#we used to think posts like ''yeah liking a villain means i support everything they do im a terrible person sure'' and were like

[mudstoneabyss]

I'm not someone who'll get influenced into getting into something because I see people posting and talking about it but I am absolutely someone who'll refuse to get into something if I keep seeing discourse and people being annoying about it

[humorously-yours]

Men should be thankful to Women that they only want EQUALITY from them not REVENGE........

Because if a woman decides to take revenge, even the Devil sits back and takes lessons from her.

I don't understand why most of the Men think that Feminism means Hating Men. Women Empowerment means to make women superior to their opposite gender (men). I mean why don't they make some efforts to look into the internet and find the real meaning of such words. I know that there are many cases where women perform like villains in some men's lives. For eg. Filing False Rape cases against an innocent man. I even heard of committing domestic violence and sexual harassment by women on men. So yeah! I admit that women can play a negative character in real life as well. But these things don't show that Feminism and women empowerment supports these issues and Women always blame men for whatever wrong is going on in their life.

I'm a Woman too and I say it loudly that I know not all men are same. I'm a Feminist too but I don't hate men, I have no reason to hate them. Some men do real bad shits and make their community look Bad Humans.

But hear me out, Men and Women are not here to compete with each other, they are here to coexist and to help each other. Simple! No one is superior and inferior to each other. They are equal. RHS=LHS.

I have seen this irrelevant debate on the internet that if a severe period pain and child birth is more painful for a woman or hitting on the balls for men?? See, Women don't have that biology to experience the pain of Hitting on the balls. So they will definitely say period pain and child birth. And the same goes with Men too, nature made them like this, it's not their fault if they choose to say Hitting on the balls and not the above women oriented options.So, I don't understand why do women start bashing them to not to choose Period pain and child birth as the most painful experiences. As a woman, I don't want Men to behave or to look like us. I just want to say that we women love their Masculinity and Manly things, as long as they are not toxic towards us. As long as they feel proud of being a man and made us feel inferior to them. Once they will start understanding problems of women both physical and Emotional. Our Real life and Social Media will start recovering and abolishing (Women ☕) emoji. That's it!

I want to clear myself that, please don't try to interpret my thoughts that I support and justify wrong doings of women in the name of Feminism and Blame Men for everything. No! I expressed these thoughts because I see these things everyday on Social media. It's getting too toxic nowadays. especially for Women.

Another thought -

I'm not a die hard of American Singer Taylor Swift. But I have listened to some of her famous songs and they are truly great, the lyrics are fascinating to the ears. But again Why do people hate her?? like, they literally have no serious reason for their irrelevant hate towards that talented woman. Taylor is a confident lady. She doesn't hate anyone. She doesn't say anything wrong to anyone. She writes songs which we women can relate to. I don't know why Men hate her. I mean just look at those lyrics, listen to them with clear ears, you'll know that Most of her songs are dedicated towards boys and Men, how a woman feels when she falls in love with man. There are numerous songs dedicated towards the beauty of a girl but songs about the beauty of a boy, I rarely find anywhere. Taylor does beautification of a Man in her songs, speaks Romantic experiences from her perspective. Such amazing lyrics. It's just her massive popularity pokes haters, they are jealous of her being a Woman and having such an infinite fan following.

I don't know What type of comments I am going to see on this post, It's just that I wanted to share my thoughts and I find Tumblr as a good Platform, It feels like another family to me. At least it's better than Twitter or X or whatever the alphabet Elon Musk likes.

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Okay Bye 💟

Take Care ✨

[bestworstcase]

So, I recently had a discussion with a friend regarding your angle that Salem respects humans/Faunus, convinced Summer to get onboard with her plan and has the explicit goal of taking out the gods to save Remnant.

Conceptually I don't strictly mind any of this, its certainly not impossible for reasons you've outlined and it'd be suitably subversive of CRWBY to take the woman scorned/heretics villain and have her not be about that but some way bigger issue.

However, I run into a bit of a hurdle with embracing the concepts because it always hits what I deem to be some narrative and structural hurdles. Not one's that "Can't" be overcome, but that I am unsure I have seen be covered in outlines and theories.

My main concerns tie into a few angles that I'll try to break up for clarity:

Focus A big concern for me with the current theory is that it feels like it shifts the focus of the story away from the main characters.

You know how people treated Ironwood or Adam, or Ozpin & Qrow like they were the main characters and RWBY were or should be just supporting characters in their narrative?

While I don't think this is intentional on your part, it does beg the question of how this would be avoided.

Shaggy Dog Story Tied into the above is the potential for it to make the main characters journey feel a bit like a Shaggy Dog story. IE, a story where a lot of bad stuff happens for no reasn and they'd be better off having stayed home.

Again, I don't think this is intentional.

But, if Salem has a plan to take down the gods, if this plan is good and workable and would succeed... Haven't they made everything worse by fighting her and dragging it out?

Agency & of not and Salem is happy about them rallying the world behind them because then she can do this alone, we go back to the Focus issue.

Salem seems to become the main character and the story feels less about RWBY and more about them being caught up in Salem's narrative.

Consistency Meanwhile from Salem's angle, it does beg some questions about her thought processes. I can accept the idea she is varying shades of paranoid ad not used to being trusted...

But at the same time she has an inner circle she trusts a fair bit and is willing to reach out and align with large organizations like the White Fang, or try to cut deals with Atlas. Plus she might legit have Summer on her side.

So the idea I've seen proposed that she feels compelled to go to war, that she cannot envision another way. When most of the world doesn't know or care about the gods, when she has humans & Faunus on her side already who could speak for her.

Simply put it feels inconsistent to say that Salem is pathologically incapable of reaching out to others. She certainly struggles with communicating, but she can do so and can get people on her side.

Satisfaction This one is a bit more vague, but the general point is I am unsure what a satisfying conclusion with the seemingly proposed ideas looks like.

If Salem is right, then RWBY and co are to one degree or another supporting characters, whose actions had little impact. Or their narrative significance is in basically clarifying that Salem is correct and should be worked with. Or perhaps serving as her nominal therapists/communication advisors.

I swear I am not trying to be reductive, I am just basing this on conversations I've had and posts I've seen.

But yeah, basically I am wondering how you envision things going down that ensures RWBY remains the focal characters and that their journey and decisions have real meaning. While keeping the nuanced Salem and ensuring she doesn't come across as inconsistent. I am sure it can be done, and have tinkered with some myself, but most of them don't seem to in the direction I've seen suggested by others.

rubs hands. all good questions

#1: focus

i will say i do think the story of rwby is foundationally about ozlem—in the sense that the plot of the story revolves around this ancient and deeply personal conflict between them that is tearing the world apart and the narrative goal is their reconciliation, because you can’t have true peace until These Two immortal fucks stop fighting—and that team rwby’s the main characters because they’re the ones whom the narrative has, in essence, asked to put the broken pieces of this fairytale back together the right way.

as ruby herself says, remnant isn’t like a fairytale but that’s why they’re here, to make it better. on a character level that’s a statement about how ruby sees the world, her youthful optimism mingled with sadness, but on the thematic level it’s a very. literal description of what the story’s about. 

points at oz. look at where he started, look at where he is now. this man is under a curse designed to make it impossible for him to change and at the top of the show he has not fundamentally changed in any sense except gradual decay for, literally thousands of years. right. and then he admits ruby into his monster hunting school two years early because she has special magic eyes and he’s in need of a new chosen one since her mother disappeared, and then salem sends cinder to maul him, and—oops!—his “simple soul” who was never supposed to become anything more than another symbolic guardian is the one actually. like. making all the decisions.

once he gets oscar to mistral his “authority” over the gang lasts for exactly as long as ruby trusts him, which is [checks notes] One Month and Two Weeks. and then she explodes his whole situation by asking jinn what he’s hiding, which incites his long period of self-reflection while oscar becomes more oscar followed by the atonement arc in v8 and now he’s in vacuo fighting against this curse tooth and nail. 

now ruby did not Set Out to wrench ozma free of his divinely-enforced rut, she just did the protagonist thing of seeing a problem (bad guys attacked her school, and they’re planning to attack the other schools too!) and trying to fix it (she won’t let anyone else die!). but directly because of her actions, oz undergoes this seismic character development precipitating his part in the Ozlem Reconciliation.

and ruby is also indirectly the cause of the (subtler but just as necessary) character development salem has undergone since her proper introduction in v4 because all of that is constructed on the foundation of cinder’s near-death atop beacon tower.

so v1-8 are—in this very high level, bird’s eye view of the narrative—about ruby being more or less the butterfly who flaps her wings, by just Being There and responding to the events unfolding around her as best she can, having these cascading impacts on the world and on ozlem. thats step one. 

step two is the ever after, where all of team rwby but ruby in particular start having to confront. The Ideology. of ozma’s mandate which they’ve not yet thought about because they’re focused on the more immediately urgent problems of Not Dying and Not Letting Innocent People Die. so they need to get a little time to stop and breathe and feel the weight of “atlas is gone and salem has two of the four relics and what are we going to do” before they meet the demiurge who tells them, very gently, that the god of light is wrong and that they can’t solve this conflict with more conflict. 

and then they go right to vacuo, which is on the brink of civil war. this is step three. they need to figure out how to resolve the situation in vacuo, and this is why i do not think salem will arrive in vacuo until the end of v10 if at all; vacuo is sort of a proving ground for team rwby. 

can they take what they learned in the ever after and put it into practice in vacuo? can they make that mental leap from ozpin’s idea of unity (conflict avoidance, fear of disagreement, keeping secrets and hiding problems to maintain the appearance of peace while propping the whole system up with warriors trained to kill monsters and not ask questions) to true balance (which is messy and complicated and requires talking instead of fighting, negotiation and compromise instead of placation or condemnation, honesty and trust instead of manipulation and secrecy)? 

their coalition wants to protect vacuo from salem. the crown also wants to protect vacuo from salem. the two sides of this nascent civil war want the same thing, but have very different ideas about how to achieve it. v10 is about team rwby solving this, finding common cause with the crown, in preparation for step four.

which is finding common cause with salem. they want to save remnant from destruction. she also wants to save remnant from destruction, but has very different ideas about how to do it. The Rest Of The Show is about bridging that divide. she isn’t the main character so much as the final goal. 

