#OR WHY U BELIEVE OR EXPLAIN IT. OR WHY U CONSISTENTLY GO FOR CERTAIN CHARACTERS N SAY OTHERS DONT FIT.

[matoitech]

i rly did not think this was as complicated as ppl r potentially missing the post to be

#SOMETIMES. IT IS NOT 'TRANS ALLYSHIP' TO SAY THAT U THINK A MALE CHARACTER CANT BE A MAN BCUZ HE DOESNT LOOK LIKE A REAL MAN #SOMETIMES UR HCS CAN COME FROM A PLACE OF STEREOTYPES N R NOT INHERENTLY FREE OF CRITICISM #AND PPL R NOT SAYING 'NONBINARY HCS BAD' OR SOMETHING BY POINTING OUT THATITS THE WAY IN WHICH UR GOING ABT IT #OR WHY U BELIEVE OR EXPLAIN IT. OR WHY U CONSISTENTLY GO FOR CERTAIN CHARACTERS N SAY OTHERS DONT FIT. #THAT IS WHAT IS BAD. NOT THAT U THINK A CHARACTER IS NONBINARY. NONBINARYIFY AWAY JUST DONT BE SHITTY ABT IT

[oh-hush-its-perfect]

do you think there is any significance that alex's colour scheme is green and pink? or do you think rr went "u know what this character needs? to look like a watermelon"

((Prefacing this by saying that I'm giving RR way too much credit here, but you shouldn't take anything an author does for granted— even a serial author who often makes blunders and mistakes.))

A while ago I saw a (pretty unfair) assumption that RR made it green and pink because blue and pink would be too obvious, but that his intention was obviously to reinforce the gender binary by using two distinctly gendered colors for a character with two distinct genders. Of course, they did not phrase it so delicately. No offense to whoever made that post, but I disagree.

Although that may have had to do with it, there's other things to consider. One of them is color symbolism. And oh. OH. I ADORE symbolism— especially flower/plant symbolism (Language of the Flowers and all that jazz), seasonal symbolism (there's a reason that evermore is my second favorite Taylor Swift album), and color symbolism.

GREEN

Let's talk about green first. Green can symbolize a lot of different things, and there are a few that can be applied to Alex's character. The most obvious thing that green often represents is jealousy— hence the expression "green with envy." But envy is not really one of Alex's character traits. Feel free to argue with me if you think that Alex is significantly envious. Just because I couldn't think of substantial textual evidence for it does not mean that there isn't any.

One of the traits that Alex does have is wealth. Green is the color of American currency, and since both RR and Alex are American, it's safe to take an American lens while looking at this color. Alex's socioeconomic background effects her in a big way. I mentioned in a previous post that I think that Alex's fatal flaw is her sense of entitlement. That kind of entitlement is a quality not exclusive to but common among the upper class. However, her distance from her wealthy background enhances the sense of irony in the story, which is a VERY big thing that we NEVER talk about within the fandom.

This is kind of a little thing, but it's worth noting that when it comes to Valhalla and everything, Alex is "green"— as in new and inexperienced.

The color green also emphasizes Alex's connection with nature. This is one of the parts of Alex's character that the fandom consistently underplays, which is an absolute shame. I don't think I have to explain why the color green is associated with all things natural. Alex's association with nature provides a few key things to her character:

It makes her a more well-rounded character. Another criticism of Alex I believe is totally unfounded is that "being genderfluid is her only personality trait because it influences her philosophy on pottery, which is her only hobby." I'm probably going to make another post in, like, a few minutes about why I find that argument a little silly, but the primary problem is that pottery is not Alex's only hobby. She also loves camping, hiking, and ice wall climbing (I bet y'all forgot about that last one!)

It gives her a connection with Magnus. I mentioned in a previous post that Magnus and Alex are foils, but I neglected to bring up why that also makes for very good chemistry between them. Of course, yes, they have different goals and philosophy, which is what makes them foils in the first place. But foil relationships function best when the characters also share some traits. As it turns out, Alex and Magnus share several hobbies, and one of them is a mutual love for nature. This is a very unexplored thing in fics. Start doing it more plz.

Finally, and this one's kind of minor, but the Alex's green gives her a connection to Natalie. I know, whenever Alex and Natalie are compared, either in canon or in fandom, everybody kind goes "eww. Oedipus complex." Which is very fair and true. But they really do have a lot of similarites. The green of Alex's hair and clothes connects her to the green of Natalie's eyes. It's worth saying, too, that Alex has one amber eye— and amber is pretty close to dirty blonde, like Natalie's hair.

If I had more faith in RR, I might bring up the concept of intextuality and how Alex wearing green is an allusion to The Great Gatsby and how Alex is elusive to Magnus, just like Daisy is to Gatsby. But I don't.

PINK

To give credit to the person who wrote the post I mentioned at the beginning of this spiel, I do believe that part of the reason pink was used was to support femininity. Please keep in mind that Alex dresses in an androgynous way— not that there is an actually "gendered" way to dress, since gender as we perceive it is mostly made up. But Alex's existence as a transfemme person (which I will maintain until my dying day) means that pink has a certain significance to her. A lot of AMAB people embrace traditionally feminine things because if they don't, they will not be accepted as genuine women or genuine nonbinary folks, since masculine dress is unisex and kind of the default. So Alex wearing pink probably had something to do with her gender, yes. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it's certainly not an unrealistic thing.

Speaking of Alex's gender in relation to the color pink, let's talk about pink's use as a queer rights symbol. Alex was RR's first character to be introduced as a queer character from the start. This was not an insignificant thing, especially in the year of our Lord 2016 (which, despite popular belief, seriously had an entirely different landscape of queer rep. Though it's commonplace now to include genderqueer characters, it was exceptional at the time— especially by such an accomplished and mainstream children's author.).

Let's go back in time to Nazi Germany. Some of you might know this, but for those of you don't this transition must seem jarring. I swear there's a point. In addition to Jews, Romani individuals, people with disabilities, and Poles (among others), gay men were victimized by the Nazis. If you're wondering why lesbians weren't persecuted, it's because the Nazis didn't see them as a serious political threat, or as a threat to the perpetuation of the Aryan race since they assumed gay women could be forcefully impregnated if need be. Yeah, ew. Anyway, much like the Star of David being used to mark Jewish people, gay men were forced into concentration camps and forced to wear a pink triangle. Years later, after the gay population somewhat recovered, the pink triangle was reclaimed and used as a symbol for gay men. Some people who were not gay men used it, too, but that's somewhat controversial since it wasn't their symbol to reclaim. When the first pride flag was created, it had a pink stripe at the top to signify sex (this was later dropped so flags could be more easily produced). The pink triangle (inverted) was used during the AIDs epidemic with the caption "Silence=Death."

My point is that this is a very important color to queer folks. Having one of the first genderfluid characters in kid's lit wear pink...... I mean, it makes sense.

The last and final thing that pink represents, in this context and in general, is innocence. Granted, this kind of connects to feminitity since women (especially white women) are often infantalized and seen as innocent— which is another issue. In any case, the use of pink to represent innocence in Alex's dress is ironic. Alex has been robbed of her childhood innocence, first by her abusive parents, then by her life on the streets, and then by her eventual death at age sixteen. But then she actually regains her innocence. At the beginning of the—

Hold on. I just had a revelation. I'll make a post about it soon.

At the beginning of SotD, Alex is acting a little childish. The most obvious example is him jumping on Randolph's bed to "make noise." Alex's life is stable and relatively healthy for the first time in the years, and she experiences something that a lot of queer folks experience: a re-emergence of childhood at a late stage.

I imagine you didn't expect a post this long. I either make essay responses to asks or I add on one sentence and post it. Oops. Anyway, I believe the mcga fandom can be more creative than calling Alex a watermelon. Here are some other (kinda romantic) pink-and-green alternatives:

Roses

Dragonfruit

Grapefruit

Cherry blossom trees

#mcga #magnus chase #alex fierro #mcatgoa #magnus chase and the gods of asgard #sorry for the long response lol #thanks for the ask! I had a go of it!

[sweetsweetkpop]

Monsta X Nsfw Alphabet

Part 2 : Changkyun

Genre: Smut

Pairing: Changkyun x gender netural!reader

WC: 1.6k

Warnings: Mentions of Cum Swallowing, Mention of Bondage, Fingering, Mentions of Blood Play, Toys, Mentions of Overstimulation

Notes: This is for the anon who requested this of me~ so enjoy!

A = Aftercare

Changkyun is really sweet when he takes care of you. He probably already had water in the room and the moment he catches his own breath, he will get you whatever you need. He makes sure you are well before the both of you are sleep.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

His favorite body part for himself would most likely be his shoulders or abs. He has grown pleased at his efforts from working out, so he really likes both of those parts of his body. Also with the added benefit that his partner would really like them as well, especially with his back tattoo. Now on his partner, he’s an ass and thigh man. He would touch your ass and thighs as much as he can cause he is just addicted to it. Bonus points if it jiggles cause he would be mesmerized.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Kyun just cums a lot so take note of that. It has nothing to do with how long he has gone without masturabating or having sex, it’s just a lot which means a mess most of the time (but he cleans up afterwards don’t worry). He would love cumming down your throat though. That’s one of his favorite things to do especially if you up at him as he does and swallow it down. That’s gonna make him fall in love with you again.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Changkyun is honestly willing and down to try any type of sex position and kink just to figure out how it feels. Besides any of the more taboo and extreme ones, he would try it all. But he rarely says anything because he don’t know if you would be comfortable with it or he is afraid you might judge him for it, but he knows you wouldn’t do it. 

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

He has some type of experience. I think he had at least one long term s/o at some point. Maybe a couple one night stands but that’s it. He is kind of a natural when it comes to sex, so everything usually flows well with you two. 

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Changkyun would like them sitting positions, so something like this or this . Mostly because he get to easily kiss you and touch you when he can. He could kiss your shoulders and just tell you sweet nothings in that deep voice of his and would just enjoy hearing your reactions when he thrust up into you cause he’s a little shit sometimes

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

He can definitely be goofy, but not all the time. He does usually act more serious when it comes to sex because he’s a bit more focused on it all, but if something does happen, he will laugh or snicker about it and the mood wouldn’t be ruined at all.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

He trims low consistently to the point that you would think he just doesn’t grow hair fast down there.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Changkyun is romantic in his own little ways. While he could say sweet nothings to you all day long because who wouldn’t want that?, he would show it when he touches you. I see him holding your hands a lot or kissing your face with soft kisses while you both are getting hot and heavy. You can also really tell with the eye contact cause it just be so much love in that man’s eyes that you could be hypnotized by it.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

He doesn’t really have a actually schedule. He just do it when he feels like doing it. If he’s in a relationship, he can honestly wait until he sees you and when you both are in the mood

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

He would be down for bondage; on himself and on his partner. He loves the trust and vulnerability that goes into tying someone up. He also really enjoys fingering too. Cause when he’s fingering you, his mouth is free (unless he is giving oral) to kiss you and just dirty talk to you as he milks another orgasm from you cause he loves doing that.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Again, Changkyun is really adventurous and is willing to fuck in most places as long as his partner is find with it. He likes the rush and excitement of having sex outside, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy any sinful deeds inside the house. Anywhere in the house is fair game.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Kyunnie get’s turned on from a heat stare from his partner with some subtle teasing. That actually gets him going way quicker than you being blunt about it but he is fine with both. It’s just something about that slow burn that will just get him going.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

I feel like the one thing he wouldn’t seriously do with be blood play. He’s usually confident even with the things that he haven’t tried yet. But blood play is one of the few things he would hesitate with. He wouldn’t know the proper way to do it and would be too worried about doing that and it wouldn’t be a sexy for him anymore. 

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

While he does enjoy boy, he would admit that he really loves receiving oral more. He just loves looking down at you and watching you deep throat his length. He was praise you about, get heavy with the dirty talk and everything in between when you do it. He would also do the same thing between your legs too.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

His pace is spontaneous. It can be a fast pace or a slow pace. It could be sensual or rough. You really never know with him, but no mater what pace he does, you’ll most likely enjoy it.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He does enjoy quickies from time to time. He doesn’t care where they are and whether he initiates it or you do, he will look around before dragging you somewhere to fuck real quick and leave wherever you were and act like nothing happened.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

This man is fair game with the risk. He is honestly willing to try anything as long as your willing to so the same as well. You wanna try something new together? He is down for it. Wanna try having sex with the other members not that far away? He’s willing to hear the earful for doing it. Just let him know  and he’s most likely willing.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

I think he could go two rounds, but that second round might not be for the same duration as the first one. There isn’t really a certain time for how long he will go for, but he does enjoy foreplay, so that would explain why the first round is so long.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

This man loves using toys. You might want to be afraid if he actually brings out some toys when you both are getting hot and heavy. Like I said early, Changkyun can be a little shit and he will overstim the hell out of you, even when you beg. Better hope bondage isn’t involved or you won’t be feeling your legs much.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He loves to tease. The amount of teasing he will do will vary on his mood at the time, but best believe that he will tease you more often than you think.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

He does moan and groan in that low voice of his. It’s especially hot when he’s in your ear when he does it. Sometimes, he’ll have moments when he gets louder, but it wouldn’t be something that could get you in trouble with his members or neighbors.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Changkyun is the type of man to do those random thrusts that have him bottom out in you really fast and suddenly just to get a sound out of you. Then he would stay there. He would be completely bottomed out inside of you and stay there for however long he wants. He would stay there until his partner’s leg shook. Once he sees that, he’ll start a moderate pace again.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

Changkyun is above average. Maybe a good 6 to 6.5 inches. He has some veins around it, but they aren’t extremely prominent. Girth is a tiny bit above average, but it isn’t something that will stretch you out completely.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

His sex drive is a roller coaster. Sometimes it is high, sometimes it is low and sometimes it’s right in the middle. He really goes off of what his partner feels and there sex drive tbh.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

He’s up for a minute. He’ll probably stay up longer than his partner. He might go work on a sou=ng or something real quick before coming back to lay beside you because he knows that you would be upset if you woke up and he’s not there.

#kdiarynet #dee writes #monsta x headcanons #Changkyun headcannons #monsta x smut #changkyun smut

[crystal-moon-101]

Y and U? For the unnamed ask?

Y - What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?: I familiar with shows like Troll Hunter & Miraculous Lady Bug through a friend of mine, and I have been meaning to get into them, just a little busy and have a lack of energy 😅. I am also familiar with Yugioh (At least the earlier series), mostly because of the abridge and because I’m really into Season 0 stuff, as it’s more my kind of thing.

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites: Given you gave me three, I think it’s only natural for me to pick from The Secret Generator 10 trio, as I always up to talk about these three and what they mean to me. Of course, they’re hardly perfect character, but they all are special in their on way for me, and I thought I’d discuss why.

Rex: My favourite out of the three, with his show being my all-time favourite. Development, interesting background, mystery, angst, tragic, fun to watch, mostly consistent, amazing powers, and gets so much found family stuff going on, he hits a lot of marks of what I love to see in a character, and the same does do good enough of a job with him. Rex is a character that plays well with the concept of being a child soldier, having amnesia, and being the key to the larger story at hand, and the show still treats him like a real person, living and breathing, and not just a means to screw over every time they want to plot to work. 

He has many layers to him, at the start seeming like a cocky, daredevil, rule-breaking and rebellious teen, who you sometimes question he understands the weight of what is happening to the world and himself, but then you learn that he does understand, so much more than he lets on. While he is naturally charismatic and a jokester, you can tell he often puts up this mask of joy and playfulness just to make a dark world around him feel a little lighter, along with hiding how alone and scared he actually feels. Because well, who wouldn’t be when placed in a role like that? He knows very well he has powers tied to saving the die, even if he doesn’t fully understand them. He knows the danger the nanites and EVOs pose, but also knows the danger that humankind can pose if they’re not willing to listen to reason. When things do get tough, he knows when to cut the crap and be serious. He’s someone who knows the world isn’t black and white, even if he hates to admit it at times.

While we didn’t get to see much of it, I’ve always seen Rex as a part of three worlds. He works closely with normal humans, like Six and Holiday (As normal as you can be at Providence), and he understands how scared the world is, how scared every day people are that any second they or someone they love could turn into a monster and go on a rampage. And sometimes that hurts for Rex is that he often tries to connect to this part of the world, because he knows he was once part of it, and he thinks it can make him happy, but the obstacle blocking him is that he isn’t human anymore, and that many people are scared of him, even if he saves them. And yet despite all the harsh things people have said or done to him, Rex always comes back to be the hero, because he knows he can help and that there are people that need his help, and it’s commendable that he’s willing to put aside those issues to save the day, even if he doesn’t get a thank you out of it.

His second ties are, of course, to his EVO world. It’s interesting that, at the very start of the show, Rex use to have this view that everything EVO was wrong, most likely something he picked up at Providence, despite being one himself. He’s hesitant around them, and while he’s not one to kill, he’s often quick to think they’ll be a danger. And while he can be right about that most of the time, he does start to learn it’s not all that it seems. His Hong Kong friends, Circe, Breach, even someone like Biowulf eventually. He even eventually learns that, while he’s not normal, he’s not a bad person for being something not human. And it’s an interesting thought that while he’s one of the most human-looking EVOs, he can be considered one of the most dangerous, even more so than EVOs that look like overgrown monsters. His ties to the EVO world are what make him start to see the world isn’t black and white.

And then his third ties, kind of, are to his nanites and history. Despite how human looking Rex is, and that he is an EVO, he’s very much something different to both sides, a middle ground thanks to his connection to the nanites. It’s always fascinated me that something about him, out of anyone in the world, he has this tie to nanites that no one else has. That can be explained by a number of things, but I also like to think it’s also because of the person he is. I mean, you get someone like Black Knight who got similar powers to him, but you never see her have a level connection with them like Rex does. And that can be explained by poor writing, but again I like to tie it back to who he is as a person, and how the nanites have evolved to be around him. And with how long he’s been tied to him, they just feel like a natural part of him, even if he may reject it sometimes. And to have him be once part of the past that involved how the nanites came to be, it adds a whole another layer to this boy. I will admit the writing can get to him at times, sadly, especially around season 3, and we don’t get certain answers to question about him, but he’s still a great character in my eyes, with so much potential for the stories and ideas you can play around him. I respect him for his hope for wanting to do things a better way, and yet knowing that sometimes you have to do the hard and logical things to do good, even if it’s not easy to do. I could ramble on more, but I got to move onto the next one. 💙

Zak: Ah, my sweet cryptid boy, have season 2 gave you crippling anxiety. Zak I would say, out of these three, is the most consistent with his writing. He’s still the same cryptid loving, cool kid, with a passion for his job back at the start of things, but he also grows in a believable way over time, especially when learning what he really is. The twist with making Kur adds such a spin on who he is and how he feels in a great way that I love, because he was someone who was building up to be the hero of the story by everyone around him, only to learn that the supposed villain he was meant to fight was himself. I think one of the interesting things that The Secret Saturdays does is that it never really answers the question if destiny is real, and if Zak is meant to kill all humans. It’s a question left up in the air, and while there seems to be facts that say otherwise, the idea that this boy could kill all humans makes people scared or eager, making everyone say that his destiny is real, even if there is no proof. And because of this, it makes Zak fear and believes that it’s real too, that he is bad just by simply being Kur’s reincarnation, even if he hasn’t done anything that makes him bad. And yet, as easy as it would have been for Zak to just accept this, he doesn’t, he still plays the hero and goes out of his way to help those that need it. Because whether or not destiny is real, Zak is willing to fight it, and that makes a noble character. And while we don’t get clear answers about destiny and Kur, many of us get to play with the idea of what it means for Zak and this world he’s in. I personally thing that Kur’s history is more complicated than him being ‘evil’ as I’ve written before, but Zak is his own character, his own person, and it’s fun to see who he is, how he reacts and how he grows. I also love that, while he’s pitched as one of those classic kid/teen boys during the 2000s action cartoon eras, he does things you wouldn’t expect. While he can get into fights and combat and have fun with it, if he knows the fight endangers someone or a cryptid, he will always take it seriously. Like when they found the cryptid fighting ring, he was always disgusted by it and keeps repeating the notion that he wanted to stop it as soon a possible, even hating to have to put Fisk into the fight just to stall and get info. He clearly as a loving passion with cryptids and the world he’s in, and is always out there looking to see more to the story than others may see. He’s not quick to label someone as a monster unless he’s 100% certain that’s what they are.  And his family relationships are just golden, I love the Saturdays. It’s adorable how, instead of calling them pets, he treats Fisk, Zon and Komodo like his siblings. He respects them as equals, and while he can argue with them, he’s willing to listen and understand that they have their own needs and wants, and the four of them are always by each other’s sides. Drew and Doc, being one of my favourite couples of all time, have different relationships towards Zak, but both love and respect him very much. Even when they find out Zak is Kur, not once do they ever turn their back on their own child, and do everything they can to help him see he’s not a monster. Zak clearly looks up to them, and it’s great to see the growth they have by letting Zak spread his wings, and stop trying to be over-protective with him. And, of course, Uncle Doyle is great, in that he’s always respected Zak, even if he’s a child. He’s willing to be level with him, and push him when he knows Zak needs it, and the fact that Zak was the one in the family to be so quick to have him join is just so well done, as he never had a doubt that Doyle could be a better person. Zak love the world he’s in, and the beings and secrets that lay within it. Despite how it might push and hurt him, he’s often willing to get back up and show who he really is, that the labels that people put on him don’t define who he is. Despite how his world turned upside down with one sentence, he’s doesn’t give up.🧡

Ben: Oof, right...*Cracks knuckles* Time to get into the more iffy ones of the trio. Right away, I have no trouble saying that Ben has a lot of issues and flaws as a character. I have no issue denying that he can be an ass, and has done many dumb things. However, I’m not one to hate or fault characters when it’s the writing that screws them over. Because at his concept and core, the person he was meant to be, Ben is quite an interesting character. He’s not the standard hero with a cape, he’s very much flawed, can sometimes be a jerk and cocky often, and has been shown to be young and naive. But that doesn’t make him a bad person, in fact he adds an interesting element to the normal hero archetypes. When written well, he’s quite fun to follow and has quite the concept to play around with. Despite his outgoing and witty outside, Ben does go through a lot of crap ever since he got the watch. His teen years and parts of his childhood are mostly just dealing with the foes he’s made, and the troubles that comes with being the main hero of the galaxy, which is defiantly not an easy task to take. And yet he does it, he goes through all the dangers just to help people and the worlds around them. He’s often willing to stand back up and crack a smirk because he’s not one to give up. He sees hope, he sees potential and light beyond the darkness, and he wants to give others the chance to see that. And while his cocky nature can get in the way when written wrong, I do think it’s a trait that makes sense. People across the galaxy praise him since he was young, which can cloud his judgement, it’s a natural flaw that fits him as a character, and it has been shown he acts this way to hide how scared he really is. Cause I mean, with all that he has to fight, it is actually quite a struggle, so it is amazing to see just how much he takes and never backs down. He’s not a boring character to watch, he’s not a perfect hero that gleams in a golden light, he’s flawed and hows so many issues to tackle, but have a noble and bold side to him that you can respect. He’s been shown to bring people up, to teach and to guide, to take on the hassles of others just so they can get by in life. And while he does like the praise he gets out of it, you know deep down he does this because it’s good to just do good, even if it doesn’t benefit you always. He could have easily given up the watch and hand it back to Azmuth, but he never does. And his connection with alien and the watch have always been a personal interest with me, even if canon doesn’t delve much into it as they should. The thing with Ben is that he’s perfect for the watch, because he has no problem shaping into another being. And while it’s still Ben underneath, he does change parts of himself for the time being. And the reason he’s fine with this is because he sees life and potential with all the aliens he can be. He sees the different powers they hold and wants to show just what they can do to help, what the galaxy could build if they worked together. It’s funny that the omnitrix was build for peace purposes, and while Ben took it a different way than what Azmuth wanted, he found a way to make it work. I know other characters wouldn’t be able to handle the watch like this the way Ben does, even Albedo proves this by how he acts with his aliens, seeing them as nothing but tools while treating himself as the higher being, while Ben accepts what he turns into, and understands what makes certain aliens special.  Sadly, Ben is a tragic character when it comes to the poor writing and constant switch in series, as Cartoon Network can’t seem to understand what to do with him. But that does make him a fun character to work off of and write, and I’ve seen some amazing things in the fandom with what they’ve done with him. So I've seen hated Ben, because I often see his as wasted potential for the character he could have been, and he does have great moments that are canon that I love. 💚

#I did not mean to make this long #Whoops! #But I hope some of you enjoy my essay about these characters I love #Got too much to say lol #my answers #Ben 10 #ben 10 alien force #ben 10 ultimate alien #ben 10 omniverse #ben tennyson #ben 10 ben tennyson #generator rex #generator rex rex salazar #rex salazar #GR #the secret saturdays #secret saturdays #zak saturday #the secret saturdays zak

[joetatoeheads]

i read “if he wanted you he’d make an effort if he missed you he’d make time” and LOVED IT SM its so well written!! could u make an ilya imagine with some pre relationship angst like that one? thank u hehe

Word Count: 2.7K

Warnings: None that I can think of? But I am so sorry this took so long.

Masterlist

Natalie. It had always been Natalie. Natalie was David’s best friend. Ilya was Natalie and David’s best friend. Y/N was no one’s best friend. A mere side character in everyone else’s story and that was no problem. In Y/N’s opinion it was better to be heard than seen. Y/N had spent almost her entire life surrounded more beautiful, funny, and charismatic people, there was just no room for her to shine.

Life went on for the four and all of a sudden David’s in LA with millions of followers, Natalie joins him as his assistant, and Ilya stayed but it was obvious sometimes he wanted to leave to LA but Y/N was holding him back. Not in a bad way, but she would not leave to go to California out of all places.

“You’re leaving, now?”

“I have some business down there and David is letting me stay at his place.”

“How long are you going to be gone?” asked Y/N.

“Just a week or two. Hey when I can come back, we can go out and have brunch for your birthday.”

“Okay.” Smiled Y/N.

Ilya did not come back in time because David was shooting a bit for his vlog so Ilya missed his flight. Y/N spent her birthday with her mom who baked her some cupcakes and sung her happy birthday alone. It had always been the two of them so friends quickly became family. Y/N always got too attached to friends thinking they were like brothers and sisters but they never felt the same way.

For years Y/N would invite people over or go to the movies. Sometimes they came and sometimes they didn’t. So, the friend group got smaller and smaller over the years. David and Natalie left for LA and Y/N wasn’t too good with keeping in touch some days. Ilya was the only one left, the only consistent one.

