#a connection unlike any either has with anybody else

[booasaur]

Special Ops: Lioness

#specialopslionessedit #special ops lioness #special ops: lioness #aaliyah amrohi #cruz manuelos #stephanie nur #laysla de oliveira #special ops lioness 1x06 #special ops lioness spoilers #aaliyah x cruz #femslash related stuff #muslim lgbt #lol putting this together made me realize three things #they keep being vague and wrong about the date and time of the wedding #there are so many things that seem to be pointing to aaliyah not making it out of this :< #and that aaliyah is actually just so very lovely and kind and stephanie nur really is doing so well with all her different layers #but man this is one of those ships that has what people love about popular subtext f/f pairings but is also canon #a central transformative dynamic the whole show hinges on #a connection unlike any either has with anybody else #let's see now that they've set it up where they take it #lol I mean we'e all absolutely expecting a bad end but can at least they both survive...

[transmascutena]

some thoughts on photography and memory in utena:

on the wall in nemuro memorial hall, there are pictures of real people. i'm not sure who they are, but i assume they're of people involved in making the show. either way, they're obviously not real; in the close-up shots of them, they change into pictures of the black rose duelists and other imagery from the show. i imagine it's there as a fun detail by the creators, but also to show how weird and inconsistent reality itself is in the black rose arc.

as for the black rose duel images themselves, it's possible that they are literal as i've talked about in a previous post, but what i think is more likely, is that utena noticing them is a visual representation of her connecting the dots of what's really been going on in this arc.

when mikage brings up the idea of memories and eternity, we see the picture on the wall behind utena, of her at her parents funeral. and behind mikage we see one of his own defining memories.

a pretty clear line is being drawn between memory and photographs. in fact, memories are so important to mikage that photographs are his black rose duel symbol. it's the one he keeps of mamiya and tokiko, altered to look like anthy's disguise, just like his memories are. through mikage we see both how memories of the past can keep you trapped in it, as well as the malleability of these memories. let's look at everybody else:

saionji has a framed photograph of him and touga as kids on his desk. he values their friendship, or at least the memory of how it used to be. he idealizes the time touga was less cruel (or maybe just the time saionji wasn't aware of his cruelty.)

miki doesn't have any literal photographs of kozue or the sunlit garden, though his memories of them are often framed as such. he also keeps a picture of anthy amidst his sheet music. she is his idealized memory now.

juri has the locket of course, inside of which is a cutout of shiori from a picture captured in the moment that ends up defining their entire relationship. is this the version of shiori that juri idealizes? not really, but she is fixated on her resentment of shiori's percieved cruelty, just not the cruelty of taking the boy away. juri keeps this photograph closer than anybody else does with theirs, but she also keeps it hidden. this could mean she treasures her memories the most out of everyone, and is also the least open about it, although i'm not sure i believe the first part.

nanami has the photo-album of her and touga; she idealizes her relationship with him, as well as their childhood. when she makes the connection that touga is adopted, the photos are scattered all over her bed, probably to represent her emotional state.

touga doesn't keep any photographs from what we see, which makes sense with everything we know about him. unlike the rest of the council, he doesn't have any idealized memories of his childhood. but he does use akio's camera, so let's talk about that.

the camera is, much like the car, a tool that only akio is shown to own (although, wakaba does mention a photography club in episode 34.) like the car, it is used to facilitate his grooming (specifically of touga and saionji when he takes those shirtless pictures with them.) and, also like the car, he offers to lend it to touga, to make him feel more like an equal part of the whole thing. unlike the car though, touga accepts the camera.

the photoshoot scene in episode 37 has a transition where the camera shutter sound effect is played over the previous scene. over the shot of utena and anthy holding hands after confiding in each other about akio. i think it's to show that he's always watching, and that they can never truly be free of him as long as they're in ohtori.

i think it also shows the idea of akio framing the narrative of the show as a whole. he plays a sort of director role in it, in that he directs the events happening, as well as how they're portrayed. it's no coincidence that he is quite literally behind the "camera" in episode 33. like the car, a symbol of akio's power and sexual abuse (which is not-coincidentally also present in all of the photoshoot scenes,) his camera (his narrative, his biased framing of events) is ever-present.

and then there's the most important photograph in the show, the frame it all ends on. the picture utena and anthy took together is, unlike every other photograph, used as a look into their future. the reason they take it in the first place is because utena realizes she has no photos of anthy, which distresses her, presumably because she worries that their friendship might not last forever, and she wants something to remember anthy by. this obviously comes with the risk of making anthy an idealized memory, like every other person put in a photograph in this show, but instead it ends up as a symbol for their love. akio may have set up the camera, but anthy (with the help of chu-chu) manipulated their positions so her and utena could hold hands. she also cuts akio out of the frame, much like she cuts him out of her life in the last episode. she doesn't want his presence to tarnish her and utena's memory anymore (although he isn't completely gone from the photograph either, as he will never truly be forgotten.)

#id in alt text #finally finished this post #these are not the only photographs in the show just the ones linked closest to the themes i wanted to discuss here #revolutionary girl utena #analysis #utena #mikage #saionji #miki #juri #nanami #touga #akio #anthy #m #the narrative

[lizardlicks]

Momo surprise

“I’m a little worried about Momo,” Aang said to his friends as they gathered around the morning campfire and started preparing for their day. “He’s been acting kind of off lately.”

The lemur in question was fussily nosing around Aang's abandoned bedroll in tight circles. As the group of teens watched, he laid down in a curl, chirped unhappily then got up and resumed tugging and scratching at the bedding. “How can you tell?” Sokka asked. He was by no means a lemur behavior expert. To him all of Momo’s actions were strange. It was possible that Aang's Avatar-ness gave him some kind of spirit connection to flying lemurs. Unlikely, but still possible.

“He doesn’t have as much energy, even though he’s sleeping more.” Aang explained, frowning. “You don’t think he’s sick, do you?”

“Maybe it’s the climate?” Katara offered helpfully. She wasn’t a lemur expert either, but she and Sokka had struggled the first few weeks with adjusting to the Earth Kingdom’s warmer weather. As far as she or anybody else knew, Momo has lived his entire life in the towering, windswept peaks around the Southern Air Temple, so maybe the sudden change had affected him too, she reasoned. 

“It’s because you’ve been giving him too many treats,” Sokka told Aang matter-of-factly. Lemurs were outside of his wheelhouse, but he'd helped the older boys with conditioning the polar dogs for sled pulling every fall. Spoiled pups turned lazy and fat, a hard lesson to learn for the littler children who only wanted to express their love.

“You think so?” Aang looked contrite.

“Yup,” Sokka said as he reached to snag a piece of star berry off the board Katara was using to prepare their breakfast. He snatched his hand back with a squawk when she smacked him.

“He is looking a little pudgy, Aang,” Katara said without taking her eyes off the food. Poaching brothers were too wily to be given that kind of an opening.

“Monkey feathers. I just can’t resist him when he gives me The Eyes.”

“I know,” Katara agreed. “He’s weaponized his cuteness.” “You’re going to have to.” Sokka nimbly dodged a sister elbow, but he still didn’t quite manage to snag any tidbits from Katara’s pile of fruit. “It’s for his own good.”

Momo, apparently noticing he was being talked about, finally abandoned the bedding to perch on Katara’s knee. “No, bad lemur!” She snatched her cutting board up and held it over her head. “No more extras for you!”

Sokka whooped in victory as he snagged a slice of moon peach and popped it into his mouth before Katara could adjust her defenses. “You’re on a diet, mister,” he informed the lemur as he sucked the juice from his fingers.

Momo chittered and pinned his ears back.

“Sorry, buddy,” Aang said regretfully as he scooped Momo up and tucked him into the crook of his elbow. “I already gave you a big handful of lychee nuts when you woke me up, you’re gonna have to wait until lunch time for more food.”

Aang could never quite tell just how much human speech Momo understood, but the lemur appeared to grasp something about the situation. He curled his tail around and grasped it anxiously, cooing at Aang with all the force of The Eyes that one tiny flying mammal could muster.

Aang held strong. For all of three seconds. “Okay... well. Maybe a couple berries wouldn’t hurt?”

--------

“AAAAAANG!”

The young monk bolted upright in his bedroll at the sound of his name, startled out of a sound sleep. Sokka was loud. Loud and very upset.

“What!? What is it?” He blinked several times, then rubbed at his face, trying to get his eyes to focus on anything distinct before he realized the reason he couldn't see anything was because dawn was still hours away. The moon hung in the sky, a crescent barely thicker than a thumbnail, with no light to offer. Hedgegoosebumps broke out across his arms. Aang hugged himself as the night pressed in, suddenly no longer a sheltering veil, but full of hidden threat from enemies he couldn’t see. 

The sleeping lump to his right rustled and shifted as Katara sat up in her bed roll. “Sokka-haaah,” her voice stuttered, breaking off with a yawn. “What's wrong?”

“What's wrong? What’s wrong!?” Sokka was rapidly climbing in pitch with each repetition. “Why don’t you look at this situation and tell me, huh?”

“Uhh.” Aang squinted into the dark and tried to make sense of their camp. Appa was still peacefully snoring several yards away, completely oblivious to the sudden chaos. Katara was wiggling and shuffling her way out of her sleeping bag, growling unflattering things at Sokka under her breath, and Sokka. Sokka was standing in the middle of their sleeping circle. He looked like he was holding something, but Aang could not for the life of him see what it was.

“We can't see anything without light, Sokka,” Katara groused. She finally won her struggle with her sleeping roll and started patting around for her bag. “You couldn't have lit a fire before you started yelling loud enough to alert the Fire Lord himself?”

“Oh, gee, why didn't I think of that! Could it possibly be because I'm dealing with Aang's mess over here!?”

Aang didn't remember leaving a mess. In fact he'd been careful to pack up everything before turning in for the night just in case they had to make a quick getaway. A few too many lost supplies had trained him quickly.

“What are you talking about?” He asked while stretching, less alarmed now that he knew Sokka was just. Well, being Sokka. They weren't being attacked, there was no life or death situation he had to fight through in the pitch dark.

Katara, having retrieved some kindling from her pack, scooted over to their banked campfire and began to poke the coals awake. She had apparently given up any hope of going back to sleep until her brother was sorted out. Even Appa was starting to rumble awake with the commotion.

“You said Momo was a boy!” Sokka hissed. 

Aang. Blinked. “Yeah?” he said, uncertainty clouding his mind. He must still be dreaming, why would Sokka wake up the whole camp to debate their pet’s gender?

“Then explain this!” Sokka shoved his cupped hands out, away from the protective shield of his body, just as the fire flared with a pop and Katara's satisfied grunt.

Cradled in between his palms, fur still sodden and sticking, was the teeniest, tiniest lemur Aang had ever seen.

#sokka #aang #katara #momo #the gaang #minific #atla fanfic #atla #avatar the last airbender #lizard writes stupid things

[bnhaemporium]

Soulmate Headcanons

Characters: All Might, Endeavour, Edgeshot, Aizawa, Hawks

✧. ┊    ✧. ┊    ✧. ┊    ✧. ┊    ✧. ┊    ✧. ┊    ✧. ┊    ✧. ┊    ✧. ┊    ✧. ┊    

All Might

Toshinori is unlikely to seek you out when he’s younger (focused as he is on his dream) and this won’t change even as he gets older. He’ll constantly be so busy that finding you wouldn’t be much of a priority.

If he does meet you, he won’t know quite what to do at first. He’s going to stumble over his own words so much that you will simply have to laugh to make him stop.

He won’t pursue a relationship or anything similar unless you show a substantial interest in him. There are many things in his life he wouldn’t want to expose a partner to and you’d need to prove you’re choosing him, not just accepting what fate wants you to do.

He’s going to protect you so much but he’s trying to make it subtle though his attempts are… well, they’re hilarious. All he ever does is confuse you and everybody else around him, even those who know.

Eraserhead

Aizawa isn’t the type to seek out his soulmate, not for any particular reason, he simply never wanted or needed to find you before you were quite literally forced into his path.

Unless your soulmate reveal is something obvious, you may not even realise it’s him when you first meet. He’ll know immediately but he won’t tell you, opting instead to let you learn it yourself, if you notice.

A relationship isn’t something he’s particularly interested in. Time, his job, and various other reasons don’t make it a possibility without excessive work and he doesn’t have the energy. Don’t worry, you can win him over.

