the class to look for San.

You take the steps, needed to arrive next to his strong figure, Yunho nowhere to be seen, and you offer him the bestest smile you can, perhaps, filled with every emotion you can't hide. The air around you is suffocating, he radiates an angelic glow, uncommon to him, you can't help but place a gentle kiss on his cheek, when he leanded nonchalantly against your locker, his shoulder relaxes visibly at your loving presence. San sends you a sly grin and tugs at the end of your blue sweater to draw you into his arms, eyes focused onto the sweet source of his happiness. "What was that for?" he pats the top of your head and places his hand on the small of your back, his actions are enough to make your heart stop beating, because his beauty defined by high cheekbones and dark arched eyebrows are the defenition of perfection. 

"I don't know." you splutter. "I suddenly got an urge to do it or maybe I wanted to prove to you about the theory of meteorite impact to the ground, which would kill all of the dinosaurs. " 

"Oh, why did you make me aware of death of dinosaurs, it's sad. Can you kiss me again to make my pain go away?"

"Kiddo." his forehead presses against yours, as you lean into him and press your lips against his ear, hands intertwined tightly and the scent still overwhelming. You place a fond kiss at the hem of his ear, whispering about sweet nothings, the boldness of your actions are enough to make him stiff in place, as you take your time to look at him, to drink in his perfect features. He’s sun kissed, you notice, and his lips are red and curved into a small smile. Choi San has turned your life upside down and has brought you onto an edge that you enjoyed more than you care to admit. "No more kisses." you laugh.

You pull away from him, and his bottom lip pops out, forming a pout and you have a strong desire to trace it with your fingers and your mouth like you did back then on the balcony, where the bright sun embodied your serene emotions. "I can always steal it, princess." he teases, and you break out into an easy grin, as he placed a chaste kiss at your soft lips.

"Let's go. I'm not in the mood to study anymore." 

"There is still one lesson ahead of us, San."

"So what? I want to spend rest of the day with my girlfriend. Now come on baby, don't make me beg you." 

He promised to make you fall in a twisted snares of love with him, his burning touches which ignites the fire will be the answer to your hopeless eyes, and he will prove the sincerity of his intentions, when you decide to run away with the knight in laether jacket to find the source of your happiness. There is no place for deep reflections, you want him to degrade you with his dark life, and to be a part of his kingdom, because ruling without the queen was already hard for him. The world can burn in noxious agony, if it means he would be there with your connected soul, holding you closely in a affectionate embrace, as your trembling hands finds way to his sharp face adorned with the most attractive smile.

"Fine, let's go." you mutter under your breath, and San lets out a quiet and triumphant yes slip from his lips, as he eagerly grabs your hand in his warm one, to assure you about the correctness of this choice and leads you to the courtyard, where his black motorbike is parked. 

Choi San is the love of your life, you decide, as you watch him, hand held tightly by him. San is everything you want and more, he is fullfilling your senses with wholesome ecstasy, you drink up his presence in the gleaming sun, a view satisfying like the miracle oasis in the middle of tropical desert. You look at him and smile. 

He is beautiful.

He attentively puts a helmet on your head, his face scrunch in concentration, his tongue pokes out of his mouth, when he was focused on protecting you from inevitable, he flashes you a dimple grin, which you return. "It will protect you. I hope you aren't afraid of speed." The thrilling feeling of adrenaline kicks in, as San's motor roars in the air like a obsessed mantra, your heart beating abruptly in your chest at the frantic sound. You are terrified, but the look of pacification on his blissful face, you long to is enough for you to hop into the embrace of death, hugging his calming back from behind. "Good girl."

The fast ride through the city with San reminds you of playing with fire, it could be a lethal weapon in the wrong hands, taking away your reckless life, when you handle it without proper caution. Life isn't beautiful without taking a risk, perhaps it's easier to put your faith in devil's sharp claws, than look for the light in angel's halo, because San's calming presence is enough for you to endure the feeling of frighten. He is aware of your trembling hands, you can't control, the swift breaths you take to soothe your racing nerves, while you melt into his figure to gain the courage, as he speeds up down the road. The destination is unknown to you, he hasn't metioned where he wish to take you, kissing you with the burning passion, holding you close in his arms till your worries of unrequited love vanish into the void, leaving a space for an attachment.