#2: shaggy dog story

following from that: i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, salem can’t get the Good Ending by herself either. i think whatever plan she has for dealing with the gods is probably something that will work but, gestures at the apocalyptic destruction she’s leaving strewn in her wake, she does not care how much blood she has to spill to get there, and the best case scenario for her if she continues on this path is that the gods are gone forever but the entire world reviles her and she’ll find no quarter anywhere. 

right-but-evil vs wrong-but-good. 

now in the abstract, if the relics had been just sitting on an unguarded plinth somewhere and team rwby had taken it upon themselves to keep them away from her… then sure, they’d have been better off staying home to let her scoop the damn things up and stab light in the heart, figuratively speaking. but ozpin had the relics locked down inside fortresses guarded by children, three in the middle of major urban population centers. salem. can’t get to them by herself without killing a whole lot of people.

so if nothing else, if literally nothing else, team rwby saved thousands of people who would have died in mantle/atlas and i am pretty sure they’re going to save thousands of people who are now trapped under mountain glenn, to bring that full circle. EVEN IF making peace with salem were to look like the heroes just adopting her plan with no notes and handing over the last relic, they’d still be the sole reason hundreds of thousands of people survived to see the world get saved. 

but i can also guarantee that’s… not what making peace with salem will look like. the stakes are very high for everyone and there is a lot that needs to be addressed. what happens to the grimm? to the huntsmen academies? how does her vision of a new world conflict with the future they want? (how do they deal with the way fear of collective punishment shapes her plans, because i do think her plan for dealing with the gods depends on the whole world being credibly united against her as a failsafe against round two of “we killed the world to punish you”?) what compromises do they demand from her? how do they challenge her? etc.

this is a type of narrative arc rwby has already proven to be pretty good at handling—look at ‘cordially invited,’ look at the whole amity-or-mantle split underpinning the plot of v8. there are even more moving pieces in negotiating with salem than in either of those combined, and team rwby—by virtue of being the main characters and by virtue of being the ones who brought the vacuo coalition and the crown together—will be the ones shepherding all of this. 

#3 agency

salem is pleased about the broadcast for, i believe, two reasons:

in the short term, it hands her an opportunity to force the sword out of the vault without risking cinder’s life on a silver platter, because if she takes a rain check on showing up to be the Great Evil they’ll eventually have to mount a counteroffensive to hold that coalition together, and

in the longer term, once she has all four relics, if the entire world fucking hates her then the gods are less likely to kill them all to punish her if she fails. 

this is also why she razes vale to the ground (and the first is another reason i anticipate a lot of survivors trapped in mountain glenn—hostages). 

i don’t see that either of these reasons reduce the agency of the main characters or make salem the main character, any more than e.g. cinder’s pleasure when the black queen virus hops from ozpin’s desk to ironwood’s scroll makes her the main character of the beacon arc. villains have motivations and agency as characters too and one of the basic building blocks of narrative is action-reaction pushing and pulling between hero and villain. 

ruby takes action. salem reacts to turn it to her advantage, because that’s how she operates. the vacuo coalition will react to her destruction of vale (and probable hostage-taking) with either a counteroffensive or an attempt to save people without handing over the sword, or both, or take the riskier but higher reward option of talking to her, which she doesn’t expect (and may react quite badly to, because of the second reason). 

the reason i discuss salem’s motivations and plans so disproportionately in comparison to the heroes is that she’s more opaque and teasing out what she wants and why she does things is a lot more challenging than it is for the main characters; they are, always, trying to protect everyone they can from those who do harmful destructive things. there is an abundance of other very interesting things to talk about with regard to the mains, but within this broad overarching narrative their motivation is Extremely Simple. they don’t want bad things to happen to people. 

so when it comes to speculation, if you can puzzle out “what will salem do?” it tends to be self-evident what the good guys will do in response. because the response is always “stop salem” and will continue to be that until it turns into “help salem,” which is really just a different means to the same end of protecting people from salem but one that requires her to cooperate, and she isn’t going to cooperate if they don’t surprise her.

it’s similar to “what is ozpin hiding from us?” in that there’s another key change coming—so far salem has taken the initiative in every arc. she attacks beacon, she attacks haven, she attacks atlas, she razed vale. villainous action, heroic reaction. they need to, in essence, react and then act in a way that she doesn’t anticipate. and then she reacts. 

but narratively, the way this plays out—the focus and momentum of the story is with the main characters. it’s going to cut away to salem only as much as is needed to set up her reaction when the main characters take the initiative. the story is how the main characters get to the point where they can do that. 

#4 character consistency 

the key point here is that all of salem’s relationships within her inner circle (and more broadly the factions she aligns herself with) are strictly transactional; she is able to trust and feel secure in these relationships only as long as they don’t care about her and she doesn’t care about them. but the instantshe becomes consciously aware of caring about cinder in 6.4 she goes kind of nuts. 

dropping everything to rush to atlas after saying she was going to leave cinder to toil in isolation. then being mean to her. then doubling down on being mean. then folding like wet cardboard when cinder called her bluff, landing on “good for you for defying me when i was cruel,” and immediately razing vale rather than send cinder after the summer maiden. 

this is what salem caring looks like; going to extremely destructive lengths to protect someone whom she is, in almost the same breath, trying to shove away. remember all the ruby-salem parallels that began to really erupt in v9? “if you stay with me, you’re going to end up dead, too” is one of them. salem:

lost her mother in childbirth. her father blamed her and locked her up with a wet nurse from infancy because he wanted nothing to do with her except insofar as he could treat her like a defective imitation of her mother once she grew older

grew up imprisoned in a tower, watching her father execute not just anyone who tried to help her but anyone who spoke to her; being caught offering her kindness was a crime punishable by death. 

fell in love with a man who then promptly grew sick and died, and got brutally punished by the gods for asking him to be restored to life.

told people her story and gathered a following of a few hundred, maybe a few thousand people who agreed to stand with her against the gods, and the gods murdered not only these people but also everyone in the world, to punish her defiance.

refused, millions of years later, to help ozma enact his mandate from those gods; he left her and they attacked each other and fought so brutally that their children (and entire household) died in the crossfire and their whole kingdom collapsed overnight. 

has spent decades watching ozpin treat children as expendable cannon fodder, bloody grist in the mill of an imaginary war to get rid of her. 

salem blames herself for at least the latter two (#5 is made clear by the framing in 6.4 and underscored by paralleling with jaune in 9.7; #4 is implied by salem glossing over her rebellion out of fear that ozma would reject her, a fear she could only feel if she felt guilt), and i will not be remotely surprised if it turns out she’s blaming herself for the first three as well. certainly ozpin implies in his commentary on ‘the girl in the tower’ that the blood her father spilled is on her hands because she asked for help.

the point is, i don’t think it’s possible to understand salem as a character without considering what it would do to a person for this to be the defining narrative of her life, literally from birth, that she is the reason others die. she killed her mother; it’s her fault that her father murdered anyone who showed her kindness; she was selfish and arrogant to plead for her lover’s life; her turning other people against the gods who enforce this rule is cause for genocide; her children are dead because she is a monster. if you stay with me you’re going to end up dead too.

ozma was her last and only hope—the one who saved her from the tower, who knew her before, who chose to come back for her—that anyone might ever see something in her worth helping, worth loving, worth protecting. his betrayal shattered her trust, but that isn’t why salem is the way she is. 

she always felt unlovable. she always felt monstrous. the foundation of her identity is guilt. she is the scapegoat. she is the reason everyone else must die. and it’s her fate to be the one left standing with all that blood smeared on her hands, because she is always, always the justification for the killing. all this endless death! salem calmed down when yang spat that in her face instead of getting angry because it rang true to her.

it isn’t that she’s incapable of trusting or making emotional connections or seeking common cause with others—although her preferred method for doing so begins with inflicting violence on herself or inviting others to inflict violence on her so there is severe dysfunction there—but rather she feels a deep conviction that doing so is materially harmful, that she endangers people by asking for help, and therefore that no one who understood her could ever want to help her. 

if no one sees her clearly, if she performs her role as the fairytale witch and allows people to cast whatever distorted reflections of themselves onto her that they like, she can maintain the emotional detachment that makes her feel safe. as long as she is alone, no matter how painful it is, she feels safe.

but once she notices herself caring about cinder… she desperately wants to keep cinder safe and that motivates her cruelty, because if she cares about cinder then cinder will, eventually, be killed to punish salem. and if cinder knew that she would run, and she should run while she still can. this is woven into the foundations of how salem sees herself.

#5 satisfaction

the conceit of this reading is that there is one way to resolve the central narrative conflict, which is the war between ozma and salem. the Problem Of Salem is that she cannot be killed and never gives up, so even if they defeated her now and sealed her away in a vault somewhere or whatever, nothing would really change. the world would still be broken and endangered by this conflict. oscar would die; ozma would gradually decay again until he became another ozpin.

moreover, it’s becoming increasingly clear that they can’t defeat salem. oz wiped out hundreds of thousands if not millions of grimm in the blink of an eye—and half the fandom kept treating that like the inflection point, as if salem had exhausted all of her resources and now had nothing left to bring to vacuo—and then what happened? she turned around a few weeks later and flattened vale.

if this were a conflict ozlem could resolve on their own, they would have done so long ago and there wouldn’t be a story, or at least not this story. the reason the story is happening right now is that team rwby are the ones who can make what needs to happen, happen. 

the only thing that makes this narrative different from a bog standard fantasy war story is that, well, as ‘for every life’ put it, some heroes chose the wrong side. so instead of a straightforward narrative about good guys persevering through trials and tribulations until they triumph over the bad guys it’s a narrative about the good guys—team rwby—learning that doing the right thing is actually really difficult and complicated, because there’s no such thing as pure evil and because the things they were taught to believe aren’t always true. 

salem is evil (she kills people) but right (she refuses to surrender remnant to a genocidal tyrant) and just a person (she deserves compassion as does everyone). ozma is good (he wants to save people) but wrong (he serves the genocidal tyrant) and just a person (he deserves compassion as does everyone). 

narratively, the purpose of team rwby is to take right and good and put them back together. with ozma this means team rwby is the driving force that causes him first to be honest with himself and others, then to rebel against his role as the god of light’s servant—because his problem is that he’s wrong. with salem, team rwby first have to tear down all the obfuscating false narratives built up around her (this arc began in v6 and is ongoing) and then hold out a hand and challenge her to meet them halfway. which she will, because the cinder stuff is challenging her in the same way that “what is ozpin hiding from us?” challenged oz.

this is not anything different from say, what blake does narratively for ilia or what penny and weiss do for winter, or what oscar tries to do for ironwood, or what ruby and yang do for raven, or what ruby does in forgiving neo. it’s at a larger scale because salem is a central character—the main villain—but the same in principle. they open a door and she has to walk through it. 

this remains true even if salem is notionally the one who initiates the conversation, e.g. by revealing the existence of hostages in mountain glenn and demanding the sword, because if she does that then obviously team rwby can’t and won’t play on her terms. this remains true even if salem initiates the conversation in earnest, e.g. by putting all her cards on the table and asking for help, because the focus of the narrative then will be on team rwby grappling with the very daunting question of whether to take the risk of hearing her out and the emotional stakes of agreeing to negotiate.