Not much will be different in the way he treats you. At least not to the causal observer. There’s subtle evidence in how he calls you to see if you’re doing alright and worries during attacks in your area. Mic notices this immediately and never lets him live it down.

Hawks

Keigo went most of his life tempted to seek you out but he always knew it would be for the better if he didn’t. Still, he thought of you more often than he dared admit, especially while working.

Meeting you turned into such a fantasy for him that he’s genuinely surprised when he does meet you. He manages to keep up appearances but honestly, he’s incredibly flustered inside and actively struggling with his composure.

Similar to other pro-heroes, he’s incredibly weary of beginning any relationship with a soulmate. While they mainly concern themselves with villains though, he has other considerations to keep in mind.

Your ‘relationship’ will develop without him meaning for it too. He protects you well and nobody ever really notices unless they’re incredibly observant. He knows how to lie but not how to tell when he falls for you. It scares him.

Endeavour

Enji doesn’t care about your existence for the majority of his life. Soulmates are too flimsy for him to include you in his dream and so, he tries his best to pretend you don’t exist.

This does continue when he first meets you and he will go through a period of denial wherein you will undoubtedly feel beyond ignored. Don’t worry, the rudeness will subside after time as he grows more open to you.

Relationships are very much tools in his life and he’s strangely averse to using you for something like that. Any interest would undoubtedly be pushed back against for a while.

He’s not shy about his connection to you once he’s come to accept it. If anything, he’s incredibly proud of you and will challenge anybody to try and take advantage of the relationship he shares with you.

Edgeshot

Shinya doesn’t feel strongly either way when it comes to his soulmate – not wanting to seek you out nor ignore you. If anything, he’s more than happy to let fate take complete control and dictate what happens.

He is pleased to meet you though it’s still unexpected and he trips over his words ever so slightly when he makes the introduction. It’ll be a difficult thing for you to not feel charmed.

He’s interested in a relationship (being able to healthily separate his working life from his personal) but he’ll take his time to charm you over in a more traditional way with dates and gifts.

He’s protective though not obnoxious about it. You’re always the first person he checks on in any situation and the first person he calls when he has free time; you are his other half in every way that matters.

#bnha x reader #mha x reader #all might #all might x reader #toshinori yagi x reader #aizawa x reader #eraserhead x reader #hawks x reader #keigo tamaki #edgeshot x reader #endeavour x reader #enji todoroki x reader #bnha pro hero

[rosehippiefield]

I wonder what happened to Q-taro after his token game over. His decision spelled death to every participant, kids included. Considering that he's not a bad person and is not very cold-hearted, how strong was his feeling of guilt? Could he really return to his orphanage and see children he wanted to inspire without remembering similar children condemned to death by him? Did he have any hallucinations?

Unlike Nao and Sara, Q-taro hasn't saved anybody else because well he couldn't. He has no one to turn to, no one with whom he could watch sunsets together, no one could get his pain, his death game experience is too unique.

Q-taro has strong willpower, but his heart is kind. He is a team player, how will him abandoning his "teammates" change him? Also, I wonder if he saw last moments of everyone, because even if he has left without witnessing it, kidnappers could show him surveillance cameras. Either to stop his "wavering" (to form a ruthless member of Asunaro) or to break him completely (broken pawn is the best pawn as it's easier to use). This man was really apologetic about giving sage card to Kai when rules were yet unknown. And now he consciously caused everyone to die. Imagine the level of guilt. Or maybe his selfishness will be a good thing and help him cope because his action was logical after all.

Also, his orphanage had shady name Asunaro, our criminal organisation is bound to be connected to this establishment. What will Q-taro do, knowing this connection? Maybe he'll adopt some kids from there to protect them from malicios intentions while trying to combat Asunaro in whatever way is possible. Or flee the country. Or lead Asunaro

I really wanna know what happens next

#your turn to die #q taro burgerberg #There are some headcanons on post massacre ending but I haven't seen anything about Q-taro #But I didn't search hard enough so there may be plenty

[lunarsilkscreen]

Valve "fan-content" and "theories" are paid advertisements

It's called viral marketing, and nobody does it better online than the company that grew big because of it: Valve. Steam was an inevitability, and Valve was just the first to it, I'm not talking about Steam. I'm talking about Every game that Valve produced before steam gained traction.

Thanks to those three games: Half-Life, Counter-Strike, and Team Fortress. Early Valve became an internet phenomenon. Cashing in on this early success and pre-internet-meme culture, it's easy to see why Valve had the runaway success it did.

These were the times of the wild wild web. Back when only trolls and nerds lived in virtual space. Because of this, nearly any digital thing was assimilated to the early internet, online, and nerd and geek culture.

The group was mostly internet adopters and lonely "male" teens, who grabbed onto these things as a way to form their own identity, most of which because theirs didn't exist offline.

Nerds and geeks and hackers and homeless teens fueled this "netscape".

The forgotten Gen X'rs. Forgotten even by their own generation, but not by the millennials who found safe haven from school bullies, and unstable home lives.

Valve continued with the generation of meme content, it's not clear if this was a calculated thing or a fun thing by the early devs. It's possible there's a little bit of both going on. Because what valve knew; was that memes generate cash. And so every game they have ever made is covered in rich-memey goodness.

What makes it even more interesting, is how those memes sound hilarious out of context, but simultaneously, can be deep and thought provoking in-context.

"The cake is a lie" meme. Referencing the cake from Portal that was supposedly Chell's "Reward" for clearing the puzzles. The cake is a lie, because that's what Chell's mother put on Chell's application when she was a kid during the "bring your daughter to work day" which ended in tragedy.

And also, because there's no real food in Arpeture Labs anymore. And even if there was, GlaDOS (Caroline) wouldn't test the food on her only daughter.

Simultaneously, every single "Game Theory" you can find online is just a rehash of some articles that Valve themselves put out in the past. Unlike Nintendo, who had a vague understanding of how their lore pieced together, and see it as a more "fluid thing". Valves timeline was meticulously crafted by Valve themselves.

It's not fluid, it is decidedly rigid in that it hasn't changed, nor has most of the lore since the first Half-Life game came out.

I know this, because I read them.

And every few months you'll see a redditor start to try to analyze the subject and then... Just kinda stop at the information in those articles, instead of actually playing one of the games and thinking about it.

And every few months more an internet contributor to some gaming website recompiles one of those articles about the Half-Life/Portal connection or the "Full Half-Life" timeline.

Nobody gets cancelled for plagiarism in regards to these articles as well. Unlike most everything else you see on social media.

This leaves two possibilities: either Valve assassinates anybody who gets too close. Or they're the ones behind it all.

Yes. Even Skibidi; A what-if scenario featuring Toilet Trolls against the Surveillance State, and the simulated war that comes from it.

[the-elder-beato]

out of curiosity, what did you think of the piano entry? i wasn't really sure what to make of it, though i remember kris plays the piano much better when they're not under the player's control

(also yeah it's super weird to me when people focus on shipping of all things in ut/dr lol)

To me it was basically a showcase of just how much kris and noelle have shut themselves off from the world. In kris’s case they seem staunchly adamant about not letting anybody in, even someone who has known them intimately since childhood. For what reason, we don’t exactly know yet, but i’m willing to bet it has something to do with either past traumatic events (specifically what happened to dess, as kris is undeniably connected to that event) or because of the otherworldly thing or things possessing them at any given time.

I also find it a very important detail that something as personal as music is the thing that kris does not want anyone else to see, my friend made a really good observation that toby is very acutely aware of the idea of music being the window to the soul, and it really shows just how afraid/against kris is about letting anybody into their internal world that they can’t even allow noelle to watch them play the piano. My gut feeling is that it’s out of protection, because there are lots of little hints throughout chapter 2 that Kris does still care very much for noelle, as they don’t react negatively to most dialogue options that express their care for her (the exception being choosing to go with her to the festival at the end of the chapter). They might feel as if noelle has already been through the wringer with dess’s disappearance and considering what is currently happening to them and not being in full control of themselves, they don’t want to risk drawing noelle in closer and potentially further hurt or traumatize her. That’s assuming that kris was getting controlled/possessed by some entity other than the player at the time the blog post was written, which i don’t think is all that unlikely

In Noelle’s case, her way of shutting the world out is through denial. Notice how after all this time, she still questions whether or not kris even considers her to be a friend despite how long they’ve known each other and what they’ve been through together. When she says that final line “It felt like a concert just for me”, it’s only after she’s resigned herself to not trying to catch kris in the act or interrupting them, and instead closes her eyes several rooms away, aka she shuts out reality. I think noelle is desperate to find that connection with kris, as thoughout chapter 2 she’s still searching for ways to bond with them on a deeper level (not in a shippy way), and I strongly believe that is in part because of her desire to hold onto people who had a former connection with dess. Dess herself is gone, azzy is gone, kris is the one major person left in noelle’s life that she probably feels she can relay these feelings to and who might understand. This is why she’s so immediately susceptible to following the player’s orders guised as kris’s voice in the snowgrave route; she is hoping for that connection so badly that, even though she knows this behavior is unlike kris, she is willing to brush it aside and convince herself there’s some other explanation for it in the hopes that it means she and kris have come to a deeper understanding

But it’s clear from this blogpost and certain events in chapter 2 that kris isn’t willing to let noelle in, for whatever reason. They seem more open to showing their true feelings to susie, at least when given the opportunity from the player, but noelle is completely off-limits. And I do believe in some way, this does come from a place of compassion from kris; nothing about their behavior has shown that they dislike or distrust noelle. In fact, it’s probably because of how long they’ve known one another that kris is especially uncomfortable at the idea of inviting her in. Either way, it’s definitely not a comfy, bonding, shippy, etc scene the way a lot of people are interpreting it. To me it’s honestly pretty tragic, knowing that these two lifelong friends share a lot of memories, both good and bad, but even after all this time, there’s still something there preventing them from really being open with one another

anyway that’s just my interpretation, and i’m sure someone smarter than me could explain all of this with much more clarity and shed light on things that i didn’t catch. but regardless, that’s my thoughts on that blog post, and i have a feeling it’s pretty damn close to what toby was going for

#deltarune #asks #me

[moviesessionwithmyhubby]

The jigsaw puzzle pieces - Part1

#notamovieexplanation

I used to believe that the reason why two people are able to be happy in a relationship is because they are two pieces of a puzzle that fit together perfectly.

But is it true that we humans are formed naturally to be like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, with one individual’s Tab (what this person can contribute to other) to fit in precisely with another individual’s Hole (what this person is lacking and in need) and vice versa? Now that I've given it some more thought, I no longer believe that.

My current theory is that in the beginning of a romantic partnership, the two persons involved are like two rough-hewn pieces of a puzzle, they can be shaped like a square, or like a triangle, or even like a rectangle. The idea is that both of these parts need to initially have the same form so that the two individuals share the same fundamental principles, which include their beliefs and interests. You can't put a square with a circle or a triangle with a rectangle and expect them to wind up fitting together nicely after some sculpting. The shape may be anything; what matters is that these two parts need to have the same shape to start with. So now we have a pair of basic puzzle pieces that share identical shapes. Does this imply that they now connect seamlessly? It is obvious that this is not the case.

In order to become compatible, they must undergo the sculpting phase. And this phrase is not easy, it’s challenging. It is a lengthy journey filled with both joy and sorrow, requiring significant effort and determination. Today I will tell you part one of the ongoing sculpting phrase that exists between my husband and myself. Part 1: The schedule piece Since my husband started spending the day with me, his daily routine has been completely turned upside down. In general, he schedules our meetings for between ten and eleven o'clock at night, which translates to between six and seven o'clock in his time zone. However, since he is here with me, he delays it until 8 or 9 o'clock at night on his end. This allows him to spend quality time with me at an appropriate hour for me, which in turn ensures that I will be able to go to sleep at the appropriate time. You know that he goes to sleep after putting me to bed, sings me songs to help me go asleep, and wakes up at the same time as I do. And unlike me, he didn't even start acting like a b*tch due to his lack of sleep.

In addition to this, he alters his normal mode of communicating. Because he is aware that I am clingy and that I like to ping him throughout the day, he makes it a point to constantly check his Whatsapp in order to ensure that he does not overlook any of my messages.

