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daetaechanster · 4 years ago

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Deku, Bakugo and Kirishima

Okay I wanna preface this post by saying first, this isn’t a post about Bakudeku (you’re itching to call me out, I feel it, but don’t do it) and while I will be mentioning the Kiribaku ship, it will be me mostly mentioning the FANS of this ship and the ideals around that ship. If this doesn’t apply to you, please gloss over it. This post was caused by once again, seeing SOME Kiribaku’s speak absolute garbage all over Tiktok. Wrong garbage mind you. Now let me start..

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When was it, that fans suddenly decided that for Kiribaku to be a ship, that suddenly people had to downplay Deku’s importance in Bakugo’s life. Yes, Bakugo use to bully Deku and he was wrong for it, he was a little fucking shithead for it. But that was in chapter one of the manga and season 1 episode 1 of the show. Where are we now? About to hit chapter 305 (leaks today whoo) and we’re about hit season 5. Things of changed, Bakugo has changed, and if you can pick up what Horikoshi is putting down, then you KNOW things have changed in their relationship.

Now what these Tiktoker Kiribaku’s like to claim is that Bakugo doesn’t care about Deku, doesn’t even LIKE Deku. That the only person Bakugo cares about is Kirishima... you can headcanon all you like that Kirishima is Bakugo’s most important person. You can 100% believe that and use it for your fanon content. But that is all it is, headcanon and fanon, because it isn’t true. And BECAUSE it isn’t true and is fanon, Do not come at people who believe CANON FACT and tell them they’re wrong and your headcanon is right.

Why does Bakugo’s relationship with Deku have to be diminished for Kiribaku’s ship to flourish? Why? When did that become a thing? because a LOT of people spread around this garbage like it’s fact.

Now i’m going to get into the major point these Tiktoker Kiribaku’s made, and what I think is the worst take i’ve ever heard. Ahem.

‘Kirishima cared about Bakugo the most which is why he went to Kamino to save him, and Bakugo cared about Kirishima the most which is why he took his hand’

I’m going to get into how WRONG this statement is.

The person who found out that Bakugo was going to be kidnapped was Deku. Deku found out during his fight with Muscular and after the fight was over, his first thought was to get Kota to safety so he could save Kacchan. He told the pussycat lady to alert everyone to Kacchan’s possible kidnapping, which is where Kirishima heard about it.

As you’d expect, Kirishima got upset and instantly wanted to go out and help protect Bakugo. Why? because he is his FRIEND. Canonly they’re not together so we are going forward with their platonic relationship, which is canon. He wanted to save his friends, as did others in the group, but he wanted to save him most. But he couldn’t. (Something we later learned was a trigger for Kirishima in season 4)

Because Deku was out on the field, he was able to go and try to save Bakugo. That boy ran around, in absolute pain to the point that some of the class commented on the fact he should be unconcious right now. But that didn’t matter because he wanted to save Bakugo. And he tried his hardest, despite being in pain and his arms not working, Bakugo gets taken, telling Deku ‘Not to come’. I like to believe he said that because Deku was injured and WOULD be killed following him, because Bakugo knows Deku would follow him into fire. Like Deku knows Bakugo best, Bakugo also knows Deku best (minus the whole looking down on him stuff, wtf Bakugo.) But because that was never established, we’ll leave that up to interpretation.

Something these Tiktokers used in their arguement was that Kirishima was the one who decided to save Bakugo, nobody else. Which.. just isn’t true at all. Another thing they said was DEKU DIDN’T PLAN TO SAVE HIM. Again, not true.

Lets go back to before Deku was in hospital and Bakugo was kidnapped. When Bakugo was gone, Deku SCREAMED in absolute DISPAIR (these tiktokers also commented that Deku hates Bakugo and all I can do is LOL, won’t even entertain that.) Deku was in such ABSOLUTE DISPAIR that he instantly went into shock. Shock, that he said, lasted for the 2 whole days in hospital, he couldn’t remember a thing. The only moment he remembers WHY he was in shock, was when the whole class were there and Todoroki told him about it.

Also at this point, while Deku is in shock, Kirishima and Todoroki had 2 whole days with a clear head to decide they were going to save Bakugo, consequences be damned.

What happened after remembering Kacchan was taken? Deku came out of his shock and burst into tears. He failed to save Kacchan and it HURT him. And then Kirishima mentions the rescue.. the rescue that he AND TODOROKI PLANNED. Do people not remember that while Kirishima had decided he was going to save Bakugo, that Todoroki ALSO had the same plan?? That if Kirishima hadn’t intended to save him, Todoroki would have mentioned the plan to Deku himself???

I 100% believe, as should ANYONE who knows Deku as a character and as someone who’s always cared about Bakugo despite him being an asshat, would have also come up with a plan to save Bakugo if he hadn’t been in hospital with damaged arms and in complete shock and disassociation.

I now want to point out a panel that people seem to forget:

For people to believe Deku doesn’t care as much as Kirishima does about Bakugo, how is it your boy is saying the complete OPPOSITE statement???

Now skip forward to finding Bakugo and AFO. While Kirishima (and Todoroki) had decided they were going to rescue Bakugo, it was Deku who came up with the plan to get Bakugo out of there. Deku planned the best possible way to get Bakugo out of there and not damage his pride in the meantime. Deku could have been selfish and have reached out for Bakugo, because we all know Deku wanted to have been the one to reach out his hand. But he didn’t because Deku knows Bakugo best and didn’t want to possibly upset him.

Bakugo, who feels incredibly insecure when it comes to Deku, how do you think he’d have reacted if Deku saved him A SECOND TIME? First the sludge villian and now Kamino? I’d wager that Deku would expect any chance of reconsilliation between himself and Bakugo to have died that moment if he’d reached out to save him.

Lets be honest, Bakugo would have taken ANYONES hand to get out of there and i’ll explain why that is true in a moment.

Another thing people seem to forget is that Bakugo didn’t tell Kirishima he was the one who should hold his hand out. Bakugo didn’t tell Kirishima that he would only take his hand. No, DEKU said this. Deku who knows Bakugo better than ANYONE. He knew, because currently his and Bakugo’s relationship was rocky, that he couldn’t risk Bakugo’s pride getting in the way of the rescue. So DEKU chose Kirishima to reach out his hand, because Kirishima isn’t someone Bakugo feels threatened by. Deku is Bakugo’s biggest insecurity, him reaching out was a risk Deku wasn’t going to place over saving Bakugo.

Again, Bakugo didn’t mention ANY of this, he didn’t even know. So how anyone came to the conclusion that canonly, this meant that Bakugo believed Kirishima to be more important than anyone else I will never know.

And when they did save him, Horikoshi put in a VERY BIG CLUE that a lot of people gloss over.

That teeth grit there was put INTENTIONALLY to show that even with Kirishima’s hand out.. he still didn’t want to take it, he didn’t want to have been saved. This is why I believe that he would have taken ANYONE’S hand. For anime fans, this teeth grit was cut out to instead focus on how close Shigaraki got to grabbing Bakugo.

Bakugo isn’t stupid, he knew he couldn’t stay. For one, he already mentioned that he was in All Mights way by being there. So he HAD NO CHOICE but to take Kirishima’s hand. And when he was saved, he addressed EVERYONE for saving him, not just Kirishima.

Now, for non manga readers, you will have to wait until season 5 to see Bakugo and Deku’s relationship flourish and I don’t want to spoil you. I’m so excited for people to see what their relationship is going to turn into and why it’s one of the most popular canon relationships in the show (and how it’s grown to be one of the biggest ships)

I will give you this though, to indicate just how much Deku means to Bakugo now without spoiling it for anyone. Anyone whos read the manga should know how Bakugo feels about Deku.

For anyone who feels that Bakugo taking Kirishima’s hand indicated how important they were to each other, i’d like to hope you have the same energy for that cover for Vol.29 of the manga drawn by Horikoshi himself. If Bakugo went back, he would have taken Deku’s hand all along. At the river, in Kamino, during the fight. Bakugo wants to hold Deku’s hand now, he wants Deku’s friendship, he wants Deku, and that is platonically canon.

The last thing I want to say is that Kiribaku as a ship can still exist without ignoring how much Bakugo and Deku mean to each other. Kirishima and Bakugo are friends, maybe even best friends canonly (though honestly i’d argue that Kaminari is closer to Bakugo but that’s my personal opinion.)

Deku’s best friends are Iida and Uraraka, but Bakugo is still the person he loves and cares about the most.

Bakugo’s best friends are Kirishima and Kaminari, but Deku is still the person he loves and cares about the most.

Do you see people push Bakugo down to make IzuOcha work? no.

Wanna headcanon that Kirishima is Bakugo’s most important person? Go right ahead. But don’t push it on others as fact when it’s not.

If you have to come to other peoples spaces and force your headcanon on them and disminish the utterly beautiful relationship thats blossoming between Bakugo and Deku, then maybe you shouldn’t be in the fandom. Horikoshi wants you to know how important these boys are to each other and if you can’t see that, don’t comment publically because you sound dumb.

Ship Kiribaku, but do not attack others for things that you have WRONG.

Tldr; Stop erasing Bakugo and Deku’s canon relationship to big up your Kiribaku ship and don’t force that on other people.

#bakudeku #kiribaku #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #bakugo #deku #kirishima #katsuki bakugo #izuku midoriya #eijiro kirishima #bkdk #decchan #bakushima

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mittensmorgul · 5 years ago

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it’s a bummer to see you can’t enjoy the ending. I hope someday you can come around it it. It wasn’t perfect but it didn’t nuke its integrity. i think the heart of the show really shines through and it’s a shame that it’s not being appreciated bc there’s so much shipping drama 😣

Hi there!

I... first of, I really need people to understand this... the travesty of the finale for me has almost nothing to do with “shipping drama.”

Yes, I see the wild conspiracy theories flying around, and I’m honestly concerned for some of those folks and hope they can find a way to make peace with this in whatever way they can, because we aren’t likely to ever get a better answer than that this is legitimately the ending that Dabb thought was best, despite years of us seeing the best of his writing choices and guiding Sam, Dean, and Cas to grow past the roles that Chuck would’ve forced them to fulfill, and that at the end it fell flat because he couldn’t actually come up with a better ending than “this was always their destiny, free will is a lie, and these characters had nothing outside of the revenge quest they’d been raised for since birth and manipulated into over and over for the entertainment of a vengeful god.”

I can see how “surface level” viewers would feel that this one basic narrative point was satisfying, that Sam and Dean had grown beyond their own hopeless cycle of self-sacrifice that had driven the narrative for so many years. The fact that they both acknowledged that they should allow their stories to end in that way was satisfying... but only in the shallowest and most detached read of the narrative. Like, is this really the ONLY thing these two characters learned in the last 15 years? If so, that is BEYOND depressing af.

And even THAT message lost all narrative weight when the two of them were once again reunited in death, as if nothing else had ever mattered in their lives. As if neither of them had ever outgrown the codependency that had driven so many of those previous self-sacrifices and refusals to let go of each other even in death.

So yeah, in the absolute most basic sense, I suppose I can see how casual viewers or people who aren’t actually invested in these characters could find that at least narratively coming back to a starting point.

But narratives don’t actually work that way, and that’s not the point of watching fifteen years of story develop in between.

This story wasn’t JUST about Sam and Dean needing to accept that death might be okay actually.

This story was also about free will, fighting for humanity as a whole but also their OWN humanity and self-identities. In Dean’s case, the absolutely transformative growth from feeling like nothing but a hammer, a killer, a tool to be used. And then less than an episode and a half later, after finally accepting that truth into his heart and using it to defeat the original creator and reclaim the story of his own life for himself... he gets pied in the face after flippantly talking about his destiny and having no choice, and then three scenes later he literally dies impaled on a great big nail... like a hammer...

So I would kindly ask folks who feel satisfied by that shallowest possible takeaway of this episode, and maybe invite folks to look just under that surface. Try to understand why loads of us will NEVER feel satisfied with this ending, and why it truly does feel like the most hopeless version of the story. Like even in defeating Chuck, they could never be allowed to own their own stories and what happened to them after that point was just a twisted version of the “destiny” that drove Chuck’s entire plotline for them anyway.

Please understand where we’re seeing this as horrifically painful irony rather than some beautiful circular narrative about letting go.

For a lot of us, the shipping stuff would’ve been the cherry on top of the sundae. We would’ve been happy with a scoop of plain vanilla, though. We would’ve been happy for anything that honored the journey to freedom, and the choice at any sort of a different life of their own making than literally falling back on a nail fighting off one of John’s unresolved hunts and a vampire who had literally never been named in canon before, yet who Dean instantly recognized somehow...

but sure, for those of us who felt that “the heart of the show” was all the stuff that the finale actually erased-- that “family don’t end in blood,” and that this was actually not a show about just two brothers but the love of their found family and coming to terms with the choices they actually HAD made for themselves versus the narrative that Chuck kept centering them in DESPITE what they would choose for themselves, the finale basically told us no, everything you ever found of value in this story actually meant nothing. It told us that Chuck’s story for them was their only truth in the end, and their only freedom was to be found in death.

Please, I am begging people, stop trying to gaslight us that this was some beautiful ending. Maybe think for a second that “your read” of the narrative that allows you to find peace with the ending is not what we saw and loved about this story for the 326 episodes leading up to this finale.

And please try to understand that we were not wrong to see the entire narrative through this lens. Because we were literally validated IN CANON, and told that we understood the depth of the story and the characters just fine, actually. There’s literally ONE episode of the entire series that burns it all down in a bewildering pile of wtf. And that’s #327. That throws that entire read out the window to well actually us all back into Chuck’s literal ending... This was literally the ending Chuck wanted to force them to enact for him, and it’s what ended up happening even after they defeated him-- the ultimate Big Bad of the entire series should’ve been defeated, but instead he pulled off one final victory over the entire story.

Becky: No. You can't-- Chuck: I did. Becky: Y- This is just an ending. Chuck: Yeah. I don't know how I'm gonna get there, but I know where I'm goin'. Becky: B-But it's so... dark. Chuck: But great, right? I can see it now -- "Supernatural: The End". And the cover is just a gravestone that says "Winchester". The fans are gonna love it. Well? Becky: It's awful! Horrible. It's hopeless. You can't do this to the fans. What you did to Dean? What you did to Sam? Chuck: There, see? It's making you feel something. That's good, right?

and

Dean: Well, what now? You're not gonna dust us. Chuck: Oh, yeah? Why not? Dean: Because you're holding out. For your big finish. Yeah, we know about your galaxy-brained idea, how you think this story is gonna go. Sam got a little look into your draft folder. Chuck: Sam's visions -- they weren't drafts. They were memories. My memories. Other Sams and other Deans in other worlds. But guess what. Just like you, they didn't think they'd do it, either. But they did. And you will, too. Dean: No. Not this Sam. And not this Dean. So you go back to Earth 2 and play with your other toys. Because we will never give you the ending that you want. Chuck: We'll see.

And even in DEFEAT Chuck thought he understood these characters, thought that having rendered him powerless they would finally take their revenge and kill him, but they didn’t, because he never actually understood these characters at all. And the story he tried to force them into from day one was never about THEM, it was about HIM.

And then Dean gets like two whole days of freedom and choice and is apparently incapable of making any of the choices that don’t throw him immediately back into Chuck’s favorite story. Like none of that resolution in the previous episode meant anything at all. He even SAYS it in the finale:

Dean: Yeah, no. I think about 'em, too. You know what? That pain's not gonna go away. Right? But if we don't keep living, then all that sacrifice is gonna be for nothing.

And then two scenes later the show gives us the Nelson Muntz HA HA and Dean is no longer living, and Sam is left to carry on as a shell of himself and wander off into Blurry Wife Land to devote any even remotely content moment of the rest of his years to raising a Replacement Dean to fill the void, and is never able to pick up the pen to write anything better of his own life than Chuck would’ve dealt him in the first place.

So I’m glad that top-layer takeaway is sustaining and enough for you. It wasn’t, and will never be enough for the rest of us.

What was actually real in all of this? We were.

Until we weren’t.

And that’s honestly a shit message to be pushing on people in the wake of it all. So please stop.

I should actually thank you for the kind intent with which your message is phrased, but that doesn’t make it feel less hilariously awful. Though I chose this one to reply to as the least insulting of all the messages currently in my inbox on this subject. So thanks for that, at least.

#spn 15.20 #aka that one episode of supernatural that doesn't really exist #because you either get to have the first 326 or the finale #they're literally narratively incompatible in all but the shallowest possible takeaway here #i chose the other 326 because those are where the actual heart of the show lies #it was set on fire and buried in 327 #Anonymous

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ginnyweatherby · 4 years ago

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Let's talk process The Prom because the tag is v negative rn and I have some random thoughts

I loved it. Like genuinely. I love the musical and was a little nervous since stage-to-screen adaptions can be a hit or miss, but I liked it a lot.

I've seen a lot of complaints on here comparing the two, but I honestly thought it was a very faithful adaption. Yeah, there were some changes, but that's to be expected. This wasn't a pro shot, this was an adaptation.

Emma: I liked her, especially for a debut role! I thought her voice was really nice, although I'm so used to Caitlin's higher pitch that some of the notes threw me, but nothing major.

I found it odd that she smiled through Just Breathe, but I chocked it up to her daydreaming about having it better than she currently did. Idk, it seemed like a weird acting choice but whatever. I liked her... except for that weird mechanic jumpsuit thing she was wearing. Wtf was that?

