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plumbogs · 1 year ago

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Making Sims 2 University Fun: my personal guide

I've noticed that while it's probably one of the most utilized of the expansions, TS2's university is generally seen as a slog. Which makes sense. It has a completely different gameplay loop than the rest of the game. But it's very handy to send your sims to college, especially if you use any of the various mods that limit careers based on education. So here's my big guide to making university an actual fun experience to play through (to me, at least).

The university expansion is, uh, very tailored to the 2000s college party time animal-house tropes. the pack becomes more fun when you treat it that way and let your sims be stupid young adults who streak and fool around on campus and throw parties. which, by default, is tricky because of the gameplay that requires so much skill building and assignments. which the rest of this guide will also deal with.

Note: I make some pretty big changes to normal university gameplay, to the point that it does require a bit of modding and at least one instance of fooling with simpe. there's probably also easier ways to do it, and of course everything is optional. maybe you do like keeping sims in dorms for the entire time and just three-speeding trough it all.

*mods: there are a few absolute must-have mods to me.:

TwoJeff's College Adjuster. It's basically an all-in-one controller to adjust semester timing, change semesters, plus a bunch of other features. The semester timing is the most important to me.

Active Classes is still in testing, but it almost completely changes how I play college sims. Once again, I'll detail gameplay later, but actually sending your sims to class makes for a much more fun campus experience.

No College Time Progression On Community Lots: this goes hand-in-hand with the previous mod.

Community Time: IIRC you have to do a little editing in SimPE to make it work right with University - this post explains what to edit. I don't know if I'm allowed to share the exact edit I made as a download. This might seem redundant after the last mod, but there's a reason for the madness: while one group of sims are in their active classes, the other students can do things on the home lot.

Instant Pledge for Greek Houses: This one is important for greek house gameplay, which is later.

SimBlender: There's like, 500 different edits of the SimBlender, and I think all of them have the main function needed for my college gameplay, which is teleportation. You can use a comparable teleporter if you fancy.

Simlogical's University Break is another important one for me, but it's not really necessary if you don't want it. I usually give the sims one break day per season - more on that later.

Autonomous Casual Romance is not required, but it sure adds a lot of fun to your college experience. You can also do any number of professor-limiting, custom degrees, etc mods and fixes you want.

*mods i do not use: there are mods to change the number of/length of semesters, but I seem to run into issues with them so I use the college adjuster to do the same things. I also don't really use any major overhauls, or mods that make term papers faster. I did have the tuition mod for a bit but grew tired of using it.

*general timing changes: I do seven-day seasons with longer lifespans for all sims and play rotations each day. These are the things I do specifically for university:

Four semesters: I only do semesters 2, 4, 6, and 8. Every time a new semester starts, I just use the College Adjuster to set the correct semester for each sim. I use the default length of 72 hours.

Synchronized finals: I use the College adjuster to reset the timer so the finals are all around 6-8am, and synchronized for each sim on a lot. This makes it easier to keep track of timing and skills. Also, all sims in university run on the same 3-day semester. Finals are the same day for the entire college each round. Once again, that just makes it easier for me to keep track of college-wide events for gameplay reasons.

Because this means there's 3 days per school year, and two school years per season week, it syncs better if they get a day off every Sunday using the University break mod.

Teens are sent to college on the same schedule. I send teens to school when they have 14 days or so left, with maybe an extra day or two if the college is currently in the middle of the semester.

*Gameplay: living situations: Here's where the meat begins. Now all your sims are on the same college schedule, they're all being sent to school, and now they need to actually move into college. I follow a real rule a number of colleges use: Every student spends a year in the dorms. Just their freshman year, then they have to move somewhere else. I find that this gives them a chance to meet dormies, adapt to being on college, and sorta figure out what kind of young adults they are. Plus, this gives them time for joining greek houses, which will be talked about later.

I do this because I like seeing sims as their own little characters with arcs and whatever and it forces me to think about what exactly they would be doing in college. Some sims get so frustrated with the constant mess of a dorm, some sims thrive by making friends with every dormie. Sometimes they start new drama with the others they came from high school with. Nothing quite like losing your high school sweetheart to some stinky dormie, after all.

After freshmen year, the students are kicked out of the dorms. They can get an apartment, they can rent a house, they can move into a greek house if they join one. Either way, they need to live somewhere. You can let them stay in the dorms, but I prefer somewhat smaller college households and divide them accordingly. Which gets into that whole greek house situation:

*Gameplay: greek houses. I gamify the Greek houses. I play SSU in my megahood, which comes with a fraternity and sorority, and you can do whatever setup you like there if you dislike gendered houses. Or abandon them all together and ignore this section. There are a few important elements:

Freshmen cannot live in Greek houses. They can, however, pledge while living in the dorms and move in right after their finals end. This includes dormies. There are benefits to the dorm, such as free housing, more social opportunities, usually more money per household since I cheat to make the greek houses actually nice to live in with things like pools and comfortable furniture, etc.

The Greeks have to be recruiting consistently. To keep the house going, they need to constantly be bringing in new members, either playable OR dormies.

Any recruited dormies are required to move in. You can townify them after graduation if you don't really get attached to them, but every member of the house is moved in. I use the instant pledge mod to get rid of that annoying requirement where they have to hang out on the lot so long before moving in. That, and they also move in after finals. You can teleport or invite them on and just ask them to move in. Whatever you want. Then, you must set them to be sophomores. Beyond that you can do whatever. They're playable now. Have fun.

You gotta let the Greeks party. Throw toga parties all the time and use a teleporter to maximize guests. Generally, ALL members of ALL greek houses are teleported to a party by default. Add more dormies, any friends, anybody in the dorms - the kids need to recruit and the easiest way is by forcing everyone on one lot. If you have autonomy mods or realistic alcohol, sit back and watch the madness unfold.

I don't really play wants-based, so playables that join greek houses is more based on vibes or friendship with existing greek members than wants.

*Gameplay: what do you mean we have to study??? Yeah. I made it this far before even bringing up the whole point of college. This is also where it gets a little more complicated and changed up, so bear with me.

I don't do wants-based, again, so I generally just try to make sure sims are at least passing by default. Whether they go beyond a C is up to whatever. I usually try to get knowledge sims to their 4.0s or sims that just seem like they'd take it seriously to max GPA.

ACTIVE CLASSES ARE SUCH A LIFESAVER. You can use the pre-made lecture hall or make your own. Put some skill-building objects in there, and if you like flavor theme the lecture halls around majors. I have a business/gen ed building, a science lot, and an arts lot, each with two classrooms (plus the library contains a classroom). I do believe I made an edit to the mod to make the class performance go higher with active classes, as well, so attending class every day is the bare minimum to get a passing grade.

The active class lots also contain career reward skill-building objects. These are nice because your sims can request to be taught by other sims on the lot. If you have a mod that allows non-students to visit uni lots, this helps even more with faster skill-building.

Every day, I send groups of sims with similar majors to their class. If there's a mixed-major group, each sim group gets one day in active class per semester. (So if there's an economics major, a bio major, and an art major, each one attends class on a separate rotation and the others do the normal autonomous go-to-class where they leave the lot and disappear). They attend one or both of the lectures and otherwise exist on the college lot to skill-build, socialize, eat, etc.

Outside of class, sims will usually research if they're not doing great. I honestly barely bother with assignments or term papers unless the sim actually wants to do them or are aiming for a high GPA. Maybe they go hang out at the lounge or downtown to fool around. Maybe they just fester at home. Whatever they want.

*other gameplay/storytelling things: I usually will take advantage of the aspiration change after their sophomore year if I realize that their aspiration just doesn't really jive with how they act. It's realistic to me. They had many years since being like, 13 when they first had their aspiration selected. I'd like to implement more in the way of holidays/events, personally, but that's not really relevant either. I usually give them an outfit change as well, and I like to go hard with the idea that they're going through a bunch of weird fashion phases. You know you want to give them a mohawk, just for a few days, don't you? Dye their hair red? Shave it all off? Have fun with it.

All of these things combine for me, at least, to make the college years a lot more engaging/interesting and less of a slow "move to a dorm -> study -> read books -> meet needs -> graduate" loop. There's a lot more storyline development that comes from sims being able to enjoy their time as young adults, too, such as the regular polycule jealousy explosions and party fights. It serves to break up anything they had going on as teens and give them a little direction to enter adulthood with. This concludes my little mini-guide, feel free to steal all my gameplay style or just take inspiration if you please. Or ignore it all and shake your head and call me an idiot. do whatever you want forever.

#sims 2 university #plumbog gameplay rules #<- ??? i guess #i'm sure i missed a lot of important things. whatever #honestly this would work better as like a youtube video. maybe someday

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meathunt · 16 days ago

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Hello!

I want to say I love your vampire dads au

Elias being sweet while Thomas is firm but gentle or (coaxing?) With his methods is something I enjoy (sorry if I might have mixed up between names)

.I think reader were a human before their turning and I think you mentioned them being turned twice? As like Thomas marked them once and elias marked them also so that would make them have two sires or am I wrong?

. If you don't mind I want to ask for scenario about reader , when they wake up and everything is cleared for them like pain is bearable and no more frogynes? Or their headache? , what would their reaction be knowing they got fully turned into vampire and is probably in their fledgling phase and their reaction to discovering they consumed blood from their sire and that they would have to feed from them for while , would reader get scared and get fussy with them or except it because they feel same around their sires's?

. Sorry if it's too long also English is not my main language so I lack in some terms and tried to explain as best as I could 😅

- anyways keep your passion and hard work and thank you for drinking our crocodile tears with your amazing writing lol

-R

Thank you! Hope you keep enjoying my works!!! Well you are right but also wrong! I will explain kinda what happened in reader's process of turning and siring in another post as i will probably make it a bit long haha. When i write it you can find it here! Now for the scenario :] ---

You felt too warm in the position you were laying down at the moment, rolling to the other side in search for a cooler place to keep sleeping.

The bed felt very nice from under you, firm but not hard, and the blanket that you were currently hiding your face in was so wonderful, the fluffy material softly caressing your face.

It was very soft huh....

....

You are pretty sure you didn't own anything this nice, even if you did you are pretty sure it would be one small blanket.

But now that you felt more awake you could recognize that almost everything around you was way out of your budget. From the pillows and blankets around you to the soft fluffy clothes you were wearing at the moment.

You slowly sat up from the bed, now noticing that it mostly looks like a bedding made of multiple pillows, blankets and few plushies here and there.

But the most notable detail of it all was that you didn't recognize any of it, no windows to get a feel of what time it was. You woke up fully now, and for the first time of what you feel have been months, you really felt awake, fully conscious, actually aware of your surroundings, slow panic rising as your situation fully set in.

Your last clear-ish memory was drinking yourself silly in some bar, after that is just some blurry scenes that make you nervous the more you try to figure out what actually happened, the more you feel panic rising inside you, unconsciously fidgeting with the blanket in your hands. A whimper on the tip of your tongue, but you hold it back, deciding to put a pin on it and come back later, for now you have to figure out where are you.

You go to stand up from where you were sitting and almost instantly feel your legs give out from under you. Well that’s strange, you go to stand up again feeling how you struggle to maintain balance when you finally stood up, you stretch a bit, feeling your bones pop with the action. Some parts of your body feel a bit sore when you go to walk to the door, having to take it slowly, stumbling a bit on the way as your legs feel a bit weaker, opening and looking into the corridor. Well, now you can clearly say you are not in your house, or somewhere you could really afford, even the light features in here look way out of you budget, you walk out of the room, deciding that exploring the place is your game plan for now.

After some minutes you are almost sure you are completely alone in the house, you haven’t heard anyone around for a bit, and if you are being honest you haven’t heard anything, the house being strangely quiet.

While walking aimlessly and judging the decoration of the house you are currently in you encounter what could only be living room, and while very comfortable you note the lack of technology in here, not even clocks to give you a clue of what day or time it is. You note that there is a door to the balcony, but before you can open it a hand grabs you by the shoulder.

“And where do you think you are going Sunshine?”

His voice almost made you jump out of your skin, turning around to see a burly man towering man over you made you stop breathing for a second, how did this mountain of a man managed to sneak up on you is a mystery.

“U-uhm.” You tried to figure out who he was but nothing came to mind, but as you looked into his eyes full of care and just happiness to see you, you are a bit shocked so you really don’t react until he is practically in front of you and immediately going to carry you, but before he could really get comfortable you stopped him “Hey, hey! It’s okay, I can walk!”

He visibly tenses by your words and immediately looks into your eyes, even when he towers above you and could possibly force you if he chose to, you don’t feel in danger, his eyes don’t look angry, but a bit more hurt, a bit more inquisitive, like he’s not used to you denying him things.

Before any of you could say or do anything else another person stepped into the room “Oh cutie, you should let Papa carry you, after all you can barely stand on your own”

Huh? What was he talking about-

You go to take a step back but just as if in command your legs fail you, if not for the man in front of you that with inhuman speed held you and settled you against his chest you would have probably be on the ground and most likely hit your head.