The most important thing for me to realize at first was that I am no longer an individual living by myself. I am now involved in a relationship. Hence, I need to take into account the fact that there is a time difference of four hours between us and work on aligning my schedule more closely with his, so that we can come up with a quality time together everyday. 

Before I met my husband, I had been single for about 26 years, and when we first started being in the relationship with my husband, I had no idea what to do. Before I met him, my typical day consisted of the following: work, followed by either going to the gym or spending time with friends and family, and then coming home to play with my cat Simba, surf the internet, read a book, or watch Netflix. And on the weekends, I would sleep in till I felt like waking up, lounge about all day, go to the gym, and spend time with my family or friends. But at this point, it is important for me to ensure that I set aside at least some portion of each day to spend meaningful time with him while maintaining some sort of activities I have been doing all the time, like going to gym or hanging with friends and family sometimes.

I'm not going to lie; while I was single, I had no need to worry too much about anybody else in my life other than my family. I was having a great time being alone. But ever since I've been with my husband, I feel responsible for his happiness and well-being. Because of this, my chest tightens whenever anything bad occurs and we aren't happy about it; because of this, the flavor of food disgusts me whenever me and my husband fall into silence; because of this, I don't feel like I have the energy to accomplish anything whenever we are having an argument; and because of this, I weep myself to sleep whenever there is a problem that hasn't been resolved between us. I'm going to be really honest with you once again, I did wonder why it was so difficult to be in a relationship. But then I had the realization that it isn't intended to be simple. If it is easy, then the vow "for better or worse" doesn't mean what it's supposed to mean, does it?

[e350tb]

Red Alert - Prologue

Camp Kronstadt Somewhere on the Western Saharan Coastline

On paper, Camp Kronstadt was the largest aid camp in the world.

Nestled under the baking Sahara sun, Camp Kronstadt was the embarking point for Soviet aid across the Atlantic region - to the Caribbean and Latin America, to Southwestern Africa, and even around the Cape of Good Hope to the islands of the Southern Indian Ocean. It was the key link in the chain of Premier Romanov’s International Friendship Program, his great initiative to show the world that the bad old days of Stalin were long over, and that the Soviet Union was interested in being a primarily peaceful player in world politics.

This city of prefabricated buildings, giant cargo ships and cheerful speakers was a sham.

Deep below the earth was a base of steel and concrete, packed to the gills with machines of war. From the window of the base command station, one could see row after row of submarine pens, each containing two massive beasts, twice the size of a standard cargo ship, and each with row after row of men and tanks lined up next to them. One by one, they were being loaded into the black-gray beasts, yet even they paled next to what was suspended above them.

These were airships, massive in scale, powered by five mighty turboprop engines, each with distinctive snarling shark mouths on their noses. They bristled with defensive turrets, and below them were rakes of massive gravity bombs, each waiting to be loaded. They seemed to stretch for miles in either direction - a massive air fleet waiting for war.

Inside the command station, dozens of Soviet staff officers were gathered around a table, moving wooden models across a giant map. At the head stood three officers, each carefully studying the units represented.

“I still advise against this.” Lieutenant-General Nikolai Krukov scowled, his moustache bristling. “Our forces are not ready…”

“We have waited long enough!” General Igor Vladimir, a heavy-set man with a grey beard so unkempt that he resembled a fantasy ogre, snapped. “The United States has treated us like their pet for too long, Krukov!”

“Their industrial output outpaces ours!” snapped Krukov. “And their major factories are far beyond the coast, far from where we can easily strike them!”

“Comrades, please.” The elderly General Topolov spoke up. “Whether it is time or not, we have been ordered to go. So go we must.”

He shrugged, picking up a flask from the table.

“Drinking on duty again, Topolov?” sneered Krukov.

“It helps me concentrate,” said Topolov easily. “You should get some hobbies, Krukov. Loosen your belt, enjoy life a little.”

“I have a career to think about,” said Krukov.

“Da,” Topolov shrugged. “Once you are near the end of your career like I am, you will not care so much.”

“We are wasting time, comrades,” snapped Vladimir, pounding the table. “Premier Romanov has asked us to decide where our main strike capability should be used. Unless anybody else has any bright ideas, I suggest striking their main centres of command and control.”

“I would suggest adding financial targets,” added Topolov. “Cripple their economy… plus I have always wanted to see Statue of…”

“Generals.”

The men turned. Another man had walked into the room, framed by the Soviet banners that flanked the large blast door through which he had entered. The interloper was bald, with a moustache and goatee that vaguely resembled Lenin’s, and a long coat over his traditional uniform which resembled those of the previous world war. There were three symbols tattooed on his forehead, which was framed by a strange metal device, not unlike a crown, that connected to his neck.

“Comrade Yuri!” Vladimir saluted, Topolov somewhat lazily following him. Krukov crossed his arms.

“Preparations for the invasion are well advanced,” said Topolov. “Tell the Premier that-”

“You will launch now,” said Yuri.

Silence fell upon the three officers.

“Now?” Krukov spluttered.

“Our nuclear forces are in position in Spain and Eastern Europe,” said Yuri. “We hold a gun to the European Allies’ heads. Now we must strike before they realise what we are doing.”

“Of course,” nodded Vladimir, regaining his composure. “I have suggested attacks on their major industrial and financial centres.” Topolov rolled his eyes, but Vladimir continued. “I would also suggest further strikes inland against their industrial-”

“It’s not time!” Krukov stepped forward, arms outstretched. “We need to finish loading the ships, we need to draw up plans to capture a supply port, we need…”

“Such considerations are immaterial, Krukov,” said Yuri softly.

“...we need to consider this properly!” snapped Krukov. “We cannot allow ourselves to make foolish mistakes in our quest for conquest, like Stalin did! We-”

Yuri’s eyes twitched, and suddenly Krukov screamed. He fell to his knees, clutching his skull, his eyes wide and red-rimmed. Red began to drip from his nose as he began to slam his head into the oak sides of the table, desperate to alleviate the extraordinary pain running through his head. Vladimir and Topolov jumped, scampering away from their comrade as he writhed and screeched on the floor.

“Random brain aneurysm,” said Yuri. “Unfortunate, wouldn’t you say?”

Krukov’s legs gave way and he crumbled to the floor, clawing at his eyes. Yuri pointedly avoided looking at him, regarding the other generals with a cold, unblinking stare.

“Premier Romanov would like your forces moving by sundown, at which time an officer will have been promoted to command General Krukov’s army,” he said. “Topolov, your army corps will attack New York. Vladimir, you will attack Florida to secure our supply lines from Cuba. General Krukov’s replacement will strike in the centre to destroy their primary command centres. Any questions?”

Topolov opened his mouth.

“No? Good, dismissed,” said Yuri. “Za Rodina.”

“Z… za Rodina!” shouted Vladimir.

“Za Rodina!” Topolov echoed.

Yuri nodded, turning his back and striding out of the room. He stopped at the blast doors, turning back to glance at Krukov. With a loud ‘pop,’ the General’s frontal lobe burst, and his body finally stopped writhing.

Yuri nodded, and walked away.

Slowly, Vladimir and Topolov turned to the map. The staff officers were already moving the markers that represented their forces - theirs, and others, striking from the Soviet puppet state of Mexico, from across the Bering Strait into Alaska, and from secret Pacific bases, not unlike this one, onto the Western Seaboard. From every angle, save the direct north, Soviet forces were positioned to strike.

The moment to unleash the dogs of war had finally struck.

The Soviet assault was about to begin…

#command and conquer #red alert 2 #writing #red alert #i guess this is happening

[nytehavyn-circle]

The ShadowLands

Tolaas Explains The ShadowLands

((This is very important, so please pay attention and respect it: Where the ShadowLands are concerned - THESE ShadowLands - Tolaas Bluue is the only person in the world that can move freely into them and through them without trouble or magic, etc. Tolaas Bluue, the ShadowLands, and his story, have been in my head, and in various incarnations in story form, for - quite literally - YEARS. The ShadowLands are something I am fairly possessive and protective of, and it’s fairly annoying and aggravating when other people decide they can do what they wish with it. No. As selfish as it sounds, the ShadowLands are my baby, so please respect this.))

 The ShadowLands. I keep gettin’ asked about ‘em, an’ I never really give an adequate answer ta those who ask. Mainly because I think most people would shit.*chuckles* Well, now yer gonna get a pretty decent explanation a’what the ShadowLands really are.

First off, remember that the ‘Lands don’t exist on this plane. They’re another dimension, pretty much. The ShadowLands exist in the shadows. That’s the best way I can explain it. But not everyone can get there. I can, because I’m connected to ‘em. Anybody with me at the time can get ta ‘em, too. That’s not important right now, though.

Picture a country – United States, Canada, whatever. Now, ya know how they’re divided inta states, provinces er whatnot? Yeah. Same thing with the ShadowLands. Unlike a state or provincial official – governor er sumpin’, the ShadowLands have ShadowGuardians.

Also, unlike a state official, a ShadowGuardian’s word is law fer his section. Am I makin’ any sense, so far? * shakes head * Anyway … The ShadowLands ain’t exactly divided inta cities, neither. Each section a’the ShadowLands has a specific name – an’ I ain’t meanin’ somethin’ like “Wyomin’” er “Ontario”. I’m talkin’ names like “The Valley a’ Shame”, and “Nightmare Swamps”, shit like that.

There are a few towns an’ villages scattered throughout the ‘Lands, just so ya know. But they ain’t nuthin’ really special – typical small villages an’ whatnot. Well, typical fer the ShadowLands. *grins* The ShadowLands ain’t exactly a friendly place, to be sure. Ain’t necessarily dangerous, neither – not if ya know what yer doin’.

I’m ‘bout the only one that ever really visits. I mean, sure, other people show up from time ta time, but it’s usually accidental. Showin’ up in the ShadowLands, just to show up an’ hang out, is purdy rare – for people other’n me, I mean. It’s a purdy terrifyin’ place for most people. It’s always twilight er darker. No such thing as sunshine in the ShadowLands … Place is purdy overcast, too. Also, the vegetation is poisonous ta most humans.

Now, the ShadowLands’re inhabited by what’re known as ‘ShadowDemons’. Come in all shapes ‘n’ sizes. Some right outta yer nightmares. Others, not so bad. Some’re good, some’re purdy damned evil, others are considered neutral. ShadowLands’re purdy neutral, anyway.

Ya know all those reports a’people seein’ what they call “Shadow Men” outta the corner a’their eye? Maybe hangin’ ‘round their bedroom at night? Yeah. They come from the ShadowLands. Most’re purdy neutral. Purdy harmless, fer the most part. Some’re actually protectors.

Sometimes, ShadowDemons’re sent to watch over special people. Other times, they’re just sent to just … watch things. Quite often, though, ‘cause most ShadowDemons’re purdy wild, they just slip on through the Shadows. Create havoc, scare people. So, I go after ‘em. If I can’t get ‘em back to the ShadowLands without too much trouble, I just kill ‘em.

Other times, I actually get commissioned to specifically go after them – either by the ShadowKing himself (we’ll get ta him in a minute), a ShadowGuardian, or someone else. Don’t matter.

Now, onta the ShadowKing. He purdy much rules over the ShadowLands. I won’t say that him an’ I’re friends … but we have a purdy good relationship. I don’t disrespect ‘im when I go ta the ShadowLands, an’ he don’t bother me ‘less he needs ta. I don’t think you wanna meet ‘im, though. ‘Less ya bring a change a’underpants. * chuckles *

Anyway … that’s purdy much it. Got any questions, feel free ta ask. 

#the shadowlands #the shadowlands are where tolaas is originally from

[catkin-morgs-kookaburralover]

Character roundup! In no particular order. I was mostly working off my tumblr posts tagged #taira to work this out xD

All this is (c) [name I write under] catkin-morgs, 2022. Not to be stolen! It be mine, and besides you don't even know half the context how would you even manage to do anything useful with it....

Spy Spry the Murder Duck name: Spry species: Duck (Speaker) gender: undecided alliance: neutral character notes: willing to go just about any lengths to attain the desired ends. murder duck. operates fairly independently of either side, and is in it for whatever Spry wants, not anybody else. probably no real loyalty. doesn’t really agree with either side, and is hence an outlier. he also does his best to hide his pain and once he can no longer, he will lash out. additional notes: he is a spy of sorts. he is the one to find Taira after she doesn’t respond to Paddy post leaf incident, and says he’s gonna take her back to safety, not necessarily Paddy. instead, he betrays her and hands her over to the alyen, then lies to Sheba; they either don’t find out in the end, or they only find out afterwards, that he wasn’t ambushed.