Alyssa: I'd have liked to see more of her, but I honestly feel that way about the musical too. She's a very important role, and yet I never quite feel connected to her, at least until her song Alyssa Greene. I found her voice to be a little mature for a high schooler, but no real complaints there.

Barry: Oof, the elephant in the room. Okay, I have mixed feeling about James Corden in general. Loved him in Into the Woods, hated him in Cats, but I like him as a person in general like on his talk show. I was nervous about him in this role because I wasn't sure how he would pull off the campy gay vibe that Barry requires. For the most part, I think he did well. There were some parts I thought were a little cringy (I'm not a gay man so I shouldn't speak on whether it crossed the line into offensive), but I didn't hate him like I feared I would since Barry is my favorite character.

They made him younger for some reason? Is that just because James Corden is younger than the original role is for? He says prom was only 21 years ago, instead of 29. No big deal, just an odd change.

Dee Dee: This was a pleasant surprise! As much as I like Meryl Streep, I was nervous about her in this role, although I do think she was a little too old for it, namely The Lady's Improving. That's a huge number and while I knew she could sing, I wasn't sure her belting chops could handle it, but I thought she sounded great! It's Not About Me was great as well.

Trent: I needed more of him, but again, I've felt that way about the musical too. I'm devastated they halved The Acceptance Song, but I get it. It's not that necessary to keep the plot moving, I would just have liked to hear it, because any excuse for more Andy Randy is always a plus for me.

Love Thy Neighbor was the part I've been most looking forward to since day one and it did not disappoint! I will definitely be jamming to this one a lot in the near future. Loved it.

Angie: Angie isn't a character I normally cared for, and Zazz was one of my least favorite songs so I didn't have many thoughts going into this, but I think I liked her better in the movie tbh? She was more fun I think, and I liked that Zazz became more of a spectacle. It's normally one of the first songs I'll skip on the cast recording, but I thoroughly enjoyed it here.

Tom: Didn't expect him to have so much screentime! They seemed to play up his and Dee Dee's relationship more in this, which is... fine I guess? I didn't really care either way, but I think he did a great job and I didn't find We Look to You as boring as I usually do lmao. He and Dee Dee were cute, especially on their Apples & Bees date.

Mrs. Greene: I mean, what can I say? She pissed me off, which was her entire purpose. Her dress at the end was ugly af tho.

Some of the changes they made were... Choices, but nothing that really stood out to me as terrible.

The addition of seeing Emma's grandma was fun, especially her bonding with Barry. I just thought it was cute - as was his relationship with Emma, obviously.

The addition of Barry's mom however was um, odd. I'm fuzzy on the details in the musical, but I don't know if we ever learn whether Barry actually calls her or not? He mentions it in Barry is Going to Prom, but I think it's left up to interpretation, which I like. Seemed weird, but I guess it was a sweet moment?

Unfortunately, this meant we didn't get the "you're going to lose her" moment I kept waiting for. Slight complaint there.

Dee Dee calling Barry's mom though... her heart was in the right place, but that may not have been the best choice. He was clearly upset, and rightfully so - his parents wanted to send him to conversion therapy ffs. That's traumatizing. It should have been his choice to reconnect, not something forced upon him.

They seemed to give the adults (mostly Barry and Dee Dee) more backstory, which was probably unnecessary, but I didn't mind it. Unpopular opinion, but they're my favorite parts of the show anyway.

However the addition of more backstory certainly added an extra element of angst. Ouch. Some moments hurted.

Barry and Dee Dee's relationship is really sweet and I'd like to explore it more sometime.

I liked that the songs weren't really changed much (a few words here and there, but nothing too noticable), other than The Acceptance Song and You Happened, but I liked Emma's Tonight Belongs to You reprise a lot, so I'll deal with it.

Unruly Heart gets me every time man... actually this movie in general made me tear up like three separate times ugh ugh.

All in all, I found it to be a very true adaption and have no real complaints at this time. I'm sure I will revisit this movie soon and maybe I'll take a deeper dive in a rewatch, but for the most part, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable and I think if anyone is looking for a fun musical to watch, you should check it out, as well as the Broadway version.

This is a special story that shouldn't be missed.

#in which ginny TALKS TOO MUCH #the prom #the prom spoilers #emma nolan #alyssa green #barry glickman #dee dee allen #trent oliver #angie dickinson #tom hawkins #ginny watches musicals #random ramblings

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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While I agree that Oz shouldn't have to tell people about his history with Salem and trauma, not telling them she's inmortal is just stupid. Yes, people have betrayed him, but better weed out the Ravens and Lionhearts early on and have less allies but all in the same page, than Salem breaking them like she did with Hazel or his allies making bad decisions based on their faulty knowledge. (1/2)

It's a stance I'd definitely agree with if the show had done anything to show us that, as you say, the characters were making "bad decisions based on their faulty knowledge." But have we ever seen that? What mistakes have the heroes made because they didn't know about Salem's immortality? The closest thing I can think of is Ironwood believing that he can amass an army, but the core task there — supposedly uniting the world by telling everyone about Salem — is still presented as an unambiguously good thing because Ruby does that despite knowing no army will defeat her and despite not having Atlas' support in combating the inevitable grimm attacks. So clearly, "Telling people about Salem" is not (according to the story) some big mistake that people would likely refrain from making once they know of her immortality. Ruby still did that.

And what other choices have people made? To join the fight at all? That's the go-to answer within the fandom, that it's considered manipulative to coax our heroes into this war without providing them with a full knowledge of their enemy. It's another argument I buy on the surface, but not within RWBY's context, because everyone is already neck deep in this battle, entirely by choice. Everyone chose to become huntsmen and defend the people in an incredibly dangerous career. Everyone chose to fight in the Battle of Beacon when it was clear that human enemies were set against them — regardless of who might be giving them orders. Ruby, Ren, Nora, and Jaune all chose to go hunt down a Maiden themselves. It's only when they're halfway through this hunt that they realize, for the first time, that Ruby herself is also hunted. But that has never informed their decisions. It was never a story, from their perspective, about them being forced into this war, it's the story of them choosing it again and again despite knowing they didn't understand wtf was going on. The group didn’t get involved in dangerous stuff because they lacked knowledge, they got involved in dangerous stuff despite lacking knowledge. Knowledge was never a requirement for them to throw themselves into the fight. So I always found the argument that the group was maneuvered into this war because they thought Salem was killable to be pretty lacking. Ruby was determined to fight no matter what, right from the start, and everyone is quite literally just following Ruby. Yang says it the most overtly: wherever her sister goes, she goes. Salem's mortality or lack thereof was never the driving force.

Did they still deserve to know out of some generic respect towards all fighters in this war? Arguably yeah, but the story has done incredibly little — really nothing at all imo — to prove that from a practical perspective that's worth the damage knowing about Salem causes. As said, I think the closest we get to seeing the ramifications of not telling someone about Salem’s immortality is with Ironwood, yet the story (as you say) argues that lying to him was a GOOD thing, not telling Mantle about Salem's immortality was okay, and the one choice made under the belief that she was mortal — telling the world — is still their ultimate goal. So where are these mistakes everyone is making from not knowing about Salem immortality? It’s not when Raven left the fight. Or decided to murder a young woman to seize more power to protect herself. Or when Lionheart helped orchestrate the Fall of Beacon and the death of most of Mistral’s huntsmen. Or when Hazel decided that serving the immortal being was preferable to opposing her. Or when Tyrian came to believe that she was a God to worship. Or when Qrow decided that everything he’s done up until this point was useless and he sunk so deep into his alcoholism that his niece basically had to tell him to shape up or she’d ditch him. That’s a whole lot of bad attached to learning the secret, the tinniest timeframe within a multi-generation war, and none of the characters are positioned as making mistakes as a result of not knowing about her immortality. Everyone’s mistakes come as a result of knowing.

Meanwhile, the knowledge of Salem’s immortality hasn’t benefited the heroes in any way. They haven’t theorized over how to contain her instead of killing her; it hasn’t changed their approach to the fight. They didn’t even take that knowledge and use it as a means of survival, concluding that they must outrun her if they can’t defeat her. Remember, that plan, Ironwood’s, was unanimously rejected. So what benefit has the story shown us for knowing Salem’s biggest secret? And what detriment has come as a result of not knowing it? As far as I can see, it’s all bad in one category, no good in the other, and no evidence of successfully weeding out a core group who can weather the secret and are made stronger by it. Which makes that generic, “But keeping secrets is wrong” pretty flimsy imo. I think it’s very easy to assume that not having such a crucial piece of information would be detrimental to the cast and that having it would radically change their approach to this war... but RWBY didn’t write that. Instead we’re given a story where only bad things happen when this secret comes out and learning the secret has not yet assisted the few heroes who had the willpower to stay, yet simultaneously we’re told that spilling this secret is unambiguously The Right Thing To Do (unless Ruby decides against that, of course). As is so often the case in RWBY, the thematic message they want to impart doesn’t at all match up with what’s actually written because, as you say, anon, everything we get is basically done at the roll of a dice. Yeah, it could have been a great plotline. It would have been staggeringly easy to make it a great plotline simply by virtue of having the characters benefit somehow from learning this secret and pulling back a little on the extent of the damage done from other who’d learned it... but yeah, we didn’t get that. It’s only our real world beliefs that lying is bad, secrets are bad, and having all knowledge is automatically a good thing that causes this instinctual flinch away from these choices. The problem is, no secret like this exists in our world. We’ve never had to test the golden rule of truth against a secret that causes this much harm against so little reward. In the same way we’ve never had to test the justification of having an army against a world overrun with endless, evil monsters — so viewers tend to just work from their real life knowledge of, “Well, armies are bad” and assume the same must be true of this fictional world. But it’s not. My own upbringing indeed loudly says, “Yes. Such massive secrets are bad. Ozpin should have at least trusted his inner circle with this,” yet the story hasn’t done anything to validate that viewpoint. The vast majority of the series’ horrors stem from those who did learn of Salem’s immortality, the one inner circle member who took it in a stride was painted as the cartoon bad guy, and the group who overcame their feelings of hopelessness immediately copied Ozpin’s decisions and have yet to benefit from knowing this secret, three volumes later. So what in all that says that keeping this secret, in this world, was a bad thing?

#rwby #mymetas

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xenia-cenia · 4 years ago

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Kaeya x Fem!Reader - To Heal

A/N-part 4... god razor and albedos are gonna kill me i FEEL it also wtf his backstory is so SAD.... enemies to lovers.... but only one sees them as an enemy..... god the brainrot is so good today

Trigger/Content Warnings: Spoilers for Kaeyas backstory, minor character death, light swearing, PTSD/nightmares, blood, kidnapping

I promise it’s only half as angsty as it sounds

Word Count: 2,267

Request: No

Summary: You hated him. He loved you. It’s every romcom but this time, there’s trauma.

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Kaeya Alberich had the world beneath his fingertips.

Very few people could resist his charms, good looks, or smile. Especially not healers who hung towards the back of the party and saved every life he put in danger.

Kaeya Alberich was a genius. People would willingly divulge secrets that would ruin their lives to his kind gaze and warm smile. He was manipulative, he was a liar, he was a traitor.

No person in Mondstadt hated Kaeya Alberich more than Kaeya Alberich himself. Though, you were a close second.

“Captain!” You barged into his office as he tied his hair up into a ponytail, “You can’t keep endangering people like this!”

He turned to you with a confused smile, “Like what? They’re Knights, aren’t they?”

“It doesn’t matter! Eventually, my healing won’t be enough!” You marched over to him and slammed your hands down on his desk, “You are selfish! You disgust me.” He shot you a big smirk which caused you to spin on your heels and leave the room, your anger nearly tangible.

Kaeya leaned back in his chair and sighed, a goofy smile lingering on his face.

No person in Mondstadt loved you more than the soldiers who you saved.

Though, Kaeya Alberich was a close second.

He didn’t know why he loved you so much. By all accounts, he should hate you. He should despise the way you brought comfort into everyone's eyes, the way you always arrived just in time to save countless lives, how your power in battle nearly outmatched his own.

He should be jealous. He should be angry. He should not be head-over-heels in love with you. He should not be trying to plan more carefully so your healing workload is lightened, and it shouldn’t even cross his mind to leave his door open so you don’t hurt your hands as you barged in here with your justified rage.

Kaeya melted into his chair as he tried to contain the thoughts that ceaselessly ran through his mind. He wanted nothing more than to hold you in his arms, sweat dripping off his face as he saved your life. And you’d smile at him, a shy and genuine smile, as you thanked him profusely.

But he was no fool. He knew how deep your hatred ran. And he couldn’t blame you, by all accounts he was selfish. He was disgusting. He risked lives for his enjoyment, he loved seeing the fear in recruits as they ran from danger.

Did that make him a bad person? Yes. Yes, absolutely. He slept every night trying to forget their screams as they called for help. No. Not called for help - begged him for help.

You seethed as you walked out of Kaeyas office. Too many lives were senselessly taken every day, too many people's blood-stained your hands.

Just like... no.

“Stop it, (Y/N). You can’t think like that.” You shook the thoughts out of your head as you mumbled to yourself. You looked to your side and caught sight of your reflection in a window. You stared for a moment, a blank expression on your face before it fell into a glare.

Kaeya Alberich brought anger into your heart. Kaeya Alberich made memories you’d rather die creep up to the surface and hit you with guilt. You hated Kaeya Alberich because he was...

“Dammit.” You slapped your cheek, “Cut it out.”

You walked back to your home and thought over what you’d do for the rest of the evening. Maybe a warm bath and tea? However, you did like the idea of belting songs from the privacy of your home... the possibilities were near endless! But, as usual, you would wash your hands first.

It didn’t matter if you hadn’t touched anything. It didn’t matter if they were already clean. You would wash them every time you had the chance.

When you finally arrived home, scrubbed your hands, you decided to put the relaxing bath off for a different night. You collapsed onto your warm bed, happily covering yourself in your heavy sheets as sleep overtook you.

If you had any regrets in your life, learning how to fight would be your top one. As the only fighter in your small town, you were relied on for everything. (Y/N) go hunting, (Y/N) take out these slimes, (Y/N) head to Mondstadt, and purchase goods.

And you were there. You were there when the small army attacked. Why were they attacking? You weren’t sure.

Families, friends, enemies. They all blurred together as you raised your weapon. In the end, you were the only one left. You weren’t out of breath nor saddened by the deaths.

Instead, you looked around the corpses that littered the ground and tried to hide your exhilaration.

For the first time, you had to fight like your life depended on it. For the first time in your life, you could let your frustration out. And there, covered in blood, was a small icy ball. You leaned over and picked it up, wiping the blood off with your hands. A Vision.

And for the first night in years, you found you couldn’t sleep. Every time your eyes would shut, you would see their bodies. Every time you plugged your ears you could hear them call your name. Every time you breathed you’d remember that they never would again.

You spent years atoning for that day and dedicated yourself to saving lives. You mastered healing, it took the same precision as killing you quickly realized, and went to Mondstadt hoping that the City of Freedom could free you from these deeds.

It couldn’t.

Nothing could.

Eventually, you found yourself working for the Knights of Favonius. As long as you didn’t swing a weapon, you were fine. You were just saving lives. You were keeping your promise.

So, why did it feel so good when their lives all depended on your choice? Why did you feel so powerful knowing you were essentially the God of these men?

Did you only join the Knights because you knew violence and bloodshed would always be a part of you?

You did everything you can to suppress these feelings. You swore off fighting, ignoring people's begging to duel you one-on-one. You’d lie and say holding weapons scared you, but it was always Kaeya who saw through your facade.

And that’s why you hated him. He was as bloodthirsty, evil, and selfish as you. He saw through each lie you spent years carefully crafting.

You hated him because he was you.

One week later, it was time for another raid.

As long as you were on the field, none of your allies would die. The raid started fine enough, you all charged into a Domain under Kaeyas orders. He froze falling rocks or spare enemies that could have killed his troops, as you stayed in the back and healed every scraped knee and minor wound.

Stay in the back. They had said. It’s safer in the back. Kaeya is smart. He’ll never lead us into a trap.

And you hated him. You truly hated him. But, damn, you trusted his plans. Even if it meant you had to work harder to keep everyone alive, you knew that the job would get done. Together, you were unstoppable.

Maybe you put too much confidence in him. You couldn’t muster a thought as a bubble of water enveloped you. You tried to break it, but all you did was force your oxygen to run out sooner.

With one last hint of desperation, you threw your vision onto the floor. And then, you fell unconscious.

Kaeya was no idiot. He saw the number of his troops dwindling and knew what happened. He ordered the stragglers to retreat, take the wounded and try their best to not die without him holding their hands.

When they were out of his sight, he immediately started to retrace his steps.

He didn’t need to come very far to notice the Vision that was kicked around and sitting on the floor. Kaeya walked over to it and picked it up, rubbing his finger over the outside.

“Cyro Vision...” He tossed it into the air, grabbed it, and continued walking. Once again, he noticed a trail of water that was slowly beginning to dry.

After not even 5 minutes of walking, he saw what he needed. A slightly askew rock. Kaeya chuckled to himself as he pressed his on it, the rocks pushed themselves aside and revealed a staircase heading down.

“Well, here goes.” He muttered under his breath as he went down the staircase.

The Abyss Mages had taken you out of the bubble and tied you to a table. You were waking up, groggy and confused, but when you remembered felt anger bubble in your stomach.

