#flowers girl failure arc is everything to me

[potatobugz]

flower and lollipop fight eachother in a dennys parking lot

#bfb #bfdi #battle for bfb #battle for dream island #bfb flower #bfb lollipop #flowerpop #flower bfb #lollipop bfb #potatart #I LOVE FLOWERPOP *MY TELEKINESIS THROWS EVERYTHING AROUND THE ROOM* #cute ship name and also i like them. i very much enjoy them #i have been rewatching bfb lately and am taking mental notes on their dynamic. i think its really really funny #flower would hit her with a comedically large hammer and lollipop would b like “whatever *eye roll*” #flowers girl failure arc is everything to me #flower: not evil anymore i want to be loved now

[eventid1ngs]

[ D a y d r e a m . ]

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I stand at attention, my left hand resting upon my right that is perched atop the pommel of the Master Sword, with the semblance that I’m ready for anything and everything that might come this way. Nothing will disturb the princess as she prays at the Goddess Spring. That is my mission.

Not far behind me, I hear a bit of rustling as Zelda slips off her sandals. She takes her time entering the water, each step into the clear spring slow and deliberate.

I know that she is anxious. I know that she feels like a failure.

I know that she is afraid.

The sounds of gently moving water and Zelda’s hushed voice make my head swim, making me remember, for whatever reasons, each time that the princess’ hand touched my hand or arm and every moment that her gaze met mine. Within castle walls, on lonely roads out in the field, late at night… under the stars... in the dark…..

Letting out a sigh, I close my eyes and focus on any other sounds around me. The rustling of the leaves and tree branches above me. Songbirds happily chirping what will be their final performances of the season. The late summer breeze wafts about, flaunting its broken promises; its own song of lingering memory and uncertain futures.

I let out another sigh as I wipe my mind blank.

After a few minutes, I hear the water stir behind me as Zelda steps out of the water. I sheathe my sword before turning to reach for the towel that I had slung over a low tree branch. Approaching the princess, I make a small gesture for her to sit down on a nearby rock. She does. Her eyes are downcast and her expression vulnerable, revealing her utter disappointment. Part of me, deep within the recesses of my soul, wants to curse the goddess for refusing to answer, but I do not.

Part of me, deep within the recesses of my soul, wants to tell Zelda that I love her and that everything will be alright and that it all will somehow work out in the end, but I do not.

She doesn’t say anything, so I don’t, either. I crouch down and dry her feet.

Reaching for her shoes, I hold her clean, dry right foot in my hand for a moment before slipping the sandal on. I do the same for her left foot.

“Thank you, Link.” she says, finally breaking the silence between us. There is so much emotion in her voice. Behind the honest gratitude of her words I hear things that others do not, or maybe just pretend that they do not. I hear the relentless fear that throbs like a festering wound within her. I hear the tenderness of a girl who possesses the sweet compassion of a mother but veils it with bold character so as to not appear "weak." I hear her heart, crying out; reaching out, desperately, for someone–anyone–to provide even an ounce of comfort amongst the chaos.

My hands linger on her legs for far longer than necessary and my heart is beating so hard in my chest that it threatens to cause my stomach to promptly expel whatever I had eaten for lunch not an hour ago.

I want to comfort her.

I want to–

“Link.” she says, and I look up to meet her eyes. The ocean green of her irises shimmer in the sunlight as the inevitable tears come to surface. She opens her lips to say something else, but the words refuse to follow. I reach up without thinking and wipe her cheek with my thumb. My finger barely touches her skin. A quiet sort of half-sob escapes her lips that are still parted.

I take her hands in mine and we both stand. I search her face for answers to questions that I do not even know how to ask. She needs something… I can see it in the concerned arc of her brows, the flutter of her lashes, and the way her breaths keep catching ever so slightly as they come and go.

What is it? What can I give that will stop her from hurting, even if just for a brief moment?

Shoving aside the doubts that are clouding my judgment, I put my arms around the princess and press her to my chest. She sobs quietly as I crush her to me in vain attempt to convince her with my embrace that I will not let go until she feels that she is ready to face the world again.