“Love, let’s go take a sit at the sofa, seems our little one has many questions in their little head” Thomas says as he is already on his way.

Elias carries you no problem as you try to make sense of what even is going on. You stay on Elias’s lap even when he already took a sit, and you don’t make a move to get off because you are almost sure he won’t allow it. You don’t want to acknowledge that it also feels just right, like you will be safe here.

You all stay silent for a bit, them waiting for you to ask something, and you trying to think of what to ask first, who are they? Where are you? How did you get here?

You look up at Thomas, trying to decide as your mind is flooded by questions, but even if you feel some kind of connection with him your mind also raises an alert. He doesn’t seem as strong as the man holding you, but you still think you won’t be able to take him in a fight. But as you focus more on him that sense of wrongness grows, you can’t put your finger on why, he looks like a common rich dude, maybe softer.

But then it clicks, his chest.

His chest is not rising. That almost instinctive rise and fall from the chest is just not happening, he’s not breathing, and since he entered the room he hasn’t being doing such a simple, common thing. And then your question comes immediately to mind “…what are you?”

Thomas smiles at you, a smile that has too many teeth, sharper than any humans would be.

Elias strokes your back as you almost instinctually nuzzle on his chest in look for comfort, even if you really didn’t realize you were doing it. --

Almost two hours after they answered all the question you had.

Vampires, fucking vampires.

You didn’t want to admit that it was the only thing that actually made sense with the meager memories you had, that it was reasonable once they answered all of the questions. You were freaking out, internally, mentally you were freaking out about all the new findings. Because physically you weren’t.

Somewhere in the talk Thomas decided to take you from Elias’s arms and take your place, no you were laying on his chest while in a cuddle pile between him and Elias. And you were angry, you wanted to shout and scream and cry about what fate brought to you, about the things you just figured out you lost, about the life you will never get back and weren’t able to properly say goodbye to.

That you were able to get mad, even when Elias’s hand strokes your back in a comforting manner, and the purring from Thomas chest wasn’t relaxing you further into his hold.

And as Elias brought his wrist to your mouth and you immediately closed your eyes, you tried to convince yourself that as the irony smell hit your nose you didn’t latched onto the source like a kid with ice-cream, and as it flowed inside you and you felt tears burning in your eyes that it was disgust what you felt instead of warm comfort as the liquid settled in your stomach.

And that the vibration of your chest was contained hiccups instead of a happy purring escaping you after realizing that your captors, caretakers, will never be far from you.

#platonic yandere #parental yandere #familial yandere #male yandere #tw infantilization #yandere vampire #mhunt storybook #Thomas OC #Elias OC #YanVampDads

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imagine-notnatural · 3 months ago

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This is set to be after the events of this post, sorry about the out of order posting

Anyways! More on Janitor! Readers (mis)adventures!

When you first arrived on base Michael thought he’d be stuck with a stick in the mud. And for sometime he wasn’t wrong. You went out of your way to avoid too many interactions with him and everyone else really, keeping quiet, letting conversations die, purposely avoiding tasks that required working with him, etc. You were coverless book and your title was incredibly boring so he wasn’t even going to try to crack you open. He didn’t even think the two of you would end up getting along.

But all it took was a graveyard shift, some cereal bars,and him telling you the order in which he poured his cereal for you to decide that you’d die on your hill and disagree with him for the two of you to become friends.(Later inseparable)

Back to now.

It wasn’t often a job called for both of you to work together. So when you’d received the call on your radio to meet with Mikey, you knew you’d be waking up the next day completely sore.

You’d been giving a task that would require the both of you. You were asked to clear out one of the buildings before some of the mechanics had to use it the next day. Michael was practically beaming when he entered the break room to find you reading the board for your charge.

“(Name)! You ready for backbreaking labor?!”

“Born ready, Big-Mike. Brought us snacks and everything,” you gesture to the inside of your olive green jumpsuit. Which is filled packets of pretzels, gummies, and protein bars. You held a couple cold drinks in your hand.

“Ugh! Yes! Do you need a house husband? I could be one if you’re going to be ”

“Not my type. I need my men to have more meat on them-“

“Nope- don’t like this- Let’s go!” He quickly stud up to grab a kart and headed towards the door. You chuckled and followed after him

“I noticed you have a couple pins on your bag when you came in today, did you start to collect them?” Michael asked, pushing forward the cart.

“I did actually. I found one on the street the other day, and when I went to go buy groceries from the farmers market today there was someone with a pop-up. I ended up getting a Perry the Platypus and Doctor Doofenshmirtz pin set and a pin that says ‘Ticket to Pound Town’ I'm planning to give as a gag gift-”

"Isn't that beastiality?" Michael asked with a grimace on his face.

"I can't stress this enough, Mikey, it's two separate ones and one is a gift."

“Oh okay...You know, one of my favorite Doofenshmirtz quotes is the one where he goes ‘It all began on the day of my actual birth, both of my parents failed to show up’”

“Mine’s where he goes ‘If I had a nickel every time I was doomed by a puppet, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot. But it's weird that it happened twice, right?”,”

Michael chuckled, “ I like that one too.”

The two of you continue to chatter on as you make your way to building.

You grab your keys as you arrive at the hangar. Once You'd unlocked and opened the door, you proceeded to turn around to help Michael lift the cart over the door's frame and get it inside. Just as you entered the threshold, you couldn't help the shiver the went down your spine.

"What is it?" Michael questioned, seeing as you'd twitched as you enter the building.

"Nothing, I think I'm just cold." You answered, trying to shake off the unease.

"Come on, if you go high and I go low, we'll probably finish faster."

The two of you nodded in agreement and went your separate ways. Michael grabbing a ladder and you clearing out miscellaneous tools and machinery.

"You should set that stuff outside, if you get the main door up a lil' you'll be able to set it out there." Michael called from the latter.

You took a glance at the front where the hangar's main entrance was, that shouldn't be that hard, you thought to yourself. You let Michael know you'd be right back as you walked over to the side of the door with the lock. You moved through the random assortment of boxes and

You stood frozen, staring down at the creature at your feet. Praying to whatever could hear to keep you from this fate. Alas you were left to fend for your own.

“Michael.”

…

“Michael”

Its antenna twitched innocently. Its beady little eyes shimmered under the the light. Its sleek black grey body reflected light as though it’d been polished.

“Michael! Mike- MICHAEL!”

“(Name)?”

. The beam of light from the overhead fixture seemed to follow it like a stage light follows its cast as it began to scurry, it could almost hear the sound of Tchaikovsky’s Swan lake beginning to play in the background-

“MICHAEL GET OVER HERE!” You jumped back, too frightened to turn around and give it your back. Michael rushed to you, his expression panicked then it turned disapproving as he saw what caused this reaction out of you

Feeling the earth beneath it tremble, it took to the skies

“IT’S FLYING MICHAEL- MICHAEL- AHHH! WHY IS IT FLYING?!”

“(Name), stop running! It’s just a-” the tables turned when it changed direction and headed for him,

“ah- AH WHAT THE-?!”

He quickly turned to the defense, swatting the air frantically. Michael’s words soon turned into incoherent screams as he missed the bug horrendously each time. However, he did not miss the fact that you had left him to deal with the roach on his own.

In tempo with the song in its head, it gracefully dodged every swat, not letting the giant deter it. It’s wings whirred in the air. Its trajectory decided.

“(NAME)! (NAME) hELP ME!” Michael screamed as he turned around to run,

“MIKEY RUN- MIKE, OH MY- MICHAEL I CAN’T-,” You were heaving heavily in a well lit area near the doorway.

“COME THIS WAY!” You cried out, rushing to the door and pushing it open,

The screech that left Michaels body was borderline inhuman as he ducked under the flying creature to get to the exit. He could feel the blood pumping into every muscle in his body worked in unison to get him out of there.

It felt like movie scene, Michael sprinting to the door as the flying cockroach speedily flew after him. You watched in terror as it followed after Michael, having whipped around once he’d managed to get past it.

You watched as Michael ran with all his might towards the door. You readied yourself behind the door.

You’d have to close it after him to save the both of you.

Michael dove through the door, yelling as he did“ CLOSEITCLOSEIT-“

“CLOSE IT!!”

You slammed the door shut once he’d passed through. The buzzing noise made by the flapping of its wings dulled by the thick metal door,

You put your back to the door and watched as Michael rolled over and lifted himself on his elbows, his eyes wide as they met with yours

You stared at each other for what felt like hours but in reality was only seconds

He was the first to crack, Michaels fearful expression had morphed into one of disbelief, then he began with his stifled laugh, and you, not able to not react, began to bite back a smile, then your heavy breath started sounding like laughing. You tried avoiding each others gazes but when you inevitably saw each others faces you couldn’t hold it together any longer.

First he began quiet, so did you. Then you couldn’t help yourself as you got louder, you tried covering your mouth but no avail. Seeing how you failed to keep it together, Michael laughed harder, then you did too.

It continued like that until you were both hysterical.

There was a lot of pointing at each other and keeling over while laughing so hard you couldn’t form coherent words.

“Aw fuck, HAH-, dude how are we gonna get shit done?” Michael wheezed out, finally sitting up. He dusted his elbows off and extended a hand.

“I don’t know but I’m not going back in there unless that’s shits gone,” You grabbed it and hauled him up, “I thought being scared of insects was ‘sTuPid’? Looked like you were just as scared as I was- if not more,”

“(Name), mate, it was flying at me,” he quickly defended, “it was coming straight for me! Of course it scared me!”

“Yeah but when I SAID-“

“YEAH YOU KNOW WHAT?! YEAH BECAUSE WHEN YOU SAID-“

As the two of you began your bickering, you both failed to notice the hulking figure that’d been watching the pair of you losing your minds for the last five minutes . Though who can blame you when his moniker is literally Ghost. It’s implied, I fear.

The pair of you were plenty distracted in your arguing. It wasn’t like he purposely had walked out of the building knowing he’d find the janitors seemingly fighting for their lives. it just happened. And now he was going to take note of it, but leave.

It was this motion that finally caught your attentions’. You paused in the middle of your argument with Michael. He quickly noticed and turned around to follow your gaze. When he saw who you saw, he quickly thought of a solution your problem.

You both turned back at each other, as Ghost’s broad back turned to face you and slowly began shrinking into the distance.

“ you know him, go, Ask him-“

“No I don’t?! I’m not asking him shit-“ you quickly denied

Michael grabbed you by the arm and whipped you around to face him, “ Then are you gonna do it?!” He glared,

“FfffAWK NO”

“WELL ME EITHER, so you go ask that big scary man to deal with it, nOW! HURRY! Before he goes!” He forced you in his direction. You stopped and turned around, you both had a silent battle of wills, your faces your weapons.

When Michael saw you weren’t budging, he merely grabbed the door knob and pointed at you then the door.

You wouldn’t, your face said

Oh yes I would, his seemed to reply

You glared at him before you turned around and began to jog to catch up to the lieutenant.

“Lieutenant- Sir! Lieutenant Riley! Wait-“

You had just turned the corner when you nearly bumped into the man.

As always you couldn’t see much of his face, baklava and what not. But you could see his eyes when he turned around and look down at you, he had a quirked eyebrow for a brief moment when he turned around

“What?” As if his figure wasn’t intimidating enough, that deep voice of his and the heaviness of his gaze on you surely were when your nerves were practically fried.

“Hi, Hello, good evening, uh, okay… I’d… if you have the time…there this- and I’ll-“

His eyebrows furrowed and you could explode right then and there

“ Wait okay,” you sighed, your hand squeezing the bridge of your nose, you dragged that same hand down your face before continuing,

“We don’t really know each other, I know this, you know this, but I need a favor-” your hands clapped together nervously, “ I restock y’all’s rec room in two days so whatever you want or need, I can get it for you, and if not that-“

For a moment he stood there just watching you squirm. Watching the way your face changed and how you continued to rattle on. You’re a fidgety speaker when nervous, just as Johnny had said. Your hands moving to accentuate your words or tug at the fabric of your jumpsuit. At this very second, one hand pointed a finger at him

“ and I’d say you at the very least owe me for the two times you scared the absolute shit out if me-“

He hadn’t even realized he’d zoned out starting at you until your hands handed on either side of your hips

“So you in or out?”

You stared at each other for a few seconds before Simon nodded,

You mentally dropped to your knees in gratitude before thanking him quickly and having him follow you to the old hangar where Michael was pacing out side the door.

When he caught sight of the lieutenant walking after you, his face visibly brightened. “ You’re the best!” He whispered shouted at you as you neared,

You had half a mind to flip him off but decided against it. You continued to the door, and turned ‘round to ensure the giant had followed after you.

The big guy is impossibly quiet, you’d thought to yourself on your walk over. And now that you stopped at the door you’d realized you hadn’t heard a single step of his.

