#this is just a fake choice with no consequence and nothing to reward me for choosing the other option

[aparticularbandit]

Okay. Gonna make a small complaint here. But like - one of things I really don't like in games is when they give me a choice that isn't a choice. Like, I'm used to it in Pokemon, cool, great, whatever.

But like. When you give me a choice to tell Kirigiri about Sakura or not. I expect to be allowed to tell her when I want to tell her. Instead of being given the exact same dialogue Makoto gave me before I clicked Tell her. Like - even Pokemon usually gives me different flavor text when I pick the answer it doesn't want me to pick.

C'mon, Danganronpa.

If it isn't a choice and there's not any additional info for picking the wrong choice in this situation, then don't give me the choice. It's frustrating either way.

[jacksprostate]

me and @a-forsteri were talking about how the narrator like, desperately wants someone to tell him his life is fucked up, what he does is fucked up, he desperately wants someone to respond with the gravity he desires.

Like, he tells these people on the plane what he does. Trying to fuck with them. Desperately hoping!! One of them will go: holy shit!!! That's really fucked up how do you live with that!!! But all he gets is people thinking he's the freak and just asking what car company he works for. Because it is easier to pretend he himself is the problem, maybe just his company, rather than actually face and recognize the systemic, widespread nature of what he's saying.

It leans together with his sense of where he is in his office, too. He feels separate from all these people. They feel fake. They feel like people going on as normal even though they're all working to hasten the apocalypse, and no one acknowledges it! They're all perfectly happy to turn a blind eye to any of the distant consequences of their actions. That is what their jobs are for. Keep them up in the cubicles, nicely fed and watered with inflated salaries, and then they'll have no issue with the distant sense that they may be contributing to a corrupt system. They can't change the system, but they need to feed their kids, so hell, just don't think about it too much.

But he doesn't have that option. He is the one who actually does go out into the field and he sees the direct result of all of their collective actions, but especially his. Every crash related to a faulty part he sees is because someone like him before him, or him himself, ran the formula and let this happen. He has no choice but to see the very real result of his actions.

And he feels INSANE over it. Because he returns to the office and it's just numbers. Applying the formula. Hearing your coworkers chat about a potluck. You're not contributing to a horrific system, you ARE the horrific system, and it's like you're the only one who sees that. He literally cannot sleep over it.

And when you tell people about it, they try to minimize it. To your company, to you. Because that is easier than acknowledging just how many things have to be corrupt and uncaring of human life to allow this to be the case. It's too much. Stick your head in the sand.

He desperarely wants someone to scream at him: how could you do that? How could anyone do that? Why is this allowed to happen? Doesn't anyone see something wrong here?

He imagines his plane crashing. Free him from this. The burden of every piece of normality manufactured for satiating any thought and discomfort he has about his job. It's all petty, pointless fluff. It's putting some artificial grass on the feedlot. Why does everything and everyone say it's all worth it for this garbage?

He wants someone to tell him all this. He doesn't want to be alone. He already feels catastrophically alone. In his life, whenever he talks about this, whenever he does anything. He loves the support groups because you're allowed to have abject misery there. You rejoice in it. Everyone's life is falling apart and ending and nothing means anything good ever. They're all honest about it, too. He plays coy when he talks about his job, but these people, everyone knows they're falling apart, and it's recognized and treated as the horror it is. This is freedom. Hitting bottom is freedom.

But he's supposed to be happy, because he's got his cushy little IKEA nest. It is only when people think he also has cancer and parasites causing his deep dissociation from his own life and general aura of resentment and misery that it's treated as something that isn't just... an individual flaw. Because it's easier for there to be something wrong with him than for that thing wrong with him to be how society makes him be this way. Rewards him for it.

So he invents someone. Tyler. To stop his little dance. To interrupt him. Drag him away and tell him all those little sundries are meaningless. Like he knows. But now he has someone saying it's true. The world IS falling apart. Everything is fucked up. It's everything he knows and has been too cowardly to say and now he finally has someone to say it for him and push to make some changes in his life. To expect him to actually do something. To feel his rage for him. And it's a catch-22, because a large part of what he hates about himself is that he's too cowardly and noncommittal to just do this all on his own.

[once-vel]

copy-pasted from my cohost. i have been doing some thinking and i thought to myself "what if zakri had dealt with the whole prophet deal better?" and i have come to the conclusion that he kills more people

under the cut because it's loooong.

instead of going through a hell of a years long emotional rollarcoaster he makes the connection of "if i say no velzie will just find another way to get me to do it, or they will make someone else do it, no chance in hell it would be that easy to circumvent all of this. plus there could be unimaginable consequences if i piss off velzie by saying no. so... no point in fighting, i guess" and starts working on being like, okay with it from the get go. except this time he actually gets somewhere with it. coming to terms with and accepting your very terrible fate speedrun

one difference between this timeline and the main timeline is his demeanor is entirely different. the emotional rollercoaster does not happen so his personality never really changes. he stays genuinely gentle and charismatic. he never adopts the rude and mean persona because. well what's the point? being generally likable is convenient. also something something "well i am going to do/have already done enough awful things, may as well be kind to those i can"

now i did say he kills more people. what better way to come to terms with your fate of god telling you to do things like this than, well, getting comfortable with hurting people? he sure would rather not be doing this but well gotta get it done somehow. it's pretty much always carefully planned and indirect, though. sucks! but whatever. you do what you gotta do. notably, he still becomes a surface runner, and the person he gets killed dies the same way, but in this timeline it was more intentional. hence why it doesn't Completely Shatter Him in this timeline.

anyway then collapse happens and the thing with unnamed kiv goes different. he wouldn't even slightly bother with getting them indirectly killed, no he does that shit directly and he does it without flinching. knew he'd have to do this and has already forced himself to comprehend how real everything is, so? just part of the job. something something "why are you doing this?? you used to be so kind..!" / "oh, if you knew why i was doing this, you would understand i am being as kind as i can"

he definitely would really absolutely rather not be doing all this but he's been much more successful at forcibly repressing every single feeling like that here, so. he also gets a little bit sadistic after a while (he is aware of this and has intentionally worked to make it worse). don't worry about it

also while he didn't have concrete proof he would die this timeline, i feel he would have been able to go "hm, my visions cut off after a certain point. i would not be surprised if velzie just decided to kill me at some point". and who knows? maybe this is one of the few timelines where he is allowed to truly survive. maybe velzie took his loyalty and rewarded it. not like it matters either way as this timeline never happens anyway. sure his loyalty is fun but it's nothing compared to making him suffer the whole time

i want to emphasize again that even in this route he's not like... horrible and evil. i mean he sure has done a lot more wrong in this timeline but it was still ultimately because velzie went "look at these horrible things im going to make you to" and he went "damn if velzie is telling me this then i probably dont get a choice. might as well make it easy on myself and fuck myself up in advance" and got to work. and he's kind here!! his kindness is genuine! he's not faking it! he genuinely wants the best for everyone. it's just that, you know, gestures to velzie

as with all other alternate universes/timelines though this is completely noncanon. i call this specific variety of timeline "what... could have been..?" (question marks included)

[mindmeltonabun-blog]

Doom At Your Service: Analysis & Theories for EPs 9-10

Anyone mentally exhausted from watching DAYS? Well, you’ve come to the right place where I do the thinking for you, so you don’t have to! As always, if you have any questions, feel free to click on the ask question button! Happy Readings !

The Contract Revisited

While reviewing the contract, I realized there was something major that I had completely missed! Anyways let’s go over the contract again to clear up some confusion.

The Contract is as follows:

1) Dong Kyung must ask for Myul Mang to destroy the world before she dies (It could be rephrased as Dong Kyung must ask for Myul Mang to destroy the world before her tentative expiration date)

2) During Dong Kyung’s last 100 days, Myul Mang will prevent her from feeling any pain

3) Myul Mang has to grant her one real wish

4) If Dong Kyung breaks the contract (does not wish for the world to be destroyed) then the person she loves the most will die

If Dong Kyung does not violate the contract as in she wishes for the world to be destroyed, the person she loves dies anyways because you know.... the world is non existent. If Dong Kyung does violate the contract, meaning she does not wish for the world to be destroyed, the person she loves dies too because her doom is transferred to them. Some have also wondered whether she can has to ask for the world to be destroyed in order to get her one real wish to be granted. In my opinion, I don't think so. I think she can still get her one real wish to be granted regardless of whether she wishes for doom upon the world or not. Other things to note is that nothing will happen to Myul Mang if he does not stick to the terms of the contract (i.e keeps Dong Kyung pain free and granting her one real wish) because as Dong Kyung said "If I violate" not "If either you or I violate".

Now something to pay close attention to is #4. In Ep 2, Myul Mang had said he would take Dong Kyung’s doom (brain cancer) and transfer it to someone she loves. This is the part I missed! I’d thought that all Myul Mang was doing was transferring the death that was meant for her, not that he was actually removing her source of death which was her brain cancer. Therefore, if Dong Kyung breaks the contract, she will live because her brain cancer is removed and is subsequently transferred into the person she loves, causing them to die instead. I feel incredibly stupid for missing this important piece of info. In light of this new info, I will therefore retract my previous theory that Dong Kyung’s one wish will be to cure her brain cancer.

For those who were confused by that scene of Dong Kyung going to the beach and staying away from everyone, here are my thoughts on that. Dong Kyung was trying to find a loophole. The loophole was that she was planning on violating the contract while protecting the people she loves. This means that Dong Kyung was planning on ending herself at the beach (you can't wish for doom upon the world if you're already dead) and accepting her doom (her doom can't be transferred to anyone else because she accepts it in herself).

Who’s Going to Get Dong Kyung’s Brain Cancer and Die?

I recently had a eureka moment a few days ago before Eps 9-10 aired that led me to formulating a new theory -- it's actually Dora who will inherit Dong Kyung’s brain cancer and die. Let’s think through some things first, “the person you love the most will die”. The most obvious choice is Myul Mang. However, if you think about that statement in a more abstract way, you can see that if Dong Kyung loves her life, then the person who will die is Dora. Remember that Dora is basically the personification of life.

To further add evidence that supports this theory, I present to you Exhibit A, Dora’s massive nosebleed. We know Dong Kyung has a rare type of brain cancer and it’s located in her frontal lobe. As days pass, the brain tumor is growing or metastasizing. In theory, the tumor could grow into nearby areas such as her nasal cavity and cause Dong Kyung to have nose bleeds (FYI: In real life, I’m a scientist with experience in the field of oncology and most of the time brain tumors don’t grow outside of the brain. It can happen, but it is very rare!). Now, think about the events that occurred before Dora's nose bleed. For example, Dong Kyung was out and about enjoying her time with Myul Mang and her family and friends. Essentially, Dong Kyung was beginning to love her life. This causes Dora to suffer because she is taking in Dong Kyung's illness into herself. Subsequently, this leads to Dora experiencing some of the symptoms of Dong Kyung's brain cancer (e.g nose bleed). Thus, as Dong Kyung is beginning to live, Dora is beginning to die.

Exhibit B: Adventures of Pinocchio. At the end of the story, the Fairy (Dora) heals an ailing Geppetto (Dong Kyung) as a reward for Pinocchio (Myul Mang) becoming a good boy. Following this, we don’t hear much about what happens to the Fairy except that she’s in laying in a hospital on the verge of death. It is implied that in order to heal Geppetto, the Fairy had to take his illness into herself. Afterall, nothing is without consequences, someone must pay so that others can be happy. Much like the story of Pinocchio, Dora is doing the same thing as the Fairy. Dora is taking in Dong Kyung’s illness so that Dong Kyung can freely love her son, Myul Mang, without consequences (e.g Myul Mang dying).

Exhibit C: Dong Kyung walking around like she didn’t have brain cancer while in seclusion. You would think that since she didn’t see Myul Mang to recharge, she would be experiencing some severe symptoms, but nope she was walking around as if she was cured! I wonder where her cancer went.......DORA!

Exhibit D: Dora telling Dong Kyung to be madly in love and live. Basically Dora saying, "Love my son and live, don't worry about your brain cancer or him dying because I'm taking care of it."

Why Dora Didn't Want Myul Mang To See Her

For those wondering why Dora didn’t want Myul Mang to see her, here are my two cents. One explanation is that Dora probably didn’t want him to figure out that she was inheriting Dong Kyung’s brain cancer. It would’ve made him feel guilty to see that his mother was willing to take on even more pain just so he could be happy. Another explanation is that Myul Mang still has a lot of growing up to do (to become human). Dora didn’t want him to get the idea that he’s out of the clear just yet. Meaning if Myul Mang had found out that Dora was doing this for him then he would’ve thought life was a breeze now and have no further motivations to want to grow, thus ruining Dora’s plan for him (to grow up to become a good human). There’s no better motivation to make someone grow than the thought of their love ones dying.

Final Theory on Dong Kyung’s Wish

In my previous post, I had discussed that without knowing the limits of what one could or could not wish for, it was difficult for me to accurately predict what Dong Kyung’s wish would be. However, in this week’s episode, I was finally given the limits: the wish must be a wish that is doom in nature. I thought to myself, what could be a good thing to end? Oh, that’s right, Myul Mang’s immorality. Dong Kyung must say “I wish for your immortal life to end” or something along those lines. The combination of Dong Kyung’s wish + Myul Mang’s willingness to sacrifice himself for her + Dora’s plant = the rebirth of Myul Mang into a real boy....oops I mean real hu-man.

The Ending of DAYS

So, what kind of ending will DAYS have? Prepare yourselves. I think it’s going to be a bittersweet ending because it goes with the one of the main themes DAYS which is dualism. I think Myul Mang will be reborn as a human, but still have his doom responsibilities (so more like a fake human). He will probably end up becoming like Dora in the sense that he gets to experience the cycle of life and death over an infinite amount of time. Dong Kyung won’t be reborn in his next life cycle (remember Myul Mang tells that crazy lady there’s no afterlife; humans only have this one life). I guess the notion that the love he and Dong Kyung share will always be with him and forever serve as a shining beacon even in his loneliest days is sweet, but still I want a happy ending!!!

Now excuse my language, but to hell with dualism and what is logical! I want a happy ending where Myul Mang becomes human, lives with Dong Kyung, and when he dies that’s it. No coming back to doing his doom job in a different life. Dora can create another herald of doom. Dora did it once before and she could do it again lol. Or if Myul Mang must come back in a different life, at least allow Dong Kyung to be reborn at the same time. I mean you can grow the same plant again…. EVER HEARD OF PROPROGATION DORA?!! Metaphorically speaking, if Dong Kyung is a sunflower, then wait until she dies, harvest her seeds and grow her again…. it’s that simple Dora!!!

Some Thoughts on the Writer of DAYS

The writer (Im Meari) of DAYS is at best, pretentious and at worst, derivative. She’s more or less just rehashing the works of other great philosophers (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Deleuze, etc). She presents DAYS as a collection of major philosophical concepts with the intention to differentiate herself from that of other kdramas writers. She goes onto placing great stress on the idea that in order to innovate or bring about a new beginning, one must deviate from the norm, yet she herself does not diverge from the ideas of other philosophers. She does not present any philosophy of her own. In this aspect, she is a hypocrite to the very ideas she tries to preach. Oh well, to each their own. Who knows, maybe my opinion of Im Meari will change by the end of the series. Anyways, I’m still here for the romance between the actors and actresses and solving mysteries!

Ep 11 Preview Predictions

Here are my predictions for Ep 11 based off of the preview, they may or may not be correct !