You trust San with the remaining strength in you, it isn't difficult, but you can't resist fluttering shut your eyes to ease the throbbing of your heart, you know nothing awful will happend to you, if he is here to remind you of his close proximity. "Baby, we are here. Open your pretty eyes, you can't miss the view." The ride came to an end when his divine voice comes out of his throat, the moment his yearning palms touch your gentle face to reveal you from the helmet, it's devastating for him, he can't let go of your pure smiles and soft chuckles at his sugared praises about your bravery. He is mesmerized by your angelic purity, the taste of blissful heaven never tasted so delectable at his tongue, as he molds your lips in a heated adventure between clouds. His intoxicating scent make you lightheaded, teeth clashing together in a messy battle of dominance and you let his lustful desires win, the low whimper escapes from his mouth. Believing in God is unnecessary for him, but believing in the miracles of blue paradise is right, because he could meet you.

The mesmerizing view of ocean absorbs your attention, it's beautiful, the sun is near to set and the colors of orange and red are visible in the sky, interwined together in a fierce dance to create a gorgeous convolution of emotions, where the stray souls would find the answer for their longing questions. San's head falls down into the crook of your neck, inhaling your sweet perfume, the smell he craves, his warm embrace on your waist grow in strength, as the cold breeze hit his back. He place another chaste kiss down your neck, your delicate hand is gripping at the red hair on top of his head, when your lips tremble at the close inticimaty, but he pulls away completely and you feel cold and empty, as he flashes you a sly grin. 

"I thought it would be nice to enjoy the sunset, while we will be busy making out like horny teenegers." San's glowing eyes forms the crescents, his sharp features softens in the vivid twilight, when he teases you, as he ruffles your hair with a precious laugh. He is uterrly beutiful in every way, you think, from the reflection of luminescent stars in his eyes, the freckles on his neck made of stardust, you yearn to explore with your desirable touch, to his flawlessly shaped waist, as it fits perfectly in your arms. But he is brighter than all stars above. "It was a joke of course, but it doesn't sounds so bad in my opinion." He flashes you a mischievous grin, eyes flaming as he stared you down with an interest.

You giggle, subtly pressing harder against him, the heat rolling off his body, he will be the death of you, but the state of limerence is amazing, you can't restrain from his charms, the God had taken his time with him, so why he had to banish him to the gates of hell? "You're gross." you flicker his forehead, smiling with adoration, when his face pouts a disappointment, a little whine escapes his mouth. Then you realize the God is awful, maybe San isn't uninfected with sins, he never prayed, but he tries to be good in his own, unique way. 

Because Choi San is open minded, the heavy curtains of the cruel world aren't enough to fool his divine eyes, and maybe you're dancing with the devil, but it doesn't frighten you. Being partly good is better than being artificial pure. San laid his leather jacket that smells like his cologne on your shoulders, as he sees you shivering under the circumstance of cold wind, his arms now exposed fully to you, the antic makes you blush and you throw him a sheepish smile to hide the cherry like flush. "No, just madly in love with you, princess." he takes out the cigarette from the back pocket of his jeans, lighting it up immediately, with a cunning smirk, it's the sin he is addicted to, the smoke surrounding him seems to embrace him gracefully.

The motorcycle seat beneath you is like a safe home to you, when still in place without the danger of speed, it's comforting you in every possible way, and his godly presence makes it even better, it's like the best antidote for solitude. "Are you always this smooth with your words?" you ask, biting your trembling lips, as his intense stare is burning holes on your redden face. He hums in dismiss, heart beating faster and faster as the seconds passed by. "Can I have one?" your breath hitches in your throat, when his large palms clutches your chin in a gentle touch. 

Choi San is the cause of the swarm of butterflies in your stomach.

"Can you be honest with me? Tell me, have you ever smoke?" he says, searching in your eyes for a genuine answer, but you can never lie to him, as the weight of the repulsiveun untruth is inordinately heavy, you couldn't carry it throught the life. 

"No."