My lips brush against her temple, not entirely by accident, and the sudden contact makes her pull back a little. Something new makes an appearance in her expression, mingling with the sorrow. It is something like surprise, something like curiosity. Something like excitement. Though I can’t be sure, I lean towards her. My heart skips a beat when I realize that she makes no effort to hesitate. My mouth pauses a mere centimeter from hers as we share the same breath. With an inhale she moves forward so our upper lips touch; so quick and feather-light that it’s almost like it didn’t happen. She does this two more times as if confirming it. I angle my head slightly so that the next time she leaned in, our lips touched properly. It was almost a real kiss, but she pulled back just before the point of no return.

“Link…” Zelda whispers. If she says my name like that again, I feel like I would have to be relieved of my duties as a royal guard because there is no way I would ever be able to concentrate again with that permanently imprinted upon my mind. I dare not look at her face to see the blush that has risen in her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose. So I keep my eyes shut.

I want to run away. I want to run far, far away, with her hand in mine. With her by my side. Two kids, too young and too dumb to fight this war.

Just sad kids, going somewhere.

Getting lost.

My hands move up her back and over her shoulders and down her arms, hovering just a breadth away from her skin. The ghost caresses were enough, however, to raise goosebumps across every inch of her flesh that is either exposed by or hidden from my view under her white dress. Skin so rosy, so smooth, without blemish… The skin of the princess who carries the goddess’ blood within her veins, and it trembles and responds to me.

Her eyes flutter closed and mine do, too. Maybe if we keep our eyes closed, we can pretend that it didn’t happen. Maybe if we never open our eyes again, we won’t have to wake up.

Our lips crash into each other.

There is no sound but our breaths that come quickly before being stolen away again. There is no feeling but a steadily growing warmth as inhibitions are stripped away and skin touches skin. The setting sun melts into eventide. There is nothing but us; she, the Princess of Hyrule and I, her appointed knight. Even the moon and stars that hang in splendor from the heavens above dare not disturb us.

A sob catches in my throat as the edges of my darkened vision go blurry with the tears that are rapidly rising. My heart constricts painfully at the sudden, terrible idea that I have become caught up in a silly dream. The possibility that this isn’t real. It couldn’t be. It never would be.

The realization hits me, knocking the air from my lungs, like a behemoth.

Just a silly dream.

All the things you didn’t say.

All of the things that you didn’t do.

Every chance that slipped from your grasp.

Do you wonder what we could have had?

Do you realize that you and I… could have…..

I feel myself start to panic, and I’m too exhausted to fight it. Don’t leave me.

Please.

A wave of pale blue flower petals rushes past my line of sight like an angel answering a prayer, but it never materializes; only disappears with what remains of my fleeting daydream.

I realize, gradually, while the scene that I had just experienced wasn’t real, the pain in my chest very much was. I look down, choking on my own sobs, at the arrows that are lodged into the center of my breastbone. Every inhale causes me to wince at the sharp pain that shoots up and down my body due to the movement.

What do I do?

I don’t know what I’m doing.

Please come back to me.

"I'll find you."  I say, out loud, with a voice that sounds out of place. "...Wait for me."

...Zelda.

I get up.

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Playlist:

“Daydream” by Super Junior

“2 Kids” & “Sad Kids” by Taemin

“Find You” by Monsta X

(Zelink shippers, don’t look up these songs with the English translations unless you, like myself, have an inordinate desire for pain.)

#zelink #oneshot #botw #fanfic #fluff #a lot of fluff #semi angst

[takahero]

some descriptions of Basta in Inkheart if you’re interested!! spoiler warning just to be on the safe side, in case u haven’t read it. and my unsolicited commentary here and there

“‘Naturally I recognised them at once. Capricorn had sent his best men. Even Basta was with them.’” — pg.99

“Rasping cat’s-tongue voice” pg.125

“(Basta’s face) was thin, sharply angular, with close-set eyes…Basta was not a tall man, and his shoulders were almost as narrow as a boy’s, but Meggie held her breath when he took a step towards her…He had an aura of fury about him, or something keen and biting—” pg.126

“Only Basta wore a snow-white shirt, just as Dustfinger had said, with a red flower in the buttonhole of his jacket, a red flower like a warning.” pg.131

“He caught her eye, and with a twisted smile kissed the blade of his knife.” — pg.173 (I JUST HAD TO ADD THIS)

“‘Oh, Basta can’t write,’ replied Capricorn calmly. ‘None of my men can either read or write. I’ve forbidden them to learn.’” — pg.176 (literacy rights for Basta 2k21)

“She could see the trepidation even on Basta’s face, although he was doing his best to hide it by assuming a particularly bored expression.” — pg.185

“‘Abduction!’ Basta savoured the word. ‘Sounds good to me. Really good.’” — pg.192 (ok but if u read it a certain way. unofficial evidence that basta would enjoy reading if he could LMAO)

“‘Where’s our luggage?’ she asked.