“What the hell!” You yelled at the two Abyss Mages who captured you. They both jumped and turned to face you, “Why am I here! I swear if any of my men died...”

“You’re awake.” One of them chirped.

“You’re awake-” you mocked, “did you think I was sleep talking or something?! Let me out of this!”

“We know about your true power.” The other one chimed in, “We know what happened that night. It was our allies who you killed. You must face punishment.”

You stared blankly before breaking out into laughter, “Wait - that was you guys? God, you’re pathetic! Can’t believe I was relying on someone to save me.” You began to struggle against the ropes.

“The ropes are sealed, they can only be undone with the work of a Vision. We know you are Visionless - none of the Archons would grant something as lowly as you power.”

“Oh,” you bit your lip, “that might be a problem.”

“So you accept your fate!”

“Let our justice reign down-”

Kaeya, who was standing on the staircase watching this all happen, let a laugh slip out.

“-who was that?!”

He walked down the rest of the stairs and clapped his hands, “Great show you two have put on here.”

“K-Kaeya!” You yelled. “Did you grab it?”

He threw your vision to you, and just being near to it made the ropes fall to the ground.

“I-Impossible!”

You stretched, stood, and smiled widely at your kidnappers, “I hope I’m not rusty.”

Within seconds, the Abyss Mages were dead. Ice bit at your skin, and, once again, there was blood on your hands.

You looked at your hands and felt your body start to shake. Kaeya walked over to you but stopped when he saw the tears in your eyes.

“Don’t... don’t look at me.” You turned away from him, “I’m... I’m no better than them.”

His heart snapped in two, “(Y/N)...”

“You heard what they said. I’m a killer. I killed everyone I cared about and after everything, after every promise I made... I just... I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please, don’t look at me.”

“If you’re bad then I’m the worst.” He stepped over the corpses, “I didn’t cry when my Father died. I put everyone in danger for fun. I left... well, I can’t call him my brother now, can I?”

You slowly turned to him, “Kaeya, I-”

He kept his gaze on the ground, “I tried to make them happy. And I did- I do- really love him. Even if I’m not his brother, he’s still mine. I didn’t mean to hurt him. That’s all I ever seem to do... I hurt you. I hurt them. And I’ll do it again. I... I know all of their names. You probably don’t believe me, I wouldn’t blame you. I am a bad person.”

In a few steps, you reached him. He looked up at you and felt his eyes widen as his hand hovered above his cheek. You hit him. No, you slapped him.

“Stop talking about yourself like that.”

“Why? You think like this too.”

“Because you’re me.” You stiffened, “Everything you do is something I’ve considered. Every plan you make is one I dream of. Every life you put into my hands is one I know I can leave.”

“But you still...”

You kneeled next to him and grabbed his hands, “Because I am more than these thoughts. I know how much it’d hurt if I let them die, how much their families would cry. I see it, Kaeya. I see the ways you care for people. You can’t tell me it’s all an act.”

“What if I did?”

“I wouldn’t believe you. I don’t believe someone who hates his people would spend time listening to Glory or look into medicines for Anna. You do it even when you think nobodies looking and I...” you took a deep breath, “I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“My anger for you was directed at myself. I do think you need to change the way you plan things, have more care for people's lives.” You smiled at him and wiped the tears from his eyes, “I’m also really sorry for hitting you.”

“It’s fine, I deserved it.” He chuckled lowly.

“No, you don’t. You did like... a month ago. But not tonight.”

“So, what now?” He looked at you with small tears still in his eyes.

“Well, I think first we get out of here. Next, we should spend some time and work on ourselves. And finally...”

“Finally?”

You blushed, “Let me buy you dinner.”

The two of you left the Domain, and for a reason, no person in Mondstadt could explain, you and Kaeya became inseparable. His plans suddenly became more conscious of his men.

And together, you began to heal.

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kitkatopinions · 4 years ago

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I’m probably over thinking/over complicating things but Ironwood and Penny have been really bothering me. It because prior to the moment that destroyed Penny’s arc the show and Ruby were really pushing that Penny not matter her body was human and that’s a very positive I like that especially when it comes to characters of Penny’s nature.

So my problem kicks in when I think of Ironwood. Namely this part in his song:

“What if it's true as they say

That I don't have a heart

That I'm more a machine than a man?”

Like wtf. I mean I “get it” especially with that dumbass line of Winter. But when it’s talked about Ironwood it was always in reference to the fact that his body is half robotic and there for we are meant to see the correlation between his body and his character.?

Put next to Penny’s message that really bothers me. Even more so since Penny gets a “reward” of becoming human, but the writers push that Ironwood sacrificing his arm to stop Watts and replacing it (a medical decision that could be debated given that he wanted to be up and able immediately to handle things not to mention that fact that nerves and muscle are severely fucked up) with a new (uncharacteristically uncovered) prosthetic means that he’s moving away from humanity. This thought has been driving nuts for a week.

I don’t think you’re overthinking at all. The writers have been pretty blatant about what they think of disabled people.

On the topic of James, 1. They wrote their triple amputee character to be coded as losing his humanity. This is suspect from the get go, but writers imo need to be especially careful and sensitive when they display things like villains with prosthetics. CRWBY is not careful and sensitive. 2. They specifically connected the loss of his limb to the loss of his humanity outside of the show, and as you said, his new prosthetic is uncharacteristically uncovered as well, and there were some pointed shots showcasing his arm and emphasizing it before showing Ironwood doing something wrong as well as a shot that particularly bothered me of them having James fall to Winter when his aura broke and then them immediately flashing to a fallen, broken robotic soldier. Tying the loss of someone’s humanity to them losing a limb / gaining a prosthetic in any way is wrong imo. There are better ways to display someone’s loss of humanity than villainizing the loss of his arm, and I don’t care what justifications people have for ‘they just meant to say that he was too impatient to-’ Idc. Tying the loss of humanity to the gaining of a prosthetic is wrong. 3. They never once treated Ironwood’s clear PTSD, history of mental health problems, and trauma with any sympathy, instead spending their time ragging on him for not wanting to feel his pain anymore and condemning him for... Trying to control his emotions. 4. CRWBY also gave him a semblance and explained how it worked by saying he hyper focused, talking about how James’ passive semblance that he can’t control forces him to focus on one single goal and fixate. I’m not disabled, but I do hyper fixate. It’s not something I can control, and to see it used as a justification for evil (in one of my favorite characters in the series who reminded me of my father lol) and being treated as something bad... It doesn’t feel good. I can’t imagine how other people must feel who are much more affected by this than I am. 5. As you say, the writers go out of their way to reference his metal body as being more ‘machine than man’ and make lines about him being heartless. And yeah, I get that he’s an allegory for the ‘Tin Man’ from Wizard of Oz but ffs the Tin Man had always had a heart and I honestly thought that was what they were going for in V3 with Qrow commenting that sometimes he thought James didn’t have a heart and the audience seeing Ironwood’s actions as questionable, only for the entire show to tell us repeatedly that he actually is a caring and good person who’s willing to destroy all the forces he was proud to show off if it means saving lives and was actually pretty freaking blameless in the Fall of Beacon and was super kind to the kids and when the chips were down, Qrow and Glynda both absolutely knew without even questioning that James would never ever willingly hurt the world or fully betray them and had absolutely no hand in the Beacon attack. Like, I’m sorry, but between Penny and Ironwood, season eight is the season of taking well done character allusions and throwing them out the window for the exact opposite moral done incredibly poorly. And anyway, getting off of that rant, making a ‘more machine than man’ sentiment tied around a triple amputee character is incredibly harmful and hurtful to people with disabilities and only propagates the real world stereotypes against people like James.

So, yes, their treatment of Ironwood, his mental health, and specifically his disabilities was so badly done, harmful, incredibly insensitive, and frankly, appalling that it came from grown adult writers in 2019-2021! But, as you point out, it’s not just Ironwood. And here’s where things really get bad for CRWBY. Because Ironwood alone is enough for me to say they were ableist - unintentionally or otherwise - and ought to apologize for the hurt they’ve caused their fans. But when you get into the rest of their treatment of characters with metal prosthetics or non-flesh elements to their body, it becomes a pattern.

Penny’s entire body is removed from her on threat of death, with the justification that it’s hurting her and that her body is just a machine and not part of who she is, contradicting Penny’s earlier themes of self-acceptance and validating her humanity in the body she already had. She then dies by assisted suicide in a way that feels unneeded, after having asked to be killed earlier in the narrative. So many people have talked about how destructive her story became in V8 and how it personally hurt them, especially non-binary people, trans people, autistic people, or disabled people who saw themselves in Penny or saw in her arc something that they could relate to, only to have Penny’s differences stripped away from her, having her conform to normal body standards and have her previous body type invalidated by her friends, and then they had her killed via assisted suicide in an unbelievable way, insisting as well that she never made a choice before she was a flesh-person and couldn’t feel things right. It’s all horribly done, but it’s important to remember that while Ironwood is accused of losing his humanity as he loses a third limb and gets a third prosthetic, Penny’s earlier validation is taken away and is instead only granted and she is only justified as a person when she loses all her ‘nuts and bolts’ and becomes a flesh person. And then she’s killed anyway.

Yang’s prosthetic is the least ill handled, but it is still dismissed as ‘just extra’ despite her former fairly strong arc of coming to terms with her disability and making it a part of her. She casually justifies what’s happening with Penny despite Penny not being in a position of adequate consent. Yang’s trauma and PTSD also vanished when Adam died at the end of season six and in my opinion, that situation was handled very badly.

Maria and Pietro, two other disabled characters, disappeared, left when Amity fell and were not even mentioned iirc since. Not even when Penny is awake, not even when they’re evacuating, not even when Penny is choosing to die. She never brings up her father. And Ruby’s supposed ‘mentor’ who never had an actual narrative role that couldn’t have been filled by Qrow and has had nothing to do since season six even past that is also forgotten out in the tundra and not mentioned again.

The writers go out of their way to have Winter say that because she was just following orders (a statement that contradicts her previous character imo) and pushing down her emotions, she was the real machine, whereas Penny had been human underneath her apparently easily tossed aside and destructive previous metal body. And I don’t know if this means anything, but in that scene where she and Penny meet when Penny is dying and transferring the maiden powers to Winter, Winter is in her V7 character design, instead of wearing her assistive brace. Like I said, I don’t know if I’m reading into that, but with everything else, it feels like an iffy choice.

So yeah. In the past season CRWBY specifically cultivated a pattern of disrespect, dismissal, and villainization of any non-flesh attributes in my opinion. It seems pretty intentional and clear to me, but I’m willing to accept that maybe this was just a wildly bad uneducated mistake. Here’s the thing about that, though, after the Faunus/Racism allegory, the CRWBY writers should’ve learned their lesson and not touched on any real world topics that they weren’t willing to do the research on and treat with the sensitivity and care and respect the topics needed. Their Faunus/Racism allegory was harmful and hurtful and frankly could’ve sunk them in the water, they should’ve learned to put much more care and effort into their work or stayed the hell away from anything that could further spread the negative stereotypes surrounding real world people. But they didn’t learn their lesson and they’ve continued to push harmful narratives with no awareness or sensitivity. I don’t think you’re over-reacting at all, I think this is something that - intentionally written or otherwise - the writers should be called out on, or they’re just going to continue writing harmful narratives.

Also, I am not disabled, many of my opinions on the treatment of these characters comes from posts I’ve seen from many disabled or neurodivergent RWBY fans (or former RWBY fans,) or other people more affected by these narratives - minus the thing I said about Winter appearing without her brace when she talks to Penny, as it was something I just noticed while typing out this post. Since I’m not disabled, I’m not the best person to talk about these things, so if I got anything wrong in this, anyone more affected, please know you can let me know and I can edit and fix.

#rwde #rwby bashing #anti rwby #anti crwby #anti MKEK #rwby hate #if anyone comes in the comments invalidating or justifying I'll block #pro james ironwood #pro Ironwood #ironwood defense

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franniebanana · 4 years ago

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CQL Rewatch - Episode 6

What I learned from this scene: Jiang Cheng is really picky about women and Wei Wuxian is perfectly happy being without a woman (as long as he has alcohol), and THAT parallels what Lan Wangji says later on that he’s fine being alone too. A little thing, but it shows that while Wei Wuxian talks big about all the cute women in Yunmeng, he has zero experience and isn’t really even interested in them. Jiang Cheng, on the other hand, IS interested, but is terrible at talking to them.

Call me crazy, but I don’t actually think Lan Wangji walked in there just to punish them for making noise/disturbing others. By the way this scene is acted, it seems like Lan Wangji is genuinely curious about what they’re up to, to the point where it almost feels like he wants to join in. Like he’s really taken what Lan Xichen has said about making friends to heart. And that all is super cute to me if that’s true. Like he hears the noises coming from their room (maybe he was already going there to see Wei Wuxian anyway!) and thinks, “Sounds like they’re having fun! Maybe I can join.” I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility for him to think that way, albeit probably hesitantly. And it’s not like he walks in with a dour expression, ready to throw the Gusu Lan Sect rules in their faces. It’s not until he sees the alcohol/Wei Wuxian asks him to drink with them that he pulls the rules card out.

Lol his look here. DON’T. TOUCH. ME. The phrase “if looks could kill” was made for people like Lan Wangji. He has nailed that glare. But like, how ballsy is Wei Wuxian to suggest drinking? He KNOWS Lan Wangji will not willingly break the rules, and if he doesn’t know, then he’s a dummy!

I love how quickly this whole thing unravels for Wei Wuxian. He thinks it’s so funny at first—stick Lan Wangji with a talisman, get him to do what you say—only he has no idea that Lan Wangji has absolutely zero tolerance for alcohol and his response is to immediately pass out. The sheer panic in Wei Wuxian’s face and voice is delightful to watch, honestly.

I’ve watched this scene so many times in the last week or so. I like it better in the special edition, since we get more wangxian and more drunk Lan Wangji—two things that I will always take more of. The part I like is that it shows how much Wei Wuxian commits and takes responsibility for his actions. He gets Lan Wangji drunk, so he spends half the night making sure Lan Wangji is okay. It’s a very sweet scene: the two open up to each other about their parents and it’s a very unifying moment for Wei Wuxian, finding out that Lan Wangji has suffered, just like him—that he is a human being with emotions, parents, that he’s experienced loss too. Wei Wuxian, up to this point, has dealt with his troubled past by clowning around and being generally optimistic, which is obviously not how Lan Wangji has handled his own past.

Lan Wangji probably remembers nothing of their conversation (or very little) but Wei Wuxian, who can hold his liquor a lot better, remembers all of it. It’s still fun watching them grow together, even after watching this so many times. Every time they experience something together, it just brings them closer. Really calls to mind themes of fate and destiny, though I like to believe that fate had nothing to do with them falling in love.

And here’s where Lan Wangji says he’s fine being alone, to which Wei Wuxian basically goes, “EH?!” in his mind, but instead calls him and his father boring. And then things get a little heavy, since Lan Wangji fully admits that he has no mother (in other words, his mother is dead). I assume (and Lan Xichen says later) that Lan Wangji would never have divulged this information while sober and it’s interesting that Wei Wuxian never lets on that he knows. It’s kind of a shame, really, that they never talk about it again. He only talks about it with Lan Xichen, but it would have been nice to see the two of them really talk about their parents.

In my mind, they slept in the same bed. Like, not that they did anything, because let’s be honest: they passed out. In my movie, Lan Wangji would have passed out again, and then Wei Wuxian would have put him in bed, and then passed out right next to him. It’s sort of strange that Wei Wuxian dragged himself across the room to sleep upright on the floor. He doesn’t seem like the type to do something like that, and why should he care if they share a bed? Especially given the fact that he’s also drunk.

It’s also super cute how Wei Wuxian is only like half-dressed (I say half, but it’s more like three quarters): his overdress is not pulled all the way on. His shock, then laughter here kind of indicates that he doesn’t remember much from the previous night, or maybe he forgot, and then remembered. The amusement is short-lived, though, since as soon as Lan Wangji wakes, up, he flips the fuck out and drags them all to get punished. I kind of wish we’d gotten to see that, although I do love the way they wove in the conversation between Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen.

His fucking face. He goes from, “Ah, Wei Wuxian, that rascal!” to “Wangji, WTF?!” I love that so much. And the thing that makes it funnier is that Xichen was the one to suggest that Wei Wuxian might be a good friend for his brother, and now it kind of ends up biting him in the ass, since he’s KIND OF a bad influence. Obviously, the next scene shows that this hasn’t really had a negative effect on Lan Wangji, since he is willing to accept punishment for something he had absolutely no control over, even when Wei Wuxian chastises him for doing so, and announces to Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen that, in fact, Lan Wangji was forced to drink the alcohol.

Which brings me to the punishment scene. I like this scene a lot too. I love Lan Wangji’s tenacity here, how he refuses to try and get out of the punishment even though he drank the alcohol against his will. I love how Wei Wuxian immediately comes to his defense to try and get Lan Qiren and Lan Xichen to stop the punishment for Lan Wangji. This is a good contrast to earlier scenes when Wei Wuxian would not admit to breaking the rules and was always trying to make an excuse for himself. Here he doesn’t do that at all. He fully admits to breaking the rules and to dragging Lan Wangji down with him. I know Lan Wangji is upset here, but I think he’s mostly upset with himself for allowing himself to break the rules (even though he really had no choice in the matter).