Unnamed the Kangaroo/Wombat name: Unnamed species: Kangaroo (Speaker) or Wombat (Speaker) gender: undecided alliance: tairen character notes: none developed yet lol additional notes: I just need some Australian animal/s, make sure this one shows up a bit - there could be at least one on the other side too, at least mentioned; consider the hoppiness or things in terms of battles.

Paddy the Fox name: Paddy species: Fox (Speaker) gender: male alliance: tairen character notes: carefree, and annoys Sheba by doing so. Sheba thinks he should have a more serious attitude to life. can be somewhat cocky, this is what gets him into trouble with the leaf incident. additional notes: while he has no smell (leaf related), Paddy comments, ‘doesn’t smell like anything in here’ or some such. annoys Sheba by doing so. he eats ducks. he also eats deer. he possibly has unrequited love going on. >:D he and his mate name one of their first litter after Taira (she calls her Namesake instead, as a nickname)

Sheba the Canadian Lynx name: Sheba species: Canadian Lynx (Speaker) gender: male alliance: tairen character notes: absolutely capable of murder. absolutely dedicated to the cause, and willing to do whatever it takes for that. in that, similar to Murder Duck. additional notes: frequently clashes with Paddy, whose flippant attitude is very unlike his own. 

Akicuter the Deer name: Akicuter species: Deer (Speaker) gender: male alliance: tairen character notes: none developed yet lol additional notes: has a Crow friend. is also friendly with Paddy because they’re both the kind of spy things that still needs a bit of working out. 

Unnamed the Otter name: Unnamed species: Otter (Speaker) gender: undecided alliance: undecided character notes: none developed yet lol additional notes: he loves to crunch ice.

Unnamed the Hedgehog name: Unnamed species: Hedgehog (Speaker) gender: undecided alliance: tairen character notes: does its best to do what it can. additional notes: it serves in its own smol way.

Minna the Canadian Lynx name: Minna species: Canadian Lynx (Speaker) gender: female alliance: tairen character notes: needs development additional notes: need more female characters. Minna is a general, maybe, and probably in some way connected to Sheba, whether his sister, mother or mate.

Unnamed the Bear name: Unnamed species: Bear (Speaker) gender: undecided alliance: tairen character notes: refer to the Bulgy Bears. additional notes: 

Darkness Rising the Dragon name: Darkness Rising/The Queen/The Darkness species: Dragon (unknown) gender: female alliance: her own; her resurrection/rising is the alyen’s goal character notes: she is dreadfully bad and destroying. she will, if released, wreak havoc and destroy the land, or at least wipe out every single tairen in existence. additional notes: she was presumably trapped, either conscious or unconscious, in a way that only a particular ritual can release her. she is pure evil. the alyen refer to her as the Queen, while the tairen refer to her as the Darkness. Sheba is extremely set on no tairen ever calling her the Queen, because names are power.

Nadia the Rabbit name: Nadia species: Rabbit (Speaker) gender: female alliance: tairen character notes: protector. protects the children and small ones. she also essentially teaches Taira of the tairen. one of her best and worst things is that she truly cares too much about everything and everyone. one life lost to literally save the rest of the world is too much for her. additional notes: sister, from an earlier litter, of Taira. she stays in a lil area to take care of the lil ones of all sorts of different tairen fighters, she and others, but specifically her mainly. post battle, gets threatened >:D

Taira the Rabbit name: Taira species: Rabbit (Speaker) gender: female alliance: tairen character notes: fearless and brave and bold and yet uncertain. she doesn’t know how the world works, she’s grown up basically on her own, with only Nadia for company apart from the silent. courageous and loving and hesitant and sometimes stubborn.  additional notes: main character. she is the one that is vital to the plot of the alyen. 

#taira #roll call #paddy #sheba #nadia #spry the duck #spry #murder duck #feedback welcome #character roundup #nanowrimo 2022

[skvaderarts]

Happy Late Ace Visibility Day!

Now then...

I had to read one to many comments from people with pride flags for logos yesterday telling Ace and Aro people that they hated them on ACE VISIBILITY DAY despite almost all of them identifying as members of the LGBTQ themselves, so I made this because I'm fucking done being nice about it.

Just let us have her pride day. You know exactly how this shit feels. STOP attacking us. You're not the only ones, but it hurts extra when you do it because we're all supposed to be allies and supporting one another, but some of the worst hate we get is from members of our own connected communities and that sucks because we know you know how it feels and you do it anyway. No one gets a free pass on hate, the lot of people seem to think that they should.

Not to mention the fact that many Ace people aren't even straight, so that "You're just unattractive straight people invading our space" bullshit isn't good cut it. Or that "You're not oppressed like we are" bullshit, either. You are the ones impressing us, assholes. Not to mention all of the therapy and dehumanizing bullshit we've gone through, too. You're not the only ones that's ever happened to. Maybe if you looked into it for 5 seconds instead of constantly hating us you'd know that.

I know this probably stirs the pot, but I don't care. I'm tired of people acting like I don't exist, and only hating me when they do acknowledge that I'm a living person. Stop the hate. I'm sorry if this upsets any other Ace or Aro people (or people like me who are both) but we have just as much of a right to exist and enjoy our pride as anybody else, and I've literally never been able to make a post in my entire life celebrating it without getting some kind of hate and I'm so tired of it.

It's morbidly hilarious that the most hate I've experienced in my entire life has been from other members of the LGBTQ and members of my own nationality in regards to cultural issues that I'm not talking about in this post. I don't think people talk about this enough.

I know I'm a day late, but happy Ace pride. To everybody who is on the spectrum in any way shape or form, and everyone who isn't, I love all of you. Unlike some people apparently. And anyone in need of education about us, here's a recent video from Jaden Animations on the topic (that unsurprisingly was bombarded with hata as well. Who could have guessed that would happen...) Don't go add more hate to it. She's had more than enough of that in the last few days. I've heard she's even had death threats over it.

Also leave trans people alone while you're at it. Leave everybody alone, huh? Don't talk about being mistreated and then mistreat others. It's that simple.

#ace visibility day #Ace #meme #seriously wtf #leave us alone #pride month #signal boost

[preemshots]

the definitive post of WHERE IN THE WORLD IS JOHNNY SILVERHAND’S BODY?

AKA the post of HERE’S WHY I WANT TO BELIEVE WE ARE GONNA GET JOHNNY’S BODY BACK IN DLC. 

buckle up, gamers. it's time for some lore. this is a very long post. 

warning: this will contain a million spoilers. both for details of multiple game endings, a wee bit of the “where’s johnny” comic, and the cyberpunk RED book. if you want a sparknotes version this is the post for you. my main source here is the cyberpunk RED book as well as as some references to the cyberpunk 2077 world book to cross examine the lore. 

i have no idea if someone has made this post before or what anybody else has been finding in their own lore diving. this is just me documenting my own findings from the sources i’ve been using.

it would be disingenuous not to preface this with the ways in which cyberpunk 2077's telling of the arasaka assault differ from the version told in the TTRPG books. the books =/= the game. pondsmith acknowledges in the intro of RED that this is a bridge between the old cyberpunk world and the new world of cyberpunk 2077. 

we also know that johnny's an unreliable narrator and his memories presented to V are often different than real events. but on top of that we don't know if the reason why many elements are changed is simply CDPR editing/adjusting/condensing the storyline for their own canon, or if it's due to johnny's construct being manipulated by outside influences such as arasaka.

some of the main differences you need to know from cyberpunk RED canon:

in 2023 johnny doesn't bring the nukes to arasaka tower. he's solely there to free alt.

johnny and rogue and their team from the atlantis/the aldecaldos are actually hired by morgan blackhand. 

morgan blackhand is the one who plants the nuke, unbeknownst to many members of the team. 

morgan blackhand promptly disappears after this event and no one knows if he's alive or dead. (claire confirms this fact to jackie and v before the heist in 2077 canon)

johnny's silver cybernetic arm is its own character, separate from himself. it seems to have a mind of its own and johnny interacts with it and/or is influenced by it.

when he, spider murphy, rogue, thompson, shaitan, and a team of los lobos from the aldecaldos (who are there in place of santiago, as he’s busy as the leader of the aldecaldos at this point) are attacked by adam smasher, johnny and his arm actively choose to draw smasher's fire in a deliberately suicidal move. smasher downs him instantly, but the distraction is enough to also save his friends.

spider murphy shoves a mysterious chip in johnny's dying head as they escape that alt had downloaded to her a long time ago.

johnny's body is later "rumoured" to have been retrieved from the rubble by a full-body borg groupie that was a first responder to the ground zero of AHQ and then hidden away in a nearby garage.

here comes the political lore that makes my eyes cross, so hopefully this accurately summarizes it: the 4th corporate war begins to end. arasaka is ultimately blamed by the NUSA government to have nuked themselves in a political move to protect their secrets and promptly banished from the USA. arasaka denies this all the way back to japan, then eventually returns to “liberate” night city in the unification wars.

but what the public doesn't know is that kei, saburo's oldest son, had actually hidden an EVEN BIGGER MORE DEVASTATING NUKE at the bottom of the tower to, well, do exactly what they were being accused of doing, even though blackhand was the one who actually dropped the smaller nuke on them. and luckily the bigger one didn’t go off.

arasaka tries to find their nuke in the rubble so they don't get in even bigger trouble, only to discover that it was moved and hidden away to... surprise! a nearby garage.

to compare with 2077:

in RED: we have no johnny loading the nukes into the elevator. no johnny being carried off the premises. no meeting saburo. no johnny getting soulkilled.

in 2077: there's a parallel moment to RED's version of events right after johnny uploads "liberator" from alt's old cyberdeck with spider's help into the arasaka mainframe in saburo's office. adam smasher comes for him as he's trying to escape, knocking him off the second floor of the atrium into the rock garden below.

visually this is the same atrium we always meet alt in in cyberspace and also where V meets johnny for the first time. hmmm. meaningful, perhaps.

not unlike what happens in RED, johnny unloads a clip into smasher at that point, but from there the scene instantly cuts to him running to the roof attempting to board the AV with rogue, where smasher shoots him down again. it’s possible johnny actually died to smasher in the atrium and we have some fabricated memories going on. 

either way, in 2077, we lose the character beat of johnny dying for his friends, and the current-day general consensus from rogue and others is that he’s perpetually a selfish asshole with ulterior motives. 

and, just to wrap up the politics of it all: morgan blackhand is rumoured to have been secretly hired by the militech-backed NUSA government to help end the 4th corporate war by... you guessed it! nuking arasaka.