again, gestures at jax and gillian. the crown wants exactly the same thing that the heroes do, but their methods are destructive and harmful and while they might be able to achieve a victory against salem if they won, it would be a very pyrrhic victory indeed. this is precisely the narrative set up regarding salem and dealing with the crown is the last set of training wheels for team rwby before they’re ready to tackle the Salem Problem. 

it may help to think of it in terms of negotiation being equivalent to the battles in a standard fantasy war story. typically you would expect the main character to face a series of increasingly difficult fights against increasingly dangerous opponents until they’re ready to bring the fight to the villain, and then they win. if they lose a battle they’ll train and become stronger and eventually face that opponent again and win this time. yeah?

well. rwby is doing that but with talking. weiss and blake have their blow up fight over weiss’s bigotry in v1 and weiss has to listen and apologize. v2-5 team rwby lose every important fight against salem’s agents except for the one that forces qrow to reveal himself and bring RNJR into the loop and the one where yang confronts raven and persuades her mother to give her the lamp. v6, ruby triumphs over cordovin and the bees defeat adam only after making a serious effort to reason with both of them, and then the leviathan is defeated because cordovin ultimately took what ruby said to her to heart. v7 is centrally about trying to talk ironwood down from the fascism ledge and get everyone to the table to negotiate. v8 is in many ways an examination of why they couldn’t get through to ironwood in the end—that intense fear of division and consequent inability to handle disagreement constructively—while setting up, through salem’s erratic treatment of cinder, the idea that salem is not beyond reason or incapable of change. v9 is literally just an extended training montage where they practice empathy and critical thinking and learn to ask questions and listen instead of making snap judgments. 

see how it builds? their journey isn’t about becoming better fighters so they can beat salem, it’s about developing the skills and perspective they need to talk to her. but that really only works narratively if salem wants something that the heroes can find common cause with—there has to be a connection, something they can listen and then say “we want that too, so work with us” about. in the same way thatif this were a story about defeating salem, she would have to have a weakness, something they could do to negate her power or make her mortal again, so that defeating her isn’t impossible. 

and again if you have trouble envisioning how this can happen without displacing team rwby as the main characters, look at how things shake out in v7 and v8 with the negotiations and disagreements the kids deal with in those volumes. because those are preludes for averting the vacuan civil war in v10 (or ending it in a truce) and that’s the prelude to dealing with salem. 

[wc-confessions]

Controversial take but I saw the post and gotta say I agree with Berryheart not being the big bad villain everyone thinks she is. She is very protective of her kits for good reason after Darktail happened, and the loss of one of her kits makes it worse.

“Many cats died, including my own daughter, Needletail. I mourn her every day, and regret that I didn't do more to save her. So many cats were killed, in fact, that our whole Clan's way of life almost collapsed and disappeared into nothing. You almost missed being raised as a Clan cat. If Tigerheart hadn't found us near the abandoned Twoleg den where we were sheltering, we would still be living there as rogues. And we were there because I followed Darktail away from ShadowClan. It was the worst decision I ever made, and I'll never stop regretting it. That evil cat did his best to destroy our Clan, and he took the thing most precious to me. I can't let that happen again. I'll protect ShadowClan with my last breath!" “Leaving my Clan to follow Darktail was the biggest mistake I ever made. It means everything to me that I am now a true ShadowClan warrior, and it frightens me to think that I might be in danger of losing that.”

“This is a mother protecting her young. Protecting her family. Something I wasn't able to do. Our Clan, our daughter...maybe our whole forest...Darktail has taken everything. And what can we do to stop him? Nothing.l

Quotes from her right from the books. She literally is grieving and suffers thinking she could’ve done more to help her kits. She didn’t intend to kill Fringewhisker, she just wanted to drive her away so that her son doesn’t go too far away from her where she can’t protect him if he goes with his new mate. Sunbeam already left her. It’s destroying her. Xenophobia, yeah I can see that, but what warrior cat isn’t xenophobic? Are we forgetting when Clan cats hated other Clans and call them stereotypical things or saying stuff like ‘never trust ShadowClan’ ‘ThunderClan celebrates mixed blood’? How about the xenophobia to kittypets? People hate her for being a protective mom and that’s misogyny at best. Berryheart killed nobody. Berryheart just wants her family safe, and has to do it the way she is because otherwise she could lose what she has left. I’m happy she has a supportive mate because not a lot of cats have that. If anything, she opposes the protagonist, but she isn’t 100% a villain. She turned to Splashtail because she wants order and a place where she can keep her kits safe. She’s very misunderstood and misogyny is still prevalent in this fandom.

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[sasukesun]

How do you think Naruto views the curse of hatred and Sasuke’s darkness?

oh i think i already gave you a hint about how naruto views that in my curse of hatred ask.

actually, i don’t think naruto knows about the curse of hatred itself, the one that comes from tobirama’s bigoted views, since tobirama only voices that when sasuke is talking to the hokages, and naruto wasn’t present there. but well, do i think naruto believes sasuke is genetically predisposed to evil? lol.

like i said in the curse of hatred ask, something that seems to be very solid in naruto is the idea that people grow “positively” when they get support from others, the good place quote and all. well, naruto himself seems to be the character that understands this idea the most.

naruto understands that he and sasuke could be in each other’s places and he does explain why he thinks that, because naruto got external love from iruka and sasuke (the positive support that allows him to grow) while sasuke didn’t. despite him feeling at ease because of naruto (and naruto doesn’t quite know that), sasuke didn’t get the same support before he left konoha, thanks to orochimaru’s curse seal actively triggering him and itachi coming back and retraumatising him. naruto understands that sasuke did everything he did because he loved his family very much, it’s quite interesting how when sakura brings sasuke’s criminal status, naruto talks about sasuke’s love for his family instead of his anger.

i guess that would be enough to show that naruto doesn’t think sasuke is genetically evil, right? i will talk more, though. another thing that i criticised about kishimoto in that ask is the fact that he uses the narrative to frame sasuke as wrong in a way. that happens in the sage of six paths moment too.

what i think it’s important to say here is that those chapters are shit. seriously, they are retconned and badly written. every time i write posts like this, i reread everything, so let me tell you that i reread the chapters of the sage of the six paths and they sounded worse than they did before, and i don’t know how to express myself here without sounding like “source: trust me bro”, and maybe i shouldn’t worry about it that much since you asked for my opinion, but still, i’m gonna try to be objective and make you look at them critically so you understand why i find them shit.

just starting by the simple fact of how retconned the naruto ending is. chapters 670 and 671 especially are used to introduce kaguya as the new and final villain to the readers, that to me is already iffy as hell for one basic reason: naruto has 700 chapters, do you think it makes sense to introduce the supposed most important villain of the whole story with 30 chapters left for the ending? don’t you find that a little bit rushed? a little bit pulled out of nowhere? take madara in comparison, his first mention as a possible personality able to influence the story (and i mean madara, not obito pretending to be madara) is on chapter 370, a little bit over the half of the manga. and madara’s presence exists even before that, hence vote1 or kurama talking about him in reunion, for example. that is how far his influence on the plot goes, he is a ghost haunting everybody else. and another thing we have to take into consideration is why kaguya even exists? i could give you two reasons: (1) kishimoto wrote himself into a corner when he made madara so damn sexy powerful, to the point he didn’t know how to defeat him and (2) to build the new setting for boruto (since it’s villains are all from her clan), so yeah, pardon me for not taking kaguya’s entire existence in this story seriously.

and it’s not only about that retcon, it’s also about the other retcon that makes her existence so off from anything else in the manga. those chapters also introduce us a new idea which is: power corrupts people and it drives them mad. this isn’t about political power or anything, just raw power. those chapters push for the idea that the problem wasn’t with the shinobi structure or how villages ended as military fortresses, the problem is actually when people are too powerful, the problem is in the ninjutsu, which is different from the “ninshuu”, even though the manga never develops this idea, or explains how they are different and why, it just throws us vague affirmations from a supposed reliable source, since we are talking about the most powerful ninja in history, with no explanations whatsoever. this is a way to build a narrative, and i’m surely not saying that the narrative in question is good or reliable, you have to look at it critically.

so i guess let’s forget any political aspect of the shinobi world, whose worldbuilding started in land of waves, the very first arc of the manga, because the actual problem is that… there is a fruit that turns people powerful and therefore evil, huh? well, that’s not the narrative i’m buying, it’s far from enough to convince me.

and finally we get to how the fuck does that involve sasuke? well, the story tell us that indra was born naturally strong and believed that with power anything was possible, while ashura was only able to reach the same level through hard work and cooperation… so if sasuke has indra’s chakra clinging onto him… do you see where the narrative is trying to go? i have already talked about how it’s bullshit that sasuke was a natural prodigy, so the narrative can’t even get that right, but here they are also hinting that sasuke is corrupted by power. it’s not enough that the narrative is trying to make us forget about the shinobi system problems — and the uchiha massacre and sasuke wanting justice is a very relevant one of those problems — it’s also trying to push for the idea that sasuke is wrong because he is corrupted by power, while centring the morality around naruto. it’s not a “curse of hatred” that sasuke “suffers” from here, but it’s also the idea of power driving people mad and making him irrational and therefore, they are stuck in this cycle of hatred.

now, the narrative and the character are separated entities, a character can be used to build a narrative, a narrative can reinforce the credibility of a character, but i can’t blame naruto as a character for a narrative that tries to frame him as good. besides, what naruto actually thinks of this?

kishimoto made sure to emphasise it at least four times… in less than 30 chapters.

and what is even more ironic is that, even though the sage of the six paths himself is used to build this narrative, he is also used to push for the idea that naruto and sasuke are different from the ones that came before them, that they are their own people. not only the sage of the six paths btw, hashirama as well… who was used to talk about sasuke’s “soul consumed by darkness”, like i said in the curse of hatred ask.

isn’t it just messy?

now, about sasuke’s “darkness” and how naruto views it. another thing i said in the curse of hatred ask is that i don’t think the darkness used in a derogatory way to talk about sasuke wanting justice for his clan is the same darkness of sasuke’s desire to isolate himself. the latter is a darkness that manifests through sasuke’s final plan: a darkness that is about bearing everybody else’s “hatred” (which would be anger against an enemy) all by himself.

i think that’s pretty objective, actually.

and obviously, another thing that is very objective and explicitly stated is that in order to sasuke’s version of hokage to work, he must cut naruto off, he must be alone so he will be able to endure all the hatred himself.

and then we go back to what i talked about in the beginning of this ask. naruto understands that people grow positively with the support they receive from others.

don’t you think it makes sense of naruto to try to give back the love sasuke gave to him in the beginning of the story, since he himself admits that sasuke and iruka changed his heart? well, that’s pretty much textually supported.