Another great Yunmeng siblings scene. Wei Wuxian complaining about being punished and Jiang Yanli just keeping it real: you shouldn’t have broken the rules. She’s such a good big sister, though, because while her speech has a touch of disapproval, she’s still very sympathetic to their injuries. I do feel like she’s a little harder on Jiang Cheng, because she knows he’s better than that and he has to be better than that if he’s going to be a clan leader someday. As usual, she’s softer with Wei Wuxian, who she just has an abundance of sympathy for. And I don’t see that as a bad quality at all—I think she and her father are willing to see past some of his behavior because overall he’s well-intentioned and, as is discussed later on, he’s not going to be clan leader. His job will be to support Jiang Cheng, not to run the place, and he’s a fierce friend and extremely loyal to the Jiang Clan.

But anyway, this scene is cute how both Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng tell Jiang Yanli that they need more protein to heal and she should really add some lamb to the soup.

A few minutes ago, he could barely walk, and now he’s literally running down these steps. Maybe you don’t need that cold spring, after all.

RIP that other shoe that he originally kicked off right into the spring.

I love all of Lan Wangji’s expressions here and his responses to Wei Wuxian’s advances (I can only call them that, because he’s such a flirt here). You can totally read this scene that Wei Wuxian is just teasing and taking the piss with Lan Wangji, but I’m not going to, and I’m assuming, if you’re reading this, you aren’t either.

Wei Wuxian was delighted when he saw that Lan Wangji was also at the cold spring. He clearly went there for his wounds, but I think the wounds are all but completely forgotten as soon as he sees Lan Wangji.

I also love how shy Lan Wangji is, that as soon as he hears him coming, he immediately dresses again. He doesn’t leave, but he doesn’t want to be seen without his clothes on. That’s incredibly endearing to me that he is so modest. And then you have Wei Wuxian, who threatens to take off his clothes several times (although this is the only time he does it for reasons outside of teasing Lan Wangji). He does not care—he’s seemingly not modest about his appearance at all. I really do love all the contrast between these two characters—it’s not that they’re opposites of each other—it’s not that simple—but there is a lot of contrast which I think just keeps things interesting. I have nothing profound to say about it (or anything else, really), but I just find it really enjoyable to watch. And a side note, the contrast between Lan Wangji and Wang Yibo constantly leaves me in awe; it’s hard to believe that Yibo pulled off this character so well because he was such a goof on set.

Wwx: A lot of benefits come with being my friend.

Wwx: [immediately starts undressing]

I see what you did there, writers/directors.

But ironically, it turns out that a lot of not-so-beneficial things come from being his friend. Because Lan Wangji becomes so devoted to him, he ends up getting in a lot of trouble within his clan and without. Obviously he’d do it over and over if he had the choice, but the fact remains that Wei Wuxian becomes a pariah and, to a lesser extent, Lan Wangji was headed that way as well. Really, if Wei Wuxian hadn’t died, Lan Wangji might have ended up living with him in Yiling. That would have been quite interesting, actually.

I don’t care how many times I’ve seen this episode—this scene will kill me with its cuteness. Wei Wuxian so wants to be Lan Wangji’s friend here! He’s adorable! “Don’t leave me alone!” and “Come to Yunmeng, and I’ll pick lotus seeds for you!” and “There’s cute girls at Yunmeng!” Oh, wait, Lan Wangji doesn’t care about cute girls haha. I just love the change in the relationship. Wei Wuxian approves of and respects Lan Wangji and wants to be closer to him. It’s not just an interest or a fascination now—it’s something deeper. It’s the shared experience at Biling Lake, it’s the drunken confessions about their parents, it’s the 300 hits of the bastinado, and the secret cold spring pond where they can heal together.

Note how long it takes Lan Wangji to actually try to leave here. That’s telling enough on its own, how long Lan Wangji tolerates Wei Wuxian. He’s willing to put up with the jabbering and the endless chattering from Wei Wuxian. This is so much progress!

I have absolutely nothing to say here, other than that Yibo looks so fucking hot in this scene.

Because other than him and of course the headband, I find the stuff with Lan Yi to be kind of boring. I like her and all, but it’s just like, meh on all this Yin Iron stuff. I read about how this is just a big trope in cdrama, so it is what it is. Personally, I found the book to be compelling without all these shenanigans, but I understand that the written word doesn’t always translate well to the screen (especially when you are censoring the relationship between the two main characters).

Oh, and the rabbits are also fucking adorable. The more rabbits, the better.

Aaand now you’re married. Thanks, bye. Other episodes: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |

#wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #cql #the untamed #mdzs #mo dao zu shi #jiang cheng #jiang yanli #lan xichen #lan qiren #wwx #lwj #cql rewatch

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2seokfan · 5 years ago

Text

Scarlet & Hazel | Ch. 3

pairings: hoseok x reader x yoongi

genre: fluff, very light angst, smut (future)

word count: 6k

chapters: ch.1, ch.2, ch.3. ch.4

summary:

Just cause you’re living paycheck to paycheck in a tiny apartment even after graduating college doesn’t mean you’re not happy. So what if your best friend is working her dream job making close to six figures every year? So what if she’s in a loving, committed relationship with her perfect boyfriend that you’re 99% sure is going to propose to her sometime next year? It doesn’t matter that your idea of a perfect relationship is a $9.99 bottle of wine on Friday nights while you binge watch Netflix specials.

Ok so maybe you’re a teensy bit miserable. Maybe you have no idea what you’re doing with your life. Maybe all you need to do is accidentally cross paths with two hybrids who will drastically change that.

Meet “Scarlet” and “Hazel”, two of the most gorgeous hybrid men you have ever laid eyes on. With their help, you learn that life is an adventure, a roller-coaster with ups and downs, and you were too preoccupied with yourself to climb out of your own predicament. And hey, you’re not much of a romantic, but with these two, you just might change your mind.

a/n: Hello, Jun here! Whew this took a while to write but thank you for your patience!! (poor Y/N still doesn’t know their real names but maybe she’ll find out soon?) Any feedback is appreciated <3

tag list: @wilhelminalucinda @ghostkat23 @ayoo-bangtan @sadgurllayha

2 months later.

August is relentless. You’re sweaty all the time and you have no choice but the crank up the a/c every single day. This heat wave is incredibly brutal because all you want to do is stay at home eating ice cream in your underwear but instead you’re stuck working overtime to pay for what you assume will be a record-high electricity bill. Fuck you global warming.

It’s currently Tuesday. You’re on lunch break at work, chowing down on a falafel wrap and scrolling through your phone, when a text pops up from Karli.

Karli: Don’t forget!

You: ???

Karli: This friday?

You scratch your head. Wtf?

You: What’s on friday?

Karli: Umm the date? Remember?

No you didn’t. Your dumbass actually forgot about a whole date. You can’t believe yourself. Karli finally set you up with that accountant guy from her job. What’s his name again? Brad? Brandon?

You: oh yeah! my bad haha

Karli: You forgot his name didn’t you?

You: …maybe

Karli: Lol it’s Bryce sweetie

Karli: He’s really sweet! Just give it a shot

You: of course i will

You: i’ll turn up my maximum charm

Karli: Dats my girlllll

Karli: Ugh gtg it’s my boss

Karli: Bye!

You: bye babe

You set your phone down, trying to envision this upcoming Friday. Karli mentioned she gave Bryce your phone number, and he’ll text you sometime this week about your date, so at least you don’t have to make any moves first. She did show you his picture though, being the wingman that she is by stalking all his social media just for you. You’ve gotta admit he is cute, the profile picture showed him sporting a casual smile, with blonde hair and blue eyes. The classic boy-next-door look.

“And he’s most likely not a serial killer!” You remember her declaring a few weeks ago, after scrolling through all his tweets. And when you say all his tweets you mean EVERY Single tweet from when he created his account in high school till now. Your best friend does not fuck around.

“Thanks I appreciate that. Glad he’ll ‘most likely’ not kill me.” You rolled your eyes and grinned at her.

While you munch away the rest of your lunch, you think about how you just aren’t acting like yourself lately. In any other circumstance, you would’ve found yourself more excited for the date. Hell, in any other circumstance you would’ve at LEAst remembered his name, or thought about what to wear by now, or even stalked his social media along with Karli. There’s just a teensy problem though. See, in the past few months you happen to have met two boys who completely changed your standards in men. And you may have maybe developed the tiniest crush on both of them, at the same time. Like how?? You didn’t think you were physically capable of doing that?

You sigh, staring at the rest of your falafel wrap, and force yourself to accept reality. As much as you adore them, you know that your little crush will be completely unreciprocated. This you found out through your group chat, now named ‘Hazel’s Nuts’ (courtesy of Scarlet). It’s not that you confessed to them or anything, they just happened to let slip to you one day that they’re a mated pair. And hybrids mate for life, so they take that shit very seriously. Although this news stung a little, it didn’t cause you to be envious in any way. At the end of the day, crush or not, you’re just glad you have two more people in your life you can confidently call your close friends.

For the past two months you’ve actively kept up with them. Sometimes you’ll send memes back and forth all night, sometimes you’ll group call each other after work. Every once in a while, when they’re not busy doing whatever it is they’re doing, they facetime you. These are your favorite moments because you get to see them in all their attractive glory. Just because they don’t like you that way doesn’t mean a girl can’t deny herself some eye candy.

You guys never run out of things to talk about. Each day you check the group chat and it’ll be popping. Your topics range from the movie that just came out, restaurants they discovered, to even discussing new criminal cases (you got Hazel into watching true crime Youtube videos and now he’s entirely hooked). Sometimes you just sit back and watch the two boys bicker back and forth. It’s hysterical how they decide to argue through text since you’re sure both of them are probably in the same room together, but you appreciate them keeping you in the loop.

At this point they’ve already virtually met Karli. She’s been in the background of one or two of your facetimes. You’re glad she approves of them instantly and you wonder if it has a little something to do with their, especially Scarlet’s, boyish charms. She does keep you grounded though, never failing to mention how it’s suspicious that you don’t know their real names yet.

“I don’t think they mean any harm and they seem genuinely nice,” she had reassured, “But you gotta admit not telling you their names is a little sketch.”

You just shrugged. “They have their reasons.”

Internally you do believe she has a point. Even though you don’t want to force information out of the boys, you’re a naturally curious person. Your mind has already compiled a list of all the unusual facts you’ve discovered about them.

A couple of things have become clear to you over the span of the last few months. The most important fact is that although they share tons of content with you, you still have no idea what they do for a living. You’re also 90% sure they don’t have an owner since there’s never anyone else around them. Another, more interesting fact is that you suspect they’re actually pretty wealthy. Every time you facetime, they’re in some sort of lavish looking hotel penthouse, with fancy furniture and artwork hanging in the background. They also dress designer, occasionally flashing their Balenciaga hats, or little Gucci necklaces, or other fancy logos your peasant-ass is unfamiliar with. You actually googled one of Hazel’s t-shirts from your most recent facetime, having no idea what the FG logo stood for. You remember your eyes bulging out of your head after discovering his plain white shirt with two black letters cost more than $200. TWO HUNDred dollars?!!! Do you know how much food and gas you could buy with $200? Why in the fuck would he spend that much on a shirt??

If only you knew how much their watches cost.

Friday rolls around faster than you can blink and before you know it, you’re rushing home from work to get ready. Bryce texted you for the first time on Wednesday to see if you wanted sushi (hell yeah you did) and you were fortunate enough to notify your boss so you could be let out early. You’ve been such a work horse the last few months that they had no choice but to let you leave in advance.

So far Bryce seems nice enough but you can’t get a proper gauge of his character through text. Oh well, guess you’ll find out tonight.

The sushi place you’re meeting at is on the fancier side, and includes a bar. Knowing yourself, if there’s a bar, there’s no car, which means you won’t be driving. The last thing you want is to leave your car parked somewhere sketchy overnight cause you accidentally got too tipsy to drive. You like to think you have some semblance of control but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.

You were let out at 4, which means you have only 2 hours to get ready. As soon as you get home you sprint to your closet at lightning speed. You rummage through your drawers, hoping to find something, ANYthing, that’s appropriate for this occasion. For one quick second, your eyes dart to your forbidden drawer, aka the ho drawer. It contains the remains of your slutty party dresses and tops from college. Being the hoarder that you are, you never like throwing away things, even if you have no need for them anymore. Wait, what the hell am I thinking? You snap your eyes back to the rest of your closet. You’re going for sushi, not to dance at some club. Besides, you have no intention of sleeping with anyone tonight.

After an hour of deciding on a suitable outfit you finally start on your makeup. Your work makeup has dried up, and now feels gross and cakey on your face, so you remove it all and start anew. At least you had the decency to shower this morning so your hair isn’t too gross.

The place is around a 10 minute Uber ride away but you took your sweet ass time getting ready so now you’re in a frenzy. When your phone buzzes, signaling your driver is here, you swipe on some lipstick last minute, grab some chunky heels, and practically fly out the door.

You stare out the window of your ride, wondering why you’re lowkey wishing you could spend Friday night at home watching tv instead, or even just spending the evening facetiming two hot hybrids. This all feels a little too rushed. But no, you shake your head and attempt to hype yourself up. C’mon Y/N this is the first real date you’ve been on in ages. At least TRy and be a little more motivated.

The car pulls up and you thank the driver, stepping out into the warm night air. August is still hot, even in the evenings, and you’re glad you didn’t bring a cardigan. Bryce has already texted you, letting you know he was inside, sitting at your reserved spot. You take a deep breath. Ok, time to put on your game face. You strut in, trying your very best to push the faces of two very good-looking friends out of your mind.

You spot Bryce in a corner, head buried in his phone, his wavy blonde hair not easy to miss. You slide in the seat across from him, prompting him to quickly look up and flash you an easygoing smile.

“Hello there!”

“Hi!” You chuckle nervously. “I hope I’m not too late.”

“Not all all!” He slides his phone back in his pocket, smile still on his face. “You’re just in time.”

A waiter comes by and you both take your orders. You make sure to order a drink because you have a feeling you’ll need the liquid courage to strike up more conversation. Maybe some sake will help ease you.

The first couple minutes are kinda awkward, not gonna lie. Bryce tries to get you to talk about work and you do answer him, but honestly work is the last thing you want to discuss right now. You try to shift the conversation to his job, but that only ends up being worse as he quickly launches into the ins and outs of life as an accountant. Maybe your two hybrids friends have spoiled you because you barely remember the last time you had to fill empty space with small talk.

When the food comes you quietly sigh a breath of relief, hoping the sushi in front of you will help you both get settled and give you time to think of more interesting topics to talk about.

“So,” you wrack your brain, “let’s get to know each other more! Like, what’s your favorite ice cream flavor?” That’s got to be a safe enough question.

“Hm, I’m actually more of a yogurt kinda guy, ice cream’s not really my thing.”

You freeze, California roll halfway to your mouth. Ok, ok, cool, cool. So he doesn’t like ice cream, that’s fine. You sweat a little. Hurry Y/N think of something else to ask.

“Yeah, I guess that’s not everybody’s thing.” You grimace. “Then what about, i don’t know, cookies? What’s your favorite kinda cookie?”

“Actually I prefer crackers, you know, like the saltine ones? Cookies can be too sweet sometimes.” He’s devouring his dragon roll, not noticing the panic in your eyes. He’s caught you off guard twice today.

This isn’t going well and you’re genuinely surprised because you know Karli has done her research, certain that you two would get along. Guess life really likes to throw you some curveballs.

Who the fuck prefers crackers over cookies anyway?? Ok. Code red! Change the fucking subject before the silence becomes unbearable. Your dessert-related ice breakers had never failed you before but there’s always a first for everything, you guess.

You take a generous swig of sake. “Right, crackers are... good.” You’re mumbling at this point. “Ok, um, what about hobbies? Got any?” Please throw me a fucking bone here! Your mind is reeling but externally you try to act calm and composed, dabbing at the corner or you mouth delicately with a napkin.

“Oh yeah!” His face lights up. Oh thank god. “Do you like football? Me and my buddies at the office sorta formed this team, and we play against other departments. It’s really fun! You should come by and watch sometime!”

“Uh, sure!” Football. Huh. The last time you were anywhere near a football was when you met someone from your college team at a bar. Well he wasn’t holding a football per se, but that counts right? You only remember how much of a douche he was, trying to hit on one of the girls from your group after getting entirely too wasted.

“Awesome! I’ll hit you up when the next game is set!” It’s almost impressive how he doesn’t notice all the tension emitting from your body. In fact, you have a feeling he’s actually enjoying himself and your company.

The rest of the dinner goes by in the same manner. With him happily answering all your questions and you slowly discovering just how little you both have in common.

He is a gentleman though, that you can’t deny. When all the food has been cleared away he immediately swoops in to pay the bill, ignoring your insistence at paying for your half at least. He really isn’t a bad person, just the opposite. Besides your difference in interests, he is a sweet guy overall, and you do find him to be physically attractive. There’s just no spark, no silver lining that keeps you wanting more. When you both get out of your seats he offers to drive you back to your place but you politely decline. You say it’s because you don’t want to trouble him but in reality you need space for yourself to think.

As soon as you arrive home you take off your shoes and plop yourself down on the couch, running your hands through your hair. You check your phone, a few notifications from ‘Hazel’s Nuts’ popping up.

Scarlet: Do you think she’s done with her date yet??

Hazel: Hey Y/N how was it?

You had told them about this date beforehand and they were excited to root for you, which did bruise your ego a bit since it reaffirmed your unreturned attraction to them, but also prompted you to go through with it. This last notification was from 45 minutes ago but you couldn’t reply since you were still at dinner.