Dong Kyung takes back the bracelet from Myul Mang after their conversation on the beach. Honestly, I’m growing tired of this whole giving/taking the bracelet type situation lol.

Dong Kyung enjoys a nice vacation with Myul Mang on Jeju island.

Dong Kyung returns from the vacation because she finds out that her aunt is sick (probably from worrying about Dong Kyung). Dong Kyung beats herself up about it.

Dong Kyung is sick again (probably from hating life...remember that I had theorized that the more Dong Kyung loves her life, the sicker Dora will be become) and Myul Mang in his desperation pleads with Dora to help him, but Dora’s version of helping him is to …. surprise surprise… teach him another lesson. The lesson is that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side and that Myul Mang and Dong Kyung complete each other for the better. Dora shows Myul Mang what their lives would've been like if they had never existed in each other’s lives.

Dong Kyung having never experience any kind of suffering would live a healthy life but become the most unappreciative and spoiled person ever. She may go on to finding that life was pretty meaningless and would want to put an end to it all. And Myul Mang having never met Dong Kyung wouldn't have any motivation or desire to grow as a person and so he would remain stagnant. And who knows… maybe at some point, that Myul would’ve became so angry with humans that he would personally go around killing every last one of them.

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

and here I am squeaking in juuuuust under the wire with a ficlet for @lokibingo, written for the square “Very bold of you to assume that you know anything about me.”

this is a promise with a catch (Loki & Sylvie, 952 words, start of episode 6) Rating: general Warnings: minor references to Bad Stuff With Thanos, references to canonical character deaths Summary: In the Citadel at the End of Time, Loki considers the offer from Miss Minutes and He Who Remains. He can't not. The words thrum over and over again in his mind: You can kill Thanos, so simply and easily, as if the suggestion alone doesn’t feel like a punch to the gut.

“It’s crazy,” Miss Minutes says, which is quite possibly the most honest thing Loki’s ever heard her say, “but he could make it work. All of it. Everything. Exactly the way you’ve always wanted. And you can have it all, together.”

You have no idea what we want, Loki almost says—a reflex, and not an entirely accurate one. Of course she knows enough to get close, because the TVA does too, even if they don’t fully understand.

“It’s fiction,” Sylvie says firmly. She doesn’t seem very tempted, and Loki can’t blame her. Miss Minutes has no truly attractive offer for her, after all—she would have to make the conscious choice to overwrite all her memories with false ones, even assuming they could do it well enough and seamlessly enough that she wouldn’t doubt her new memories later. She would still know, in the moment she agreed, that she was choosing a pretty lie.

The offer to Loki, on the other hand…

He thinks about it. He can’t not. His mind has always been like this, flicking through possibilities, playing out scenarios, weighing his options even when he knows some of them are unacceptable (although his definition of “unacceptable” has gone back and forth quite a bit, lately). And in this case of course he is tempted, because—

The words thrum over and over again in his mind: You can kill Thanos, so simply and easily, as if the suggestion alone doesn’t feel like a punch to the gut. Forget the Avengers; self-righteous as they are, they were never his true enemies, which Miss Minutes would recognize if she took two seconds to look past some of the assumptions in his TVA files. If he could actually end Thanos, somehow, with or without the Infinity Gauntlet—take a little bit of revenge, yes, but more importantly stop the Titan from hurting or killing anyone ever again—

He could save everyone. He could return to Asgard a hero—even Midgard might forgive him, if he could prove Thanos had sent him. With the Gauntlet he could fix most of the problems ravaging their planet, and then they might well call him a hero too. He could protect Asgard from the Dark Elves—from everything, probably. Save his mother. Save his father, maybe, if that part isn’t an inevitable consequence of Odin’s age, and even then Loki would have those years, to do what he could to…have a family again. He could prevent Ragnarok, even, if the TVA allowed it—and why wouldn’t they, if they were really willing to change the Sacred Timeline for him in the first place? He couldn’t prove what Thanos meant to do with the Infinity Stones, maybe, so the universe’s inhabitants might not know that he’d saved fully half their number—but he would know, he would be responsible for preventing death on a truly cosmic scale, and that would matter.

And Sylvie, even if she couldn’t bring herself to accept a lifetime of happy memories while knowing they were fake—she could live, if he convinced her to agree to the rest of it. Stop running, stop hiding, go back to Asgard, have the next best thing to her own family back again.

He could save everyone.

…except, of course, that isn’t the bargain, not really. The reward is an illusion, even if the TVA’s ruler somehow keeps every single promise, even if that promise involves allowing them to forget the TVA’s existence. Loki would have to make his decision, fully knowing in that moment that he was making himself complicit in the continued existence of the organization that strips free will from everyone in the universe and regularly destroys numberless lives to do it. He could tell himself it was better than the alternative and he might even be right, if their claims about devastating multiversal war are true. He is a prince, after all (and, very briefly, a king), one who grew up understanding the value of pragmatism. He is still practical enough, he thinks, to choose the lesser evil, if better options really do not exist.

But he doesn’t know. He has nothing except propaganda and a temptation from the same (deeply unsettling) source—and giving in to the temptation would make him little better than Thanos, with all his lies to himself that the destruction of half the universe was necessary to save the half left behind.

Well. Maybe more than a little. Even in his relatively short time on Sanctuary, Loki came to know Thanos well enough to be confident that the Titan’s motivations were no more than self-serving lies to hide even from himself the truth that he wanted the universe to suffer, that it made him feel powerful to cause pain.

(For just a second he imagines Mobius interrogating Thanos and wants to laugh, even though it isn’t really funny. It’s been that kind of day. Or week, or year, or…whatever.)

If the threat of multiversal war is real, if the constant sacrifice of variants and everyone unlucky enough to be in their vicinity truly prevents more suffering than it causes—even then, it is still an evil thing to choose. And if he chooses it now without that certain knowledge, knowing that he is sacrificing countless variants of, quite possibly, everyone who has ever existed and choosing to do so purely for the sake of his own happiness and that of the people he loves—

Better than Thanos, yes. But not by much. Not by enough to live with it.

He exhales. “We write our own destiny now.”

“Oh, sure you do,” Miss Minutes says. “Good luck with that.”

Norns, he hopes he’s right this time.

[alexthemagicaldevil]

Of Medea, Jason, and Other Tragedies

Some of you might remember a post I made a little while ago comparing how Quackity and Technoblade fit into the lore of the DSMP. Here are my thoughts via a 3k words of angst:

Read it on AO3

There was nothing left of L’Manburg.

It was something universally understood and known. Something that was never questioned. Something that everyone just accepted so that they could move on and not think about the nation that had too many traitors, too many broken promises, too many memories. It was something that everyone thought they believed so that they wouldn’t go looking for little pieces left behind, pieces that miraculously survived the desimation.

But Quackity knew the truth. Those little pieces could be found without looking too hard, whether it be in the fractured relationships of the SMP or the physical evidence that managed to not become ash at the bottom of a crater. And Quackity, well, he held both of those pieces in the palms of his hands.

In one hand, he held the souls of those fractured by L’Manburg’s memory. Fundy and his desperate need of a stable family, with a past scarred by a father that went mad and nightmares that haunt his waking actions. Sam and his futile attempts at control, gradually being poisoned as he pushes everyone away and tries to single handedly keep the server’s god locked in his own prison. Purpled and his lack of legacy, even in a place he so heavily influenced and his skills so valued yet so dismissed. Foolish and his beautiful builds and broken heart, running away from his destructive past and wanting peace despite the possibility of godhood sitting at his fingertips.

In the other hand, Quackity held a poster, one of the last remaining remnants of the place he had once fiercely declared home. He has no idea how it survived. Most of the physical pieces of L’Manburg that could be found were sections of buildings just far enough away from the explosions, items in random chests, or whatever was on the citizens at the time. Yet somehow, through all the fire and TNT, this poster had survived.

Technoblade. Wanted dead or alive.

Quackity had found it relatively soon after Doomsday, wandering around the crater where L’Manburg once stood. It was slightly singed on the edges and an entire corner was gone, but there it was, lying on the ground innocently, Technoblade’s mocking eyes staring at him with something like satisfaction.

He should have left the thing there. It would have eventually faded away like the rest of L’Manburg with enough time under the elements. Or maybe he should have burned it and forgot it was there in the first place. Whatever he should have done, picking it up, carefully folding it, and stuffing it into his back pocket was definitely not it. But he did. And it stayed with him for a long time.

At first, it was just there, a burning reminder in his back pocket of all he failed to do and what he promised to accomplish. It was there as he built Las Nevadas from the ground up, barely noticeable besides the constant nagging reminder in the back of his thoughts. It was there when he hired Purpled and Technoblade to take care of the Eggpire that had gone on for far too long, growing heavier and heavier each time the Blood God looked at him. It was there when he found out about Kinoko Kingdom for the first time, how the only three people he thought he could trust, the reasons he built Las Nevadas in the first place, left him behind without a second thought.

(The poster didn’t feel heavy then, but it did feel like it was laughing at him. Low and monotone, coming from deep within his memories.

The poster didn’t feel heavy then, but the two rings threaded through a chain around his neck did. They felt like shackles threatening to weigh him down and drown him.

Quackity removed the rings and hid them in a chest after that. Somehow, though, they still felt suffocating).

The poster was there for everything, tucked away in his back pocket, even when he began recruiting members for Las Nevadas. Through Foolish and Fundy, Purpled and Sam, and even through Slime. It knew everything, Quackity would find himself thinking. Of course, there was no way for a poster to know anything, but it didn’t stop the thought.

It wasn’t until after Wilbur visited him with Tommy after his revival (and so many memories of Pogtopia) that he finally took the poster out of his pocket. He was alone at the time (as he always is these days, it feels like, even surrounded by other beings) and in his unfinished casino. Sam had left nearly an hour ago to continue his duties as the Warden at the prison. The echoes of their conversation reverberated through Quackity’s mind.

Technoblade is going to the prison to see Dream tomorrow, he remembers saying. I trust you know what you have to do.

Of course, Sam had replied, the intense green of his eyes sparking in the dim lighting of the casino. You’ve done your part. Now I’ll do mine.

Quackity stared at the glass of whiskey in his hand. It had always Schlatt’s drink of choice, when he was still breathing. The smell reminded Quackity of the long nights he spent as Vice-President to a man barely sober enough to stand, let alone run a country. How many times had he put the smallest amount of poison in Schlatt’s drink, hoping that this time, it would be enough to end him for good? How many days had he spent hiding bruises and putting on fake smiles, wondering if it was all worth it? How many nightmares had he endured, thinking about everything Schlatt did and made him do?

He drank all the whiskey in one go. It burned his throat and pooled like fire in his stomach.

The glass made a satisfying thud on the counter as Quackity set it down. It was then that he finally reached for the poster in his back pocket, holding it almost gently in his scarred hands. He traced the edge of it with his finger, thinking deeply.

Quackity unfolded the poster, one fold at a time. The folds were deep from the sheer amount of time it’s spent in his pocket. It was honestly a miracle that it was still intact, given the state it was in when Quackity found it and the constant strain it’s been under since.

When Quackity finished unfolding the poster, he placed it against the wall and used his empty whiskey glass to hold it up. It looked just like he remembered, even back when the Butcher Army was first created. Sure it was faded and threatened to fold on itself at any moment, but it was still there. The reward, Technoblade’s face, the L’Manburgian flag.

Quackity stared into Technoblade’s red eyes. It was only a drawing, but whoever had done the picture nailed the resemblance to the Blood God. The scar over his eye and lip itched just looking at it.

“You know Technoblade,” Quackity found himself saying. “Before we met, I always had a healthy respect for you. Who didn’t? Everyone was in awe over the Blood God, the most terrifying fighter of our generation, rumored to never be able to die.” He sighed. “Of course, fighting was never my strong suit. You found that out first hand,” he added with some humor, though it felt flat. “Still, a part of me longed to do what you do. Words can only get you so far, get you so much respect.

“They say you should never meet your heroes. Something in that has to be true, because ever since I’ve known you, my life has been nothing but one bitter failure after another.” The poster didn’t reply, and Quackity understood with some absurdity that he was literally talking to a poster as if it were a real being. Still, he continued on.

“Well, maybe that’s giving you too much credit, but it sure feels like that. It’s just,” he trailed off slightly, moving his hands around, trying to figure out some way to articulate his point. Words were supposed to be his weapons, but here, vulnerable and trying to express something that’s been gnawing at him for so long, they scrambled in his throat. “Somehow you come out of every battle, every conflict without a single mark, yet I’m punished for every decision I’ve made since I came to this Primeforsaken SMP.”

And those words, Quackity realized, are when the floodgate inside his chest burst.

“No matter what you do, who you hurt, who you kill, what everyone wants or tries to accomplish, you have never paid for anything you’ve done to the people of this server. I remember when we took down Schlatt with Pogtopia, how you were so insistent that the government had to be taken down, all the while talking about how it was the people’s choice to live how they wanted to live. Well guess what, shithead? The people, L’Manburg, us, we decided that we wanted a government, one that listened to us and one that we could trust. And what did you do once the people made their choice? What did you do after we had called you our friend and said you didn’t have to live by our ways if you didn’t want to? You called us traitors. Said we used you, when all you ever wanted was an excuse to push your own anarchist bullshit down the throat of any server that would give you the time of day. You’re somehow the biggest hypocrite I’ve ever met, even in a world where Dream runs around as the Admin.

“But that’s not even the worst of your sins, isn’t it? I’ve watched you blow up countries with no remorse, execute a child on the whim of a dictator, corrupt and hurt every single person I’ve ever cared about, destroy what I put every ounce of my heart and soul into like it was nothing.”

There were tears aching behind his eyes now. Quackity took a shuddering breath, trying to calm his hurting heart. He thought about Schlatt and his time in Pogtopia, thought about Tubbo and Tommy and Niki and every other L’Manburgian face as they realized the nation they loved was gone at Technoblade and Wilbur’s hands. “And what were your consequences for all of this? What karma did the oh so powerful universe decide you deserved?

“Nothing. Not a single, goddamn thing. For all your violence and bloodshed, you get to live in a nice cottage in the Arctic, filled with friends that celebrate your birthday, and not a single regret.”

Quackity smiled blankly at the poster, raising his hands. By now he was full on pacing in front of it, his shoes making soft noises against the tile. All the while, Technoblade’s red eyes watched his every move.

“But what about me? Prime knows I’m the furthest thing from a saint this server has to offer, but at least I had good intentions. I went against Wilbur during the elections not because I wanted power, but because I saw what he was doing and no one else was going to call him out on his bullshit. I mean, come on! Running a single party election in a so-called democratic nation? Now, that doesn’t mean I didn’t do bad things. I should have left Schlatt the moment I realized just how bad he was. I shouldn’t have waited until after he ruined L’Manburg and executed Tubbo to join Pogtopia. It haunts me every waking moment.” Quackity stopped his pacing for a moment, lost in the memories. Tubbo screaming, the flash and bang of a firework. The explosion of color from the second firework immediately after, because the first one hadn’t been enough. The burning in his chest as he was hit with a firework of his own.

“And then, after you and Wilbur decided to blow it all to kingdom come, I did everything I thought was best for L’Manburg. I helped people. I rebuilt everything you destroyed and made it better. I wanted to hunt you down and make you pay for everything you did.” His scar began to itch again. “But I guess we both know how that turned out.

“And what were my consequences for this? For doing my best, realizing my mistakes, trying to fix them, trying to protect those around me? What karma did the oh so powerful universe decide I deserved?