“rather… i pray they’re able to reclaim the love they’d lost… not just naruto… but sasuke as well”

even naruto’s explanation of what “friend” means to him is related to not being able to turn his back to sasuke when sasuke is hurting, and he knows sasuke’s isolation is just a way to hurt himself, it is also textually supported that naruto’s issue is with sasuke being alone.

he just can’t turn his back on sasuke, knowing sasuke is perfectly capable of good, like- is there any doubt to naruto that sasuke is good and deserves the positive support (love) like anybody else? sasuke is the one that doubts himself (because of itachi’s influence on his mindset), but naruto doesn’t even hesitate.

i really hope you were able to get my train of thought and understand that even though there is a narrative trying to frame sasuke as wrong one way or another, not every character believes it, nor you should believe it just because it tells you so. i myself can’t take it seriously when i look at it critically.

[fluffypotatey]

Macaque Book Club AU

He’s the only one asides from Tang probably who has read JTTW. So in his little book club because let’s be honest, between the theatre and the graffiti lego set, he seems like the kind to have a couple modern day hobbies in the arts like your grandma who has a bunch of friends to gossip with at the knitting meet or the greenhouse. He’s the only monkey actually using his human disguise actively so, I imagine they get together at the local library, someone brings refreshments Macky is allergic to by virtue of being a monkey but they get him addicted to (insert snack/drink of your choice) and he gets into fandom discourse at the book club with someone whose like “the 6EM from the book was a one off villain who died ages ago, get over it” but to him, on the worst nights it all comes back. (And maybe this is recently right after Shadow Play so.) oh wait pff, we’re going to need a new recent trigger I forgot he gets kidnapped right after 😭 okay so maybe this person is what pushes him to write the play. I hope you know the exact like of fandom discourse I’m talking about bc I’m really pulling from people who are like??? why are you hyperfixated on this one thing? And maybe Tang eventually puts the pieces together about who this guy is. I also can’t help but start thinking about how lonely Macky might actually be, because you’d THINK he’d be the anti social one but Wukong is the one isolating himself for a thousand years with 13 cats, I mean a bunch of baby monkeys. Meanwhile, Macranberry is out there in Six Earred Hearing Hell in the city and super chatty whenever we see him. He wasn’t as chatty around the Brotherhood. Only with Wukong as needed who was full out dancing on the tables lol, things change eh? Even defeating the smoke monster feels like an attempt at catching up to your friend who got a real job while you’re just starting college. (Aka when Wukong and his shiny new hero legend status sealed the Bull King.) He says there was nobody who could stop the two of them in the Celestial Realm or on earth but we know that 1) Macky doesn’t like the Celestial Realm. 2) They definitely weren’t spending all day there back then with the overthrowing plotting and also got defeated hard. 3) They weren’t actually vigilante heroing back then if Wukong picked up his demon defeating status after the journey. 4) Would Macky ever do that on his own or was it always with Wukong until he tried it out post-resurrection like everything else presumably new about him. He probably meant “nobody could stop Wukong’s mischief that I helped him out with but he mostly did all the big things like immortal peach stealing and the book of the dead himself and I was there for uh, moral support. And baffled that he did that. But I’m going to pretend to MK that we were a cool team and equals and this wasn’t just a precursor to our eventual fall out. Sorry Mr. “yeah you always did have a sidekick kinda vibe.”

careful, anon, he could hear you 👀

but lmao i love this au!!!! also, since Tang is in the same book club as Macky (and i kinda want them to always get into “scholarly” debates when it comes to jttw because it’s Tang’s favorite book and….well, Macky has a monkey problem…..), Tang is invited by Macky to the shadowplay, so end of 2x07 is basically

MK: uh…so that’s Macackle— Tang: MY BOOK CLUB NEMESIS WAS FHE SIX EARED MACAQUE THIS WHILE TIME??? MK: yeah, he— sorry, book club? Tang: THAT BITCH HE FUCKING LAUGHED AT MY ANALYSIS ON THE MONK AND WUKONG!!

and then you’ll just have Tang screaming at Macky throughout s3 about how he must answer for his “crimes” of withholding valuable academic information (3x08 is just them arguing about the content in jttw but it’s not actually about jttw rather about Macky himself and his blind anger obscuring his memories. they just use the book as a cover for the true conversation)

[motley-cunt]

MOTLEY’S THEORY CONGLOMERATE

Disclaimers: Take all of this with a pile of salt, I am an insane person. Sweeney Todd is required reading. Long ass post.

The Rose Theory

The cover to bleeders looks like it’s shaped like the head of a red rose. Yes it a blood splatter, but it definitely looks weird right?

Red roses are commonly known as symbols of love and passion, while you could argue Sweeney Todd is a fucked up love story, I think the “passion” in the rose is more referring to a parallel between both Andy and Sweeney’s craft. Andy’s passion for music is basically a given, but what’s important here is how complete dedication to a craft could drive someone mad.

Andy’s matching his experience with music to Sweeney’s character ark in the play. So, passion for killing, passion for music, and that passion manifesting in a tool you can use to enact revenge is clear. Especially with the constant mention of the aspect in the Minidoc

Now the other rose I wanna mention is (what i believe to be) the black roses in the “”Sweeney Biersack”” photoshoot

Take this with a grain of salt but looking at what black roses symbolize,

That’s pretty fuckin Sweeney Todd isn’t it? Yeah? It’s basically fitting pieces into a puzzle at this point. It could be just to represent the gothic vibe of it all. But y’know, everything means something.

Judge Turpin, Villainy, and Sumerian Records

One of the blatant themes in Sweeney Todd is people in power taking advantage of the vulnerable. If you’ve seen the movie, the play, or just kind of skimmed through the plot summary you catch onto this. I think this aspect means more to Bleeders than I initially realized

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that Sumerian Records treated BVB like shit, especially Andy like shit. I’m pretty sure someone’s out there consolidated all of the shit they’ve done to them better than I could, but I know I’m not an idiot for saying that a power struggle was probably apart of that. When BVB signed to Sumerian they were damn vulnerable. We all know the band was almost torn to shreds and buried into an early grave. A record label is a record label when you’re at that point.

Labels want money, they’re a company. But bad labels are greedy. Especially to passionate artists with extremely dedicated fanbases. Sumerian didn’t want to put in the work to support BVB as a label but liked the money they accumulated. It’s unfair, right? That’s the point. They suck. People in power taking advantage of the weak, those below feeding those up above.

Black veil brides has been fucked over a ton. Wouldn’t being fucked over so much make someone just a little bit angry? Make them wanna go apeshit? You can only be nice for so long, right? You beat someone to a pulp for long enough they’re gonna hit back. Hard. I think this is definitely a project about hitting back, not punching down, but hitting the fuck back. While I marked Sumerian as the “Turpin” in all of this, I theorize it’s the big “fuck you” that the band deserves to put into song. They are finally the villain in all this, but it’s important that they’re the villain with a purpose. Just like Sweeney is.

Directed Anger

Now that’s not to say black veil brides has just made sunshine and rainbows music before, there’s a lot of things that Andy is directly angry at. But some of the songs off of The mourning EP (Devil and Better Angels) seemed like it was the first mark in a clear minded and artistic recounting of a person that’s hurt him and the band. This isn’t God Bless you, where a drunk 18 year old is throwing paper balls at the Catholic Church (even though I still love that song), this is a man frustrated with being fucked over so much and he knows exactly who did it and what he’s gonna do about it. All of this frustration has a target, all of it has a reason. It’s not being *hindered* by anything. It’s a clear shot. Bleeders is just as much about Sweeney Todd as it is about the balloon of anger that’s been building up in this band.

Conclusion? Andy’s an artsy little bastard.

[fonulyn]

So Death Island and how bad it is in expanding on the lives of our fav RE characters beyond just the games/movies in a believable organic way (like seriously Chris not even mentioning Piers to Jill before this???) - I'd love to hear your thoughts on what Jill and Piers' relationship could be. Like give me your thoughts on Piers desperately working or communicating with Jill on how to find Chris pre RE6. Maybe even what their first meeting was like. What do you think Jill felt at first about this puppy who I imagine to be so similar to STARS Chris before Wesker betraying them.

I don't at this point headcanon her to be overly involved with Nivannedy happening in comparison to Chris but I'm happy to be educated 👀👀

(also omg bonding and support following Piers' recovery from the C-virus and how she could relate from being Wesker's puppet and experiment)

honestly, DI was fun, I enjoyed it, but mostly just the Jill & Leon parts if I'm honest and okay some of the Redfield siblings interactions. the main villain was weak, Maria was completely wasted, and idek I wanted more. but SERIOUSLY. "THIS GUY CALLED PIERS"???? FUCK RIGHT OFF. there is no way that Jill didn't know who Piers was. even if they didn't have a personal relationship, she would've known OF him and I absolutely refuse to believe otherwise. insinuating otherwise is a damn insult to Piers, and the movie lost SO MANY points from me with that. it could've been a lovely callback and a nod to him but they ruined it. RUINED IT. assholes.

coughs. anyway.

we canonically know that at least Claire was in some kind of contact with Piers pre-re6 so to me it'd make perfect sense if Jill was as well. I know it's a bit vague where Jill was actually recovering, but i doubt she was somewhere completely cut off from the rest of the world, so she would've still been in contact with her friends. and when Chris disappears? there's no way she didn't know. remember how Chris moves heaven and earth to find Jill, multiple times? Jill would do the same for Chris. Jill would not necessarily be in the thick of action if she wasn't yet cleared for it but she wouldn't stay completely out of it.

and in that vein I actually kind of like the idea that when Chris goes missing, Piers is charged to find him, communicates with Jill, and Jill then directs him to Leon, who could potentially help. since, you know, you mentioned nivannedy 😇 she might not necessarily make it happen lmao but she could be the initial point of connection, potentially!

but like. we all know Chris is the type to act without thinking, and both Jill and Piers have had to be the person to rein him in and try to talk sense into him. so post-re6 it would be amazing if they could bond over that. they'd only need to exchange a single look and they'd both know what it means. they would have this camaraderie, all "what did he do this time?" and "yeah that's him" and "oh i knew it". not in a mean way lol, in an affectionate way, but still very frustrated :'D

and I genuinely think Piers would look up to Jill so much. he already respects Chris greatly, as we know, but I think he'd think Jill is even more badass tbh :'D he'd be all heart-eyed over her in the "oh my god she's so cool i want an autograph" kind of way, until they'd get to know each other better lol. but even then, some level of admiration would remain, 100%.

as for the other way around, I think that Piers would remind Jill of young Chris in more than one way. there's the determination, the drive, the temper too. I bet she'd first keep secretly giving him these bewildered looks at moments when he does something that REALLY reminds her of the past lol. she would get used to it, but i think it'd be a learning curve at first. and it doesn't help her mind has been fucked with tbh, these blasts from the past would be equal parts sorta nice nostalgia and actually disturbing because of everything she went through.

if they'd made Piers and Jill work together to find Chris that would've been such a dream team. they'd both do anything to find him.

and you're so right, damn, once Piers recovers from the c-virus infection they'd have even more in common. granted, he wasn't exactly being puppeteered by anyone like she was, but there'd still be enough common ground for understanding each other on a level not everyone can.

and since I'm obsessed and my brain is never far from Leon lol, that is one thing I wish was around more; Jill and LEON bonding over their experiences. Leon was infected with the plaga and although it only took over very briefly he knows the feeling, he knows the sensation, firsthand. and Jill spent so long being controlled, doing things she didn't want to do... they'd understand each other on a deeper level others couldn't.

damn this makes me regret i've written Jill so rarely. but honestly, i love her, but i'm also a bit intimidated that i wouldn't get her right so I've been a coward 😅

ANYWAY I rambled. I don't know if I actually answered anything you asked :'D

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 10 - The World We Make by N. K. Jemisin

I’m generally a huge fan of Jemisin, so of course I had to read this as soon as I realized it existed, even if I really didn’t think The City We Became needed a sequel on pretty much any level. And yeah, it didn’t!