“Do you think I should move to LA?” asked Ilya.

“What?”

“Do you think I should move to LA?” repeated Ilya.

“I-I…I don’t know.”

“David said I could crash with him for a bit if I want to get a place over there and I think I might do it.”

“You…you would leave like permanently?” asked Y/N.

“Maybe, I don’t know, I could. You could go to. We could go to David’s also Nat was asking me about you. They said it’s been months since you last talked to them.”

“It hasn’t been months.”

“David said it was and Nat showed me the messages. We should go! It would be good.”

“I don’t do planes.”

“I never said anything about planes,” smiled Ilya.

“Are you- are you suggesting you drive. I can’t drive, you know I can’t drive and…and we can’t drive across the country. You can’t drive across the country!” rambled Y/N.

“I want you to come to California and you have a fear of planes. Seems like the only option.”

“Oh my god! Oh my god! What the fuck Ilya! How long would it be like a week?”

Ilya laughed at her, “It’s a day nonstop but knowing you and your bladder might take us a week,” joked Ilya.

“Are you serious? Because I’ve always wanted to leave the state! Oh my god Ilya. I can’t believe we are going to do this.”

“We might have to bring someone else.”

Things just crashed, “Why?”

“Two maybe three days in a car across the country? Y/N we would kill each other,” laughed Ilya.

“I could not talk. Would that help?” It was a genuine question because this was the most fun Y/N would ever have.

“I was joking. I’ll call Natalie and see how long we are going to stay. Pack lightly my car isn’t that big!” Ilya left Y/N in a state of shock. A road trip across the country with a boy, her best friend, and she would finally leave the state. It was a dream come true.

Two weeks in California was not at all what Y/N expected. It took three days to get to David’s with Y/N wanted to stop to take a picture at every sign as they entered the state, her constant need to go to the bathroom, and wanting to take pictures at every beautiful sunset. At first Ilya was annoyed but it like the smile you would get and how your eyes lit up whenever you jumped up and down ready to take out your phone.

You both got to David’s house around 4 in the morning but you had already knocked out. Ilya was the one to carry you into the house and lay you down on the couch.

“She looks so different,” observed David in slight worry.

“It’s been a rough couple of months. Her mom got sick and…”

“Oh…oh okay. She just- she looks so…I don’t know.”

“The trip really made her happy,” assured Ilya.

“Good, that’s good. I had Natalie fix up the room I thought - I don’t know what – You two are sharing a bed.”

“Are you okay?” asked Ilya.

“Yeah, yeah I just…I didn’t think she would come.”

“Dude you’re acting like she’s dying or something. Are you okay?”

“Does Y/N have a boyfriend?” asked David.

Ilya did not expect that, “Uh…yeah, I think she does.” That was a complete lie. But Ilya didn’t think Y/N would want to start dating in such a hard part of her life.

“Really? Matt thought she was pretty and asked if she was seeing anyone. I told him no, but I’ll have to text him later.”

“Matt King? They wouldn’t work out,” said Ilya.

“Really? I thought they would. Y/N always gravitated toward certain men.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Y/N likes strong men-“

“Matt isn’t strong.” Interrupted Ilya.

“Not like that. Y/N always had you to protect her our entire lives and she just needs someone to protect her.”

“Matt wouldn’t do that.”

“How do you know?” asked David.

“Because Matt would get frustrated easily with her. You know how he blows up on everybody else whenever he is told he’s wrong. Y/N takes time to understand. Remember how you hated her?”

“I didn’t hate her. She was just very straight forward…I wasn’t used to that.”

David and Ilya went to sleep while Y/N was still on the couch. What they didn’t know, Y/N had been awake while they talked. She had heard everything and she didn’t know what to think. Ilya lied to David and she could tell him the truth but what good what they do.

The next day when the four of them were talking before the rest of the group came, David accidentally mentioned a boy when Natalie asked Y/N if she had a special someone in her life, “Sort of.” Answered Y/N.

“Sort of? So are you two friends with benefits or something?”

Y/N briefly looked at Ilya before turning her full attention to Natalie, “I don’t think he wants anything serious. It’s…weird.”

“You don’t deserve to be lead on.” smiled Natalie. She protected Y/N in her own way. A sister type that Y/N never had.

“I don’t think it’s being strung along maybe just... waiting for the right time? Does that make sense?”

“Sometimes there is never a right time. Sometimes you have to make one.” Said Ilya.

Ilya and Y/N looked at each other, almost like the two wanted to say something more but didn’t. Then would have been the perfect time for Y/N to say she has been in love with Ilya ever since David left in California. Y/N only had him left and maybe it was simply a childhood attachment or maybe it was love, either way she knew something was there.

For Ilya she was the first one by his side when things got rough or whenever he got happy news, Y/N had been the first person he thought about. For him, maybe it was his mind tricking him into settling, but to be with Y/N was not settling entirely. If some guy wanted to be with Y/N the only thing Ilya could think about was that he won’t be kind to her. He won’t be patient and understand how picky she is about everything and it’s not because she wanted to be frustrating or complicated but because it made her calm.

Who knew if the new guy was going to understand that?

The conversation changed and it was maddening. To think something but not have the courage to say it… that’s one of the saddest things to happen to a person. Days later Ilya watched as Matt asked Y/N on a date. He kept his mouth shut even though everything felt wrong but she was happy. She could not stop smiling after the date and her face would get all red at the mention of Matt’s name.

All Ilya could think about was it didn’t feel right.

“Does she know?” asked Natalie one night. David was in his room editing with Joe and Ilya was on the couch looking at his phone every ten seconds thinking Y/N was going to text him.

“Know what?”

“That you have feelings for her?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Y/N’s on her third date with Matt and you are going crazy looking at your phone. What, you think she’s going to call you and ask you to pick her up from her horrible date?” asked Natalie.

“…Maybe.”

“I doubt the date is going all wrong. Matt spent a week preparing the night.”

“What?! What is he preparing for? What do you think they are doing?” asked Ilya in a slight panic.

“He didn’t tell you?”

“No! Nobody tells me anything anymore!”

“He made like a candlelight dinner in the backyard. He went all out with steaks and stuff,” explained Natalie. Ilya laughed. He didn’t know. “What?” asked Natalie.

“Y/N doesn’t eat meat. She’s been a vegetarian for some years now because meat makes her throw up.”

“Really? I always feel like she eats meat whenever we go out?”

“She eats it sometimes but it makes her sick after. Steak makes her sick for a couple days like a really bad hangover.” Explained Ilya.

“I’ll be sure to remember that.” Nodded Natalie as she left him alone on the couch.

Y/N did come back to David’s and she immediately looked for Ilya in a panic. She looked like she was about to cry.

“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” Ilya was panicking thinking the worse possible scenarios in his head.

“I ate steak. I ate meat! I feel sick. I feel like throwing up. Oh my god, I feel like dying!”

“Alright let’s go into the bathroom.”

It only took seconds before Y/N was throwing up and apologizing for throwing up. It was typical for her. Years spent in the background, to be anyone’s center of attention, it felt uncomfortable.

“What do you need me to do?” asked Ilya.

Y/N couldn’t talk. She felt gross, she didn’t know what she was supposed to do after this. Do you take medicine? Do you rehydrate? Do you eat again? Do you sleep it all off? All those questions made Y/N start crying.

“I’m sorry.”

“You really don’t have to say that. It’s a really bad habit.”

“I could not, not eat it. He made it.”

“You have the right to refuse something, especially when it makes you sick.”

“But…what if he thinks that I’m not worth the trouble? What if he thinks I’m too picky about things and leaves?” asked Y/N.

“Picky is one thing, but something like meat making you physically sick is not being overdramatic or anything. You should speak up more.”

Y/N nodded but she didn’t think it was right. It someone took the time to make you something, you can’t just turn it away. That would be bad. Ilya helped Y/N into a bed and took care of her the next day but he was itching to go over to Matt’s and talk to him. David had talked him out of it, but he did go to Matt’s several days after.

Before Matt and Y/N’s fourth date, Ilya went over to Matt. It was an awkward conversation but Ilya was ready to burst out with all this information.

“What’s up?”

“She can’t eat meat! It makes her sick but she likes chocolate. Buy her chocolate and she’ll be happy. It’s one of her favorite’s things in the world but don’t buy her a lot of it. She likes chocolate-covered strawberries but hates chocolate cake because she thinks it’s too much and it also makes her sick. She loves ice cream but none of that fancy stuff with a bunch of flavors or nuts. Y/N likes strawberry flavored stuff the best and her favorite ice cream is butter pecan but that will never be her first choice so you have to pick it out and she’ll love it.

When you take her to new places, you have to be by her side. Sometimes you’ll have to order for her if she keeps on flipping through the menu because she’s indecisive at new places. But if you order for her, you have to be careful because if you mess up and chose the wrong thing, she won’t say anything and make herself sick. And don’t leave her alone or she starts to freak out and might have an anxiety attack or a panic attack. You should learn the difference because she’ll want to be hugged during a panic attack but she’ll want to be alone for hours after an anxiety attack.

And comedy isn’t her thing. She feels awkward during romantic comedies so you should only really watch horror movies, they’re her favorite. But she’s picky about what movies she likes. They either have to be really bad that she can’t stop talking about it or really good that she can’t stop talking about it. If you watch something with a lot of jump scares expect her to come to you because she will get nightmares.

If she’s quiet she’s replaying things in her head and that makes her really sad so you have to watch out for those things. Be careful what you say because she’ll replay the conversation over and over again in her head for months, sometimes even years. It might seem like a lot but it’s worth it. She…she’s worth it.” Ilya took a deep breath and rather than stay and listen to Matt he left and pretended like things never happened.

“Ilya did you… did you talk to Matt?”

“Uh, yeah I did.”

“What did you tell him? He called off our date.”

“I just told him you got sick and you don’t eat meat.” Answered Ilya.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah.”

“Ilya.”

He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t tell her the truth. “We should stay for another week or two.”

“Okay.”

Another week or two for Ilya was only a couple of days for Y/N. She wanted to leave. She wanted to get away from California and return back to her life. California was not for her, it was foreign, it was wrong. Even with her fear of planes, Y/N wanted to leave so a plane was her only option. Years in a big city, she had always relied on public transport so learning to drive never was a top priority.

Waiting for a car to leave in the middle of the night wasn’t what Y/N wanted to do. Only Natalie and David knew she was leaving but not like this. When Ilya woke up the next morning he looked for Y/N to ask her what she wanted for lunch but he couldn’t find her.

“Natalie! Where is Y/N?”

“She left.”

“Left? Left where?”

“Back home. She wanted to leave last minutes and her flight was really early this morning so she left around 4.”

“Flight? She can’t go on a plane she’s afraid of them. How long ago did she leave.”

“She’s probably home by now. It’s too late.”

“Late? No its not! She probably had a panic attack; she needs someone to calm her down. I have to go. I have to go make sure she’s okay.”

“Ilya, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Said Natalie.

“Why?!”

“Because you always being there isn’t always a good thing.”

“You two left, okay! You two left and she couldn’t get out a bed for months! I was there! I was there and she needs me.”

Ilya didn’t mean to yell at Natalie like that but he was upset. Y/N would never just leave without telling him. For years, it was the two of them going through life but now it seemed like he didn’t have Y/N anymore.

When Ilya returned to Chicago, Y/N pretended like LA didn’t happen. Things returned to normal but Ilya didn’t tell her anything. It was a horrible thing to have something to say and not have the courage to say it.

#vlog squad imagine #fanfiction #Ilya Fedorovich Imagine #Ilya Fedorovich X Reader

[dayables]

4 and Shin? That's a dark one, but you write him well so I'd trust you with it. If you want something lighter instead, 17 for Shin!

Thank you for asking this! As you can see, I got into a very deep ramble about his life pre-death game and it doesn’t really tie in but I’ve kept it there :)  The last few parapraghs are the actual answers ahaha. Play some sad music in those paragrapths because I nearly cried with halloween music in the background.    4) What they would do if they had one month to live.   If Shin had one month left to live? We see it in the game kind of. Or at least kind of. Obviously imitating your ‘scary friend’ most likely abuser to try and turn everyone against your biggest threat isn’t going to work in real life. 

What the game and his 0.0% score does tell us (or heavily shove in our direction so we infer it) is that Shin is petrified of certain death to the point of desperation.

I do believe/headcanon that he is a very logical person. Almost everything he does is backed up by logic in the death game except for his last moments because screw logic that’s never worked before.  (The opposite of Keiji who’s likely very emotional until his potential last moments but this isn’t about him). So the question is, when did Shin’s last moments begin for him?  As the player, it’s when it’s that final choice between him and Kanna. To Shin this is likely a very different response. His last moments start the very second he gets told he’s doomed to die. Almost all of Shin’s choices in the game are emotional. Trusting Sara or at least earning her trust is the logical choice here. Making yourself her enemy because you are scared is the emotional one. He just lies to himself on the basis that she’s untrustworthy. Which, you can trick yourself into believing is logical.  It triggers a kind of flight or fight response in all our characters when they realise they can die here. All the cast barr Shin choose to fight and try and escape. Shin chooses the flight option here. Nothing he does actually prevents his death in the end. He just runs away from the inevitable doom. 

 I am once again inferring by comparing him to rest of the cast the death is a deep rooted trauma (and I definitely have thoughts on why). While the concept of death is one that scares everyone, no one seems to revel in it the way Shin does. He is living an incredibly safe life. A free lance programmer (by the sounds of it)  which earns an average of £60 an hour. He has a side job at a convenience store (that wasn’t a lie). He doesn’t leave his apartment much meaning he doesn’t have much of a social life. Shin is in a position in life where it’ll be near impossible to hurt him. Obviously he isn’t earning 60 quid an hour, but he has the potential too. Once he’s set up and successful, he’ll be able to die old. Alone, maybe not happy, but old.  For a guy likely in his early to mid twenties, things are bound to change but only as much as he lets them. From one person who will happily spend all their life in their own company to another, Shin isn’t going to change that. Not when he’s too scared to let someone past arms width and will avoid doing so. By the time he gets his game together and his skinny self to therapy it’ll likely be too late to make the same connections he has the chance too at his current age.  It’s not emotional because even the most introverted of introverts desires a life all alone. It’s a logical one for the fears and life he has. I don’t think that means he isn’t happy. It just thinks there’s a potential that he could have been happier. 

For Midori to have gotten as close as he was and no one to pull up the red flags his friends either didn’t care or didn’t exist. Most likely the latter seeing as he is very much in the process of mourning three years after his friends death. He likely wasn’t close enough to his parents to feel he could go to them over something as silly as Midori’s death. In the aftermath, Shin will be confused and muddled. In some ways, he’ll be elevated because he is free, he can move on. In other ways he’ll be lost, devastated and empty. Shin will also have a semblance of independence back. He doesn’t think he shows enough gratitude to his parents for materialistic items. Midori’s abuse was likely emotional or verbal. It probably consisted of vague threats, put downs, anger, power dynamics and a shrug at Shin’s emotions. I’m in no way a professional but after years of this Shin is going to think his emotions are something he should be able to handle himself, something he might not be able to do if he started to repress them in his teens. Shin likely has a warped sense of independence. Instead of being free from others control, he’ll likely think it means he can’t get help and must deal with everything alone. 

Being told that his death is round the corner strips two things that he values most away from him. He now has zero control over his life and worse, it ends with him dyeing. Shin would grasp for straws to have that independence back and therefore escape his own death. If he couldn’t get his independence back then he’ll try and avoid the end outcome. 

His last month would be a goose chase to avoid death. There’d be a list of everything he has to do. Fuck his jobs, fuck debt he needs to get to the hospital. Get checked up! Make sure he’s well. He’d do it everyday. Does he have enough medicine? Wet wipes, stock up on healthy food, hand sanitizer? Does he have enough hand sanitizer? Make sure his room is squeaky clean, don’t let anyone in, don’t answer the phone. Bolt the windows and live off ramen and debt for the rest of the month. Beanie on, beanie off, what is he going to die from? Has he prevented any possible cause? He’s forgotten to call his parents. That’s fine because he shouldn’t be dyeing anyway. It’s logical. It’s all logical. This is not his fear of death speaking through everything he is doing is logical! Now he just needs to figure out what’s causing this all? How did that person know? Then on the last day. He’d just give up. He’d finally pick up that phone and call his parents. He’d thank them and explain. He’d apologize for the debt because he’s swimming in it then he’d hang up. Shin would then proceed to cry in bed all day and trying to sleep so he just doesn’t wake up.  Then, while it’s a tragedy, I think he’d accept it. I don’t think he ever really thought he had a chance but his emotions drove him round and round in circles. Maybe he would regret his whole life and look back on it all. In a none death game scenario Shin seems like a brooder. He doesn’t have Kanna to live for so he has no reason to push forward. I think in the end he’d reach the conclusion his life was pretty pointless. Just as he’d slip from consciousness I imagine he’d think of Midori. Nearly everything we know about Shin seems to revolves about Midori . We, the player, never know him before the guy entered his life. That guy has a big impacts in his life and in a world where that was the only person to leave such a big mark? I think he’d go back to Midori. Especially with nothing to distract him from his mourning. 

It’s quite sad really. He lets his fear control him too much. Midori controls him too much and they’re both aware of that fact. But in the short, Shin would try and avoid his death. Hell he’ll likely die of exhaustion or caffeine overdose

His ending in the main game, I think that’s the best way Shin could have gone at that age. Dying for Kanna and letting go of his cynicism. 

Ending this off with 17 because I need that jokeness now, after all that. 

17) What would they sing at Karaoke? 

Everyone expects Shin to like bang out with some Beyonce or something. Maybe one of those silly little disney parodies. Everyone would make a joke about what he should sing because he’s indecisive as hell. 

Keiji Kai and all of those mature adults suggest Single Ladies,  Mr. Brightside,  Fireworks, Wannabe because classic Karoke songs you actually have to be able to sing when Shin 100% can’t? Count them in! 

Midori would suggest something embarrassing he knew wouldn’t even be funny to watch. Just painful. 

Gin, Sara, Reko and Alice are snickering behind their hands as they suggest Poor Unfourtunate Souls,  How Bad Can I Be (Alice ended up doing that one), The oogie boogie song and the price Ali reprise. 

When he refuses Sara refuses to let him get away with not being painted as some corny villian and dedicates her singing of Cruella De Vil to him.

Then Kanna taps on his shoulder and tells him what to sing and A: It’s Kanna’s suggestion B: It’s not and a bonus C if he’s drunk: He gets to whack a certain police officer and teacher with a hockey stick. 

And my inner theatre Kid shines through as he I say Shin sings Revolting Children and can’t get his letters write, drunk or sober. 

‘R e v o t l i n !’  instead of ‘ R E V O L T I N G’ 

‘S P L L!’ instead of ‘ S P E L’ 

‘TOO LATE FOR YOU?’ Instead of  ‘ 2-L-8-4-U ‘

I kid you not I have knows this song for years and I still struggle. You can not do that spelling rhythm first time. 

Also the lines. The lines!   We will become a screaming hoard.//Take out your hockey sticks and use it as a sword.// Never again will we be ignored.//We'll find out where the chalk is stored// And draw rude pictures on the board.

It’s such a childish song but it’s so hard. He struggles and struggles and one day he will get it because it’s so simple and why can’t he do it roght! Also, it suits him. Sue me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6PXm34OBP8

#well this is sad #Press F for Shin #I swear i started rambling #IDK man he gives me hermit vibes #Also like karoke #thanks for the ask! #I told myself this'd be a quick write up because the answer is so simple #This is why Im failing English. #I go in rambles like this #Stan Kanna and what she does for Shin #yttd #meta #shin tsukimi #Sou Hiyori

[astrologista]

jason stop dying

ooooook i just watched ditf. it was PRETTY GOOD.... i only wish there was MOOORE! watching this REALLY brought me back to 2011 times to see it and i think they did a good job with most of the character design and animations insofar as matching it to the original. (maybe i’m totally wrong but i thought it looked good for the most part... also i just really love these character designs in particular). obviously the budget is not what it would be on a feature, so there are a LOT of places where animation gets recycled and many still frames. some parts are basically a slideshow lol. but i only sort of came to that realization awhile after watching, so i think they did a fairly good job of masking this... ymmv

so let’s get into it!!! 

SPOILERS a-head! do not read until you’ve watched it because i’ll spoil everything

now obviously the thing to be aware of if you are not is the fact that this adaptation is not a panel-by-panel adaptation of the original death in the family comic. all references to jason’s mother (save one mention of her dying of illness) are completely removed, they go to bosnia instead of africa, and the circumstances around jason leaving are also heavily altered to fit the new narrative. this adaptation does slot perfectly into the universe established by the under the red hood animated movie from 2011 though, without which one would be pretty confused when watching this. it’s kind of a mystery as to why they didn’t just package this with utrh and release the entire thing as a collectors edition. instead they package it with like 4 or 5 unrelated dc showcase shorts which makes absolutely 0 sense but go off i guess. anyway

i liked that they took the time to adapt the scene from the original ditf where bruce is talking to alfred about jason! (i do not like that alfred didn’t get any lines. bad choice). tbh i can’t understand why they bothered showing us alfred, barbara and dick if they weren’t gonna give them any lines..... like come on........??

HOW INTENSE BRUCE LOOKS WHEN HE FINDS JASON IN SARAJEVO and just. grabs him lol. hes smad :)

ok so one two skip a few and we get to the first branch. instead of calling 1-900 we now get to choose whether jason lives or dies. there are 7 possible endings i think i got em all so let’s see what we got here.

“Hush” Route - Robin cheats death

hgrgdggr. i definitely think this is one of the more interesting endings, if not the most interesting one. this is also the only ending in which both bruce and jason survive the bombing. bruce is still too late, but this time jason barely clings to life and survives. as a hurt/comfort fan i was 100% on this shit from the word go but then jason? runs away from home lmao lmao i thought that was SO funny because 1) hes super messed up, how is he able to just literally run out the house that is SO funny to me and 2) implying that bruce would ever not be keeping an eye on him after that is just, lmao. it’s so zany. i call this the “hush” route because of the bandages but there are no other references to hush so ok. that’s fair. so anyway jason is now angsty for loosely explained reasons but the most fun part is yet to come.

when talia showed up, i really thought / was terrified for a second that they were gonna bring up certain “events” regarding damian’s parentage / who damian’s father is but then she mentioned bruce and i was like OH THANK GOD WE CAN STILL GO TO HEAVEN. i am so so grateful to the writers for NOT going there. cuz it was damn close ok. im not sure what the implication of this route is in terms of talia, jason and damian being a family unit but i want to believe talia sees jason as a son and damian’s brother (which is how she refers to him, damian’s brother) and not... yknow. i mean. jason raising a baby is kind of like a baby raising a baby...

no actually the reality of this scene is really dfuckin interesting like. they actually go with the “birth of the demon” (forget if it was birth of the demon or bride of the demon. one of those.) explanation for damian and that is something i’ve NEVER seen adapted so whoever wrote this can have a cookie and i kNOW this is something a certain someone will appreciate :)

not only that but the implications? are interesting? so talia’s claim is she miscarried so bruce won’t have to “choose” between damian and jason and idk if she’s supposed to be all on the-up-and-up in this universe but. i’m sitting here like GIRL YOU DON’T GOTTA DO THIS HE HAS A PRIVATE JET HAVEN’T YOU HEARD OF SHARED CUSTODY and BETTER YET HE HAS A MANSION JUST GO ON MAURY AND GET THIS SORTED OUT RIGHT NOWwwww

i’m also LAUGHING at the implications of jason thinking theres anywhere on earth that he’s going to go and hide damian’s existence from bruce. because you already know he’s just going to be tearing the planet apart looking for jason so this is actually hilarious. imagine he finds jason in one piece and also a baby. his baby. he’d be like (@ talia) “OMG WHY WOULD YOU THINK I WOULDN’T WANT THEM BOTH u are tearing me apart talia......” BUT THEN HE WOULD BE SO FREAKING HAPPY BECAUSE HE HAS TWO ALIVE SONS AND HE THOUGHT THEY WERE BOTH DEAD / (lost to crime)!!!

please lord imagine all of jason’s angst probably just originating from the fact that he has a brain injury that hasn’t fully healed and the trauma of going through all those surgeries probably gave him a lot of fear / paranoia about bruce and associating him with the joker because his neural pathways are all messed up but after he leaves he starts slowly healing back and regaining some of his lost sanity and thats when he realizes he misses bruce so much... but hes also raising his child... and every day it gets more difficult for him not to just take damian and bring him home and i ;v;

anyway i thought this route, while it had a few inconsistencies in it, was really freaking interesting and it gave me feels and plot bunnies and is probably the one i want to write about the MOST despite the fact that baby damian looks like a character from one of those web flash games in this lol

“True” End - Jason Dies

now if you select that jason dies the route basically defaults to the canon of under the red hood and the fact that utrh does not come packaged with this movie is a rather mystifying choice to me as i don’t think this adaptation would stand on its own very well. like you need quite a bit of background to really get anything out of watching this on its own, which is probably why it’s classified as a “short” and not as its own movie.

instead of showing all of utrh, it seems they took the opportunity to give a ~30 minute recap of utrh with basically entirely reused animation but they allow bruce to sort of. give his dvd commentary over it.

the biggest feeling i have on this is that it’s sad that they had to waste 30 minutes like this that could’ve been used to do something new and much more interesting, but honestly i’m not mad. it seems kind of obvious that this choice was probably made for budget and/or runtime reasons because a short does not get the same budget set aside as a full length feature film does. so they basically took the option of recycling 30 minutes of animation from the movie and dubbing new audio over it.

in evangelion they ran out of budget and that’s why the last two episodes consist of nothing more than still pencil drawings and frames while the characters engage in philosophical debates concerning the nature of reality and human connection. and i really enjoyed that. and for the same reasons, i also really enjoyed this.

i enjoyed seeing the clark kent of this universe. i enjoyed that he was basically out on a date with bruce. i enjoyed that bruce was willing to open up for once and tell clark all of what happened with jason. but what really makes this segment shine bright are bruce greenwood’s line reads. there are SO MANY good line reads in here. and i LOVED how many times he said the word “son”. very wholesome. the way he describes how he felt during the final fight with jason? probs my favorite FUCKING part.

and then him and clark joking together about contingency plans and then they’re going to work together to find jason and i ;_; this is probably the closest thing to a “good” ending but as a continuation of utrh i thought it worked really well. i really want to believe that bruce and clark did find jason in this route and that there was some closure in the end even though we didn’t get to see it.

including clark in this was DEFINITELY the right move as well, considering that he played a rather large role in the original ditf so it’s a welcome nod.