"Then the answer is also no, angel." his delicate grip on you has loosened, as he lets go of your chin, brushing a strand of your hair behind your ear, and you whimper in his chest at the lose of his warmth. He doesn't fancy the idea of ​​you being addicted to the awful nicotine because of him, the deadly treat isn't worth losing your flawless purity, and for San you are a good girl made of pure porcelain, too fragile for this dark world. Good girls don't smoke. You clutch at his black shirt, as he lowers his head in order to move his lips to your cheek, while you inhale deeply his intoxicating scent and you’ve never felt more alive than you did then, in San's arms – the one boy who sets your heart in flames.

"But I want to try, please San. Let me, it will be my first and last time. I promise." you whine, the high hopes in your mind, because San can't resist your soft pleadings, as he is a slave of your angelic voice, but he doesn't mind as long, as you are his cause of rapid heartbeat. Truth to be told, both of you are too lost into the world of love, Choi San has committed to you, and you seal the deal with the devil itself, as you press an open mouthed kiss on his neck and then on his jaw, landing on his lips at the end. And yes, maybe it can bring the pain and sorrow, but the embrace of the devil is worth it.

He chuckles, and it’s low and throaty, his right hand ends up on your neck in a firm grip, leaving a trace of hell, which burns you alive. You aren't afraid of his crimes anymore, beacuse Choi San is the reason of the flowing sensation in your veins, as he pushes you harder into his body, taking a deep inxhale from the cigarette with the other hand. He molds together your plump lips in a sensual kiss, the other hand finds the way to your cheek, the metal cold rings on his fingers are sending you to overdive, as his mouth opens against yours and his tongue licks eagrly at the entrance of your lips. You give in to his burning touch, mouth feeling hot and a heavy, the sensation of fullness settles into the pit of your chest, as he kisses you harder and more urgent, exhaling the deathly smoke into your lungs. San is needy, but you don't mind, as your arms wrap around his neck, pulling him impossibly close. There’s no reason to hold back, you desire his proximaty and he desires yours, it's the definition of selling your soul to the bad side.

Your fingers reach for his hair, feeling the fluffiness of his locks, as San breaks the kiss, when the overflow of smoke in your mouth chokes you, and your hazy eyes still fixated on his swollen lips, which forms a cocky grin. "I can't believe you said it was your last, when you are looking at me like this, sweetheart." You struggle to breathe, as his hands cup your face in between them, rough fingertips rubbing circles into the skin, and you blush harder than you thought possible, when a low and guttural moan leaves the back of his throat. "Fuck, it's hard for me to restrain."

"Sorry."

The overwhelming weight of the intense battle, filled with lustful touches and hot kisses, leaves you hot-blooded, and you wish it would last longer, because San is the reason of your mad addiction and sins, which pulls you down into the hole of thirst. You don't regret giving up, the pit in your stomach deepens and your thoughts swirl around in your head like sweet promises, because you can see the love oozing in his chestnut eyes, and you swear you fell in love with him once again. San rests his forehead against your heart, the sound of your rapid heartbeat is like a beloved lullaby for him, cooing him to fall into the marvellous dreamland, but the gates to the underworld of Hades are watching him, proud of his actions, because you sinned, and the God will never forgive you, but if that means rotting in hell together with San, then it's alright to do so. You are sure that you can endure it, because Choi San is your medicine for pain.

"Don't be, it's my fault. I got too carried away, but I can't help it, you are driving me crazy." his fingers brush at the strands falling into your eyes and he presses another quick kiss onto your longing mouth. There is no air left in your lungs, and they burn with need yet you neglect them. "Do you like the place?" he flashes you a gentle smile, pushing up the jacket on you, which had slip when you were too engaged in each other mouths, and he moves away completly from you to let you see the breattaking view, as he stands next to you. It eases your neglected pain.

The beautiful place pulled straight out of a fairy tale, reminds you of the place, where you had spend most of your childhood, but you can't recognize it, as your memories are blurry. "Yes, I do!" you answer, looking at the sunset in awe. "I feel like I was here before, but I can't remember it." you sigh. "I have a feeling that I used to spend a lot of time here, coll-" you say in a daze, but San interrupts you with a unreadable grin, when you look his way, to see how the sun is glowing at his honey like skin, making him a untouchable piece of art, the messy hair stand on all sides from the previous actions, but he still looks saintly.