“It’s inside, we just need you to kill it-“

“Sir, if you happen on any others feel free to get those too while you’re at it.” Michael added, his hands balled into the pockets of his jacket.

“You shut up,” you pointed an angry finger at him before turning back to Ghost with a pleading smile, “ but also what he said,”

You could’ve sworn you’d heard an amused huff come from the giant.

He opened the door and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

You and Michael waited silently beside the door. It was less than a minute before a sudden THWACK, made the two of you jump. Then it was followed by another, and then another, and following that another. It continued like this for five minutes; there was a sound of equipment being moved when a final THWACK was heard.

Ghost stepped outside with a folded up cardboard in his hand, you whipped around at the fight sight of a dismembered leg on it.

“It’s done,” was all he said when he shut the door behind him. “Get on with it,”

Michael was the first to thank him, nearing the door and opening it to look inside. Ghost grunted in reply and walked past him, not that Michael minded, too caught up in the massacre left begging to notice.

Simon dropped the cardboard on the ground before nearing you. At the sound of it, you turned around to face him, purposely not looking to his feet and instead focusing on his face.

“Thank you sir, really,” your eyes met his “ Any thoughts on how I can repay the favor?”

“ Wait and see NyQuil”

You visibly and viscerally cringed at the name,

“Yes sir, thank you sir,”

He huffed out a silent chuckle and began walking off.

Right then Michael poked out his head from the building, his face expressed awe,

“Ay mate you’ve gotta get in here- HEYWHAT THE-“

The rock you don’t remember picking up flew in his direction and dinged the metal of the building, only missing his dumb stupid face because he’d ducked back inside the building in time

“ I fucking told you not to call that shit! Now people are actually fucking calling me-“

“It’s COOL!” Michael yelled back

“No ITS NOT”

you throw a couple more pebbles before finally giving up. Despite your impeccable aim, it was no use if the bastard used the door as his shield.

You finally neared the door and pulled on it, you were met with resistance,

“ Mike open this door right now,”

“ so you can pelt me? No thank you,”

“ I won’t, I don’t even have anything in my hands,”

“ you’re lying,”

“ I’m not,”

“On our friendship you’re not?”

“Mhmm, on our friendship.”

The door creaked open. Michael’s body language unsure as he revealed himself to you. He quickly turned his eyes from your face to your hands, a sigh of relief escaped him when he saw them empty.

“ in all due respect, it’sa sick nickname”

“No it’s not. Shut up before I stone you to death, Mikey”

He smiled and moved out of the way, showing you in

“ yeah yeah just get to work scaredy cat,”

#cod 141 #john price #john soap mactavish #kyle gaz garrick #mw2 141 #simon ghost riley #oc #task force 141 #task force 141 x reader #tf 141 #supernatural au #soap cod #ghost cod #gaz cod #captain price #price #price cod

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autumnmobile12 · 7 months ago

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My Hero Headcanon: Rei

When I think of Rei’s childhood, I think of Yuki from Wolf Children.

Just not at all being the lady her parents probably wanted her to be and living her best life collecting bugs, feathers, and small animal bones.

And just like Toga, those interests were suppressed because they ‘weren’t appropriate for little girls,’ and she was made to conform.

I mean, look at her expression and tell me she wasn’t told to sit still and be quiet too many times when she was a child.

I think she was a weird kid.

And that's why I play with the snowboarding theme when I do fanworks involving Rei, as well as the idea that Touya’s inability to sit still when he's agitated/excited comes from Rei. It's also why I have the headcanon there was never a point where Rei and Endeavor loved each other. They already have two extremely different personalities in canon, and the high-energy headcanon just highlights a further personality difference.

I’ve already gone into it in more detail with an Endeavor analysis that I made, but here’s an excerpt that illustrates my point:

...what I think shows here is they weren’t really talking all that much. Specifically, he is not ‘talking down to her.’ He is not treating her with any particular disrespect or putting her down as inferior. He doesn’t have the arrogance he later exhibits. This also isn’t him being aloof and ignoring her either. Look at his face, specifically his eyes. That is the same blank, deer in the headlights, “I have one brain cell dinging around in my head that is struggling to find a way to interact with people,” stare he shares with Shouto.

He has no idea what to say to her.

So finally, Rei turns off to the side to admire the garden, and he asks, “Do you like the flowers?” It’s a small thing, but it does show that in some capacity, he did show some interest in Rei and making her happy. He’s just stupidly awkward about it at this point. (Even if his ultimate goal was…well, we’ll get into that.)

...

The long and short of it is if you remove the violence/temper aspect of Endeavor's character, you basically have Shouto: An awkward dork who doesn’t entirely know how to interact with people and he probably doesn’t understand sarcasm or euphemisms either. The main reason we can’t see that side of Endeavor’s character very well is because he’s weaponized intimidation/violence to cover it up. (Dammit, dude, this it not how you patch a character flaw.) So I don’t think Shouto’s isolation and childhood training caused his social ineptitude so much as exacerbated a character trait that was already there. He got it from Dad.

So referring to the earlier pre-kids part of Rei and Endeavor's relationship before the violence actually started, imagine the awkward personality-type paired with a partner who is, by all accounts, weird and has too much energy to be contained. Arranged marriage aside, I like the idea that Rei reverted back to her odd personality after she left her parents’ house. I like to think she danced in the kitchen when there was no one home, hoarded feathers and skulls and other odd keepsakes, and looked for places where she could snowboard. She was a housewife by herself for long periods of time, so who was going to stop her?

There is a short story I absolutely love called Ink, Water, Milk by Catherynne M. Valente. The plot's not relevant to this post, but there is a scene where a bored housewife buys a bunch of those cube-shaped watermelons and just stacks them in her fridge to admire them.

And for some reason, I can picture Rei doing this.

Like Endeavor just comes home to find her sitting cross-legged in front of the open fridge and smiling happily at the nine cubed watermelons stacked neatly inside. (Keep in mind, these things average $100-$200 a piece and are inedible/decorative.) No explanation for why she's done this, she just has a big, ecstatic smile on her face and pointing into the fridge. You know, Touya energy when he's a kid and excited about something. And Endeavor, in true Shouto fashion, is baffled by what she’s done, has no idea why she’s done it, and wondering if there’s a joke he’s not understanding.

I like to mirror this behavior in Touya and Shouto when I can in writing for Ambush Simulation. Underneath the trauma, they are at their core the brother with their mother’s high energy and the brother who is socially awkward and doesn’t quite know how to deal with the unhinged behavior but doing his best.

...

Edit because I just found this gif.

Young Rei:

#my hero academia #rei todoroki #dabi #touya todoroki #shouto todoroki #endeavor #enji todoroki #boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #headcanon #watermelon #rei himura #rei young #tw flashing

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xerith-42 · 1 year ago

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I was wrong

It takes a lot to admit that, even more for me to admit that about MCD, but I was wrong about something in regards to this series. In a previous post I said that the worst episode of MCD was Season 2 Episode 95, because it was the culmination of the absolute failure that was Laurance's character arc. And I wasn't wrong about that, S2E95 is an objectively bad episode and I stand by it being one of the worst. But it's only one of the worst episodes of this series. Probably second or third worst.

The actual worst episode of Minecraft Diaries happens far earlier in it's run time than I anticipated. The actual episode that begins the degrading of every single main character happens within it's first season. The worst episode of Minecraft Diaries is Season 1 Episode 65, Our Fears.

For those of you who haven't watched MCD in a minute, or aren't insane like I am and recognize what happens in an episode from just a number and a thumbnail, this is the episode where Aphmau and Dante get chased into Malachi's abandoned castle and fall victim to his uncontrollable magic. A magic that shows people their greatest fears.

Now the concept of a ghost that forces the audience and the characters to come face to face with the leading characters greatest fears is a fantastic idea. I'm serious this is one of the best concepts for character work in the entire Aphverse. This is great, this can go so many good ways.

Aphmau's fear is pretty weak mostly because it shows her house on fire, nobody hurt, and Malachi comments that she's "Scared of losing the ones you love." My honest reaction to this was "She lost her house in episode 36 and didn't seem to care because her loved ones are safe. You wanna communicate that she's scared of people dying just show Zoey lying on the ground or something smh." It gets the job done, but not very well.

Dante's fear is the only one that's well done because it's an image of Gene about to rip apart the realm barrier in the Nether. This works surprisingly well despite only being one shot because it gets across Dante's connection to Gene and the Nether pretty well, setting up for the reveal later on. Dante's existence is this episode's single redeeming quality. And as much as I like the guy, he's not enough to hold up the episode after what happens next.

Now, dear viewer who presumably knows the plot of MCD because you've read this far into a post about this single episode, you know that at this point in the series Garroth has been found out by his brother and has the looming threat of the entire O'Khasis military on his mind all the damn time. Zane has already hurt members of his village in direct ways, and only didn't do more damage because he was called away for an emergency. Garroth has already failed to protect one lord, and he's nearly failed to protect another.

Laurance is a shadow knight. And even though the lore of shadow knights is still flimsy at this point, we know that they are very prone to killing lords, it's why Laurance renounced his position as head guard of Meteli and refuses to return. But that doesn't mean his desire for blood is gone. It just means it has a new target. Like say, the lord he comes to the castle in search of? That he has explicit romantic feelings for?

Again, this idea of forcing the audience and the characters to face their greatest fears is such a good idea, especially with these three, because they can all be interlinked. Aphmau fears losing her loved ones, Garroth fears failing to protect his people, and Laurance fears that he'll give into bloodlust. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? I don't know if I can make it anymore obvious where the show should have gone from here.

But, no, unfortunately Jesson wrote this series. So what could have been one of the best moments of character work in the entire series, instead became the beginning of the end for our would be love interests. I'm of course referring to how it's revealed that their actual "worst fear" is Aphmau getting with... Another guy. Not even her picking one over the other, just her holding hands with and kissing some guy that Garroth and Laurance DON'T EVEN KNOW!

And despite Laurance saying he's happy as long as he has Aphmau in his life, he starts getting enraged that another guy would have the audacity to kiss her. Even though the scene he's shown seems to be entirely consensual. And in response to this, BOTH OF THEM DECIDE TO TRY AND KILL THIS ILLUSION OF DANTE JUST FOR KISSING THE GIRL THEY LIKE!

AND THIS IS SEEN AS A GOOD THING BY THE SHOW!! Attacking this illusion breaks the barrier around the real Aphmau and Dante, and Garroth and Laurance are never punished for their actions here. Aphmau is barely concerned that her guards, the men she's willing to trust with her life, were willing to kill someone for the crime of kissing her. Hot fucking take, Aphmau maybe shouldn't trust these people after seeing that they're willing to kill a man over the crime of loving her when they want to.

And even hotter take, GARROTH AND LAURANCE WOULDN'T DO THIS! Both men have been shown to be highly protective over Aphmau, which makes sense it's literally their job to keep her safe, but that protective nature shouldn't cross over into actively interfering with her romantic life. They're fucking lucky it was just an illusion, what would have happened if Malachi used mind control? What if he was using Aphmau and Dante's bodies as puppets? What if Garroth and Laurance just killed an amateur guard whose only crime was being forced to kiss the girl they liked?

This is one of those writing decisions that truly baffles me. It was RIGHT THERE, HOW DID YOU MISS, IT (the perfect piece of character work) WAS THREE FEET IN FRONT OF YOU! The answer is that Jesson don't really care about the interesting character work, they care about tropes. They care about the main character being in a love triangle with two guys who equally suck but in different ways. They care about fans getting excited and debating over which ship is better. They care about pushing this love triangle onto viewers regardless of what makes sense for the characters involved because the writers fail to see the nuance of the characters that they fucking wrote the nuance of.

I fucking hate Episode 65. Easily the worst episode of MCD. Any episode after this when Garroth and Laurance act horrendously out of character in service of this love triangle (I'm looking at you episode 77, and episode 90, and season 2 episode 95, and season 2 episode 98), know that it started here. It started with episode 65.

Fuck this episode.

#I love being a hater #minecraft diaries #mcd #text post #aphblr #aphverse #laurance zvahl #garroth ro'meave #mcd aphmau #episode analysis #fuck episode 65 #me and my homies fucking hate episode 65 #actually despise this episode

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chibishortdeath · 2 months ago

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Bunch of random stuff I forgot I hadn’t posted—

Explanations under a cut cause it’s fun to rant :3

Leon pose study! I don’t remember which pose reference website it was I used tho augh

A Leon headcanon (0_o)— yeahg I like the headcanon that his gloved hand is a prosthetic. This headcanon lead me on a really cool rabbit hole looking up medieval prostheses and stuff and there’s a guy from the 1500s I think named Götz whose hands are in a museum— anyway really cool stuff, if I can find it again I’ll add the link to some of the websites I ran into about it :3. It also lead me to research the time period Leon is from and I discovered that Leon would actually not have been a crusader fun fact! His game takes place approximately two years before the crusades are presumed to have started, he likely would’ve been a knight in other conflicts. Actually the year he got knighted (pretty sure it was like 1088???) lines up with a revolt that happened in northern France and southern Britain, and given that he has a French last name, it would make more sense if he was a part of that— he actually would’ve left his baron title to go fight Walter instead of fighting in the crusades! Again I’ll have to idk maybe make a post with a ton of random historical stuff cause it’s really interesting :3

More Leons hehehe— it was supposed to be a much larger whole page dedicated to each Belmont thing, but this one just kinda ended up doodles related to mostly just one headcanon lol. I’ll probably come back to it later, but hehehe I uh got into something else too and uh well that’s for another doodle on this post—

It was so hard to figure out how to simplify Leon’s hair, but it was worth it. Look at him with his cute little smile :)!