The rest of the branches exist under a separate option where Bruce makes it in time to save Jason from the warehouse... but Bruce dies......... :O

let me tell you bout it... bruce’s fucking DEATH SCENE i don’t know WHAT my man bruce greenwood is on, but the freaking LINE READS in this dialogue had me making INHUMAN NOISES. LIKE NOT ONLY WAS THE DIALOGUE GOOD, NOT ONLY DID HE SAY “I LOVE YOU, SON”, but this man is just an amazing actor. not just voice actor, but actor. he really really really really gave it the most i don’t know how else to say it....... it was very very well done and punched me sideways in the heart and i haven’t recovered and i’m not going to recover. and

ok so once we get past that.... scene.... u have to choose whether you’re going to catch the joker or kill the joker. bruce asks jason to promise not to kill the joker but technically jason doesn’t promise so........

Let’s start by choosing to kill the Joker. Jason attends Bruce’s funeral and various members of the Justice League show up to talk with him and just generally hang out. He has Alfred, Dick and Barbara as his support system, but Jason has some other plans.

This leads to a scene in a cafe where Jason meets with a man who... something something Killing Joke, flashlight, more Barbara being used as a plot device when she deserves better, Jason kills the Joker with a butter knife.

Once you do this you can choose to surrender to the police, or retaliate and escape.

Jailbird Ending

basically if you surrender to the police jason ends up in prison where he can actually attack even more criminals so.... ya

If you retaliate and escape instead you go to the Red Robin route where Jason becomes a vigilante who kills people much like the Red Hood and you get a further choice in a fight with Two Face where you can control how Harvey’s coin lands. 

Tim Ending!

If you choose the coin to land clean face up, the thing rewards you by having Tim show up and I forgot what happened (wasn’t really paying attention lol) because i was so focused on TIM!

Prolly they felt sorry for him what with Jason stealing what is essentially his outfit (ok I know it was Jason’s first, but Tim made it cool) so they let a little baby tim have an appearance :) he’s very smol

I guess in this ending Jason gets reintegrated with the family somehow and Tim becomes “Bat-kid” which is hilarious to me but you know what it’s cute. CUTE.

The one ending where the coin lands scarred side up

i honestly forget what happens if you choose to have the coin land scarred side up but let me just say this is a FUCKED route to take, not only have you had jason survive and bruce die, you’ve now chosen to kill the joker against bruce’s dying wish, you’ve chosen to attack the police, and at the end of that you really are gonna choose harvey’s coin to be scarred face up???? choosing this made me feel like a DICK because here i am supporting jason’s whole fall to madness and villainy thing the way it wants me to and now he’s gonna die HERE? i hate it here.

interestingly enough he doesn’t actually die in this route. he ends up at home with barbara and dick while dealing with the fact that he killed the joker but the route ends with jason saying “i promise” so i guess this is supposed to be kinda sad. im so confused lol ok

So that is all the options if you choose to kill the joker, I believe. You can also make the choice to just catch him instead of killing him but amazingly enough, those routes are even more FUCKED up. 

If you do this option Jason goes home, mourns Bruce with Dick, Barbara and Alfred, and becomes Red Hood BUT with a twist, he’s entirely on a bloodless operation in line with Bruce’s wishes. OR.... IS HE?

Things then follow the events of UTRH until the scene on the bridge with the van and the guys. Jason finally confronts Joker, who reveals the truth. 

Apparently in this route Jason has actually been killing and decapitating his victims just like in the original movie, but he’s repressed it so as to not even realize to himself that he’s doing it.

that is FUCKED. also. i wanna cry because jason doing all of that stuff but not even realizing it ;------; jason blocking it out, because he wanted to honor bruce’s wishes for him not to kill anyone ;______; but he’s doing it anyway ;_____; he’s actually hearing voices telling him to kill ;____; like it’s a very cheap twist in a sense and also really quite cruel but.... damn, son.

There is a branch here where you can choose to spare or kill the Joker at this point (UNDERTALE???) but from what I can tell it seems to be totally meaningless what choice you pick because you end up at the exact same point either way, I think there’s a small variation in what happens after you make the choice but after that they just coalesce back together into the following two endings. Which seems incredibly cheap to me, I mean making a choice like that should alter Jason’s path completely but, it doesn’t! So... ooook....

Either way Jason ends up on the Wayne building and Talia shows up with a re-animated Bruce from the pit. Here’s another fun blast from the 2011 past with more gratuitous Grant Morrison dreck, remember that shit? Well, they’re gonna jam it down your throat here, too.

The reanimated Bruce is the Zur En Arrh Bruce and he’s already dead so this is all meaningless but basically Jason fights him and you get to choose whether everybody lives or dies.

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Lives!

if you pick this, jason actually gets the re-animated bruce back to the batcave and they lock him up down there because he’s still pit-mad and the prognosis is not great. but i’m not sure what they expected, he is the zur-en-arrh guy so I don’t think he’s getting better. 

Zur En Arrh - Everyone Dies!

pretty much there’s an explosion and all three of them die and that’s it

I think that should be all the possible endings there are.

By the way the different ways in which black mask dies in this was actually a fairly clever running gag lollll. let that mf burn we don’t need no water.

overall there are a couple of things i would have done to SIGNIFICANTLY improve this adaptation beyond some of the obvious ones.

- the fact that all of the branching options are branched exclusively under the “jason lives and bruce dies” branch is a huge wasted opportunity. imo this is the most egregious problem with this, i was really looking for a more balanced tree / explanation of different things. i am probably super biased though being a fic writer and used to fic, we’re the ones making huge ass trees every day lol.

- the fact that there is no “good” ending here is something i kind of expected but given the context of this is lackluster. i sort of get it though because granted, the original ditf ends in an unresolved manner but it’s distinctly unsatisfying here. i secretly wanted an ending where bruce, like, figures out about the different endings and hacks reality to try to find a good ending where jason lives and everything is fine lmao. like a bat mite ending.

- i was disappointed in a sense that the narrative given in here is so basically simplistic? maybe i’ve been spoiled by games like 999 and undertale where shit gets messy and that’s not what this is supposed to be but when i play something with multiple endings in this day and age, at least play with the concept a little bit and connect some of the branches together narratively. use different devices. i was also hoping some of the choices would be a little bit meatier like you could choose to “forgive bruce” or something cool like that lol. but it looks like the majority of choices have to do with who lives or dies. and i felt like they couldve been a bit more creative with that ya know? being able to control harvey’s coin was a GREAT example of having some more fun with this.

- it is a huge missed opportunity not to have a “secret ending” on something like this. like where. the fuck. is my secret ending for completing everything. come on. and in a similar vein there should’ve been at least something in terms of bruce and jason interacting in a “true ending”. even if very brief. the closest thing to an ending this has is the “jason died” route and then the ending where he’s talking to clark which i feel like was a REALLY nice good optimistic ending as far as this goes, but it comes off as kind of disappointing i guess

there were SO many interesting nuggets locked into this thing though. i can’t deny it bugs me how many wasted opportunities there were with how they chose to structure things but i guess it’s the best you can do with limited runtime. i thought it was really well done though, makes an interesting companion piece to the original utrh, and is definitely something that i will be re-watching again soon!! overall i give it a 7/10 and some parts an 8/10+!

#a death in the family #death in the family #ditf #it was cool to see the different ideas they had to offer finally? #for what it was #it was kind of a collection of shorts and half spun ideas #plus i think about this shit like every day #so i cant help but be interested #someone come and talk to me about this #i really want to know #what ppl thought #spoilers #ditf spoilers #death in the family spoilers

[milkbreadtoast]

Hey so! I’ve been wanting to share one of my Kurama(yu yu hakusho) headcanons for a while, but have been too lazy(and scared) to put it into words and share it w/ my followers ahah. But i’m finally gonna share it..! This is one of my headcanons that’s most crucial to how I interpret his character... and I want to preface this with saying that everyone has a different interpretation of a character, and that’s ok; u don’t have to agree. Interpretations can feel very personal sometimes...this one means a lot to me personally haha. Anyway, here goes: (BIG SPOILER WARNING!!!)

Basically... I think the current Kurama, “Shuichi” Kurama with the red hair, is LITERALLY a different person than he was in the past, due to the unique way he escaped death by merging with the unborn child of a human woman, and that his current personality makes a lot of sense if you think of him... as a fusion, in a sense... kinda like a Steven Universe fusion(not exactly, but hear me out)...

The present day Kurama is shown to be a really different person than the legendary thief Yoko Kurama. This difference becomes starkly apparent when the Yoko Kurama of the past makes his appearances in the dark tournament, and he’s very sadistic, cruel... very different from the Kurama shown until then. 

Although the current Kurama has the same memories and consciousness, intelligence, etc. and is still fully “Kurama”, and a 1000+ year old demon, he also seems to act...like a normal teenage boy. He giggles, jokes around, cares a lot about his friends, and of course, loves his human mother... 

Hiei describes Kurama in an internal monologue in ep 47, and it’s very interesting...

Kurama also describes himself in this way, in the same ep:

Although not in the manga, Kurama also says this in ep 108:

When Kurama talks about how he’s changed since being reborn, and how he’s become a different person...  I think... it's more than just a change of heart. He's literally a different person, because his soul merged with that of the boy who would have been born as Minamino Shuichi.

And moreover, Kurama himself seems to be aware of this? in the way he describes himself...the whole “we’re merged,” “while I am Kurama, I am also Minamino Shuichi,” “no longer the same Kurama that I used to be”... And perhaps most convincingly, in this line he delivers in “Two Shots”: 

Specifically describing himself as having a “human side”, despite also explaining to Yusuke in his introduction that he is fully a demon, despite his human appearance. 

Given his wisdom and intelligence, retained from his past as Yoko Kurama, this--his self-identity--is surely something he’s thought hard about over the years, and this is the conclusion he’s come to... Even though he is classified as a demon, this is the way he describes himself... as a fusion of sorts, as being part “human”... (and Hiei’s description is mostly likely influenced from what Kurama has told him, along with his own understanding of Kurama). 

The current Kurama shows a profound duality, and it makes him such a fascinating character... in certain moments, he shows a coldness, a brutality, a willingness to take lives, and wisdom and intelligence that certainly goes far beyond his human years. Yet... stuff like how he giggles and jokes, and how he outsmarted Kaito by making a funny face... to me, this is something new... something unique to his current self...something the old Yoko Kurama wouldn’t do. 

The way Kurama acts in the present day...  the way he's 100% a demon, yet distinctly...human... makes so much sense if you think of him as being like a fusion?? When “he merged with the body of the human who would have been born as Minamino Shuichi”, I think their souls also merged. (edit: This also makes sense if you consider that in his severely wounded state, Yoko Kurama was essentially reduced to a bare soul, disembodied and dying--If this fusion between his dying spirit and this fresh, living human soul did not take place, he would not have survived. The unborn baby is not yet conscious, so Kurama’s concsiousness took over completely, but the fusion still occurred...)

Kurama is still Kurama-- but there’s something added, something more.  I think the human who would have been born as Shuichi would have been a very gentle person... so some of that got absorbed into Kurama's soul when they merged... and so his current, softer personality is not JUST a cruel demon who got touched by human kindness and had a change of heart... but a fusion of the original yoko’s personality, and the personality of the human boy he merged with. He did have a change of heart, but this was facilitated by him gaining... a new capacity for feelings? in a sense? due to this fusion. 

This interpretation I have of him... it makes me feel so much for him...b/c even tho he's...not the same person anymore, he still has the same memories and consciousness; he both is, and isn't, the same person.  I think it probably contributes to the guilt and self hatred he feels on some level, which is evident in what he tells Yusuke in the beginning...

It’s true that he said he tried many times to leave throughout his life, to return to his previous life in the demon realm, but it’s also true that he was never able to. His mother’s smile, her sacrifice for him, her genuine warmth and love for him... it moved him, and he decided to stay, and to protect her and the things precious to him now. And I argue that the “human” side of him, the result of a fusion of souls, enhanced his capacity to be moved, weakened his resolve to return to his past life...

When other yokai accuse him of "going soft"... that's not quite what happened...it is, in some ways, but not the full story. Although he is still the ancient, 1000+ year old demon Kurama, and retains all his memories and sense of self... there is still a part of him, a new part, that really IS as young as he looks... one that is gentle, empathetic, kind, and constantly haunted by his past.

In some ways, this added layer of softness can be seen as a fallibility, an exploitable weakness... how convenient, for the cruel and merciless, cold and calculating thief to become “soft”... a soft point, a weak point, where there was only hardness before. But,

Kurama himself believes it is a strength. Although I do think he harbors some level of hidden self hatred, he doesn’t hate this side of himself. In fact, he embraces it, is proud of it, and will fight to protect what he has now with his life on the line. He has found people and things he wants to protect... he’s come to see the beauty of the human world around him, even the mundane... he’s come to see the beauty and power in something as simple and fragile as a rose. 

And the important people in Kurama’s life(e.g. Hiei), unlike the yokai who jeer and mock him, also see this part of him as a strength and not a weakness, and accept him as who he is today. 

Kurama has a war in his heart... and this inner conflict and duality makes so much sense with the fusion interpretation. Itsuki makes this observation:

“affection” and “carnage”... two sides of himself, at war... consistent with his past life of violence and cruelty, and the gentle human soul he merged with that literally made him a different person...  But again he’s still “Kurama”; he’s 100% yokai, not a human, and he remembers everything.

This headcanon of mine is why it doesn’t really feel right to me when I see people joke that Kurama’s just an old guy hanging out with a bunch of kids (like that steve buscemi meme lol). Again, in my interpretation... in some ways he IS just a teenage boy... even though he’s 1000+... which is why it makes sense that he genuinely enjoys having friends his “own age”... it’s more than just a facade of pretending to be a kid, I think. 

And I mean...just look at him. HE...... IS BABIE 🥺🥺🥺

TL;DR I see the current Kurama as literally being a fusion of souls, literally “not the same Kurama” as before, and this colors the way I interpret him haha,,,

.............................

OK THIS POST IS ALREADY LONG AS ASS, WHY NOT MAKE IT EVEN LONGER BC THERE’S SMTH ELSE i WANTED TO POINT OUT

This might be unique to the anime, but it fits in nicely with my headcanon... In the original Japanese cast, Kurama(as Shuichi) is voiced by Megumi Ogata, and the Yoko Kurama of the past is voiced by Shigeru Nakahara (i.e., when he appears in the dark tournament, and in subsequent flashbacks to Kurama’s past). However, when Kurama transforms into his yoko form on his own in the Chapter Black arc, not by the influence of the potion that literally turns back time...he keeps his Megumi Ogata voice even in that form... whereas in flashbacks he's consistently voiced by Shigeru Nakahara.  ITS A REALLY NICE TOUCH....and it confirms what he says when he's like i haven't actually reverted back, my body just transformed due to my heightened yoki.

And not only his voice, he even looks different... his yoko form is given a slightly different design in Chapter Black arc. In the dark tournament, his outfit is sleeveless, he has frayed eyebrows, and his ears are smooth. 

In black chapters... for some reason they started giving him sleeves

and more solid eyebrows...

and raggety ears? vs smooth

(SO CUTE I LOVE THEM...) 

These differences are shown in this production note from the anime, indicating that this was a conscious design choice in the anime: 

(I can’t read the text, but I see that episode #90 is specified in the right pic, which is the ep Kurama transforms into his yoko form in Black Chapters)

Anyway, these are very subtle details, but to me they’re another indicator that even in his yoko form he's not the same Kurama as he was before...!

OK THAT WAS LONG AF BUT I’M DONE NOW I THINK......... enjoy these kuramas before u go ^_^

#fluffprattle #yu yu hakusho #kurama #holy shit that was long #i am so sorry #ANYWAY.......... #i dont even know if this was comprehensible or not HITS SEND #KURAMA I WOULD FUCKIGN DIE FOR U

[monimmortal]

My Immortal is the quintessential piece of bad fanfiction, a story so notorious that the very concept of badfic immediately brings up mention of it in virtually any circle. Much like a discussion about bad movies inevitably breaks down into someone screaming quotes from The Room into the middle distance in a terrible impression of an even worse accent, My Immortal is a guarantee whenever bad fanfiction comes up. It’s risen above the entry-level masterworks like My Inner Life and “the Goku/Anne Frank” fic, and with its sheer fame completely obscured the deep cuts of a 4 AM fanfiction.net binge where you learn things about yourself that you were much better off not knowing. Regardless of a person’s fandom or even how into fanfic they are, they understand the story to be the utter distillation of everything terrible about fanfic. There is something for everyone, whether the dark specter of a writer’s own teenage shames or something to cackle quotes from and spiral off into dramatic readings of. No fanfic has ever united people across barriers of fandom so easily.

And it’s all a lie.

Several months ago, I wrote a rather long-winded explanation of how My Immortal is not the creation of a teenage girl embodying the very worst in fanfic writers, but in fact the most masterfully-constructed piece of troll fiction ever conceived, which has, for going on nine years, managed to fool the internet at large into believing it completely genuine. But I was left unsatisfied with the initial result, which didn’t delve as deep as I would have liked into the points it raised, and missed quite a few important parts. So I’m making a second pass on the, hopefully concisely enough that I don’t need to make a third, because after writing a second essay about My Immortal, heaven knows I’m miserable now.

Special thanks to oisiflaneur for proofreading this 14,000+ word monster.

Preamble: People Who Are Young And Alive

For the purposes of best understanding everything I’m about to talk about, I suggest going and reading My Immortal first. ‘Context’ might not be the best way to explain what you’ll get by knowing what I’m referring to, but familiarity with the source material will make this a much easier read. Due to it having been long-since purged from fanfiction.net, you can find it reposted across the internet, in particular here. It is quite a read and I greatly reccomend it, although I do so as somebody who has read through countless times and liked it enough to write thousands upon thousands of words about it.

However, it’s certainly not an easy read for some people due to its clusterfuck of misspellings and incomprehensibility, so in addition to the quotes and excerpts I will provide to illustrate my points, I will briefly give a quick rundown of the major players in our tale.

Our heroine, Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way’s own words sum up her existence better than I ever could:

Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eye shadow. I was walking outside Hogwarts. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

This paragraph is the first of the story, and it is also the longest of the story, saying so much and yet so little about our protagonist. We know almost nothing of the personality that she is alleged to possess, but we do know that she wishes to be familially related to Gerard Way because she finds him attractive, and presumably has an incest kink that will never be touched upon again in the story. The rest of this thesis will touch on all of the other woeful elements of this monstrous violation of ‘show, don’t tell’, but now you have the definitive look at who and what Ebony is.

Ebony is in love with Draco Malfoy, who save for a few minor elements remains largely unchanged in My Immortal. The same cannot be said for Harry “Vampire” Potter;

In the Great Hall, I ate some Count Chocula cereal with blood instead of milk, and a glass of red blood. Suddenly someone bumped into me. All the blood spilled over my top.

“Bastard!” I shouted angrily. I regretted saying it when I looked up cause I was looking into the pale white face of a gothic boy with spiky black hair with red streaks in it. He was wearing so much eyeliner that I was going down his face and he was wearing black lipstick. He didn’t have glasses anymore and now he was wearing red contact lenses just like Draco’s and there was no scar on his forhead anymore. He had a manly stubble on his chin. He had a sexy English accent. He looked exactly like Joel Madden. He was so sexy that my body went all hot when I saw him kind of like an erection only I’m a girl so I didn’t get one you sicko.

If nothing else, it’s certainly a nice change from the usual traits about his mother’s eyes and taped-up glasses. In this story, Harry goes by ‘Vampire’; he used to date Draco Malfoy and they got tattoos with each others’ names, he is gothic and now part of Slytherin for reasons never elaborated upon – these two traits go hand-in-hand for every character in the story– and resembles the lead singer of Good Charlotte for some reason. Thankfully, our author also notes that the character who was born, raised, and lives his entire life in Great Britain happens to have a “sexy English accent”.

“Satan” is the name that Tom Riddle went by when he was a Hogwarts student. In the 1980s. And gothic. We’ll touch on him a little later. There’s a lot of trainwreck going on here, in case you haven’t noticed.

The two meta players to what is one of the greatest internet performance art pieces ever created are our author Tara Gilesbie, and her best friend/beta reader Raven, noted in the story by her own self-insert Willow. I have a lot to say about these two, who are characters in their own ways and who the understanding of is vital to seeing My Immortal as something greater than it appears to be. Tara is a budding teenage writer, Harry Potter, and goth, who doesn’t like that people keep ‘flassing’ her story and threatens self-mutilation as retribution for it, because if there is one thing the mid-2000s internet was, it was caring and serious about such issues. She plays it rather loose with things like literary devices or the English language, as we shall see.

Part 1: Bigmouth Strikes Again – Matters of “Da Story and Spelling”

Upon reading My Immortal for the first time, one of the most egregious and clear issues with the story lies within the spelling and grammar: they’re fucking abysmal. You can see it in the author’s notes right away, and it slowly trickles into the story itself. It starts with ridiculous run-on sentences that seem more like lists than the placement of words into a coherent and complete thought, delivered in a halting and completely jarring cadence. Allegedly, Tara’s friend Raven is editing the story until chapter 15 – more on her later – but even under her tenure as beta, little slips become more frequent. The job of trying to edit something so terrible would certainly be taxing and likely require intensive rewrites of whole chapters at a time, and it’s understandable that perhaps someone would simply be past the point of being able to handle this, and would get sloppier in their job. Chapter eleven, where the author’s note explicitly stated Raven helped, contains of the most infamous and brilliant mistakes in the entire work; ‘Loopin’ 'masticating’.

Once Raven leaves as Tara’s editor, the story nosedives even further into a death spiral of spelling and grammar. Typos become common and any lip service paid to writing words out fully is discarded. Without a beta, we see the depths of Tara’s unfettered lack of shits given for her story to come off as anything resembling presentable. And it needs to be this way, because one of the hallmarks of bad fanfiction is being incomprehensible. Not quite as much as it once was in the days before My Immortal shook the scene up, but it’s a clear indicator of the writer being unprincipled and very young, which are all vital to the character of Tara. The story needs to be poorly written, because if it isn’t, a site like fanfiction.net which, let’s be honest, doesn’t have very high standards–or really any at all–won’t react with all the venom and vitriol the story is meant to induce. It would merely fly under the radar as another mediocre story in the ever-swelling Harry Potter section, which even years after the fandom has cooled off, still moves faster than any person can possibly read through completely. That’s why the author’s notes are so terribly formatted; the very first thing a reader will see upon opening the story is, “Special fangz (get it, coz Im goffik)”.

And it is that word 'goffik’, my darlings, that marks the first place in My Immortal where Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

Everyone who types regularly can see certain little flubs and bad habits develop in their words; muscle memory kicking them in the ass and accidentally writing an incredibly similar word, or having some consistent errors that come through very clearly. And she does have a few, such as “jacket” as “jackson” (chapters 26, 37, 41, 42) and “converse” as “congress shoes” (chapters 24, 39, 41, 42), but they are few and far between in a dizzying array of random misspellings as chaotic as the story itself. They’re just layered beneath what is already a no-shits-given typing style that was back then incredibly commonplace within the subculture presented in the story, but they can be made out clearly if looked for beyond using Z in place of S or 'da’ for 'the’.

The easiest case to make in this regard is with names. Nobody has their names consistently spelled correctly, but they aren’t even consistent in their incorrectness. Our main character, Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, is referred to as Enoby, Enony, Egogy, TaEbory, Ebony, and Evony, among others. Hagrid’s name is spelled correctly a grand total of zero times, but can be noticed as Hargrid, Hairgird, HAHRID, Hargirid, etc. Is her boyfriend Draco, or is he Drako, Darko, or Drago? Voldemort has almost as many misspellings as he does appearances; Volfemort, Vlodemort, Volxemort, Voldemint, Volremot, and Darth Valer, to name a few. Sirius Black becomes Serifs, Series, Sodomize, Socrates, and my personal favorite, Spartacus. Professor Slutgorn, Cornelia Fuck, Dumblewhore, Preacher McGongal are also highlights.

But there’s  perhaps too much convenience in how words become other words so easily. From Loopin’s mastication and the pointing of his womb, to being sent not to Azkaban but to Azerbaijan, to recording a sex tape on a caramel, to Dracon being hung like a Stallone, the story is littered with mistakes that seem almost too good to be true. Not all of this can be explained away as just a stray finger. Some of them defy keyboard logic in how they came to be, and somebody who could be that sloppy with a keyboard would be incapable of making sentences that could even be pieced together by someone intent on understanding what was meant by them, which as it stands is already how much of My Immortal is written. Sort of like Finnegan’s Wake, except the analysis of it is performed by significantly sadder people.

Matters like Azerbaijan and caramel might be explained away by spellcheck, if there was even the slightest evidence that Tara spellchecked any of this. It’s very, very apparent that she didn’t, because these passages are surrounded by misspellings that have gone unedited and unfixed, which means that she had to type out these words to the full extent manually.

Could it be some kind of celestial alignment that leads to there being so many absolutely perfect typos? It could be. But I believe that the typos not in fact  the meanderings of someone who doesn’t care, but in fact a labour of love from someone who cares far, far too much. Poor typing habits and a lack of care for what’s being put down are hallmarks of bad writing, and My Immortal strives to push it to heights that become almost impossible for an actual human being to accidentally make. Words are put into the story that aren’t even in the same neighborhood as the ones they’re supposed to be, and names steadily spin out of control in ever-escalating insanity like a Fibonacci sequence from hell.

In the chapter 4 author’s note, Tara notes “her name is ENOBY nut mary su ok!” In chapter 12, hot off the heels of Loopin masticating is the line, “Who MASTABATED (c is dat speld rong) to it he added silently.” What are the odds that she misspells the words on the two occasions where it matters most? In particular the latter one, where you’d think she would bother looking the word back over first to make sure it wasn’t, in fact, misspelled. Raven doesn’t pick up on it either, even though as we’ll see later she is most certainly capable of spelling words properly. It highlights the character of Tara’s hubris and incompetence, that she points out that she spelled a word correctly when she in fact had not. Someone who cares enough to show up the haters mid-story, but not enough to make sure they’re actually doing so.