“Everything. I was punished for everything. Every place I called home, every person I called a friend, every time I fell in love, anything I tried to protect, every time I tried to be happy, I was punished for it. Somehow in this fucked up version of the story, I’m the villain that needs to be punished for their actions, while you’re the blameless hero that gets a happily ever after!”

Quackity was near yelling at this point. It felt good to let out all of his emotions after so long, putting everything into the open even if no one else heard him. He forced himself to calm down slightly, running a hand through his hair.

“Have you ever heard the story of Medea and Jason?” he asked abruptly. The air of the casino seemed to shift uncomfortably with his sudden change of tone, lighter and lower than before. “You probably have, with your obsession with Greek Mythology and shit. You know something interesting about Medea, though? Even though she did horrible, and I mean horrible things, she never lost the favor of the gods. She abandoned her country for some random dude she fell in love with, plotted the murders of her brother and father, as well as murdered a princess with a poison so strong that it killed anyone she touched, and even killed her own children. Yet she doesn’t pay for any of it. Through all of the murder and sorcery, the kept her favor with the gods, and was allowed to have a happy ending. Hell!” Quackity let out a barking laugh. “She doesn’t even die as far as anyone knows! Greek mythology is known for its love of horrible and dramatic deaths, yet of all of the myths she shows up in, never once does it mention her eventually dying, even of old age! Sounds like someone else we know, doesn’t it?”

He paused for a moment, as if expecting a reply. Of course, there was none.

“Now Jason, Jason, on the other hand, we see something interesting. You see, he loses his favor with the gods, specifically his patron Hera, because he was trying to marry another woman even though he was already married to Medea and had two children with her. Can you imagine your patron goddess being the lord of marriage and family, and then you trying to marry another woman? The balls on that man, I’m telling you. The point is, none of his heroic deeds mattered in the end. He lost favor with the gods, lost his wife and children, and ended up dying alone, crushed under the weight of the Argo. The only thing left to immortalize his heroism ended up being the cause of his death.”

Quackity suddenly paused. His words echoed in the casino around him. No longer was he pacing. Instead, he stared long into the distance, as if he could see something through the thick walls. The weight around his neck was nearly unbearable. When he spoke again, it was just above a whisper.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is you are an awful lot like Medea. Doing horrible things left and right with the gods still choosing to favor you, still getting a happy ending despite all the pain and grief you’ve caused. But…” he trailed off, looking back at the poster. It may have been his imagination, but Technoblade’s eyes seemed less mocking, somehow.

“I have hope. Maybe you’re not Medea. Maybe, just maybe, you’re Jason. You’ll do something so terrible that you’ll lose your favor with the gods, lose everything that ever mattered, and you’ll be crushed under the weight of what once proved your worth.” Quackity walked forward, reaching out his hand. His fingertips stopped less than an inch from the surface of the poster, just hovering. Waiting. Contemplating.

“But I can’t wait for that to happen. I can’t wait for the universe to finally decide you’ve lost its favor.”

He dropped his hand. “You once said something, Technoblade. You said: treat others as they have treated you. That was your excuse for everything you’ve done. I tried to enact that saying once before, and I lost a life because of it. This time around…”

Quackity finally snatched the poster from the place on the wall, rattling the glass in the process. He refused to acknowledge that there was the finest tremble in his hands, making the poster shake.

“Well, the universe already made me the villain of this story. Might as well act like one.”

Quackity ripped the poster to shreds, piece by piece, one of the last remaining pieces of L’Manburg destroyed at his hands. Soon it was so shredded that it was unrecognizable, a pile of paper falling softly to his feet. When it was gone, it felt like pressure was relieved from Quackity’s shoulders. For the first time in a long while, he smiled genuinely.

He walked out of the casino, leaving the pile there for another day. He was sure Slime would clean it up without much fuss.

And if the weight around his neck grew to be nearly unbearable-- well, that was no one's knowledge but his own.

[sou-ver-2-0]

What do you think of the Push Fake Reko(Save Reko) or Spare her(Save Alice) choice as it relates to the themes of logic vs. emotion? My one friend views Reko as the more emotion leaning one since thats the only why she and Alice can potentially make up. But I think it's more logical since to do that you push Fake!Reko to her death because she's obly a doll, even though she's begging for her life.

Why pushing Fake Reko is logical and sparing her is emotional

This is a fantastic question. I was thinking about it for days after you sent it in, going back and forth. The "push or spare Fake Reko" choice feels a bit messier than other logic/emotion choices, such as "kill Kai (logic) or kill Sou (emotion)" in the First Main Game, or "kill Kanna (logic) or kill Sou (emotion)" in the Second Main Game. That's partially because, as you mentioned, this choice ends up determining the fates of the real Yabusame siblings rather than Fake Reko and Gin, whose fates are sealed. Unlike other choices, Sara can't anticipate the consequences. This makes it tricky to analyze in hindsight, since we're influenced by the unexpected outcomes. That's what your friend was doing by looking at the emotional results of pushing Fake Reko. I sympathize with your friend because I also want to analyze the complete story, but I still think it's most important to analyze Sara's mindset in the moment of the choice itself. That's why I argued that killing Kanna was logical for Sara, even though a genre-savvy player might logically assume that killing a child could lead to a bad ending. We need to be able to set aside our greater knowledge as players, and put ourselves in Sara's shoes.

Another reason this choice feels different from other choices in YTTD is because it has almost nothing to do with Sara's self-preservation. Instead, this choice is based on a more philosophical question: how do we measure the humanity of a robot doll? And there's another question baked into this choice as well: are we willing to become a murderer to save a human child? Can we rationally justify this murder?

I recently played through this choice, and after reviewing the narrative, I came to the same conclusion as you did: I think it's logical to push Fake Reko, and emotional to spare her. 

Fake Reko makes an emotional appeal to save her life. She says that she has suffered. She says that she considered Sara a real friend. She sings a beautiful song full of emotion. Even though Sara can logically trap Fake Reko by pointing out that the real Reko wouldn't have sung that song, that only proves that Real Reko and Fake Reko are different people. It's much more difficult to prove that Fake Reko doesn't have a right to live, because Fake Reko's robotic heart still feels real. Even if we rationalize that she's "only a doll," my heart still wants to save Fake Reko.

When Fake Reko sings, the game's dialogue reinforces that Sara is being swayed emotionally to save Fake Reko. Sara's heart connects with Fake Reko's song, even as her mind reels to prove that she's different from Real Reko.

(I've never heard a song from Reko's band, so I can't compare her singing with the real deal...)

(Even so... Could a doll perform vocals so full of emotion...?!)

However, what fully sold me on my interpretation of this choice was hearing from Mr. Emotion and Mr. Logic themselves. This is how Sou and Keiji react to Fake Reko's emotional defense of her own life.

Sou: ...Doesn't feel good. Why is she able to cry, too...? She's basically a human at this point.

Keiji: Is this...part of the emotion program, too?

Notice that Sou talks about his feelings. He says out loud that killing Fake Reko "doesn't feel good." He connects with Fake Reko's ability to cry, and he ends by affirming her humanity. Sou's sprite is also clearly distressed.

Meanwhile, Keiji asks a logical question that would affirm Fake Reko's robotic nature. Yes, she may feel like a human, but we can still rationalize that she's not. Even though Keiji looks bothered, his expression is more muted than Sou's. 

We also have Kanna's emotional outburst.

Kanna: Awful... Awful! Isn't this just too cruel...? If she has a heart... and feelings... then she's no different from a human!!

Kanna is an emotional character like Sou. I believe that Kanna is the character most like young Shin Tsukimi. The meaning of Kanna's words is the same as Sou's words, but expressed more strongly. Additionally, Kanna's expression is even more despairing than Sou's face, with tears streaming down her face.

When I pictured Kanna, Sou, and Keiji in Sara's place, it became clear to me that sparing Fake Reko was emotional while pushing her was logical. 

If Kanna was there, I don't think she could do it. Killing Fake Reko would be too heavy a burden on her young heart. She knows it's wrong and her heart screams at the injustice. All Kanna can do is offer up her own life in the event that Gin is about to be executed. She asks Ranger to take her instead. That's extremely brave of her, but ultimately ineffective since it's against the rules.

If Sou was there, I think he could do it, but he would hesitate for a long time, and he would probably cry. Sou is capable of making difficult choices and doing what needs to be done, but he would still connect emotionally with Fake Reko. Sou and Fake Reko actually parallel each other as "the harsh part of yourself who would kill the kind part of yourself to survive." When Nao calls out Fake Reko's threats against her and Sara as a bluff--Nao states that Fake Reko couldn't kill anyone she considers a friend--I believe that statement applies to Sou as well. Both Sou and Fake Reko are less tough than they appear; they'd rather kill themselves than someone they love. (Sou metaphorically kills himself and Fake Reko literally kills her other self, but Sou won't hurt Kanna, and Fake Reko won't hurt Nao or Sara.) Killing Fake Reko would be difficult for Sou, but I think he would still make the same hard choices as Nao. Especially if he was motivated to preserve Kanna's innocence, much like Nao was motivated to preserve Sara's innocence.

If Keiji was there, I think he would bury his guilt and he wouldn't hesitate for long. Keiji is the most jaded character with a heavily burdened heart. He's already killed his childhood hero and his ex-coworker, so shouldn't killing a robot woman be easier to justify than either of those? Keiji is the best at rationalizing and prioritizing the greater good. In this case, the greater good means killing a robot doll to save a human child. I also think that Keiji is a responsible, brave sort who would prefer to take on this burden himself, rather than let somebody more innocent suffer through this choice. I imagine such logical thoughts would spur on Keiji to be the quickest to push Fake Reko to her death.

That's why I believe pushing Fake Reko is logical while sparing her is emotional. You need to be able to set aside your feelings in order to kill Fake Reko. You need to be able to rationalize and think of the greater good. Emotional characters would struggle more with this choice because our hearts insist that Fake Reko deserves to live, even if she's different. Recognizing our common humanity with "different" people, especially vulnerable people, is a good moral instinct. She still feels "basically a human." Can we ignore that injustice in order to rescue Gin?

I'll share a few final thoughts about this choice.

Another tragedy at the heart of this puzzle is that it was designed by a doll, Rio Ranger. Rio Ranger is a doll with an inferiority complex who feels jealous of humans. His own solution to this puzzle--the humans have to kill a doll to save one of their own--feels like a way of justifying his own hatred of humans. Obviously the nicest solution to this puzzle would be if we could convince Rio Ranger that we recognize dolls' humanity, but Rio Ranger is an unfinished doll who can't feel compassion, so we can't reach him.

Finally, I want to discuss the cathartic reunion scene between Real Reko and Alice in the event that Alice dies. Since the only way to get a cathartic scene after the Sou-Kanna choice is to choose "emotion," I understand why your friend would think that pushing Reko must be the emotional choice. However, I think the parallel between these cathartic scenes is more complex than simply choosing logic or emotion. Both cathartic scenes reward you for two things:

Sara chooses to save a child, the most vulnerable among us. Either Gin or Kanna.

Sara helps a guilty man along the path of redemption. In the first case, she must help Alice try to reconcile with Reko in his bongos sidequest, which is the only way to trigger the bittersweet reunion scene. In the second case, she helps Shin save a little girl and become himself again.

Protecting the most vulnerable and giving the guilty a second chance are what really matter here. Even though pushing Fake Reko is logical and killing Shin/Sou is emotional, Sara is still making the same kind of moral decisions.

Thank you for the stellar question, Anon.

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzeltopia

This episode, much like many other plot important episodes of the first two seasons, is decent on it its own, but becomes retroactively worse due to season three’s bad writing and behind the scenes bullshit. 

Summary:  Matthews reveals himself as another dark spirit and disciple of Zhan Tiri, and traps Eugene, Lance and the others in unbreakable vines similar to the Great Tree's evil magic. He has Rapunzel live the perfect life while he prepares to hand over the mystical powers of the Sundrop to his master. Fortunately, Rapunzel is able to make contact with her brown-haired dream self and attempts to convince her to let go. 

Timeline Alert

So what does almost a year ago mean? The Great Tree was six months out, and then in Mirror, Mirror, Lance said that they been fighting for three weeks since. So how long have then been stuck in this shell house? Because You’re Kidding Me was just the next day after Mirror, Mirror. Was Lance’s ‘three weeks’ comment meant to be after Brothers Hooks and Rapunzel: Day One and not Great Tree? Are we 7, 8, 9, or 10 months out from Secret of the Sundrop? Like be clear about your time frame guys if you’re going to use it as a plot point. 

I’m going to say we are 9 months along on this trip, just cause that sounds closer to ‘almost a year ago’ without keeping them all trapped in the shell house for months. So Great Tree is 6 months, Brother’s Hook and Rapunzel Day One is 7 months, Mirror, Mirror is going on 8 months, and at the end of this episode they’ll be heading into the 9 month period...I guess. Lets just say they were trapped there for a week or two. 

This Episode Only Highlights How Self Centered and Immature Rapunzel Still Is Rather Than Showcase How Much She’s Grown 

The point behind this episode is show how much Rapunzel has grown since season one, and how she is accepting of responsibility now, but it actually backfires because she’s not actually being challenged on her selfish desires but on her lack of agency. Which is the wrong lesson that she needs to be learning at this point in her development.

Rapunzel in her subconscious mind doesn’t wish for what’s best for other people but what’s best for herself. People she must interact with on the regular have to be superficially happy even if it completely warps their character. While people she doesn't care about, like Lady Caine, can just be simply banished and ignored regardless if they deserve such an end or not.  She doesn’t see people as people with individual thoughts and feelings, but as satellites to herself and her narrow worldview.  

 Also, ‘I believe everyone deserves a second chance’ my eye! Caine never gets even a first chance in Rapunzel’s own fantasy world. Because Rapunzel is a selfish hypocrite who’s ‘redemptions’ always comes with strings attached. 

Here Comes the Dumbest Plot Point In the Show

I’ll talk about this more when we get to season three, but this scene is the beginning of the end for any dignity the show once held. 

Also why would ‘I don’t trust anyone’ Cassandra follow a creepy voice calling her name through a doorway inside a magic house that’s tried to kill her twice now? 

If you gotta make you character act out of character in order to get your plot rolling than you haven’t a good plot. Think of something else. 

What’s the Point of Having Two Names? 

They did this both with Sugarbee and Matthews here and it makes zero sense. Why would they need to bother with fake names if the heroes wouldn’t even recognize their real names to begin with? Such revelations add nothing and fails to tell the audience anything new about the characters.  It’s also not consistent as it turns out Gothel was a disciple too and she only gets one name, so what gives? 

So How Does This All Work Again?

So Zhan Tiri needs ‘a clash of the sundrop and moonstone’ in order to be freed from her prison. Why? I don’t know, but holding Rapunzel prisoner for life actually undermines that plan, and it’s a plan that Zhan Tiri is currently setting up with Cassandra off screen during all of this. 

So does Tromus/Matthews just not know that Zhan Tiri is already ‘free’ and has her own plans?

Is Rapunzel’s power being drained what gives Zhan Tiri a foothold in the real world?

Or was Zhan Tiri released back in the Great Tree with the removal of the spear and that’s why she knows to go after Cass? 

What was up with the Great Tree and the sealed tree back in Painter’s Block? Did they have any impact on Zhan Tiri’s plans?  

Were any of the disciples actually useful at all? 

So What Do the Disciples Gain From All This?