You: hi I just got back!

You don’t expect them to respond right away but to your surprise:

Scarlet: And???

You: it was meh

Hazel: That bad huh?

You: no nothing like that!

You: he’s really cute and all, it’s just we basically have nothing in common

Scarlet: Aww poor Y/N (sad emojis)

Hazel: Hey happens to the best of us

Hazel: Actually I wouldn’t know cause I’ve only been with fox boy

You: thanks anyway, i appreciate it Hazel

Maybe it’s cause you’re a little tipsy, or maybe you just feel so open and vulnerable around them tonight, but the next text you send is especially honest.

You: ughhh idk guys i’m just so lonely!!! why can’t things just work out for me for once! Like the first real date I go on in years and this happens :(

They don’t respond for a long time. So long in fact you start to get worried that you exposed too much about yourself.

15 minutes pass by but to you it feels like hours. You’ve already removed all your makeup and changed into your pajama shirt. You relocate to your bed, checking your phone again, thinking of a way to play off your last text as a joke when:

Hazel: If you’re so lonely maybe you could adopt?

You grin to yourself, glad that they’re not being judgmental. Their concern for you resets your mood.

You: ha ha you know my apartment doesn’t allow pets

You: but honestly if i could i would, cause i’d definitely get a little kitty

Hazel: I’m flattered

You: thanks but i meant a real cat

Hazel: Either way i’m flattered

Scarlet: HEY what about foxes??

You: pretty sure owning a pet fox is illegal here Scar

Scarlet: (angry emojis)

Hazel: You heard what the lady said

You: anyways i’m going to bed

You: thanks for making me feel better guys <3

Hazel: Anytime

Scarlet: But hypothetically if foxes weren’t illegal you’d get a pet fox right??

You: of course i would sweetie

Scarlet: (happy emojis)

Scarlet: Yay!!! Goodnight Y/N!

Hazel: Night Y/N

You: night boys

You wake up next morning on your own time, checking your phone to see that you slept in till 11am. Wow, you haven’t slept that well in a while. Maybe it’s the stress from the previous weeks of non stop working, or the pressure to maintain your composure last night, but either way you knocked out like a rock. You sit up, lean back, and stretch your arms as far as they can go.

Today you’re meeting Karli at her place up north. She couldn’t ask you about last night since she was occupied, her seven year anniversary with her boyfriend Sunny coinciding with your date. But she assured you a couple days ago over facetime that today was going to be a girl’s day, no boyfriend included.

“Hey!” Sunny had popped out of nowhere in the video when he heard the news, a look of mock shock on his face. “I live here too! So what, you're just gonna kick me out of the house and leave me on the streets to starve?”

“My god stop being dramatic!” Karli had shoved him playfully off the screen. “I need girl time with Y/N and it’s not girl time if you’re in the house.”

“I can be one of the girls! Right Y/N?” He sounded betrayed.

“I know you can but I’m not the one who makes the rules.” You pointed out.

He sighed. “You got me there.”

Since you’re just spending time at Karli’s and getting takeout, you felt zero need to dress up. You washed your face, threw on an oversized t-shirt some old hookup left at your place (hey it was cute) and some tights, and tied your hair out of your face. This entire process took less than 30 minutes and next thing you know you’re ready to head out.

You sent Karli a quick text, letting her know you’re on the way. You grab a bottle of prosecco, your purse, and keys, saying a quick goodbye to your roommate Ayah on your way out. She gives you a small wave, reminding you that she, yet again, has to leave today for a whole week. You backtrack to give her a quick goodbye hug, telling her to drive safe, before you take off.

Karli’s place isn’t as far as the beach coffeehouse you frequent, but it’s still located in the wealthier side of town. The drive lasts a good 20 minutes but it feels a lot faster since you spend the whole time singing along to your favorite songs.

You pull up to Karli’s apartment complex, driving yourself to the guest parking space. Her apartment building is pretty tall, with a distant, but gorgeous view of the beach.

Karli squeals when she opens the door, immediately giving you a big hug. When you break apart you hold up the bottle of prosecco in your hand, waving it in front of her face.

“I know you have the ingredients here so let’s make some spritz!”

“Yay!”

Aperol spritz is your favorite at-home drink to make with Karli. She had gone on a short trip to Italy in the summer between her two years at grad school and tried the drink there, completely falling in love. She googled the recipe, made it for you one day, you had said “Oh FUck that’s good!”, and the rest is history.

She grabs the bottle and quickly relocates it to her kitchen. Her energy levels are sky high today and you wonder what’s got her so elated. She’s skipping everywhere she goes, there’s a permanent smile etched on her face, and she’s humming non stop as she pulls you away from the front entrance.

Sunny emerges from the hallway, two hands in the air in surrender.

“I’m heading out, I swear!”

Sunny is a big teddy bear of a man, with tattoos splayed across his arms and a well-kept beard. There’s a term you learned online called ‘lumbersexual’ and that’s exactly the word to describe Sunny. He almost reminds you of Jason Momoa, the actor who played Aquaman. Those who just meet him think he looks intimidating at first but once you get past his height and size, you see just how much of a softie he is. He’s also extremely intelligent, working somewhere in the computer industry developing software.

Karli bounds over to him and gives him a big snuggly hug and tiptoes all the way up to give a quick kiss to his lips.

“Have fun babe! Love you!”

“Love you too! Also bye Y/N!”

“Bye Sunny have fun!” You smile as he treads out the door.

You both head to the kitchen and start making your drinks.

“Aren’t you extra chipper today!” You mention as you pour a splash of club soda into your glass.

“Am I?” She doesn’t look at you, wearing a mysterious grin, stirring her mixture with a straw.

After you both finish making your drinks, you head to her living room and settle onto her plush sofa.

Karli yawns, almost too dramatically, covering her left hand over her mouth. You quirk your eyebrow at her, wondering why she’s acting so weird until you spot it. There’s something large, something shiny, on her left ring finger.

“Oh my god….” Your entire mouth hangs open. “Oh my GOD!!! Is THAT…?”

“Yep!”

“Did HE -?”

“Yep!!”

“AND YOU - ?

“YEP I DID!!”

“YOU’RE ENGAGED?!?!?!”

“I KNOW!!!!”

What happens after is a shriek rivaling that of a pterodactyl taking flight after spotting prey, except the sound is just the two of you screaming and jumping up and down in Karli’s living room.

You bring her into a tight hug, so emotional that you’re about to tear up. And you’re not one to cry that easily.

“I’m so happy for you!” You pull apart and wipe a stray tear from your cheek.

“Thank you! I’m so happy too!” Her smile is also a little watery. “Like I knew he was gonna do it soon since we’ve been together so long but I’m still shocked you know?”

“I know!”

“And I’m sorry. Today was supposed to be me asking about your date last night.” She dabs at her eyes. “Bryce really likes you too. He even texted me thanking me for introducing you!!”

“Oh shit...” You take this chance to drink your Aperol spritz. “I’m gonna be completely honest with you. It’s true he’s cute but there was no spark.” You give her an apologetic grin, knowing she really wanted this to work out for you. “Like don’t get me wrong he’s super nice and stuff but I just couldn’t find anything we have in common. I can’t believe he’s still into me?!”

“Aw I’m sorry babe.” She pouts. “I really did think you would be a good match.”

“It’s ok. Anyways,” you wave her off, bringing up the more important subject at hand. “I’d much rather talk about your engagement! Like, hello?? You’re getting married, girl!!

Another squeal. You really hope her neighbors don’t complain.

“I know!! I literally don’t know what to think!” She smiles wistfully, like she’s on cloud nine, then brings her attention back to you. “Also you’re the maid of honor and you can’t back out of that.”

“I would never!” You gasp dramatically, one hand clutching your chest.

“But don’t worry!” She sets her drink down. “The wedding’s not happening till next year at least. We don’t have to start planning till way later.”

The rest of the day you spend chatting to Karli, prompting her to spill every single detail about the proposal. Even though you have no need to help her plan a wedding just yet, you can’t hold back from offering some ideas that spring to mind.

“I got it!!” You shout.

“You got what?”

“Hear me out,” you may or may not be a little tipsy at this point. “Goth wedding!” You say with jazz hands. Then you reach down to take another sip of your drink.

“Hmm…” She pretends to think about the idea, then giggles. “And that’s enough prosecco for you.” Plucking the glass out of your hand, she transfers it to her kitchen sink.

A couple more hours roll by. You both decide to watch a cheesy Netflix horror movie to sober up, paired with the Mexican takeout you ordered. By the time the credits roll, the sun has long since set, along with your alcohol buzz. You check the time on your phone, deciding it’s best to head home since poor Sunny has been respectfully out and about all day, giving you your girl time.

You give Karli one last big hug, murmuring into her hair how happy you are for her situation. She walks you to the apartment elevator, where you proceed to blow her a swift kiss right before the doors close in your face.

Reality sets in the moment you’re alone. Your head swims with thoughts as you drive back. Most of them are happy about your best friend’s engagement but you can’t discount the little ugly bubble of jealousy that wells down deep in your gut, reminding you of your own current situation. It’s not until you reach home that you realize you didn’t even play music in the car.

Ayah has long since gone on her business trip by the time you arrive at your apartment. The whole place looks dark and unwelcome, only highlighting the emptiness you feel inside. You trudge to your room and slump onto your bed. You try to scroll through social media as a way to distract yourself but you’re met, instead, by all the pictures and posts of happy people, showing off their achievements or bragging about their seemingly perfect lives.

You immediately lock your phone and throw it onto the blanket, the stress and anxiety from the last few months building to a boiling point in your mind. Your biggest concern is you still haven’t figured out your lease situation, and you only have two more months to move out or find someone new. Ayah has tried her best to help you but she’s bombarded by business trips so no luck so far. You let out a small groan and bury your head in the pillow, deciding to sleep it off and worry about your problems tomorrow, even though it’s not even that late.

Right as you’re about to drift off into dreamland, your phone rings. You fumble around the covers until it’s in your hands and check that you have a facetime call from your two favorite boys.

Immediately your body jerks awake and you sit up, swiping the answer button.

“Hey guys!”

“Hi Y/N!!” Scarlet’s heart-shaped smile is taking up most of the screen but you can see a sliver of white and grey hair behind him.

Hazel elbows him out of the way. “Sorry were you sleeping?” He tilts his head, ears twitching. “Wait, it’s only 10 pm where you’re at. You never sleep this early.”

“No I wasn’t... I mean, yeah I was trying to sleep but…”

You sigh. It’s their faces. Just seeing them through a screen, their wide, innocent eyes blinking up at you, makes you want to spill everything.

You nibble on your bottom lip for a moment. “I was just kinda having an existential crisis so I decided to sleep it off. No biggie.”

Scarlet’s eyebrows furrow in concern. After only two months, he can already tell when something is off with your tone of voice.

“Y/N what’s wrong?” He looks up for a bit, pausing to think. “Was it the date last night?”

“The date?” Oh yeah the date. Yet another thing that didn’t go well. You totally forgot about that can of worms. “Not really… or actually kinda?”

You try to reorganize your jumbled mess of a brain and put your thoughts into words.

“So you know how I said I was going to Karli’s today?”

“Mhm,” they nod at you to continue.

“Well turns out she got engaged last night.”

“That’s awesome! I’m so happy for her!” Scarlet bounces a little, then quickly returns to a more serious tone. “But that doesn’t really answer my question.”

“Yeah I’m happy for her too.” And you genuinely are.

You pause for another moment, teetering on the edge of playing your emotions off like it’s no big deal or exposing all of your concerns yet again. Your need for an outlet to vent to wins in the end. For the first time you find yourself unable to confide in Karli because you want her to be happy and focus on the engagement rather than to be preoccupied with you. Before you know it, the words flow from your mouth like running water.

“It’s just that her announcement really brought me back to earth, and I started thinking a little too much about my own life.” You purse your lips. “I don’t know… I feel pretty selfish right now because she’s doing so well and I just can’t help comparing my life to hers. I’m so proud of her but it’s like everything in her life is coming together and I just want that for me also.” You throw your hands up in frustration, almost knocking the phone off from where it leans on your pillow. “I mean we’re the same age for god's sake! Why can’t I get my shit together??”

“Well you should be proud of yourself though,” Hazel cuts in. “Cause we are.” He gestures to Scarlet and himself.

“Yeah!” Scarlet chimes. “I mean you’ve got a full time job and a place to stay. I know you don’t feel like it’s the most ideal situation right now but please don’t discredit yourself.”

“Thanks guys.” You calm down a bit, but then you remember the whole issue with your apartment. Scratching the back of your neck, a habit you’ve picked up whenever you’re nervous, you say in a much smaller voice, “although my ‘place to stay’ might not last much longer.”

“What do you mean?” Both boys’ eyebrows are raised in confusion.

You realize you never mentioned your living situation to them, the topic always pushed to the back of your mind whenever they initiated conversation.

“Yeah.” A dry chuckle leaves your lips. “My lease ends soon and Ayah wants to move to a place of her own. And I have two months to figure out where to live or find another roommate.” You let out a frustrated huff. “She’s been so helpful but still no luck I guess.” You shrug in defeat.

You feel like a balloon that’s lost all its air, brain exhausted from running through all the problems in your life.

“Actually that’s pretty convenient for- ” Scarlet starts, but is elbowed again in the ribs by Hazel. “Ow!”

“Not yet!” The cat hisses quietly to him.

“Huh?” Now you’re confused. What in the world are they talking about?

Hazel turns back to you. “I’m really sorry about everything Y/N. If there’s anything we can do to help please let us know.”

“Thanks buddy.” You offer him a small smile, choosing to ignore what just happened since they clearly don’t want to reveal anything just yet.

Hazel then shifts to a more nervous stance, ears slightly flattening and both hands grabbing his floofy grey tail for comfort. It’s the cutest goddamn thing you’ve ever seen in your life.

“So Y/N, um, there’s a reason we called you tonight.”

You’re glad for a change in subject, a much needed distraction away from your downward spiraling thoughts.

“Oh right! Yeah. What’s up guys?”

Scarlet steps in front of him again, blocking most of the screen.

“We have a surprise for you!” He’s so close to the camera that you can only see half of his unblemished face but from the way his eyes crinkle, you can tell he’s giddy with anticipation.

“A surprise- ?”

“Yeah!!”

Hazel nudges himself into view again. “Quit hogging the whole screen fox! I swear to god next time we’re using the tv. I can’t see anything! Anyways,” he turns to you and smooths his shirt, expression back to stoic, “are you free next weekend?”

“I should be. Why?” You’re still a little lost on what the surprise is.

“Cause we’re coming back to town!” Scarlet blurts out.

“You are?!” Suddenly all your negativity melts away, replaced by excitement. Hard to believe just five simple words can shift your mood a complete 180��.

“But wait, there’s more!” You snort at how much Scarlet sounded like an infomercial just now.

“We’d like to invite you to dinner next Saturday night. If that’s ok with you?” Hazel isn’t as physically expressive as Scarlet but the hopeful shine in his eyes gives himself away.

You melt at his expression, heart rate speeding up. “Of course that’s ok! I’d love to!”

“Great!” He flashes one of his rare gummy smiles. “Saturday night. 7 pm. We’ll text you the details.”

“Yep!” Scarlet pipes in. “There’s something important we gotta ask- !” He lets out a small gasp, tail bristling, and clamps a hand over his mouth as if he just said something he shouldn’t have.

“What’s important?” You’ve gotta admit, your curiosity is at its peak right now, and it doesn’t help that they’re acting a little weird today.

Hazel rubs his temples in exasperation, groaning at Scarlet. “What part of ‘not yet’ did you not understand?” He then addresses you. “Sorry Y/N I promise we’ll tell you when we see you in person.”

“Ok.” Cool. That’s fine. You’re a little nervous about what they have to say and it’ll be torture to wait but you’re a big girl and you can handle not knowing for a week. “I can’t wait to see you guys!!” you added.

“Me too!” Scarlet’s personality is so bubbly and contagious that you can’t help but smile back at him.

“Same.” Hazel lets out a small yawn. “Well we’re in a different time zone than you and it’s really late here so I gotta hit the hay.”

“Mk, go get your beauty sleep.” You give them a little wave. “And thanks for everything. I mean it.”

“No problem Y/N.” Scarlet also gives off a yawn, stretching his tired limbs. “Goodnight.”

“Night.”

After ending the facetime call, you lie on your back, staring at the ceiling. Your mind is active once again, but this time it’s not clouded with self-deprecating thoughts. Instead, you spend the remainder of the evening theorizing about the ‘important’ things the boys have to tell you. Maybe you’ll finally find out their real names. Or maybe they’ll reveal something else about themselves, like why they’re constantly travelling, or what they actually do for a living. Either way you can’t wait for next Saturday to come around.

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#bts fic #bts hybrid au #hoseok fanfic #yoongi fanfic #bts smut #bts fluff #bts fanfction #hybrid hoseok #hybrid yoongi #bts hybrid fic

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bbq-hawks-wings · 5 years ago

Text

BBQ gripes about fanon Hawks

Not even gonna put this in the character tags aside from the spoiler one I use just for the anime-onlies on my blog. I'm salty. I just wanna vent. I want to keep the general character tags fun because it was awful when I went looking for new content and found so much Not Fun material a while back; and I don’t want to become what I hate. Basic point - my blog, my vent, and unless it’s reblogged (which you are welcome to if you like) this post dies here.