Accompanying the more clearly intentional mistakes is the steady clumsiness that grows with the word count. Misspellings become more prevalent and less attention is put into trying to look like words, and while the tipping point is certainly Raven rescinding her service as an editor, it’s also a measured and slow degradation. We’ll go over this in more detail in part eight, but it is rather damning that the story doesn’t just plummet right through the floor once Raven isn’t working on making it presentable, as it reasonably should. Instead, it s a careful and measured breakdown. For comparison’s sake, let’s take the opening of chapter 15, which is the final Raven-edited chapter before the breakup:

“Ebony Ebony!” shouted Draco sadly. “No, please, come back!”

But I was too mad.

“Whatever! Now u can go anh have sex with Vampire!” I shouted. I stormed into my room and closed my black door with my blood-red key. It had a picture of Marylin Manson on it. He looked so sexy in a way that reminded me of Draco and Vampire. I started to cry and weep. I took a razor and started to slit my wrists. I drank the blood all depressed. Then I looked at my black GC watch and noticed it was time to go to Biology class.

And chapter 16, where their relationship reaches its peak and Raven has left as editor:

We ran happily to Hogsmede. There we saw the stage where GC had played. We ran in happly. MCR were there playing ‘Helena’. I was so fucking happy! Gerard looked even sexier than he did in da pictures. Even Draco thought so, I could totally see him getting an erection but it didn’t matter cuz I knew know that we were da only true ones for eachother. I was wearing a black leather minidress and black leather platinum boots with red ripped fishnets. Draco was wearing a black baggy MCR t-shirt and black baggy pants. Anyway, we stated moshing to Helena. We frenched. We ran up 2 the front of the band to stage-dive. Suddenly, Gerard pulled off his mask. So did the others. We gasped. It wasn’t them at all. It was.,……………………….. Volsemort and da Death Dealers

There are certainly a few more typos in this sample, and we see 'da’ and 'cuz’ slip through without Raven’s guidance, but overall they don’t seem too far apart. 'Volsemort’ is the only thing that is clearly down to a typo rather than laziness. But let’s jump into Morty McFli’s “tim machine” and see how chapter 26 opens:

A few mutates later Vampire came 2 da tree. He was wearing a blak leather jackson, black leather pants and a Good Chralotte t-shirt.

“Hi Vampire.” I said flirtily as I started to sob. Draco hugged me sexily tryont to comfrot me. I started to cry tears of blood and then told them what happened.

“Oh fuck it!” Vampire shouted angrily. He4 started to cry sadly. “What fucking dick did that!”

“I don’t know.” I said. “Now come on we have 2 tell Dumbledor.”

We ran out of the tree and in2 da castle. Dumblydor was sitting in his office.

“Sire are dads have been shot!” Draco said while we wipped sum tears from his white face. “Enoby had a vision in a dreem.”

Dubleodre started to cockle. “Hahahaha! And How due u aspect me to know Ebony’s not divisional?

It’s night and fucking day. Raven’s presence was clearly not the only thing keeping Tara’s spelling in check, because she started off just fine without her, but somewhere along the next ten chapters clearly lost her way. But hey, just for comparison’s sake, let’s see if ten more chapters supports my claim. Chapter 36:

I loked around in a depresed way. Suddenly I saw Profesor Sinister. B’lody Mary, Socrates and Draco, Vampire and Willow were their to.

“OMFG Sorius I saw u nd Samaro and Snip nd everyone!11111 I kant beleev Snap uzd 2 b goffik!111111”

“Yah I no.” Serious said sadly.

“Oh hey there bitch.” Profesor Trevolry said in an emo voice dirnking some Volxemortserom.

Hi fuker.” I said. “Lizzen, Satan asked me out to a gottik cornet and a movie so I need a sexah new outfit for da date. Also I’m playng in a gothic band so I need an ootfit for that too.”

“Oh my satan!1” (geddit lolz koz shes gofik) gasped B’lody Mary. “Want 2 go to Hot Topik to shop 4 ur outfit?”

“OMFS, letz have a groop kutting session!11” said Profesor Trevolry.

“I can’t fucking wait 4 dat but we need 2 get sum stuff first.” said Willow.

“Yah we need sum portions for Profesor Trevolry so she wont be adikted 2 Volxemortserum anymore nd also………….sum luv potion 4 Enoby.” Darko said resultantly.

It’s almost difficult to believe they’re from the same story we saw twenty chapters ago, and it’s sure as hell not because Tara has improved her craft. Within the confines of the story itself, it seems so gradual that you might not even realize it, but laid out in chunks like that, can you really say it’s not someone trying their best to destroy as many words as they possibly can?

Part 2: It’s Gruesome That Someone So Handsome Should Care – Matters of Identity and “Goffikness”

At the very core of My Immortal is what Tara believes being a goth to be. From the very first sentence of the first author’s note we learn this fact, and the first paragraph in the story, which is also the longest, is devoted to showing that Ebony is as well. Whether or not one is a goth becomes the most important character trait for the entire cast and defines their relationships with one another. Throughout the story, we are regaled with all the evidence of band fandom and other ultimately superficial traits that assure us that these characters are indeed true goths. The only things that receive anything approaching description are the clothes Ebony wears, all black and leather and band t-shirts. Nothing matters more than being a goth.

In this strange world, Ebony’s lifestyle is supported in ways that are beyond belief. Merchandising is so invasively ever-present that you can buy just about anything branded with her interests. In chapter 38, Satan smokes a Nightmare Before Christmas cigar (over a decade before The Nightmare Before Christmas came out), capes can bear Avril Lavigne’s face on them without anyone raising an eyebrow, and cars have pentagram decals all over them. Although band t-shirts are perfectly normal – and if I’m anything to go by, having pretty much nothing but band shirts isn’t unheard of – Ebony also has a wide range of band-branded everything, like skirts that have 'Simple Plan’ written across her ass.

Ebony looks like Amy Lee, and any boy she thinks is attractive will invariably be compared to the lead members of bands she likes, because those positive associations are marks of her dedication.

In the world of My Immortal, being a goth or a prep is not down to musical choices and circles of friends, but instead a sweeping statement about where you fall in matters of good and evil. Everyone she approves of fits her lifestyle whether it makes sense for the character to or not, radically changing their personalities to fall into the box she wants them to. The Golden Trio, alongside Ginny and Neville all goth up and convert to Slytherin, because as the 'dark’ house it is the only logical place for goths to go be. She does not have any friends who aren’t goths, because to not be a goth is to a prep, and preps are evil. Preps have middle fingers put up at them when they do nothing wrong, because on mere principle they must be hated and despised.

Which forms one of the many problems with the plot, but one that is not specific to the madness of Tara Gilesbie. At almost no point do characters coded as preps actually do anything wrong. Britney is consistently insulted and called a 'fucking prep’ in every appearance she has as though 'prep’ is an earth-shattering slur. Her presence consists entirely of being in a room, sometimes with middle fingers put up at her, and in one case, singled out by Professor Trevolry to do extra homework, because Trevolry is a goff teacher, which means she punishes preps for being preps. The only time Britney does anything wrong is in the final chapter, when it’s revealed that she released Snap and Loopin from Azerbaijan.

Britney is also the only actually preppy character in the story. We know this because she wears pink and little else, due to the lack of dialogue or character shown. But other people are referred to as preps constantly, including Snoop, Lumpkin, and Valmont. As are everyone who criticizes the story. We receive no indication for these, and often they are completely baffling for how decidedly un-preppy these characters truly are, but it’s vital to the narrative and the division of the cast that everyone Ebony does not approve of is a prep.

It’s not an uncommon attitude among teenagers, especially those with interest or belonging to subcultures out of the approved mainstream, to draw lines and assume everyone who falls into divisions other than them are inherently opposed to them. The idea that anyone who isn’t different must assume that difference is bad is so pervasive that it often comes to define works of fiction taking place in high school, even when written by grown-ass adults, because it provides cheap and easy conflict. Most teenagers grow fairly quickly out of this, but because of its convenience as a device, it persists. Tara is far from the only person to ever believe this, but the degree to which she takes it is a little further than most do, lumping the world into only two categories, but defining 'them’ as a one-dimensional army of preps even when they’re the opposite of preppy.

Which makes it an incredibly mockable and therefore desirable  angle to write her plot through, doesn’t it?

Once again setting herself up for incredible failure is the fact that she’s completely off the fucking mark about what a goth is. With favorite bands ranging from My Chemical Romance, Evanessence, and Linkin Park, to a bizarre interest in pop punk through Simple Plan and Good Charlotte, her taste in goth music is a lot like her taste in klezmer; it doesn’t fucking exist. This is not the musical taste of a broody, dark goth, it’s the stock standard taste of a teenaged rock fan in 2006, which is exactly what it’s supposed to be. To believe this is all to be pure, gothic music is to be so disconnected from the entire concept of the goth subculture that Tara would have to have not even given it a cursory Googling to discover what sort of music goths listened to.

This 2006; 'emo’ was already a word so pervasive that it was insufferable, but had TaEbory identified as emo, she would have lost one vital piece of the puzzle. Merely being wrong or incredibly forward about one’s identity isn’t enough; she had to be both simultaneously. Her fervid defense of what it is to be a goth, paired with being so off the mark, turns her into a hypocrite and a fool, a strawman whose every word is only making worse her whole case. It makes her stand out as a special and egregious case, an author so wrong about everything and whose self-insert only looks worse off for it. And this is how My Immortal rose to the top of an ocean of mediocre, bad, and downright terrible fanfiction.

Dubious musical categorizations aside, another element of the gothicness that pervades the story is authenticity. Among the more snobbish and elitist of any subculture since the beginning of time, the desire to be seen as authentic and real is an incredibly pervasive element that My Immortal predictably lingers on quite heavily. “Poser” is a word loaded with as much venom as prep is, because in the false dichotomy Tara instills upon the world, to have airs of goffikness while not truly being a goff is just as evil as wearing pink is. Perhaps even more so, because these fakers are infiltrating her circles. When Tara and Raven cease being friends, Raven’s stand-in Willow is referred to as a poser. When Draco feels betrayed upon discovering that Voldemort has tasked Ebony with killing Vampire, he refers to her as a “poser muggle bitch”.

While we can’t hold My Immortal to a rigid understanding of proper Harry Potter canon, it does explain a lot about Tara’s worldview. Draco Malfoy has spent his whole life of privilege being taught about the importance of blood purity by his parents, who — we’re all adults here, right? We can accept this? — are fucking wizard nazis. A lot of his early character is specifically centered around his beliefs on blood purity and his use of slurs like 'mudblood’ toward Hermione and dismissals of families like the Weasleys as blood traitors. Such traits are so surface level and blatant that even someone like Tara could pick up on them, which makes the inclusion of 'poser’ in his insult, a triple threat along with fantastical racism and straight-up sexism, into something very telling about just how important it is in her version of the Harry Potter universe to be seen as genuine.

You can’t simply become a goth, you have to already be one. You have to shop at the 'real goth stores’, which are known only to goths. Any attempt to learn of them is met with derision, because goffikness is not something you can attain, except for all the characters who are noted in their new backstories to have become goffs in their transfers over to Slytherin.

Simmering underneath this obsession with being seen as authentic, with a narrative that constantly asserts with very insecure undertones just how much Tara wants to be seen as a real goth, is how shallow her interests really are. She prattles off lists of the clothing she and her friends wear like she’s Patrick Bateman, a laundry list whose obsessive detail forms the only proper description anything in the story receives. And much like in American Psycho, the narrator’s obsession with clothes comes off as remarkably phony, a desire to fit in with a group they desire to be a part of through a series of checklist points, although while Patrick Bateman is deranged within the narrative, you must go one level of abstraction away from the character’s portrayal in the universe, to look on a metafictional level into the delusions of Tara to see where she gets it all so wrong.

We’re told in the narrative that Ebony is depressed and suicidal time and again, but despite slitting her wrists in lieu of an afternoon snack, we never truly see actual depression. She uses 'depressed’ in ways that don’t really make sense, such as to describe the movie Corpse Bride, coloured contact lenses, and makeout sessions. Chapter three even contains the passage, “'Hi Draco!’ I said in a depressed voice.” Given how wonderfully the entire world caters to Ebony and the fact Tara seems to not really understand what it means, it comes off not like Ebony is a character that actually has depression, but instead that since depression is gothic, she must therefore possess it. She isn’t somebody who wears black on the outside because black is how she feels on the inside, she just says she’s depressed because it’s all a part of the goth package.

As is Satanism, which Ebony is apparently an adherent of. Much like being depressed, a vampire, listening to Simple Plan, and being a Slytherin, it is vital to the gothic identity that you are a Satanist, even if you don’t know what Satanism is. That you sometimes refuse to acknowledge the words 'cross’ and 'god’. It’s so casually mentioned and without even the slightest bit of conviction that it feels thrown in by someone who doesn’t really care, but, once again, wants to fit in.

The end result is an all-encompassing, story ruining obsession with ensuring the reader know and believe that Ebony–and by extension the author she is an avatar of–is the most true and devout goth in the world. Setting herself up to be so very, very wrong on this account is an easy way to discredit Tara and add another layer of pure mockability to the story. She is truly the greatest poser of all, and her entire worldview comes crumbling down around her under the slightest scrutiny, all by design.

Part 3: Just a Miserable Lie – The Impossible Mistakes

This news may shock and surprise you, so make sure you are very securely strapped your seat.

My Immortal is not entirely consistent.

Certain little things creep out of the woodwork in both the narrative and off to the side, hidden amid all of the craziness around them, that I believe are little winks at the camera on the part of the author. Hints meant to clue you in as to the fact that this whole thing is, in fact, one big joke. A lot of them have gone rather unnoticed, it seems, but let’s start with the most noticeable of all.

In chapter 31, we meet Tom Bombadil. I’m not fucking with you, here, it really does happen.

Suddenly I was in fornt of teh School. In front of me wuz one of da sexiest goth guyz I had ever seen. He was wering long blak hair, kinda like Mikey Way only black. He had gren eyes like Billie Joe Amstrung and pale whit skin. He wuz wearing a blak ripped up suit wif Vans. It was…………………….Tom Bombodil!1

Now, some of you may be asking who the balls Tom Bombadil is, and that is my point entirely. Deep in the first half of Fellowship of the Ring is god of the forest and walking filler arc Tom Bombadil, whose three-chapter appearance leaves most readers wishing for a violent end to existence for how long it all drags. For the express reason that his appearance is so incredibly pointless, he appears in no major adaptations of the series, which means for Tara to know about him, she’d have to read Fellowship of the Ring, a book that is done no favours by Tolkein’s incredibly dry and long writing style, not to mention an entire chapter chronicling the genealogy of Hobbiton.

To be a teenager at a reading level high enough to tackle Tolkein precludes you from being capable of doing something like My Immortal genuinely. Tara would know how words are spelled and that, hey, stories are considerably better when you give a quarter of a crap about typing them properly. The levels of literacy involved in Tom Bombadil and writing My Immortal are so far removed that these two traits are mutually exclusive, impossible for Tara to possess if she’s genuine. After all,

I dntn red all da boox! dis is frum da movie ok so itz nut my folt if dumbeldor swers!

But wait.

Among the many baffling changes Tara makes to the canon, one of the weirdest and most damning to me is Professor Sinister/Trevolry/Sinatra/Siniater/Relory. This bizarre composite of professors Sinistra and Trelawny is a half-vampire, half-Japanese goff, and the only teacher in the school Ebony likes, because she dresses like her and assigns the preps extra homework, complete with a pun about doing an 'exorcise’ in the book. Her presence is bizarre, for being the only positive authority figure in the story, and for the utter perplexity involved in picking the two professors as a composite goth character at the expense of more conventional fanfic fodder like Snape and Lupin, who are both obviously villainous preps in this story.

Professor Trelawny is a strange choice whose incongruity I feel is another one of those expectation-defying twists meant to seem strange as an indicator to the audience where a more mainstream and believable choice would have been to romanticize Snape as so much of the fandom has, but the real headscratcher is Professor Sinistra. Her presence in the canon is entirely off-screen, mentioned by Hermione as a teacher for a course that Ron and Harry don’t take; she has no lines or purpose anywhere, and even in the movies is only a background character identified by virtue of there being an actress credited as her. Her absolute lack of lines makes her presence here troubling, because if Ebony’s reference base for this is the movies, where this dialogueless character coming from?

Of course, there’s also the aspect of how fluidly she switches between names bastardized off of the two professors which, unlike the matter of Hagrid being Cedric but not really, is so consistent and ever-present that it again seems like a level of sloppiness entirely beyond human capability. Two completely disparate names that are way too far removed to be keyboard fuckery, with bastardizations of both used in each scene she appears as though there is a quota on how many of each get used in a chapter for full effect. Because there absolutely is; here’s the introduction of the professor in chapter 24:

Well we had Deviation next so I got to ask Proffessor Trevolry about the visions.

“Konnichiwa everybody come in.” said Proffesor Sinister in Japanese. She smelled at me with her gothic black lipstick. She’s da coolest fucking teacher ever. She had long dead black hair with blood red tips and red eyes. (hr mom woz a vampire. She’s also haf Japanese so she speaks it and everyfing. she n b’loody mry get along grate) She’s really young for a teacher. 2day she was wearing a black leather top with red lace and a long goffik black ripped dress. We went inside the black classroom with pastors of Emily the Strong. I raced my hand. I was wearing some black naie Polish with red pentagrams on it.

In the tweet-sized morcel from “well” to “Japanese”, Tara has already methodically sank this character’s introduction, making someone paying even the slightest attention to what’s in front of them look back up to that previous line to see if they lost something somewhere. Trevolry is used to refer to her next, and then Sinister again, which are the only four mentions of this character in the chapter. Tara’s handle on the chaos of her own story is perfect, and the entire existence of the professor in this chapter serves as a massive wink to the camera.

Also a strange decision is to note that Professor Sinister and B'loody Mary “get along grate”. They don’t interact, as is expected from a narrative that marginalizes everybody except for Ebony and her love interests, relegating all of the friends to satellite roles where they interact only with her, but it’s perplexing for the way it’s made note of out of nowhere. I feel it goes beyond a strange decision to include more female friendships in the background of her story, and serves as a one-two punch of running afoul of “show, don’t tell” and of the canon itself, as in the original series the teacher that Hermione clashes with the most, to the point of dropping the class altogether, is Professor Trelawny. And yet here they are, besties in gothhood. Another subtle note that indicates how carefully woven this entire mess is.

For someone with the reading comprehension of a microwave-made baked potato though, she has an oddly prescient view on the series endgame in chapter 42’s author’s note.

AN: omg da new book iz kumming out rlly soon I kant wait!!!1111. I fink dat snap will be really the same person as Volximort koz dey are both haff-blood so dat will explain y he kild dumblydore and he hated hairy!!!!!1111 nd den hairy wil have 2 kommit suicide so voldimort will die koz he will rilly be a horcrox!!!!!111

On one hand, the idea that Snap and Volximort are the same person is so unfounded and bizarre that you kind of dismiss what comes next, but despite retaining nothing beyond the most surface-level details about the canon, she somehow managed to make the connection of Harry’s abilities and scar as evidence of him being a horcrux. It’s not a massive leap, and many in the fandom saw it coming, but for someone whose grasp on the canon simply doesn’t exist, it’s suspect.

I’ve unfortunately already blown the “big deal of a revelation that is fairly obvious” joke, so I won’t bother setting it up again, but this revelation is genuinely a noteworthy one. Contained within My Immortal is one reference that is unambiguously and inarguably gothic. Not one of the borderline cases like Marilyn Manson where it depends on who you ask, but a genuine reference to a piece of gothic music. From chapter 28,

We went in2 a blak room. The wallz were blak with portraits of gothic bands lik MCR, GC and Marlin Mason all over them. A big black coffin was in the middle. Red vevlet lined da blak box. There were three chairs made of bones with real skullz in dem. I wuz wearing a blak corset bar wif purple stuff on it, fishnet suckings and a blak leather thong underneath.

It’s so subtle and unexpected a reference that even if you know what it’s from, you may not pick it up. “Red velvet lines the black box” is a lyric from Bauhau’s 1979 song Bela Lugosi’s Dead, which is generally considered to be the very first gothic rock song ever written, thus making it the only genuinely gothic sentence in this entire tale. However, devoid of teenage angst or guyliner, it makes no sense that such a reference would be in the repertoire of somebody who believes that Marilyn Manson was a band from the '80s. In fact, it is impossible to believe that a Tara taken at face value would have ever so much as encountered the song, because the collision of matter and anti-matter annihilates both. However, it would be the fodder of somebody who, baffled at how easily people have accepted their work as a genuine offering, got bored and decided to throw a wink to the camera that couldn’t have possibly slipped under the radar.

Littered among the litany of showy, “look at how goffik” I am references to things, as though My Immortal were a PSA about the goth cred of Tara Gilesbie, are a few rather suspect notes. Tara is somebody who can’t mention certain names without indicating her undying hatred toward them, and yet,

“I love you!” I said and then we started to kiss just like Hilary Duff (i fukin h8 dat bitch) and CMM in a Cinderella Story.

We are apparently to believe that Tara, somebody who is so slavishly devoted to her identity and to a dichotomy that has coloured the entirety of a fictional universe, not only watched A Cinderella Story in spite of her hatred of Hilary Duff, but then drew a comparison to it in how she and Draco kissed? Drawing comparisons to things the author is interested in is a rather frequent amateur move for young fanfic writers who merely draw the blunt comparison to something rather than learning to describe the individual features themselves. Tara is not a good enough writer to describe the facial features of her favorite band leads, so she just mentions that people look like Gerard to indicate that the absolute pinnacle of human attractiveness is this.

The only comparisons she ever draws are to her favorite things, because it’s a way to prove that her life is so goffik that everything around her draws its existence from her interests. And yet she cites a Hilary Duff movie that she quite frankly should not have even seen, if she is so diametrically opposed to being perceived as a prep, which veering so far off of the beaten goff path and into would most certainly indicate. Something doesn’t add up about this.

On what I believe to be the intentional cliffhanger that chapter 42 ends on, we hear another mention of goffik cinema right before the very end of the story.

“Save us Ebony!” Dumbledark cried.

I cried sexily I just wanted 2 go 2 the commen room and slit my wrists with mi friends while we watched Shark Attak 3 and Saw 2 and do it with Draco but I knew I had 2 do somefing more impotent.

“ABRA KEDABRA!!!!!!!!!!!11111” I shooted.

For those not in the know, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon is a phenomenally bad direct-to-video monster movie whose sole claim to fame is in being so laughably bad that it’s found an audience in bad movie circles. And while one could make the fairly weak argument that on the basis of some super edgy “I love watching people dying” attitude, a movie like Shark Attack might appeal to Tara the same way slashers and gorn like Saw and “Hoes of Wax” appeal to her, it’s so bizarre in its sudden presence at the very end that I believe it yet another wink, but this time a more final one. The second-to-last sentence in the story makes mention to a notorious bad movie to draw the connection to the story, a final and overt declaration of a joke that you’re supposed to be in on. The last punchline before the music hits and Porky Pig bursts from out of the big drum to say, “That’s all folks.”

Part 4. What Difference Does it Make? - The Desecration of Canon

Calling out My Immortal for distorting and twisting the Harry Potter universe into something unrecognizable and monstrous is like calling out a bear for shitting in the woods, but it’s impossible to explain how carefully crafted a piece of perfect trollfic it is without examining just how many 'liberties’ Tara took with the canon.

All of the characters that Tara seeks to lionize convert to Slytherin, because apparently people can just do that if they decide they really like black lipstick. But that’s not enough to make them more 'like her’. Backstories are revised to include a quite frankly startling volume of sexual abuse backstories and characters secretly adopted by abusive parents. Vampirism is not a trait anybody received through the narrative, but instead a species inherited by birth that somehow, people don’t know they have, showing no signs or hunger, until they learn about their parentage. Characters all receive new, gothic nicknames like B'loody Mary, Vampire, and Diabolo.

What Tara has done is remove everything about the characters one may think noticeable about them in the slightest. Everyone now resembles Tara’s favorite artists. Harry’s iconic lightning bolt scar, a symbol of the series, has been changed by makeup and magic to instead be a pentagram, because that is a design change of her choice, visually reclaiming the character from Rowling. The only character whose visual traits at all line up with the canon is Voldemort.

Then all of a suddenly, an horrible man with red eyes and no nose and everything started flying towards me on a broomstick! He didn’t have a nose (basically like Voldemort in the movie) and he was wearing all black but it was obvious he wasn’t gothic.

But then it gets stranger. Hagrid becomes a member of Ebony’s band Bloody Gothic Rose 666 and a “little Hogwarts student” (chapter 11). Although she appears to retcon that in chapter 12 with,

AN: stop f,aing ok hargrid is a pedo 2 a lot of ppl in amerikan skoolz r lik dat I wunted 2 adres da ishu! how du u no snap iant kristian plus hargrid isn’t really in luv wif ebony dat was sedric ok!

Although she seems to take a strange “whatever I want” approach to her own retcons like the most hackish of comic book writers, since we get in that very chapter,

Anyway I was in the school nurse’s office now recovering from my slit wrists. Snap and Loopin and HAHRID were there too. They were going to St. Mango’s after they recovered cause they were pedofiles and you can’t have those fucking pervs teaching in a school with lots of hot gurlz. Dumbledore had constipated the cideo camera they took of me naked. I put up my middle finger at them.

Anyway Hargrid came into my hospital bed holding a bouquet of pink roses.

“Enoby I need to tell u somethnig.” he said in a v. serious voice, giving me the roses.

“Fuck off.” I told him. “You know I fucking hate the color pink anyway, and I don’t like fucked up preps like you.” I snapped. Hargrid had been mean to me before for being gottik.

Hagrid is in this canon simultaneously a pedophile and presumably grown-ass adult, but also a Hogwarts student who may or may not be Cedric Diggory, who not only survived the events of Goblet of Fire, but also managed to fail two years at Hogwarts to join Harry as a seventh-year. He is also a poser who is mean to Ebony for being 'gottik’, but is also in her gothic rock band which sounds like “a cross between GC, Slipknot and MCR”, which as we all know would make it the most authentic gothic rock band since Mungo Jerry.

Except in chapter 14 a Death Eater is referred to as “the fat guy who killed Cedric” so maybe HAHrid really is Hagrid after all?

Then there is the odd decision to align Lupin and Snape as pedophilic voyeurs in the service of Voldemort while bizarrely championing Professor Trelawny, in stark contrast to a fandom that especially in the golden days of Harry Potter fandom, where people would dick ride Severus Snape all the way to the moon on the weight of how 'misunderstood’ he was. A pale man who seems conventionally 'dark’ in his interests and mannerisms is the perfect place to begin projecting on when you’re telling a story about how you’re the exact same things, but it seems almost too obvious a decision. Like the rest of Professor Siniater’s composite existence, she’s so odd a choice that it startles you, and I believe within that shock value is the decision to buck expectations.