Like, I’ve already posted about my issues with this book extensively, so will try to keep this relatively succinct. But broadly – there were about twice as many POVs as the wordcount could actually support with their own subplots, Ry’leh and her minions had all the threat and grandeur of a Saturday morning cartoon villain, the broader metaphysics/plot didn’t actually much sense at all , basically every actual problem the characters had was resolved as soon as they actually tried, and, generally, the book’s highest aim really seemed to be more engaging in some cathartic effigy-burning of various political analogues than it did really telling any sort of coherent story.

The book has virtues – the sentence to sentence prose is very good when it doesn’t read like a DNC campaign mailer, and the characters who actually get screen time and internal conflicts are all very compelling (somewhat unfortunate that half of them are the villains). But just – it’s impossible to really feel like you’re rooting for the underdogs when the protagonists start the book in a commanding position with everything they need to win and nothing that happens over the course of the entire story actually puts them on the back foot for a couple of hours? Or I mean, I tell a lie, technically the entire book is a race against the clock of impending universal extinction, as caused by...Fox News and right-wing twitter running a bunch of anti-New York smear campaigns? Which was just so obviously arbitrary and driven by the needs of plot it was impossible to take seriously.

Just, generally, there is a real upper limit to how far you can stretch ‘the divine avatars of quite possibly the richest and most politically powerful metropolis in the world fight proud boys and a no-hope Trump wannabe running for Mayor’ into something that compelling. The literal global capital of financial capitalism, not an easy sell as ‘scrappy underdog’! Especially when the dominant tone used to talk about any of the human opposition is just sneering contempt. Which I mean, very true to life, but doesn’t do a great job establishing a sense of threat. Especially when the sneering contempt is just entirely justified, and every action on the part of the enemy basically just happens to allow one of the avatars to do an incredibly self-indulgent New York-themed bit of magic, probably humiliating an obvious analogue for some prominent right wing figure or archetype (trucker convoy, proud boys, etc) in the process. It’s just, so incredibly cheesy. At one point a city councilwoman is revealed to be a friendly acquaintance with Beyonce and able to call her in to help with her mayoral campaign. Wretched of the earth these are not.

But okay, to try and make this a bit more analytical and a bit less me ranting – I really don’t think the book’s conception of the soul or character of New York really coheres? It’s New York, but, like, the nostalgic fantasy of pre-Guliani New York mixed with the parts of it that modern progressives take pride in. At no point does the book explain in any even close to satisfactory way why the transparent Trump analogue winning would be more spiritually damaging than Bloomberg (or hell, Moses) was – we’re just supposed to take it as read that being the beating heart of progressive America is at the soul of what it means to be New York.

On a similar note – there’s a real ambiguity to what Ry’leh is supposed to, like, be, thematically? Or I mean, not really. She’s gentrification, not necessarily in the social displacement sense (but that too) as in the way that every central business district in every major city in the world increasingly looks the same, in the way that identical chain stores replace local small businesses, the tendency of modern capitalist development to erode the difference between places until a city is a city is a city, no matter what continent you’re on. Local restaurants bought out by numbered holding companies or international franchises and getting their menus and recipes from a focus group in California. Which is a great, meaty association for your villain! But, like, isn’t especially well served by also being specifically alt-right and Trumpist American right-wing politics (very, very much not the same thing!). And as soon as we get into what she and the Ur actually want everything just kind of stops making sense entirely. (She’s also just so, like, cartoonishly evil and constantly talking about wanting to end the world and make things worse that it’s impossible to take seriously and she just ends up one of the most endearing characters in the entire story.)

Anyway, yeah, Neek and Manny and Ry’leh and Aislyn were all great, but otherwise The City We Became really didn’t need a sequel.

[archiveikemen]

Ikemen Villains Prologue: Chapter 4

I do not own any of the Ikemen Series content being uploaded on this blog, everything belongs to CYBIRD. Please support them by downloading and playing their games.

read this before interacting with my posts

(I failed to escape…)

The eight mysterious men introduced themselves to me and put me into a carriage that travelled through the streets at night.

I looked out of the window at the streets of London and caught a passing glimpse of a grand palace.

Suddenly, the carriage entered a dense forest.

(Where are we going? … What’s going to happen to me?)

I left the mail at that townhouse. I wonder if I’ll get paid for tonight’s work.

More importantly, will I get home safely?

(These guys work as a group and are headed for the same destination. They must be from some kind of organisation.)

(And that means… they’re going to take me to the person in charge of their organisation.)

The red-eyed man who introduced himself as William called them the “Palace’s Grim Reaper”.

(If that person doesn't decide to turn a blind eye to what happened just now, I’ll—)

An image of that bloodbath flashed into my head and all the blood drained from my face.

Gentlemanly Man: Kate.

Kate: Yes…!?

I immediately looked up and saw a gentleman pointing out of the window with a mysterious smile.

I looked out of the window in the direction he was pointing and noticed that the carriage had passed through the forest, it was now crossing a drawbridge over a body of water.

Gentlemanly Man: We’re here. This is evil’s stronghold and possibly the final destination of your life… our headquarters.

Kate: Uh…

(Where are we?)

I was courteously escorted out of the carriage, and a gothic castle took my breath away.

Surrounded by a thick forest and large pond to stay hidden, it was a magnificent spire with an overwhelming presence.

It looked so incredibly majestic that it could make a person instinctively prostrate oneself before it.

(I didn't know that such a castle existed in London…)

Kate: Is this… real…

Gentlemanly Man: I’m afraid so. This is neither a dream nor an illusion, it is a painful reality you can't escape.

(This is reality… no, this is preposterous.)

(“Evil’s stronghold”? “Final destination of my life”? … ahh, my head…)

My head was spinning and my legs turned wobbly.

I immediately turned around when I bumped into someone by accident.

Kate: I’m sorry.

Blonde Man with Blue Eyes: … It doesn't matter. … Are you alright?

(He’s so close…)

The man holding me by the shoulder stared straight into my eyes, his soft blonde hair nearly touching my face.

(This man… he's terrifyingly beautiful. His looks remind me of a bisque doll.)

Out of all his features that looked like they were works of art, only his dark eyes staring at me looked human.

Kate: I’m alright. Thank you.

Blonde Man with Blue Eyes: … Yeah.

(Erm…)

Blonde Man with Blue Eyes: …

(He’s not letting go of me…)

As I stood there in confusion, a hand reached out from beside him and poked the blonde man’s arm.

Cat-Like Man: El, you shouldn't make a move before others.

Cat-Like Man: Kate, want to talk to me too? I want to get to know you better.

(Wah…)

His hand wrapped around mine like a cat's tail, and I started panicking because I was caught in between two men.

Man Carrying a Shotgun: That’s enough, you can talk later. Our priority now is to report to Victor.

Man Carrying a Shotgun: It’s not too late to get to know this young lady after we’ve decided what to do with her.

The person who came to my rescue was an intelligent looking man with a more muscular build.

That rational gaze behind those glasses and his calm demeanour made me relax a little.

(I think I can get through this guy.)

Kate: … What's going to happen to me…?

I asked the question I’ve been wanting to ask for a while now.

Man Carrying a Shotgun: That's up to us to decide.

The egoistical smile on his face made me regret thinking I could get through him.

William: This way, Kate. Come with me.

Kate: Alright… Sir Rex.

William: Ahaha! No need for such formalities. Just call me William.

Kate: Okay… Sir William.

(Wow… this place looks amazing.)

I took one step into the castle — and it was as if I had entered a whole new world.

(Never have I thought I would ever step foot into a place like this even once in my lifetime…)

The splendour of the castle’s interior was as great as its exterior, no wonder it's said to belong to the royal family.

A dangerous, mysterious, yet beautiful unknown world unfolded before my eyes.

(This is the stronghold of people who might be criminals, but…)

(... It’s gorgeous.)

William: You seem to like this place.

Kate: !?

A whisper in my ear sent a shiver down my spine.

I turned around to see William with an amused smile.

Wiliam: Let’s go. The Grim Reaper is waiting.

[lostinlands]

My brain isn't done marinating on the last few words of Tomura and the meaning behind his actions and words and how being a Sudaca influences my opinion on Tomura, (but that's a post for another day) but I was thinking about how theres is this kind of divide? Between people who like Tomura and those that like Tenko.

"But dude, those are the same!"

Yeah, no.

Most moments where the divide is made or is very clear that they mean one over the other instead of just jumping from name to name is on the debate of salvation, The Crying Child VS The Symbol Of Fear type of situation.

The thing that bugs me about that is the simple fact that I've been a fan of Shigaraki Tomura since he was first introduced to us in the manga, and that might have something to do with the fact that I am a Sudaca, 27, and also have always been in support of the villains when it comes to mangas because I feel like the heroes/protagonists are 9/10 times blinded by survivor bias.

I've been fan of Shigaraki Tomura since he was first introduced, and then we saw him change his final goals, his ambitions, and even his stance on his group/his friends. And still during all of that Tomura was unashamedly a villain. He didn't give a fuck, he was going to kill as many as necessary and force society to change because society needed (and at the current moment of the manga STILL NEEDS) to stop being so complacent to the status quo.