Please know this isn't a callout post or me claiming that others are being fans of Hawks "wrong" because they disagree with me. I am a huge proponent that (with very few exceptions) fiction and fandom should be free to be enjoyed, reinterpreted, or otherwise indulged in however the individual fan prefers; and if I don't like it, I let them have their space and go do my thing elsewhere and leave them alone (hence why this not going in character tags). I just have been annoyed with the rampant mangling of Hawks' canon personality/characterization - that is, confusing common fanon interpretations of him with how he’s actually written/portrayed and then getting angry (like, actually-angry-spilling-into-publicly-dragging-real-people, not just disappointed) when he acts like canon Hawks in canon. Non-canon is open season and by and large has my blessing, it’s just frustrating when it gets dragged into discussions about the manga.

This has been going on a long time, but I just want to get it out of my system in my personal space. All this is, is my "Overthinking Tumblr blogger Shakes Fist at Cloud" moment.

#1 Hawks is a sociopath/unempathetic.

I just... I... You can't be reading the same manga I am if you genuinely come to this conclusion about who he is in canon. A man with nothing to gain by looking like this when considering the depths of the suffering inflicted on others that he bears some amount of responsibility in...

...cannot be called unempathetic.

"But he killed Twice and Best Jeanist!"

Twofold counterargument to this one, starting with BJ - we don't actually know he's dead. There's a body, there's a disappearance, and we have no idea wtf happened, but we also don't know wtf happened. It's drastically ooc for Hawks to murder someone in cold blood. For someone who places emphasis on speed specifically "because when two sides keep fighting and won’t give up, someone eventually has to die" it makes no sense for him to not have had a plan and simply ambush a man in his own home - this goes doubly since he was in contact with the HSPC and had time to "premeditate" anyway.

And as for Twice: Hawks ran out of options. He wanted to detain Twice and keep him from escaping and helping the MLA. He was able to do so when alone, but the moment Dabi cornered him Hawks had a choice to make - probably die in the fight and let Jin go or make absolute certain he can’t and still probably end up dying because he's in bad shape and still probably won't make it out of this, regardless. I don't need to harp on this - it's been said a couple different times now by several people. Even in 266 when Dabi initially ambushes Hawks, Hawks thinks to himself that he’ll carry Jin out of the building to keep himself and Jin safe before Twice retaliated and Dabi literally forces Hawks into a corner.

Jin's loss was a blow, but the chips on the table being wagered are human lives, not feelings. Up until that point, Hawks did everything he could despite the weight of his decision. Human life is human life, and Jin’s life isn’t more important than the may more who will be saved by quashing the MLA’s revolution. Simply equating “could kill someone” with “unempathetic” is fundamentally flawed, and mistaking someone who is pushed to kill despite every attempt to avoid it as unempathetic and even sociopathic has missed the point to the extreme - the mere fact he avoided lethal force for so long alone proves he possesses empathy.

#2 Hawks is a compulsive liar.

He is a good liar, but he does not like lying. He does twist the truth, but always when forced to keep a secret. Even then, his lies are predominantly spun from truth and omitted details instead of outright fabrications. He doesn’t gaslight, and he doesn’t make up stories/details if he can help it.

When Hawks told Endeavor his dreams for the future, that was the truth. When he told him he thought he was cool at the hero billboards, that was the truth. When he tells Tokoyami to focus on his strengths instead of merely covering his weaknesses to be a better hero, that was the truth. When Tokoyami asks Hawks for his weakness and even why he took him on as an intern in the beginning just to ignore him, he tells him the truth. When he tells Jin he "doesn't belong in a cage" and that he considers him a good person, that was the truth. When he recognizes he’s profoundly wounded Jin for deceiving him for months, he tells Jin the truth. When confronted by Dabi and he doesn’t need to lie anymore in this fight to the death, he tells him the truth despite not actually needing to in hopes to learn the truth behind Dabi and Shigaraki.

I don't have a better segue, so I'll just mention that a lot of folks who believe this also believe the next point.

#3 Hawks is unapologetically emotionally manipulative.

The context makes a huge difference and we need to look at when and why he manipulates others as well as the fact that he does.

At the hero billboards, Hawks plays the heroes on stage as well as the crowd. He's trying to shift the mindset of, "oh yeah, just another hero ranking" to "wake up, mf's, things are changing and you better be ready to change, too!" Rocking the boat is a huge no-no in Japan. Despite being part of his “persona” there is still real social risk involved with this move but one that he deems necessary to turn heads and get gears turning. This is not just an elaborate ploy to get under Endeavor’s skin, but an effort to reach a wider audience while he has them captive.

He does use the public crowd around him and Endeavor before the Hood fight as an excuse for its appearance, but the original intent was to mentally prepare Endeavor for what was potentially (and proved to be) the fight of his life without outright telling him so he could maintain his undercover status. When he realizes he’s part of the reason for Endeavor’s permanent scar and life-threatening injuries, he feels remorse.

He lies to Jin to get information out of him, but linking back to #2, when calls Jin a good person and offers him a way out, he’s telling the truth. He does feel guilt for having to manipulate an otherwise well-meaning person and betraying them, especially given his long-running history of being used and the ongoing issues he suffers from because of it.

When he meets up again with Endeavor to drop his clues about the League’s movements, he squirms when he realizes the interns don’t know him well enough to know he’s blowing smoke because he does NOT want these kids to actually buy what he’s selling. This espionage mission is hard to navigate, and he has to tread carefully lest he setup the dominoes in the wrong places.

This is all to make the point that Hawks is more than capable of emotionally manipulating people, but it’s not in his nature or something he does to any and every person he comes across just because. We haven’t had much opportunity to see him operate outside of the HSPC’s orders which is where the bulk of the instances of his manipulation comes from - those orders requiring him to operate covertly and thus, by nature, necessitate lying, manipulation, and strategically withholding information.

If anything, when he’s making an appeal to someone else as his own person - not as a hero on a mission- we actually see a level of vulnerability and transparency we don’t otherwise catch.

Though it’s technically canon-adjacent and not necessarily canon in and of itself, in My Hero Academia: Team Up Mission where he works with Bakugo and Midoriya he operates on a level of transparency with them we’re not used to seeing; and my theory is he took it as an opportunity to operate without ulterior motives and build report instead of bucking back against “training up the next generation of heroes” like he initially did with Tokoyami.

Which now actually segues better into the next point.

#4 Hawks never lets people get close to him.

There’s a surprising amount of evidence that Hawks wants the ability to be an open book. Back at Team Up Mission, the restaurant staff note he regularly takes people he likes to their establishment - so we’re basically told outright this is a special place to him reserved for enjoying himself and only people he likes get to share it with him - so we already know what that says about how he sees those two despite their sparse interactions. We already know he’s taken Endeavor there when Endeavor made no move to input as to where he wanted to have the lunch meeting.

Though he kept Tokoyami at arm’s length initially, we have at least three canon instances of him sharing personal interactions with him with other canon-adjacent indications he cares for and values his intern. We’ve readily established that while Endeavor may not consider himself close to Hawks, Hawks does hold Endeavor as near and dear to his heart. While his only mission regarding Twice was to get information out of him, he still made a genuine effort to help and save him because he wanted to and considered him a friend despite the circumstances.

We still don’t know very much of Hawk’s past, his personal relationships outside of work, etc.; but despite the HPSC’s extensive efforts to strip him of his identity he not only possesses a faceted, complicated personality but seems to want to share that with others readily when and in the ways he’s able. Getting into the truly squishy, vulnerable parts of him may take a while, but on a scale of closed to open, he seems to lean towards open.

#5 Hawks is hopelessly in love with Dabi and will abandon everything up to this point for him.

This isn't to throw general DabiHawks shippers under the bus. Most of them know VERY well at this point that canon has sunk that ship, and they're just having fun with it at this point - and you know what, power to you! They look great together! In another life, the character chemistry could have been incredible. There’s a lot of great DabiHawks shipping content I thoroughly enjoy despite not shipping it myself.

It just isn't canon. It never was and never came close. Even now, with the Endeavor reveal being very much imminent, Hawks' view of Dabi is one of a lying, malicious, callous, murderer. Though he’ll likely be crushed at the revelation of what Endeavor’s done, that doesn’t equate to him defecting (especially not immediately) and falling into Dabi’s arms.

And Dabi hates Hawks just as much.

Again, this is not anything against the ship or the shippers - just an annoyance I have with some who were so wrapped up in the ship they were genuinely mad when the ship sank and they dragged that frustration out into the real world against real people when canon didn’t align with fanon.

Ships are some of the most stupid things to rail against creators and fans over, and the amount of harassment they receive now over shipping has me ripping my hair out when I know it’s a mere fraction of the total pool of shippers who are frothing at the mouth while the rest are super cool and happy doing their own thing and keeping to themselves.

Ship what you want, regardless of “validating evidence” and have fun. Don’t make it others’ problem when it isn’t canonically validated.

#6 Hawks is a dirty cop.

Only half upset with this one because it comes down to the nuance and lack of precise definition of this phrase I have a problem with. Lots of people hate cops for very real, legitimate reasons. Police forces - being a voluntary, government-employed force enforcing government rule - are notoriously prone to corruption of every kind.

It's implied the HPSC is itself corrupt, though to what extent we don't know. (Granted, buying a young child from his family to raise as your personal puppet is pretty high up there.) By continuing to follow orders from the HPSC and not vehemently fighting back, many see him as reinforcing a corrupt institution and at least partially liable for their continued hold on society.

Fair enough, but... The issue I have with this is it reduces Hawks to his job.

I believe a huge chunk of this take comes from my experience as an armed service member spouse, but it's easy for me to empathize with a guy

Who was promised the moon for himself and his family in exchange for his service not realizing what was actually being asked of him

Is praised outside the organization for "being a hero" and "upholding this country's core values" while first-hand witnessing the corruption of it when inside

Is viewed as a cog valuable only in services rendered instead of being treated like a human by said organization and worked into the ground because of it

Is frustrated by the insistence to keep the status quo instead of improving procedure/infrastructure/environment because egos need to be padded over real, human problems being solved

Has his autonomy or otherwise ability to operate under his own judgement restricted in favor of maintaining organizational control at the cost of effective action

Has DEPENDENTS who rely on his continued work to provide for them and is thus unable to refuse an order, even when it's morally reprehensible and even outright illegal

Whose cries, both those calculated and desperate, to the organization (who have placed themselves as the sole resource he can turn to) for help (even for his own body/mind) fall on deaf ears until he breaks to the point of becoming unusable or dangerous - and even then minimal effort/responsibility is taken in favor of keeping him functioning in the organization as long as possible.

Hawks fights back against the HPSC constantly. He raised concerns over letting civilians suffer to get him in with the League of Villains and then still defied orders by reducing casualties to zero. Despite orders to keep his mission top secret, he's informed Endeavor of his motives/movements independently from the rest of the heroes. He had long refused to take an intern (read: fresh meat for the machine) to train until this year, and even then sought to minimize his encouragement of Tokoyami for as long as possible until he realized Tokoyami was made of the real mettle people needed in a hero and not just another youngster endangering himself on a pipe dream.

He even takes initiative to keep his personal to-do list from the HPSC to a minimum by squashing problems before they come knocking asking him to fix it for them. He knew of the League of Villains and anticipated the escalation of their movements immediately after the USJ incident as well as has a network of informants and connections with local police forces to stay in the know.

His methods for apprehension of criminals are, and continue to be, to react and detain them so quickly they can't retaliate or endanger others in the struggle, thus minimizing human loss and injury despite the insinuation the HPSC has told him that gloves are off in the current situation.

He might be "a cop" depending on the definition we go with, but he isn't a dirty cop. He doesn't plant evidence. He doesn't shoot first and ask questions later. He doesn't blindly take orders. He largely doesn't see "villains" as dirt under his shoe but as people pushed to extremes. He's a morally convicted individual trying to rebel within the system instead of tearing it down outright. He may be wrong in the assumption, but he genuinely believes he can do more on the inside of the system than outside.

#7 Hawks is a manwhore.

Ok, this one is not serious and actually just to end this all on a lighter note after ranting until I'm blue in the face.

I'm 100% guilty of this myself. Something about that chicken makes me and many others salivate - either for themselves or to watch him with someone else. We love dressing him up slutty, portray him as flirting unashamedly, and placing him in as many overtly sexual scenarios possible.