Sugarbee, Matthews, and Gothel were all once real people who actually lived so what are their reasons for following Zhan Tiri? What do they gain from going through such complicated plans? Why continue to follow someone after you’ve been dead for centuries and are a ghost now, and were presumably trapped and or killed by Demantius for following her? Real people don’t just hold on to such fanatical devotion without reason. 

This Conflict Over Choices Does Not Work Without Varian

Going back to how this episode fails to develop Rapunzel; it wants to have Rapunzel take responsibility for difficult choices, but much like Painters Block, it completely ignores her biggest fuck up thereby undermining why she has trouble with owning up to hard choices.  

Rapunzel ruined a child’s life. She may not have meant to but she did, and thus far she has done nothing to make amends for it. She’s not even spared the poor boy a single thought beyond seeing him as the boogeyman in a nightmare once. 

You can’t have Rapunzel take responsibility for anything if you won’t hold her accountable for anything.  

Varian was meant to appear in this episode, and indeed he should have for the above reason. 

But of course Chris had to give us a bullshit excuse for why he cut the most plot important character from the series. 

I’ve already spoken about how Varian’s cameo in Happiness Is did nothing to actually further develop Rapunzel nor explore her guilt back in that review. In this episode, however, I want to discuss how hollow the comparisons to Gothel is and why there shouldn’t logically have been any competition between the two. 

Varian and Gothel provide two completely different conflicts and two completely different points of development for Rapunzel’s arc. Gothel is the instigator of her conflict with Rapunzel. Rapunzel, as the victim, has only one thing to learn, self esteem. She learned it back in the movie, she relearned it back in the season one, and here she’s re-contextualizing it for this episode’s mini-arc. 

Meanwhile Rapunzel is the instigator of her conflict with Varian. She’s the one with the power in their relationship and her choices matter. She doesn’t need to learn agency because she already has it. What she needs to learn is responsibility and she can’t do that without confronting Varian and what she did in some manner. So unlike with Gothel there only new ground to cover here rather than rehashing old conflicts. 

Chris Sonnenburg has things all backwards. Rapunzel’s agency/self-esteem issues and her need to take responsibility for her actions are not interchangeable conflicts. Addressing one does not automatically address the other, and of the two her conflict with responsibility holds more weight because it’s ongoing. We haven’t seen the resolvement there. It also affects more people than just herself so the stakes are higher there as well. And to top it all off, it fits with the themes of the episode better. 

Also, you very much could have had both characters because they both reflect different conflicts and serve different purposes in the narrative. Time management in television is a very big deal yes, but you have little grounds for defense when all you’ve shown is how poorly you’ve managed your time until now. 

In short, Chris is full of shit. 

No, It Wouldn’t

We’ve already established that there’s no need for Rapunzel to go on her quest in season two. The black rocks are inactive, there’s no ticking clock she has to beat, and her staying at home would have actually prevented the conflicts in season three. 

Unless dream Rapunzel is referring to Zhan Tiri being released, but even that is false because Zhan Tiri is already floating around a little blue ghost girl off screen right now. What Rapunzel choses or chooses not to do does not change that. 

Lack of external conflict undermines internal conflict.  

Just Cause You Make A Meta Joke About Your Heroes Being Dumb For No Reason, Does Not Make Them Any Less Stupid 

Jokingly admitting a fault in your writing doesn’t not excuse that fault. If you can’t have a plot without handing the idiot ball to your characters than you haven’t a good plot. Time to go back to drawing board. 

Season Three Will Go Back On This Episode’s Message and Prove the Villian Right

I’ve liget seen fans unironically praise the show for it’s message of ‘be content with what you have’. Not only is that a terrible lesson to teach children; it’s actually the exact opposite of what the show is trying to achieve.

“Be satisfied” is suppose to be the wrong motto. Rapunzel is suppose to be fighting against this message. In the episode itself it’s the villian who is saying such things in order to tempt her to stay put. 

So how could anyone look at the show as a whole and come away with idea that the one off villain was right along? 

Because season three does a complete 180 away from its original messages regarding agency and responsibility. All consequences disappear from the story and the mains are given convenient scapegoats to distract from their decisions. Characters actively regress and are rewarded by the narrative for either not doing anything or for victim blaming others for their actions. 

But most damaging of all is the fact that nearly everyone winds up back where they started out at, or aren’t given a proper ending at all. Tangled’s story is just one giant circle and that in of itself contradicts the idea of progress.  

Cassandra’s Hurt Hand Is Only Relevant When The Story Wants Rapunzel to Feel Guilty About Something  

Oh but we can just throw Cassandra’s burnt hand in here as a substitute Rapunzel’s guilt over Varian. Even though the two incidents should actually complement one another rather than compete for dominance. 

Tangled doesn’t trust its audience to remember things. It acts like if it’s off screen or not being focused upon than it’s not happening or isn’t relevant. This undermines any ongoing or overarching conflicts.  

Why should we care about Cassandra’s arm if she’s been shown as being fine with it for four episodes by now? Especially since it’ll never come up again after this point? And on the flip side of things, why should the audience not care about the 15 year old who has been sitting in a dungeon for almost a year now due to Rapunzel’s neglect?  

We’re not magpies who are quickly distracted by shiny new things. We are capable of retaining information and informing decisions based off of that. Especially if Chris was shooting for the teen audience as he claims he was. 

Oh But We Got Time For Godzilla-Pascal 

Can’t spare even half a minute for a Varian cameo that would be relevant, but we sure got time to waste on a pointless action sequence that does nothing to further the character in what is meant to be a character development episode. 

This Scene Is Out of Character 

That’s not how abuse works! 

The whole reason why Gothel was able to keep Rapunzel under her thumb for 18 years because Rapunzel always sought her approval. Never at any point, even when finally choosing to break away from her in the movie, did Rapunzel wish to harm the woman. That goes against who she is as a character and it’s not how abuse victims respond to abusers even after cutting things off with them. 

If anything, Rapunzel’s treatment of Frederic in Happiness Is is more in line with how a victim goes about mourning the loss of an abusive relationship. Victims grieve for what might have been. Victims mourn the loss of what good times they had with their abusers, because yes, abusers aren’t abusive 100% of the time 24/7. They can’t be or they risk losing their victim quicker.  

I initially was ok with flashbacks to Gothel on occasion because no victim ever makes a completely clean break from their abuser. Even ‘moving on’ isn’t some triumphant singular action when you stand tall while you knock your opponent down in a wish fulfilment fantasy.

No. ‘Moving on’ is slow. It’s understated. It’s routine. It’s about being able to do the dishes without getting triggered. It’s sitting at lunch with friends and being happy and calm without the fear of returning home hanging over your head. It’s not skipping out on work because your anxiety is through the roof over just meeting with your boss. It’s not devolving into a yelling match over something minor because you internalize your abusers behavior.  

Abuse victims don’t celebrate violence as strength. We celebrate being an unmovable mountain of clam fortitude. Being in control even as the world rages at us, because we’re self assured. 

The fact that this scene exists, while Happiness Is shows Rapunzel behaving the opposite way to the father who abused her the same as Gothel did, only proves that a man shouldn’t have been in charge of this show. Certainly not without a woman by his side giving equal input. 

Stop Using Destiny as a Shorthand for Everything!

Destiny isn’t a catch all word that can mean whatever you want it to. Words have definitions for a reason. Destiny isn’t a goal nor does it equate to agency and responsibility; kind of the opposite in fact. 

Well That Was Redundant

All we did was rehash Rapunzel’s season one arc in under half in hour. Nothing new was learned. It’s like writers don’t know how to resolve any conflict that isn’t a repeat of the first movie. Meanwhile actual unique conflicts are just sitting off to the side being ignored. All because the show’s creator doesn’t want to hold his precious self insert accountable for anything. 

Bye Bye Smart Cass, Hello Dumb Cass

So from this point onward the Cass we’ve known for nearly two seasons is gone. She’s just been replaced by the dumbest bitch on the planet. Because the writers don’t understand how manipulation and trauma actually works. Nor do they comprehend the importance of giving characters actual goals.  

Conclusion 

Season three is what retroactively spoils this episode. Cass’s dumb decision here, Zhan Tiri’s lack of a coherent plan, the uselessness of the disciples, and even the lack of Varian could have been glossed over had they writers given us a satisfying pay offs for any of the main conflicts. But they didn’t and so here we are. 

Also a small update, but after this review and starting next week, the Salt Marathon will go from bi weekly updates to only one a week. This is a combination of real life work getting in the way and the growing length of the reviews. This means we’ll hopefully be done come March, which would mark the show’s anniversary. I got some plans to celebrate if that works out. 

[notbang]

the pursuit of happiness

or, an examination of happiness and the chase as recurring motifs in the character development of Rebecca Bunch and Nathaniel Plimpton

rethaniel appreciation week day 2 → pursuit

I could write a small novel cataloguing the endless parallels between these two—I have, in fact, thought about attempting it many times—but honestly the list is so long and varied and sprouts off in so many different directions that I’ve yet to think of a logical way to go about it. Which is why for the time being, I’m choosing to focus instead—in some degree of detail—on this particular mirrored thread between them.

As our protagonist, Rebecca functions as a major catalyst for change in West Covina, and just as surely as she stumbles along in her journey we see the (for the most part) positive effects of her friendship on those around her. With perhaps the sole exception of White Josh, all of the characters end the show as happier and healthier iterations of themselves, with many of the major aspects of their growth traceable to their involvement with Rebecca in some way. Nathaniel is no exception to this rule; arguably, his development, more so than any other character’s, is directly tied to Rebecca’s influence on his life. The main difference here lies in the fact that he moves to town good a season and half after her—putting him that much further behind in his inevitable development.

One of the major, ongoing setbacks Rebecca faces over the course of the show is her tendency to conflate happiness, or personal fulfilment, with romantic love, and more specifically, for the first half of the series at least, conflating it with a single person. Nathaniel, by comparison, at the time of our introduction to him, has little interest in the concept at all, something Rebecca is quick to sympathise with in 2x09—‘You know Nathaniel, I used to be a lot like you. Ruthless. But then one day I was crying a lot, and I decided to flip things around. Decided to put happiness before success. And when I did that, the world rewarded me with true happiness.’ Nathaniel doesn’t verbally dismiss the sentiment, but the wealth of facial expressions he supplies in response suggest what he thinks of that: happiness is frivolous, and he doesn’t have space for it in his busy schedule.

Nathaniel, probably: Sounds fake but okay.

In the season two theme Rebecca declares that as a girl in love, she can’t be held responsible for her actions, and the sweeping duet Nothing Is Ever Anyone’s Fault follows a similar thread of eschewing culpability. While this certainly works to help dismiss a season’s worth of questionable behaviour from the two of them—including, but not limited to, infidelity and conspiracy to murder—I’m not convinced the touted concept behind the song—that Nathaniel has learned the wrong lesson from being in love with her, as explained in post-finale interviews at the time—flies in the face of our understanding of Nathaniel’s character thus far. As a rich, straight, white, cis male whose privilege the show has only made clumsy attempts at dismantling, a disregard of consequence seems a lot less like something he needed to be taught by anybody and a little more like something that was probably ingrained in him at birth.

If we want to talk about misguided takeaways within their relationship, though, their relationship to happiness is the perfect place to start. Nathaniel begins the show with no concept of the pursuit of happiness, so it makes sense that when he does adopt an interest in it, he takes a page right out of the book of the person that introduced him and pins it all in the one place. Unlike Rebecca, though, Nathaniel’s preoccupation seems to be less wilful delusion and more of a case of ignorance being bliss—being with her feels good, so why change anything or interrogate the situation any further? For all his earlier talk, he is quick to give up the thrill of the chase under the hedonistic guise of contentment. Unfortunately, what he lacks is the emotional intelligence to navigate the implications of Rebecca’s disorder, highlighted by his belief that the mere fact that he and Josh are two vastly different people is reason enough for him to be able to dismiss her obsessive behaviour as ‘cute’ and ‘flattering’. Rebecca’s recent breakdown and consequential suicide attempt can’t exist as warning signs in their (what he perceives as superior) relationship because he isn’t planning on leaving Rebecca at the altar; he isn’t privy to the realisation that it ‘wasn’t about Josh, and maybe it never was’.

Nathaniel: I don’t want to get in the way of your therapy thing, but isn’t the point of all this to be happy? We’re happy. That’s what matters.

It’s a shame because despite there being so much more going on with Rebecca than Nathaniel is capable of comprehending at this point in time, he actually, perhaps entirely by accident, manages to get a few things right—he checks in with her about her therapy when her appearing on his doorstep contradicts the information she’d given him earlier (even if he is, at this point, all too easy to convince), counters her suggestion that they play hooky at Raging Waters with the compromise of a more sensibly scheduled dinner they’ll both enjoy, and, when they do come in to conflict over her obsessive behaviours, takes some time for himself before having a serious conversation with her. Though it’s certainly naive of him to think it’s a problem as easily solved as getting Rebecca to promise she’ll never do anything like this again, it suggests the capacity exists (given, with great guidance) for him to approach Rebecca’s mental illness within their relationship in a thoughtful way.

(This of course completely ignores the inherent issues in their boss/employee relationship, which come to a questionable forefront when Rebecca makes the decision to return to work after having broken things off, but we’re starting to get a little off-track from the intended scope of this discussion.)

The idea of romantic love as a chase—if not already sold to us by Rebecca literally moving across the country in pursuit of Josh—is hammered home most effectively in episode 2x11, but Nathaniel actually brings it up in the episode prior; before Rebecca and Josh leave for New York, at the same time as setting up the whole ‘man of my dreams’ idea that also carries on into the next episode, a sweaty Nathaniel beseeches Rebecca to imitate a land-based predator so he can amp up his workout under the threat of chase. Within this alignment, Josh, who ends up proposing to Rebecca at the end of 2x10, becomes even more clearly representative of an end goal—love, marriage, and, as an expected by-product, ultimate happiness. Nathaniel, by contrast for the time being, is all about the chase that comes before. After his speech at the beginning of 2x11 boasting of his dogged approach when securing clients, his passionate buzz words begin to permeate Rebecca’s subconscious, with ‘pursuit’ in particular going so far as to in an echo in a similar way that ‘happy’ does in the pilot. Such is the effect of his words on her that she parrots them back to Josh when she tells him she’s moved up their wedding—‘Finally, it’s coming to an end. The pursuit is over and I just want to celebrate that’. The title of the episode title may pose the question Josh is the man of my dreams, right? but in the most literal sense, the star of her dreams becomes Nathaniel, along with his personal brand of terminology.

Where Nathaniel thinks life is all about playing the hunter, Rebecca insists she doesn’t care for the chase, which makes sense—she doesn’t want to be chasing Josh, and furthermore, admitting that she’s chasing him would only be contradictory to her belief that they belong together. She wants her happy ending. She wants to arrive at her final destination—her destiny—because thus far all her journeys (which have in actuality been more of a kind of stagnation) have been left her unfulfilled. However obsessing over an idealised future only postpones her happiness with her inability to focus on the present. Ironically, the point at which she makes an active choice to begin shifting that focus—in 3x07, when Dr Shin encourages her to live in the messy in-between—is right around the time Nathaniel starts buying into her idealisation himself.