"Collecting the colorful sheels and screaming about the invisible fishes in the water, which would scare you to the bones?" he finishes the sentence for you, and you, quite simply put, forget how to breathe. San smiles a bright smile, pearly whites on display, and you see the glimmer of the orbs in his eyes. You blink at him in confusion. "Yeah, something like that, but how did you know?" you ask bewildered by his words.

"I was the kid with the blonde streak at the top of his head. Girls swooned over me, and I only had my eyes for a girl, who would smooch my bruises on knees, from falling too many times on the hard rocks near the shore." he chuckles, finally looking at you with beaming eyes full of adoration, the late realization hit you like a bolt from the heaven.

The story of you and Choi San didn't start the moment the saviour Seonghwa introduced him to you, but it started at the very beginning of the hot summer holiday, both of you were still an small mere imitaions of your parents, made of nothing, but the blank pages, who later would be neglected by your bad words and poor choices. You met him at the age of 12, he wasn’t the tallest, but he was endearing, when he walked confidently into the blazing sand, in his hands toys and a happy smile on his face. San had one desire back then, the childish one, to defeat everyone in the competiton of building the highest sand castle, and the prize was a date with the most beautiful girl on the beach, and yes you were her.

He succesfuly won the first place, after many devastating for a kid failures, but his motivation to win was more powerful, just like him today. In this young age boys grossed you out, they were noisy and disgusting, and they were talking only about games, but he was different, a little mysterious. You were under some sort of aura that managed to take your breath away even back then, when he was nothing more than a boy, who was raised by his granparents, with a stupid name "Shiber Choi", but he soon turned to be your best friend and that's how your two months teeneger crush, filled with nervewrecking adventures and deep conversation started.

"What? That was you, no fucking way, San! You were my first love, you asshole!" You flush in delight and raise on your tiptoes to press a lingering kiss to his mellow cheek, putting your hand over his heart. "I love you, San." You whisper quietly into his shirt, sound muffled by the fabric and you hope he hears you, especially now, that you are held by him so tightly. He hugs you tighter and kisses the top of your head, fingers coming to comb through the hair at the nape of your neck. 

Choi San is your first love and you hope to also be your last.

[inumaqi]

top ten tagged by @linkspooky 🍊 explanations under the cut! sorry for rambling xo → rules: name your top ten favourite characters from ten different fandoms, and then tag ten people - @osomanga @kara-suno @anonimarevolts @zeninmaki @wildbishonen @shysheeperz @tkmewthyou @kaldurlenn @joxterism @marshmallowdonutsprinkles

snufkin okay so he’s the only one not from an anime or manga but i had to put him on bc he’s the most important fictional character to me, ever. i grew up watching the moomin cartoons in the 90s and thinking about it instantly calms me down - they used to air the episodes early in the morning when it would still be dark outside: the landscapes were moody and cosy, the characters were so softly spoken and articulate... it’s just peak nostalgia. anyway, snufkin is moomin’s best friend; he returns to moominvalley every year to be with his friends during the spring and says his goodbyes to go adventure again come winter. it upsets moomin when he leaves but snufkin is adamant that quiet and solitude are important and healthy, and it’s not fair to expect him to compromise on his independence - that made a really big impact on me as a kid, especially as someone who never really had their ‘own’ space (twinsies). relationships aren’t weakened by physical distance or time, they’re about communication and understanding. that was important too. i don’t think i realised just how influential it had been until i was an adult but snufkin is an anarchist. he first shows up in the comics when moomin and sniff are talking about opening a bank - he tells them they should plant fruit trees instead. he destroys private property and rescues orphans, he refuses to participate in things that don’t bring him joy. when he’s asked where home is, he replies, “nowhere. or everywhere! it depends how you look at it” - the whole world belongs to him, and the whole world belongs to everyone else too.

yomo renji in general, i like characters that trudge along in the background and do the nitty-gritty work that supports the main story. i like people like that irl too. more than anything else, yomo is desperate to form human connections, even though he’s shackled by self-doubt and self-loathing. he just wants to positively contribute to a community, thinking he’s most useful keeping a quiet eye on people who might need protection/guidance (while still giving them space to grow and act themselves) or foraging for human corpses so that others aren’t in danger or moral anguish doing it for themselves.