The best part about all of it, though, is that it’s almost the exact opposite of how he dresses/conducts himself in canon. His clothes are loose fitting and high-coverage. He’s personable, but never gives any indication he’s romantically/sexually involved or interested in anyone. The asscourse is real only because we cannot confirm either way due to his baggy clothes. His overall figure/body shape has been hinted at, but only recently confirmed; and his jacket had to be literally be burned off to get a good look at the pattern of his shirt under it!

~~~~~~~

And with that, I release the frustration and move on.

Enjoy fanon as much as you like - even I do! Just be aware of where canon and fanon diverge, and definitely don’t take the difference out on real people. Please also be aware of how others hold their favorite characters dear before flooding the general tags with negativity and creating a hostile environment for them. People latch onto their “comfort characters” for a plethora of reasons, and when they lose that character to the plot, the fandom, or otherwise, they should still be allowed to grieve and celebrate what they had in a safe environment.

Retaliation in response to others coming against your favorite is also not acceptable behavior. It sucks, but the most mature thing to do is step away from the general fandom, stick to blogs/spaces you know are safe, and let the storm blow over. Comfort characters do not justify mistreating real people no matter how much they may mean to you.

When “canon gets it wrong” is where fanfiction and pockets of the fandom community comes into play. Leave those people alone and let them be. For those who aligned themselves with canon, they are not free game to take personal frustrations out on. Leave those people alone and let them be. Unfollow the people/tags you need to for your own sake and others’, and the fandom will be a better place all around over time. Venting belongs in controlled spaces away from the rest of the fandom and with enough warning for those who not only don’t want to endure it but who for their own safety shouldn’t.

Fandom is a community, and healthy communities do not endorse members lashing out when they don’t get their way.

#spoiler!hawks #let's talk hawks

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buckybarnesbingo · 4 years ago

Photo

What the Pic? - Pic Summary Game

Aim of the Game: Provide some kind of summary for what is going on in the pic. Thank you to our Party Mod @ariasfandom for facilitating!

@saganarojanaolt - A chase ended badly

For the baddies

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@pherryt - "In retrospect, letting Steve drive the van had been a bad idea. Too bad nobody listened to Bucky"

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@liquidlightz - Steve knew he shouldn't have let Sam drive... Bucky just couldn't resist hiding up on the roof and tearing out Sam's steering wheel when he least expected it... for old times sake

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@lokivsanubis - “Honestly driving had changed a lot since 1943. What’s this automatic mean?” Steve is honestly confused. Bucky sighs, “Next time I drive.”

Keep reading for more!

@lokivsanubis - Clint just looked at the key then back at the door. Bucky paused, “are you sure you live here?”

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@liquidlightz - Steve had been struggling to get a handle on his new body after the serum... looks like it's back to 0 days since the last mishap. Good thing he can just break the lock and get in that way, who needs keys anyway.

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@pherryt - "Bucky glared at the broken off key. He just wanted to grab a shower and hit the hay. He hadn't even been using the metal arm. He wasn't Steve for God's sake, just breaking things willy nilly. Which meant... Sam. Sam's prank had gone too far this time..."

@lokivsanubis - Steve still wasn't' sure 100% how this photo survived all these years. And yet here it was as he looked at at his best man and then back at his partner.

"Don't worry Babe," Bucky assured them. "You've got yourself a winner in Stevie."

"And don't worry." Clint assures from the side, "We definitely ate that pizza."

Steve just wanted to curl up and die. That photo was 5 years and at least 90 lbs ago.

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

@liquidlightz - What the hell Buck?" Steve exclaimed as he bent down to check Clint was still breathing. "You open the door inward, not out at people!"

"You're the one who installed it after your last little episode... maybe you should have read the instructions as to which side the hinges go on!

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

@saganarojanaolt - Clint has a fantastic aim, Drunk Clint has a fantastic aim too just sometimes for the wrong targets As Tony have learned the hard way when the cup hit him on the head just when he taken the pizza

@lokivsanubis - Sometimes it's the things you don't say that say everything. The fact that Tony didn't depart the plane told Steve everything he needed to know. He put the flowers down and accepted his losses. The fact that Bucky couldn't let their relationship die here and was currently on a plane to California to drag Tony home is another story entirely.

@saganarojanaolt - I can imagine all kind of explanation of why Tony didn't board the plane

And it ends in Happy end

@lokivsanubis - i feel like Bucky would show up like 'WTF?' And tony be like hmmm? What do you mean it's thursday? JARVIS WHY ARE YOU MUTED!?

@saganarojanaolt - Exactly

Or Avengers business

Or an accident

Tony got on the wrong plane

@lokivsanubis - Tony trying to fly coach is just a disaster waiting to happen.

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

@saganarojanaolt - Tony gets into an accident, and because he doesn't have an ID with him - why would he? Everyone knows who is he - when he loses his memory he is noted down as a John Smith This protects him from the paparazzi but also from Bucky finding him

@lokivsanubis - ohh the drama i love it!

especially if they shaved his face or his hair for some reason.

so he'd look different

@saganarojanaolt - nods nods

Surgery

Or it was bad guys who caused the incident - so they shaved him and thrown him off somewhere far away where he was last seen

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@liquidlightz - Steve waited to receive his Russian internet match with bated breath and a humble bunch of flowers, they seemed so small now, he really should have gotten a better bunch on the way instead of relying on the airport shops, they were extortionate, maybe he should stop being cheap and go buy a bigger bunch...

as he considered his frugal choices he heard his name called out, and looked up to meet the most mesmerising sky blue eyes he could have never imagined, a shy tentative smile on a gorgeous face framed by luscious long wavy locks, and cradled to his chest in a sling, a little toddler... asleep, while his dad struggled one handed with the luggage.

They were as smitten in person as they had ever been over their emails, and the flowers were graciously received but left forgotten for anyone else who might need them more... they both now had everything they needed and all their hands were full...

@lokivsanubis - though i'm imagining Bucky with Alpine in a cat sweater lol

but OMG SO CUTE!!

@liquidlightz - ha ha... plot twist... the baby is a kitten!

@menatiera - Bucky still doesn't know to this day how his phone ended up outside on the windowsill. He suspects either Sam's prank, or some kind of magical mishap from a practicing Sorcerer Supreme. Anyway, good thing he has a few Spiderfolks on speed dial, even if that means he'll owe a favor to one of them. Now to decide which one is the safest bet to be indebted to...

@dreaminglypeach - Has a few spiderfolks on speed dial, but he needs his phone to be able to call them to come rescue his phone… not sure how well Bucky has thought this one through

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@pherryt - that's absolutely Clint's phone. he climbed up on the roof to take a picture of something and then it slipped right out of his hands. Now Bucky's wishing Nat was here to help talk clint out of doing some aerial stunts without a safety net just to reach the damn thing. "Phones can be replaced, dumbass" Bucky's muttering. Clint, halfway down the wall already 'But it's got pics of Lucky and Alpine cuddling together!"

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@liquidlightz - Bucky had been insisting that he could scale buildings and climb through windows better than Nat could... which Clint scoffed at, nobody would believe him, and Nat refused to take up his challenges so he could prove his point.

She'd left him no choice; with Clint's help he'd managed to swipe her phone and abseil the side of Stark Tower to place it outside the common room window which he knew to be tightly sealed... Steve and Clint had timed him as impartial witnesses.

Now Nat would have no choice but to retrieve her phone and everyone, including Jarvis, was placing bets and keeping a close eye so they wouldn't miss it when she made her move...

@saganarojanaolt - Nat quietly kills Bucky, while everyone is watching the phone, no one takes her phone unpunished

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@lbibliophile-mcu - Bucky glares at Steve

"But...!"

"No. I've told you before, no playing on your phone during briefings. I thought you would have learnt from Clint's example last week."

"But..!"

"Calm down. Stephen can help you grab it again after the meeting. If you pay attention."

Steve never had these problems leading the Howlies... he just had different ones

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

@your-ginger-angel - It's not Bucky's fault that he forgot his phone on the windowsill. He'd been sucked into some stupid TV show Steve was watching and before he knew it, he was sobbing as character A professed their love to character B (he had no idea what the characters names were or what they were saying -- Steve had some damn good windows!) and then as Character B walked away, Bucky had put his hand on the window and cried, "Noooooo!" Now, he doesn't think Steve heard him, but the movement had to have caught his attention because Bucky had been forced to made a quick climb up to the roof before Steve realized that Bucky was perched on the sill keeping an eye on him.

#buckybarnesbingo2020 #bbb2020 #discord party #party game #bbb discord party #pic summary #what the pic?

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revchainsaw · 4 years ago

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The Descent (2005)

Greetings and Welcome to the Cult Film Tent Revival. Come Worshippers and join me, Reverend Chainsaw, as we partake in the word of the Lord. This week we will be reading from the Book of Neil as we pray and reflect upon the 2005 film The Descent.

The Message

The Descent tells the story of a group spelunkers who find more than they bargained for when they attempt to explore a new cave system. Our cave crawling crew consists of 6 women, foremost of which are Sarah and Juno. Sarah and Juno have a history, mostly a friendship centered around thrill seeking and globe hopping, but a rift formed between them when while returning from a whitewater rafting trip Sarah lost her husband to a logging truck accident. Sarah was left with severe PTSD and Juno made it her mission to get Sarah her groove back.

Unfortunately this is not the fun and fantastic story of gal pals overcoming adversity. Juno's motivations are not quite that altruistic. She seeks to alleviate her personal suffering. Juno was in love with Sarah's husband and the two had been carrying on an affair behind Sarah's back when he was killed. Sarah does not know this, but Juno has been plagued with guilt. In an effort to pay penance for her wrongdoings without actually talking to her friend and confronting her betrayal, she feels she can make things right by giving Sarah a heroic accomplishment by exploring a barely known cave system in North Carolina.

The group soon discover that their are ancient carnivorous hominids who reside in these caves and they are being hunted. The women must overcome the dangers of the cave system, the beasts that dwell in the dark, and their personal demons if they are going to make it out alive. Unfortunately; in the midst of an attack Juno accidentally fatally wounds a friend and leaves her for dead. After being separated for some time and winding up in a cesspool of viscera Sarah learns from the dying girl that Juno had betrayed her. Sarah enters warrior mode and kills Juno and many of the cave dwellers before finally escaping into the Appalachian wilderness.

Now please stand and receive The Benediction

Best Effect: Captain Caveman vs the Teenangels

The Cave Crawlers are definitely a huge selling point of this film. Long before I had any interest in horror films I remember seeing the trailer for this film and with the minimal glimpses I saw of these troglodyte creatures was enough to captivate me, so much so that I remembered what was coming years later when I finally saw this film.

Best Character: Live Fast, Die Young. Bad Girls Do It Well.

Believe it or not, I like Juno. I think she was a flawed character, but that's what made her all the more human. She was a bad ass and a hero for much of the film. She was not ethically unambiguous but I wanted her to uplift Sarah, I wanted her to succeed. The fact that she did not is the aspect of this film that gives it it's greatest tragic edge.

Best Moment: Blood Bath

If anyone has seen the Descent before they will know exactly where I'm going with this. The Killing floor scene. Where Sarah finds herself in what basically amounts to a garbage disposal, a metaphorical pit of Hell. Sarah and a Cave Crawler end up in a violent conflict submerged in a pool of blood and guts before they eventually submerge out of sight. When after an uncomfortable amount of time passes the surface is broken, Sarah emerges triumphant and we the audience feel truly empowered with her.

Most WTF Moment: You Got Knocked The Fuck Out!

For many of the congregation the opening sequence will have cemented long held anxieties about driving behind logging trucks. This movie is like the Jaws of the logging industry. I had one moment though that hit me way harder. Maybe it is just that I'm getting old, but the danger of bonking my head in a particularly rough way, even from not so great a height, just hits me in a very visceral way. There's a sequence where one of the girls bashes her head on a rock and passes out. The force portrayed and the sound effect were very very effective and I let out a very guttural ouch. It wasn't even a kill and it sticks with me.

Worst Scene: Kill Your Darlings (or how I learned to stop asking questions and embrace excessive force)

I didn't know what else to call this because it's not so much a scene but a choice in the script. I found the fact that Sarah murders Juno to be a bit extreme. Maybe if she had simply chosen not to help her do to her feelings of betrayal, but she actively harmed her friend in an act that felt pretty petty, over a piece of shit cheating husband. I never understand why films portray "the other woman" as the villain in affair stories. I mean, yes, Juno betrayed her trust, but murder is a bit extreme, especially when we spent most of the movie watching Sarah struggle over the loss of her husband. There's no point in the film where Sarah wrestles with the idea that her partner whom she had been grieving over in such an extreme way was actually not a very good guy. Instead we are left to put all of our hate onto Juno. It also seemed like having Juno accidentally and understandably struck one of their companions in a fight with cave dwelling monsters seem like a cheap ploy to make us feel like she's getting what she deserves. The writers needed to make Juno more evil, and making tragic mistakes and having common human moral failures is not enough to make a cold blooded murder feel justified. In the end I wind up feeling more like Sarah is a fucking murderer than like justice was served, and since that's clearly not what the filmmakers intended, I think it makes the whole film weaker as a result.

Summary

The Descent is an excellent movie! It speaks volumes about the quality of this film that I can say "The Descent is great to look at" when the movie is this dark (and I don't mean the tone). The creature effects are excellent, the actors portraying them sell it, the characters are engaging and likeable as opposed to just being lambs for the slaughter. The sets are believable. I've already spoken above to the weaker aspects of the film so I won't spend anymore time here doing so. Please join these ladies for a spelunking trip next time you have the opportunity, and give praise to the Cult of Cult!

Overall Grade: B

#B #Grade B #The Descent #Neil Marshall #Monster #Cave #Cave Crawler #nocturnal #creature features #creature #creature feature #survival #horror #2005 #200s #2000s #(B)

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psyga315 · 5 years ago

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Prelude

With Volume 7 just beyond the horizon, I figured to look back at my thoughts for Volume 5 and, through more cooled down eyes, boil down why I consider it to be the worst volume of RWBY. When I wrote my review of Volume 5, it was literally the night the episode premiered, so I was boiling. But now? I’m going to look through the review with fresher eyes and clarify what sort of problems I had with RWBY.

First, a bit of backstory. There was an interview made during the summer in between Volumes 4 & 5 that had the cast say what sort of themes one could expect for Volume 5. Among these were stuff like “building yourself back up again”, “shouting ‘we’re not done here!’”, “solving problems on your own”, and lastly, from Barbara herself, “Strength” and “Growth”. For someone who was just starting to realize why people were turned off by the darkness of Volume 3, this was uplifting to say the least…

Shorts

The Character Shorts kinda hyped the Volume, though they sunk in their own way. Weiss’s Character Short effectively foreshadowed her loss to Vernal. This tough and talented girl gets her ass stomped rather quickly and needed to be bailed out. Winter’s line about how she “won’t be around to save her” was foreshadowing to her not actually being in the season, but when I first heard it, I thought she meant “Hey, I’m going to die this volume, lol!” and that’s without bringing up how the trailer fails to hype Weiss up like the other trailers did.

Blake’s Trailer was alright, especially in taking steps to address a problem regarding Menagerie, but it felt more like Ilia given the backstory dump we got that feels all the more like mandatory reading. The problem is that, and it’s perhaps the very first problem I’ve heard about RWBY, is that the trailers (and by extension, anything that’s a spin off of RWBY like World of Remnant) feel more like you need to watch this rather than you can watch this. It’s confusing, but let’s use Blake’s Short as an example.

Ilia talks about her backstory as it is contrasted with a chase between Blake and a random dude we never see again. Assuming you’ve never watched the trailer, you’d just get the truncated version of “MUH PARENTS ARE DEEEAAAD!” and not the bits where she was forced to resent her own race because it was easier to blend in to her surroundings, like a chameleon. It’s ironic, since RWBY would do the reverse problem with Adam, where his trailer isn’t mandatory but we barely get a backstory for him beyond “I got branded, but everyone will speculate that it’s because I did something bad and not that it drove me to do bad things”.

Lastly, there’s Yang’s short, which had the minor hiccup of contrasting what an interview said about running out of Aura means you can’t use your Semblance. The Aura thing is something that can be discussed for another day, but the basics you should take away from this is that, for some time, people didn’t know how running out of Aura is symbolized. Most people take the flickering as the signal as the next hit on those guys are usually the one that does them in. As such, you had this huge debate on what kind of flickering means Aura broken and what just meant Aura is low, which, personally, could have been avoided if the writers and/or animators just utilized that Aura dust thing (seen prominently in the Bumblebee vs Adam fight) as their definitive “aura broken” animation instead of just using it some of the time.

First Episode

The first episode proper promised a lot. In fact, a good chunk of the first half promised a lot. However, it became much clear in a second viewing that a lot of it was just padding at worst and showing us where the characters are at best. But what I think was done dirty the most in this episode was introducing Mistral. We were hyped in Volume 4 (thanks to World of Remnant) that Mistral was this dichotomy of rich, cultural people and the seedy underbelly of criminals and that, at least one of the elements would be utilized in Volume 5. Unfortunately, all we got were a few mat paintings that contrast what Lionheart was saying in regards to Mistral being in chaos.

And so, the most we get out of Mistral are those mat paintings and a perpetually raining downtown that we don’t see much of, even when it gets briefly revisited in Volume 6. We’re supposed to be invested in the city and yet all we get are empty rooms and 2D art. They took great steps to improve this in Volume 6 with Argus, though, so if there’s any consolation, it’s that they learned from their mistakes here.

But we now get into the biggest problem of why Volume 5 is disliked. Because of the situation, the group are left to basically wait until Lionheart convinces the council to get them some Huntsmen. The heroes. Wait. In a volume where the writers were talking about the themes of improving yourself and pulling through with your own strength.

Do you guys see the problem here? I know people have bitched about Volume 5 to hell and back and you’ve probably heard the complaints to high noon, but this entire issue is what rots Volume 5 to the core the most. Not the piss poor fight scenes, not the inconsistent characterizations, it’s that the plotting decides to take a back seat when the volume was meant to be about taking action.

As the episode goes on, you see the problem unfold. Ruby and friends hit a dead end until Oscar appears and has Ozpin exposit things to them, Weiss is denied a chance to save people and fight the Grimm until the Grimm come to her, Blake is hit with the dead end of the Albains deflecting blame, and Yang had the chance encounter with Bakugou where he knows the hideout of her mom.

The closest person who is taking action here is Yang, who established that she is actively looking for Ruby (technically Raven, but as we see later on, moot point). Blake’s situation is being handled by her dad, Weiss is sitting in the plane until the Grimm come for her, and Ruby is sitting on the couch that I’m pretty sure has her grooves molded into the cushion with how many times she’s sat there.

Episode 2

A minor complaint before we go to Episode 2, we had the Stinger repeat itself because the crew thought that people wouldn’t see the stingers. This is the show, mind you, that makes a point to include scenes at the end of every volume, regardless of how long they are or what point they serve in hyping the next Volume. Hell, one of the major complaints about Volume 2 was about the stinger not mattering. So why did they suddenly decide that the viewers might not see the stinger in a culture where the MCU exists?

Alright, cooling things down, we have three major scenes in Episode 2. Salem’s chat with Lionheart was meh at best and wtf at worst. I get the idea of Salem using different approaches to get people to do what she wants, but the cool aspect of Salem was that her approach was not what a villain would normally be. Instead of berating or choking her minions should they fail or talk back, Salem instead talks people down like she’s a mother to them. Even when Tyrian fails, she doesn’t hurt him, but rather tell him that he disappointed her. So, having her choke Lionheart, even when in hindsight it made some sense, is kinda an odd thing to do.