They’re all gaming on the same weird off brand arcade cabinet thing I have in my house hahahaha yay projecting! Anyway, they’re playing Darkstalkers. Richter is a Felicia main and is wayyyyyyyy too competitive to let Leon win. Leon (picked BB cause he thought she looked nice— was surprised when she had a gun lol) has never played an arcade game in his life and is struggling lol. Both Trevor (plays as Morrigan and Talbain and button mashes) and Simon (very serious Anakaris, Zabel, and Lilith player) are desperately trying to give him pointers, but they’re both conflicting with each other and it’s all fighting game lingo that Leon doesn’t know so uh 💀💀💀💀💀. Christopher (Rikuo main) is waiting his turn, as is Juste (bizarre secret Marionette copy character main). Julius is laughing at the whole situation and will not be playing, not because he’s not like an arcade fighter fan or anything, but because he’s just more of a Tekken and Soul Caliber guy.

This is a redraw of a way older doodle that I can’t find the original of rn, it might be on Instagram idk. The text says “I can lift him! :D” and yes, Trevor evidently can lol. Simon is a little uh only unsure about it 💀.

Uh oh— bro’s really lost— found himself in the dungeon’s of fear and hunger—

Heyyyy so this one references the thing I just got into recently uhhhhh— I just started transformers :D. Yay! Anyway Simon has met Optimus Prime before fun fact, dream mix tv fighters is a game for sure. Text says “bisexual”. I can’t blame him, Optimus is pretty cool tbh— but but hear me out on Ratchet I mean Anyway, expect more transformers stuff cause I already made OCs.

#castlevania #castlevania games #akumajou dracula #akumajo dracula #castlevania leon #leon belmont #trevor belmont #christopher belmont #simon belmont #juste belmont #richter belmont #julius belmont #art post #my art #headcanon posting #not tagging transformers yet cause this is still primarily Castlevania realated #hehehe the sillies!#augh anyway back to coloring an oc art—#I think that’s all the tags idk I might be forgetting something

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mer-acle · 20 days ago

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Silent Wars- Athena's room

Sooooo in the series of making SW things in The Sims 4, today I felt like showing the progression of Athena's childhood room in Zeus' and Hera's house through time. I'll probably do the the rest of the house one of these days but have this for now. No video today cos the other is still half edited in my program lol

1-5 years, Guest room

So this first version of the room was not built for Athena at all, it was a guest room within the Dean's house, which shows in the clean furniture and the color coordination that just makes it look a lot less lived in. I picked a blue and pink color scheme mainly because of the bed that I chose but I also really like it, it really feels like it has Hera’s touch, the rose gold and the tasteful décor seems like her.

5 years, post accident

Now of course we get to something a lot more interesting, which is how the room changed after the car accident. My idea is that Athena was not in the hospital for very long, a couple of days for observation at most, so there was not the amount of planning time to actually make a kid's room for her before she came home, and at the same time they did not know how much of her furniture from Metis’ apartment they would be using so it would not make sense to pick completely new furniture just to throw it out a couple of weeks later when the apartment was cleared. What Hera did to still make it somewhat cozy, was putting the little rug in which is an old one from Ares that he probably got gifted when he was very little, and she asked Demeter if there was furniture from Persephone that was in storage and could be used for this. That's where the house-shaped bookshelves are from, she bought some extra toys for Athena just to make it a little bit more comfy, but it is very obvious that it’s not hers quite yet.

Rest under the cut:

5-7years, first own room

The next stage is a lot more interesting cause we actually get to see what Athena would want. First of all we have a bunch of the furniture that was hers in Metis’ apartment like the bed or the desk. We are still holding on tight to that dresser that was in the original guestroom and she has that to this day so that's quite fun in my opinion. We also got these owl decals which I'm sure she appreciated a lot. We still have Persephone’s bookshelves and we have a little den that looks terrible in The Sims but trust me it's just like a pillow fort that Athena can like sit under (you can't really do that in The Sims) otherwise we just have a bunch more clutter to just show that a child is living here.

7- 13, Boarding school era

Next we move to a little bit later to her school days where admittedly that room was used a lot less because five days a week, Athena would be in school and in her dorm but she still had a nice room that she could come home to. We gained a proper desk chair, some new shelving and furniture, a lot more books of course, just in general a more grown up version of her childhood room.

14-20, young adult

2nd to last we have a room that you might be familiar with if you've seen my apartment builds for this AU because most of this furniture is actually reused in the apartment, Athena took most if not all of it with her. We have some plants that she doesn't have in the apartment because those are kept alive by Hera and Hera alone and Athena is definitely not going to have a dying plant in her room. This version of the room is missing her sewing machine that would be by the poof, otherwise vibes are very similar to the apartment room that she has during the main plot.

20, post move

I'm really enjoying this last edition of the room which is Athena's current room in her parents’ house, cause after she moved and all of her furniture got moved out (Ares’ as well a bit later) Hera just kept getting sad about seeing the empty rooms and she wanted her children to have a room to come home to that felt like theirs, not just a bed to sleep in. So this is Hera refurnishing Athena's old room in a way that she would enjoy so she can come home to it (to cope with her babies growing up). We have a desk that she can work at if she wants to, we got a little seating area with books, we got a new dresser because the old one finally moved out after 20 years, and we got a nice big carpet so Athena can still walk barefoot in the house. Also I would like to mention the bed is the same as it was in the guest room all those years ago, it got out of storage, those are just different sheets (if you see a different wood color no you don't).

-------------------------

@persony-person873 you're my sims buddy, get tag'd

as always, chat, let me know your thoughts :3

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thehiddendooronserpentinesteps · 28 days ago

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THE UNKISS – A KISS THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED - PART 1.

This is probably my main theory, that I have not seen discussed, anywhere.

But if you encountered this theory anywhere else, please, please, let me know. :)

ABOUT THE UNKISS - THE KISS THAT HAPPENED

As everybody knows, Sansa has a very complex relationship with the Hound, which starts in AGoT, and develops in ACoK. It culminates in the famous Blackwater scene (ACoK Sansa VII). Sandor, incredibly drunken, exhausted and stressed out of the battle, frightened by the fire, humiliated by Tyrion, leaves the battlefield. Thus, he loses his job, his career, reputation, and I’d say partly his identity. (Since house Clegane’s story goes back to his grandfather, who saved the life of a Lannister lord, thus given the Clegane keep, fields and blazon.) Sandor loses all, as he himself states it, goes to Sansa and offers her to take her with himself.

"I could keep you safe," he rasped. "They're all afraid of me. No one would hurt you again, or I'd kill them." He yanked her closer, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. He was too strong to fight. She closed her eyes, wanting it to be over, but nothing happened. "Still can't bear to look, can you?" she heard him say. He gave her arm a hard wrench, pulling her around and shoving her down onto the bed. "I'll have that song. Florian and Jonquil, you said." His dagger was out, poised at her throat. "Sing, little bird. Sing for your little life."

No kiss happens here, but later in ASoS and AFfC Sansa remembers three times, the Hound kissed her. This is the so called “unkiss”.

Martin himself made some comments on it.

You will see, in A STORM OF SWORDS and later volumes, that Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom... but if you look at the scene, he never does. That will eventually mean something, but just now it's a subtle touch, something most of the readers may not even pick up on.

File this one under "unreliable narrator" and feel free to ponder its meaning..

Well, I definitely feel free! So, I was thinking…

Sandor’s behaviour towards Sansa is a mixture of care, protection, gentleness, attraction, and… impetuosity, anger and violence too… It’s mixed, and we only see him from Sansa’s POV, we cannot see Sandor’s thoughts or feelings. It’s left in the dark, as many things between them, and I think for a very important purpose.

Sandor’s mixed behaviour divides the fandom, and it leads into two types of interpretations on the unkiss. Those, who do not like Sandor’s character, think that Sansa’s traumatized by him, especially in the Blackwater scene, and she tries to phrase it as romantic, to cope with it. On the other hand, those, who consider themselves Sansan fans, likes to think, that Sansa eventually gets attracted to him, and fantasizes about him this way.

Well, I think neither. If the unkiss would be Sansa’s coping mechanism, she should use it regarding Joffrey too, or the other members of the Kingsguard, who were waaaaay more traumatizing towards her, than Sandor ever had been. But we don’t see her misremember regarding any of the other characters. So then? Is it a sexual fantasy of a teenage girl? Well, I myself have been a teenage girl once, and I can tell you, teenage girls can make a very sharp distinction between reality and fantasy. Yes, they fantasize, but they don’t mix it up with reality. And again, Sansa’s not getting mad, we see no other cases where she misremembers this way.

So for me, the only reasonable answer is, that this kiss ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

But wait! What did Martin say? „Sansa remembers the Hound kissing her the night he came to her bedroom... but if you look at the scene, he never does.” But if you look at THE SCENE, he never does. In other words, he never does it, in THAT SCENE. And my idea is, that he actually did it… in ANOTHER SCENE. But there’s no other scene, where the possibility of a kiss appears, right? No. There’s no written scene. I think Martin hid that scene, on purpose.

THE HIDDEN SCENE

We assume, that we see every important scene of the POV characters, but that’s not necessarily true… We’ve seen missing scenes before, which we only got to know about in later chapters in remembrances or discussions about what happened. Sometimes the information is held back for a few chapters. Sometimes for a whole book (e.g. when Cersei gets Osney to kill the high septon) or for two books (e.g. that Cersei got Pycelle to lie about Margery and the moon tea.), and most certainly there are hints already placed that will only be unfolded In the upcoming volumes.

Let me give an example of a hidden scene. In AGoT Daenerys VIII. Dany says to Jorah: “"Help him," Dany pleaded. "For the love you say you bear me, help him now."” Yet, we see no scene, where Jorah confesses his love for Daenerys. But from his reaction, we immediately see that Dany did not go mad, or imagined Jorah to be in love with her, he really confessed. Martin simply does not show us that scene. Hiding scenes, memories and thoughts is something he does regularly and on purpose. The big difference between Dany and Jorah’s and Sansa and Sandor’s case is, that the latter pair has no chance to talk about what happened afterwards. They parted ways after the Blackwater battle, and Sansa has no one to talk about it afterwards, since everything happenned only between the two of them.

So jumping back to Dany and Jorah, where could be that scene in the timeline, where Jorah confessed? We see them interact way before the battle, and we see them interact after the battle. I think, this confession could have taken place somewhere in between. More precisely, the night before the battle. Why? The answer is easy. What do men need before a battle? They go there to kill other men, and they, themselves will probably be injured or killed as well. Jon notes in ACoK Jon I: „ Some men want whores on the eve of battle, and some want gods.” They all need something to comfort them, before a battle. Well, I think Jorah needed Dany. And I think Sandor needed Sansa. He needed comfort even more, for he already seen the fires set by Tyrion and Stannis, and he, as a leader must have known, that wildfire will be used in the battle. We know, he only fears fire. We see Sandor and Sansa meet some days before the battle, on the top of Maegor’s Holdfast in ACoK Sansa IV. And we see them interact during or nearly at the end of the battle. We don’t see them interact on the night before the battle (the eve of the battle). My theory is that they met, we’re just not allowed to see the scene. Why? I’ll get to that later.

That seems to be the only possible timing, for another reason too: Sansa’s having her first period, just after she had a conversation with Sandor on the top of Maegor’s Holdfast, only some days before the battle. Though still very young in our modern day terms, that makes her a woman according to Westerosi customs, just as Cersei says in the same chapter. If Sandor really kissed her, it is the first time, he could do such a thing, never before, for kissing a child even in Westerosi traditions is unacceptable.

AN UNRELIABLE NARRATOR

I think the timing also could explain why Sansa remembers the Hound to come to her during the Blackwater battle. There’s no mental breakdown, no fantasies becoming real memories.

She’s an unreliable narrator, for sure. But she’s always been one, nothing has changed. I’ll give you some examples on that too.