A trip to the past begins to paint an even more bizarre picture, as apparently the parents of our heroes all went to school in the 1980s, alongside Voldemort and Hedwig. They were also all Slytherin goffs who at some point seem to have just turned into poser preps whose children had to re-convert out of Gryffindor and into gothhood. This timeline yet again causes a great many headscratching tears in the fabric of space and time, but the most vital and important of all is Hedwig.

In the canon, Hedwig is Harry’s owl, female and not much of a doer, speaker, or goth. But in the horrible alternate universe that My Immortal takes place in, Hedwig is a bisexual human male who is very much a goth, the ex-boyfriend of Tom Riddle, whose dumping of the boy starts his descent into becoming Volxemort. It is a change that is so wrong, so removed from not only the canon but from the possibility of anything ever being accurate to the canon, that it can’t be accidental. One cannot fuck up that badly by accident.

Voldemort himself is a great many things. In the past, he is Tom Riddle, gothic musician at Hogwarts and love interest to Ebony, but also Tom Bombadil, the master of wood, water, and hill. But in the present time, he is both the Bark Lord, as one may expect, but also potentially a young, thoroughly goffik employee at a “punkgoff” store in Hogsmeade, Tom Rid. Tom Rid is described as “OMG HOTTER THAN GERARD EXCEPT NOT CAUSE THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE“ and, like every other guy in the story, is “bisezual”. Tom Rid is never the setup for Voldemort’s secret infiltration of the goth subculture, but nonetheless seems to be a template earlier in the story for the later time travel storyline and Tom Riddle as a love interest. It’s another nonsensical “mistake” thatjust doesn’t mesh with any fathomable stupidity. It would be like introducing a character called Harry Pot and having him be completely disconnected from Harry Potter in any way.

Littered with iPods and anachronistic pop culture that manages to miss its mark in two different time periods, the only reason we know that this is the same world and not just one with suspiciously similar names is the fact that it’s fanfiction. Not a deep AU that interestingly adapts elements into a different world to see how they work out, or which shows characters and how they might develop under different circumstances. This is a mangled mess where muggle bands play concerts in Hogsmeade, seemingly well aware of wizards’ existence. There must be panic on the streets of London.

The big question is “why”. Why would somebody do this bad a number of canon, accidental or not? And the reason is simple.

Part 5. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want – Wish Fulfillment

By changing the context of everything except for the most basic connections of who the characters are 'supposed’ to be, they cease to be J.K. Rowling’s. They instead become Tara’s playthings. The canon is so distorted that it may as well not be fanfiction for how few things that remain intact, and yet it is vital that the world be the world of Harry Potter, at least nominally. Tara needs to turn a world that she loves, as off the mark as she may be, into a wonderland in which to self-insert, to mold into a countercultural paradise that centers completely around her.

We can’t speculate on the life of Tara – who this entire paper of course serves as a document meant to disprove the very existence of – but we can very clearly see the desires of this alleged person. Ebony is the single most important person in My Immortal, supplanting Harry as the only one who can kill Voldemort, whom every attractive character and even many unattractive ones profess their love to and fight for without provocation. Her interests are catered to on an unrealistic level and divine karmic justice makes those who sit culturally opposed to her suffer undeserved retribution solely for existing.

Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is, even by those who see her as an entirely genuine creation, often held up as the ultimate self-insert. On top of very clearly existing as an author avatar who holds the exact same interests as her creator, her very presence distorts and twists the canon around her like an eldritch abomination tearing the very fabric of the reality she occupies. One of the more criticized elements of self-inserts in fanfiction is of course the ease with which a narrative becomes wish fulfillment for the author, and My Immortal has this in droves. Ebony is the most important character in the world not because she’s the protagonist or the narrator, but because she has supplanted Harry as the only person who can stop Voldemort, and whom everybody’s 'motivations’ center around.

Ebony is loud, angry, and has access to a time machine. When Ebony isn’t on-screen, all of the other characters ask, “Where’s Ebony?”

The love triangle between Ebony, Draco, and Vampire begins with Vampire solely wanting to reconnect with his ex-boyfriend Draco, but as the story goes on that element is lost and replaced with him instead lusting after Ebony, as evidenced by the time they had sex right in the middle of Hair of Magical Creatures. One of the only connections that two different characters had with each other is slowly replaced with an attraction to Ebony that they fight over, because everyone in My Immortal is defined by how Ebony perceives them. Their own attractions to one another take a backseat to their lust for Ebony, save for occasions where she permits them to have sex for her enjoyment, at which point it is presented as titillation for her.

Also among the characters with stated romantic interest in Ebony are Tom Rid, Hairgird, Snope, Lumpin, Tom Riddle, and Snaketail.

Everybody who has things in common with Ebony is Ebony, essentially. Every character is so interchangeable due to the pre-packaged identity she assumes is the only authentic way to be gothic that nobody feels like an actual character. Willow and B'loody Mary both occupy the role of female best friend for Ebony, save for a brief period where Willow is killed and Lupin has sex with her corpse before her resurrection one chapter later. In fact, the only time a character Ebony isn’t sexually attracted to is complimented is when she tries to lay on really thick her attempt to suck up to Raven in the hopes she’ll return to editing. The only difference between Vampire and Draco is how many times Ebony has sex with them, and that’s not getting into the masses of other goff guys who may as well be nameless, such as Diabolo (Ron), “Crab”, Goyle, and “Dracola” (Navel). In the past, Tom “Satan” Riddle proves to be just as generic a love interest as the other two, and then more faceless characters in Hades (“Serious Blak”), Lucian Malfoy, James “Samoro” Potter, and Hedwig.

Nobody has any character, save for Ebony, because they’re not meant to be characters, they’re meant to be imaginary friends for Ebony to play with, to fawn over her and have everything in common with her. If we buy into the belief that Tara is a rather lonely teenage girl who has apparently pushed away her only friend over a My Chemical Romance poster, then her decision to basically strip away everything that makes the Harry Potter world what it is so that she could rebuild it from the ground up into her gothic paradise makes a lot of sense.

Of course, she isn’t that at all, but first we need to look at all the other things that Tara is and isn’t.

Part 6. Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before – Raven

Fifteen-year-old Eternity Demen'tia Johnson warily took a seat on the Hogwarts Express. As she did so, she heard many giggles in the air. Ugh. Stupid preps. Eternity had hoped she wouldn’t see any when she came to Hogwarts. They had made her life in Los Angeles High School miserable. Now she was supposed to put up with them here? She sighed sadly, and stared out of the window. In her mistery, she took her iPod out of her Emily the Strange bag and blared on some My Chemical Romance (A/N: Don’t they rock?). Oh great. Now even more preps were giving her dirty looks. Eternity tried her best to ignore them. It wasn’t because Eternity was dirty or deformed or anything. Maybe it was something to do with her black leather corset, or her ripped black miniskirt or her black combat boots or the metal music she was listening to. Eternity hated how people judged her like that just because she was a goth.

The above is a snippet from I’m Not Okay, written by Tara’s friend Raven. And in it, you can see a lot of the same themes present in My Immortal. Anachronistic technology, a misunderstanding of what the goth subculture is, preps hating her on mere principle, authors notes spliced in mid-sentence to herald the glory of her taste, and more description offered up for her clothes than for anything else. Throughout I’m Not Okay, we see Draco Malfoy as the gothic love interest, comparisons of characters to members of bands the author likes, and canon Harry Potter characters becoming gothic and taking on nicknames like Dracula, Sea, and Darren.

Good sense and suburban decency run screaming at the sight of a dark name like “Darren”.

Rather than shit all over preps of her own design, Luna Lovegood and Hermione Granger, two characters so far removed from the stereotype of an American high school “popular kid” that it’s almost infuriating, are turned into the superpreps to be hated. Slytherin is still so gothic a house that their common room password is “bleeding kisses” and the portrait is a woman described as the “splitting image” of the lead singer of Sisters of Mercy, an actual goth band whose frontman Andrew Eldritch is most certainly not a woman and not even particularly androgynous.

The same out-of-place theme of sexually abusive adopted parents that plagues My Immortal’s side characters returns in Eternity’s backstory. She sticks her middle finger up at preps unprovoked and veers off course to call out the shittiness of preps. Really, Eternity is in every imaginable way just Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way with a marginally better writer, as is to be expected from the editor of Tara’s disasterpiece.

The authenticity of Raven’s works isn’t in doubt, in my mind. It predates the memetic nature of My Immortal by a great deal, they co-wrote a story entitled Ghost of You that, again, features the exact same terrible tropes and bad ideas, albeit this time with Hermione Granger as the parentally abused goth hated by preps and now in love with Draco Malfoy, And, the fifth and final chapter of I’m Not Okay has,

a/n: TARA IS DA BIGGEST FUCKING BITCH EVERY AND BY THE WAY I’M A BIGGER MCR FAN AND GERARD IS MINE 4EVA SO FUCK U

Eternity was so happy. She went to class with the other fifth-years, Sea, Draco, Shadow, Darren, and Satan. That fucking retard Elvira (whose real name was Lindsay like that fucking ho Lindsay Loan) had gone all the way back to first-year and they put her in Gryffindor where all the retarde4d preps were because she couldn’t even write properly and she had to get her friends 2 do it for her.

Hot damn. That’s a far more scorching burn than being the offscreen victim of Lumpkin the necphilak.

Raven’s stories being the template for My Immortal is no coincidence. Tara aped everything she saw with gusto, imitating her friend who, while not a very good writer, could write sentences properly and gave description to things. Hell, as far as fifteen-year-old fanfic writers go, Raven is actually pretty decent, just entrenched in some terrible themes–again, pretty typical for teenagers–and does things like describe Eternity 'sadly putting her hair up’. On some level, Tara is trying to be as good a writer as Raven is. She looks up to her and, immediately after in a fit of anger killing off the character meant to be Raven, brings her back and guiltily sucks up to her with as many compliments as she can give.

Whether she is the same person as 'Tara’ or a friend in on the joke, I believe that Raven exists as sort of a proto-Tara, a precursor to the real juicy fun. Her story isn’t very good and she writes the exact same things Tara does with marginally more writing ability. They’re identical in every possible way, with the same interests, attitudes, and bizarre writing sensibilities. Almost no differences in the presented persona emerge, but as much as their obsessions with clothing and iconography bordering on disingenuous poserliness would imply that the pre-packaged nature of their identities is to blame, I believe it was all meant to deepen the character, provide a more grounded contrast to her and help make her seem more real.

Rather than existing as a nebulous beta reader who also has no prior internet history, existing solely through the character of Willow and authors notes that let their ongoing drama spill through into the story for us to see in what I feel is a brilliant piece of meta performance art, she has her own stories that make her very much a real presence in the extended saga of My Immortal. I believe that in the long term, she was meant to continue onward as a developing foil for Tara, someone whose existence helped back up her own. But, as evidenced by the way I’m Not Okay stops at chapter 5, which on the timeline of My Immortal would place it somewhere around chapter 16, this didn’t go as planned.

If “Raven” were a co-conspirator to “Tara”, it’s possible they got bored, didn’t have the insane devotion to a multi-layered and quite frankly absurdly deep prank. If Raven and Tara are one and the same, then perhaps the pressure of developing two 'different’ personas proved too much work, and decided to focus on the big one. After all, Raven’s stories are only notable through her association to Tara, the Art Garfunkel to Tara’s Paul Simon. Mediocre but ultimately harmless stories that by and large flew under the radar and aren’t even well known by people who know My Immortal. I’m Not Okay was never going to draw the same level of interest or vitriol that My Immortal did, thus making it a joke with far less payoff, even if by virtue of not being as poorly written, it was likely easier to write. This is helped by the immense disparity in productivity between the two; whether the primary actor or personality, Tara is more prolific, something that ties directly into the return on investment when it comes to how people reacted to either story.

And as it turned out, she wasn’t needed. The My Immortal Extended Universe has long since been forgotten, and yet people fell for the joke without it. People bought very easily into My Immortal as a genuine piece of work, or at least were so willing to enjoy it as a mockable distraction that nobody ever really asked. Raven became a redundant cog in the machine, and removing her freed up the effort to focus full time on making My Immortal something even more incredible than it began as.

More evidence of this lies in the fact that even once Raven allegedly returns to her role as editor, the spelling only gets increasingly worse; she’s credited as helping in many chapters, but her former sensibilities are gone, and no edits are ever made, as illustrated in the snippets detailing the degeneration in part one. It’s possible that this was meant to convey that Raven wasn’t actually helping; that she quit writing fanfic due to her fallout with Tara, and Tara merely went on pretending she still had a friend in Raven as she sank deeper and deeper into her wish fulfillment paradise. Raven never managed to gain the established foothold that Tara did, so nobody ever questioned it, and everyone was too busy having a good time to wonder how the chapters ever qualified as being 'edited’.

Curious is the fact that even though they made up, Raven never came back. She didn’t continue writing her own stories, the drama between them never resurged, and aside from her supposed beta services to Tara, is absent from the bulk of the saga in its entirety. This is in spite of the fact that in all apparent ways, Raven is not only the more skilled writer, but the one with a clearer passion for it. Her prose may be nothing special, but the bar should not be set too high for what is allegedly a teenage girl writing Harry Potter fanfic. She falls into a lot of the common holes, but her style is that of someone who loves stories and wants to write their own, and for her to so quickly vanish and never return is, to me, evidence that she was always a character too, and that her place in the 'real life’ layer of My Immortal was simply deemed irrelevant.

Part 7. Girlfriend in a Coma – That Time Tara Got Hacked

In chapter 38, a time-displaced Tara opens for Marilyn Manson in Hogsment, which is what Hogsmeade was called before they changed it in 2000. In Hogsmint, a store called Hot Ishoo will change its name to Hot Topic in the year 1998. Tom Riddle possesses future knowledge of both of these events, as well as the certainty that because amnesia potions haven’t been invented yet, he will not be affected by the one being used on his cigar branded with a movie that hasn’t come out yet, which is a shame because he wanted to use the potion on Ebony so that the time-traveling girl he loves will forget about her old life and her romantic entanglements in her own timeline with the sons of two of his bandmates sothat only her love for him will remain. His prescient, almost accepting knowledge of seemingly everything about his future up until his fall is almost tragic; he must know that Ebony’s involvement in his life is going to ruin it

On top of being the Dark Lord and Tom Bombadil, Tom Riddle may also be Doctor Manhattan. But that’s not the point of this part.

After xBlakXTearX performs its first big gig, the band immediately falls apart as, due to Lucian Malfoy playing the wrong song by mistake, Samaro Potter decides to shoot his arm off with a knife. Those of you attempting to follow the bizarre, Ebony-centric take on the universe may be surprised to learn that she is not the Yoko Ono of the band in what may be the only important conflict in the story that isn’t about her. However, since everything has to be about our goffik darling, Ebony jumps in front of the bullet–that, again, has been shot from a knife, like this is the second-worst Final Fantasy game ever made–and enters a coma.

Bear in mind, she does this knowing that Lucian survives this attack, going on to find love, have Draco, and despite two stints as a wizard nazi manages to avoid jail time and lead a life of incredible luxury and comfort. This also requires her to ignore her very important mission to prevent Tom from ever becoming Voldemort and the insane repercussions of dying in a timeline that isn’t her own, leaving behind all of her possessions that are even more anachronistic in the 80s, including a time machine that anyone could suddenly begin misusing.

All in all, an incredibly stupid decision with no purpose other than to insert Ebony and her useless ass selfless heart into conflicts that she has nothing to do with, because she’s the 'hero’ of our story.

Before we could see the resolution of that nail-biting cliffhanger, Tara’s account was allegedly hacked by a 'guest writer’, who claimed to have been able to crack her password with incredible ease. While there, the password cracker gives her own take on My Immortal, involving the death of Ebony, which undoes all of Tara’s damage upon the universe and returns everybody to their proper states, while sentencing Ebony to a terrifying ironic hell where she is doomed to an eternity of wearing infinite layers of preppy clothing brands.

While there, the hacker also shares with us the real chapter 39 as an act of kindness to those of us who were clinging onto the saga for dear life and wanted to know how Ebony was going to survive jumping in front of the knife-propelled bullet. Allegedly, this chapter was already written and waiting to be posted in the document area. It ends up being such a bizarre element of time travel that even the Terminator franchise never went there.

“What the fuk happened?” I asked dem. “Oh my satan!11 Am I lik dead now?” I gosped.

���Enoby u were almost shot!11” said Serious. “But da ballet could not kill u since u were form anodder time.”

“But fangz anyway!1” said Lucian holding oot his arm. I gasped. He had two arms!

Which opens up a lot of questions, then shoves them aside so I could wonder for a second if Lucius Malfoy was missing an arm in the canon. He wasn’t, making this another perplexing note of Tara’s that rewards a familiarity with the source material by highlighting all the ways in which it’s wrong. But then, after being told that Snap was Death Dealer, despite being the classmate of a Tom Riddle who hadn’t yet gone dark, Ebony comes across Snape raping Draco, and is so distraught by her boyfriend’s betrayal in this act that she runs to her room, takes out a steak, and uses it to slit her wrists.

Neither steaks nor stakes work like that.

The next chapter begins with her “back in Tim” due to her suicide, but the endgame plot batshit of My Immortal isn’t something we can even tackle in full yet.

There is a lot about the hacker that’s peculiar, and that’s because I believe that the hacker is Tara herself. A lot of minor elements of the breach of her account actually betray this secret, and it’s one of the few things in My Immortal I’m unsure about in regards to its intent.

The way that fanfiction.net handles posting a story involves uploading the story file to a document area, and then from the story menu selecting the relevant document. I always found it kind of clumsy personally, but what stands out about it is the fact that the chapter was allegedly written and left online for an indeterminate amount of time. There aren’t many reasons to upload a completed chapter to the website and then not post it. For someone like Tara, who does no editing and is clearly no longer sending the story off to Raven to be edited, there seems to be absolutely no reason for the story to be sitting idly in the documents area. I imagine Tara finished each chapter and immediately shoved it online in a frantic hurry to get it out there, as opposed to leaving it online to age like a fine vintage of toilet moonshine.

The original posting of the chapter was actually from the original document being copy/pasted into the one that contained the fake chapter nine. However, chapter 40 is then posted some time later as, “Chapter 40. LOL! Someone has taken my account over” by what seems to be the hacker. Which is odd, since they already pasted it into chapter 39, and posting it again from the document area seems rather pointless. It even includes an addition of, “THE IDIOT’S NOTE: Well… this was in the doc area… might as well let the whole world see what the real Tara wanted to show us… Have a nice day!” that the chapter 39 version lacks, meaning this hacker allegedly went into the doc, copy/pasted it into a new file with her chapter and Tara’s, but then edited the original document and posted it too. It’s an odd thing to do, like someone went in with very little idea of what the plan actually was and stumbled redundantly over ideas as they went.

But particularly odd about this whole thing is that Tara does nothing about it. She doesn’t delete the insulting notes or remove the fake chapter, she leaves them both there even though the author’s note of chapter 41 makes it clear that she’s very aware of her account being compromised, not only letting the mockery of herself remain, but even letting it effect the numbering of subsequent chapters. Which may seem like just Tara not caring enough and going with the chapter numbers listed by fanfiction.net, until you look back at chapter 10.

Chapter 10 was posted twice, and Tara never removed the second, identical version of it. It remained on the site up until the day the story was purged by site moderators. And yet, Tara always remained consistent in her renumbering of the chapters, always subtracting one from the chapter count when she posted it; what the site claimed was chapter 12 was really chapter 11. For a story with only the barest minimum of shits given, to properly compensate for this numbering accident for almost thirty chapters is a surprising amount of misplaced effort, but it establishes that she does care about the chapter numbers, and makes the sudden slip a lot more suspect. Why only go halfway in on her effort by continuing to count her double-posted chapter, but not this fake one that she’s allowed to remain as a part of the saga?

Part 8. That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore – Bringing it all together

I’ve prattled on for well over ten thousand words now about a myriad of My Immortal’s issues, but you could look at each individual flaw of the story and say that on their own, they hardly form evidence of trollery afoot, even if some of the more glaring issues are harder to explain away. But surely I’m going to show how they connected to form the cohesive peak of my argument, right? “How soon are you going to get to that?” you shout into your screen, not knowing how computers work.

Well how soon is now?

Tara Gilesbie wrote a story that set her up as the ultimate caricature of a teenaged fanfic writer who is just the worst in all of the best ways. All of the elements of bad writing on every level came into a perfect storm that only grew more powerful over time as it sank further and further into its own madness until it didn’t even resemble what it had started out as. From the self-inserted wish fulfillment to a startlingly creative use of the English language, it hits every hallmark of a bad fanfic one would think to roll up into one neat and tidy little ball, save for perhaps a massive panfandom crossover of everything the author has ever liked.

There is a clear story arc in My Immortal, but it isn’t Ebony’s tale of romance and destiny, it’s Tara’s slow descent into gibbering madness, like the story she had created was an eldritch being that she was unable to comprehend the sight of. As I went over in part one, the writing style breaks down steadily over time, becoming more typo-ridden, filled with more and more casual abbreviations and chatspeak until it’s become apparent that she simply doesn’t care, and while the decline in writing 'quality’ certainly begins with Raven’s absence, it is a steady drop for many chapters afterward. Tara’s character is not one that seems like she has a grasp on subtlety or moving slowly, but that’s the pace with which the boundaries are pushed.

Let’s look at the plot in a rather brief rundown. The story starts out fairly simply, with Ebony and Draco falling in love and having poorly written sex in the forest. Vampire comes in to complicate things in a love triangle that is surprising for leading to attraction angst in all possible directions. Voldemort’s introduction adds to the melodrama of the story, and it weaves in and out of slice of life romance angst and the Voldemort subplot rather strangely. Then, in chapter 17, my favorite part of the story occurs, and it signifies the moment where My Immortal jumps the shark in a way nobody would have ever dreamt of.

Gerard was da sexiest guy eva! He locked even sexier den he did in pix. He had long raven blak hair n piercing blue eyes. He wuz really skinny and he had n amazing ethnic voice. We moshed 2 Helena and sum odder songz. Sudenly Gerard polled of his mask. So did the other membez. I gasped. It wasn’t Gerard at all! It was an ugly preppy man wif no nose and red eyes… Every1 ran away but me and Draco. Draco and I came. It was…….Vlodemort and da Death Deelers!

“U moronic idiots!” he shooted angstily. “Enoby, I told u to kill Vampire. Thou have failed. And now……….I shall kill thou and Draco!”

“No no please!” We begged sadly but he took out his knife.

Sudenly a gothic old man flu in on his broomstick. He had lung black hair and a looong black bread. He wus werring a blak robe dat sed ‘avril lavigne’ on da back. He shotted a spel and Vlodemort ran away. It was…………………………………DUMBLYDORE

It’s important here to note that this is very soon after Raven left the story. and remember that this is around when the story began to stop caring about spelling and typing. After this point, everything in the plot goes off the rails. The melodrama ramps up, Ebony is revealed as the only one who can stop Voldemort, time travel is introduced, despite supplanting Harry as the chosen one who can defeat the Dark Lord she instead tries to seduce a teenaged Tom Riddle… Everything goes completely off the rails.

And that’s the plan all along. The angle of Raven and Tara’s feud never went anywhere, probably because nobody really cared much about two teenagers yelling at each other on the internet. At least, not until 2015 when some asshole would examine the shit out of it for very little discernable reason or gain. I believe that when it was scrapped, the brain trust behind My Immortal decided to go in a different direction. Readers may not have took the bait of their public dispute, but they were buying the troll hook, line, and sinker. People genuinely believe, or at least want to believe, that the story was written in earnest. Even a lot of the people who have doubts about it have them on the grounds that they don’t want to accept that someone could write a story so terrible. The unexpected appeal of the trainwreck that was My Immortal itself, rather than the meta saga of Tara Gilesbie, terrible writer and object of mockery, drove the project into a different direction.

The story and spelling both degrade at the same time, steadily creeping further and further into the most ludicrous things the author thinks they can get away with. As the readers continue to accept what they see as genuine, the author pushes further, which is why we see new elements constantly introduced into the story where they make no sense. It’s not Tara throwing the kitchen sink into her story in a misguided belief that a lot of everything will make her story good, it’s Tara setting the narrative on a trajectory of the most ludicrous thing she can think of, and watching as people believe it. Because they do, completely.

Sex is introduced into the story, because of course it is, through the most unappealing of ways possible. Genitalia are referred to by 'thingy’ as though using the word penis is too embarrassing for her to handle, even though later she refers to Snap’s 'clook’ without issue. To further the wish fulfillment, she must be having sex with her love interests, and it must be terrible.

We went on the bed and started making out naked and then he put his boy’s thingy in mine and we HAD SEX. (c is dat stupid?)

I believe they call that docking.

I’ve already explained how I believe Tara Gilesbie to be just as much a fictional character as Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, and what I feel that character is meant to be is the most mockable and stereotypical fanfic writer one could ever dream of. A teenage emo girl delusionally believing she’s a goth, who’s into boys kissing but has no problem throwing homophobic slurs around, who violates the Harry Potter canon in every way possible for the sake of creating her world of wish fulfillment where everything centers around her. Every bad writing trope wrapped up into sensibilities that set themselves up for mockery. Throw on a tragic lack of self-awareness that opens her up to be laughed at as she smugly highlights her mistakes, and all the pieces fall into place.

Tara Gislebie is a parody of fanfic writers.

Before My Immortal hit the scene, bad fanfiction was not as popular a fandom passtime as it is now, owing largely to new forms of media allowing us to better share the stories and our mockery of them than we had access to in mid-2006, but also because it was always rather contained within fandoms or specific LJ groups meant to deride them. But My Immortal crossed boundaries and spread far outside the reaches of the Harry Potter fandom, to become more than just a story. It was a sensation, a fic so notorious that even people who weren’t around back then have still at least heard of it, even if they haven’t gone out looking for it. While bad writers are nothing new to fandom, My Immortal set off a slew of imitators and tributes, fake sequels, adaptations using its basic setups in different fandoms to produce interesting results, and with more attention suddenly on badfic with the intent to mock it, troll writers came out in droves to try and reproduce the magic.