HERE'S WHERE JOHNNY'S BODY ENDS UP IN CYBERPUNK RED (SPARKNOTES VERSION):

RED ends with a story called "black dog" set in 2045. black dog is the last song johnny recorded right before the assault on arasaka tower, but the final copy is a bootleg copy of the song and only a fraction.

we're introduced to a fun group of cybernetic-enhanced characters that represent the classes in the TTRPG and based on/designed by real people in collaboration with CDPR.

this group includes trace santiago, santiago's son, who is a media that is curious about the mystery surrounding the circumstances around his father and the arasaka bombing. 

just connecting lore here: if you talk to saul at the aldecaldo camp in 2077, he confirms that santiago was killed for his involvement with johnny and the bombing, something that rogue and johnny reference when they talk about their now-dead crew from the afterlife, and in chippin in, santiago is a friend that johnny lists as someone he had disappointed.

the group sets off to find any info about black dog, and meet up with a full conversion chrome woman named samantha in a garage who is blatantly a johnny silverhand fangirl. trace discovers she has a history with johnny, having rescued him from a studio fire at some point in 2015 and speculates she could have been a groupie also.

she mysteriously has a more complete recording of black dog, though not perfect, and offers to trade it for a service: she wants the group to transport a large crate to a facility in new mexico, asking them not to open it.

shit goes down. evidently everyone in night city wants to kill them for this package once it starts moving. eventually they open it. it's the arasaka nuke that had been hidden and never went off, emblazoned with warnings.

trace inquires about the circumstances surrounding the arasaka assault with an older member of the lobos who had been present with rogue and johnny. the man mentions that it was weird, because morgan blackhand organized the whole thing and then ran off immediately with a mysterious bag that we now know contained the nuke. 

michiko arasaka intercepts the gang, explaining the situation around the bigger nuke, that other factions in arasaka want to utilize it for their own goals (presumably hanako and yorinobu) and her father's legacy, that she feels responsible for. she escorts them to new mexico so that the nuke can be dismantled once and for all.

they meet up with a woman named angel in new mexico that takes the crate from them, at a facility that specializes in nuclear material. she gives the group the full recording of "black dog". the group leaves successful.

this woman is also a johnny silverhand stan. once alone, she calls up samantha, who says, "i promised i would get him to you in the end" and reveals that she had already gutted/dismantled the original nuke and discarded the material into the bay.

angel opens the "nuke" to reveal a hidden cryochamber, and greets the face of the person inside with, "hello, my love."

i mean, holy shit. okay! so that’s DEFINITELY johnny’s body. cool!

now let’s go into all the references to this story in the actual game of cyberpunk 2077 that SUGGEST we are going to pursue this story AND johnny's body since it’s such a HOT FUCKING TOPIC. 

and i know many of the following can just be considered easter eggs. but my personal interpretation of this game is that it has a really delightful way of intentionally glossing over important story details—and not by ONLY putting them in shards (which people tend to dislike because lol reading) but by also hiding them in plain sight, constantly deferring to V's own ignorance, distracting us with shallower, shinier things, encouraging us to actually play as the fool hero of this story. 

so here's the fun list of “””evidence”””:

this one’s a reach, but fun. in the initial arasaka assault flashback in 2023: we can interact with the groupies at kerry's show as johnny. samantha doesn't appear to be present, but the first person and groupie you can encounter in the flashback has a passing resemblance to angel in that she has a cybernetic arm.

in chippin' in, where we go to johnny's "grave" in the oil fields: if we are to take the 2077 retelling of events as truth, the story could instead be pretty easily be changed that samantha procured his body from there.

mike pondsmith, who wrote these stories and created the TTRPG can be heard on the radio narrating various conspiracy theories. and sure, these can just be easter eggs, intended to reference the differences between the TTRPG lore and the game, so take it with a grain of salt:

johnny. bro. tell him it was morgan blackhand

to top it all off, mike also directly references the actual WORSE nuke arasaka had hid in another arasaka conspiracy: 

SPOILERS FOR GAME ENDINGS AHEAD.

in the rogue ending of the game we discover rogue has a son. it's possible her son is trace (edit: nvm NOT LIKELY, since in RED’s black dog story rogue is listed separately from santiago’s mom in conversation) OR possibly one of the other characters. she tells her son to "pull over and look at the stars" or something along those lines. maybe just details, so that screams nomad to me.

rogue also has a photo of herself and johnny with mike pondsmith in her apartment/office in the afterlife. i initially read this as a delightful cameo but it also can mean mike the CHARACTER knew johnny and rogue, and rogue therefore has some kind of relationship to him and these conspiracies on the radio. and why the fuck not make him a full on character? we have a smattering of streamers and personalities already integrated into quests in the game. the creator of all this should be no exception. fuck it! 

rogue and johnny constantly dance around this accusation of her “selling out”. it’s repeated over and over that she and adam smasher worked for "the same people". i'm beginning to wonder if this wasn't meant to imply only arasaka since smasher mysteriously disappeared after the AHQ assault in 2023 and returned to SOMETIMES take jobs from arasaka... but possibly morgan blackhand and/or by extension, the NUSA or any other greater influences. (like nightcorp? we still don’t know where all this shit with nightcorp/the peralezes/sandra dorsett’s discovery about their research into mind control is gonna go) this also doesn’t account for the multiple factions inside arasaka with VERY different motives. 

morgan blackhand and adam smasher are rivals in the TTRPG, a role that appears to be at least partially filled by johnny instead in 2077. in relation to the arasaka factions, it’s worth nothing that smasher specifically works for yorinobu as his bodyguard at the beginning of the game, in part i assume because yorinobu is avoiding working with arasaka security details as he stole the relic and is plotting against his father. he is then promoted to head of security by yorinobu when yorinobu assumes power. 

in the ending as you work your way through arasaka tower with rogue and shaitan and johnny, rogue remarks:

michiko at this point in 2077 is the leader of the more “liberal” faction within arasaka, so it’s possible we’re seeing that while rogue and smasher work for the same people/family, they couldn’t be more different. 

you can also encounter rogue more than once on the phone fighting with wakako, who has apparently crossed her. wakako also seems to have her own ulterior motives and works mainly with the arasaka-backed tyger claws. she notably gives v/takemura the parade security info for “play it safe” without asking for anything in return, enabling hanako’s kidnapping. my theory is that yorinobu intentionally leaked the parade info to her to give away to put hanako in danger or at least continue to destabilize arasaka. 

in the takemura/devil ending of the game, there is a point where violence breaks out at the arasaka board room meeting when yorinobu-allied security open fire on them. one of the only people that survives along with hanako is michiko arasaka, who was at odds with hanako’s decisions, but  very involved in the preceding discussion.

and now for is my favorite detail! in the afterlife AT ALL POINTS IN THE GAME (but it can only really be inspected in the rogue ending when we are allowed behind the bar), we can find a photo of the squad that transported johnny's body from samantha to angel on the shelf below johnny's tequila, of them hanging out in front of the afterlife sign:  

this implies rogue has some relationship with them, and sentimentality, if we're to judge by the placement. she maybe even took the picture. i don't know, it's charming, it could be all easter eggs. who fucking knows.

either way, rogue and these kids both have in common that they worked with or at least interacted with michiko arasaka. 

and you know what my final evidence is? more wishful thinking! black dog plays on the radio in game. we got a full recorded version of it by refused. if not an oversight, i go ahead and take it to mean the final version was finally released to the public by those kids that were looking for it. 

i haven’t the slightest idea how this is gonna wrap up in future DLC. who has johnny’s body now in 2077, decades after it was dropped off in mexico? what is the truth?? where the fuck is morgan blackhand?? from the devil ending, we know that arasaka stole jackie’s body and put his soul into mikoshi, so the idea that they would just toss johnny’s corpse has always been laughable. the “where’s johnny?” promotional comic was even about thompson unsuccessfully trying to find johnny’s body. i know i am biased here but i cannot fathom all this talk about johnny’s body ending off with us NOT finding it, whether it’s just to bury it, shove johnny’s engram back in it, make out with it, or WHATEVER.

if you made it through this slog, congrats. thanks for reading! 

#cyberpunk lore #johnny silverhand #spoilers #cyberpunk 2077 #cyberpunk2077 #cp2077 #cyberpunk game #lore post

[mypoisonedvine]

Love, Theoretically | Sebastian Stan x reader (chapter 10 - FINALE)

series masterlist

series summary: having lost your husband, sister, and best friend all to the same extramarital affair, you ran away to a secluded villa in the Hungarian countryside to write and get a little time away from the life you’d left behind.  you were only looking for peace and perhaps some inspiration for your novel, but instead you found an unlikely connection with the immigrant repairman– even though the two of you don’t speak the same language.

word count: 6k

warnings: implied smut, angst, fluff, romcom tropes, lots of swearing, pregnancy mention/minor breeding kink

note: click the asterisk for a hyperlink to a translation when the time comes

Six months later...

“It’s good!” she beamed, setting down the last chunk of pages and taking off her reading glasses. “Oh man, that ending hurt, but it’s really, really good!”

You leaned back into the plush chair and sighed with relief. “You think so?”

“It’s best-seller material,” she assured. “With some editing, of course. God, I can’t believe you were sitting on this for so long.”

“What are the biggest changes you want to make?” you asked.

“Well, I’m thinking we’ll cut the romantic subplot,” she mentioned in passing, like it was no big deal. “It’s distracting.

“Distracing?” you repeated. “Nia, it’s the story. It’s a romance.”

“I thought it was a thriller,” she frowned.

“A romance disguised as a thriller,” you corrected.

“Listen, I get what you mean, but I didn’t get this—” she tapped the nameplate on her desk: ‘NIA BROWN, HEAD PUBLISHER’ in shiny letters— “for nothing. I know what I’m talking about, and I know what your readers want. Violence, gore, drama!”

“It has all that!” you defended. “But it’s all there to talk about the real love he finds in her!”

“What do you mean ‘real love’?” she pressed flatly.

“I mean…” you pondered. “I mean love where you feel like a version of yourself that you actually like. Love where you feel unjudged, no precedents or caveats or back-up plans. Love that fucking hurts because you never wanted to rely on anything or anybody. Love that lives in silence because you don’t even need words.”

She furrowed her brow. “That… sounds nice, I guess, but I don’t think anybody really has that. Everybody needs a back-up plan. Everybody needs words— a writer should know that.”

“Oh my god. Oh my god,” you groaned, your face falling into your hands. “I’m so fucking stupid. Jesus Christ, I’m a moron.”

“What? What’s going on?”

“I had that! I had that, and I let it go! I’m the dumbest bitch on the fucking face of the Earth.”

“Don’t say that,” she soothed, but you were already standing up.

“No, I need to find him,” you decided as you grabbed your coat and briefcase. “I need to go back and try to fix this. I love him, I’ve never— I didn’t know I could love like that, I didn’t know I could be loved like that… oh my god, I need to find him. It isn’t over.”

“It isn’t over?” she repeated incredulously. “You said Michael signed the papers!”

“It’s not Michael,” you rolled your eyes as you stormed out of the office. “It was never Michael.”

You ran into the first telephone box you could find, slamming the door shut as you searched your purse for the business card that probably wasn't even in there.

After a moment, you gasped with delight when you pulled it from a very bottom pocket and began punching in the number as fast as possible with shivering hands, long-distance charges be damned.

“Hello?” the confused voice on the other end answered.

“Mrs. Alberti, hi— does Sebastian still work for you?” you asked hastily.

“No, dear," she sighed, apparently recognizing you by just your voice (and likely your request), "he quit recently, and moved away.”

“Moved?" you repeated with a wrinkled brow. "Where?!”

“I assume back home, sweetheart; to Bucharest.”

“Shit,” you sighed. “Shit!”

“Are you having your ‘run through the airport’ moment, sweetheart?” she realized.

“Yes, I think so— do you have his address?”

“Well, no, but I’ll see what I can find.”

You waited rather impatiently as she shuffled through papers in the background, mumbling to herself as she apparently searched for information that could help you.

“All I’ve got is the address of a previous employer… a carpenter,” she finally explained, breaking the silence. “It was his only reference when he came to work here," she explained.

"Wow, you really did just hire him for his looks," you blurted out.

"He was desperate for work, that boy had nowhere else to go,” she defended.

“Right, well, I guess if that’s my only lead then I’ve gotta go for it,” you decided. “Thank you, Mrs. Alberti.”

“I told you to call me when that book was a hit. Did it happen yet?” she piped up.

“It’s not published yet,” you explained. “It needs some more work… but I think it’s almost ready.”

“I think so, too, dear.”

Learn Romanian in 10 Weeks! A practical language guide.

Week 1, Day 1: Greetings

Hello                      Salut

Goodbye                La revedere

Thank you              Mulțumesc

You’re welcome      Cu plăcere

Good morning         Bună dimineata

Good afternoon       Bună ziua

Good evening          Bună seara

Good night               Noapte bună

You brushed your hair back out of your face with a sigh, turning the page as you mumbled the phrases to yourself. Broken Hungarian and your high school education in Latin were not getting you as far with this as you had been hoping.

How are you?          Ce mai faci

I love you                 Te iubesc

“Te iubesc, te iubesc, te iubesc,” you repeated over and over in a whisper.

Each day you had a new routine: practice Romanian for an hour, check flight prices online (or call the airline), research what you knew about Sebastian and the address Mrs. Alberti had given you, and then get back to practicing Romanian again.

Oh, and occasionally you worked on the edits Nia wanted for your manuscript. You were focusing on the minor changes— grammar errors, rearranging sentences— and putting off her big request for the removal and replacement of the romantic aspects. More than ever, they seemed like the most important thing the book had to offer.

You had a small apartment, just a place to sleep and shower really; much too small to fit everything you’d already taken from Michael’s house (you know, the one that used to be your house) along with what he’d shipped to you that you forgot before. He included a letter in the package as well. You threw it out, unopened.

Truthfully, you never really fully unpacked. As much as you realized you probably should, in order to really feel like you had a real home, you couldn’t bring yourself to empty your suitcases when you knew you’d be packing them again any day now.