“Dustfinger looked at her with amusement. ‘I expect Basta’s divided it out among Capricorn’s maids. He likes to ingratiate himself with them.’” — pg.213 LMAOOOOOOO OH MY GOD

“Basta was still standing in the road. His face was sharply outlined when he lit a cigarette with a lighter.” — pg.215

“And he bent down to cut through the leather thong that Basta wore around his neck. It had a little bag tied with a red drawstring hanging from it.” — pg. 231

“‘Ah, Basta!’ Fenoglio smiled. Each of his separate wrinkles expressed self-satisfaction. ‘One of the best villains I ever thought up. A rabid dog, but not half as bad as my other dark hero, Capricorn. Basta would let his heart be torn out for Capricorn, but his master is a stranger to such loyalty.’” — pg.264

“‘You know, if you were to ask me which of those two I was prouder of, Basta or Capricorn, I couldn’t tell you! Even though some critics said they were just too nasty!’” — pg.265

“Basta emphasised the word, putting his foxy face so close to Meggie’s she could see herself reflected in his eyes.” — pg.301

“‘You’ll do no such thing!’ he spat at Flatnose, as the grey cat disappeared under the wardrobe. ‘Killing cats is unlucky. How often do I have to tell you?’” — pg.303 (friendly reminder that the last time he appeared, he kicked a dog in the ribs 😐)

“Basta was walking just behind her, and she heard him quietly cursing the rain.” — pg.304 (irrelevant but i kind of hc basta to like the rain, since it would dampen dustfinger’s showbiz LMAO)

“Basta’s eyes always narrowed when he smiled.” — pg.305

“‘You wear long sleeves,’ Fenoglio continued very slowly, as if giving Basta time to take in every single word, ‘because your master likes playing with fire. You burned both arms right up to the shoulders when you obeyed his orders and set fire to the house of a man who had dared to refuse his daughter to Capricorn. Ever since then, someone else has laid the fire, and you confine yourself to playing games with knives.’” — pg.308

“‘Oh, I know all about you, Basta,’ he said. ‘I know you’d give your life for Capricorn any day, and you’re always hungry for his praise. I know you were younger than Meggie when his men picked you up, and ever since you’ve loved him like a father. But shall I tell you something? Capricorn thinks you’re stupid, and despises you for it. He despises you all, his devoted black-clad sons, although it’s his own doing that you’re still so ignorant. And he wouldn’t hesitate to set the police on to any one of you if it was to his advantage. Are you quite clear about that?’” — pg.308 (FENOGLIO…..RUTHLESS)

“Basta winked at Meggie.” — pg.310 (wink 1)

“Every cruel deed with which he had ever credited Basta was probably going through his head. Basta relished the fear on his face for a few delicious minutes.” — pg.312

“Basta’s car had not been in the car park at all since they’d come here. It was unusual for it to be gone so long, because Basta didn’t like to be away from the village for any length of time.” — pg.318 basta is a homebody guys

“‘Save your tongue for later, scribbler!” Basta interrupted. ‘I don’t like whispering.’” — pg.324

“Almost all the women in the village kept away from Basta, but he didn’t keep away from them.” — pg.337

“‘Take him, for instance,’ he said, pointing to Basta. ‘I always knew he was a very unhappy boy before you picked him up. As it says in another very fine book, it’s terribly easy to persuade children that they are worthless. Basta was convinced of it. Not that you taught him any better, oh no! Why would you? But suddenly here was someone to whom he could devote himself, someone who told him what to do — he’d found a god, Capricorn, and if you treated him badly, well, who says that all gods are kindly? Most of them are stern and cruel, wouldn’t you agree? I didn’t write all this in the book. I knew it, that was enough.’” — pg.345 (this is really the part that made my stance toward basta change. like PHEW. that’s a lot to unpack)