Some succeeded. Many failed, and I believe one of the main reasons is that people continue to take My Immortal at its word. They just whip some typo-heavy dreck up in their word processor, and ignore all of the subtler elements of My Immortal. It gets so much wrong from the very beginning, but it had to slowly stew in its own crazy long enough to become the poorly written train wreck we’ve come to love. For a story so over the top, that combines all of the elements of a bad story into one perfect package, it does it cleverly enough that it continues to fool people almost ten years later.

You may believe that this is all way too much work for anyone to put into a stupid fanfic. That if it’s meant to be a joke, that it’s a long way to go. Developping characters, faked account compromises, and an active effort put into writing as terribly as possible. And it is a lot of effort, which is meant to throw you off, because it’s the greatest trick the devil ever pulled.

Haha. Wondering why this post isn’t where it’s normally found?

Well, my friends, ask no more!

On a dark lonely evening, sweat drips through your hair

Warm smell of your butthurt, rising up through the air

Up ahead in the distance, see the laptop’s blue light

Your head grows  heavy and your sight grows dim

Gotta stop for the night

There my posts on the display

Rang the warning bell

And you were thinking to your self

Give it a week and I’d surely quell

Then I flamed all the posters and I showed you her name

There were voices ringing in your head

Swear you’d heard them say

Welcome to the Hotel Tarafornia

Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)

Such a normal place

Plenty of room at the Hotel Tarafornia

Any time of year (Any of time of year)

I can smell your fear

Her mind is Tumblr-addicted

She got them means behind ends

She got a lotta commie, commie kids

That she calls friends

How they dance in the Discord

Sweet doxxing rush

Some post to remember

Some troll to forget

So I called up the admin

“Please bring my ban”

And he said

We haven’t had that spirit here since GC toured Japan

And still those voices are ringing from far away

But still those posts are comin’ from far away

Wake you up in the middle of the night

Just to hear me say

Welcome to the Hotel Tarafornia

Such a lovely place  (Such a lovely place)

Such a horrid face

Living it up in the Hotel Tarafornia

What an awful lie (What an awful lie)

What an alibi

Mirrors behind mirrors

Men behind the man

And she said: “We are all just copycats here

Of a copy of a fake

Among the moderators

They gathered for a feast

They stab it with their steely knives

But they just can’t kill the beast

Last thing you remember, you were

Grasping for your mouse

You had to find the permaban

To restore what was before

“Relax”, said your bete-noire

“I am

Programmed to deceive

You can ban me any time you like,

But I will never leave!”

[retroateez]

Prophecy - Chapter Ten

i’ve been so excited to introduce this character purely because i’m absolutely whipped for him,,, hope u enjoy xx

wc;3542 Prophecy Masterlist

The next morning, you and Yeosang prepare yourselves for the final hurdle of your journey, the mage believing that you'll arrive just before sunset.

"Why can't you just teleport us there?" you ask him as you wolf down a bowl of porridge at the bar downstairs. "Or are you just trying to torture me?"

"It drains too much of my energy to move two people such a long distance," he explains. "There's a cost with magic."

You nod, finishing your breakfast as Yeosang double checks you haven't forgotten anything.

"What do you think happened to that bear?" you look around cautiously as you exit the tavern, scared that the beast will come lumbering around the corner and separate your head and your shoulders with ease like a mangled children's toy.

"I don't know," Yeosang shrugs. "somebody might've hunted it."

The mage's hypothesis does nothing to soothe your worries, still anxiously peering into the woods around you. You cast your mind back to your dream, remembering the image of the wounded bear, wanting nothing more to put your new mecidinal skills to use and patch him up. You have to keep reminding yourself that it was merely a dream, that the bear was fine and there was no gushing cut on his neck.

Still, you stay glued to Yeosang's side as he marches along the dirt path, ignoring your pleas to play another game to take your mind off the poor beast lurking in the forest.

More hours pass, consisting of nothing other than walking, except for Yeosang pausing momentarily to gather various plants along the side of the road. He spends countless minutes explaining the uses of hellebore petals, moleyarrow plants and nostrix leaves, tearing them apart and rubbing them between his fingers like they're spun from solid gold.

Of course you take no notice of what he's saying, which, of course he notices.

"These'll be on your next alchemy exam!" Yeosang declares. "Just to spite you for not listening to me!"

You huff and storm ahead of him, crossing your arms heavily to make a childish statement, which doesn't faze the mage in the slightest. Chuckling at your antics, he catches up to you and slings an arm around your shoulders.

"Awh, is little Iris sulking?" he teases you, and you press your lips together in an effort to completely ignore him.

He reaches round to poke your cheek, and you meet his ribcage with your elbow in response, smirking when you hear him exhale a small grunt of pain.

"I'm not sulking," you stick your tongue out at him. "Are we nearly there yet?"

Nursing his freshly bruised torso with a pout, he nods at you and points to his left with his free hand.

"See that tower?" he mumbles through the pain, and you nod when your eyesight lands on a pointed roof just on the horizon. "He lives there."

Seeing your destination within reach lifts your spirits back up, and you slap Yeosang on the back in encouragement, dismissing the way he doubles over and coughs into his knees.

"Hurry up, teach!" you call. "We've got an astrolomer to see!"

-----

The home of the astrologer is more beautiful than you could ever have imagined.  You're stood at the beginning of a winding, cobblestone path, which leads to a wooden door in the main building of the house. Comprised of stone bricks, the primary feature is the tower. Taller than you can comprehend, the tower is circular, a few arched windows dotted in place of the brick. The main building is square, and honestly it would look like a completely normal house if not for the gigantic spire connected to it.

Ivy meanders up the stone walls, growing out of an overwhelming amount of undergrowth surrounding the entire structure. The amount of greenery is stunning and you can feel the excitement radiating off of Yeosang at the sheer thought of how many rare plants could be hiding in all that foliage.

Looking up, you spot a faint orange glow in the very top window of the tower, and you suppose that your certain somebody must be home.

Yeosang leads you along the curved footpath, marvelling at the growths of flowers and ferns spread out throughout the astrologer's garden.

"I might have to borrow some of these petals when we leave..." Yeosang trails off, lightening flickering around his pupils uncontrollably.

You roll your eyes at him and lift an arm up to knock confidently on the door, but the mage lightly grabs your arm and pulls it back.

"Just go in," he instructs you. "If he's up in the tower he won't be able to hear you anyway."

"But that's rude!" you counter. "You can't just charge into somebodies house!"

"Why not? It's not like we mean any harm!"

"Well he doesn't know that, does h-"

"Ahem."

Lost in your bickering with Yeosang, neither you nor the mage notice the wooden door swing open, and you certainly don't notice the man standing on the other side.

And you're not sure how you missed him, because you've never seen anyone as beautiful as him. Sure, Seonghwa, the kingsguard, was exeptionally handsome, but in a tall, dark way. And Yeosang was pretty, but in a soft, comforting way. But this stranger was something else, something entirely ethereal like he's stepped straight of a children's fairytale book. and you couldn't do anything except for stare at him, mouth agape from having your speech abruptly interrupted and being absolutely bewildered.

You scan over his face, and you're aware that he knows you're watching him, and he's aware that you're aware of that. But you really don't care.

His hair is inky black, mirroring the night sky on a clear night and you've half a mind to run your fingers through it and see if you can map out the constellations within the strands.

"Can I help you?" the stranger speaks and your knees would've buckled if you weren't frozen to the spot, your mind completely boggled. You're embarrassed, to be frank. One person shouldn't have such an affect on you, but he does and you don't know how to handle it.

"Hello!" you blurt. "Help?"

His eyes snap to you questioningly, and it's only then you notice the way they sparkle a gorgeous amethyst purple. You don't think he could get any better. The concern he's glaring at you with is outshined by how beautiful his everything is and you momentarily forget how much of a fool you look. That is, until Yeosang grabs you by the arm.

"Are you okay?" he asks. "You've gone really pale."

You keep your gaze fixed on the astrologer, whose overgrown, midnight black hair falls into his eyes when he moves forward a bit to get a closer glance at the mage.

"Yeosang?" the stranger says. "It's been so long!"

Like old friends, the stranger leaves the safety of his home and approaches Yeosang, giving you the opportunity to recollect yourself. But instead you continue to study him. From his side profile, you see he's got quite a big nose, high, slender cheekbones and the most heart-warming smile you've ever seen in your entire life. You can't see much else except the oddly pointed tip of his ear peeking out through his hair.

"This is Iris," Yeosang points the stranger towards you, and luckily you manage to pull yourself together enough to wave politely and utter a meek 'hello'.

He's dressed in a white shirt, quite similar to Yeosang's (do they all go to the same tailor?) and black, leather trousers. A few buttons on his shirt are undone, his collarbones exposed and glittering in the sun, and that's almost the final straw for your poor heart.

The astrologer extends a palm towards you, and grins widely, clearly having forgotten about your instantaneous, smitten demeanour. You notice a prominent freckle on one of his cheeks, and you can hear the sound of your heart shattering into a million pieces.

"Wooyoung," he shakes your palm firmly and you swear  you feel lightening shooting through your entire arm when your hands connect. "Jung Wooyoung."

"Nice to meet you, Wooyoung." you smile shyly.

"Likewise, Iris" he's still grinning down at you, but you avert your eyes nervously and you miss the crimson that seeps into his cheeks.

"Anyway..." Yeosang rudely snaps you out of your daze, shooting you a confused look that you pretend not to notice. "We came to ask for your help, Wooyoung."

Wooyoung nods, motioning for the two of you to follow him into his house hurriedly. The main section of the building is very typical, stone brick walls and a cobblestone floor with some type of furred rug thrown over it. There's a lit hearth to your left, a large, wooden table and accompanying chairs, as well as a small designated area for cooking. The only thing remotely out of place is the bottom of a endless, spiralling staircase off to the right, which you assume led to the top of the tower.

You and Yeosang sit down at the table, watching Wooyoung bolt the door numerous times. From the handle all the way down to his feet, there's latches, locks and bolts littered down the door.

"Scared of a break-in?" you crack a joke, realising very quickly there's an element of truth to your poor attempt at humour.

"Something like that." Wooyoung nods grimly, and Yeosang glares at you, kicking you under the table as a warning to keep your mouth shut. After all, you still need to convince Wooyoung to help you, and you're definitely not helping.

Wooyoung turns to face you and Yeosang once he's finished locking the door. He smiles a little, resting his hands on his hips.

"What can I help you with?" he questions, directing his attention to Yeosang.

"We've run into a little... predicament," Yeosang explains through gritted teeth, side-eyeing you to hammer home the fact this entire thing is your  fault. Wooyoung follows Yeosang's death stare and stifles a laugh at the way you flush bright red, reclining further into the stiff back of the wooden chair. "Somebody agreed to help King Hongjoong with matters we know little about."

"And what matters would those be?"

"Divination matters."

You expect Wooyoung to smirk, to nod straight away and agree to help you and an old friend. But instead, his face drops a mile, crossing his arms and a deep frown that doesn't suit him etches into his features.

"I'm sorry, 'Sang. I can't help you. It's too dan-"

"I know it's dangerous for you," Yeosang interrupts the astrologer, standing up from his seat at the table. "But the king'll protect you if you're on his side, you don't need to worry about that."

Wooyoungs's gaze narrows, and his nostrils flare outwards in anger.

"The king would kill me in a heartbeat, mage." Wooyoung spits harshly, his violet eyes laced with poison. "They'd sell my blood and display my ears like some kind of freak attraction fror wanderers all over the galaxy to come and gawk at, so no, I don't quite think you do know it's dangerous."

A moments silence passes between the mage and the astrologer and you can only sit, bewildered. You have no idea what happened to Wooyoung in the past, but it must be equally as dangerous for Yeosang too, especially as a mage?

"They're still after you, aren't they?" Yeosang asks quietly, flicking his gaze up to Wooyoung long enough to watch him nod solemnly.

"I've only been home for about a week," the astrologer whispers. "I was planning on leaving again tomorrow night, they keep managing to track me and I don't know how."

You sit on the chair, looking back and forth between the men and you're not sure what you're supposed to do. It's clear they're both thinking quietly to themselves, and your curiosity outweighs your reason, so you go for it.

"Who's tracking you?" you ask shamelessly. "And why? Are you a mage too, Wooyoung?"

Wooyoung keeps his lips sealed, looking at Yeosang nervously. They have a silent conversation, Yeosang's icy blue eyes boring into Wooyoung deep lavender ones until they finally reach a mutual conclusion.

He tucks his raven black locks behind his ears, drawing your attention to the unusually pointed tips. With the hair out of the way, you can see the glittering jewellery decorating his entire outer ear, all the way from the lobes up the shell. You also notice a scar, already healed but you can tell it was once a painful, angry red. The scar starts where the bottom of the lobe attaches to the face, and runs up to the forward helix. The longer you look, the quicker you realise just why life is so dangerous for the astrologer.

"You're an elf, aren't you?" you breathe before Wooyoung can begin to explain.

You stand up, reaching out to gently glide your fingers across the scar, and you feel for him, you really do. You don't even know him and yet it's like every emotion he's ever felt in his entire life hits you in all one go.

He inhales sharply, moving back instintively and letting his fair fall back over his face like a curtain for him to hide behind.

"Yes," he confirms. "I'm Elven."

"The people that are tracking you," you ask hesitantly, after all, you've only just met the guy. "Did they give you that scar?"

There's a flash of bitterness in Wooyoung's eyes, a momentary lapse of rage and pent up, unresolved hurt and you regret asking.

"Yes." he repeats. "They would've done a lot worse to me. I was one of the lucky ones." His piercing gaze is locked onto Yeosang, and the mage wears an unreadable expression.

"We need your help, Wooyoung." Yeosang says suddenly. "You can bargain with Hongjoong for your safety, and we'll see to it that you're safe."

"I don't thin-"

"Please," you butt in the conversation. "If you play your cards right, you could get so much more from the King than you think. You can get eternal safety and protection from him just by offering him the tiniest piece of information that he needs."

The elf considers your words for a few seconds, scowling as he ponders every possible way you might be planning to trick him. His eyes flick between you and the mage as he thinks carefully. He knew Yeosang well enough to tell that his intentions were true and pure, but you complicated things slightly; he didn't know you at all. He had no idea where you came from, how you even met Yeosang, whether you could be trusted or not. Hell, he didn't even know if you were human. You intrigued him. There was something off about you, but he couldn't quite figure it out. Yet on the other hand, he yearned for safety, wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by people who cared about him and offered him protection. He was tired of running for his life and dealing cards with danger at every turn.

"Before I agree, what exactly do you require from me?"

-----

Yeosang had explained the entire situation to Wooyoung in minute detail, even including the day he found you lifeless on the beach, much to your embarrassment. He informed the elven astrologer about the prophecy and how no other in his field had managed to prove useful thus far.

"Then they're clearly not very good astrologers." Wooyoung sniffs, lifting his nose into the air proudly.

He had taken you both up the spiralled staircase to the top of the tower, where the majority of his work took place. The room was circular and dimly lit, but in a comfortable way. There was a huge, round window in the back wall with a telescope positioned in front of it, the scope itself aimed straight up into the clouds. Wooyoung's bed was pressed against the opposing wall, the blankets a mess and strewn half upon the floor. Papers were stuck to the wall and littered across every surface in the room, and stacks of books covered almost every inch of the stone floor.

Were all elves this messy?

"I wasn't expecting company..." Wooyoung motioned to the clutter with an embarrassed smile, trying his best to shove a wad of papers into his desk drawer.

"So what does an astrologer actually do?" you ask, studying the various drawings of planets and diagrams plastered all over his walls.

Wooyoung paces over to you and plucks one of them into his hands, turning it upside down and showing it to you.

"I study the stars and the planets, and relate their positions and relativity to how they affect the events that happen to us, in our world." he explains, and his violet eyes begin to glow with enthusiasm. "This one for example, you see that miniscule dot?"

He points to a tiny circle he'd drawn on the paper, and you nod.

"That's one of our moons, and because it is positioned exactly there, at an incredibly specific time, it caused a torrential storm down here on our planet."

"That's bullshit," you scoff in disbelief. "There's no way that something up in the sky can do something like that here."

"Is that so? Then maybe you'd like to explain why this diagram is dated the exact same day you washed up outside Yeosang's home? Just after a brutal storm, no less?" Wooyoung raises his eyebrows at you, challenging your logic and almost begging you to try and argue with him.

"It's merely a coincidence." you insist, crossing your arms and turning away from his smug smirk.

"Is she always this annoying?" He points his question to the mage who sighs at your bickering.

"I've told you Iris," Yeosang purposefully avoids the question and instead decides to lecture you. "There's no such thing as coincedences, everything is determined by fate, especially when the stars and planets are involved."

You roll your eyes at him and decide to ignore the lesson.

"So will you help us or not?" you turn back to Wooyoung, who's evidently having an internal battle with himself.

He wants to help, he really does. Honestly, he'd like the company and it would give his work more purpose than it does when he's constantly on the run. Plus, he could try and bargain for protection from Hongjoong in return for his work.

The thought of even stepping through the Ateez kingdom walls makes his stomach churn.

"What about the witch hunters?" he asks quietly.

"You're not a witch, they won't care, will they?" you tilt your head slightly in confusion.

"They'll take anyone who isn't human or has even a single ounce of magic blood in them." Yeosang explains. "Especially elves."

"I'll take us directly into the castle, straight to Hongjoong. The bastards aren't allowed into the castle grounds unless they're requested, so we'll be okay." The mage reassures Wooyoung, who's standing there still looking unconvinced.

He looks at Yeosang, and then to you and the pleading expressions you're both wearing. He doesn't know what life'll be like for him once he was properly avoiding the people chasing him. He could be dead in a matter of days, truthfully.

"I'll need a few things before I get started." he sighs.

"You'll help us?" You grin, almost throwing your arms around him in a hug.

"Yes," he nods. "But I'm doing it for me, and to ensure my own protection. Not for you, understand?"

Yeosang nods. How could he have expected less from the reserved astrologer? It's a a miracle you even managed to convince him to help. But like he said, he was only doing it for the safety Hongjoong would have to give him for his work. Yeosang supposed he would probably do the same if he was in Wooyoung's shoes.

"I'll have to spend the next few days gathering things I need," Wooyoung says. "You're welcome to stay here, I have a guest room downstairs. Besides, there's information I'll need from you regarding the nature of the prophecy."

You let Wooyoung and Yeosang discuss the situation, pouring over the notes on the table, while you sit and watch the sunset through the giant window. Yeosang had been reluctant to show you or even tell you very much about the prophecy, claiming to protect you from such dangerous things. Which you thought was ridiculous, but you didn't want to argue with him, so you let it go.

Hopefully now with Wooyoung by your side, you'll be able to decipher the prophecy quickly, fix the whole mess you created and be on your way, back at Yeosang's shack complaining about how difficult alchemy is.

Hopefully.

Proud of his skilled craftsmanship, he surveys his work with a smile; the second cog is complete, as is the third. There are more cogs yet to come, but the machine is coming together exactly as intended. He refers back to the blueprints, content that the process is progressing smoothly. Of course, something or some One could throw a spanner in the works at any moment. But he's prepared. After all, One must be ready for anything, and everything all at once, whether it be planned or not.

Chapter Eleven 

#ateez #ateez au #medieval!ateez #god i'm so whipped for elven wooyoung #you have no idea #hongjoong #yeosang #san #mingi #wooyoung #yunho #jongho #seonghwa

[meetthemoosemonster]

Glowing Eyes and Shimmering Scales

Introducing: Layla, Sam, Lonna, Jay, and a fuck ton of other side characters, places, and organizations that i didnt really explain, but im to lazy to write something that will explain everything, which will become relevant in the future! Maybe! If I summon the will to write!

also, sorry that I don't post consistently at all, but I hope you enjoy the writing, under the cut.

This is probably going to be a part one for a certain chain of events, and then ill disapear for months agian, so sorry ahead of time, lol.

Tw: abusive parents, torture, emotional breakdowns

Layla's wings flapped as she landed on the training area platform, and saw the instructor stride up to her, looking concerned.

“Layla, you have to leave. Your father is coming, and what he's bringing is not suitable for you to see.”

“Come on Lonna, can’t I stay? I'm going to be of age soon, I need to know what Kron is dealing with.”

“May i remind you that you are not of age yet, and the king still has control over you. Please go back to the cave, its safer there.” Lonna pleaded, fear lighting up her eyes.

“Ok, fine.” Layla grumbled, and started to shift into a dragon in order to get across the castle quickly. But just as she started to flap her wings, a thud was heard behind her, followed by shouts and faint whimpers. Which sounded familiar. Layla turned around to look back at the platform, and saw Sam laying on the ground, shackled, bleeding and shaking violently as the guards sent shocks through his body with wires attached to his temples. Next to him, her father stood, glaring at the child on the ground.

“S-Sam?” Layla could barely breathe, stopped in her tracks as she saw what was happening to Sam only a few feet away. Lonna started to push Layla away, trying to get her to leave, but the king looked up anyway.

“Layla? What in the hell are you doing here?” Laylas fathers voice boomed as he advanced upon Lonna and Layla. “I told you to make sure she wasn't here? You will regret this.”

“O-ok your highness, I'm sorry, I should have-” Lonna stuttered, shaking in fear.

“Dad? What the hell is happening? What are you doing to Sam? Is this why you never tell me shit? Because you're torturing him? Is this-” Layla was cut off by the kings tail slapping her across her face. The tip of his tail scratched at the skin around her eye, leaving blood to trickle down her cheek. She could hear Lonna gasp as the sound of the slap echoed around the training platforms walls.

“Don't speak of things you'll never understand.” the king growled. Layla just stared at him in shock, holding her cheek. He turned to Lonna, who was trying to not glare at him “Why is she still here? I thought I told you to make sure she was long gone.”

“Oh! U-um, I'm- I'm sorry your highness. She came late, and I didn't have time to make sure she had left before you got here.” At the shaky words of Lonna, the king turned to his daughter. “And why were you late?”

“I-I,” Layla was shaking. She was still clutching her cheek and eye, her mind reeling. She knew that her dad had just hit her. She never thought he would go that far. She started thinking about the time that Jay had come back to the cave with a swollen cheek. Anger flared in her chest, her fists tightened, and her skin turned scaly. Her nails grew longer and sharper and cut into her palms. “Did you hit Jay too? How much do I not know about you? And what the HELL are you doing to Sam?” Layla was still shaking, but now she was angry.

“He is a prisoner, and he is treated accordingly. You have no business questioning my authority.” The King returned her glare, then snarled. “You need to leave. Lonna, Make sure she goes to the cave, and doesn't leave. We will talk about this later. Remember, you aren't queen yet Layla. Not for a long time. If I have to correct you all the time, there will be consequences.” Layla started shaking from fear at the word ‘consequences’. Lonna grabbed Layla's arm, and started to pull her away. Layla looked back at her dad as he turned around and advanced on Sam. Sam looked over at Layla in the midst of his pain, and they locked eyes. Layla tried to give Sam a look, hoping Sam would understand what she meant. Sam nodded everso slightly before being shocked back into the torture. Lonna made sure Layla was turned around before she could see Sam again, and they both jumped off the cliff, transforming into their dragon forms in midair.

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

When they reached the cave where Layla, and her little sister, Jay lived, Layla turned back to her human form right before she landed, and Lonna shook her head at the young girl. Usually Layla would have done a flip, or rolled her eyes at Lonnas disapproval, but her eyes were still red, tears ready to fall from her eyes. Once she noticed Lonna looking concerned at her, Layla wiped the tears and blood away, and shook her head, trying to return to normal.

“Oh honey,” Lonna said, and hugged Layla. “I'm so sorry you had to see that. You are ok, right? He didn't hurt you too bad?” Layla remembered her cheek and eye, and felt it throbbing again.

“Oh, I guess I forgot. I’m ok Lonna, I swear, stop worrying about everything, god.” Layla tried to cover up her choked voice with teenage annoyance. But Lonna saw right through it.

“Come on honey, let's get you inside, and take a look at your cheek.” The two of them walked into the cave, and Lonna had Layla sit down on the couch in her room. She started to take care of the swollen skin, grabbing a box of magical ointments from the kitchen. Lonna started to hum childrens songs about ghost stories and dragon legends and such and Layla started to close her eyes and drift off to sleep. But then she heard her sister land on the ledge, and run through the door.

“You won't believe what Mica got me!” Jay ran into Laylas room, a wide smile across her face, but it faded when she saw Layla. Layla sat up. “Oh no, are you ok?”

“Yeah, im ok Jay, dont worry about it, training just got a little too aggressive today, that's all.” Jay gave her a weird look.

“Ok, if you say so. Anyway, look at the necklace Mica got me!”

“OoooOh, so Micas giving you necklaces now. It's almost like your, um, DATING?” Layla fake gasped, and started laughing with Jay. Lonna smiled, but then got serious.

“Jay, you have to be careful, you know your dad doesn't want you dating a citizen, much less Mica.”

“I Know, he wont find out, it's all good. Please, just let me have this Lonna?” Lonna nodded, but still looked worried. Jay continued to talk about her day with Mica, and after a while, layla zoned out, and began making a list in her head of the things she would need, and her plan to get Sam out, and FAR away. Shed never really liked him, but she couldn’t let him suffer like that, not now that she knew.

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

Later that night, Layla was packing her bag, going through the list she had come up with earlier.

“Ok, i've got a change of clothes for me, and for Sam, warmer clothes for when it gets cold at night, the straps and blankets for my back that sam can stay on, blankets for when we sleep, enough food for 2 weeks, a water filter, some matches for Sam, and a map. I think that's everything-” Layla stopped when she heard Lonna in the doorway. She threw the bag under her bed quickly, then looked up to see that Lonna had been there the entire time.

“Don't worry, i won't tell your dad, or anyone else, i promise.” Lonna said before Layla could even open her mouth. “Take it from someone with a history of running away, don't expect that anything will go as planned, make sure you have something from the people you're leaving behind.” Lonna threw a necklace over to Layla, who caught it, then turned it over in her hand. “It's a scale from each person in your family. Jay, Me, Mica, Nao, your mom, and your dad. And one of your scales too. I thought you might want to have something to have from us when you're gone.”

“No, I can't take this, I'll be back right away, I just need to get Sam out, I'll be back before they even realize what happened, so you should keep it.” Layla held out the necklace for Lonna to take, but she just shook her head.

“Even so, keep it. I made it for you. regardless of whether you leave or not, I want you to have it.” Lonna smiled sadly at Layla. Layla looked down at the necklace as the six scales shimmered and clinked together.

“Ok, I guess I’ll keep it, but I'll be right back, seriously.”

“Ok honey, just be safe for me, ok? Promise me that you'll be safe. And give me a hug before you go.” Layla nodded, and hugged Lonna tight.