In a similar way to Rebecca, regardless of his purported love of the pursuit, Nathaniel’s infatuation is seemingly tied to the concept of a destination—several times quite literally. In 3x04 he’s ready to whisk her away to Rome to evade any obstacles to their being together, and in 4x01 proposes a similar escape to Hawaii, causing him to lash out when Rebecca turns him down—‘I want us to just be happy and be together. That’s what I want. You just said you love me, right? So can you just do that for me? Can you just stop overthinking everything? …seems like every time we’re happy, you try to ruin it.’ He sees their shared happiness as a nirvana state he’s caught a glimpse of that Rebecca is now determined to deny him access to, to the point that he seeks to make their version of a love bubble a physical one, where no outside interference (or, more accurately, internal reflection from Rebecca) can keep them apart. Still degrees behind Rebecca in the parallel arcs of their development, he’s stuck in the mindset that them being happy and in love is the only thing that matters. His behaviour is far from flattering, but with a quick review of his history of being on the continual receiving end of her rejection, it’s not entirely difficult to see where he’s coming from.

(As an aside, Rebecca’s relationship with the destination versus the journey as it pertains to the mural on her wall is something I’ve already discussed in a previous meta.)

When she breaks up with him at the beginning of 3x09, Rebecca responds to Nathaniel’s protest of ‘but we’re happy!’ with the qualifier that she’s ‘happy, but it isn’t real’, which probably isn’t the most pleasant thing to be told, even before you factor in Nathaniel’s implied inexperience with serious relationships. While her behaviour prior to this definitely calls for some self reflection, it’s an interesting backflip from extreme infatuation to sudden dismissal, and while it does align with the black and white thinking associated with BPD, it’s easy to see why Nathaniel feels blindsided and, consequently, spurned. She begged him not to break up with her not only to then turn around do exactly that, but to also (presumably unintentionally) throw in the humiliating implication he cared more than she did.

Dr Akopian: Maybe now you can see that your father’s behaviour in the past has set a pattern for you, seeking the love of men who don’t fully love you back. Who you have to pursue. Men who are taken or emotionally unavailable. Like your father. Like Josh. Like Greg. Like other men, I’m sure.

Nathaniel is an outlier amongst the three main love interests in that, for all his grandstanding about humans being hunters by nature, he’s the one constantly falling over himself to win Rebecca’s affection rather than the other way around; it’s ironic that the love interest that asserts himself as being all about the chase is the one that ends up later having to assign himself the title of ‘king of declarations’ based on his ongoing habit of blurting out to Rebecca how he feels, never achieving the level of emotional standoffishness he hopes to exude. Nathaniel’s unavailability—and subsequent cementing as one of the types of men Dr Akopian calls Rebecca out on being predisposed to pursuing—comes only when he enters into a relationship with Mona, and Rebecca, who supposedly ‘never cared for the chase’, with interest reignited finds a skewed sense of security afforded by the romantic roadblock, something Nathaniel seems to understand on some unspoken level, as hinted at by his eagerness to maintain the fragile status quo of their morally questionable arrangement.

As a result of this subversion of power dynamics within Rebecca and Nathaniel’s relationship, in amongst the many other parallels between them that only serve to support this, it starts to become apparent that, narratively speaking, Nathaniel is to Rebecca as Rebecca is to Josh, something that is visually co-signed by the show during 4x03, when we see the same golden glow of romantic epiphany crest behind Rebecca in the church during her speech at Heather and Hector’s wedding that suffuses across Josh when Rebecca encounters him in the streets of New York.

Nathaniel’s takeaway from Rebecca’s speech is that because he loves her, he should do everything within his power to get her back, which of course leads to his (frankly embarrassing) attempts to manipulate her and win her over in 4x04. (Fittingly enough to this discussion, the opening line of the Slumbered quote he plagiarises is ‘you are the only thing that makes me happy’. The irony of his failed use of her teenage diary to win her over is that I honestly do believe the speech is an accurate summation of how he sees Rebecca, and had he only chosen to put it in his own words, that final scene between them might have played out a little differently.) The part he probably should have focused on, though, is the part Rebecca is currently pouring all her professional energy into (and not so coincidentally, it’s right there in the episode title)—love (and therefore happiness) being about finding your own path.

Rebecca: I don’t believe in destiny anymore. I just believe in taking responsibility for your own happiness.

This is not the first time Nathaniel makes the decision to actively pursue Rebecca while her attention lies firmly fixed elsewhere. In 3x03 and 3x04, he is forced to grapple with his feelings alone when a distracted Rebecca eventually goes where he cannot follow, putting an abrupt end to any potential for chase when she flees back to New York in 3x05. Consequently, Nathaniel embarks on a mini-arc of struggling to accept the idea that Rebecca may never come back—initially incomprehensible to him, owing to the fact that she bears importance to him, personally—to conceding that his (thus far relatively unexamined) need for her to be in his life is secondary to her own wellbeing, something that acts as a precursor to a major thread in Nathaniel’s (often one step forward, two clumsily-written steps back) character development in the back end of the series.

Nathaniel: I just hope wherever she is, she’s happy.

In 4x11, Nathaniel’s dream world amalgamation of Maya and Rebecca begs him to let her be happy, and as the former fades into the latter we get another callback to the pilot—an echo of 'happy, happy, happy…’ reminiscent of the empty shell of New York Rebecca latching onto Josh’s description of laid-back West Covina. Unlike its instance in the 1x01, however, this is a wake up call of an entirely different kind—it is not the blossoming of a brand new delusion but the sobering dissolution of one. And unlike the speech a radiant Rebecca gave at Heather’s wedding about finding the one you love and holding on tight, this particular iteration is here to impart the contradictory wisdom ‘if you really love me, you have to let me go’.

Nathaniel: I want you to be happy, I do.

This moment is arguably the true beginning of Nathaniel’s lesson that his happiness isn’t necessarily (or in this case, due to the current circumstances, can no longer be) inextricably linked to Rebecca—she has the opportunity to find happiness independently of him and that in itself is something that should make him happy, as someone that loves and cares for her. His assertion to dream Rebecca that he wants her to be happy manifests in his concession to Rebecca in the real world—‘I’m glad you’re happy. I really am. And it makes me happy too’—an exchange that echoes two similar moments between them back in season three, during which Rebecca expresses the same sentiment regarding his relationship with Mona, first following the cool down from their 3x10 conflict, and again in the aftermath of their ended affair in 3x13: 

Rebecca: I’m happy that you found someone else. Mona seems lovely.

Rebecca: I’m happy for you… I want you to be happy.

The more interesting callback here though, of course, is to Rebecca’s conversation with Greg at the duck pond way back in 2x02. After finally tracking down an AWOL Greg with the intention of breaking the news of her involvement with Josh, Greg makes peace with the situation by way of reassuring them both that everything worked out fine as long as Rebecca is happy. ‘You and Josh—you should be happy together. You’re happy, right? And he treats you well?’ Rebecca responds to this in the affirmative, though her expression—and the context of the episode—belies her answer. In contrast, her exchange with Nathaniel goes a little differently:

Nathaniel: Because you’re happy, right? You’re happy with Greg. Rebecca: I mean, I don’t know. I’m not there yet. But I could possibly be, yeah.

The evolution of Rebecca’s response is of course evidence of her development as a character and her own understanding of her relationship to happiness, but what I find most noteworthy is not that she lies in 2x02, but that in 4x11 she chooses to tell an unusual truth. She could just have easily have said yes the second time around and it would have functioned as a clear enough juxtaposition of what she considers close enough to happiness; after all, at the time of 4x11 she and Greg believe they are approaching their relationship in a mature and thoughtful fashion, they are warm and affectionate towards one another and, unlike in 2x02, she is not having to compete for her partner’s attention. She would, by all accounts, be completely justified in giving what could be considered the normal response to being posed such a question—that yes, she is happy with Greg. So even though it’s encouraging to hear Rebecca verbalising her newfound knowledge that happiness is so much more than such a simple dichotomy of yes and no, it feels significant that Nathaniel, as a person currently knee-deep in untangling his own complicated relationship with happiness, is the one that gets to be privy to this particular brand of truth.

And while it can be argued that all the strides Nathaniel makes in 4x11 are undone over the course of the following episodes, setting aside the very real fact that human emotions are fickle, and we can’t always stick as completely to our guns as we’d like, his blessing here still comes with a telling caveat: ‘I’ve got to let you go… because you’re happy’. And who shows up on Nathaniel’s doorstep during 4x12 to poke holes in that perceived state of happiness between her and Greg? None other than Rebecca herself.

Rebecca: You just want me to be happy, which is what I want too, and god, Greg… Greg doesn’t know what happiness is.

Such is the shared significance of this concept of happiness between them that the second Rebecca alludes to their conversation in the foyer, Nathaniel’s previously good-natured, albeit slightly confused, response to her drunken presence in his apartment quickly and very clearly dissolves into alarm bells and he eventually sends her on her way. Though he could easily have wielded Rebecca’s visit as a weapon to create dissonance between her and Greg in 4x13, he merely probes for clues by way of a convoluted metaphor, resigning himself to the fact that the issue has been resolved, while Greg, in actuality, is at this point none the wiser. It’s only once Greg himself tells Nathaniel that it is over between him and Rebecca that Nathaniel returns to entertaining his feelings for her.

Though we the viewers are all too aware (and at this point, probably screaming at the TV!) that Rebecca’s happiness is not, contrary to recurring belief, a vacant role that she needs someone to fill; unlike us, the characters have not had the good fortune of being able to watch the show Crazy Ex Girlfriend on the CW network. Nathaniel is still a fledgling in terms of self enlightenment, and it makes total sense for him to be nudged towards into pursuing her again once the clearest obstacle to her affections—her relationship with Greg—is no longer an issue.

When she breaks the news of her decision to Nathaniel in the finale, Rebecca is quick to assure Nathaniel that ‘the times that [they’ve] spent together have been some of the best of [her] life’, which is an interestingly bold statement all on its own, but it feels somewhat satisfyingly like finally giving Nathaniel a real-life answer to the ‘we’ve had such happy moments, you and I, haven’t we?’ that he throws at his Maya-shaped projection of Rebecca in 4x11; affirmation that contrary to what she says in 3x08, something in there between them was real.

‘You only get one life,’ he tells her in return. ‘And you’ve got to live that the way you want.’

Neither of them uses the word ‘happy’ in this exchange, but as we fast forward in time, we get:

Nathaniel: Happy to be here.

Rebecca: For the first time in my life, I am truly happy.

Nathaniel (who in an amusing reflection in 2x09, reveals that he, in a roundabout way, moved to West Covina because of Rebecca—‘it’s kind of your fault that I’m here’) has finally made the actual change that Rebecca taunted him with on their first meeting. And unlike Rebecca, he’s had a chance to interrogate what happiness for himself, removed from another person, might look like before he does so. Rather than starting with a life-altering change, he gets to make incremental changes along the way—which very much are tied to his entanglement to Rebecca—in order to make a more meaningful and deliberate life change for himself later on.

“When you find someone that melts the iceberg that is your heart…” - 3x03

“Provoking me, and zinging me, and challenging my world view. And warming my heart.” - 3x04

“You make me feel like I can be a different kind of person.” - 3x08

“You’ve awakened my heart and unlocked my soul.” - 4x04

“You’ve changed my whole life. Who I am, who I can be.” - 4x11

Rebecca describes her moving to West Covina in Nathaniel’s first episode as ‘[deciding] to flip things around. [Deciding] to put happiness before success. And when I did that, the world rewarded me with true happiness.’ In the finale, she tells the audience how he, by comparison, ‘upended [his] life’—‘You changed everything. But unlike me, you did it for the right reasons. And I am in awe of you.’ Alongside the nice progression from her proclamation in 2x09 that she ‘came to West Covina to search for happiness’ to her more self-aware announcement at the open mic that ‘for the first time in my life, [she is] truly happy’, (which feels like a subversive callback to a certain infamous butter commercial) we also get a reiteration of the sentiment— ‘I came to this town to find love. And I did. I love every person in this room’—that conflates happiness with love in what is now a healthy and satisfying way. It’s the perfect twist that she’s rewarded with the thing she was searching for all along just as soon as she realises she was looking in all the wrong places, and that the place itself still gets to play such a large part in that. And she is able to see Nathaniel’s journey as all the more meaningful in light of her own missteps along the way.

While I have my reservations on the bow they tied Nathaniel’s arc in for the finale (because despite Rebecca’s realisation that there is no such thing as ‘ending up’, there is in the sense of the scope of this series) being a well thought out resolution as opposed to leaning on a previous gag without laying any actual groundwork, the truth is it’s unclear what the true nature of Nathaniel’s sabbatical is/was/will be—mere extended vacation, permanent new career path, or just the initial spark of inspiration in some extended self discovery. That being said, much like Rebecca evolving towards a point where she can appreciate the interconnectedness of love and happiness in a less troublesome way, it is neat that Nathaniel’s resolution follows on from his tendency to want to escape to far-off destinations in an attempt to control his desired status quo. Though his fleeing town is still inextricably linked to having his heart broken by Rebecca, Guatemala, for once, isn’t about transposing his current circumstance to another place in order to cling to something, but rather a carefully selected, specific site for welcomed change.

Independent of any potential that may or may not exist between them as the show closes out—romantic or otherwise—it’s undeniable that these two characters have left indelible marks on each other, and without their respective involvement in each other’s lives, their journeys—and resulting transformations—would not have been the same.

[frumfrumfroo]

I just....wow. Rian really was like “Women’s awakening and Heroine’s Journey” and set up the most powerful and fulfilling arc for Rey...only for it to turn out that JJ thinks of Rey EXACTLY as the sexist fanboys do, as a carrier for another man’s legacy, except in some fake feminist way where women being alone and without their fulfilling love is Strength. They’re really going to try and spin this as empowering and slap “Rey Skywalker” all over the place and act like it was ever enough

It is, indeed, the Nightmare Scenario.

To me, the thing that makes this so baffling is how JJ really gave Rey exactly the life she was afraid of in TFA. He, in HIS FILM not Rian’s, has her look up at that older scavenger woman and see the face of her future- he in HIS FILM gave her that big ‘wonder’ shot and line about seeing greenery for the first time. This motherfucker sketched this character with a real edge of poignancy which gave her humanity, that moment of ‘is this all my life will be?’ and the longing of adolescence. She wants life!

And then he made that vision come true. She ended up precisely as she feared she would, alone on a dead planet with no family and no purpose. They put a fucking line in the fucking visual dictionary about her always being more comfortable in deserts.

That’s how bad this fucking movie is- they put this line in a visual dictionary to try to justify dumping their heroine in her depression dream and leaving her there with nothing but ghosts EXACTLY AS SHE WAS AT THE BEGINNING. LOCKED IN ETERNAL CHILDHOOD, HER LOVE INADEQUATE TO SAVE HER PRINCE AND HER VICTORIES ENTIRELY COMING FROM ACCIDENTAL CONNECTIONS TO MEN. She has no power, none of her decisions matter or have any consequences. And her reward for all her suffering and faith is getting to crawl back into her defensive maladapted coping mechanisms with a new set of pretend parents and some identity theft.

When WHEN did we start pretending that she wanted an important lineage or a name and not someone to love and have love her?

What is going on in the tiny minds which produced this? Super empowering how none of her choices mattered and she couldn’t save her soulmate because we wouldn’t want to imply any possibility her romantic love could be consummated. No it’s a barren, frigid thing, and she can only come down from the pedestal long enough to give him a chaste peck as he dies, snuffing out all chance of renewal and rejuvenation for the galaxy.

This broken fairy tale full of dead things. It’s so wrong.