“Basta was notorious for his silent tread.” — pg.363

“Basta’s breath smelled of mint, fresh and sharp. Apparently a girl he’d once wanted to kiss had told him he had bad breath. The girl had regretted it, but ever since then Basta chewed peppermint leaves from morning to night.” — pg.364

“He whistled softly through his teeth, then held the book close to Meggie’s face.”— pg.374 (i was rendered speechless)

“Basta’s lips quivered with annoyance, but he bit back his reply and, without a word, put his hand under the black cloth.” — pg.377 (ugh I loved this. like we know he worships capricorn like a dog, but earlier fenoglio flat out told him capricorn couldn’t care less about what happened to him. more than that, capricorn asked basta to bring meggie and fenoglio — prisoners — into his home. later dustfinger says that basta would’ve slept on the threshold of capricorn’s room if he could but none of the men sleep there. so with all of this fresh in his mind, you can imagine him feeling quite hurt and betrayed. UGH I wish he had a greater arc surrounding capricorn…like even if we saw a few hints that his loyalty was starting to show cracks…idk what his arc is in inkspell so maybe I’ll sit tight for that)

“He was in a hurry to get back to the light of day, away from the dead and their ghosts. His hand shook as he hung his lantern on a book and opened the grating over the first cell.” — pg.409

“Dustfinger was always surprised to find how easily you could scare the man with a few words.” — pg.409 LMAOOOOO

“‘That notion of burning us isn’t a very new idea, Basta, but then you were never fond of new ideas.’” — pg.422

“His teeth were almost as white as his shirt.” — pg.442

“Meggie saw from his face that everything in him felt revulsion, but he came closer and took the creature. He held the scaly body well away from him as it wound and twisted in the air.

“‘As you see, Basta doesn’t care for my snakes!’ said the Magpie, with a smile. ‘He never did, not that that means much. As far as I know Basta doesn’t like anything but his knife. He also believed that snakes bring bad luck, which of course is pure nonsense.’ Mortola handed Basta the second snake. Meggie saw the viper’s tiny poison fangs when it opened its mouth. For a moment, she almost felt sorry for Basta.” — pg.446

“‘Basta likes to use snakes to scare women who reject his advances. It didn’t work with Resa. How did it go exactly — didn’t she finally put the snake outside your door, Basta?’” — pg.446 (10/10 resa & snake well-deserved)

“Basta did not want neighbours. Indeed, he wanted no other company but Capricorn’s. Dustfinger knew Basta would have slept on the threshold of Capricorn’s room if he had been allowed to, but none of the men lived in the main house.” — pg.478

“Basta was probably the only man in Capricorn’s village who locked his front door.” — pg.480

“They said in the village that whenever Capricorn had a house set on fire Basta took away a brick or stone, even though he feared fire at other times, and clearly that story was true.” — pg.480

“(Everything in Basta’s house was scrubbed clean, as spotless as his snow-white shirt.)” — pg.481

“Once or twice, footsteps approached, but each time they passed by the house. What a good thing Basta had no friends.” — pg.482

“Basta was not in a good way. Whenever they looked at him they saw his hands clinging to the bars, knuckles white under his sun-tanned skin.” — pg.503 (BASTA’S SUNTANNED?!?!)

“Basta in particular was the object of enough scorn and derision for ten men, and from his failure to react at all one could only guess at the depths of his despair.” — pg.503

“For the fraction of a second life came back into Basta as his former lord and master stopped by the bars; he raised his head, his eyes pleading silently, like a dog begging for forgiveness…Basta only bowed his head and stared at the floor. Elinor thought he looked like an oyster with the flesh and life sucked out of it.” — pg.504 (i honestly still can’t wrap my head around his behaviour in this chap. i mean yes, the gladiator-style death sentence looming over his head can’t be understated. but i think for me it was how rapidly his spirits deteriorated from screaming for help in the cell to becoming a husk of a man before he even saw capricorn again? how?? was it all because of dustfinger spooking him so bad in the crypt?? 🤔🤔)

#the list nobody asked for #im gonna keep adding and editing for personal reasons #it’ll be interesting to see if any of my thoughts change after inkspell tho I’m kinda scared #basta #i could’ve sworn there was another wink!!!!!!!!! I SWEAR #basta: don’t swear oaths u can’t keep #inkheart

[nanakah]

about Ishigami, his growth and Miko's role

most people, myself included, thought at some point that Tsubame's rejection (or acceptance) could wrap up Ishigami's arc and even his past's flashbacks neatly, but Osaragi's arc suddenly revealing there was more to his relationship with Miko made me reflect more and think nah...if anything we're halfway there. It also showed glimpses of him already struggling to find his place in the world by quitting his clubs, even though he was successful at them and there was no Ootomo incident yet to undermine his self-image.