In AGoT Sansa I. and Eddard III. happens the famous incident, where Nymeria bites Joffrey in defense of Arya, Joffrey lies about the whole story, Sansa does not back up Arya’s story, Cersei demands the death of a direwolf, but only Lady’s left there, since Arya chased away Nymeria to save her. Robert doesn’t really hold his ground to Cersei, and at the end Ned takes the task of killing Lady, because he thinks she deserves better than Ilyne Payne. It’s pretty complex, but it’s also very interesting to see, how Sansa remembers the whole incident. In ACoK Sansa II. Sansa remembers Lady’s death: “Father had killed her, on account of Arya.” But later, in Sansa III. she says to Joffrey: "Lady never hurt you, but you killed her anyway. "No, your father did," Joff said…” In my opinion, this means that she sums up the core of the story, according to her momentary focus. She doesn’t make up new things, she sums them up.

Thinking about these examples, I find it quite possible, that she actually smashes up two events, that took place very close to each other in time: the night before the battle (the eve of the battle) and the night of the battle. The two encounters would be basically about the same thing: Sandor’s feelings towards her, expressed in darkness. Smashing up the two encounters also makes it more romantic for Sansa. Yes, I think, she romanticises what happened, but not by making up new memories, but by altering them a little bit. A kiss that happens “while green fires fill the skies” sounds quite dramatic, don’t you think? :)

GRRM says: ''Unreliable narrator'' is the key phrase there. (…) And what does that reveal about her psychologically?”

Well, my answer is, that she’s not a data-person. That’s quite clear: she’s rather artistic: the songs, dancing, the sensibility for visual beauty: she’s that kind of person, who remembers stories and feelings, instead of details. She herself admits, that she’s not good with numbers. Plus, she’s a teenage girl. Honestly, I think, that’s all, that’s what these memories reveal about her, and not some mental breakdown, or madness.

But this is just a first part, and there’s gonna be a lot more. Stay with me for the upcoming parts. :)

Fort Part 2. click here:

For my previous topic, click here:

#a song of ice and fire #fan theory #sandor clegane #the hound #sansa x sandor #sansan meta #sandor the hound clegane #sansan #sansa stark #unkiss #grrm #george rr martin #daenerys targaryen #jorah mormont #jorah x daenerys #dany x jorah #asoiaf #book sandor

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krillonthegrill · 5 months ago

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rant about double exposure's Amanda Thomas (i adore her, for anyone that's worried reading that - this is long)

god no one's gonna care about this 💀 the thing that makes me so upset about Amanda Thomas's character is how little she has to do with the main plot and how much of a FUMBLE that is.

i love Amanda. i want to put her in my pocket and carry her around. i made a bee-line for her every single time i was in The Snapping Turtle just so i could have a surface-level five-sentence-total conversation with her. but she really is only there to romance Max. and that totally sucks.

she's 10x less enjoyable if you don't romance her. i feel like that rings true for every romance options in the franchise with the exception of Chloe and Rachel - it's a flaw of the writing, in this case, but i understand how it came about. they don't wanna lock players out of her romance if they decide that they actually do wanna romance her later on (because, cmon, her introduction you speak for maybe two minutes before you're given the option - granted, i loved her immediately but not everyone's gonna feel that way), but they don't account for people who don't wanna romance period. she flirts with you very openly like she didn't call HERSELF your friend just an episode ago. it can feel hot and cold, and people are allowed to be annoyed by that

anyway

after some thinking, i'm realizing she reminds me of a worse Steph, not worse as in behavior but worse in writing. Steph had ties to the plot, she knew the characters Alex had issues with WELL. Gabe was her BEST FRIEND, the ENTIRE reason she stayed in Haven Springs, she was with Alex the same amount of time Alex was with Ryan. and even THEN Steph falls short because she already dealt with her flaws in Wavelengths, but at least she got a DLC to show how she dealt with her trauma after Arcadia Bay

Amanda isn't really friends with any of the main cast. not with Safi, not with Moses, not with Reggie or Diamond or ANYONE ELSE. EVEN THOUGH THEY'RE ALL IN THE TURTLE ALL THE FUCKING TIME

and she knows them well enough. when Amanda talks about Safi in a post, she mentions that Safi was the first person to sign up for an open-mic night that Amanda was really worried no one would go to

in the dead timeline, she keeps a gingerbread house on the side specifically FOR Moses so he can build one, because she knows he would probably want to even though Safi's dead.

like, when you go with Moses and Safi to see the meteors, Amanda's posts implies that she would've gone had she not had work. but have they EVER fucking hung out? canon content implies they do not.

she has an entire LIFE separate from the plot:

• people apparently fucking ADORE her. like, everyone in town. Max makes a comment about everybody having a huge crush on her, both men and women. she's just generally well-liked

• she's the oldest of six, she has TWO NAMED SISTERS, Melissa and Ashley, that exist in the world and even comment on Max's posts. i think one of them - i believe it's Ashley - makes a joke about U-Hauls and Amanda being a huge lesbian

• she likes to cook. she makes Max HOMEGROWN salad (girl, homegrown) and FOCCACIA. she cooks her siblings breakfast. one of the polaroids you can find is her cooking Max breakfast - i'm going to go out on a limb and assume acts of service is a love language for her

• she names people she is friends with that do not show up ANYWHERE in game (Henry, Eddie, Teegan, etc.)

• a good chunk of her conversations with Max are about music. a polaroid you can find includes them finally going to a concert. one of the first conversations you have with her is her gushing about the Vermont bands

• she's Cherokee and Abenaki, she talks about the indigenous people on campus having a place to congregate and have a community. i think she mentions they're moving something to do with weaving (? - some kind of craft, something with beads) to the Turtle because she wants them to be able to do it. she fucking hosts an indigenous artist exhibit INSIDE the Turtle

• i think she talks about volunteering at a soup kitchen?

• she mentions her therapist in-game three times, two times in the same scene, about becoming too attached to people way too quickly and about making good choices (when she decides to NOT sleep with Max - which, boooooo 🍅🍅🍅 more power to her, god knows i would've jumped at the chance). Max calls her a control freak - jokingly, but still (and it's true - she's not the owner of the Turtle, but she's basically running it)

all of this would be fine if it was acknowledged by the narrative. and it IS, but only by HER

she doesn't know Max, not really. but she desperately wants to. and she expresses that so many fucking times. but you never get the chance to.

it drives me nuts. you make a character with lots of charm - at least, to me; i think Samantha Bowling did a fantastic job, props to her - and do nothing with her. it's like DeckNine knows how to give a character the illusion of being fleshed out without doing any of the work to MAKE them fleshed out

#my small town lesbian <3 #genuinely adore her #bums me out that she wasn't in the game more #life is strange #life is strange double exposure #amanda thomas #max caulfield #safiya llewellyn fayyad #moses murphy #diamond washington

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tangerinesilk · 2 years ago

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－ I CAN SEE YOU : TANGERINE X FEM!READER

tangerine is going on a solo mission… well, at least he thinks he is. with lemon missing by his side, he’s left with one other option that is supposed to make his job easier. unfortunately for him, you’re not the easiest to work with. stubborn, strong-minded and feisty. you’re both so alike yet nothing has made your bloods boil more than each other.

rating ✷ r (18+ minors dni!)

warnings ✷ (very quick) smut: fem receiving, kisses all over bodies, a needy but quick hj, p in v, dirty talk, praising, implied rough (consensual) sex / others: cursing, drinking alcohol, mention and use of guns and violence, male hurting female (?) but not between main characters, mentions of blood and wounds.

tropes ✷ enemies to lovers!!!, person a is all talk no bite + person b knows that but still pushes them, playful banter, hiding together in small spaces, fake dating (?), if one is hurt– the other goes a bit crazy, says ‘i dont care’ then cares 5 seconds later.

word count ✷ 6k!

songs that fit the vibe ✷ i can see you - taylor swift | moth to a flame - swedish house mafia + the weeknd | king of my heart - taylor swift | attention - charlie puth | nonsense - sabrina carpenter

a/n ✷ so i made a poll a months ago and this trope + pairing won! i’ve honestly been wanting to write a dave lizewski one as well and got a request idea. so.. we will see lmao. i will probably post then maybe edit later if there's still things i don't like... also, if you couldn't tell but im kind of a swiftie so i will love to write fics inspired by whole ass albums y'all.

but i hope this is what u guys expected and wanted. i actually do love writing for tangerine. just gives into my delulu thoughts. also, if you guys would like a plain pwp fic and not all of this fluff and dialogue stuffed inside, pls let me know bc i am definitely into that idea. 🫡

“You had to go and get yourself shot… then you wonder why you have to wear a bulletproof vest. Fuckin’ hell.”

Tangerine kept his voice at a hushed tone, basically talking under his breath as he strutted through the grand hall of the hotel. Golden light glossed over his figure, passing by couples who were at standing tables with their cocktails.

“Well, Thomas said-”

“Thomas didn’t say shit. Don’t get me fuckin’ started now.”

Lemon already knew Tan was in a bad mood. Another Thomas the Tank Engine factoid wasn’t a playful move right now.

“Hey, mate. Don’t get all fussy wit’ me. You’re just mad about your new partner for the night.” Lemon rolled his eyes.

“Can’t believe I can’t be held accountable of myself. I can handle it on my own but you had to call the fuckin’ princess-”

“She’s good. Your denial is obnoxious, bruv. It’s only a night, you get in and get out.” Lemon replied, holding his wounded side as he laid in his bed back in England, “What happened between you two that you’ve got beef like this?”

“No time to explain nor do I have the patience.” He arrived at the small bar to the side of the room, “If I leave her behind, can I take half the pay that’s supposed to be hers?” Tangerine asked.

“She’s supposed to be wearing a red dress. You’ll see her there… and please don’t cause a scene.” His brother begged.

“No promises.” He replied before hanging up.

Tangerine blows a sigh past his lips, quickly asking for his drink of choice before scanning the mass of people around him. His blue eyes could only search so fast for the man that the hit was called on, causing him an instant frustration when he’s already worried about you ruining things regardless of how long you’re together.

“He’s next to the woman in the tacky gold ballgown… about two feet away from the ice sculpture.” Your soft voice suddenly spoke next to him, “But, I didn’t need to tell you that, right?”

The smirk on your face burned at his nerves and you noticed the clench in his jaw.

“Well, if it isn’t the fuckin’ Queen herself.” He said in a stern tone, “What? Germany was too borin’ for ya? Had to figure out a way to ruin someone’s operation?”

“Lemon is the one who called me in, and it isn’t about you. It’s about the pay out… you’re bound to screw something up with your ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ tactic.” You trailed, rolling your eyes as you turned your head away.

“And I’m certainly not afraid to use that tonight and not your fucked up, painfully long mind games like some fuckin’ psycho thilling killer.” He spat as his drink was place in front of him.

You narrowed your eyes at him, “Fuck you.”

“Darling, I’m flattered, but we have more important things to do right now.” He lowly groaned, purposefully looking at his target so his back was facing toward you.

Behind his tall stature, you glimpsed past his shoulder and saw your target chatting up a woman.

He won’t be smiling for long, you thought.

“Alright, I’ll wait for him to slip away, follow him and you go through the kitchen.” Tangerine said under his breath, keeping quiet for only you to hear him.

“To go where?” You ask, walking around him to stand face to face.

“Erm…” He sighed, “Whatever car or vehicle you got here in, drive yourself back to whatever place you’re staying and I’ll figure out how to wire you the money.” He shrugged, downing the rest of his drink.

He took a step but you placed your hand on the center of his chest, “Not so fast. I’m not going down if you make a mess of this.”

“I don’t make messes. Well, actually, I get away with them once I’ve done ‘em so, I don’t need to worry about a liability.” Tangerine smirked, a bit of a tilt to his head. Cheeky bastard.

“The only liability here is the one who is ready to pull the trigger in his back.” You said before huffing, “I’m not sorry for what happened in Paris, but that was my choice. So, I’m going with you because it’s our operation. You know… I don’t need a fucking helping hand either.” You practically growled.

The two of you held a long gaze, creating a tense eye contact before he sighed, “Didn’t even say anythin’ about Paris, but if you’d like to assume I’m still mad ‘bout that, be my guest, princess.”

His shoulder bumped yours, making you clench your jaw before quickly following behind his tall stature. While he seemed persistent, you grabbed his hand which made him stop in his tracks in the middle of the dance floor.

He turned, “Am I your babysitter?”

“No, you’re my date. Hold my hand, you idiot.” Your eyes pierced through his.

As he looked down at your hand, he slowly grasped it, your fingers intertwining with one another’s before he proceeded through the glamorous crowd.

Couples swayed and waltzed between each step you took, assuming you were unnoticed by your target. Tangerine kept his eyes on him, easy to with the frosty-white full head of hair he had slicked back. The woman in the tacky dress ran her hand down his shoulder, pressing her lips to his ear to whisper something which made you and Tangerine veer to the side at a standing table.

“Are they movin’?” He asked, facing his back toward them.