You also realized how outrageous this all was. Ignoring the unlikelihood of even finding him in the first place, Sebastian probably wouldn’t want anything to do with you after you broke his heart, left, and then randomly tracked him down after over half a year. But to be totally transparent, you weren’t really doing this to get him back, necessarily. You knew that was probably never going to happen. You were doing this because you needed to try. You needed to go there, and get hurt, and come back knowing you did everything you could: you’d never be able to live with yourself if you did anything less than that.

You couldn’t start your new life until you had put everything else to bed. And if that meant being 100%, painfully certain that you and Sebastian could never be together, then that was just how it needed to be.

After two weeks of looking, there still weren’t any reasonable flights to Bucharest, so you booked another trip by train, figuring you could use the three day trip to brush up on the key Romanian phrases you were going to need as well as prepare your speech.

Yes, your plan was a speech. You didn’t have a back-up plan. You didn’t even have a return ticket back to London yet.

A passage by Yeats came to mind; But I, being poor, have only my dreams. I have spread my dreams under your feet. Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.

In all your life, you’d never understood before why someone would want to only have their dreams. But now, here you were… and yes, it felt terrifying and vulnerable and uncomfortably naked, but it felt pretty damn good, too.

With a sigh, you scribbled out the last sentence you’d written, tossing the trash paper aside. You looked up out the window at the scenery flying by in a blur, worried that if you didn’t look out from the train every once in a while you’d get motion sickness.

The sun was beginning to set already, the green of hills and trees tinted orange. You only indulged in it for a moment, though, before getting back to this god-forsaken speech you were deadset on finishing before you arrived in Bucharest tomorrow. At first, you’d figured the translating would be the most difficult part… but writing in English wasn’t exactly a piece of cake, either. You had so much to say, and suddenly so few words for any of it.

You’d probably done more editing on this than any of your novels combined; the crumpled up pages spilling out of your wastebasket were proof enough of that.

“And I’m a fucking writer!” you groaned aloud, to no one in particular. “How is anybody else supposed to be able to do this, if I can’t?”

Other people aren’t as emotionally constipated as you, the voice of your inner critic reminded you plainly, making you roll your eyes at yourself.

A rap at your door made you sit up straighter and turn around. A stewardess slid open the frosted glass slightly to give you a friendly smile. “Is everything alright, ma’am?”

Your brows furrowed at the sound of her accent. “Is that a Romanian accent?” you asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” she nodded.

“So you’re fluent in Romanian and English,” you concluded.

“And Portuguese, yes ma’am,” she agreed.

“Could you come in here for a moment and help me translate something?”

She seemed slightly confused at the request but stepped forward, sliding the door most of the way shut behind her. Leaning beside you on the desk, she picked up your handwritten letter and blinked her wide, brown eyes a few times. You felt slightly embarrassed knowing she was reading such intimate thoughts, but that was how it felt the first time someone read anything you wrote so you were pretty much used to it by now.

“I usually ask the passengers what brings them to Bucharest,” she mumbled after a moment. “This is the most interesting thing so far. Am I reading this correctly, that you intend to confess your love to someone you met—” she scanned the page quickly— “during a vacation in Hungary?”

“Yup,” you smiled awkwardly, popping the ‘p’ at the end of the word.

“And he doesn’t speak English?” she assumed; you nodded. “And… you don’t speak Romanian?”

You nodded again, and she breathed in and out quickly, sitting beside you as she stared at the letter.

“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she explained.

“Sorry for sucking you into the entropic vortex that is my life,” you chuckled.

“I don’t mean to pry,” she sighed, setting the letter down, and you laughed a little internally at the idea that she was worried about prying when she just read the most personal piece of writing you’d ever put to the page, “but do you think this is… enough? I mean, to build a relationship on?”

You just gave her a shrug. “I have no idea. But, you know, I spent my whole life worrying about stuff like that. I dated my husband for seven years before we got married, because I wanted to be sure. I was initially interested in him because he was successful and ambitious, and it made me feel like this was a really secure relationship that I could rely on. I double majored in English and Computer Science because I wanted a more stable career to fall back on in case being a writer didn’t work out, and even though it did, I’ve spent most of my career publishing what I thought people wanted to read instead of what I wanted to write, so I’d have a better shot at a good paycheck. I grew up thinking the best thing I could ever have was security. And now I’m divorced, watching my royalties shrink every month, more insecure in every way than I’ve ever been, and I’m realizing that the choices I made didn’t give me what I wanted. I gave up so much in the name of safety, and I let the one good thing I’d ever found go, so I could go back to being the same person I always was. I’m ready to settle again, if this doesn’t work… I’m ready to accept that this is just the way life goes, and be thankful that I got a taste of the kind of stuff I thought only existed in the sort of books I’d read but never write.”

She swallowed as she looked at you, and you felt your eyes water as you stared out the window towards the dimming scenery one more time, smiling at the sight of a distant village, a church with a steeple, vineyards and farms. Someone’s whole life is in that little town, you imagined, and they’re just watching your train go by like they see every other day.

“Sebastian gave me more security than I’d ever had before, even though the whole thing was such a ridiculous little whirlwind, and nothing like I ever imagined my life could be. But he made me want to be honest and raw and write sappy letters like the one you just read. He doesn’t have any money, at least as far as I know, and I haven’t known him for seven years, and on paper it makes no sense… but you would understand if you knew him. If you felt that joy that he radiates, if you saw him live his simple little life like it’s the best thing in the world. You would understand if you knew how much I needed this. You would understand if you had been just as miserable being who I’ve been for so long, and finally had a chance to be somebody you think you were maybe meant to be the whole time. So, if I never see him again, I hope I just get to thank him.”

You waited for her to say something, but furrowed your brow at the long moment of silence, looking back from the window finally and finding her staring at you with a tear running down her cheek. When you met her gaze, she quickly wiped it away with a sniffle and looked down at your desk again. “Let’s get to translating, shall we?” she announced with a half-smile.

You noticed the way the other passengers looked at you as everyone was in line to deboard from the train car; you stuck out like a sore thumb, since everybody else was carrying heavy luggage and all you had was a backpack.

In your defense, you really had no idea how to pack for a trip where you knew neither the duration nor the true final destination. So, it was mainly filled with your essentials, a few clothes for any kind of weather, and enough leu to buy anything else you needed along the way.

The stewardess was waving goodbye to everyone as they shuffled out into the train station, occasionally stopping to shake a hand or give directions to nearby destinations. When you were just about to pass by, though, she pulled you into a tight hug.

“Good luck,” she whispered, holding you just a moment too long before pulling back and giving you an encouraging look. “If he doesn’t take you back, feel free to blame my translation… because if he knows what’s in your heart, I know he’ll say yes.”

“Yeah, that’s the hard part isn’t it?” you laughed weakly. “Thank you for your help. I guess if I come back alone for the return trip tonight, you’ll know how bad it went.”

“Then I hope I don’t see you again,” she winked.

It being a major train station and all, cabs were waiting around every corner so it was pretty easy to grab one and give them the address you already had written down for this exact purpose.

“This is pretty far,” the driver explained, “on the edge of town. Not a tourist spot.”

“Good, because I’m not a tourist,” you nodded, already only giving him half your attention as you pulled out the translated speech to practice.

“And you can afford this?” he pressed. You sighed and dug through your bag, pulling out a haphazard stack of bills and handing them through the plastic partition.

“Is this enough?” you asked, and he didn’t answer, just taking the money and starting the car as you smiled and leaned back in your seat.

As much as you had tried to convince yourself to not get your hopes up, the butterflies in your stomach felt more like whole birds at this point, demanding to break free as you practiced the words hand-written on the page over and over again, committing it all to memory.

“What are you reading?” the cab driver asked after several minutes.

“Oh, nothing,” you mumbled, “sorry if I’m bothering you, you can turn on the radio.”

“No, it’s not bothering me, but what you are saying… it’s very odd. It sounds like something from a play, or movie,” he explained.

“Um, it’s not,” you replied, a little embarrassed. “But does it sound like it’s from a good movie? Like, if you heard a character say this to another character, would you think they should get together?”

“I… don’t know,” he answered, sounding confused. “I mean, it depends on what happened, right? How they met, how well they get along…”

So, you told him the whole story, as succinctly as possible (which is not very succinct at all). By the end, he was actually giving commentary as you spoke.

“Why the hell did you leave?” he interjected, clearly irritated with you. “You loved him!”

“Yeah, well, sometimes love isn’t enough! I loved my husband too, and look how that turned out,” you defended.

“But that’s different. That was love for all the wrong reasons.”

“I promise, it felt very real at the time,” you shrugged.

“And now?” he countered. “You realize that this man— Sebastian, right?— is real.”

“I hope I’m right this time,” you offered. “But even if I am, he may not agree.”

The driver scoffed, taking a hand off the wheel to wave dismissively. “If he’s anything like you said, then he will still be completely in love with you. After all, you still feel the same way after all this time apart, don’t you?”

“If anything, I love him more every day,” you admitted, your heart beating quickly just to say it aloud.

“You know, when I met my wife, she was engaged to another man. He was rich, good-looking, and he wasn’t even a bad guy unlike this husband you describe. He was a good man, but he wasn’t right for her. They were… content together, but she wasn’t truly happy. Every night I would come to her window and beg her to marry me, because I knew that she knew we were meant for each other, but she was scared because her family wouldn’t approve and she would be a poor man’s wife.”

“How did you convince her to marry you instead?” you asked eagerly, sucked into the story already.

“I didn’t. On the day of the wedding, some people told me to go and break it up but I didn’t. I thought it would be wrong, to try to ruin her happiness and take it for myself by making a scene at the wedding. I realized she was her own woman and if she wanted to choose him, I had to let her. I had locked myself in my house, not wanting to see anyone that day, and she appeared at my door. I didn’t need to convince her because she knew the truth in her heart, and called off the wedding herself.”

“Wow,” you smiled.

“She was still in her dress!” he recalled with a hearty laugh. “She looked like an angel. We were married just a few days later. And next month will be thirty years,” he added as he lifted his left hand to show the golden band on his finger.

“Thirty years, that’s… a long time,” you sighed.

“It wasn’t always easy,” he admitted. “But it was always worth it.”

Just as you wondered what you could possibly say to that, you felt the car slow down to a stop.

“This is the address you gave me, this is it,” he explained, pointing out his passenger-side window. You leaned up against the glass and gasped in dawning fear as you saw the storefront dark and empty inside.

“No, nonono,” you whispered rapidly to yourself as you swung open the door and hopped out, pressing your face against the glass to try to get a look inside and finding what was undeniably a closed carpentry business. There was a note on the door, taped on the inside of the glass, and you knew enough Romanian to know it said something about a vacation and three months.

“Shit!” you yelped, holding your face in your hands, wondering if your journey had come to an end before it really began.

“Are you alright?” the driver asked, rolling down his window to speak to you.

“This was my only lead, I don’t have his real address,” you explained. “He used to work here, I thought maybe someone would know him…”

He sighed, giving you a sympathetic look. “Get back in, we can search nearby. You came too far to give in yet.”

But getting back in the car felt like giving in, too, which you realized as you looked back at the note taped to the carpenter's door. This was the closest you'd gotten, and it felt wasteful to leave with nothing.

Just as you were ready to hop in the passenger seat and start searching aimlessly through suburban Bucharest, or maybe look around for a Romanian yellow pages, you heard a noise from behind you, across the street; a laugh. His laugh. But it couldn’t be because it was too good to be true… and yet you found yourself whipping your head around and hoping beyond all reason that it was Sebastian.

Across the street was a restaurant, with a large patio where patrons were dining and chatting as they sat at wrought iron tables, and your eyes searched the crowd for any signs of him.

And then your gaze landed on a head of thick brunette hair, red and gold highlights so obvious now when the sunlight hit it this way. Broad shoulders wrapped in a white button-up shirt. He was facing away from you but he was looking to the side so you could see his face; he was smiling, laughing at something someone had said. And it was his smile that you recognized; it was like everything else faded away, and in that moment you thought maybe you could almost be happy with just this, just seeing him be happy even if it had nothing to do with you.

“Sebastian,” you called out to him, but he didn’t react. “Sebastian!”

His whole body turned, his eyes met yours, and you couldn't help but let the tears well in your eyes as you ran across the road to him.