It seemed odd that despite everything he went through he still has his "hair=shield/averting eyes" theme going strong, but it makes sense if you consider even though Tsubame helped him see the way to be more accepting of people and cleared his name, his self-esteem still is super low. I spoke of this in my "sutera" meta, but to Ishigami, his life still has been a sucession of failures and almosts. At his core, he still hasn't fully opened up to people or learned to use his vulnerabilities to his advantage.

If I have grabbed your interest thus far, keep reading for more considerations!

Tsubame is kind to anyone and attempted to do good for him, but ultimately he was never fully himself around her, nor she tried/he alllowed her reaching out to the deepest parts of his insecurities. She doesn't show her own flaws to him either and to this day we get the feeling we don't know her well, just the best parts that Ishigami wanted to see. Kaguya, Miyuki and Chika contribute a lot in a sibling-like way, but there's a limit to how much Kaguya in particular can inspire him. Miko however, has scratched a little beneath the surface and has expressed an interest in helping him with that, even if he himself is still avoiding the topic. She's also more relatable to him in the sense that the rest of the stuco has a history of successes in their lives, while he was able to watch Miko's hardships and failures closely. Their panic attacks even look similar and they're always watching the other to provide backup (in a very roundabout way, at least before) when they happen.

While their personalities are fundamentally different, his arc and struggles remind me a lot of Miyamura from Horimiya and today, as I was musing on what is so different about them as of now, I believe it's how Miyamura didn't have a single *traumatic* mistake to get over, so he goes down his development road much faster. Putting it another way, it's ultimately that Ishigami hasn't yet learned to be kind to himself like Miyamura has through Hori. Like Shirogane and Kaguya are through themselves. In Miyamura's case, sympathizing with how Hori despite her strong exterior can be very fragile inside but still support him (fight for him, defend him, accept his true self, not judge him, hear him, make him feel good enough) made him feel compelled to grow stronger to protect her back.

Miko as she was at the beggining of the story couldn't provide Ishigami this sort of stability (and that's where Osaragi's "prettier story"/"you weren't there for him" reasoning fails) even if deep down she wanted to, but now after making many mistakes, learning from them and becoming more flexible, she absolutely can. Both Ishigami and Miko have deeply rooted issues that took them more than just each other to flesh out and develop, but they're very much the missing puzzle piece the other needs.

Miko still very much has room for growth as well, mainly concerning finding a middle ground between her "bad girl" and "good girl" personas that Ishigami can easily see through, as demonstrated by the consolation chapter. She tried being "bad", she attempted lying but was still saying half-truths, because her love of justice isn't just out of parental abandonment issues or loneliness - she does believe them sincerely. The moment Ishigami headpated her and shared genuine, spot-on words of concern and admiration (thus a hint of fondness), it was all over for her trying to keep up the love-warfare upper hand.

That's not actually new - Ishigami has always demonstrated he was able to see glimpses of her true self, be it teasing how she's an otaku or a closet pervert and such, he never fully bought the strait-laced image she aspired to make real. But it did take him being around her more to see she could be sweet to him and as he puts it, that smiling more is not a bad look on her. Miko says to Osaragi your true self only comes through interacting with others, so given how lonely she has always been (and how the one person close to her - Osaragi - was actually keeping things between them superficial because of her own problems), it's no surprise she's only finding out now who she is. Ishigami can help Miko find a better compromise of good/bad after both not following any rules at all for so long and recently learning that hard work can pay off. Miko immersing herself in his hobby will clash with her rigid study schedule sooner or later, and he'll know how to help her with that better than anyone else.