Your eyes smoothly shift, taking a quick glance at the assumed couple. You ran your hand down Tangerine’s arm, accidentally feeling how toned his bicep was through the thick fabric of his suit jacket. You almost glanced down, wanting to give another squeeze before clearing your throat. A heat rose on your cheeks as you turned your head to face away from him.

“Y-Yeah, near the bathroom. There’s also a backdoor that leads up to the second floor… lots of private rooms for reasons that are obvious.” You said in a hushed tone, moving away from him to the other side of the table.

“Alright, since you wanna tag along, I’ll follow them and you cover the door.” Tangerine suggested once again.

You furrowed your eyebrows, “You do understand what teamwork is, yes?”

He chuckled, “Yes, I go up there, shoot a few rounds, then we make a getaway.”

“Will you just trust me?”

“Your trust means nothing… I need to know you’re not going to fuck anything up. Just like in Paris.”

You smirked, “So you do have that against me.”

“Well, it’s not like it was your best. Leave me with a shot in the arm, Lemon on the ground and you, little miss greed, get away with your cash. If we all did this job for money, we wouldn’t be riskin’ our lives just runnin’ around killin’ or resucin’ people just for someone’s dime. You obviously do though.”

You narrowed your eyes, “You don’t know me…”

“Nor do you know me so…” He huffed, “Let’s just do what we have to do.”

There was tension between you, as if there was more fo a protective instinct than hate toward one another. You couldn't figure out Tangerine’s deal. Why was he so hostile toward you? Yes, what happened in Paris was fucked up, but he wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. He didn’t take shit from anyone, so why were you getting under his skin?

“Shit!” He grunted under his breath, seeing your target disappear into the hall.

The two of you hurry, yet still try to act casual to not raise eyebrows, and exit into the same hallway. As you push open the door, you hear the two talking in the stairwell before another door closes.

“You got your gun on you?” He asked as his hand slid into the back of his pants.

“Of course.” You scoffed, tearing up the slit in your dress. He saw the small pistol strapped to your thigh, making his mouth a bit dry.

He nodded, “Good…”

Taking a quick breath, Tangerine opened the door. You slipped through and he followed behind, your backs facing one another as you scanned the hallway. It wasn’t narrow but if anyone slipped out of one of the rooms, they were right in your sights.

“I’ll take this one, you take that one.” He whispered, pointing his gun to the opposite door of his.

With your heart in your throat, you slowly crack the door open and don’t see anyone before a body flies from behind and slammed the door open from Tangerine’s side. The woman lied dead on the floor, blood all over his dress, and just as you turned around, a punch slid across your cheek.

Instinctively, you ducked to dodge the second jab and swoop under to get on the other side of the man as Tangerine wrapped his arms around the guy to pull him to the ground.

Tan loudly grunted as he tried to gain control, basically attempting to straddle him in order to push his arm against his neck. Even with all his strength, the man gripped his hands around Tangerine’s arms to throw him off along with trying to push his knee between his crotch.

“Watch the door!” Tan directed to you.

You nodded, catching your breath with your back against the wall by the door. The adrenaline ran through your veins and heard your heartbeat in your ears as one tear of blood dripped down your cheek. The crack of bones made you turn your head, seeing the man’s body go limp as Tan began to stand over him.

He quickly walked over the man, as if he was in the way, and comes to your side.

“He nicked you bad. Lemme see.” Tan said, your eyes meeting his as he held your cheek. The touch of his hand seemed to be some comfort, his thumb wiping the blood away and trying to see how bad the wound was.

“Bastard.” He muttered, “C’mon, let’s go before someone comes up.”

Without a word in, he grabbed your hand and dragged you behind his lead. You two headed for the exit door down the other side of the hall as you heard footsteps rumble from the other stairs you came up.

“Wait a minute.” Tan said, fiddling with his belt buckle.

Your eyes widen, “What on earth are you doing?”

He smirked, “Relax, darling. You flatter yourself too much.”

You rolled your eyes as the sound of his belt slid against the fabric of his belt loops before curling the leather strap around the door to keep it locked. The two of you fled down the stairs and suddenly found yourselves in the kitchen area. A few eyes followed as you both ran through, very obvious that you were running from something, but still aimed to get to some kind of exit.

With sudden luck, Tangerine saw his car across the street, instantly knowing which way he was supposed to go. Without skipping a beat, he grabbed your hand once more and the two of you ran across the street. Hopping into the passenger seat and Tan taking off was like a blur, just happening in seconds.

“Y/N?” Tan saying your name woke you from your trance.

“Huh?” You asked, shaking your head.

He quickly turned his head, “You alright?” He said with concern, one hand on the steering wheel and his foot easing off the gas.

“Y-Yeah, I’m okay. I don’t know what happened back there.” You trailed, a bit embarrassed. You were never one to let your guard down, well– enough to get hit right smack in the face.

“Are you sure?”

You turned your attention to him, “I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?” You asked rhetorically.

“‘Cause of that big cut on your cheek.”

You narrowed your eyes, “Alright, what’s your big plan now, Einstein? Were just going to sleep in your car and hope we don’t wake up decapitated?”

He half-chuckled, “You truly think so little of me, don’t you?”

“Is that rhetorical?”

Tan rolled his blue eyes, “We’re goin’ somewhere safe.”

– – –

You wanted to believe you were strolling into some kind of trap. The lobby had a classic aesthetic to it, pale gold wallpaper and a wall of keys behind the person at the small front desk. You two placed your go-bags on the red carpeted ground as Tangerine checked into a room.

“Hello Mr. Tangerine.”

Oh, great. He’s some guest of honor here.

“‘Ello, Colin. My usual room.”

“Is that what you say in front of all the girls?” You tilted your head, standing behind him.

He rolled his eyes, “‘Cuse her.”

The man chuckled, crinkles by his eyes, “How many nights are you staying this time?”

This time. You could scoff out loud but you didn’t want to hear the tude from him.

“Just overnight. Nothin’ too serious.”

“Well, enjoy your stay, as always.” The man nodded before Tangerine thanked him.

The two of you head toward the old elevator, watching him quickly press the up button before you stand by his side. You half chuckled, “I’ve never seen you act so kindly toward anyone, tell me, does he see you bring girls through here all the time or-”

“Has anyone ever told you to shut your pie hole?”

“Hmm, not verbally. But, those eyes of your say enough for me… you’re too predictable, sometimes, Tan.”

He gave you a lingering look as the door opened, passing him into the elevator. The two of you make your way to the fifth floor and the hall is eerily quite for a hotel full of private contractors and assassins. You had your hands behind your back then patiently waited for Tangerine to jiggle the key into the lock, opening a door to a huge room with a surprisingly wide view.

“You’d think the curtains were closed.” You muttered as he walked over, closing them anyways.

Suddenly, he stripped from his suit jacket and you couldn’t help but see how tight his button up was around his biceps and chest.

“Did you get that a size too small?” You ask as you chunk your heels into the corner.

“Well, I certainly can’t kill fuckin’ bloaks wearing baggy clothes now.”

“But, you can in a three piece suit?” You cocked your eyebrow.

He licked his lips, “As if your dress is a flexible material.” Tangerine said as he pulled his rings off, placing them on the night stand.

“I can say the same for your pants.”

Tangerine wanted to look down but didn’t give into your comment. You place your bag down on the bed, grabbing your silk pajamas nearly folded on top and changed in the bathroom.

“God, just go to bed. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.” You somewhat groaned.

You sit on the top of the bed, unfolding the duvet before shoving it off to get underneath them.

Tangerine paused, “What the fuck do you you’re doin’?”

You furrowed your eyebrow, “This thing called going to sleep. Try it sometime, you’d be less grouchy.”

He rolled his eyes, “I know that, smartass, I mean what’re you doin’ in the bed that I’m goin’ to be sleepin’ in too?”

You rolled over, putting your weight on your elbows, “I know you’re dramatic but this takes the cake for top performances.”

He faked a laugh, “If you don’t get your ass out of that bed in two seconds, I’ll throw you in the tub with a pillow.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to. Fine, do it.” You said before laying flat into the mattress, staring straight at the ceiling.

He didn’t care for your equal amount of sarcasm, but he just gave you a cocked eyebrow.

“Okay, fine. I’d rather sleep on the floor anyways.” He said, stretching his arms up and behind his head. Your eyes quickly admired his muscles before turning back.

“Be my guest, princess.” You scoffed, slipping on your pajama shorts, “I’ll enjoy my big comfy bed.”

You pulled the heavy duvet over your waist, curling up with the dense pillow beneath your head.

Tangerine stood there, biting the inside of his cheek as he watched you roll on your side. He tilted his head back before unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it on the desk chair. Although your eyes were closed, his side of the bed sunk in and you tried to hold back your smile at his faded stubbornness.

With your backs facing one another, you two just listened to the silence of the city. It gave you a moment to think of Paris– the last time you were with one another or much rather supposed to be against each other. You were a double agent, not exactly proud of it but you let greed take over your motivated justice.

Having to scam Lemon and Tangerine wasn’t your finest hour either, you thought about it for months and finally coming face to face with Tangerine (out of the two, he wasn’t the one you would want to bump into again), all the guilt came rushing back like the snap of an elastic band.

– – –

The morning sun runs through the thin silk of the curtains, shining over your bodies in the bed. You wake up to the sound of light snoring, happy that you could sleep through it, and Tangerine in a deep slumber with his arm over the bed. He suddenly looked like innocence, so soft and tender, simply laying there like it was any other day.

You sit up, putting your hair out of your face then head to the bathroom. When you turn the light on, you’re almost surprised to see your reflection. Forgetting about the scar against your cheek, you look more rough around the edges. You sigh as you run your fingers over it, remembering the way Tangerine did last night.

After washing up, you go back out and Tangerine is now standing up and stretching his arms above his head. Your eyes quickly shift up his body, admiring the tattoos in their random places and how the band of his briefs rest on his hips. You sealed your lips from smiling at how sharp his v-line was accompanied by the happy trail disappearing into his pants.

“Sleep good with that stick in your ass?” You retort, passing him.

He rolled his eyes, “...You’re annoying, ya know that?”

“Oh, you’ve made that clear.” You mocked him as you closed the curtains more, “That’s why I love to do it.”

Tangerine flicked on the lamp, giving the room a warm glow.

“Alright, I say we lay low today. Better to be out of sight and–”

You cut him off, “Stuck in this room together?... are you trying to kill me t–”

He then put his hand over your mouth, looking deep into your eyes, “Yes, stuck in this room where we can keep an eye on each other and you can’t screw me over again.”

Your heart stopped for a split second, as if he couldn’t have been more of the controlling one. He took his hand away and you gulped, “Yep. Fine. Fair.”

Tangerine pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek before you go to your bag in the chair that’s pushed in the corner of the room. You slightly bend over to look inside your duffle and his icy eyes can’t help but look up the back of your thighs and straight at your ass and lower back. How he could easily put his hands on your hips and make you hold onto something.

He shook his head, feeling like he was coming down with something to even imagine that thought.

You pulled out an old novel and sat yourself back on the bed, hoping that the hours would pass as you sank further into the broken-in mattress.

Tangerine sat down in the chair nudged into the corner, adjacent from your view, and he pulled out his gun that was conveniently tucked into the back of his pants.

“Are you actually holding me hostage?” You furrowed your brows, but didn’t take your eyes from your sentence.

“Whatever fantasy you’d like you believe.” He trailed, opening his gun and emptying his rounds into his palm.

– – –

Suddenly, you leaped out of a deep sleep. Your book laid open on your stomach while an extra pillow was between your legs. Your eyes fluttered open, thinking the past few days has been a dream, until you noticed Tangerine wasn’t sitting in the chair. You quickly looked around before hearing the bathroom door open and he stepped out, shirtless and in new dark slacks that rested on his hips.

Your mouth became dry. How could you dislike him so much yet here you are, ready to jump his bones as he crossed the room.

“What are you getting dressed for?” You asked, rubbing your eyes.

He half-chuckled at your groggy voice, “I want a drink.”

“Oh, like you’re not just going to abandon me here like I did you?... Where you go, I go.” You warned him.

He rolled his eyes, “Don’t be so dramatic.”

“A bit hypocritical coming from you.”

Tangerine just ignored your smart comment and opened the door, letting you through first before he followed. His eyes, once again, trace your lower back and trailed down your legs. His cheeks flushed pink as he quickly looked away, clearing his throat as he caught up to you so you two were walking side by side.

You pushed the faded down button as you pushed a big breath past your lips. Tangerine put his back against the wall and crossed his arms, his muscles basically restraining in his light button up. As you turned around, you rolled your eyes– but not at him, just at yourself. How could you have any little feeling for someone who also annoyed you to your core?

He took your silence as a bit of a tease. To be fair, you two didn’t really know one another. You met once before and then you simply betrayed him. Quickly, you were dead to him, but now you’re forced to be together and it raised an important question to himself too. Why was he helping someone who obviously can’t be trusted?