He looked, understandably, stunned, and you realized he was actually waiting on a table at the moment; he said something to them, apparently excusing himself, and stepped closer to you.

But he stopped walking, not coming any closer, not exactly dragging you into his arms like you might've preferred, but with a breath to try to soothe your racing mind, you summoned your memories of the practiced letter and began. *

“Când am venit în Ungaria…” you started slowly, doing your best to remember the words and hoping your pronunciation wasn’t too awful, “nu căutam dragoste. Căutam spațiu, claritate și poate o idee de carte de un milion de dolari. În schimb, am găsit tot ce am căutat toată viața mea…”

You did your best to bite back tears, especially when his expression was nearly unreadable and you had no idea how well this was going.

“Ești tu, Sebastian, bineînțeles că ești tu,” you sighed, laughing slightly. “Ai fost acolo pentru mine când nici nu știam ce vreau de la nimeni. Ai fost prietenul meu fără să spui vreodată un cuvânt - cel puțin nu un cuvânt pe care l-am înțeles. M-ai iubit și nu știam ce să fac cu asta, pentru că uitasem cu mult timp în urmă cum se simțea să fii iubit. Și ce simțeai să iubești cu adevărat pe cineva. Dar te iubesc. Și am fost prost să te las să pleci, atât de neconceput de prost. Vreau să fim noi, Sebastian. Lasă-mă să te iubesc, mai dă-mi o șansă și îți promit că nu te voi mai lăsa să pleci niciodată.

The first thing he said was your name, and just the way he said it made you fall in love with him all over again.

“I… I dream that you would come back,” he shakily replied. “But now I cannot believe. You are my dream.”

Tears were openly flowing at this point and you wanted to run into his arms, but you tried to stay calm and hear him out. He stepped closer, almost hesitant, like you would run away if he got too close too fast.

“I love you, very much that I am sure I am insane person,” he explained with a grin, and you giggled. “We will live anywhere, do anything you would like— be my wife.”

You gasped as he pulled you into him, gripping your arms tightly as his desperation became apparent.

“Marry me?” he asked softly.

“Da,” you nodded, “yes, of course, anything—”

He kissed you suddenly, but gently, and it said more than any words in any language could.

It was a small wedding, in the Hungarian countryside by the lake. You could remember diving into that lake for lost pages of your manuscript; you could remember looking out over the water and dreaming of this moment you were living right now, thinking it was impossible.

He didn’t have much family, but they welcomed you with open arms.

Your family, well, they were too busy with planning another wedding, for your ex-husband and your ex-sister. A few of them sent cards but the rest were suspiciously quiet. You honestly didn’t even notice… you had a new family to attend to, anyhow. And it wasn’t like you didn’t have any guests, since you were able to track down and invite a stewardess named Maria, and a cab driver named Andrei and his wife, Paola.

Sebastian’s cousins weaved flowers into your hair and his grandmother tailored her dress to fit you like a glove. A picture of his parents was hung nearby in tribute; he told you they would’ve wanted to see him get married but that he felt, in some way, they were able to even if they had passed away quite some time ago.

You realized you’d never seen him in anything even mildly formal before; in fact, the suit he wore was rather casual, all things considered, but he looked so painfully cute in it. Sometimes you thought he actually looked a bit out of place wearing a shirt, though, especially one that was buttoned up all the way.

Luckily, the shirt was halfway unbuttoned about ten minutes into the reception.

Mrs. Alberti cooked a massive dinner for everyone, and even grew the flowers that you carried down the cobblestone aisle.

And wow, can Romanians drink. You had to be careful not to try to keep up with them, because if you had you would’ve been blacked out halfway into the night and the last thing you wanted was to forget even a moment of this.

As the night started to wind down to a close, you and your new husband retired to the lakehouse, running up the stairs and finding them as creaky as always.

He wrapped his arms around you in the hall and kissed you eagerly as you stumbled back into the bedroom, tripping over the doorway and falling onto the bed together.

It felt so right to have his weight on top of you, to feel his smile against your lips, to wrap your arms around his neck.

“This room,” he mumbled into the kiss. “Do you remember first time?”

“Yes,” you nodded, “da, I remember, how could I forget?”

He grinned and moved his lips down to your neck. "I thought of you every day… I love you,” he whispered.

“Te iubesc,” you whispered back.

It was almost like the first time in so many ways: passionate, yet oddly hesitant as you rediscovered each other. It was comfortable, though… you couldn’t think of any other person you felt so comfortable with, somebody who finally got you out of your own head and who made you want to experience everything life had to offer.

You were sure you’d never gone so long without worrying about something in all your life.

“My wife,” he whispered against your skin. “This is all I had wanted… from seeing you in very beginning.”

“You’re all I ever wanted,” you sighed in return, “ești tot ce mi-am dorit vreodată, Sebastian.”

Life with Sebastian was beautifully simple. You spent most of the day writing, usually, while he built furniture to sell and occasionally gardened with his spare time. You could always tell how busy you’d been with a new novel lately by how perfectly groomed the hydrangea bushes were.

You’d told him once that you’d come to Hungary looking for a million-dollar book idea. A Killer in Disguise performed alright, but not anywhere near that. The Language of Love, on the other hand, was definitely a million-dollar idea… about eleven times over. Sebastian didn’t seem to worry too much about how much money you made, though; he was just proud to say that he was the inspiration for your hit novel. You secretly suspected that he was more proud of your work reaching enough international notoriety to be translated into Romanian.

His English still needed some work, but you found it endearing. He was determined to get better and spent at least a half-hour each day practicing, but you hoped he wouldn’t get too perfect because you would miss the silly little mistakes he made. At least you could be sure he’d keep the accent forever… damn, that accent; and he knew exactly what it did to you, too.

In fact, you were crossing through the hall in your robe one evening when your husband’s voice stopped you.

“Darling wife,” you heard Sebastian call from the bedroom in a playful sing-song.

“What is it, Seba?” you asked with a smirk.

“Come in here, please…”

You opened the bedroom door to find most of the room covered in rose petals: most of all the bed, which was surrounded by candles, and topped with a shirtless (as per usual) Sebastian, laid on his side seductively with a long-stemmed rose (one you recognized from his very own garden) between his teeth.

“What are you doing?” you laughed. “Is this some sort of special occasion I’ve forgotten?”

You were already searching your mind for what it could be, but your two-year anniversary had passed a few months ago already and since it was spring it couldn’t be the anniversary of when you first met since that was late in the summer.

“Iss not quite a thpecial occathion yeth,” he answered before taking the rose from his mouth so he actually made sense. “I was considering it could be a special occasion, when we’re done…”

You smirked and climbed over the candles and into bed with him, taking the opportunity to run your hands over his chest. “And what occasion would that be?”

“A year from now, it could be the anniversary of when our child was conceived,” he answered.

Your breath caught in your throat, your voice reduced to a whisper of surprise. “Seba—”

“If you’re not ready, I will be understand,” he instantly added, stern yet soft. “Only if you want this, I just thought that maybe—”

You silenced him with a kiss, lacing your fingers into his hair and letting him roll you onto your back. He pulled back just enough to let you answer, but your noses were still bumping into each other and you smiled.

“I’m ready, Sebastian. More than ready,” you whispered.

He grinned and kissed you again, deeper and slower as he held your face with one hand and gripped your waist with the other. As his lips trailed down to your neck, you were interrupted with one pressing thought.

“Can I ask you something?”

He popped up and looked down at you with a smile. “Sure!”

“Why are you wearing ratty old jeans?” you laughed.

“Hey, these worked on you the first time,” he defended.

You gasped. “You don’t mean those are the jeans—”

“Yes,” he nodded, “the jeans that I had been wearing when I was working on Mrs. Alberti’s cottage. And, truly, when I was finding an excuse to work outside your window.”

“Wait,” you sat up, “did you actually work outside my window on purpose?”

He laughed, hanging his head quickly before looking back at you again with a sparkle in his eye. “You are very smart, my love, except for those times when you are— how do you say? Oblivious.”

You chuckled, unfortunately very aware that he was right.

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I was building a window frame, nearly a dozen metres away from the window it was for?”

You thought for a moment before dropping your face into your hands and laughing. “No, I didn’t notice that. I was too busy giving you a thorough eye-fuck,” you recalled.

“Yes, because I was not wearing a shirt and this distracted you,” he pondered, sounding suddenly like a scientist explaining a theorem or something. “See, that’s the beauty of wearing the jeans and no shirt. The body distracts you while the jeans seduce you.”

“How about you take the jeans off and put that body on me, capisce?” you pleaded; not that you didn’t love his humor or anything, but maybe his funny bone wasn’t exactly the bone you were interested in at the moment.

He grinned devilishly and suddenly pulled your legs apart, settling his body between them as he kissed your neck again, nipping at your jawline and ear. “You’re being impatient, dragă,” he purred. “You want to have my baby that badly?”

You whined involuntarily, arching your back as his hands roamed your body and finally began to untie your robe and push the silk out of the way. “Yes, Sebastian, please—”

“Let’s just say, theoretically, I wanted to have more than one? Would you have another of my children?” he asked softly as he reached up and palmed at your breasts, teasing your nipples which were already much too hard and sensitive for how little he’d touched you. The rough denim rubbing against the inside of your thighs was oddly arousing— maybe it was the sensation itself, or maybe it was just that this was almost like the first thing you imagined when you saw Sebastian all those years ago.

“Yes,” you moaned out your answer, “yes, you know I’d do anything for you.”

“What if I wanted a big family?” he pressed. “Really big? Like, Catholic big?”

“We can have our own fuckin’ Brady Bunch, Seb, I just need you right now,” you begged, grabbing the back of his neck and pulling him into a hot and desperate kiss.

He decided to wait until afterwards to ask what a ‘Brady Bunch’ was. You decided to wait until afterwards to ask when he’d learned how to use the word ‘theoretically’.

sfarsit; the end

#sebastian stan x reader

[sexyglances]

Hyejin and Dusik's Self-Reliance and How it Manifests in the Way They Present Themselves to the World

The clothes Hyejin and Dusik wear and objects they surround themselves in are so important to how they present themselves in society and indicative to how they socialized themselves to navigate the world.

We know Hyejin cares about designer clothing and she explicitly says in dialogue that that she uses her fancy clothes as armor. It's like a first line of defense against the incoming judgement she steels herself against. She clearly has a complex about being looked down upon. It's interesting because when she is comfortable in a situation and relates to someone on a personal level, she isn't guarded and worried about how she is being presented via fashion, but when she is unsure and feeling vulnerable, she relies on putting on an air of sophistication as a coping mechanism.

When she first moved to town she pointedly tried to show how she was used to living a certain lavish lifestyle. The way she insisted that "brands are very important to her, and how she described designing her ideal apartment with luxury goods from around the world. However, when she truly relates to people on a personal level, and she lets go of some of her detachedness, she stops caring as much about her armor and how she looks and she becomes a much softer and more genuine person. Even in the first episode when she was making friends with the fish restaurant owner, she only became self conscious again when someone noticed that she was wearing the cheap, disposable shoes. Or how she balked at wearing the apron to clean squid, but then ended up enjoying herself with the grandmas.

Based on this dichotomy, it seems like a lot of her own judgmental behavior is actually learned and socialized behavior from having to fend for herself so much of her life. Pretty sure she learned early on that to avoid being looked down upon she had to be seen as prestigious, and thus her fixation on keeping up appearances was born. It was most likely a defense mechanism borne against being seen as the poor helpless girl without a mother, so she worked hard in school to become a top student and then chose a prestigious profession where she could be relatively independently wealthy and be someone beyond reproach. This way she could stand on her own without the need for a family or connections to rely on and also free herself from societal judgement.

But this protection she puts around her also leaves her alone. She has literally one friend, none of her dental colleagues gave her a chance after she quit the Seoul dental clinic, and all her classmates were judging her at the wedding reception. The objects she buys, the fancy clothes she wears, are ways of her comforting herself. She hasn't had human care as a comfort device (even her dad seems emotionally absent), so the material goods she accumulates are physical manifestations of how she has been able to be a success all on her own. She buys these objects as comfort devices. And maybe Hyejin goes a bit overboard with her purchases, but as she has had to rely on herself so much, she just wants to be prepared (battle ready) and give herself comfort in the way she knows how to, in a way that doesn't rely on other people (people who might not even be there). This is her way of self-reliance.