[skyeyaga]

Sweatshop Worker POV

My eyes flutter open. The first thing I see are the numbers on the wall and I rub my eyes to focus more on the numbers and hands - it points at the number five. Outside the window that is on my right, the light peeks through the clouds outside. Now I better get ready for a new tough, tormenting, troubling day because of the countless mistakes I make. Swinging my legs out from under my thin blanket, my toes make contact with the cold, crisp, cool floor and it sends shivers down my spine. As I fully step on the floor, a creaking sound is caused. My eyes dash to my roommates and one or two of them yawn and rub their eyes while the others stay asleep. I rapidly ran into the filthy, grimy, messy room because I need to clean myself up for the day (this is the only reason I wake up before everyone, so I have this all to myself.) The water from the sink sprays on my face and I look in the mirror, the girl in the mirror jabs me with hollow eyes to begin the day.

Each foot lightly touches the ground, the footsteps that were once clear quickly fade. The tapping echoes in my head while I think. There was a time when I was happy and joyful. There was a time when I was surrounded by love - I could almost hear the words: “Aku cint akamu.*” There was a time when I was not here. Wide smiles float through my head, gleeful giggling tantalises my memory. My parents’ gentle and kind faces flash around in my head. A clap of thunder crashes the shores of my happiness and like a storm it darkens. My fourteenth birthday was the worst day of my life, all I can remember is my father’s snow white face lying under a blanket, his raspy exhales and the rivers flowing down the sides of his face, that gave me goosebumps. We didn’t have enough, I turned to this place to do it all for him and I can’t imagine him leaving - I have to keep him here and I will do whatever it takes but it’s been about two years since that happened. Walking past a window, I see a bedraggled girl. She stares back. A gasp escapes my mouth. She’s me. She looks awful. My eyes lay on my once chestnut glowing skin, it’s covered with thick layers of dust and dirt. My long lustrous thick auburn hair is now ruined; short and straggly, strands falling out. My hazel eyes, they don’t have the shine they used to have. I brush my hands over my large and baggy pants, my finger gets caught in one of the many holes. I glimpse at a blood stain and wonder if it’s mine. I wander on ahead, trying to forget that this ever happened. 

A long line forms behind a door, each person carrying the same sort of item. We all know the punishment if one does not bring it. A loud shriek echoes across the room and no one even dares to look at the awful sight but truly, it is their own fault. When I walk through the door, I look around me and all I smell is the foul, repugnant stench of smoke. Walking to my station, getting lost in my thoughts, ‘I know this is hard but you need to do this for your family. It’ll all be worth it in the end.’ I keep telling myself the same thing. Slowly sitting down at my desk, feeling empty inside, as empty as a politician’s promise to hard-working people. In this case, as empty as my boss’s promise but at least I am getting money, this is the reason why I’m here - isn’t it?  As I gently press the foot pedal, I watch the needle going up and down creating a charcoal black tick, it reminds me of evil thoughts and at that moment I glance over to look at my boss who is peeking over my shoulder and I try to hide the little smile of satisfaction. The once-loud footsteps become quieter and more muted. I sit for so long that sweat makes my bottom stick to my seat like gum at the bottom of a shoe. Once I finish I will get rewarded greatly - hopefully. Then I hear footsteps that get louder and then he appears again. He puts his dirty, muddy hands all over my hard work, wiping his disgusting hands across them. I stare at him, frustrated. ‘This is not fair, I worked hard on this and this is how he repays me?!’ Without any further thinking, I pull his hairy, chunky hands under the needle. A long yelping sound goes on longer than a whale song. Panting, he glares at me with his blood boiling. Always know the consequences of your own actions.

I entered hell. As each hit causes more pain, the world becomes extra blurry, or maybe it’s just my eyes. As a result, my mouth spews red liquid. A man hits me on my head finding it more satisfying hitting my hollow head. My hands swollen, my mouth numb and my head cracked. ‘I need the money, I can’t do the same thing again. I need the money, this is worth it.’ I scold myself in my head. Subsequently, a large and heavy foot steps on my hand, squishing it like a bug. Something hits my head again and all is black. When I wake up, the first thing I see is an old man sitting down at a polished wooden desk. His face is as wrinkly as a scrunched up piece of unwanted paper. I notice that he’s dressed quite nicely and he is wearing a light gray suit with a bright red tie so clearly he’s someone important. My eyes dash around the bright red room, (probably there to cover the blood). A young man standing next to the good-looking elderly man in the chair says, “Bill, she is awake now.” Bill, I recognise that name and then one of my roommates’ voices enters my head. “I hate Bill, he’s the one who owns this company and he abuses us when we make a mistake. But we have to work harder if we want to succeed in life.” She would talk about this Bill everyday and now here I am face to face with him. I look at him, he knows what he has done. He is responsible for the suffering of the workers. While I’m staring at him pictures flash in my head, the blood on workers’ hands, the bruises, the suffering- at such a young age too. His face would always be there, watching us die. Us faking to inspectors, telling lies and more lies causing the weight on our shoulders to grow bigger. He was there to make sure that everything goes smoothly. The empty threats we receive in return for our hard work and us being unable to take care of our own families because of the measly wages we earn. A harsh growl ripping from someone’s throat is heard, ‘who is making this sound?’ I then realize it is from me and I sound as fierce as a dog when there is a trespasser on their property. My face softens after some more thinking, the truth is this that coming here was our choice. We all came here for a reason just like I came here for my father. I cannot lose this, this is all I have...  He just laughs to himself, “you amuse me, miss. But now you must pay.” The room darkens and there was a thunder clap. “Absolutely not, I am not sorry for anything. Rather than me, it should be you. You know what you did.” I replied simply and coolly, I sounded like a swag person who doesn’t show their feelings. Next thing I know, all is black. Again.

I wake up in bed, groaning sounds comes out of me. Automatically, my stick thin fingers that are as thin as an empty apology appear next to my temple. A deep rose color that is as red as a freshly picked strawberry coats the tips of my fingers, ‘not again!’ I scream in my head. I throw the material over my head, gazing at the coins next to me on a side table. It is barely enough for me to even buy food! Suddenly I become more aware that I got lower than I normally get. This must be the punishment. There is nothing worth living for anymore, I feel like I am dying everyday. I’ve climbed up so far up a mountain only to fall right back again. My parents enter my head, I’ve got to do this for them. Once again I am sitting and watching the needle go up and down, I could almost smell the stench of failure. That’s me.

* “Aku cinta kamu” means “I love you” in Idonesian.

[1dfangirls35]

Voir Dire- N.H

A fake dating AU about contracts, soulmates and risking it all for love.

Masterlist // Tell Me What You Think!

A/N: I’m back!! The past month and a half has been craziness! My ER rotation had me working ALL THE TIME. But now thanks to coronavirus, my rotations have been cancelled at least for the next three weeks (maybe longer) and now we get the stress of wondering if we will get to graduate in December. So for the next few weeks I’ll be listening to Heartbreak Weather on repeat and (hopefully) updating Voir Dire!

sixteen

Kelsey checked the time. Again. The numbers glared at her from the brightness of her phone screen. 

3:01pm

The results were supposed to be sent out at 3.

Did she not get registered? Had they lost her test? Had she given them the wrong email? Kelsey's mind was racing through a million reasons as to why her LSAT score wasn't coming through her inbox at this precise moment.

Two weeks ago, Kelsey had sat in front of a computer with a hope of redeeming herself. Unlike the first time she'd taken the LSAT, this time she had been calm and collected. She had started the morning off with breakfast in bed and a large cup of coffee courtesy of Chef Niall, himself. He'd walked her to the door as she left his house, holding her in his arms and whispering in her ear "You've got this". And that morning she did. She felt like she had it.

But as another minute ticked by on the clock, she began to doubt that she'd "got this" all over again.

Kelsey refreshed the page again. Still nothing.

"Refreshing that page fifty million times isn't going to make it load any faster darling," Niall said sternly, placing his head into Kelsey's shoulder a little further. Kelsey had told Niall several times that there was no need for him to be with her when the results came in. She could handle the relief or disappointment all on her own. But then he reminded her that she'd been with him on his big night, the least he could do was return the favor, and he "didn't even have to change out of the sweats" for it. And she had to admit, leaning against Niall's chest as she refreshed the page for the tenth time was kind of nice.

"They should be up by now, it's..." Kelsey watched her screen refresh once more, this time a new email popping up. "Oh my god it's here." She felt her heart begin to race, and shoved the phone into Niall's hands. "Open it."

"It's your score, you should open it," Niall argued back, trying to push the phone back into Kelsey's grasp.

She shook her head adamantly. "I can't do it Ni, please." Niall looked at Kelsey's pleading eyes, they are filled with a fear he hasn't seen across them in a while.

He knew she was nervous. She'd worked so hard for this over the past year. He had tried his best this morning to rehearse what he was going to say if it all went south. He hoped it wouldn't. And as stood in front of his mirror, coming up with all the wonderful things that he hoped would make Kelsey realize she was so much more than a test score, he realized how silly it all was. Because she was going to pass. There wasn't a doubt in his mind.

He sighed. "Fine." He clicked open the message, taking his own deep breath before reading.

Kelsey tried to read Niall's eyes as he opens the email. But he kept his poker face strong, which only antagonized her more. "Well?" she asked.

Niall raised an eyebrow with a smirk as he watched Kelsey squirm in her seat on the couch. "172, that's great Kels!"

"172," Kelsey repeated slowly, hardly believing her ears. "Are you sure you read that right? It's not like a 127 or something?"

"Kels," Niall said, bringing the phone in front of Kelsey's face. "It's a 172. You killed it."

Kelsey read the numbers for herself, seeing that Niall was indeed correct. "I'm going to law school," Kelsey breathed.

"You're going to law school Kels. I never doubted it for a minute." He planted a kiss on her forehead, wrapping his arms around her in an almost smuggling embrace.

"I did it. I DID IT," the volume of Kelsey's voice raises with each word she said. She stood up from her place on the couch, pacing circles in the living room. She didn't know what to feel. Relief? Excitement? Pride? A mixture of the three?

Kelsey knew it might seem premature, celebrating a test score when the actual admission was yet to come, but she also couldn't help but feel like she'd overcome the biggest barrier. A barrier that had plagued her for over a year, reminding her of all the things she'd been through and just how fragile her life had been. She had doubted herself so much over the past year, her self-confidence had vanished, and this- this score, was proving to her that she wasn't a failure. Her life wasn't a complete mess. And maybe she was coming out of a valley. Maybe she could be at a peak for a while.

"We've got to celebrate," Niall exclaimed, breaking Kelsey away  from her thoughts.

"I've got a bottle of wine in the fridge I've been saving. And I guess Becca has a bag of peanut M &Ms..."

Niall stood up next to Kelsey, placing a finger to her lips before she can even finish her sentence. "Forget the wine and the M&Ms darlin', what's the one thing you want to reward yourself with at the moment?"

"Honestly I could go for some chocolate ice cream. I can text Becca and have her pick some up on her way home..."

"Well let's go get ice cream then," Niall stated. 

Kelsey looked at Niall cautiously, because she couldn't have possibly heard him correctly. "Go get it? Niall you know we can't be seen."

"We can drive through and pick it up can't we? Or I can get out of the car?"

Kelsey gave Niall a questioning look, still unsure of this suggestion. Of all the things to go out in public to do, this seemed like the least important thing on the list. But Niall is unwavering, pulling out his keys from his pocket and dangling them in his hands like a treat. 

"This is a special occasion Kelsey. I don't care what you say we are going to get that ice cream. Twenty minutes there and back. No one will be the wiser."

Kelsey sighed, knowing that this was one thing that Niall wasn't going to change his mind about. She reached out and grabbed his hand, following him to the door. She locked the apartment behind them, as Niall headed down the elevator to grab the car. 

Kelsey couldn't tell if she was high on excitement because of her LSAT or because she was riding in the passenger seat of Niall's car for the first time since they had "broke up" in the eyes of the label. No longer hidden behind the blacked out rear windows of a sleek black escalade, Kelsey felt on top of the world. Nothing could be better than her hand intertwined with Niall's as the LA sunshine warmed them through the windows and Niall's album played softly in the background. 

Kelsey began to wonder what she had worried about when they pulled up to the ice cream drive-thru. There are no other cars in sight, and no one paid a second glance to the messy haired brunette with the thick sunglasses pulling up to the window. Niall ordered a hot fudge sundae with extra fudge, Kelsey a chocolate malt with Reese's. 

"Mmmm," Kelsey said taking a bite out of her treat. "This was a good choice."

"Told you to just trust me," Niall smiled, setting his cup in the center console as they pulled away. 

"I'm so proud of you," Niall said, gazing at Kelsey in a way that made her heart flutter. 

Kelsey smiled. She was pretty damn proud of herself too. 

************************************************

The second Kelsey saw the email from Mr. Alan Michaels she knew they were in trouble. There was no subject, but somehow without even opening it, Kelsey knew exactly what it was going to contain.

The contents were simple.

Miss Benton,

If you know what's good for him, you'll meet with me tomorrow at 10 am sharp. I trust you''ll keep this meeting to yourself. I would hate for another party to become involved and complicate our resolution.

Sincerely,

Alan Michaels 

There was one attachment. But Kelsey didn't need to click the image to know what they'd been caught doing. Suddenly, she wished she hadn't been craving ice cream yesterday after all.

"What's wrong love?" Niall asked, as Kelsey quickly exited out of the message. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"Nothing," Kelsey said, trying her best to form a fake smile and grabbing his hand again. "Now tell me more about this set design."

Niall began rambling on. About lights, guitars, set lists and which songs he was most excited to play live. But all Kelsey could think about was the email sitting in her inbox. 

Her mind began to race with all the things that this could mean. What exactly could his label do? Niall had warned her once before that the music industry could be a brutal environment. She knew that there were consequences to every action, consequences that could ruin careers if certain rules or agreements weren't followed. 

Kelsey wanted to believe that she wasn't scared of these people. She wasn't in a contract with them, and therefore, she had no obligation to even entertain the idea of meeting with them. She owed them nothing. And she certainly did have to play by their rules. 

She thought about showing the message to Niall. But each time she went to bring it up, something stopped her. She knew what that something was.

Niall would take the fall. He would risk the loss of his music, his tour, his livelihood, all for Kelsey. Kelsey knew it. But she wasn't going to allow that to happen. She wouldn't allow him to sacrifice what he had worked so hard on, the career that he so loved- for her. 

"Kels," Niall nudged her his elbow at Kelsey, whose gaze was fixated on the corner of the room. "What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," Kelsey replied quickly, snapping her gaze back to Niall and shooting him a smile. "Just tired." She rested her head on Niall's shoulder. 

"You sure you're okay?" Niall asked again. Kelsey had been acting off over the past few hours, and he couldn't figure out why. She wasn't the best at hiding her racing thoughts. 

Kelsey turned, placing her hands on either side of Niall's cheeks and staring into his icy blue eyes. "Niall, I'm great. I've got the LSAT score of my dreams and an incredible man who I love more than anything and who loves me. What more could I need?"

"I love you," Niall replied, planting a kiss on Kelsey's lips.

"It's just been a long week for me. A good week but a long one," Kelsey mused as she snuggled deep into Niall's arms. She inhaled deeply, basking in musky, cool scent of Niall's cologne. She didn't want to think about what their relationship might look like if she attended the meeting tomorrow. Or what it might look like if she didn't. 