Tangerine furrowed his eyebrows at that thought, knowing he would have thrown you to the wolves last night after you closed your eyes. He played with his watch a bit before the elevator dinged and caught both of your attentions.

After entering, the low-sounding shifting mechanics of the elevator were the only sounds between you two. You heard Tangerine sniffle, seeing him stretch his neck out of the corner of your eye, but you kept a straight view to the doors. While Tangerine thought you were continuing to give him the silent treatment, you were lost in your own thoughts of the past.

You flashbacked to your last night in Paris together, and remembered how the guilt creeped up on you knowing that, in a few hours, you’d have to betray both Lemon and Tangerine. Before knowing them, you didn’t care, but now that you’ve realized how hard you were falling for Tan, it felt like a double edged sword. If you didn’t do it, maybe you could stay with him– have a life together. But, if you went through with your selfish heist, you’d lose the guy who made you comfortable with being vulnerable after a long time.

Obviously, you regretted your decision.

“Is this what you want?” You simply asked.

Tangerine quickly turned his head, “What?”

You rolled your eyes before facing his direction, “This.” You gestured between the two of you, “The weird animosity and constantly arguing and nit-picking?”

He never thought you’d be so bold to point it out, “I mean, we don’t like each other. Simple, isn’t it?”

“I guess…” You trailed, facing back toward the doors.

Tangerine licked his lips, wondering if he should utter the words on his tongue.

“...But, that doesn’t mean we can’t start over.”

You looked over your shoulder once more before turning around to him, “You mean that?”

He arched his eyebrow, “Should I regret it now?”

Just as the elevator dinged, the doors slowly opened and the hotel lobby appeared empty. You smirked to yourself, “Why don’t we catch up over that drink, huh?” You sort of teased– not sure if it had purpose.

– – –

Your drink tasted smooth, easily trailing down your throat as you leaned your head back to finish off the rest of the liquor in your glass. Once you tilted your head back straight, you were met with Tangerine’s signature eyebrow arch.

“Don’t worry, I’m paying for my own drinks.” You sighed, placing your glass back down on the wooden table top.

“As long as I don’t got to carry you back up to the room.” He sighed, sounding more defeated than witty, then his blue eyes glanced down then back into your eyes.

You hummed, running your finger along the rim of the empty glass.

“‘right so, what’ve you been doin’ since we last…” He cleared his throat, “saw one other?”

You crossed your leg over the other, “Not much. Actually, it’s the first time I’ve been out for a while. After leaving you guys, I laid low in Tuscany.”

“For how long?”

You shrugged, “Five months? I was on the countryside and I wanted to be alone…” then, you smirked, “I heard that you were in Kyoto.”

Tangerine could chuckle about it now, “For a bit. Had a job to do for some psychotic, fucked up family. The dad called in us, they were all turin’ on each other. Whole fuckin’ thing…”

“As in…” You trailed, “Against one another? The whole family?”

He just nodded before taking a sip of his drink.

You raised your eyebrows, “Wow… and you got out with no bruises or cuts? Bullet holes?”

Tangerine licked his lips before he presented the side of his neck, lighter skin over his tanner tone to show the scar. You carefully reached out, brushing your fingers against it which made a tingle go up his spine. You sit back down as he turned back in his chair, and he seemed to tense up.

“Amazing you survived it.” You sealed your lips.

He crossed his arms, “I supposed…”

A comfortable silent fell between you, the light, jazz music playing at a low, and Tangerine’s eyes trailed up the side of your bare leg. He didn’t mean to stare this much, but he felt more vulnerable than usual. One thing you knew is that Tangerine was a layered person, you had to take time to get to the center of him and realize he’s not so cold once you get to know him.

“Five months in Tuscany, I bet that was lovely.”

“Not really. I isolated the whole time… I wanted to be by myself, but I felt bad about what happened… what I did in Paris.” You admitted, but didn’t look into his eyes, fearing that he would turn on you in a second.

Tangerine sighed, “You had to do your job, we did ours… that’s ‘bout all that can be said.”

Assuming from the lack of eye contact and his tone, he seemed hurt too. You could easily let it boost your ego, but, you actually felt a relief. This hatred you’ve held against each other has finally come down and even though it wasn’t actually said, both of you can feel hostility leave the room.

You bit the inside of your cheek, “Remember, we’re starting over. Clean slate. I hope I’m making a good impression so far.” You raised your eyebrows, lifting your glass again just to drink the mixture of watered down liquor.

He chuckled, “You’re just lovely.”

The comment made your face get hot. You blame the accent and how it can just get under your skin.

“I don’t think you’ve ever called me something so nice.”

Tangerine smirked, “Funny since we’ve just met, darling.”

Darling.

It was the first time you heard it as a term of endearment then pure spite.

You rolled your eyes, but you could humor that Tangerine was going along with it. This new cheeky side of him was something you didn’t think existed– maybe it was the liquor talking, but you hoped it wasn’t just that simple.

“So, what brings you here?” You continued to tease, placing your elbows on the table, “Business… or pleasure?” Your hand laid on top of his, brushing your fingertips along the chunky rings that perfectly fit his fingers.

Multiples thoughts sounded through both your minds.

“Maybe it’s the liquor.” “Maybe we’re a little over our heads.” “Maybe we’re bored.”

But, Tangerine held your hand on top of the table, gently holding it as his thumb grazes over your knuckles.

“Depends…” He trailed, now leaning in too, “What are you here for?”

– – –

In just a few minutes, you two were back in the room you felt trapped in for hours.

Tangerine pressed your back against the wall, a tingle running up your spine from the coolness of the wallpaper. Your lips pressed together over and over, tilting your head before biting his bottom lip. He effortlessly lifted you up with his hand under the back of your thighs, and your ankles meet around his back.

He needed so bad, desperate even… and the feeling was mutual.

He put you down on your feet again, pressing a kiss against your scarred cheek then another on your jaw. His light kisses run down the middle of your breasts as his hand lifted up the end of your skirt. You pushed your hips out as your back was against the wall still, watching him pull down your panties in an instant. You kick them to the side and Tangerine placed your leg over his shoulder, kisses along your inner thigh and your hand ran through the front of his curls.

Suddenly, his tongue ran over your swollen clit before sucking on it. With one hand in his hair, the other caressing your breast and running your thumb over your nipple.

Tangerine panted, moving his hand against your pussy lips. He pushed them apart, showing your tight hole and how you clench around nothing. He lowly groaned, running his fingers over your clit before sliding his two fingers into your pussy. You bite your bottom lip to hold back the moan stuck in your throat, watching him suck your clit and finger you at the same time.

Just as your climax neared, he felt your cunt tighten around his fingers. He couldn’t end it like this so, he took them away. You let your leg down, watching him come back up and tower over you.

“If I’m goin’ to make you cum…” He sighed, “I’m gonna be deep inside you when you fucking crumble.” He said so low before pressing his fingers against your tongue, and you tasted yourself.

You pulled his hand back, running your thumbs over his tattooed hand.

“Not if I make you cum first.” You trailed, moving his hand down so you could kiss him.

He could drop to his knees in an instant, but Tangerine surprisingly kept his composure.

You smirked as you pushed him toward the bed, the back of his knees hitting it to make him sit down. As you stood in front of him, he leaned on his elbows as he watched your dress drop to the floor. It pooled at your ankles and when his eyes shifted back up, so glossed over, your bare body was the center of his attention.

“Hmm, I don’t think you’ll last.” You taunted.

As much as he could snap back, you straddled him and pulled apart his tightly buttoned shirt. Your hands ran over his toned and tatted chest before reaching down to his pants, unzipping the fly and he shuffled a bit to shift them off his hips. His cock was hard, restrained from his boxers and you felt flattered.

You giggled, leaning forward to share a slow kiss with him. Your bare pussy rubbed against his cock as you moved closer to him. A low groan mumbled between your makeout, and you pushed him back so you two both fell on the bed.

Your hands pressed into each side of the mattress, gaining strength to help yourself grind against his hard. His big hands tightly held your hips as you continued your smooth momentum, whimpering at your clit being rubbed by your harsh grind.

As heat rose in the room, your right hand dipped between the two of you, and ran over his hard cock once more. Tan’s lips now desperately met your jaw before taking a light bite at your neck. The feeling of your hand caressing through his boxers could make him release right there.

Becoming more impatient, you finally pushed your hand into the band of his boxers and he once more moved his hips to shift out of them.

“Fuck, your cock is so big… can barely hold it with my hand. God, I want you to stretch me out…” You moaned, “Is that okay?”

You purposefully let him believe that he was in charge, and you were falling into the submissive role. Tangerine gained a bit of confidence from your desperate comments, and he sat more up on the bed.

“Fucking christ…” Is all he could say.

He moved the swollen and red tip against your wet slit, also aching and needing your walls to wrap around him now. At first there was pressure, pushing the tip inside your hole then slowly guiding your hips down to completely take in every inch of his cock.

Once he bottomed out, your body lightly shook as your lips brushed against his. He was fully inside you, the tight and warm feeling making him wither beneath you.

Tangerine moved his hand, kissing your shoulder, “God, you feel like fuckin’ heaven.”

“Don’t stop. Please…” You huffed.

– – –

Then, it was morning.

The rising sun peaked through the small split of the curtains. As you tried to shift, your body ached throughout every muscle. A small groan left your lips, but you were pulled back by a strong arm wrapped around your waist.

It snapped you back into reality. Last night really happened… and you were okay with that.

Tangerine’s tattooed arm unconsciously tightened around you, holding you close still as he still slept behind you. You barely look over your shoulder and saw his face, his eyes still shut and his curls looked wild.

You faintly smile as you turn around to face him, and that’s what woke him up. He pulled his arms back and rubbed his eyes from the brightness of the sun coming in. You run your finger along a curl on his forehead, pushing it to the top of his head and your heart melted from the sight of those blue eyes.

“Did last night really happen?” You mumbled, but with a faint smile on your lips.

He placed his hand gently on your cheek, caressing his thumb against your jaw.

“I think the real question is…” He trailed, “Do we stay another night or go back to pretending to not know each other's existences?”

You bit your bottom lip, lightly giggling, “I think we pick secret option three and go somewhere else. Get away for a while… see where this is going. Don’t you?”

Just at that moment, Tangerine’s phone vibrated in his pants that were on the floor next to the bed. He turned over on his other side, reaching down to pull it out and reading a text Lemon just sent.

“Got a call about a job in Budapest. Are you in or overstaying your weekend?”

Tangerine smirked at himself, then felt your lips press against his neck. You placed another kiss on his shoulder, leaving a tender love bite before he turned back around to kiss you. Maybe it was the natural thrill of the chase, but you loved the not knowing.

Whatever was next, you could only hope that he kept it interesting.

#tangerine #tangerine x reader #tangerine x y/n #tangerine x you #tangerine fic

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putotyras · 2 months ago

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bad horrid uika post

trying to put this together more coherently i am very open to correction.

okay so uika/hatsune(from here i'll say hatsune)'s story as told in episode 11 has a lot of weirdness and inconsistencies in my perspective. i know i'm not the first person to talk about it but just putting down some of the things that feel off to me Personally.

i think the thing i've seen spoken about the most is the conversation between kiyotsugu and sadaharu that uika could not have been present for but is shown in detail. i'm not going to post images of this one because the main issue is the scene's existence at all, really. i'll add that i find kiyotsugu's post-kicked out of the household behaviour a bit out of step with this version of events(namely the way his self-loathing gets depicted and his attitude towards sakiko) but it's nothing particularly concrete. we do at least know that the 16.8 billion loss did really happen also.

the first thing that stuck out to me in the episode personally though is when hatsune says this

she immediately recognises kiyotsugu's voice in a crowd. this seems strange because hatsune has had very little contact with sakiko's family, and only played with sakiko at all for one day. we do see her hear his voice, for exactly one line that she overhears from outside their house. this theoretically could explain it but is, to me at least, a pretty big stretch. it was seemingly years later after all.

in general her conversation with kiyotsugu is a bit weird and off to me, but nothing stands out as blatantly false. the part that i do find strange here though is the timeline of the texts she recieved from sakiko, that have come up multiple times throughout ave mujica and mygo.

i haven't included the translation in the image but it's easy to find in the episode if you want to check what it says. she opens up saying to sakiko that it's been a while and her debut has been confirmed. to me this sounds like it hasn't actually happened yet, but this could be a lack of knowledge on idols on my part. regardless, she also says she's been told not to inform non-family members(...) yet, so it's presumably still early stages.

regardless, when she meets kiyotsugu, it's after she's done an opening performance. again i don't know if this is synonymous with 'debut' in the idol world(the word used in the japanese is, i believe, お披露目, which sounds and seems like the same thing to me, but i don't want to say definitively and make myself look like an idiot, so.) but even if it's not a debut, it certainly seems more public than 'only tell your family'. before this first performance is shown, she uses the same language in the japanese she uses in her text to sakiko to tell her her debut has been confirmed.