On the other hand, Ishigami's moral compass, romanticism (love for flowers, planing dates etc) and idealism aren't things he is proud of...yet. He protects himself with layers of cynism, especially in his first appearances, but he is always being contradictory and letting it slip how idealistic/pure he is at heart. He also is only now learning to like his outward image with things like fitness/studying and finding out it's not like he never cared about it - it's just that he was scared shitless of failure, thus never even tried hard in the first place to avoid being hurt. And as I have advocated for in the Sutera post, I expect Miko in some level to help him come to terms with seeing good in himself. Heck, even being able to game with her now and showing off how good he is and having her appreciate it is gonna do wonders to make him feel more "adequate". Tsubame's arc had a lot of him changing himself to become "better", but Miko on the other hand is trying to put herself in HIS shoes to maybe go "hey, I like you as you are. I'm trying to understand you more and put effort in for you".

Ishigami and Miko start out watching out for each other behind their backs - which instead of helping their relationship, drives them further apart because they think the other side is showing no appreciation. As the story progresses, they're slowly learning to make each other more aware of their support, and it is making them open up more in general.

They have a strong belief the other wants to be rescued and there is truth in that. Both want help and to be recognized for their efforts, but won't cry out for it. In the unplugged earbuds chapter Ishigami takes it upon himself to protect Miko's reputation in spite of himself, the election arc has him actually putting effort into the campaign just for the sake of protecting her and at first posing as a rival of hers to Shirogane only to reveal he's trying to "make Miko smile", he is constantly fending off men from interacting with her as protection (while also sounding jealous), he was way more protective of her when she was wearing that cast than needed and is now being able to openly headpat her and sounds almost like her "soothing sounds" from the days of yore lol Sure Tsubame seems like his start to becoming "a better man", but all the way back on the election, it was for Miko's sake that we first SEE him putting effort into *anything* without being coerced by anyone to take action.

And while it's more discreet compared to Ishigami's "white knight" attitude, Miko also tries hard to protect him - cheering him on during the sports festival race and wanting to console him before the stuco intervened, telling him he should study (but he thinks it's just nagging), christmas (which I'll elaborate bellow), making sure he was able to graduate middle school by actually confronting school staff and, of course, their very first meeting as recently revealed.

Many people hated the entirety of Osaragi's arc, but 232 gave very juicy info indeed. Ishigami's reason for supporting Miko from the shadows comes from admiration AND part gratitude for her attempting to talk to him and listen to what troubles him, and seeing they actually had a "falling out" argument was game changing.

He looks sad and troubled to have shut her down there, not simply angry, and so does she (there's tears in her eyes when her face is shown in the next page) - despite her black and white sense of justice at this point of the story, she still wanted to listen to him. And even after that outburst she still believed the rumors weren't real, unlike Osaragi sees it - otherwise she wouldn't have made the effort for him to be able to move on to high school. Why would she care, if she truly hated him and thought he was in the wrong?

If any further proof was needed at all that this info is important, I'm happy to say we have more. I noticed the Christmas stairs scene mirrors this exact falling out moment: "Go away"/"Suit yourself"

But this time Miko had already decided to change, had already seen the mess their relationship became the last time she did not reach out to him and thus already had their previous falling out in mind - meaning she decides to chase after him.

I don't like how the scanlations handled this scene because reading the japanese raws, my interpretation was that Miko was sounding "annoying" because she was still kinda drunk/unfiltered and freaking out when talking to Ishigami, not outright berating him like the Jaimini's box translation made it look like. She also sounds too angry after the fall, so I generally thought Viz's version (the panel shown above) was closer to the original.

"I always have to take care of you! You keep putting youself in danger. You can't make it on your own." is a better translation than Jaimini's, and also parallels better what Ishigami is often telling Miko as well (That she keeps putting herself in danger and that he has to be around to keep her in check). But with 232 in mind, I think it misses a nuance of the original line: "ほんとあんたは 私が居ないと危なっかしく駄目ね" - "Honto anta wa watashi ga inaito abunakkashiku dame ne" - while I'm a novice at japanese studies, gathering from what I can read and trying to get a feel of the whole sentence, it's closer to "So it really is dangerous to you if I'm not there/ It's no good if I'm not around you". You can take that as her being full of herself, which is the route Jaimini's goes ("You'd be screwed without me") but that's too hostile - Viz's got the spirit of wanting to protect him better, but the original has an implication that she has "tested not being there"/failed being there before (due to not fully siding with him in middle school) that's absent elsewhere.