But not as odd as Salem’s whole “Not you, Arthur” bit. A lot of people drew points to that and the best I can explain is that it’s either a typo (she’s meant to say not yet or not now) or Arthur and Watts are some sort of Jekyll & Hyde thing. Unfortunately, it seems Watts is more a parallel to Watson rather than Jekyll, so that brings me to believe that it’s a typo and so, rather than have an easy explanation for a problem, we just have a compounded problem. One of many.

And there’s something funny to be said about Salem warning Cinder about Silver Eyes when Ruby barely learns about it this Volume. And also that she wants to speak with Tyrian but we never see what comes of it. At all.

I only have one new thing about Weiss vs. the Bees. Originally, the pilot was supposed to be gay, but held off on it because they’d be killing off their first revealed gay character, something that wouldn’t look good to the fanbase. Now, while I understand the reason behind it, I have to question the logic behind why they think it isn’t okay for their first LGBT character to be offed, but instead be someone who seemed okay with murdering her crush’s parents while sending said crush to her abuser.

But more on that later, we have Sienna to discuss. Now, there’s a lot to dissect. For one, RT has obviously realized that they’ve messed up and brought Sienna back for a bit (while taking the heat for “if she’s so badass, why did she go out like a chump”). However, in hindsight, what purpose did she actually serve outside of some cute nod to Shere Khan?

All she did was tell Adam that he’s going too far and that’s it. And really, it just seems hypocritical for the leader of the White Fang to effectively restructure the organization into a terrorist group, murder tons of people, and then suddenly back away and say “woah, too much” when Adam proceeded to help torch Beacon. It’s to the point where one question most people want to ask at cons is “did Sienna order the hit out on the SDC”, since we don’t actually know and that it could be a radical leader of that quadrant like Adam.

It felt more like Sienna should have been just the leader of Mistral’s White Fang faction instead of ruling over all the White Fang, which would make more sense as Adam would need permission to attack a kingdom that isn’t his stomping ground. Then there’s the introduction of Hazel, who at first is presented to be a pretty decent character, not wanting to kill people if he had no choice, but as time goes on, is basically your stock “big soft guy with a secret hulk side” character.

Unfortunately, this episode didn’t help enforce the theme of taking action when it’s the villains who are doing it and seeming to be two if not twenty steps ahead of the heroes.

Episode 3

Episode 3 has that whole speech thing I overlooked. Barring Ghira’s speech that the crew said is based off Obama’s “we killed Osama” speech (which, if it is, paints the whole situation of Sienna’s death in a rather dark light) before Ilia interferes. Now, I actually liked that Menagerie is hesitant to stand up for Haven. After all, humans hated their guts so much that the island was originally planned to be a place where people could dump Faunus on. There were lynchings and enslavements that are still going on to this day, just in subtler forms, Of course the Faunus wouldn’t want to fight.

Then Ilia swoops in and robs Blake of any agency she has with the scene. If RT wanted to not let Blake convince the people until three quarters to the end, they should have cut the subtlety and have some annoying kid go “IT’S TOO EARLY IN THE PLOT TO DO YOUR SPEECH!”. Hell, let Blake tell her story about her team, but the audience balks at the fact that she’s not only friends with a Schnee, but also a human who crippled a guy on live television. Remember that plot point?

We then cut to Oscar and this is perhaps the reason I decided to do this revisit of Volume 5. The way Ozpin talks of action and resolve, it felt like we’re going to the root of the themes of taking action. No more being subject to the events of the plot like in previous Volumes. Now? Now is the time to fight back! And that built up to… what? One training scene and Ruby learning headbutt?

Granted, we see later on that there was a bit more to the plan, but for the most part, it seemed like an excuse for “character growth” as opposed to actual character growth. A training arc isn’t just some short scenes of a person lifting weights and jogging up stairs. Its meant to be a sort of means of growth for the character. There’s a reason most training montages have the character suck at first, but then get better by the time the montage ends. It’s because it’s the quickest way to show growth. But even without that, you could get some serious mileage for a pulled off training arc.

Rocky IV and Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back have some good examples of it. Rocky IV had the titular hero train and work out in the middle of a cold, mountainous range, while his opponent is simply given steroids. It shows the dichotomy between the two and how they view their eventual fight. Empire, on the other hand, had that masterful scene with Luke in the cave, where he has a huge moment of both foreshadowing and character growth.

Here? We just have Ruby learn headbutt like she’s nothing more than a Pokemon. There could have been a lot more done with it, like having Ruby put a lot more force in her punches, causing others to realize she’s extremely angry about what happened to Pyrrha and Penny, or, if the need to exposit about Semblances is needed, bring something new to the table that isn’t going to confuse the fuck out of people… Something like:

“Your Semblance might not reveal itself until you need it most” or something like that. Not “A semblance is someone’s personality, but not. Wow! Exposition!” or “Hey, remember how we said Aura was passive? Welp, not anymore!”

Not to mention that Jaune is seemingly cool with Ozpin suddenly coming back from the dead. Here’s the thing, last Volume had him upset with Ozpin about what happened to Pyrrha, something that didn’t seemed to resolve itself. Keep in mind that, for all rights and merits, Jaune believed Ozpin to have died. In fact, it was that confirmation that Ozpin had lost against Cinder that convinced Pyrrha to kill herself. Now here he is, seemingly stuck in the body of another kid and he just outright said this is a normal thing for him.

You’d expect him to have something more than “golly!”. The fact that he didn’t seem to have any aggression towards Ozpin until after he ran to his hidey hole in Volume 6 seems rather odd given that his entire character is that he’s angsting about Pyrrha and angry at Cinder for what she did. The group seem rather content to just sit back and let the plot happen, which is the opposite of what the crew was trying to convey with their themes.

Episode 4 and Episode 5

I still stand by what I said regarding how Episode 4 was a good episode, finally having a reunion between two members of Team RWBY, but it’s perhaps one of the last good things about RWBY we’ll ever see in Volume 5. Because Raven’s promise to tell Yang “the whole truth” turns out to just be regurgitated exposition at worst.

But first, we need to have Blake, the woman who doesn’t want her race to be labeled, turn out to have labels for her friends. Okay, granted, it’s not that dumb but it is kinda patronizing that we need to have a character tell us what another character is. While the rest of her speech is pretty effective in defining Blake’s character, making her perhaps the only character these themes of growth and strength actually apply to, it still is annoying that the most we take away out of this is her boiling down every character to a single word, then bringing up how Adam is going to ruin everything for the Faunus. You’ll see why this is a problem later. I liked the setting of Menagerie’s Shallow Sea marketplace thing and felt like Menagerie is wasted potential.

Ruby’s whole speech still feels like damage control, but with the added complaint of Ruby deciding to blame Salem for something Cinder did. Now, I heard the common excuse a lot: “Salem told Cinder to do it so it’s all her fault”, but that problem with that? Cinder told Emerald to kill Penny. So… Yeah. It is her fault. Hell, I wouldn’t have minded this if Ruby didn’t word it like Salem personally killed Penny and Pyrrha. Like as in, she just up and appeared out of nowhere and shot both Penny and Pyrrha in the head.

It still doesn’t fix the fact that Ruby is basically “hey, remember how I’m supposed to be upset?”

Lastly for Episode 5, we have the White Fang do the brilliant plant of murdering the chieftain who just spoke out against them. It’s dumb. Extremely dumb. What the hell do they think will happen after they murder the chieftain in cold blood? Menagerie is just gonna magically bend over and obey the White Fang? But perhaps the biggest waste is the White Fang in general.

You have these two sneaky fox brothers who seemingly oversee everything and even state that they’re only letting Adam do what he wants until he’s no longer of use to them, a buff bat dude, and a spider-lady… And they’re never seen again after this Volume. I get the idea, because RT is trying to wrap up the Faunus subplot as quickly as possible, but the problem that you can’t exactly introduce new characters or hidden depths if you’re just gonna throw them out with the bath water.

If they wanted to end the subplot, why did they put all the effort in some random characters that are just gonna be defeated off screen with a tea tray? Then again, this is a problem endemic to RWBY. Introduce this character, then quickly shoo them away before you’re committed to writing a plot for them. If you know you were going to half-ass the White Fang conclusion, why bother with stuff like more White Fang members or the SDC brand? In fact, why bother with the White Fang to begin with if you’re going to do so little with them?

Episode 6

Moving on before I lose my cool, we have Qrow aimlessly walking around downtown Mistral. Now, the crew said that Maria was supposed to be here… But… Why? What purpose would she serve? If she’s just gonna be a “hey, look, cameo to foreshadow Volume 6”, then that’s a horrible purpose. You know how most Cinematic Universes tanked because they spent more time hyping the next twenty movies when they should focus on their pilot? That’s what she would have been like.

Not to mention that she would have been caught in the crossfire of why Volume 5 was bad. “So here we have this random old lady who doesn’t matter at all to the plot so why is she even there” and then “Oh wow, she’s a SEW. They’re doing damage control to justify her unneeded presence in Volume 5”. And, don’t get me wrong, Maria is a fun lady and all that, but there needs to be a reason she was there beyond “hype for next Volume”.

What makes the problem worse was that they’re planning to include Maria so as to have a sort of Yoda to teach Ruby. This makes the complaint of “why didn’t Ruby ask about the Silver Eyes” even more of a complaint because now it seems like they decided “hey, we’re going to address it next volume, so let’s not bother bringing it up here”. Which is even worse than “hey, people noticed we didn’t address this so let’s completely invent this character for the sole purpose of addressing it!”

And then there’s Raven who is all “lol, I know more than you realize but I’m not actually gonna answer anything trolololololol” AARHG!

Okay. Okay. Before I completely lose my marbles, there’s one thing about the scene with Raven that’s stupid.

It’s the “there’s no such thing as magic” thing.

Okay. I get it. Turning into a bird is something that, in the world of RWBY, seems impossible. But there’s a ton of problems with this:

What makes summoning dead Grimm to fight for you so much more different than magic?

You’re willing to believe in magic rocks that augment your fighting style and are in fact part of a company that profits off magic rocks, yet turning into a bird is the messed up thing?

The guy who gave her this ability is currently inhabiting the body of a young boy and has said to basically devour his soul in due time, as well as create the magic that’s responsible for torching your school and your friend… And the BIRD is the most messed up thing!?

“But Raven made it sound like she was forced into it”. She didn’t seem to have any fucking problem with it though. Not only that, but it didn’t seem like a big dark secret that Ozpin wouldn’t want uncovered. In fact, he even said he gave Qrow and Raven the ability to turn into birds in an amused way.

Even more so when everyone but Yang seemed to respond to it with disbelief rather than outright anger. There’s a reason this whole bird issue was made fun of in Jello’s “So This is Basically RWBY” video.

Also, before we move onto Episode 7, I wanna bring up that the scene where Qrow visits the Shields is perhaps the reason why I hold Ozpin’s censorship of Lionheart’s role in the Battle of Haven to be one of the most scumbag moves he could have made. “Your mom’s dead, but don’t worry, the guy who sold her out is a hero!”

Episodes 7-10

Right, back to Episode 7. Okay, I’ll admit, it was a nice reunion scene all things considered, albeit with some rather unnerving things like Yang asking Weiss if she let the Boarbatusk skewer the trophy wife or even the dumb, patronizing “we haven’t made character arcs for us to go through so I’ll just say we had some”, since they had the great idea to use Ren, who is voiced by Monty’s brother, as the mouthpiece for that.

Unfortunately, this is the episode I always think back to when I think of Volume 5. The perfect epitome of a slow, monotonous Volume. The problem I have is that, yeah, it’s meant to be this breather episode, a calm before the storm, but this just feels like a long lull that’s made even more insulting with the cliffhanger. All it has is people dumping exposition that viewers have either figured out or weren’t even burning questions and I think the awkward silence that followed Ozpin saying how he was the wizard that gave the Maidens his power is the perfect epitome for just how boring the volume is. The dude just revealed a massive plot twist and it’s treated as nothing more than a “did you know” factoid.

While I liked how they addressed that Blake leaving Yang would have had some serious negative emotions in Yang, it felt rather half-assed that they basically resolved it with “hey, my mom’s drunk, so shut up and accept Blake the moment she comes back”, especially since it comes from Weiss, who told Blake at the end of Volume 1 that if she ever runs away again, she best let RWBY know. If they wanted to ship Bumblebee so badly, this would have been a great hurdle for them to come across instead of just “hey, let me resolve this plot for you”.

Now, the whole thing with Ilia… Let’s get the elephant out of the way. The way they revealed her sexuality, I feel, could have been done better. “You wanna know why I’m gonna kill your parents and bring you to your abuser? Because I wanted you to look at me like a lover!” There’s a reason why some fans label her as a “psycho lesbian”.

However, I want to bring up that Rooster Teeth did an excellent job at building tension during the climax of the Menagerie Arc. Sure, the cliffhangers were tiresome, but you couldn’t help but admit you were at the edge of your seat and it even did a good job at subversion. Even if they allegedly didn’t even intend for it to happen.

The constant dryness of exposition and dialogue exchanges is what made Episode 10 so much better than the other episodes. Not just because it’s action-orientated, but because it finally tries to get back to the themes that it was originally supposed to tell. Throughout the entirety of the middle portion of Volume 5, the group basically took a backseat and allowed characters and plots to happen to them rather than advocate for themselves. The closest thing we got to the theme of “building yourself back up” is Weiss talking to Yang about Blake.

In fact, the only actual characters taking action are the villains. Constantly roadblocking the cast, setting them in for a trap, and even aiming to screw each other over. These guys have more advocacy and agency than the main characters. The most any of them did was…

Burn down their own house and blamed everyone else for it, all while saying that the house is the message Adam wants to send.

Use a girl’s unrequited feelings towards them to their advantage, straddle them, and guilt tripped her enough for her to consider switching sides.

Cry about how things are not going their way until their hands start magically glowing.

Yelling at someone until they cry bitch tears and then have them run away without even bothering to close the door leading to the dangerous artifact everyone had been working so hard to keep out of enemy hands.

In the volume where the theme is “solving problems on our own”. Just because Yang drops the word strength a few times when bitching out at Raven doesn’t mean that the theme had been accomplished. In fact, they do nothing of their own accord and just follow a script. Even Ozpin, the supposed smartest guy in all of Remnant, doesn’t even bother to figure out a way to counter the trap. Just instead walk in. Hell, if Yang didn’t spot Raven, they’d be mulched.

But, back on track. Episode 9 was an entire waste that failed to pay off the expectations of what we had with the cliffhanger set up in Episode 7. “But it subverted your ex-” NO. There’s a good way to subvert expectations and being promised a fight after episodes of bland exposition only to have it be “lol, no, it’s just gonna be more talking” is not a good subversion.

No. Here’s a better way. Set up the cliffhanger like normal, but don’t show Cinder’s dragged out negotiation with Raven. Instead, have her “allying” with Cinder be a twist. That way, people’s expectations for what happened are actually, you know, subverted?

The Battle of Haven

But, you know where this is leading to… The Battle of Haven. Really, I don’t think I can say anything that hasn’t been covered by someone else. We all know it makes all the Vytal fights look like masterpieces by comparison, we all know the jokes about useless Weiss or Lionheart hogging the staircase, or even the plot holes of Raven knowing Cinder’s arm being Grimm but doing nothing about it or Blake, despite spending the past volume saying how Adam must be stopped, suddenly doesn’t care about him…

So let me cut it simply:

The reason this battle sucks might have to do with the crunch.

We don’t know how long this issue with Rooster Teeth had been going on for, but if it is indeed what people say it is and that animators don’t get paid for the last quarter or third of their work, then that might explain all the cut corners animators and writers made. Why the fights are broken up into one on ones or why fights are cut out entirely. Maybe they weren’t getting paid enough and thus, the quality of RWBY suffered as a result of it.

And that’s perhaps the shittiest thing about the Battle of Haven. It could have been this epic fight that would have made up for all the boring, drawn out scenes of exposition and chatting, but because Rooster Teeth got too greedy or even because of our own impatience (which, again, isn’t helped by the aforementioned long, drawn out scenes), we are treated to a final battle so broken and tiresome that the Battle of Winterfell manages to be a better final battle, with the only thing holding it back being that Haven had a better identity twist.

And if, for whatever reason, it isn’t due to crunch issues, then we have another problem. This was meant to be this hyped up rematch between the heroes and villains, who haven’t seen each other since the latter ruined the lives of the former. This would have been excellent to see how the killers of Jaune and Ruby’s friends would interact with them, how Yang would react to the person who framed her, even how the group had grown since their last battle…

But… if crunch wasn’t to blame for the quality dip and the writers intended for the fight to go the way it went… I have to say… What the fuck were they thinking!? So many moments could have been brought up here and yet they decided that they weren’t important enough to focus on! And now, with this battle over and done with, those moments lost their luster. If they decide to bring them up, it’d be too little, too late at best and “why the fuck are you bringing this up now” at worst.

I’ll deal with one commonly used example to get what I mean. Adam was established in Volume 3 to be a threat only made strong because he uses Blake’s emotions against her and has a Semblance that lets him dish out aura-breaking damage. Blake easily defeats Adam and has him on the ropes, only to let him run with a few excuses that some people have debated to death and back, when it would have been much easier for Blake to have to choose between apprehending Adam and helping Yang. Then, when he inevitably returns to haunt Blake next volume, suddenly he’s a threat that Blake is afraid of again despite Blake having “grown” to oppose him.

They wanted that “triumph” over him, but realize that by doing so, they’ve burned that opportunity to have the triumph be meaningful. Same goes with Emerald and Mercury. They had a good opportunity for Ruby to effectively call them out for their crimes like how Jaune did to Cinder, but instead she just headbutts Mercury. Yang had at least some closure on her arc with Mercury, but it was meh.

The Point in All of This

Hell, speaking of wasted opportunities, the reunion of Team RWBY, something that the opening had hyped and one that the fans had been waiting for since Volume 3 ended, is nothing more than an afterthought. They couldn’t even be assed to show Blake’s first fight back with Ruby and Weiss. That’s how little they cared. It’s like everyone was just wanting to get that paycheck but they needed to rush that final episode out the door and also need to make room for Gen:Lock and Nomad trailers. They didn’t even care about the stinger, as they basically ignored any sort of information relating to the stinger.

Perhaps the biggest reason why Volume 5 sucked so hard was that it was running off the heels of Volume 3. Everyone basically accepted that Volume 4 was meant to be a breather Volume, with lower stakes and lower drama (with the exception of possible death flags for Ren and Nora), but the moment they made Volume 5 the grudge match everyone wanted, then the stakes got raised back to the heights of the third Volume, only for it to fail to live up to the expectations. Sorry, I think I mean to say “subvert the expectations” in this day and age.

Though, I think the huge problem with all of this, and perhaps the biggest bottom line I can say, is that it might be due to Volume 3 going too over the edge. By killing important characters and even dividing the team, the villains had raised stakes up so high, that people began to take the show more seriously. When characters were vaguely hinted to die, be it through threats from the villains or even flashbacks, people fretted that they would die. When the villains go back to striking distance with the heroes, people desired a grand battle. When the show tried to deal with the ramifications that happened with RWBY separating, people wanted to know what was going through the characters’ heads.

And when Volume 5 failed to deliver/“subverted their expectations”, people considered it a bad volume.

But worst of all, it failed to live up to its own themes. Jaune was the only person to build himself back up again through deus ex hands, and we saw next Volume that it needed a statue for him to feel better. No one was in a position of giving up only to be defiant and shout “we’re not done here”, but instead cry “it wasn’t supposed to be like this!”. The big problem of Volume 5, make sure the relic is secure, is only solved because two characters had a catfight in the basement and the survivor didn’t bother to lock up because their daughter was too busy bitching at her. No one really grew or strengthened their resolve. The triumph… wasn’t theirs to have.

Although, it seems Rooster Teeth had learned from their mistakes, with Volume 6 being leaps and bounds better than Volume 5, regardless of what you thought of the latter half. Best of all, the themes promised in Volume 5 were shown prominently in Volume 6, albeit some of the scenes capitalizing on those themes feeling more like a child is having a tantrum because they couldn’t have the airplane.

To close out this rather long winded discussion, and to give people a tl;dr on the whole matter, Volume 5 failed to address the themes it had presented and instead just padded itself out, expecting people to accept it because it’s RWBY.

#RWDE #RWBY #Volume 5

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