When Kelsey got back to her apartment later that evening, she poured herself the biggest glass of wine she could find. Kelsey knew Niall had found it odd that she was leaving his house so early in the evening, but she brushed it off as needing some rest. She couldn't bear to tell him the truth: that every minute she sat in his apartment her anxiety about just what would happen at the meeting tomorrow was growing exponentially. 

Kelsey tipped back her glass of Moscato, gulping it down like a housewife at a dinner party gone awry. Becca walks into the kitchen at that precise moment, giving Kelsey a side-eyed smile. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Kelsey answered quickly. The word was slipping off her tongue easier the more times she said it. 

The email had been explicit: no outside parties. Plus Kelsey already knew what Becca would say. Becca ask why Niall was even considering negotiating with the label when he had the power of his fanbase and the media to shift the story. A story of forbidden love? According to Becca, people eat that shit up. 

"Hmm let's see," Becca scratched her forehead, leaning over the kitchen countertop. "You're back from Niall's before 10pm, you are chugging a glass of wine like its a magic elixir, and you keep glancing at your phone like its going to jump out at you. There's a lot more than nothing going on, so pour me a glass and spill."

Kelsey sighed, grabbing another glass from the cupboard and pouring Becca a glass and herself a refill. She clicked open her phone to the email and slid it across the counter to Becca, watching as Becca's face turns from a sly grin to a face of concern.

"Well for starters, Niall needs a new agent," Becca said, clearly trying to lighten the mood. "But this is messed up Kels. Seems like more of a threat than a suggestion."

"More like blackmail," Kelsey replies with a roll of her eyes. She makes her way into the living room, sliding down onto the couch before taking another lengthy sip of her wine. 

"What did Niall say about this?"

Kelsey stayed quiet.

"Kelsey..." Becca stared her down. "You didn't mention this to him?"

"The message didn't exactly sound like they wanted him to know about it."

"And so you thought he didn't need to know that his label is basically blackmailing you to break up with him?" Becca responded. 

"Niall," Kelsey began, taking a deep breath. "Niall thinks with his heart. I didn't want to tell him and have him make a rash decision based on what he was feeling. Especially with something like his career."

"But you don't even know what they want Kels," Becca argued. 

"I'm pretty sure what they want is for me to not see Niall anymore. They made that very clear the first time we met with them." Kelsey's mind flashed back to the last time she visited the Capitol Records office. It wasn't a memory she looked back upon fondly. Her heart raced just thinking about being in that situation again.

"Are you going to meet with them this time?" Becca asked.

"I think that whatever they tell me at that meeting has to be a far better alternative than if I ignore the meeting in the first place."

"What's the worst thing they can do to you Kels? Being in love with their musician isn't illegal," Becca reassured. "Besides, Niall already released his music. He's a former member of One Direction, no one's gonna pass up on the opportunity to sign that moneymaker to their label."

Becca had a point. The worst Capitol Records could do to Kelsey was a slap on the wrist and a warning that she shouldn't see Niall again. A lot of bad things could happen to Niall because of this, a cancelled tour, a loss of his contract...but maybe none of that was career-altering. For a moment, Kelsey thought that she's made up her mind. That maybe going to this meeting was doing exactly what Capitol wanted her to do. They wanted her to be scared into being their pawn.

But then Kelsey remembered what Niall told her back in the beginning. About the music industry be far more connected than you would think. About being blacklisted from every record label in the country. She thought about Niall sitting on his couch strumming his guitar to a melody that had just surfaced in his mind. Or the way his blue eyes glowed when he told her about the feeling he got hearing an amphitheater full of people singing the words he wrote back to him. 

Becca could tell Kelsey was still deep in thought, and so she stood, walking to the kitchen and placing her now empty glass in the sink. "Whatever you decide Kels, I'm here, okay." Becca walked towards her room. As she reached the doorway, she turned around, meeting eyes with Kelsey again. "Besides now they have to come after both of us."

Becca's comment turned Kelsey's lips into a small smile, even if just for a moment. Kelsey made her way to her bedroom, sliding under the grey comforter and burying her head into her pillow. Her mind racing with a million thoughts.

She loved Niall. More than she had ever loved anyone before. The selfish thing would be to not go to the meeting. To be defiant and keep Niall to herself. But the world needed Niall Horan and his music. And Niall Horan needed his music more than he would ever need Kelsey, even if he didn't know it. 

So she would go to the meeting. And she would listen to the terms. And if it came down to dating Niall and his music career, well, she would pick his career. Because he wasn't going to pick it for himself.

As she lay in bed, her phone buzzed with another notification: an email. 

Tomorrow. 10 am sharp.

Tag List: @awomanindeniall​ @ihearthemcallingforyou @niall-is-my-dream​ @stylishmuser​ @thicksniall

[yan-purgatory]

Hello? Can you do an EXO yandere headcannon or reaction of them being jealous ?

admin: ☕️ / cory

request:  hello? can you do an exo yandere headcannon or reaction of them being jealous ? (fem reader)

note: hey! I hope this is alright? I’m not that used to making hcs but i tried my best for you, lovely anon! 

Minseok:

despite the fact that minseok often kills for you, it rarely is ever out of jealousy

it’s just to show you just how much he loves you

and to enjoy that expression on your face when you’re watching him murder a man just for you

it’s pretty hard to make him jealous anyways

he knows you’ll never leave him

you would be too scared of the consequences

but, if he ever some how felt threatened by another guy

said guy would get a fate much worse than death

“So you think you’re good enough for my doll, huh? Ha… that’s hilarious…”

he would have that man tied up in his basement

if you thought he tortured his victims usually, well you’re in for a treat now

he would get the dullest knives he could find

and in the slowest, most agonizing pace, he would carve the word scum absolutely everywhere possible

no one besides him could ever even dream about being with you

he’d use some of his normal techniques as well

like breaking all the bones in both his hands

along with keeping him alive as long as possible, only allowing them to finally die from starvation or dehydration

all the while making you watch

“Be careful y/n, if this happens again ill make you participate.”

Junmyeon:

this is never unexpected when you guys go out

it always seems to happen with how perfect you are

some guy walking up to you and deciding to press his luck by talking to something that’s not his

of course junmyeon wouldn’t show much feeling toward the act

but inside he was already planning his murder

he would flash a fake smile at the lousy excuse of a human and speak calmly toward him

“Would you excuse us, we’ve got a date to get to.”

he would scoff silently to himself and then carry on doing what you had been

you might’ve thought he got over it, but of course he didn’t

once he dropped you off he would make up some excuse to leave

“My boss called me in. I know it’s late, but it seemed important.”

he would promise to be back as quick as possible and then he’d be gone

finding the guy would be easy with his connections

unlike minseok, when he finally got his hands on the guy he wouldn’t spend much time murdering him

any of his victims don’t deserve his time

you’re the only one who does

they’re just the dirt beneath your guys’ feet

once the job was done he would drive home, already in other set of clothing

happy to finally be able to relax with his one and only

“I just spilt a drink on my clothes and had to change, don’t worry so much love.”

Yixing:

yixing would be the most reasonable in this kind of situation

not cause he was right in the head or anything

no, far from it

but only because if he did what he actually wanted to he knew that you would surely end up hating him for it

so he would try his best to be as calm as possible if someone tried hitting on you

“Going after taken girls isn’t really a good strategy is it?”

he would pull you as close as possible to his body

and keep his arm around your waist

a glare on his face that would surely scare any person

and his jaw clenched tightly

to not let any other remark leave his mouth

he would be fuming as the man walked away, but still try to keep his composure until he left his sight

“I can’t believe some people…”

he would turn to you

mood completely opposite

he would smile down at you

and kiss your cheek

“I didn’t even touch the guy this time. Once we get home you should reward me don’t you think?”

Baekhyun:

if a guy tried to steal you away from him, he knew it would never work

baekhyun had you wrapped around his finger

but baekhyun likes to use anything as an excuse to punish you

so even though he doesn’t really get jealous he would definitely act like it

“Y/n, who is this? Your new boyfriend or something?”

he would interrupt you trying to reject some guy’s pickup lines

he would look furious

his expression being able to scare even the most fearless people

so obviously the guy didn’t take long to leave

“I guess you leave me no choice…I can’t have you talking to other guys. You’re mine.”

your pleads would do nothing to stop him

he would drag you home and quickly get to work

smirking the entire time as he punished you

he would make sure to use all of his favorite tools

being very meticulous in his actions

your cries of help would do nothing to stop him

“You look so beautiful right now.”

he would continue on for hours, your expressions never getting old to him

“No one else can ever see you like this. This is sight will forever only be for me, darling.”

Chanyeol:

chanyeol is usually calm at all times

that is until someone decides to try to interact with you

how dare anyone try and take away his possession?

he would have absolutely none of it and put an end to the attempt very quickly

“Excuse me, I don’t believe I said you could talk to what’s mine.”

no one would even be able to get far enough into a conversation to pull out a pickup line

he knows he dresses you nicely and manages to make you look even more perfect

but that doesn’t mean anyone else should be able to get all googly eyed at you

only he can

he would threaten anyone, male or female, no matter their sexuality

“If I catch you looking at her one more time I’ll rip your eyes out so you can’t anymore.”

just having you wear a collar around your neck with his name lettered on to it wasn’t enough for him

if you two were in the field of view of anyone he would make sure to claim you

kissing you in public and even occasionally leaving marks on you was definitely a good way to do so

not even caring how embarrassed it made you

“Shhh. Your complaining is just drawing more attention.”

Kyungsoo:

he was the literal definition of jealous whenever you were out of the house

he just couldn’t help himself

obviously he wasn’t worried about you doing something

no, it was everyone else he was worried about

if you weren’t locked up with him in his house then who knows what someone could do to you

even if he was with you it didn’t really help, not that he would let you be without him anyways

but he would just be hostile to absolutely everyone

no matter what their intentions

if anyone approached you he would growl out a threat of some sort as a warning

“Pal, I highly suggest you just move onto the next girl. My y/n isn’t just another slut despite what you may think.”

you wouldn’t even be able to respond he would interfere so quickly

he wouldn’t want to get violent

but if he really had to he wouldn’t hesitate to do so

no matter if he was in front of you or not

“I’m sorry darling, I was just trying to protect you. I promise i’ll try to restrain myself next time.”

of course that wouldn’t be the case

Jongin:

he would not get jealous at that someone decided to talk to you, but the fact that you responded

the only person you should speak to is him

no one else deserves to hear your voice

he’d threaten the guy in some way just to get him to leave

“Unless you’d like to get a black eye I’d suggest you walk away.”

the cliche of how stuff turns out when guys get jealous is absolutely not the case with jongin

he would focus his anger on you

you knew he hated when your attention was anything besides him

and yet you do this

it’s like you’re just asking to get punished

“We’re leaving. God, you can never listen can you? You’re so lucky I actually put up with this.”

don’t expect anything on the lenient side

he would be absolutely pissed with you

more than likely opting to do something irrational and crazy

like injuring your vocal cords so you can’t speak

“See, look what you made me do.”

he would feel guilty quickly though and try his best to help you heal as quick as possible

“I read that warm liquids really help. Now, drink up. I wanna hear your sweet voice again. I already miss it”

Sehun:

usually not the type that’s jealous

just because when he’s constantly showing you PDA when you’re out it’s kinda hard for people not to take the hint that you’re together

on rare occasion that someone does actually approach you with some stupid pickup line though, he’s in full blown jealous mode

at first he’ll just hold onto you in some way

anything to show you’re his

holding hands, hand around your waist, etc.

if the person persists it’ll escalate

he’ll shove the guy away from you

“Hey, are you blind? She’s taken, back off.”

and, if he dared to talk back to him, sehun wouldn’t be so nice

he’d walk up to the guy and grab him by his shirt

“You should’ve just kept quiet.”

sehun’s fist would meet with the man’s face

he’d drop him to the floor and begin kicking him in the stomach

once he decided he was done with him, he would grab you tightly by the wrist

“Let’s go, I shouldn’t have brought you out. This will never happen again.”

[claire-thelen-blog]

*Fake News*

Fake news! We hear about it all the time—especially from the man in charge of running our country. But how does this fake news—or junk news—spread so quickly across social media? Well, Philip Howard and Samantha Bradshaw believe it is a combination of algorithms, advertising, and exposure. I agree with their statement that all three of these factors contribute to the spread of junk news on social media.

Algorithms

Algorithms are used on social media platforms to select and prioritize what information is delivered to the user. The algorithms are used to maximize user engagement and keep social media users on the applicable platform. This is problematic because it inhibits the free flow of ideas and makes it more difficult to ensure you are finding information from a diverse set of viewpoints.

I agree that algorithms can be very useful. For example, Netflix uses complex algorithms to pick out movies that I might like to watch based on content I previously enjoyed. Facebook uses algorithms to show me hilarious videos that are similar to previous videos that I “reacted to” or “liked.” However, as Howard and Bradshaw pointed out, I also see the dark side of algorithms. If social media platforms are only showing us information similar to the posts we previously interacted with, this quickly narrows down our content and destroys any chance at seeing a wide variety of viewpoints on one’s feed.

Advertising

As the saying goes, “You don’t want to stare, but you can’t look away.” As humans, we are drawn to outrageous, tragic, intense, and emotional content. For example, when visiting New York City, I distinctly remember stopping many times on the street to watch outrageous, intense, and emotional street performances. In addition, we saw a lot of homeless people. It was quite sad, and you did not want to stare, but sometimes you just could not get yourself to look away. In much the same way, social media’s data-based advertising model helps spread junk news by rewarding viral content. Clickbait is used to attract attention, and this increases the use of exaggerated and misleading content.

I try to ignore website advertisements, but I have definitely seen these outrageous, exaggerated advertisements while browsing the internet and social media. The times that I do click on some of this “clickbait” are often when it involves celebrities that I enjoy following. For example, I remember clicking on a little advertisement on Facebook this past week with a really exaggerated headline involving Carrie Underwood. After clicking on the ad, I quickly realized this was junk news. This is a relatively harmless example, but if it involved misleading political information, this could definitely have negative consequences in spreading inaccurate and exaggerated content.

Exposure

The majority of my friends share many of my same viewpoints. I would like to say that I spend time with a group of people who challenge my views, but that is just not the case. Thus, I completely agree with Howard and Bradshaw in their statement that exposure is one of the factors leading to the spread of junk news on social media. Most of the posts I am exposed to on social media are from my friends who share the same views as I do. In addition, I do not necessarily enjoy reading content that makes me question my views (although I know I should do it). When we are only exposed to information that supports our beliefs, I think it makes it much easier to buy into junk news. I am sure we all have that one family member or friend on Facebook who is constantly sharing content that looks far less than reliable. But, as with a train wreck, it is hard to look away.

 -----

I believe businesses and individuals should simply be aware that there is a lot of junk news out there and that it is likely that they are not being exposed to information from a diverse set of viewpoints on their social media feeds. Howard and Bradshaw’s article reminded me of the recent controversy over Ellen DeGeneres sitting by George W. Bush at the Cowboys game. Ellen defended her seat choice by saying that she was aware she was going to be surrounded by people with very different views and beliefs. Ellen also expressed that many of her friends have different views from her. I think this is the key to trying to respond to the spread of junk news. We need to take actions to surround ourselves with a diverse set of viewpoints. The first step would be to follow a wide variety of individuals on social media that have differing views than your own. If the social media feed still seems filtered to show only content you agree with, this may require manually checking in on the posts of the individuals you do not agree with. It is a challenge to sort through the junk, but as they say, nothing worth having comes easy.