To someone like Dusik, it can seem like mindless consumption. Like he said, why would she need so many clothes if she only has one body? That's because unlike Hyejin, he expressly rejects any air of pretentiousness as part of his own persona. Because he doesn't care what he looks like first then no one can judge him for it. Instead of finding luxury goods sophisticated, he finds focusing on opulence unnecessarily snooty instead. He has no desire to fit in with the elite and he proactively rejects any notion of being seen as elite expressly through his rejection of fashion as a way to denote his self-worth. To him, there's nothing to be gained from something beyond its utility. He has no shame wearing the slides from the bathroom in public because their label doesn't make them any less useful as shoes. If something can be useful to him, why does it matter what it looks like to anybody else?

But it's this rejection of optics in favor of a focus on utility that he uses as his own defense armor. And just like she does, he collects his armor too. His armor is just different than hers. If he can be a jack-of-all-trades, then he doesn't need to rely on anyone either. If there's a problem, he's the one that can fix it. He doesn't have to wait for help from someone that might not show up because they don't exist. He'd rather be relied upon than do any relying for himself, because that gives him his own sense of control. And there is control in being the go-to person in a small town rather than another faceless nobody in a large city like Seoul. This is his way of self-reliance.

Dusik's penchant for utility is reflected in the clothes he wears too. Rather than surround himself in extravagance, he focuses on utility and convenience that he can provide himself. A t-shirt is easier to move around in among his various jobs than a dress shirt. Jeans and work pants are more durable than slacks. All the pockets and zippers on his fishing vest give him the space for all the doo-dads and whats-its he might need to produce at any moment in order to fix various incoming problem. He might be a "fashion terrorist," but that doesn't mean he is entirely careless about his clothes. Rather, he expressly chooses to not care about the fashion aspect of what he wears as a way to separate himself from the part of society who would judge him for that. This is a choice he makes to present himself to the world in much the same way as Hyejin does, they just approach it from different angles.

Which plays into what Hyejin said about how they are a penguin from Antarctics and a polar bear from the Arctic. Yes, they are from opposite ends of the world (i.e. social standing), yes they have lived different lives whose harsh conditions impacted them in different ways (she chooses high-brow, he chooses to do minimum wage work), but they both understand what it is like to come from from a specifically cold and barren climate without parents and without the comfort of a familial safety net. A penguin and a polar bear may never originate in the same place, but that doesn't mean they can't relate to each other. The "frozen tundra" of the world is something they have both had to learn to navigate by themselves, and their own self-reliance--and by proxy, their pain and loneliness--something that they can recognize and understand in each other as well.

#hometown cha cha cha #kdrama #meta #my meta #homcha meta #also! #i couldn't find a neat way of including this in this essay #but it's so interesting how the times we see dusik wearing dress shirts are a) when he is visiting the clinic in seoul #and b) in the last scene of the morning routine montage with hyejin and their restaurant outing together #there's definitely some subconscious wanting-to-impress-her feelings brimming to the surface in his clothing choices for sure #i wonder what other gems eps 5 and 6 will unveil

[hellsbellschime]

Why Will Dany Burn King’s Landing?

Although most fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones understandably aren't keen on revisiting the sloppy final season of the TV series, season 8 of the show is actually home to some of the most interesting indications of where the book series may or may not be going.

Season 8 was largely so confusing because the series was attempting to get across the finish line as fast as possible, but many of the messier aspects of the show were also clearly driven by the fact that Game of Thrones had already significantly deviated from the story that George RR Martin was trying to tell. So, when the time came for the TV series to end, the show had to push its characters into their decided endgames despite the fact that many alterations to their prior arcs now made those endings somewhat nonsensical.

George has already directly stated that the broad strokes of the ending will be the same in the books, but I think it stands to reason that the most controversial aspect of the series end, Daenerys' decision to burn King's Landing, will likely be significantly different within the books.

There are a lot of theories about how Dany's dark, or at least slightly darker, turn is going to go in the novels. Many fans unsuprisingly have come up with speculations that alleviate most of Dany's responsibility for the destruction of the city, but I think the notion that someone else will burn King's Landing or that Daenerys will burn the capitol by accident are extremely unlikely.

I can't envision a world where George RR Martin lets any of his main characters off the hook for the most destructive choice in the entire series, and frankly it has always been completely in character for Daenerys to justify any amount of devastation and destruction if it's in service of reclaiming the Iron Throne. And honestly, despite the fact that Game of Thrones retconned most of Dany's darkest book decisions and characteristics, even within the TV series itself, burning King's Landing was largely a logical extension of Dany's habit of killing anybody who gives even the slightest indication that they might not follow her.

However, it also seems undeniable that the burning of King's Landing is almost certainly going to come about due to different circumstances. And, it seems extremely likely that the omission of one significant character in the books, Young Griff, will be one of the key differences in the destruction of King's Landing and the entire Targaryen dynasty.

While I don't think Young Griff's non-Targaryen heritage is nearly as undeniable as many other fans do, one thing that seems very probable is that regardless of whether or not Aegon is really Aegon Targaryen, Daenerys will not believe that he is the long lost son of Rhaegar Targaryen.

Cersei becoming Dany's greatest rival never really made sense considering how few legitimate supporters she had. But on the other hand, someone like Young Griff, who has spent his entire life training to become the best king possible, seems like the kind of person who will likely win at least a significant amount of support among the lords of Westeros and the common people, who at this point would honestly prefer anyone other than Cersei anyway.

But, if Dany arrives in Westeros and there is a Targaryen who she doesn't believe is a Targaryen already sitting on the Iron Throne with the backing of a multitude of kingdoms as well as the common people, clearly she's going to be pissed. And obviously she's going to have a huge axe to grind with the boy who she believes has usurped her throne.

Dany has always been prone to violence to begin with, but now that she seems to have decided to go full fire and blood, it's not that difficult to figure out how she is likely going to handle Aegon the Sixth. But, I think that the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones may have already explained exactly how that is going to happen.

Like most fans, as soon as any information about the final season of Game of Thrones was released, I thought about what it could possibly be referring to or what it would mean. And one aspect of season 8 that seemed to not quite fit into anything within the rest of the series was the title of the episode "The Bells".

What initially interested me about that name was that not only was it the title for arguably the most important episode in the entire show, but that it referred to something that has a lot of thematic relevance within the books but that has been barely mentioned within the TV series. Bells are mentioned constantly in A Song of Ice and Fire, but they've only gotten a few nods within Game of Thrones. And I was even more surprised that, when the show actually aired, the ringing of the bells didn't seem to be hugely relevant to the episode itself either.

Yes, the bells do seem to trigger Dany's decision to burn the entire city down, but they aren't important before or after that, and when there are so many possible titles that are more connected to the series and the story, it still seems strange that "The Bells" was called "The Bells".

However, while bells are a bit of a perennial theme within A Song of Ice and Fire, I think one particular bell-themed subplot might be the exact history that is going to repeat itself when King's Landing burns to the ground, and I think that Daenerys might defeat Aegon in the second Battle of the Bells.

Jon Connington is another fantastic character who was completely omitted from the TV series, but it's interesting that the most fervent supporter of House Targaryen who was on the front lines fighting for Rhaegar in Robert's Rebellion seems to believe that the war wasn't actually lost in the Trident, but in Stoney Sept when Jon failed to root out Robert Baratheon.

JonCon's perspective on Rhaegar and on the entire war is undeniably warped, and in retrospect House Targaryen's dynasty was always destined to fail. Rhaegar may not have had the violent impulses of Aerys, but a dude who lets the entire realm devolve into chaos because he really needs to impregnate a teenager who is dubiously consenting at best was not going to bring peace and prosperity back to the realm. And in a broader sense, the Targaryen values of isolationism, superiority, subjugation, and consolidation of power seem to indicate that no matter what happened, as long as the Targaryens stuck to their beliefs then they were never going to hold on to the Seven Kingdoms.

But still, it seems incredibly important that Jon Connington believed that the Targaryens lost the Iron Throne in the Battle of the Bells, and it's even more important that he's almost certainly wrong. A Song of Ice and Fire has been pretty consistent in its portrayal of brutality. It has proven to be an effective tool in the short term, but it seems to have disastrous results in the long run. And, given that George RR Martin is an ardent pacifist, it's obvious that JonCon's belief that if he had only been crueler and more violent in Stoney Sept then the war would have been won for House Targaryen is a belief that is bound to be undermined.

The fact that Prince Aegon's greatest Westerosi supporter is so strong in this belief though seems to be an obvious setup for a clash in the future. It seems unlikely that the boy who Varys wanted to be the perfect king would be as brutal as someone like Tywin Lannister, and honestly, most people are not that violent nor do they believe that the only goal is winning no matter the cost.

But, it also seems to be a setup for a clash between Young Griff and Daenerys. After all, while most people wouldn't do absolutely anything to get what they believed was their birthright, Dany absolutely would. She internally justifies every action that she takes in service of getting the Iron Throne, and there doesn't seem to be a limit to the violence that she would excuse if it meant taking what she believes is rightfully hers.

The descriptions of the Battle of the Bells in Jon Connington's POV chapters are all very interesting, and it's telling that even in these few glimpses into his mind, this battle is so vitally important. But, Jon's memories are at their most interesting in the chapter "The Griffin Reborn," when he discusses his failings with Myles Toyne.

Jon tells himself that even Tywin Lannister couldn't have done anything more than what he did, but Toyne disagrees. Blackheart says “Lord Tywin would not have bothered with a search. He would have burned that town and every living creature in it. Men and boys, babes at the breast, noble knights and holy septons, pigs and whores, rats and rebels, he would have burned them all. When the fires guttered out and only ash and cinders remained, he would have sent his men in to find the bones of Robert Baratheon."

And while Myles is undoubtedly right that this is exactly what Tywin Lannister would have done, the particular description of the violence sounds undeniably Targaryen in nature. It literally sounds like fire and blood. And frankly, it sounds pretty close to what Daenerys did in Game of Thrones and is likely to do in King's Landing in A Song of Ice and Fire.

Conceptually, it's actually quite simple. Jon Connington will fight the Battle of the Bells once again, except this time he's going to be on the side of the new Robert Baratheon. If Young Griff is a remotely capable ruler who wins the hearts of the people, then it's entirely believable that the citizens of King's Landing would give him quarter when the dragon queen comes looking for him. And given Daenerys' typical patience level, it seems incredibly likely that Dany would just burn the traitors and find the bones of the usurper in the ashes.

Jon Connington has returned to Westeros operating under the belief that he is going to have to be tougher and more brutal to ensure that Young Griff ascends to the Iron Throne like Rhaegar never did, and to ensure that he's never overthrown like the Mad King was. So then, it would be a pretty perfect twist of fate if everything that Jon believes now winds up being proven wrong and he finds himself and the boy who he has vowed to defend to his last breath relying on the kindness of strangers to hide them from the Targaryen ruler and her armies who are searching for them.

And ironically, Jon will not do what he has set out to do, succeed for the son where he failed for the father, precisely because the enemy that he's facing now will be ready and willing to use the brutality that JonCon originally shied away from in Stoney Sept. If Young Griff and the elder Griffon were actually dealing with a rival who was similar to the younger Jon Connington, someone who wasn't willing to wreak havoc and destruction in order to find their enemy at all costs, then they might have a chance at at least surviving.  

But, because Dany is the type of person who serves up fire and blood to anyone she thinks even might be her enemy, any of King Aegon's protectors will be treated with the brutality that Jon currently believes is necessary to win, and Young Griff will be killed anyway. And of course, while Daenerys will almost certainly win the battle against Aegon the Sixth, her decision to be as violent and swift as possible in order to root out her enemies will also lead to her ultimate downfall and a truly irrevocable end to the Targaryen dynasty.

Thematically, the repetition of past mistakes, the false belief that great violence in service of a supposedly greater good is worthwhile, and the false belief that brutality is strength, all fits in well with A Song of Ice and Fire and George RR Martin's political point of view. But obviously, given that Aegon Targaryen, Jon Connington, and their entire branch of the story was omitted in Game of Thrones, none of this could have ever happened in the TV series. And perhaps the title of the penultimate episode was a subtle nod to the climax that the writers know will be coming in the books.

#got #asoiaf #anti daenerys targaryen #aegon targaryen #young griff #jon connington #asoiaf meta #got meta #my videos