“I promise, I'll be safe. And thank you Lonna, thank you for everything.” Layla felt Lonna nod, and tighten her grip before finally releasing.

“Is there anything you want me to tell Jay? Just in case I mean?”

“Um, I actually wrote her a note already. Can you give it to her if i don't come back?”

“Of course honey, I'll give it to her.” Layla handed the folded up piece of paper to lonna, and then clasped the necklace around her neck.

“I'm going to go hang out with Jay now, bye, I love-” Layla stopped herself, but then noticed that Lonnas eyes were tearing up, and she was looking at her so tenderly. “Um, I love you Lonna. Thank you for basically being me and Jay's mom when Mom died. And sorry for all the times I messed up, I know I'm kinda a lot.”

“Oh baby, you're not a lot, it's an honor to be your step in mom for you and Jay. I love you too honey, come here.” Lonna hugged Layla again, and Layla hugged back. They stayed like that for a while, then Lonna let go, and wiped the tears off her face. “Ok, go say bye to your sister kiddo, and remember, i love you.” Lonna walked out of the room and went to the kitchen.

Layla took a deep breath before going into her sisters room. She listened to Jay talk about the karaoke date that she was planning for her and Mica for their anniversary, the big test she had coming up next week, and her concert.

“Hey, you'll be there, right? Dad obviously doesn't want to go, you know how he is with that stuff, it's next weekend, and you don't have training that day, so you'll be there?” Jay looked at Layla. Layla's breath caught, and her heart dropped down to her stomach.

“Oh,...um, yeah, i'll be there.” Layla tried to remind herself that she would be back before the concert, she would be right back. There was no reason to worry.

“Awesome! We sound really cool, we've been working on this set for a couple months now, it's not easy AT ALL.”Jay looked over to see her sister looking like she would throw up. “Hey, you sure you're ok? You've been acting weird ever since you got home, and so has Lonna.”

“Oh, it's ok Jay, I'm fine, just tired, long day, you know how it is.” Layla yawned, trying to act tired.

“...Ok, if you say so, but somethings up, I know it. You don't have to tell me, but somethings up.” Jay hugged Layla. “Hey, whatever is happening, please just be careful, you know how dad is.”

Layla chuckled. “Yeah, I know, don’t worry about it.” Layla hugged Jay back. “I love you, you know that right?”

“Yeah. I love you too.”

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

Eventually Jay had fallen asleep in Layla's arms, and Lonna came and stood in the doorway and whispered, “You should go now, I'll make sure she's safe.” Layla nodded, and gently moved her little sister off of her, and under the blankets. She kissed Jay's head, hugged Lonna again, and slung the straps with the bags and blankets attached across her body. Once she was outside she took a deep breath and then jumped silently off the ledge, wings sprouting from her back, scales raising across her skin, claws growing from her fingers, and her tail slicing through the air. She felt the straps slide into place as she turned. She began gliding silently toward the dungeons, hoping that Sam had used Sight to see the plan she had written down.

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

In the dungeon Sam was shivering in the corner. He dug his fingernails into his palms hard, and his eyes began to glow white as a vision triggered.

The wind was roaring past his head, and he heard the flapping of wings. Panicked he looked around, expecting to see the king. Instead he saw the mountains in the distance, and bursts of light coming from Layla's mouth as she breathed fire for warmth. He noticed he was sitting on the dragons back, on top of blankets, and surrounded by a couple bags of supplies. He looked behind him, and saw the Gorge and castle falling away behind them as the distance grew. Sam started to turn back around, but his vision flared white, then black.

Sam returned to the dark, damp cell, his heart beating fast.

“It's ok, you're ok, you're getting out.” Sam whispered to himself trying to calm down after the vision. He would panic after even good visions because of how defenseless he was after them. “At least I was able to control it today. I didn't See until I wanted to, which is progress.”

“Yes, it is” Sam jumped when he heard someone else whisper next to him. A burst of orange fire sparked near his head, illuminating the cell with dim light for a second before it died out. Sam saw Layla's face before the light faded.

“Oh, Layla, you scared the shit outta me. Are we going now?”

“Yeah, come on, the guards are sleeping, but now for long, we have to go right now.”

“Ok, cool.” Once they had escaped the dungeons, Layla turned back into a dragon, and Sam climbed on her back and sat down on the blankets.

“I packed you some new clothes in the green bag, and some food and water that you can eat, cause I bet you're hungry.” Layla growled to the best of her ability in dragon form.

“Oh, you think?” Sam immediately started rifling through the bag, pulling out the clothes, and a container of food. “Thanks dude, I owe you one.” Layla just snorted, and took off, causing Sam to get jolted back, and nearly drop the clothes and food. “Hey! Warn a person, for the love of Sight Layla.” Sam changed into the new clothes, ate a sandwich, and drank some water. He saw his vision carry out in real life, and breathed a sigh of relief. Eventually he patted Layla's neck, then tied himself down so he wouldn't fall off, and went to sleep.

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

After a long day of flying non stop, avoiding all towns and traces of dragons as to not be seen, Layla eventually reached the forest that bordered Kron and Verlorn. She landed in the forest, and let Sam get off her back before she transformed back to human form.

“Hey, Sam, we're going to rest here for a bit, then you can go off on your own to Verlorn and meet up with the travelers there, they should be able to help you. I'll see you to the border, then make my way back to the Gorge. It'll only be two days, so hopefully my dad will think that i just needed a break and went to the woods for a bit.” Layla started to take off the straps and bags, and started to set up a little lean-to for her to sleep under for a bit.

“Wait, hold up dude.” Sam was looking at Layla, concern etched across his face. ‘Your telling me that you think you can go back? He hit you! And he’ll do it again. You can't go back, it's so obvious that you got me out, if you go back, you'll be killed, 100 percent.” Layla looked at Sam, starting to panic. “Even Lonna told me to make sure you make it to the Resistance base in Verlorn, she said that you had to get out and stop your dad? You didn't know?”

“L-Lonna? But- But she wouldn't do that. She couldn't.” Layla was hyperventilating. She looked down at her necklace, and grabbed lonnas scale remembering what lonna had said to her before she left. “Is that why?”

“I'll take that as a no…”

“I-...I have to go back, i have to go back, right now. He- he wouldn’t hurt me again, he cares. Yeah, he gets angry sometimes, but that-” Layla's eyes filled with tears, and she felt like she was being punched in the gut.

“And I thought I had issues, my god. Dude, he doesn't care about you, he's kinda evil if you didn't notice? How do you not see that?” Layla didn't even look at him, but her breathing got more rapid.

”I have to go back, I want to go back. I can't leave him, I can't leave them.” Layla was full out sobbing now, hunched over as if her stomach hurt, and to be honest, it did. “Oh no, Jay, i cant- i cant- I have to go back, i can't leave her, i promised her, I PROMISED HER. I can't just leave. Oh my god, no, nononononono. I have to go back, i have to go back now.” Layla forced herself to stand up straight, and began to walk toward a clearing so she could fly back. Sam ran in front of her, and grabbed her arms.

“You can't go, he’ll kill you Layla. We have to find my brother, then we’ll be safe.” Layla started to push past him, still sobbing, but he wrapped his arms around her. Almost immediately Layla sunk to the ground, sobbing and screaming.

“I have to go back, i have to, i should have never left, it wasnt supposed to go like this, this wasnt the plan, THIS WASNT THE FUCKING PLAN.”

“I know, but you can't go back.” Sam looked around, unsure how to deal with the situation. “Layla, do you trust Lonna? She seemed to care about you alot, she wouldn't let you do something that she didn't think you needed to do.” Layla was still sobbing on the ground, whispering ‘i have to go back’ under her breath over and over again. Eventually she nodded a little, but then closed her eyes. Sam held her for a while, before getting her to move under the lean-to, and wrapped her in a blanket. Layla drifted off to sleep, exhausted, and Sam just stood watch, occasionally looking over at Layla, worried, and confused at her response.

#MY OCs #nikas ocs #nika writes #Layla #Sam #Lonna #Jay #The King #Mica #Nao #probably more #glowing eyes and shimmering scales #pls pls pls reblog #and read #pls #My writing #tw: abuse #i think? #tw: torture #sorry for all the typos my brain is fried

[losangelesvalorant]

interesting things from tactical crouch’s interview w fusion assistant coach chrisTFer on 1/21

christfer talks abt hero bans, why fusion underperformed in s2, and why their roster is what it is. ill update this post w the youtube link once its out

On hero bans

Christfer thinks hero bans would change EVERYTHING, every team would have to be able to think on the fly, strong ingame leadership, makes coaches' jobs a lot harder, have to practice every hero on every map. you'd have to coach fundamentals into players a lot more and more focus on quickly IDing win conditions and the enemy gameplan. very seriously hopes they aren't gonna drop it this season

if the goal is to have genuine diversity in hero pool, bans is the way to achieve that, but christfer thinks itll fuck up the competitiveness, level of play will go down. but any aspect that helps spectators is better for league overall

volamel thinks hero bans will excite and drive the audience bc banning players specific heroes would be hype as fuck. lotta strategy, lots of analysis. however he's skeptical bc if it happens midseason it's gonna fuck over coaches

christfer thinks if theyre gonna do it they gotta do it today. there's no other good time

yiska thinks it would be bad to implement it midseason bc the # of games teams play across the season is sooo spread out. teams have different amts of games every month

on why fusion underperformed in s2

Internally, fusion was kinda "naive" coming into s2, thought they were the 2nd best team and acted as if they were 2nd best. rarely felt happiness after scrims bc theyre "supposed" to be winning all the scrims. losing scrims also was hugely negative for the same reason

smaller roster makes it harder to kick people into gear, so lack of motivation was a big thing. they were just waiting for goats to die

thought goats wouldnt continue into s2, stage 4 was where they finally got motivation, fusion never completely understood the goats style of play or the fundamentals goats taught teams, they lost games they shouldnt have as a result. Not one big issue, lots of small issues

fusion held themselves to such high expectations that when they failed them and weren't enjoying the game as much so morale fell. (paraphrased) "as long as my players enjoy playing the game, it makes my job easier"

Christfer says fusion changed a lot for playins, changed coaching structure, overwhelmingly positive result. best theyd looked all season

shanghai had very particular strengths on certain maps. fusion was winning brawl comps vs brawl comps. got nervous and dropped maps they were supposed to take, but theyd given away too many of "their" maps to be able to lose shanghai's maps. 

felt like they hit the ground running on playins, but other teams levelled up across playins and christfer believed other teams wouldve developed more than they would have

even if coaching wasnt problem if team is in a slump you need new coaches to re-fire everyone up, which is what happened w fusion. 

on carpe and sado

carpe was able to play heroes he excelled at in s1, in s2 zarya was entirely different in elements of what makes a player good at the hero. carpe holds himself to a very, very high standard and playing zarya killed his morale because he wasn't so good at it. christfer considers it a failing of himself as a coach that he didn't help carpe work through that more

nobody on the team is worried about carpe’s performance. Christfer confirmed carpe wont play if he isnt up to standard (in response to reddit worrying abt how long his contract is and how much sway he has over coaches)

christfer is very upset about how people treat sado. sado is the "single nicest person you will ever meet." every single player/coach had 1 on 1s with tucker, everyone said they wanted to keep playing with sado. yiska emphasized how important it is that every player on the team wanted to keep playing sado bc for example eqo and carpe want to win more than anything and if they thought sado was the problem they absolutely wouldve said so

Other teams came to fusion wanting to sign sado

christfer said sado wasnt the greatest main tank player last year, but playing rein in a "dysfunctional" team makes the rein player look bad. 

christfer thinks this is the "season of sado." has complete faith in him

the complaints abt sado’s rein "[he] can understand," says to remember sado had never played pro before s1. he doesn't have as much competitive exp which hits him hard but he's grown wildly in the last year. 

sado's ability to hit every halt at the right time is incredible. compares him to alarm in how good his instincts are. excellent player in a team environment, kinda a big brother to some of the players on the team, sado is very important to the team

christfer agrees that if meta shifts and sado is sick, theres a problem, but says this is not a problem unique to fusion

on fusion’s new acquisitions

heesu surprised christfer the most. he’s “very, very, very very, very good.” hungry to learn, easy to talk to, they got a very good deal and christfer is surprised more teams didn't try to get him

heesu has a lot of respect for carpe, heesu said its a + for him to work under carpe

theyre trying to scrim w heesu daily, sounds like they intend to play him if the opportunity presents itself. excellent signing theyre very happy abt

the point of the chipsa signing was that they didnt need a 5th dps, their lineup is already perfect, they had to find someone that "made sense" from many levels. wanted a specialist. Christfer thinks chipsa understands the raw mechanics of doom better than any owl players, thinks he could legit play in a doom meta. also thinks chipsa could teach eqo doom in a doom meta. chipsa provides advertisement, no need for scrimming with him. if the situation is right he can play and if he's not playing he provides income, publicity, etc. christfer again restated he was originally against the signing. when tucker explained why hed be signed, christfer came around to the idea

having 2 way players is a headache in christfers opinion, so that was another reason why they didnt pick up a contenders player instead of chipsa.

chipsa has not had a scrim yet because he’s not in philly bc visa stuff, but christfer did not clarify whether or not he will scrim. 

of all players signed, funnyastro was by far the most in demand. they had to fight for him, almost every team wanted him. he's a "sponge" where he remembers whatever coaches tell him, incredibly coachable, very mature for his age, needs to adjust his playstyle a bit to fit into the team (bc he's going for plays he shouldnt sometimes) but if they can "tune him back" a bit hes great. want to find a middle ground bc astro's ability to kill everything and doing his job (brought up moth as the "glue guy" who enables everyone by doing his job perfectly)

alarm has insane awareness, has natural affinity for positioning, understands ovw instinctively. zero attitude issues, the nicest/perfect teammate. "the whole package."

yiska said ivy has a "special type of character," quickly clarified that it’s not a “problematic” character, but needs a dif type of coaching (christfer agreed)

thinks things got difficult for ivy on toronto bc he was moving roles so much, kdg puts a lot of stock into him, a lot of kr players do too. people from toronto think ivy is insane mechanically. volamel thinks ivy should have been toronto's standout

fury wasnt signed bc of bad synergy btween sado and poko. poko wasnt the problem. fusion is very serious abt winning everything and fury is a statement of that intent. fury/poko cover every base

on new coaches

Christfer really respects seita and kdg, happy to have gotten them. has worked w both of them in the past, considers kdg similar to crusty. they signed kdg like the second he became available, christfer asked for him specifically. 

seita will stay remote 

yiska says mobydik is nuts in terms of game knowledge. Christfer agreed, says he thinks abt the game in a very unique way, outside of the box

misc

Fusion has a system where all 3 supports are rotating in the current meta. nobody is benched. had main support play bap originally when bootcamping, but theres places u can play 2 flex sups, so fusion has a lot of flexibility. who plays depends on situations where you can always play zen/bap vs where you might have to flex to lucio

Christfer thinks main sups doing calling/single caller system is a bit outdated and more of a western concept, trying to build comm system where everyone communicates, everyone calls their own ults. can have ingame leaders, but wants everyone to call what they need to call. in this meta everyone has to make the plays and call their own ults bc its split second and only the person w the ult can see the optimal situation

Christfer thinks the positions where you need stability in ovw is main tank and main support. subbing dps players in and out is fine but you need consistency at mt and ms. 

really really think they dont need to fill their last roster spot

Christfer calls this season a "rebuild season" for fusion. if they dont do well this year christfer thinks it would be the fault of the coaches. too much talent to fuck it up. 

not taking home a title is not exactly a failure, but anything within the top 4 fusion is happy with

#notes #these r barely edited so if theyre incomprehensible thats why

[creativenicocorner]

5, 10, 19?

Aaay! Thank you so much!! @dreamcrow

5. What’s a crackship you love?

As a crack ship gfdkgsd oh man, my heart is set on Blinky/Strickler on that one ahaha. I already adore whatever dynamics they have together on screen - or even when referencing one another!! And honestly I think they’d make great friends!! Heck they could bond on Roman pennies, and mechanical engineering (seeing as Blinky helped build Jim’s Vespa, and Strickler made a super accurate replica of Merlin’s amulet) and don’e get me started on the quick witted beautiful back and forth they’d have

Once tried writing a Good Omens AU with all this in mind, but never quite had the energy to finish it. Let’s face is the two of them have great Aziraphale / Crowley energy haha  

10. Mutual pining or enemies to friends to lovers?

Oh man oh man, mutual pining. It leaves so much potential open!! Heck even the enemies to friends to lovers could happen within the umbrella of mutual pining (especially if one of the two isn’t ready to admit to their pining -wink- ) 

That and I’m just a sucker for two people being so equally into one another but just, not quite having the confidence to learn how the other feels. It’s so juicy and can be played oh so deliciously in so many fun ways!

19. What’s your favorite character head canon?

Weeeell there’s certainly one HC I’ve been hinting at for quite some time and have been meaning to make a proper post about - but here is what I’d like to call the Meat and Potatoes (super lean edition) of the Etruscan Strickler HC ヽ(o♡o)/

(please keep in mind I’m not a qualified historian, or anthropologist, or archeologist - but an avid lover of history )

So the Etruscans and the peoples of Etruria have been around for a loooong time, in fact there are some who believe the Etruscan language is one of the building blocks of many italic languages. And for a good amount of centuries they thrived! 

Then Rome happened, which was perhaps inevitable seeing as they were on the same peninsula - and because of that the size of Etruria changed depending on which century map you’re looking at. And although at some point Etruria spanned from Umbria to just grazing into the region of Lazio - its biggest consistent chunk existed in what we know today as modern Tuscany.

Because of this I should perhaps make it clear that I believe Strickler came out through the fetch after 32BCE during the already decline of the Etruscan language (in which Etruria is already absorbed and occupied by the Roman Empire). In fact by then only a select few, unless they were Etruscan, knew the language Marcus Terentius Varro for example, the Roman Emperor Claudius (though he probably learned it from his first wife, Plautia Urgulanilla who is believed to be Etruscan).

Now I hear what you’re probably thinking: But his/ his familiar’s name is Waltolomew Strickler? That’s not very Latin sounding for a name. 

 And you’re absolutely right!

However, Etruscans (despite occupation and absorption into the Roman Empire - and more so before) were known to be seafaring, trade was very important from Egypt to what we know today as the Greek islands and to the northern coast. Import and export was important and (as well as fighting pirates, but that’s a very fun wiki rabbit hole to fall through another time haha), and with trade comes awesome exposure to other cultures and other peoples from that culture! 

Case in point the vague similarities and non similarities between certain deities between the Roman Greek and Etruscan Pantheon! Of course each pantheon has its own variants and deities that don’t exist in another pantheon, as well as different takes on certain heroes i.e the Greek Heracles, and the Etruscan Hercle -which through a lot of found art, is perceived to be a very popular hero for a number of reasons. 

I could also go into the account of Etruscan soothsayers being well praised even by Cicero - but that’s another rabbit hole for another time - as well as a reason I like to indulge in the fact that Strickler can come across as rather superstitious at times! 

But I’m getting off topic XP TRADE we’re talking about trade, and it was important be it Egypt to the Balkans 

And with that in mind it isn’t impossible for a Northern Germanic man to fall in love with an Etruscan woman.  

1) women were treated far better in Etruria, as opposed to Rome and Athens. In fact Romans thought they were more promiscuous because of how freely and equally they were treated. 

 2) Germanic tribes treated their woman on a similar level of equality. 

 3)   As a culture of partnership, heck we are still discovering more and more about the Etruscans but we can make educated guesses through their sarcophagus covers (the reclining lovers and so on). This celebration of life lived even in the face of death. 

Very on brand Strickler imo, and if we from history can see how they treated marriage in death we can assume how marriage was treated in life. As loving and equal as possible. In short Strickler grew up with that respecting women juice (at least compared to Roman and Athenian standards) 

So name wise, Waltolomew Strickler can come from the Norther Father’s name. Vel for short, as names beginning with ‘w’ aren’t very common in Latin, Etruscan, or Italian. In fact if you go to Italy today and introduce yourself as idk, William -  there’s a good chance they’ll pronounce William as [Vee-lee-am]. 

However in Latin the use of ‘v’ often replaces the ‘w’ and ‘u’ sounds. u = v and a double u = vv (aaay get it?) And just like that a VValtolomevv is named haha

Enter the name Vel slowly over time becoming Walt over time. I could go on for paragraphs, but I know I explained the whole congnomen thing in Terpsichore, I’d have to re-check and I fear this is already getting…ah…crazy long so I’ll try and wrap it up ^^’’

Initially the real Waltolomew was supposed to be left in the woods to die at the mercy of nature because it didn’t look like the infant wouldn’t survive anyways, but when they went back to check in the woods to find who we know as Strickler the host family Strickler saw it nothing short than an auspicious miracle of the gods, or that their child managed to strike a deal with Vanth (a death god), there’s a lot of theories between the family members to try and explain how Walter’s survival is possible - but all the same Waltolomew is raised in a rather loving family!  

There’s the quiet and slightly distant Northern Father (who is occasionally homesick) and mainly tends to the olive grove. The Mother that settles the finances. The Uncle that runs shipptrades and sells the family olive oil. And, of course, The Grandmother who is very proud of living Etruria thank you very much, openly mocking romans, quick with an opinion, morally gray, with a sparkle of mischief - and someone who pretty much elbowed her way into the very serious child Waltolomew’s heart in such a way the changeling wasn’t sure if she knew his secret or even cared! 

Eventually Roman payments became too steep, the Northern Father racked up a bit of debt and was sent into the army…the Northern Father never returns presumed dead in action. The resentment of Romans grows even more in the Strickler household because of this. 

Which is one of the reasons why later in life Stricklander chooses to occasionally pass as ‘British’ aka one of the peoples the Romans couldn’t occupy and conquer, as opposed to siding with a people who absorbed the population of his home peninsula that would later be known as Italy.

 In fact I believe after being forced to work at Hadrian’s wall (which was a laughable failure, although as a Cesare Hadrian was well praised), and returning to find his host family home repossessed by Romans Walter would flee to Gaul (another location where Romans couldn’t conquer).

It wouldn’t be long until the Romans called on a 13 ½ year old Waltolomew to enter into the military just in time for the Hadrian’s Wall debacle. Where Waltolomew grows a respect for the peoples of the British isles for being able to hold off Rome for so long and so much. Afterwards he returns to the peninsula to find his home repossessed by Romans, his grandmother having passed, and his mother and uncle closer to the port and not doing so hot. This spurns Strickler’s dislike for Romans more, an incident occurs, and Waltolomew flees to Gaul (another area famous for being able to hold off the Romans), but this time to join the Gumm-Gumms 

More on that another time cause ooo boy this is a long response XP I’m sorry this got so out of hand!! 

I wanted to add my thoughts as to why and how I came to the conclusion of this HC but like I said this response is crazy long already so I’ll keep it short (for now) to: That classic ‘Roman Nose profile’ of his, the pale olive skin tone, the vague roman/greek helmet he has in his office, how his Italian VA did not do an English accent in the dub, and - uh, well, I like the idea of it haha

Oh! And here’s a picture of a supermarket outside of Sarteano named ‘Etrusco’ Look at that lil face! It probably doesn’t mean much, but it does spark joy haha

Thank you so much for your questions!! I deeply appreciate it!!♥(ˆ⌣ˆԅ) 

#oooff this one got a bit long haha I hope it makes sense!! #Nico Responds #Tales of Arcadia #Walter Strickler #Stricklander #Blinky #Blinkous Galadrigal #fan fic ask

[migleefulmoments]

I'm a psych major - i seriously believe that the CC fandom is a cult - the hate they send is cult like mentality, they have something seriously wrong with them. Like mentally. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them got arrested for harassment of C or D or their partners.

Come off anon and chat with me...there is a lot to unpack and I won’t do it publicly.  

There is definite some mental health issues for in that fandom. I too keep wondering how far they will push it.  If not them, will some follower of theirs do something stupid because they are emboldened by the rhetoric that the ccc leaders spew? 

Whether the anons are real or the leaders of the ccc are sending anons to themselves-or it’s a combination of both- is unclear to me, what I do know is that the answers they are giving are consistently and purposefully misleading and often outright lies. 

Two recent examples of their outrageous lies; 

1. ANON::

“...have u seen naya say on the podcast that C was actually upset about santana's rant to kurt in that episode... because it was so real? it really makes u think that there was for sure one writer thay really did have it out for chris...

ajw720 answered:

That rant was 100% directed at C and it was divined by RM.  He is raging with jealousy towards C, he has everything, looks, talent, creativity, and D.  And things completely feel apart when RM realized C was genuine competition.  You realize Blainofsky was punishment to CC for acting out that past summer? He literally broke up the fan favorite couple on the show during the last season for revenge. And he despises C in particular. And that rant was not aimed at K/urt. It was aimed at C.  And I am glad N/aya commented on it, I can’t imagine how she felt being used on that manner.

FACT CHECK: 

Had she spent 2 minutes Googling this she would have realized that fact Brad Falchuk-not Ryan Murphy- wrote Jagged Little Tapestry thus invalidating her entire theory.

Everything she said about Ryan Murphy in this paragraph is simply her fantasy. Ryan is a very successful and powerful Hollywood writer, producer, and director. He is also gay and married with young children and Is a powerful LGBQT advocate.  His youngest son waged a 2-year battle with Neuroblastoma from 2016-2018. Neuroblastoma is a vicious form of childhood cancer that requires intense treatment. I used to be an pediatric oncology/bone marrow transplant nurse and this cancer and treatment is no joke. 

Ryan Murphy is very creative- he created and wrote episodes of Glee, 911, and  Nip/Tuck, AHS, ACS, and the upcoming The Politician. Check out his IMDB (X).  

He has won numerous awards and nurtured a lot of queer content including Pose which hired both LGBTQ actors and staff making it highly unlikely that he would closet a gay actor. 

She suggested Ryan is jealous of Chris because of his “looks” and  his relationship with Darren. There is nothing to suggest that Ryan is unhappy in his married, his attracted to much younger or is attracted to Chris and/ Darren.  Ryan called his husband, “His rock” in 2018 when talking about their son’s illness.  

Abby ignores  Ryan’s real life story, instead because it doesn’t fit her fanfiction character profile she created for Ryan.     

2. ANON: 

“....is it a known fact to the whole fandom that f/etusm/iarren is M/ia ?” (X)

chrisdarebashfulsmiles answered:

Hi, you know, i think (my opinion) that m/iarrens are ignoring purposely this fact. Like.. they have seen everything happening or showed here and decided to say “hey, you know? i don’t care”. Like they do with everything that is not part of the “D is straight” tale.