He showed us how fucked society was due to their own passivity, and that was all Shigaraki Tomura. There was not a hint of Shimura Tenko in the person fighting against the Shie Hassaikai, it wasn't Tenko the one who promised Himiko to let everything she liked untouched, it wasn't Tenko the one who internalized the fact that Mr.Compress wanted Sushi and the first thing he did when he got money was GIVE HIM SAID SUSHI (And also unsure his allies were in positions of power in the new military-like structure of the meta liberation army)

You could argue that "it was Tenko" the one that cared enough to pass on a last message to Spinner (However that point is immediately Decayed to the fact that the last phrase is "Tell Spinner that SHIGARAKI TOMURA fought till the end to destroy."), or the one that cared enough to try to advise Midoriya ("Oh yeah? That depends... on what you people decide to do tomorrow. Make sure... you do your damn best.") on making sure there are no consequences that might create a new League.

However, we go back to the fact that things are argued to be separated. Its not Shigaraki Tomura the one that deserves to be saved because: He's a villain and a murderer! But it IS Shimura Tenko, the perfect victim, the one who deserves a chance at salvation.

And in the fucking end Izuku saved nothing. He didn't save the crying child because the Crying Child had already become Tomura, and he didn't save Tomura because BNHA showed us time and again that the villains didn't deserve salvation.

"But what about Himiko? She got a redemption arc!" By sacrificing herself for Ochako. Her redemption arc was her death (Allegedly, who the fuck knows, maybe we'll tune in after Hori's break and Himiko is gonna be a new member of 2B since Hitoshi is the new member of 2A) in the name of saving someone she loved and who, if she had not been actively fighting a war, would've been saved in Tomura's worlds because she was one of Himiko's beloveds and as such one of the people Tomura promised not to hurt.

"Well, What about Dabi?!" The Todoroki's don't give a fuck about DABI, they are trying to save TOUYA (oh hey, ANOTHER CASE OF DUALITY!) and also being thrown into what looks like a giant cooler isn't exactly salvation and by how his wounds ended up at the end of his fight it might just be more merciful to kill him.

"Well, what about Spinner!" In jail, probably, and also his brain overloaded with Quirks so there is a big chance he's just straight-up brain-dead.

"Kurogiri was saved before by Mic and Eraser!" Kurogiri is a corpse. Even if he wasn't, we go back to the theme of how the heroes are trying to save one part of a duality by Mic and Zawa trying to save OBORO and not KUROGIRI.

"Mr. Compress then!" In jail! which BTW has been shown to not be a "rehabilitation" center to help villains stop being villains but just.... just jail. Also Compress lost all his friends, and all the people he had grown to care about. It's the same for all the villains that are still alive, they are in Jail and if I remember correctly Tartarus wasn't exactly... up to the Geneva Convention. What the fuck is that solitary confinement-looking shit.

Anyways this post was about the duality and how most people who expect Tomura to be alive are either hoping or expecting it to be Tenko instead of Tomura, and it's understandable, I'm not judging.

I'm also not in agreement.

I read either here or on Twitter that Tomura's death felt hollow and basically pointless, and how it would've been more enjoyable to see how a redemption arc could've been tackled with an unapologetic villain like Tomura. And while I agree that it would've been an incredibly challenging redemption arc I am actually happy with the fact that they didn't suddenly pull a "Yeah no now Tomura is good and agrees with Heores and saw the error in his way" out of their ass.

Tomura Shigaraki exists as a character to force the hero students and THE CIVILIANS to see the fact that society is currently fucked up and they can't depend fully on "Dogs of the state" without them doing anything. Sure yeah, people can depend and hope on cops (which is what heroes basically are), but that doesn't mean you are blind and deaf to the person being murdered next to you.

It's like this image from Club Penguin!

In the middle of the fight Tomura tells Midoriya and AFO "Everything I witness in this world of ours... led to the existence of that house." because Tomura only saw compliment people who's only solution to the abuse that Tenko was experiencing was "don't cry, it makes us sad".

When Midoriya wins, he insisted that the things that caused Tenko's house to exist have already been destroyed by Tomura himself, and that's when Tomura tells him "Oh yeah? That depends... on what you people decide to do tomorrow." but the next fucking chapter is them returning to school and telling us how Nedzu is basically president and helping with the rebuilding.

At the end of the day, the death of Tomura serves to show US the AUDIENCE that nothing has really changed, and the new character that we see basically crawling out of a destroyed house in a place that is NOT undergoing reconstruction efforts is the perfect visual representation of that.

Here is another Perfect Victim.

Now where are his heroes?

[quirkwizard]

Hey Quirkwizard, I hope you are doing well. After searching for 10 minutes throughout your entire blog I couldn't find anything related to my question. What if Geten was a hero instead of a villain ? Do you believe that he would attain the level of control over his quirk as in his villain role? Would his personality change in comparison to his villainous status? And how effective would he be as a hero??? I hope I explained everything clear enough for you to understand what I mean. Thanks for the posts you make of everyone's asks including me even though I haven't asked anything in the past month. So yeah take care and don't forget to sleep and eat well.

Thank you, for checking first, for your consideration, and for asking about this topic. I always found it a lot of fun thinking and writing about heroes as villains.

If Geten was a hero, there would need to be some changes in his personality and backstory, but it wouldn't be that hard. Geten would still start out with a weak Quirk and want to train it to become stronger. Instead of going to the MLA, he decides to become a hero, using it as method to improve his own Quirk through the constant training and battles. Not the most in depth backstory, but certainly unique from all the other heroes. Don't get me wrong, I do think that Geten would have a massive chip on his shoulder over everything. It's just now that it's being filter into a more constructive pursuit. He would be spouting out ideas of how those with the strongest powers should be the ones who are ruling the heroic hierarchy, not the popularity test it seems to becoming, and holding resentment for certain figures who he believe didn't become a hero the "right way". Though he wouldn't be a total jerk about it. He simply believes that those who wish to be heroes need to either get good and get strong, or get rolled over, either by the villains or by stronger heroes.

Now, how affective he would be as a hero would depend on what you believe would translate over. I do think that Geten, given his drive, could gain a lot of skill with his Quirk. But his Awakening event was based around Re-Destro getting injured, meaning he probably wouldn't have it as a hero. From here, he has two options. He could either have some support equipment to make the ice for him, whether that be before or during he goes on patrol, or he could try to work somewhere with a lot of ice and snow, such as mountain rescue work or a snowy village. And with his skill, I do believe he'd be an affective hero, but not amazing as he is constantly held back by how little ice he would have available to him. If we did give him his Awakening, that is a whole other story. I think he could have easily been a top twenty hero with his Quirk, maybe even top ten. With the sheer scope and skill with his Quirk, there is very little he couldn't do. Thing that would keep from getting too high would be his personality and his utter refusal to play the role. Ironically, I could see him being a lot like Endeavor. A jerk no one really likes or wants him to be a hero, but a man of undeniable talent who you need to be a hero.

[laffy-taffy-creations]

WOOOOOOOO WHUMPTOBER DAY 8 BABES

This fic was cross-posted on AO3 here

Collateral Damage

Overcrowded ER | Outnumbered | "It's all for nothing"

Fandom: My Hero Academia

Words: 1,188

Taglist: @athenswrites @lili-loves-whump

Warnings: hospitalization, power overuse, past experimentation

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The shaking started first. It was the first sign that anything was wrong.

Next was shouting. The sounds of things, walls, doors, windows breaking. I made the mistake of going out into the hall to figure out what was wrong and almost immediately got decked had I not ducked.

Villains. So many villains.

There was reason UA prided itself on security, it set up it’s offense defensively and it’s defense offensively. But the defense had broken somehow.

Shit shit shit what are we meant to do? None of the kids from the lower levels are heroes! Are any of them safe? Are they okay?

[Focus Clo. We’re a hero. We handle this.]

I had already ended up engaged in combat with some of them, but there were just so many that I wouldn’t be able to take any of them out using only the power I showed off.

We’re outnumbered. We’re out of options. We just have to stand our ground until support arrives.

But support wasn’t arriving. I put maybe 3 out of commission, and 6 more showed up for me and the others in the hallway. If we go all out now, it’ll end up hurting people. I cant get them all to safety in time.

Someone hit me in the back.

[Fuck it. Void.]

My power stretched and I let it go as far as it deemed through out the school, causing damage like no other. I knew it would end up going out of control, I fought to stay conscious the same as my fight to contain the full power of my quirk from harming innocents.

I let it rage, let myself go for just a little bit, let them have my wrath. Let them see exactly why they should never come back ever again.

I let the anger and hatred fuel it, let what had happened to me cause chaos, let my quirk handle and give proper catharsis to at least a small sliver of my fury. My happiness, my protectiveness, my want for others to live a better life than I had barred it inside as much as it would be leashed.

And after that I was in a hospital.

“No, nononono stay down! You need rest!” the nurse said when he saw me get up. My confusion must have shown. “We barely managed to get you in but you’re the current most likely source of whatever wrecked UA. You need to rest,” he explained.

My just-waking-up mind was still confused but I wrote it off in the name of sleep.

The next thing I remembered was waking up again. I could think more clearly now. There was an IV in my arm. I was hooked up to a heartrate monitor. I was no longer wearing my suit, instead being put in a hospital gown.

“They’re awake!” I heard vaguely.

My dad was the first to enter along side Ochako and Izuku.

The same nurse as before said, “their condition isn’t critical so we’re allowing the one extra visitor, but if it is to change at any point you all will need to leave the room and they will only be permitted to have 2 visitors after that. “

My friends nodded and my dad immediately crouched down by my bed side.

“Are you okay sweetie? Is everything alright? Did you use too much power?” he whispered so only we would hear.

“Yes… to all three of those. Ugh, I feel like death.”

“Yeah well, you almost put us in death when we couldn’t find you. What happened?”

“Uhhh…” I wracked my brain for memory. “I went to the bathroom, the building started shaking, I heard sounds of general conflict and when I opened the door there were way too many villains for anybody to feasibly take in a fight storming their way through the building.”

There was a pause.

“You mean you dont remember anything about UA having a complete shift in reality for like 5 minutes before going back to normal?” Ocha asked.

“Yeah, even those of us on the training field experienced some of it,” Izuku added.

The nurse cut in, “they’re the most likely source for where all that power would have come from currently, so they probably dont remember anything about it. Plus, if it was someone near them, some part of said power might have knocked them out or caused them to forget.”

“Are you telling us they were the one that caused all that carnage?”

“Most likely, yes,” the nurse answered.

My dad looked at me and I nodded. “They are,” he said.

All eyes were on him now. “It’s been something of a secret since I adopted them, but yes, they have a very intense and powerful quirk that, under the right circumstances, would be able to have done that to UA.”