[originaljediinjeans]

I think here on Tumblr is the only place I “could” discuss this. If I brought it up on a Facebook support group my post might not get approved by admins because of how what I am about to describe touches on multiple sensitive issues. Also I have certain friends in those support groups that might not like seeing what I have to reveal. 

I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We’ve been called “Mormons” in the past but we’re trying to step away from that. Those of you who have heard of the Church know that the Church has come under fire for its policies towards LGBTQ+ people, based on teachings that promote the traditional family and traditional marriage as the center of our lives and the thing for which we are rewarded the most in Time and Eternity for having. For very strong personal reasons I accept the Church’s teachings about the importance of marriage and family.

In the last few years I have added a good number of LGBTQ+ friends into my social circle. A few of them are very vocal about their identity and lifestyle on their online profiles. I have had good experiences with some of these people and I have grown to care about them as peers and as friends. Some of them I have stood by (mostly via internet) as they have struggled with their own mental health problems. I want to have good relationships with people from all backgrounds. There is no reason in my mind that I can’t. 

I am autistic, and I have struggled with mental illness off and on since my teen years and issues about marriage and sexuality and my beliefs about them have been at the center of a good portion of those struggles. My parents and my counselors and doctors would all tell you that I have a very “black and white” way of thinking and they are correct. For me, something either has to be all one way or all another way. I have worked very hard since I was a child to try to understand that things that are different can coexist, and things that are not all one way can be just as they are. 

There is a part of me that is always trying to reconcile having LGBTQ+ friends and associates with my faith. I have done everything I can to study the scriptures and the teachings of church leaders in order to understand the concept that the Savior taught that we must love those who are different from ourselves. He dedicated His life to making a special effort to reaching out to everyone who was outcast, downtrodden, and left behind in any way: He asks as much of me as well as everyone who follows him.  

After this last weekend’s General Conference, I saw the usual backlash on the internet against how certain topics were addressed by the General Authorities. I admit, it was enough to trigger a meltdown. I was able to pull myself out of it. I came to the conclusion that the issue with myself is that I am not ‘homophobic’ as much as I have anxiety about certain topics. I wonder how much homophobia itself is related to actual anxiety etc, but that is not the main issue here. The main issue here is me and how I feel. 

I don’t want to “hate” people for who they are. And I don’t. But I have two seperate lines of thinking when it comes to my LGBTQ+ friends: 

One: I love and respect them and I am so grateful that I can be friends with people who are different from me

Two: I do not approve of the lifestyle choices of people that I am acquainted with because my Church teaches that sexual relations are only legitimate between a man and woman legally married. 

I have to carry those two mindsets in my interactions with certain people--I think it’s partly due to the fact that I’m autistic that sometimes I can’t deal well with the effort of being, in a sense, “double-minded.” It can feel exhausting because I’m trying to resist my natural tendency to think only one way. But I come from a church and a culture that teaches that basic values should not, cannot be compromised, and that only reinforces my mental rigidity, and that makes accepting other ideas harder. I confess sometimes that rigidity lends itself to feelings of anger and hate--but I don’t like to dwell on them. I don’t want to.

I hate reading or hearing that my opinions about anything are wrong, even if it’s not directly addressed to me. But I have a growing paranoia that I’m going to get hate for my opinions anyway (but if it comes because of this post so be it--I have honest concerns and I need to address them and I hope the right people find this post).

A lot of what I see on the internet tells me that my church is wrong about everything: about sexuality, about gender differences, about the leadership, I could go on for quite a while. There are people who question how it is “fair” that the highest rituals of our religion are exclusive to people who do as the Church teaches. There are people who protest that if God’s love is so universal and far-reaching that they should be allowed to have full participation in the Church regardless of their sexual behavior. There are many who claim that the Church wants them to “suffer” rather than have fulfillment from romantic and sexual relations with people they are attracted to. All of those concerns are valid. I don’t know the answers to all of their questions. However, I don’t think that questions or other people’s complaints are a reason to abandon faith. 

My biggest concern is that as much as I “love and respect” my LGBTQ+ friends, I feel hypocritical and evil for associating with them because I have negative feelings towards their way of life. I feel like a bad person because I don’t “love” them unconditionally, or that I have to pick and choose how to love them. I think I am being fake with them. I have always been concerned about these friendships at least in theory but now I am an adult and being able to deal or not deal with them is going to have real consequences. 

(Yeah, it’s Satan, I know).

When I was younger, I had the assumption that I was supposed to not interact with people who were immoral in any way, that it would make me “unclean”. I have since learned, of course, that that attitude is very wrong. I get that there are plenty of people in my church who treat LGBTQ+ people very poorly and I know that that has caused serious problems--some of my LGBTQ+ friends are from that background. I know that Jesus Christ would never condone members of His Church being unkind to others just because of their sexual orientation. 

(Side comment that may hurt the validity of my quandry: I know that it sounds like the General Authorities of my church are talking down about LGBTQ+ people, or at least saying things that sound hurtful or aren’t what people like to hear, but the Church has always taught that we need to show love and kindness to all people, that we are all children of our Heavenly Father, and that being disdainful of others who commit sin is not the right way, even if we aren’t trying to make them “repent.” Those teachings are still valid even if the members don’t always live it. Also, back in 2015 the Church supported legislation in Utah to promote equal housing and employment for LGBTQ+ people, and the Church recently supported a hate crimes bill in Utah that includes protections for LGBTQ+ persons. I feel that the Church is trying to promote peaceful relationships and equal rights for access to basic needs). 

I have a very real paranoia that if my LGBTQ+ friends knew how I “really” felt, they would abandon me. I belong to a church that is actively seeking to put them down, in their minds, and the flawed culture of imperfect members is hard to disentangle from Church policy. I have a very real compulsion to “out” my “problematic” side and just get it over with, to post here on Tumblr or on Facebook that I am a “toxic” person who should be shunned. In fact, since last October I have been tempted to commit suicide over the mere possibility that this ugly beast exists in my soul. 

(Yeah, that’s definitely Satan)

I still believe that homosexual behavior is a sin. I have no intention of leaving the Church or criticizing its leaders, even if they are imperfect. But I accept that same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria is a reality for many people, and there is nothing wrong with those feelings in themselves, even though living in a world dominated by cishet people is very difficult. I also know that Heavenly Father does not approve of homophobia. The “natural man” is the one that gives in to fear, anger, and hatred. 

But there are people who would interpret my religious views as homophobic no matter how I felt about them as individuals. I am afraid that the people that I am actually friends with might think of me as homophobic merely for belonging to this Church and for accepting some of its teachings. And there are people who think that if I don’t unconditionally “accept” and support their sexual lifestyle choices that I don’t truly “accept” them. I’m afraid of my own homophobia and it hurts. I’m afraid of attitudes of hatred and prejudice taking over me and then costing me my relationships with other people. 

I am afraid that as we get closer to the Second Coming that the conflict between people fighting for what they believe are their rights and the Church trying to stand its ground will get very heated. I don’t know how that’s going to affect me but I’m not looking forward to it. However, I don’t want to worry about that now. And I shouldn’t. My life is better for my relationships with people who are different from me, including those of differing sexual orientation. I know that my Savior has commanded me to love other people the way that He loves--loving them for who they are and encouraging them to follow Him--and I want to. 

I just really need help reconciling my feelings, or at least knowing that such reconciliation is possible. I’m not concerned about doing the right thing as much as am I going to be okay and do my LGBTQ+ friends really accept me without me having to compromise my beliefs? These issues put me under a lot of mental and emotional pressure. What is it going to take for me to be strong enough to withstand it?

Sincerely, Me, a person who struggles with mental illness and wants to do right by the people she cares about

Please interact: open-minded people who are religious/spiritual, Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, people with knowledge or experience of mental illness, LGBTQ+ people who are more tolerant of religious people; people who have struggled with similar thoughts or fears a plus

DO NOT INTERACT: athiests and exmos, antis, etc., anyone who just wants to talk down to me about my beliefs or “educate” me; also far-right religious people who misinterpret religious beliefs to justify homophobia

[emmadelosnardos-blog]

Complete Bathmate Review and More

I have basically maxed away a ~7.5" x 6,1".

Large, however, not "huge".

Though a major expansion from the ~ 5.3" x 5.0" dick I once had.

I am interested in a few experimental hormonal techniques to put in a bit more size, though I am a lot happy with what is in between the legs of mine now. My lady is happy as well. ;)

I've the "rings," upon utilizing bathmate and they also disappear in a couple of minutes. I eventually recognized what they're from I am getting much too large for the Hercules and yes it may be the time to go as much as the larger body. I've the brand new Hydromax x30 on the manner in which. The Bathmate Hercules supports as many as 9" in length and 6.5" in girth. I am pressing it on girth [when broadened within the Bathmate] at this stage.

Bathmate was among the products that got me to begin the site through the primary Facebook group of ours. Because of the private dynamics of the problem and more than the best advertising by lots of makes, it's tough to locate authentic reviews and specifics about male enhancement products. I will protect every part of Bathmate in this particular comprehensive comment. You will discover confirmed consumer opinions in the conclusion of the article that are an aspect of the Facebook group of ours.

Bathmate (almost any penis enlargement pump) works by producing a vacuum round the penis. As the vacuum grows? that's, substance is pumped from the cylinder that involve the penis? the ensuing strain attracts bloodstream in to the erectile chambers, extending the penile shaft to its optimum capacity.Thanks to the suppleness of the penile cells, there's obviously great space for expansion not unlike an over inflated tyre.

I might discovered six healthcare journals(citation in the end) which will help support the above mentioned principle of penis extension by traction or stress. Many of these health journals are about real world trials. Thus, you need to provide the accounts additional weightage than evaluations you experience all around the web.

Although the science behind Bathmate penis pump is pretty simple, the constituents components to look after enough sizing as well as brilliance concern isn't. In order to stay away from the danger of trauma and suboptimal outcomes, it's advisable to opt for the reputed brand name like Bathmate. Despite Bathmate, you have to stay within the suggested routine getting results that are good with no danger of trauma. When you're on the checkout web page, you might notice a package to get into a coupon code. As per our newest details (April 2018), genuine Bathmate website does not have any coupon code. If perhaps you see a working coupon code, you have to be on a fake site. Thus, continually be cautious. Just purchase from Official Website.

Here is what this particular penis pump is able to do:

Improve measurements in place to plus 1-2 inches in most cases after 6-12 months

Augment thickness

Boost self-confidence

For higher stamina

Increases orgasm

Enlarge penile head

Correct curves

Help in Peyronie's condition (Clinically proven)

Assists erectile dysfunction Bathmate most pumps begun as atmosphere that is to high. Nevertheless, that was innovated to present an even more efficient consequence. With all the experts' pneumatic and hydraulic awareness, they realized the pump is able to move better with h2o. The h2o produces a partial vacuum that involve the penis that will improve as well as enhance the penile wellbeing.

The brand new pump is known as Hydromax hydropump where h2o is used to push bloodstream on the body organ. This will, in turn, boost blood chambers ensuing to longer, hard and thicker rock erections.

The organization had released Goliath as well as Hercules as flagship versions to begin with. The very first one was for the conventional size as well as the latter with the larger hydro penis pump. After a little time, Hydromax was included and this's the better variation of the very first two sorts which happen to have thirty % even more energy. This method has faster and better benefits. Apart from HydoMax Xtremes which will come with hands heels, the majority of the designs are self contained and therefore are devoid of any additional aspect.

Hercules? This's suggested for males with a minimum of seven penile measurements. This could also support so long as 8.4 with a girth of 6.6 max. This's the least expensive style however numerous men discovered the to become the best also.

HydroMax X20? For men that have a maximum penile measurements of 5.5, this person is the greatest choose. It is able to assist you improve as much as 7.4 measurements plus 5.4 of girth.

HydroMax X30? make use of this in case you would like outcomes that are important in only a brief period. Originality was completed on the valve process of its, enabling it to suction far more to almost as thirty % when compared with various other versions. It's a comparable dimensions to Hercules. Hence, Hydromax X30 may be used by typical guys(less than seven in when erect).

HydroMax X40? This's for males with seven to ten measurements of the erect penis. The optimum girth of 7.9 may additionally be accommodated.

Goliath? This's the biggest sort with penis computing nine in length or even greater (up to 10.5). It's additionally for individuals with nine girth. In order to have the thought of what size this's, realize that you are able to accommodate Hercules within this particular pump! HydroMax Extreme? This is available in sequence (Xtreme XX50, Xtreme XX40, and Xtreme XX30, intended for men with 9 11 measurements range. These are available with handball pump and also hose along with a large amount of various other extras. This particular probably the most complex sequence with lots of additions.

Picking out the pump which meets you many is vital, or else, you won't just receive the preferred effect though you are able to possess a swollen, bruised and sore penis. This has absolutely nothing to do with the choice of yours of using water or maybe air flow pump. The most significant factor is picking the item with the very best quality.

The great point regarding Bathmate pump may be the simplicity of the use of its. In reality, you are able to simply put in it easily to the day program of yours.

In your everyday bath (in a bath or maybe tub), load up the tube with h2o that is warm. Next, put in the flaccid penis of yours within the pump's cylinder (Nevertheless, many men acknowledge they normally use this with an erect penis). To create a preliminary seal, drag the pump to the body of yours as well as release this. As you are doing very, the bath is going to be introduced out of the pump by its release lamp that is situated in the cylinder's conclusion.

After the unit is sealed, you'll be able to start your pumping period. Of the procedure, the penis of yours is going to increase in dimension and erect.

After the lamp operates from the bath, that shows you're in the optimum stress level. You are able to begin with 1 2 cm much more erection measurements and this also may even go higher. The task will not be very painful though you are going to feel the strain when you pull. The moment soreness is sensed, launch the valve to put out a little amount of stress preventing injuries.

With all the strain arriving at the maximum level of its, let it remain for 5-6 mins. When accomplished, keep on the release valve and discharge the penis of yours. The whole process should be repeated two or perhaps much more occasions. 3 cycles should be finished in 10-20 mins. This will likely reward you with optimum advantage as well as speedier consequence.

For comfort, ensure to warm up initially. You've to have loose-fitting condition as well as a flaccid (that involves the scrotum) of yours. Small scrotum is sucked within the pump and this also can be quite uneasy. Penis workout methods are additionally required prior and following the periods of yours and also ensure you make use of h2o that is warm too. In case you've tub at home, even the greater.

Kindly confirm comment areas below for actual user reviews as well as dialogue. Please remember that Extenders and bathmate pump happen to be analyzed scientifically by healthcare pros for usefulness with mostly good results as well as owners evaluations often be partial for/against based on health conditions and the character for owners.

If you discover it extremely uncomfortable to get this particular through the shop, much better examination them out there online. This flat provides you with the flexibility to select the dimensions which meets you finest because you are able to get your time carrying out the searching of yours without being concerned that a person is looking at you.

Ensure you're purchasing out of the official site, not the phony shops.

Genuine Bathmate website.

Although some previously as well as after pictures you notice online are marketing, there are already impartial scientific studies that verify a minimum of 0.5 or even 2 inch expansion in numerous self reported journals. Many males might be way too modest to teach you their very own however their assuring phrases provide sufficient motive to make the item a shot. You will discover not many solutions in male enhancement market that has medical society backing and Bathmate is 1 of the items. With repeated and consistent use, you are able to have 1 3 in. Although days are taken by irreversible increase, you will see short-term grow quickly. You will get two weeks no-questions-asked guarantee to confirm the convenience of its to yourself (Make certain you purchase out of the official website to be included under refund policy).