Edit: a couple of people have clarified this for me, which i very much appreciate. hatsune's performance here was pre-debut. that said, in the below image, she does still mention being set to debut as sumimi, and it's straight before the performance is shown. this feels like it implies the debut was somewhat decided beforehand, but i don't know how likely or realistic that is.

she does also thank kiyotsugu for the family connection making her debut possible, in a conversation straight after the performance, which again implies to me it had been confirmed by this point.

i could just be reaching now of course, but i still find the timeline hard to follow. (end of edit)

then, after an opening performance has taken place, she meets kiyotsugu. and then, she asks him to let her meet saki.

and then, the messages sent between them are shown on the screen

(i've cut out the subtitles for visibility's sake, but again it's probably easy to check. they are(mostly*) the same messages we have seen before.

i'm thinking now if hatsune really just told kiyotsugu 'actually i'm not the friend of your daughter that you know, i'm her half sister who's using her name and my dad is your father in law' and hearing this he just gave over sakiko's number. i mean i'll take it if the show really wants me to but i think it's very funny. but it's still really unclear if kiyotsugu did actually give her sakiko's contact details, or if he allowed them to meet and just...lied to sakiko about who hatsune was? would he have told hatsune to keep lying about being being uika? if he wanted to sort it out with the family, shouldn't he have done that first? it's all very vague and i can't tell if it's for the sake of storytelling or if it really is hiding something. we get the 'i must not go to the villa' which could imply her being put in contact, especially since that's when the messages flash on screen, but they're never actually brought up as being the issue. sadaharu seems not to know she's been in contact with sakiko specifically either, he just says to tell her not to approach the togawa family again. though i suppose kiyotsugu could have been hiding it.

but this seems strange to me. if we assume kiyotsugu did, in fact, get her in contact with sakiko(which is notably never stated and is in my opinion at best lightly implied), why did she tell her she was set to debut, rather than she just had? why would she tell her she can only tell family about it when she's already done a seemingly public performance? she could be lying to sakiko, but why would she? it's not explained or expanded upon, and the next scene is the kiyotsugu and sadaharu conversation. again, had this explained. i do still find the events leading to this exchange strange though, including wrt to the things i put in the footnote.

she does seem to know where sakiko is after this happens as we know she attended crychic's performance and she knows in a fair amount of detail what sakiko was up to in the time after. again, it's not clear if kiyotsugu told her about this, or she found out some other way. but they don't meet up for around a year after this, and they don't seem to have been in contact during this time(when we see hatsune's messages in episode 4 of mygo, there's no new ones past that one conversation, and she's surprised when sakiko calls her.)

most things outside of that are less definitively wrong, but still seem strange to me. we obviously know that uika and hatsune looked identical despite the age gap and different fathers(we don't know how big the gap is but it naturally can't be less than nine or so months.) and this isn't a young sakiko mistaking people who looked similar, we've seen them both. they're identical

even height wise they're absurdly similar.

they could have used sakiko only meeting hatsune in the evening as a way to explain it, but they very explicitly played for the whole day in the middle of summer.

(another thing to note that probably means nothing but i still find interesting is that the part in mygo 8 where their memories conflict about who invited who to go bug hunting, is that hatsune remembers what uika said happened, but sakiko is the one who remembers what happened when it was hatsune there instead.) i'll also point out that it's baby uika who has a moon on her shirt, despite it being hatsune that sakiko describes as being like the moon.

there's more minor details, like no-one at hatsune's agency taking much notice of her claimed parentage, and uika being the only character in episode 11 to always be voiced and acted out by hatsune. the timeline between hatsune and sakiko's last meeting is unclear also, something i think is relevant due to the messages again*.

i don't have a clear theory here or anything, i'm just really curious on people's thoughts on it that aren't mostly just trying to make it Not Incest because that's not really what bothers me. at least not nearly as much as everything in this post (among other details).

anyway thank you if you read this fucking thing please call me a fucking idiot and tell me why i'm wrong because i really do want somebody to.

*okay i'm putting this as a footnote because it's likely for space but the messages we see on hatsune's phone and the ones we see projected behind her are slightly different. specifically, it cuts out the 'it's been a while' at the start of hatsune's opening message and changes sakiko's 'youre really going to debut' to just 'really'. i think the 'ひさしぶり', while obviously normal to say if you haven't spoken in a while, comes off as significantly less extreme than 'it's been literal years' when she jumps straight from it into 'i'm gonna debut'. and sakiko doesn't even say hello or seem surprised at 'uika' suddenly contacting her at all. which i think is notable because if it hasn't been years since they were in contact, when exactly did they start communicating again. i really just don't know, and all i can think of is 'hatsune stole uika's phone', but in that case, why would she be going by uika's name in order for sakiko to find her. i just find it strange.

#ave mujica #uika misumi #misumi uika #hatsune misumi #sakiko togawa #ave mujica spoilers #kind of long and incoherent im sorry i did not read over anything....#edited a little bit here and there for corrections and extra thoughts

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myfairkatiecat · 10 months ago

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LOTR Musical Chicago Experience (according to Katie)

I GOT TO SEE THE LORD OF THE RINGS MUSICAL IN CHICAGO! As promised, here’s a blog post detailing my experience, my opinions on the characters/plot portrayal, and basically everything else I’m still rotating in my brain after seeing it last night.

Audience Member Experience

After coming in off Navy Pier and into the theater (Navy Pier was cool too but that’s not why we were there), I started seeing Lord of the Rings fans. Some people even came in costume, which was fun. As we got closer to the beginning of the show, it got harder to tell cosplayers apart from actual actors cause… the actors were just there. Walking around, greeting the people, saying hello…

The show began at seven. At about 2 minutes til 7:00, they really began interacting. Our seats were on the main floor near the center, and Bilbo Baggins came out right in front of us, asking some of the people, “Who’s here for my birthday party?” we all responded enthusiastically, and then he shouted so the whole theater could hear, “WHO’S HERE FOR MY BIRTHDAY PARTY??” Then the entire theater sang the happy birthday song to Bilbo Baggins and applauded, but that wasn’t even the beginning of the show. Hobbits were walking around playing games with the audience. I heard Frodo introduce himself to some people behind us. Rosie was carrying around what I believe was a ring toss game.

At about four minutes after 7:00, the main character hobbits began to make their way from the audience and onto the stage, while ensemble members stayed throughout the audience to create the sense of really being there with them in the Shire. The Hobbits greeted each other, gave each other hugs, and everyone started playing instruments to indicate the beginning of the show.

I wouldn’t realize it until house lights finally went off, but they were still on through the whole first number! The actors looked like they were having a fantastic time. The prologue song was a rendition of the “Now and for Always” chorus sung by the hobbits, and then Bilbo said his iconic lines at his birthday party and ended up disappearing in a puff of smoke. When Bilbo said he was bequeathing everything to Frodo, this one actor far back in the audience started grumbling and telling everyone around him that was stupid, and I’m officially dubbing that guy Unidentified Sackville-Baggins Character.

After they began to tell the actual tale and Frodo’s journey began, the house lights finally turned off, and it was like, “oh, we were hanging out with hobbits in the Shire, and NOW we’re watching Frodo’s story after he leaves,” almost like we, the audience, were in the Shire the entire time.

The characters onstage played all of the music. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about that when I first heard about it at the watermill, but now having seen the show performed that way, it was AWESOME. It made everything feel very homey, like a story being told around a campfire, even though the effects for the epic parts were FANTASTIC (I’ll talk about that in a later part of the post).

The characters often showed the nature of their journey by trekking through the pathways in the audience. Act two began suddenly the the house lights going all the way off as Gollum suddenly appeared up in the audience, scurrying down and murmuring in the Gollum voice. (Sméagol’s actor was amazing, by the way. Amazing portrayal. 10/10.)

The audience interaction really made it feel like you were in the story, and it was absolutely so much fun. I could tell the actors agreed.

Casting and Character Portrayal

This is the casting we saw:

With the following cast update:

As you can see, Sam’s understudy played Legolas in the show I saw. He did a fantastic job. He kinda looked like a Sam to me? But that’s probably just because I saw that in the program. His acting was phenomenal and I could tell he was having a great time with the role (especially singing Lothlorien, which, of course. Singing that song is so much fun.)

The rivalry to friendship of Legolas and Gimli was portrayed fantastically. Both characterizations were spot-on and their catfighting from the very establishment of the Fellowship was very entertaining. While a lot of the show was understandably abridged from the original plot, leaving less room for a full development of the relationship, but their journey to understanding each other as friends was beautiful nonetheless, and one of the main things that stood out to me as far as the well-portrayed character development in the show.

Sam and Frodo were phenomenal. The portrayal of their relationship, the good parts and the bad parts, Frodo’s descent as the Ring affects him more and more paired with Sam’s unwavering loyalty—that was one of the things done best about the show. Sam embodied the role, and when he grunted in determination as he picked up Frodo to carry him over his shoulders, the entire audience burst into applause. It was such a wholesome moment because of how well their relationship was done.

Arwen and Aragorn’s romance was done about as well as I could have hoped for given the length of the show and how much of the rest of the plot was going on. It was sweet and given many moments, but there wasn’t tons of development there. However, it touched on the parts that were most important to the plot, and I definitely enjoyed them.

Merry and Pippin were chaotic and played amazingly. Nothing more to say there. Just. Fabulous. 🙃

Boromir!! They did my guy Boromir justice, from his initial hesitance, to the true development of why he sees the Ring as a possibility for good, to the unwavering way he cares for his people and their wellbeing, to the way his honor remained even in his worst moment… it was really good. His death scene made me cry. Aragorn holding Boromir as he died 😭 I don’t even remember their exact dialogue but I was like wow you might as well just kill me now 😢 I went from giggling at “GIVE ME THE RING wait no I didn’t mean it I’m sorry stay with me—“ (yes that was the exact wording he used) to absolutely sobbing over his death. YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO DO THAT TO ME (they did it was in the books)

Galadriel… :/ okay so the actress was very talented. Like, insanely good. I just would have done Galadriel’s character differently, and I think she was done differently in other productions of this show. She was a powerhouse for sure, but her scrunched expressions on long notes and moments of growling and the way she walked were giving “sassy girlboss” which was fine but not really what I was expecting for her character. So… do with that what you will.

Arwen’s character was portrayed amazingly. She usually only showed up to be in love with Aragorn, which was unfortunate, but the way she was done by the actress was an absolute 10/10. She was so graceful and tender and strong-willed and beautiful and just. Arwen vibes.

I don’t even have anything to say about Sméagol/Gollum. Just… perfect. Amazing. I can’t even describe how well he did the character. Imagine Sméagol in your head and that’s him. The script also did justice to his internal conflict, which I appreciated so much!

Effects

They gave a strobe lights warning but they did NOT tell me they were going to be flashing lights right at my eyes 😭 if you’re sensitive to lights at all, just don’t go to see it. Take care of yourself.

That said, if you can handle it, it was AWESOME. During the “you shall not pass” scene, they had a black tarp waving near the ground with projections of fire on it. It created a seriously awesome lava effect. They were also flashing white lights directly into the audience during the whole thing, which I think was purposefully disorienting while Gandalf ended up disappearing.

The Shelob scene featured an ACTUAL GIANT SPIDER ONSTAGE. I mean not a live spider, it was a puppet I guess? I have no idea how they did it. But it took up the entire stage and it was terrifying. People with arachnophobia DO NOT LOOK.

The effects were genuinely awesome the entire show. I can’t do them justice with description, but the use of their set pieces and lights and fog genuinely made for a great stage fantasy experience.

Other Stuff

The show began right before 7:00 with the interaction as I mentioned before, and bows ended at 10:15. So the actual show was 3 hours, with a fifteen minute intermission.

The adaptation of the plot was very abridged, as I may have mentioned, because of entire the run time being the length of one LOTR movie (which is already a slightly abridged LOTR adaptation). Minor plot points/middle sized plot points were diminished in favor of major plot points and character development, which I think was appropriate for the medium. You could tell where the time skips were, of course—Frodo puts on the ring in the prancing pony and suddenly he’s been stabbed by the witchking and is recovering in Rivendell. And a lot of the plot of Return of the King that didn’t involve Sam and Frodo just vanished. But again, I wasn’t expecting a fully faithful adaptation of every plot point in three hours, and I truly believe the spirit of the Lord of the Rings was captured in this production.

Some of the best and most famous quotes were done basically word for word, which I really appreciated. I did feel like I was immersed in the world of Tolkien’s books, with a dash of the Peter Jackson movies and lots of really well composed music.

If you have any specific questions about my experience at the show, certain scenes or songs, etc, send me an ask or a DM because I could absolutely continue to talk about this show. I’m in love with it and I’m so lucky that I got to see it. If any of you get the chance, I highly recommend it!

#lotr #lord of the rings #lord of the rings musical #lotr musical #the lord of the rings #the lord of the rings musical

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