bird boy is a total weapon - “the perfect ghoul” - and you’re reminded over and over again but a lot of his growth is about rejecting violence and repurposing his power as something productive that he can use to help the people around him instead of hurting people (the yang to uta’s yin). in the first few chapters, he says he kills humans (he’s a ghoul, humans are food, it’s natural) and yet he’s consistently framed as a scavenger who seeks out ‘roadkill’ [suicide victims] for sustenance, even before coming to anteiku, and implements a system so other people can do the same.

suguru getou i was originally gonna say meg bc i love him but, having just finished The Flashback Arc, i can’t stop thinking about getou and i’m beyond impressed with how akutami has managed to ground him so well, so sympathetically. getou is the sick, warped darkness to the hopeful light that gojou commands but... in an uncomfortable twist, the reverse is true, kind of.

actually, gojou is arrogant and confrontational and hyper individualistic. he’s a dissident. getou is obedient, compassionate, self-aware... he has a sense of social responsibility and passionately believes that his skills should be used to protect those who can’t protect themselves - non-jujutsu sorcerers - and all of the suffering he endures as a result is worth that. idk if others are reading his downfall differently but, from where i’m standing, that overwhelming responsibility never goes away, he doesn’t give up on it - he just starts to view the social landscape differently and begins to see how jujutsu sorcerers are vilified and mistreated in spite of all the good that they do. the ‘weak’ aren’t really weak when they’re able to organise and assert collective power over a minority, and so his sympathies shift.

the nail in the coffin for getou is learning that the hurt and pain could be eradicted from the world by cutting the head of the proverbial snake: non-jujutsu users generate cursed energy, so get rid of non-jujutsu users and cursed energy won’t be generated. it’s all horribly, weirdly rooted in good intentions that weigh him down and misdirect him.  shinazugawa genya i feel like the bond that slowly starts to develop betwen tanjirou, and zenitsu and inosuke (in particular) is nicely foiled by genya’s lonely journey towards becoming a pillar. after losing almost all of his family and having sanemi walk away, genya is angry, antisocial, rude, violent, evasive...

he’s characterised as competitive, as if he hates his peers and wants to leave them in the dust as an act of self-satisfaction, a power fantasy or whenever, but this is a deliberate misdirection to cover for the fact that he’s scrambling to be a pillar so that he can reconnect with his brother and prove to him that he can protect himself; that sanemi doesn’t need to shoulder everything alone like he used to. his entire goal is an act of apology.

and in a story where so many characters are able to hone these exceptional skills, genya is uniquely disadvantaged as the only one who can’t master breathing techniques. rather than having a hero moment and powering up, his need to reconnect with sanemi is so strong that he essentially decides to compromise his humanity and become a kind of monster by ingesting the demons he’s pledged to annihilate. amajiki tamaki i wish i had a a longer explanation for this one but it’s actually super simple: tamaki is a really, really, really good portrayal of a person burdened with severe anxiety. the way he physically carries himself, the way he hides his face, his manner of speaking, his dependency on his mirio, how he interprets compliments as trickery, how he needs to be pushed and pushed and pushed before he’s finally able to release his potential... every single scene with tamaki felt deeply personal when i was reading bnha and i knew exactly what he was supposed to be feeling. shinmon benimaru sometimes good, nice people don’t fit a little friendly mould and i like that benimaru is hostile and rough and antisocial, even with people he cares about. he doesn’t expect anything of people, he doesn’t want them interfering with him, and he wants to help and support them all the same because he believes in community. he’s completely oppositional to the special fire force because he thinks it’s a tool to pursue an ideology rather than to protect people, which is why it’s so important when the eighth are finally able to win his approval - they become the only company the seventh consider allies, and it’s proof that their objectives are righteous. despite his reputation as... kind of a nuisance, his skill is acknowledged by everyone and he’s universally regarded as the strongest fire soldier there is. in spite of his antisocial attitude, he agrees that it’s important to share that with younger fire soldiers - he’s incredibly patient and understanding with them, helps them to individually adapt. the way he (and others in company seven) operate in contrast to the other companies when fighting infernals is really cool to me for two reasons: (1) it provides a commentary on how cultures and traditions often struggle to survive when they’re systematically (forcefully) replaced through power and wealth - although the subtext is a little troubling because it’s unclear whether ōkubo is conflating multiculturalism with globalisation which, uh, big nope; and (2) philosophically speaking, the approach to death is interesting. where the other companies essentially perform last rites and offer absolution to the deceased, benimaru personally takes responsibility - at the request of the people in his district - for sending them off in huge public display, kind of like a festival intending to celebrate their life. i think it speaks to how profoundly he values life. akihiko kaji i liked akihiko from the beginning because he’s stoic and introspective and also excitable and dumb. he’s a people watcher and waits for opportunities to softly guide uenoyama and mafuyu when they’re quietly crying out for help but doesn’t interfere any more than he thinks is necessary because he knows they can make their own way to where they need to go. i liked akihiko even more when he got really fucking messy. his relationship with ugetsu is sweet and it’s incredibly ugly and unhealthy because they both fail utterly to communicate with one another - they’re both to blame for avoiding and hurting each other, and i think that’s a really normal issue that people find difficult to overcome. i’m super interested (and really nervous) to see how his relationship with haruki develops. he’s done some horrible things to haruki and i want him to be accountable for those things and have them affect their relationship in a realistic way.