Let’s say that most of us have an idea about who the minions are (if they exists and i think i can tell you that maybe one is a real person)… but it’s irrelevant. 

The account still exists because, and believe me i don’t know how this is possible, the stans who follow that account are more “m/ia stans” (the ones that bother us on our blogs and in blogs dedicated to hate and mock us) than “D stans.  Let me tell you one thing: i speak with a good bunch of “m/iarren” that are D stans and we are on the same page, we worry for D. No talk of bullshit with them. Most of them understood that something wasn’t ok and they left their fandom, without becoming part of the cc one. Others are still here but more subtle and still respectful.

And I see why: because they want to understand what is wrong.

Anyway: D’s team gives her stuff, and this is one of the problem.

FACT CHECK:

In truth, there are very few “Mia stans” and a lot of “Darren stans”.  The CCCers refuse to listen to what their anons actually say. Instead they pigeon-hole people into categories based on their own needs and they need us to be unreasonable and obsessed with Mia rather than Darren for their self-righteous antics to work.   

Nobody that I am aware of is purposefully ignoring credible evidence that Darren is gay. None of us are looking at the “evidence “ and saying “hey, we don’t care”.  The fact is that very few people care if Darren is gay or straight and the “evidence” is nonsense. I have yet to year one thing that sounds credible. Anyone else? 

I did a very rudimentary look her claim that “The account still exists because, and believe me i don’t know how this is possible, the stans who follow that account are more “m/ia stans” than “D Stans”.  I sampled 280 Fetu/sMiarr/en followers: 

The vast majority were private accounts aka we cannot say why they are interested in the account.

4 or 0.1% called themselves Mi/arrens

10 or 3.5% listed Kl/aine or Gle/e in their profile

15 or 5.3% listen Darre/n or posted photos of him alone

1 or 0.03% was a Guns ‘N Hoses page DING DING DING we found the Mia Stan.   

Darren’s team gives her stuff? What exactly would Darren’s team need to give her? She is his wife. She goes everywhere with him. they own a home and bar together. 

Chrisdarebashfulsmiles had a rare moment of honestly when she said “Believe me I don’t know how this is possible”.  The truth is. it isn’t possible. it’s all made up.

Abby stuck her nose in to the conversation with this wisdom: 

ajw720

And a lot of the stans who refuse to accept it, need M because she is the only thing that makes d straight. And they know as soon as they start to question, they have to face reality

Um, no Abs, Mia is not the only thing that makes Darren straight. 

Darren is straight because he is a man who is sexually attracted to women....the very definition of “straight”.  

Darren has identified as straight for 9 years. 

Your confusion around his sexual orientation is simply your refusal to respect his word because you believe you know more than he does about his own feelings-however that isn’t a valid argument.    

His marriage to Mia is a personal decision to build a life with the woman he loves and has been in a relationship with for 9 years or so.

Let’s look at Darren’s own words over the years:  

2011 'Glee' Star Darren Criss Comes Out—As A Straight Guy!(X)

"I think it's more empowering to everybody, including myself, if I'm articulate about identifying myself as a straight male playing a gay character," the actor says in the Hollywood issue of Out magazine. "Ultimately, that's more powerful for both communities."

When Criss first got the role of Blaine, he admits that he wanted to deflect questions about his sexual orientation, giving reporters answers like, "It doesn't matter if I'm gay or straight." But he decided that it was better if he was just honest and straightforward. Besides, he explains, he owes a huge part of his identity to gay role models. 

2011 “Glee Star Darren Criss Dishes on Kissing Lea Michele & Losing Out To Cory Monteith (X)

I’ve been pretty overt about the fact that I am straight,” Darren told Billy and Kit. “I think it’s an important thing to be explicit about — not for my own sexuality, but just as a general statement that I am comfortable with my sexuality and very comfortable with the fact that I’m playing a strong gay character.”

I’ve been pretty overt about the fact that I am straight,” Darren told Billy and Kit. “I think it’s an important thing to be explicit about — not for my own sexuality, but just as a general statement that I am comfortable with my sexuality and very comfortable with the fact that I’m playing a strong gay character.”

2013 Cosmo Guy” Darren Criss On Glee’s New Chapter   (X)

Q: You're not gay; you just play gay on TV. Do you ever feel the need to assert your heterosexuality?

A: No. I know who I am. I feel bad for guys who have to flex their muscles. But hey, if that's the way to make yourself feel comfortable as a man—as long as it isn't antagonizing anybody—go for it. I'm okay with your getting a Miata to feel like a dude; just don't be a dick about it.

Darren Criss Will No Longer Play Gay Characters (X)

Darren Criss has decided that he will no longer play gay characters. Why? Because he doesn’t want to be a straight actor taking potential roles from actors who actually identify as gay, he said in a recent interview with Bustle.

“There are certain [queer] roles that I’ll see that are just wonderful,” he explained. “But I want to make sure I won’t be another straight boy taking a gay man’s role.”

2018 Darren Criss on Playing Serial Killer Andrew Cunanan in ACS: Versace and Passing as White  (X)

You’ve also played a lot of gay and queer characters. Has playing these parts informed how you think about your sexuality or gender? That’s a great question. God, we need like an hour. Sure, yes. Absolutely. It definitely has. I think being queer in general evokes more self-questioning than somebody who’s cisgender straight, because you really have to explore a lot of things about yourself that are meeting resistance on conventional social levels. So you have to go, “Okay, cool. Is this really how I feel?” There are questions that arise within yourself that doesn’t have to happen if you live in a hetero-normative universe. So in that sense, I think the journey of questioning oneself, which everybody does anyway — and should do— I admire that narrative. Even though I am not gay myself, or queer, I am a storyteller, and I love and appreciate the strength of character it takes for someone to get through that, whether it was difficult or not. I’ve been very blessed in my career with being allowed in the gay community. Again, as a cisgendered straight dude, that’s not lost on me. I don’t take that for granted. It’s been such a huge part of my life, even pre-Glee. I come from San Francisco doing theater, man. Like, I was raised by gay men. Not literally at home, but you know, as a young kid doing theater, my friends were these men and women in their 20s, driving me home and getting me dinner. These were my adult figures in my life, so unconsciously I’ve always had such affection for the life, whatever that means. So I guess inhabiting a gay voice is important to me because it’s a voice that I find inspiring. 

These are just two of the many lies the cc fandom tell their followers in order to manipulate them into believing the fantasies that means much to them.  

#cc #ccer #ccers #cc family #cc blog #ccc #CrissColfer Cult #cc fandom #crisscolfer #darren criss #mia swier #Ryan Murphy #Darren is straight

[justtwilightshitposts-blog]

So I got high as fuck and watched Twilight for the first time in 6 years and made a list of the thoughts running through my head. Anyways it’s under the cut, enjoy lol

Dramatic entry....

I don’t understand what she’s saying

Oh my god look at her stupid fucking cactus it’s so small and dumb

Why does she sound so miserable

Charlie her hair?? Really??

How is their house so big with one fucking bathroom

Charlie really had someone else decorate her room omg

Why is he such a good fucking dad. I want to cry

“Still dancin”..... aight, billy 

Jacob looks so fucking angsty

She’s so excited about this huge ugly piece of shit truck how is she straight

Did it ever get explained in the series where the fuck Jacob goes to school

“Nice ride” ahah SOOOO FUNNY

I don’t remember his name but why is he such a try hard

*Ball comes at Bella* bella: fUCK

Jessica: stay the FUCK away from my man

Jessica you weird

Mike stop

Who tf is that dude omg he just took his fucking chair

“FEATURES DEAD, ANGELA”

Oh my god Jess when she says eating disorders aakkskakdn

This background music does not fit the characters

Yeah they live together omg

How convenient. A family full of people who fuck each other except ONE

HIS FUCKING STARE

Why they got a fan in the classroom

No introduction to the new kid? Unrealistic. Blocked.

Stop staring at each other what the shit bruh

Just jump tf out the classroom damn

Edward trying to slam the door omggg

How she gonna know you Santa when you dressed normal, tf

Just grab the ketchup

Jesus Christ just talk to each other

Goodbye cell phone then

Day one and you’re doing homework ok

Why is Edward so fucking cringey

He couldn’t handle it so he just stayed home fucking pussy

They just straight up threw a fucking rock at her

Things were getting strange AFTER he stops going to school hmmmmm?

Seriously their house is good sized

This bitch just fucking ate shit what a clumsy gay

“You’re not in Phoenix anymore”

“I need your playlist”

Why is EVERYONE hitting on Bella. She doesn’t even look straight

“Hello” bruuhhhh

His voice, TF

What is the golden onion

Why does he talk like... that

Bonding over science. Haha. Get it. Bonding

“How’s the weather”

Cold n wet. Cool

He laughin. Lmao

Aw his smile

I feel so awkward watching this conversation

Why doesn’t this bitch just sit tf still Jesus Christ

“Wait hOLD UP why didn’t you go with your mom and Phil just curious haha I’m just trying to analyze you no biggie”

The fluorescents. Walks away. ????

How tf did this mf even manage to almost crash like what. How did it even happen

He out this mf

Everyone just like. Sat there for so long not doing anything??? Then BAM OMG BELLA ALSKAJNCKDO”

Carlisle is so fucking white Jesus

Did she never notice his eyes are the same color as Edwards

Fuckin snitch omg Carlisle is not happy

“Hey ex wife our daughter almost died lol call me back”

They are really just arguing in the middle of the hospital tf?

I was standing right next to you....

why does he look like that

Rude ass tf?

Edgy moon

Tf she dreaming about

Wait so like he didn’t even start out with anything low key he just straight up fucking watched her sleep after knowing her a week

God why does he look like that. All the time

Poor mike oh my god

She’s lived here a week how does she already have plans conveniently the night of prom. Get a better excuse Bella

Recycled tea

Why is he so fucking creepy “what’s in Jacksonville” mf HOW you know

Rude ass again what the shit

Why would Bella care if you go to prom with mike, Jessica

“We shouldn’t be friends” no one said you were???

“Our bus is full” 💀

Call your fucking mother you asshole

Charlie don’t talk about Phil

She just walks tf out lmaoooo

How did anyone NEVER say anything about them NEVER eating lunch

La PUSH

He just bounced a fuckin apple

Stop being so cryptic what the fuck

“Let’s say for arguments sake that I’m not smart” bitch me too the fuck

“What if I’m... the villain” shut up you fucking emo oh my god

Come to the beach lol

This is all so awkward

Why did they like hardly ever show Angela

“You’re a strong independent woman” how do people think she’s straight

“The Cullen’s don’t come here” so fucking dramatic

“Yeah yeah whatever enough of you, what about the CULLENS”

Wait. How long have the Cullen’s been around? How long ago was the treaty made???

This music is so fucking dramatic

Oh no it’s Santa....

These bitches gay as fuck too James looks so fucking gay

How is it the entire time she’s trying to figure out the Cullen’s not ONCE does she question the quilietes being descended from FUCKING WOLVES

All these prom dresses boring as fuck

Like what the fuck even is that material

Jess is fucking... phat

“Sorry I don’t do prom dresses I just like really wanna go to this bookstore”

I don’t even want to know what would have happened if Edward didn’t come get her from these creeps...

She legit is about to get gang raped and like. No one ever said anything about this guys what the fuck

Why does Edward look like a fucking crack addict

“Sorry I just REALLY wanna murder these guys”

You should put YOUR seat belt on

“Yeah were gonna do everything that consists of a date but it’s not a date ok?”

No way that tiny bitch is gonna eat that whole ass plate

I’m gonna make sure YOU eat but I won’t alright?

Fucking math nerd

How DID he know she was there???

“I feel very protective of you even though I’ve known you for like less than a month”

He can read minds it’s no biggie

“Cat” bitch me too!!!

I can’t read YOUR mind tho sorry

Wait so why are certain vampires given gifts?

I don’t wanna stay away from you anymore lol

Ooooo our dads are here

“Animal attack” *GLARE*

“Idk what to say I’m so sorry”

Charlie STOP MY HEART IS FUCKING BREAKING

Animals are attacking and you give her pepper spray?

Why tf did they roll his whole ass body out in plain view why the hell was he not in a body bag!!!!

“Oh OKAY everything is starting to come together”

What is this dramatic dream where he’s all emo drinking her blood what the fuck is happening

“Follow me into the woods just trust me”

I don’t find it believable that he speaks like he’s from a different time. His dialect would change with time. Imagine him in 2018 fuckin yeet this and dab that lmaoooo

Why when he runs his legs move and nothing else

How fast are they even going

Diamonds are a girls best friend. And vampires.

“I’m a killer” on cool aha I’m just chillin alone in the woods with u haha no biggie

Why are you being so dramatic Edward

He just yeeted that fucking rock lol

“I’ve never wanted to kill anyone until you”

You’re my drug....

his voice is cracking me tf up

“I’m not afraid of you I’m afraid of losing you” you fucking emo

I want to die

I zoned out an all I heard was “sick masochistic lion” .... alright

Let’s just lay in the grass in the middle of the fucking woods it’ll be cute!!!

Do they just. Stare at each other and not talk...

Why do they use sound effects for his skin lmao

“My crush is a vampire lol ❤️”

What’s Monte Carlo

Everyone is staring lmaoooo

The siblings are not happy lmao

Why would you turn someone into a vampire like there is no logical reason to be like “you’re dying so I’m gonna make you live FOREVER”

They’re just chillin in the rain lmao

Literally tho like being a vampire would be pointless and fucking torture Jesus Christ why would you force that on a dying person

“Wanna meet the fam lol jk u have no choice”

The fucking stare down between Edward and Jacobs dad I’m fucking deceased

“Just keepin it real, son” broooo

Does anyone remember at one point in this series Edward and Jacob just fucking switched Bella off like what the shit was that was I just hallucinating

They cooked for her :(

How long has it been since they cooked

Esme is my soul mate

We NEVER use the kitchen

Jesus CHRIST Rosalie chill the FUCK out

Calm down you FUCKING drama queen

Please don’t kill me lol

Alice you Sapphic ass coming in on a fuckin tree branch

“Bella and I are gonna become great friends” does... does she KNOW. You know bc she can see the future

Alice is so cheery oh god

I too would be dramatic enough to frame all of my several graduation caps

I don’t... sleep

Like he doesn’t even need a chair like their legs never get tired. If they wanted to they could just stand every second of every day

Edward it is the 21st century catch up on the tunes, man

The face she made when he twirled her lmaooo

“I’ll MAKE you dance” .... alright

Why did they like. Move midair

This tree jumping shit just does not look scientifically accurate

“This kind of stuff just doesn’t exist” ... the woods?

Let’s sit in a fucking tree and just talk forever

I wonder who wrote the song Edward wrote. It’s actually... good???

Why is the footprint on top of this fucking mound of dirt lol

Hey hey you You I don’t like your boyfriend

I would kill for Charlie

No one like ACTUALLY questions why a HUMAN foot print is found in the murder scene

“Go SOCIALIZE”

He just fucking comes out of nowhere fuck

How much time does this movie take the course over “only the last couple months” ????

“There’s always something I wanted to try” *kisses bella* you gonna tell me you’re 100+ years old and a virgin???????

This kissing scene must have been so awkward

He just fucking. Zooms back into the wall

Does Charlie not hear any of this???

Edward. She needs to sleep bro

I’m sorry but if my partner never slept I would never sleep with them like don’t fucking watch me sleep the shit???

He just fucking loves his gun

What is he doing over his head ??

We’re just gonna play a family game of baseball lol

Charlie cares so much :(

Charlie doesn’t even question that they’re going to play baseball in a thunderstorm

The baseball scene is in my top iconic scenes in cinematic history

Why do they keep the field so small if they hit the ball so far ???

Emmet my fuckboy baby

When emmet and Edward collide. Iconic.

These gay ass Mfers and their dramatic entrances

Why is putting her hair up going to help. It’s not her hair they smell it’s her blood? Right??

Vampires just go around claiming territory??

All around America??

James knows

Why do they hiss....

The fucking Cullen clan all just bend their knees and hiss like what the shit

“I can buckle MYSELF Edward”

This all went 0-100 real quick

Edward step up your acting game. Monotone ass mf

Charlie is so fucking confused

What even is she grabbing

Ok but Charlie’s so supportive of her and like all he cares about is her being safe oh my god

And he never knows that she didn’t mean any of what she said :((((((

That would fucking kill me oh my god poor Charlie

When they land on her truck... where are they coming FROM...

“Her kind” ... gingers?

Rosalie has a point...

Laurent was just a third wheel

Why do they drive so fast

How the hell was Bella even going to explain this to her mom??? What was her plan.

James.... Jesus your fucking face...

How did he get into the high school

You fucking dumbass you just gonna. Fight a fucking vampire? What is her plan? Fight him? Show up and take her mom and get out???

Also how did she even sneak past Alice and jasper

Wait how did he get this video

You dumb as shit bitch!!!

You can’t fight a vampire the fuck!!!

Why is the part where James shoved Edward against the mirror so sexually tense

This whole fucking ballet studio scene is just too dramatic

Why is she convulsing tho. Is that how it is when you turn into a vampire??? You fucking have a seizure???

Alice fucking SNAPPED

This whole series could have ended right here if they just let her fucking change into a vampire right then and there

Shut the fuck up and suck, Edward

Why her face look like.... that

Carlisle just PUSH HIM

Why are the tubes like ON her eyeballs

Edward sleeping... ha

The whole falling down the stairs bullshit story is so fucking ridiculous lmaoooo

“You’re texting” this movie is so old

Which leg is broken???

I almost killed you lol sorry. Also get the fuck out of Forks

Bella: *insert lady from lipstick in valentino bag vine*

Ok so her right leg is in the cast but in the hospital she was chillin in the bed with her right leg bent?

Jacob where did you come from lmao

“My dad paid me to come talk to you”

“Also you need to break up with your boyfriend”

The instant tension between Edward and Jacob and Bella is so fucking oblivious

“The wolves descend” REALLY EDWARD

Was their senior prom ever mentioned in the series???

She’s so fucking short omg

This music: A++

No seriously what is with everyone’s dresses being so ugly

“I want you always” bitch you just met like 2 months ago???

Bella is so desperate for the dick that she wants to become a fucking vampire

She actually thought he was gonna bite her at prom lmao????

They kiss so awkwardly

Victoria looks so jealous

And hot

Where is she going

Oh it’s over ok cool gn

#my post #twilight #bella swan #edward cullen #carlisle cullen #esme cullen #rosalie hale #rosalie cullen #emmet cullen #jasper cullen #alice cullen #twilight saga #humor

[ofsalvo-a-blog]

*     PERSONALITY TESTS     !

tagged by:     @antialibi my precious   !   thank u <3 tagging:    anyone who wants to honestly   ,   i don’t want people to feel excluded   !

ZODIAC  SIGN:     taurus.               ruled by the persistent and plodding bull, taurus energy has two speeds.   it’s either relaxed and contented (   like a steer luxuriating in a verdant pasture   ) or hyped-up and ready to charge.   (   toro, toro   !   ) this zodiac sign has a built-in energy conservation program.   it will patiently assess whether something is worth the investment of time and resources.   then if the green light flashes,    it’s all systems go   !  until then,   slow and steady wins the taurus race.   this sign encourages us to break our work into simple steps then take daily action.   taurus is the sign of the builder,   helping us create concrete results for our diligent efforts.   under the influence of a taurus planetary transit,   we roll up our sleeves and get the job done.   the positive essence of taurus energy shows up as patient,   organized,   supportive,   romantic,   careful,   and dedicated.   on the flipside,   taurus energy can also be overindulgent,   stubborn,   lazy,   vain,   tightfisted and too cautious.   routine-loving taurus can get us stuck in our comfort zones and habits.   make sure that consistency doesn’t turn into stagnation or inertia.

MYERS - BRIGGS:     enfp,   the campainer.                     The enfp personality is a true free spirit.   they are often the life of the party,   but unlike explorers,   they are less interested in the sheer excitement and pleasure of the moment than they are in enjoying the social and emotional connections they make with others.   charming,   independent,   energetic and compassionate,   the 7% of the population that they comprise can certainly be felt in any crowd.

enfps are fiercely independent,   and much more than stability and security,   they crave creativity and freedom.

more than just sociable people-pleasers though, enfps, like all their diplomat cousins,   are shaped by their intuitive (   n   ) quality,   allowing them to read between the lines with curiosity and energy.   they tend to see life as a big,   complex puzzle where everything is connected – but unlike analysts,   who tend to see that puzzle as a series of systemic machinations, enfps see it through a prism of emotion,   compassion and mysticism,   and are always looking for a deeper meaning.

FOUR  TEMPERAMENTS:     sanguine.                 fundamentally  spontaneous and pleasure-seeking,   sanguine people are sociable and charismatic.    they tend to enjoy social gatherings,   making new friends,   and tend to be boisterous.     they are usually quite creative and often daydream.     however,   some alone time is crucial for those of this temperament.     sanguine can also mean sensitive,   compassionate,  and thoughtful.     sanguine personalities generally  struggle with following tasks all the way through,   are chronically late,   and tend to be  forgetful and sometimes a little sarcastic.     often,   when they pursue a new hobby,   they lose interest as soon as it  ceases to be engaging or fun.     they are very much  people persons.     they are talkative and not shy.     sanguines generally have an almost  shameless nature,   certain that what they are doing is right.     they have no lack of confidence.

CELTIC  ZODIAC:     hawthorn,   the illusionist.                       hawthorn signs in Celtic tree astrology  are not at all what they appear to be.     outwardly,   they appear to be a certain persona,   while on the  inside  hawthorn’s are quite different.     they put the term   “ never judge a book by its cover ”   to the test.     they live  seemingly average lives while on the inside they carry  fiery passions and inexhaustible creative flame.     they are  well adjusted and can  adapt to most life situations well     –     making themselves content and  comforting others at the same time.     you are  naturally curious,   and have an interest in a broad range of topics.     you are an excellent listener,   and people seek you out as an outlet to release their burdens.     you have a healthy  sense of humour,   and have a clear understanding of irony.     you tend to see the big picture,   and have amazing insight    –     although you typically won’t give yourself enough credit for your observations.

SOUL  TYPE:     leader and spiritualist.                         leader   :    it would be hard to imagine you being anything but the leader in any group.   in fact,   taking any kind of subservient role may feel demeaning to you.   as a leader type,   you have a natural air of authority,   and a charisma that makes you stand out in a crowd.   (   think how out of place elvis might have appeared if he’d stood in the background playing saxophone instead of being the front man.   )   you bring to this life an innate wisdom,   which is why people will look to you for advice.  you may sometimes make decisions on your own without thinking to involve others,   and once you’ve made up your mind,   you may be reluctant to change it.   this may work in an emergency,    but in other circumstances,   it can give the impression that you are arrogant or condescending.  it can be hard to find good role models,    given the scarcity of leader types,   but you can always refer to history to see how individuals such as alexander the great and john f. kennedy used their leadership skills.   not every leader becomes a president,   of course,   and many end up in humbler circumstances.   you can always recognize leaders by their inner confidence and occasionally by their coterie of followers or assistants.

spiritualist��  :   what unites spiritualists is a deeply held belief in a world beyond this one.   you will have a desire to express your spirituality in some way,   and may be drawn to religion or other spiritual practices.   many spiritualists are highly intuitive,   which is why you may have had psychic experiences in the past and why you will tend to use your sixth sense when it comes to decisionmaking.   you have a great deal of compassion and may feel a strong need to create a better world,   or to help people make the best of their lives.   charities and   nonprofits are places where you and other spiritualists can express your soul’s desire to help others.   whatever work you choose,   you must feel you have a higher purpose.   it is not enough for a spiritualist type to simply pick up a check at the end of the week.   there has to be a feeling that someone has benefited from your efforts.   that’s why many doctors and healers are spiritualists.   whether you know it or not,   you frequently inspire others through your behavior.   by expressing spiritualist values such as compassion,   fairness,   honesty and altruism,   you encourage others to live by these values—especially younger spiritualists who will wish to emulate you.

ALIGNMENT:     chaotic good.                   a chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him.   he makes his own way,   but he's kind and benevolent.   he believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations.   he hates it when people try to intimidate others and tell them what to do.   he follows his own moral compass,   which,   although good,   may not agree with that of society.   chaotic good is the best alignment you can be because it combines a good heart with a free spirit.   chaotic good can be a dangerous alignment when it disrupts the order of society and punishes those who do well for themselves.

DARK  TRIAD:      machiavellianism.               machiavellianism is a tendency to be  manipulative and deceitful.     it usually stems from a lack of respect or disillusionment for others.     

THE ANIMAL IN YOU:     wolf.                          the rugged wolf is athletic,   good-looking and brimming with self-confidence.   a close relative of the domestic dog,   it is stronger and more aggressive,   managing to generate notoriety wherever it marks its territory.   the wolf's dark reputation is mainly due to jealousy of its consistent success in work and romance.   a wolf in full stride is quite impressive.   firing orders at subordinates while on the phone to customers,   no one can get the job done quite as efficiently as the wolf.   with an innate understanding of the value of teamwork,   it's always ready to take its place in the chain of command either as leader or as simply a member of the pack.   when a wolf decides to innovate,   it makes sure that it has the backing of a capable team.   the wolf is clear-headed and strong-minded,   always willing to compromise in the interests of getting a job done.   wolves are facially expressive and readily communicate their emotional states with body language.   they work hard at developing their social relationships,   although unlike their cousin the dog they are quick to anger when they sense threats to the social order.   when confrontations occurs,   they sometimes react suddenly and violently,   barking displeasure at offending subordinates.   close companions know to avoid their biting tongue until they resume their normal gregarious behavior.

ROSENBERG  SELF  ESTEEM  SCALE:      0    |    1    |    2    |    3    |    4    |    5    |    6    |    7    |    8    |    9    |    10    |    11    |    12    |    13    |  14  |    15    |    16    |    17    |    18    |    19    |    20    |    21    |    22    |    23    |    24    |    25    |    26    |    27    |    28    |    29    |    30

BRAIN  LATERALIZATION  TEST:     right,   66%.                       right brain dominant individuals are more visual and intuitive.     they are better at summarizing multiple points,   picking up on what’s not said,   visualizing things,   and  making things up.      they can lack attention to detail,   directness,   organization,   and the ability to explain their ideas verbally,   leaving them unable to communicate effectively.

#i. developmental concepts . / re. ↷ headcanons . #* dash games . #this was... interesting!