IMO the reason Ishigami's "closed his eyes" arc is not over yet is because he hasn't accepted or gotten over or fully learned from his past yet, he simply shut it down. That's why briefly during the sports festival his eyes are in plain view, then go back to their usual for the balloon gag. I'm not sure if Ootomo herself will make a comeback, may or may not - regrets are regrets and sometimes the only solution to them is letting them stay in the past. But the topic of how he saw Miko in middle school and the letter certainly are being set up to still show up in the story.

If I compare him to Miyamura again, he'd still be at the point before Miyamura's haircut - not wanting to face the parts of himself he doesn't like, not quite ready to change. Not quite ready to patch up his own wounds yet and instead silencing everything from his past.

In this sense, Miko does wonders to make him feel more confident even if he hasn't realized it yet, and she's always dropping little hints she'd like him to worry about his future not in a naggy way, but because she genuinely prays for his success. He unconsciously wants Miko to think well of him and it fills him with confidence and a more prideful image of himself he doesn't really display to anyone else, not even Tsubame - like his usages of "ore" (a more manly/confident way of addressing himself) around her (AND HER ALONE):

( I don't like the available translations to the staircase scene either, lol. Zaibatsu has conveyed the tone of the second scene up there perfectly. For the staircase line, I've seen "I'll be there to catch you" and "I'll save you" which are contextually correct, but to me the original "俺が絶対守る" - "I (ore) will absolutely protect you" carries a much more romantic nuance or ambiguity, regardless of him realizing it at that point. It's like, the title to one of the most romantic moments/songs in the CCS Clear card anime ost, for instance. OF COURSE MIKO LOVES HIM. The narrator doesn't overexplain or take apart Ishimiko's interactions like for Prezguya, but all the evidence needed is there. And I gotta add the very next chapter to the staircase one is the "eternal love" x "real love" I'm super fond of that says fate is irrelevant and to find real love you must use your head to realize/understand things, so makes the romantic subtext even greater.)

This whole affair is also making me open my eyes that I should try to study japanese more...of course I'm happy to have translations and scanlators working hard, but there is something inherently lost in adaptations because it robs you of connecting with the author's intentions unless it was the author who wrote the translation in the first place

Thinking back on Ishigami's early "i wanna die/i'm going home/don't look at me" role, it seems unbelievable we're at the point he's now able to directly confront a "stranger" (lololol) or make serious promises with so much confidence.

PLEASE DON'T END SO SOON MANGA, I NEED MORE.

( off-topic kind of, but i'm lazy to make a separate post just for it: Since I mentioned things lost in translation, I saw something on Discord about Ishigami having an unreliable narrator moment in the "compliments" chapter/Iino Miko cannot love part 4 and holy molly, it is true. He first says something akin to "You're just too beautiful" out of context, Miko HEARS IT - and that's why she looks so shocked before asking for clarification - and he DID SAY IT in the speech bubble, but after she's nice to him and he thinks back to what he said he adds a "Your handwriting is just too beautiful" to his flashback. I'm ONTO HIM. ONTO HIM I SAY. It is what he meant, but it's like his mouth betrayed him. Whether it's unconscious or denial...it totally is something. The scanlation completely skips this and had the same line both times it's mentioned.)

#kaguya-sama #kaguya-sama spoilers #meta #ishigami yu #yu ishigami #ishimiko #it's ishigami focused but i'd be a dirty liar to say i'm not at least a lil bit biased #longpost #spoilers #yes i am an overthinker and overanalyzer did u notice #horimiya spoilers #yeah i kinda mentioned miyamura lol #i'm not even procrastinating anything this time i just rly care for them #kaguya-sama meta #this is a clown here that procrastinated 3 months to write a thesis but is churning out meta after meta for manga #plz forgive typos i'm still lazy to spellcheck this one lol #ishiino #ishigami using ore again to invite miko to the dance makes this post qualify for fridge brilliance now

[agent-cupcake]

Can I ask your opinion? So, I feel like everyone into 3H is in love with Dimitri, but I can't connect with him. I don't dislike him, but I feel like there isn't much to his personality without all his various mental health issues. It's hard to get a feel on what he's really like, so I end up just seeing him as a walking ball of trauma and not a three-dimensional character. Do you have any thoughts on Dimitri himself and how to separate him as a person from his psychological issues? Thanks!