tanigaki genjirou one thing i really, really love about golden kamuy is the way noda satoru incorporates the importance of minority cultures into the story, and tanigaki’s apparent abandonment of his matagi heritage is really beautifully written. matagi hunting traditions shaped his life as a young man, it’s how he was able to really assimilate to the people around him and form relationships and - without getting too spoilery - he divorces himself from it all when he’s overcome by grief and hatches a plan for revenge against the person responsible. so, by allowing himself to surrender to negative feelings and thoughts instead of seeking support and learning to heal from what happened, he becomes a total shadow of himself. 

makimura takeshi i know i’ve gushed about it before but i can’t properly explain just how incredible it felt seeing an asexual character in manga dialogue about being asexual, and devils’ line does it twice. the reason i’m so attached to makimura in particular is because he doesn’t seem to have fully figured it out - and he’s kinda... comfortable with that. he wants to be with someone and he wants to be monogamous but he can’t understand why he doesn’t feel sexual desire towards her; he knows his feelings aren’t platonic but doesn’t know whether they can really be called romantic either.

not to go dark mode but i very vividly remember just how lonely and horrifying it was battling with those uncertainties when i was a teenager, thinking i was broken because i didn’t have Normal Human Feelings and needed to be fixed. i was so worried about it that i thought about all the boys i knew, picked the one i thought was the nicest and actively tried to develop a crush on him. it was dumb as fuck but, ten years later, i realise it was really desperate and sad too. i forced myself to have ~my first kiss~ (it was horrible) because i felt like i was getting left behind and i think i would’ve put myself in worse situations as i got older if i hadn’t suffered with such bad social anxiety.

i hadn’t really thought too much about a lot of this stuff for yeaaars but it all came flooding back when i was reading devils’ line. it was bittersweet bc i was remembering all of those shitty feelings but also watching this character grapple with those same questions and go: i don’t know yet and that’s not weird, let’s just grow with it. i still don’t totally know whether i’m ace or aro or bi, or whatever, but i’m trying to be okay with just... not knowing.

misora shuuji anyway, devils’ line isn’t actually a manga with a specific focus on sexuality and gender but shimanami tasogare is and all of the characters are written beautifully. if you haven’t read it yet... then why haven’t you read it yet? misora is only about twelve years old and watching them battle with their growing pains is really compelling - they’re closeted but, through the lounge, they have somewhere to explore their gender and all the questions they have about it. they’re amab and present as traditionally feminine wrt clothes, wigs, makeup, etc. but can’t quite tell if they see themselves as a girl, a boy or non-binary.

with the onset of puberty and anxieties about physical changes to their body, misora’s story puts a lot of emphasis on the pressure they face to just ‘make up their mind’ about something that’s actually incredibly complex and doesn’t have any easy answers. they snap and shout and get upset, especially when tasuku (the protag) tries to push them into a corner because he wants a concrete label or identity he can attach to misora, even though space is exactly what misora needs.