“I thought their quirk was Illusion?” Ochako questioned.

“One of, yes. I have multiple. Illusion is the one I was born with.”

“...Are you trying to say there’s ways to manifest multiple quirks?”

I sat up. “Well, considering I can do this,” I paused and concentrated, letting my heartrate monitor flatline for a bit, “for a minute straight without any sort of repercussions, I’d say that’s a fair assumption.”

“But why keep this secret?” Izu said confused.

“Because I didnt get these of my own volition. They were forced on me.” Dont think about it dont think about it dont think about it.

“By who?”

“That’s a question best left to the police,” my dad cut in.

“A pro-hero,” I responded.

The silence and tension could’ve been cut with a knife.

“A…A hero?”

“Yes. A very famous one. One that nobody would honestly believe me. He pumped me full of chemicals and now the official quirk blocker on file for me is a sedative.”

“A sedative?”

“You saw how strong my quirk is. Normal blockers dont cut it, I have to make special ones for me that are 10 times stronger than the current strongest ones available to heroes and cops, and even those still break when I lose control.”

The silence was only broken by the small shuffling of clothing as my dad offered me a cup of water.

“...We had a tough time finding you. There was a lot of people rushed to 3 different ERs to properly accommodate how many people ended up injured and otherwise passed out.”

“I can imagine.”

“...What exactly does your, uhhh… lab quirk?... do?”

“I was given three. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Uhm… The one we saw you use?”

I put down the water. “That one’s my most powerful. It started as a general item-creation quirk, with the main component being a form of matter manipulation that with enough stamina turned into this.” I shifted the room around us, changing realities, shifting the environment, then letting it settle back to normal.

”So it’s matter manipulation?”

“At one point while it was still developing fully. Its true form is much better described as reality bending.”

Ocha spoke up, “That’s… terrifying.”

“Indeed.”

There wasn’t much else to be said.

The truth is finally out.

[fluxweeed]

10 first lines

share the first lines of ten of your most recent fanfics / wips

hi @teeteringpileofunusednotebooks and @nv-md! tysm for the tag + i’m sorry i’m so late!! mari – i’m ridic excited for your stupid number of WIPs – also i feel like you’ve started writing at least? two more? since you posted your version? i’m laughing, but with love. ali – your lines are all so perfect and make me miss ur writing so much! nv-md binge incoming!!! 

the last time i did this was exactly 10 published fics ago, so this is actually perfect timing! last time i also completely ignored the rules and talked in-depth about each line, and u kno what? tumblr is about the only place i feel comfortable being stupidly self-indulgent, so here we are again lmao 🙈

in reverse chronological order:

1. For Lack of Wanting (8.4k, E, unrequited drarry)

I was obsessed with him, you know.

(this line and also the entire first section is so tell-y but tbh i purposefully didn’t care. i just wanted to write some fucked-up unrequited roleplay sex, you know? sometimes you have to forget about writing good and just treat urself)

2. Still the pine-woods scent the moon (15.5k, E, remus/harry)

It seems like a reasonable idea, at first.

(so this fic actually started off as a sirius/harry after i went on a huge @lqtraintracks bender one weekend [and if u haven’t already, stop what ur doing and go inhale all 19 lqt sirius/harry fics immediately]. then i realised there was nothing i could really add to a sirius/harry fic that hadn’t been done already - but i came across this art and it lodged itself into my brain forever. it’s just the vibes, u know?? how soft remus looks but also the way he’s looking right at the camera?? that man is in CONTROL. so anyway then obv i needed to find a way to get him into grimmauld place so he could walk in on draco fucking harry in the arse. thus: first line.)

3. Ferrety Little Mouths and How to Snog with Them (5k, T/M, soft drarry kissing)

“And she lost her shit, can you believe it?”

(can’t rly take credit for this one; this whole section with draco talking about his ex is almost word-for-word a convo i had with a friend about their ex and their friend who was weird about it. not quite sure the phrase “she lost her shit” was used, but that was def the vibe.)

4. Two to Lie and One to Listen (85k, E, drarry fake relationship [sort of])

She’d got another letter from the Ministry that morning. It was from the Muggle Liaison Office this time. 

(god, this fic. in the very first draft, hermione was the legit villain: the sort of friend who is well-meaning and loudly supportive, but is lowkey bigoted and doesn’t think that queer relationships are as meaningful as straight ones. then before the first big rewrite i started thinking more about her motivations and had the idea of making her trans – both to give her a non-bigot reason for agreeing to help draco hide his sexuality and not tell harry about it [it’s all about the trauma, folks!!], but also as a nice little fuck-you to jkr. so then she needed more of her own storyline, bc it felt like a bit of a cop-out to be like “hey this character is trans i swear! anyway let’s mostly ignore her and have her get in the way of the main pairing” [which, honestly, is still sort of the vibe of the fic], so she got her big Let’s Change The World Campaign.

the first version of this prologue was from draco POV; the second version was hermione POV but she was sooo mean and angry; this one is the third attempt. i wanted to show her desperate attempts at making any kind of change, anywhere at all, so it’s a bit more plausible that when she runs into draco malfoy, she’s like “ok yeah sure let’s pretend to be boyfriendgirlfriend!” lol. also does it bother anyone else that there are three different tenses in this one line? everything about this fic makes me sick lmfao)

5. Per my last letter (I hope you choke on it) (10k, T, epistolary author!harry/publishing-grunt!draco)

CURRICULUM VITAE: Draco L. Malfoy

(can’t remember whose idea it was to start with a cv? it seems like the sort of lazy backstory shortcut i would do, lmao, unless it was actually @lastontheboat​’s idea, in which case it was a genius move to introduce draco’s work struggle and set the tone for his journey thru the rest of the fic)

6. An Auror Error (1k, T, stupid drarry auror fic written in tongue-twisters)

Harry shivered under Malfoy’s stern glare.

(1. wanted it to be left a bit ambiguous what harry’s actually feeling here [reality: he’s shivering bc he thinks draco is sexy when he glares, but also he could be scared bc he’s being interrogated?] 2. playing around a little bit with the s/sh sounds. easing into the nonsense to come.)

7. Eight o’clock, tomorrow evening (11.5k, E, drarry legilimency sex)

It was seven fifty-five, and Draco’s stomach churned.

(listen, i thought i was doing something with the title being a line from the end of The Four Doors, which this fic is a lil sequel to. this first line was (a) tying that together even more and also (b) establishing the POV switch from harry POV in 4D)

8. The Taste of Țuică (15k, E, ron/harry/draco)

Mum always says my problem is that I care too much. I think that’s nonsense, honestly—one of those meaningless things mums say to make you feel better about overreacting to stupid shit. But I can’t deny that I care about my friends. I mean, really care about them. You know?

(i’m including the whole first line here instead of just the sentence bc i was trying to do sooo much here, lmao. first, i wanted to really ground this fic in ron POV, and the weasleys are so very Family [u know??], so i wanted to get that in asap. i also wanted to get in ron’s maybe-demisexuality in there – i love love LOVE getting characters to explicitly state something about themselves while also simultaneously not realising it at all [seriously i do this all the time, promptly forget about this if ever u plan to read one of my fics bc it will be all u can see now haha] and this absolutely an example of that. poor old ron is going “hey i love my friends soooo much, i love hermione, and also i love harry, i just love them both SO MUCH. wait why tf did i kiss harry that one time???” what a chump.)

9. Belatedly Consummated (4k, E, drarry post-arranged marriage fuck)

The problem is: Harry can’t stop touching Draco.

(idk man i just really liked the thought of these two idiots having to cohabit and try to remain platonic while they get a magical boner every time they touch each other ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ this one also gave me a chance to do another thing i rly like to do, which is take the first line and make it the last line, except the last line is somehow Resolved. last lines are fuckin HARD, i use this trick all the time, pls also forget this one before reading any of my fics, ty)

10. Show them the night that they dreamed about before (6.5k, E, percy/harry/draco)

Draco’s first thought is, Huh, Potter’s here again.

His second thought is, What is he doing, bent over the desk like that?

His third thought is, Oh. Weasley is fucking him.

(i think this was the first thing i wrote for this fic and i lowkey still love it. i think it’s maybe a bit confusing? clunky? i feel like one of my beta’s didn’t like it? but it makes me laugh and also i enjoy the mental image of percy going to town on harry and draco standing there experiencing a whole-ass face journey while otherwise completely motionless, so.)

BONUS WIPS:

1. 10k/15kish written, E, silly drarry vagina fic

As soon as Harry wakes up, he knows that Something is Not Right.

(i feel like this might stay the same in the final version? this wip is about 5 years old lmao but i’ve been playing with this beginning section a bit recently. have made it 100% sillier and imo it’s improved it so much. still not sure i’ll ever finish it.)

2. 27k/50kish written, M, drarry polyjuice clubfic

In general, Harry is grateful for Hermione’s efforts to keep him alive.

(i strongly suspect i’m going to rewrite this entire first scene once i actually finish the fic and realise there are secret themes that currently elude me. atm it works as a way of getting them to where they need to be [on a brisk morning walk!] and also as a joke later on in the fic, but there’s nothing else really going on with it.)

-

god i’m so sorry for hijacking a simple tag game to talk about myself at such obnoxious length ;_; hope it encourages more writers to talk about their processes tho, i need more fic writing meta content now galla’s bonus podfic episodes are offline. tag me if u do this / come across this pls!!! love u ❤️

[thelonesomequeen]

Anons thoughts and opinions:

Sharing the asks we got about relationship status from yesterday. Please note these are the opinions and comments of our anons, and not necessarily ours. Some things we agree with, some things we don’t. We wanted to give a space to share those

🌷🌷🌷

🌷🌷🌷Anon 1

There’s not an ounce of doubt in my head that this is a real relationship, you can argue what type of relationship; or how much it’s lasted and in what terms, but not that’s only PR

People around here love running around like “oh nothing makes sense, no theory fits all this” yes yes it does make sense, it’s a real thing going on with them and they’ve told a few lies maybe or maybe not, it changes absolutely nothing.

The answers to the questions:

1. Does Chris have something to gain from this?

2. Is this strictly PR?

It’s the same answer. No.

N

O

Whatever you answer to the first question answers the second one and viceversa. Simple math.

If you answer the first question with a YES and give a concise firm IMPORTANT answer of what he has to gain, then the its strictly pr answer is a yes too BUT SO FAR no one has been able to answer that question with a logical yes; the most people have come up with is that the SMA title requires for the man to not be single; which sounds dumb he’s doing ALL OF THIS for a title he looked blatantly uninterested in and that no one is talking about anymore. The other thing they’ve been saying is YES but we don’t know yet what he’s gaining, THATS NOT A VALID ANSWER.

Let’s not be in denial and accept we just don’t like this girl at all. I DO NOT LIKE HER and I hope they break up soon.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 2

This is clear PR. I don’t understand how others don’t see it.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 3

Whilst I agree with everything you said. I do think Chris would’ve been a little peeved at that shower video considering she’s linked to him and ‘supposedly’ his girlfriend of over a year and it really doesn’t look good because of the fact people are aware she leaked that video herself lol. Like I don’t think he was like ‘oooo yeah a white vest and it’s all wet yeahhh’ hahaha do you know what i mean?

🌷🌷🌷Anon 4

Love your last post!

Even though I think this is a real relationship (not sure how serious) used for PR so many things surrounding this situation are so odd. But the PR angle makes no sense to me. Like you said this type of PR relationship has done him ZERO favors and anyone can tell that. And I also think it is not favoring her at all. Yes she gained more followers but she hasn’t done anything with this newfound recognition. She hasn’t booked any interviews, barely promoted her show. She even ended up deleting her account. The whole point of a PR relationship is to be constantly in the public and have people talking (think Pete Davidson and his relationships). This is not like that at all. If he wanted to promote her show, there was no need to confirm a relationship. He could’ve just posted a friendly message did a puff piece with People about how he’s supporting his friend. Honestly, I think at this point we just need to wait and see

🌷🌷🌷Anon 5

What does Chris stand to gain from this relationship if it’s actually PR? A new image. The fandom knew something was up between them at the beginning of the year and nothing came from it except a few interactions on IG. Nothing really happened until October. The fans were prepared for something, the GP weren’t. Creators on the internet who never spoke about him went on long rants about how he’s another Hollywood cliche going through a midlife crisis. Maybe he really wanted to shed the internets boyfriend, dog dad, Disney loving image in hopes of reinventing himself and the way the public sees him. He’s had that good press for years. My mom watched TGM over the summer and she said she didn’t like Lloyd or Chris playing a character like that. He’s Cap and should stick to roles along those lines. Maybe this is him entering his villain era in hopes of getting more drama heavy roles. Maybe he doesn’t want to be known as Prince Charming anymore.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 6

I’m going to play devils advocate here and say that CE knows that his appeal and “sell” to his fans and public is the sweet, handsome bachelor in Hollywood who can’t find love. And that’s why it’s been crickets from him regarding her show (not even a mention), any photos of them or even him talking about her in SMA. Nope, nothing. I believe after it was made known they are an item, to quickly bury it and get back to “look at handsome Chris” mode. And I think he likes being viewed that way too.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 7

I’ve seen y’all and a few other people question “Why Alba?” if it’s just for PR and I have some thoughts.. Why not go with someone you already know? Why out another hookup when you have one that people have already been speculating about for a year? It gives them a built in timeline with NYE as proof and a LDR also gives an excuse for why there are no photos of them and no one has seen them out together. It also lets them do the bare minimum for PR since they’re not really expected to be in the same place. Why wasn’t she at any big events like family and friends’ weddings, or premieres? Well they’re both busy working and LDRs are tough. Plus a long distance relationship where he’s traveling to go see her kind of lines up with his character in Ghosted, just more realistically. No one outside of the fandom is really going to question the relationship or timeline. We’re in a bubble. People don’t care about Chris Evans as much as we think they do. His career will be fine. I promise.

Whether it’s PR for Ghosted, a PR cleanup from the pumpkin photo leaking their situationship, or an actual relationship, it will eventually end, and people will eventually stop talking about it. It’ll just become a messy, chaotic blip in his history. I know that sounds bleak if it is real, but honestly just don’t see this working out for them in the long run.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 8 (@andnowwedance)

The no pictures thing is just the weird part for me.// for me the no pictures thing just shows hes learning from his past. They way this fandom has treated the women is his life is shameful. If i was famous and someone treated the people i dated like that i would def try and keep it as secret as possible for as long as possible. I would have a rule about not putting putting pics on the internet. People would not have known they we’re together if his fans weren’t super stalkers looking up real estate listings and property taxes and tracking tail numbers. If they we’re together for over a year (which I absolutely DO believe) I think they did the best that could be expected in keeping it private.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 9

The problem with CE and BA “Relationship” os there isn’t any old pictures of them // yall do realize it is possible for people to live a life off the internet and out of public view right? It’s privacy. We rarely see chris doing anything anywhere, especially since he no longer lives in la most of the time

🌷🌷🌷Anon 10

i think i’m of the mindset that they’re totally legit and he’s probably really into her just because why else would you add that stereotype onto yourself? of being a man with a midlife crisis, soothing his ego with a girl in her early 20s.

OR he really just is a man in a midlife crisis soothing his ego with a girl in her early 20s. (but surely he must know how desirable he is to the general public?) idk. i’m really not totally invested either way i just like checking your page! love the way you approach these topics.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 11

Chris hasn’t publicly dated anyone for almost 5 years now, right? Perhaps it was just time to reup the desirability with a relationship. He can back up his standard “wife and kids” talking points with something recent

🌷🌷🌷Anon 12

But how many “in the wild” SOLO pics of Chris did we get in 2022? Just out to eat, at the store, walking down the street style pics? If we don’t think the relationship is real because they haven’t been snapped by random people while out, well, by that logic Chris himself ceases to exist when he isn’t being photographed or spotted by the public. Honestly, with a baseball cap and a sweatshirt he’s just too average to stand out in public. And no one knows who she is.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 13

I have a theory was the “relationship” isn’t thrilling the tabloids, it’s the wrong timing. Had this happened around Endgame or even Knives Out it would have been everywhere. The things he’s done since haven’t exactly been world wide phenomena. She’s gaining a little visibility but only though people who already keep close watches on Chris, the general public.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 14

The PR rs is done. There are more important things to worry about. Tara's mother in law passed away a few days after Thanksgiving. Condolences to the Bidwell family & friends. Death has a way in reminding people what matters most, the relationships you make with the people you love the most.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 15

Yep. That’s the part that’s remained weird to me too 🦎// I mean if they spent the nye party together which is 99% (minus 1% because I’m eyewitness) probable I can’t believe there’s no the whole group together type of photo. And we know he and his friends pose for these type of photo on these parties and they post. Also, remember that DM post of him being “spotted” in Martha’sV in those same days for a nye trip with friends. Imo, at this point everything is possible regarding this whole thing🤡

🌷🌷🌷Anon 16

I know more than likely it's a real relationship, but there's still just this little part of me that wonders if Chris and Alba are just a casual hookup turned long PR play for whenever Ghosted comes out. If he's playing a hopeless romantic chasing after Ana's character, a LRD could make it more relatable.

🌷🌷🌷Anon 17

These two will be done by the new year. Her show was just canned. It's not gonna last beyond next year. But LOL at people thinking they're getting engaged.😂

[notmuchofatail]

Wednesday, November 30 -- SWYNRP Character Wishlist: A list of 10+ characters you’d like to see in the RP (for you to play or someone else!)

1. Cash; I literally have his entire app written out (#Foxandthehound2foramerica - it’s been 2 years). I was going to pick this man up before he even had a skeleton. Cash has been a hovering entity for idk how long. It became an even deeper thought when someone mentioned b-coops as a perfect FC (and that’s my dude. I used to have a running joke of always having a Bcoops FC in my old RPs) However, I decided against Cash a) because I thought it would have been better to bring him in with a Reba and to link up their stories, and also because at the time, his story seemed a little too similar to Dodger’s. The second one...doesn’t exactly apply anymore. But.......I shouldn’t get another character. I LOVE HIM THOUGH. 

I’m begging you. Take him from me. TAKE HIM. Look I even made a little banner to show how much u should take him. Adopt him. JUST TAKE HIM. 

LOOK AT HIS FACE. LOOK AT BRADLEY COOPER (A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper specifically). LOOK. GET HIM AWAY FROM ME. 

2. Fawn; Another one I have the basis of an app written for. But we know my track record with women (aka for some reason I have none) so therefor SOMEONE ELSE SHOULD BRING THEM YEAH? C’mon. She’d be fun. She’d be great. We need Chaotic-Good energies in the house. 

3. ....Look - I’m still 100% saying someone should pick up Roger Rabbit - I just think it would be incredibly funny and I don’t think (?) we have a skeleton for him yet so like. World is your oyster. But imagine him being some kind of weird magic that allows him to fuck with the world kind of like a cartoon so he can have those over-exaggerated, cartoony, over the top moments, you know? 

4. Piglet: This is just me selfishly wanting more of the Hundred Acre crew on board. There’s only 3 of us. I think that the series is full of wonderful characters and Piglet is a perfect diverse character who I think would be a wonderful addition and like... be friends with greg pls. 

5. On that same token - I stopped doing this either out of choice or simply because I forgot but when I first started writing Greg, I’d force him to answer starters/be places because I gave him an NPC friend who was outgoing and friendly and did everything and dragged Gregory with. That friend was ‘Chris’. This was always a super lowkey NPC variant of Christopher Robin and so I think it would be delightful if someone brought the real Christopher Robin too. Obviously it also doesn’t have to do anything with the previous mentioned tidbit - but I just think he’d be a neat character. 

6. Iago. I loved Iago. I love everything about Iago; his skeleton drew me to him the second it was posted and I ended up getting him twice but... He’s too big of a potential baddie for me. I lovingly accept the supporting artist category - and therefore big villains don’t work well with me. Now, technically Iago is a support/side character but - we know damn well he wants the world. He’s the true brains of the operation. He knows what he wants and he’s a powerhouse with SUPER COOL MAGIC. Someone please get him. 

7. Similarly - It’d be cool if someone got Camilo. I have nothing to do with the Madrigals but like Iago, I just think mimicry is some of the coolest magic. Camilo is actually like....... my compromise in theory because he’s everything I want in Iago (aka the cool powers) but without the big character energy that always knocks me with Iago. I also love a sarcastic fuck mama’s boy. I won’t do it though - no. 

8. Give me the baby; 

9. Do we seriously not have any Lilo & Stitch characters?? What are we DOING. Doesn’t someone feel so inclined to get Stitch!? (okay I know some of you are traumatized but we can REBRAND. We can MOVE ON). Wouldn’t stitch be a fantastic little demon monster (not literally) to run around Swynlake? I mean please... imagine them vs most Swynlake disasters. 

10. Pascal - please. While I don’t have the trio of characters that all had tattoos and the two of them that were tattoo junkies that would have severely benefitted from this - Gregory still has tattoos (and may or may not be working towards an entire sleeve slowly but surely but you didn’t hear it from me) and c’mon. I have ONCE AGAIN BEEN ASKING FOR YEARS.