Hmm, I guess my first thought is that everyone resonates with characters differently and so if you don’t particularly feel connected to him, that’s not wrong. Fictional parasocial relationships are very similar to real-life relationships, so it follows that nobody is going to like every character. I can’t say that a portion of my love for his character doesn’t come from his mental issues because that’s something I personally relate to and feel drawn to in others. That’s just who I am and how I build relationships. There is also something to be said for the unavoidable way mental illness informs a person’s behavior and character, it’s as much an aspect of them as being born with blond hair or losing an eye.

That said, I will do my best to explain why I think Dimitri is wonderful. Not in spite of his mental illness, but because I don’t think that’s all he is.

So, Dimitri is, as he says, a very clumsy person. This unfortunately extends to his social skills. He has a lot of very socially awkward tendencies and a general lack of self-awareness. This contrasts with his innate desire to please people, or at least avoid upsetting anyone. The thing is, Dimitri doesn’t always completely understand what upsets people or how exactly they might feel. His childhood isolation left him rather emotionally unaware and desperate for the acceptance and approval of others. That’s not to say he doesn’t try to understand other people’s feelings, but it’s not an intuitive process. He has a habit of saying kind of dumb or uncomfortable things out of nowhere, which is most likely his real feelings coming out in rather inept ways. He means well, but he’s just so dang clumsy.

The desperation to be included and validated I mentioned, I think, can be seen in the way he tries so hard to make the other Blue Lions see him as a peer and equal all the while keeping himself rather closed off from them. Dimitri approaches conversations as a means of focusing on the other person, trying to make an appeal to them rather than as an interaction where both parties could be seen as vulnerable. Of course, just like most other socially awkward introverts, he opens up when he feels closer to the person, but that takes a while. Gotta unlock the supports, you know? Although it’s not necessarily obvious, his incredibly stiff behavior (especially pre-timeskip) and the way he switches between overly formal and awkwardly friendly in his interactions with people as he tries to figure out how to socially and emotionally navigate relationships really gives me the impression of someone trying desperately to fit in without even the faintest clue of how to actually manage that. He also does his best to avoid social situations, which, mood. Basically, Dimitri’s a big dumb massive introvert trying to act like he’s not.

FURTHERMORE, he is a dork. An absolute goof of a person. Dimitri canonically thinks so-bad-its-good puns and jokes are hilarious. His own style of telling jokes is saying things that may or may not have contextual humor in a normal voice and then claiming after the fact that he intended it as such. Now, his supports with Alois are absolute factual proof of the so-bad-its-good humor, but might I also direct your attention to the scene before the battle against Miklan in Conand Tower (the event name is “Tower in a Storm (Blue Lions)”). Basically, Gilbert is explaining the history behind Conand Tower and Dimitri says, in an incredibly earnest voice, “You’re very well informed, Gilbert. Please, tell us more.” This is a joke. Supposed to be, at least. The delivery is somewhat emphasized, but not in a recognizably sarcastic way. Gilbert, who knew Dimitri very well when he was young, realizes it’s a joke after a second. But there are other things Dimitri says that I believe are his bad “jokes” and since nobody knows him well enough to tell, they don’t call him on it. There’s no proof, but his line in the Lord’s intro where he says, “And here I thought you were acting as a decoy for the sake of us all.” to Claude has to be an attempt at sarcasm. Dimitri is oblivious, but not stupid. In his Goddess Tower conversation with Byleth, when discussing the topic of wishes, he says, “Perhaps it would make more sense for me to wish that we’ll be together forever. What do you think?” In a completely normal voice. Following are two speech bubbles of “...” before he laughs and proclaims that it’s just a joke and that he’s getting better at telling them. Now, this is a two-parter because I see this as both his horribly awkward tendency to say things he feels without thinking too hard beforehand as well as his silly deadpan style of “jokes”. Granted, he does apologize. Dimitri’s got socially awkward zoomer humor. It’s endearing.

Here is a video of Dimitri hitting on Byleth pre-timeskip. I’m not sure how far it goes to endear someone to him, but the mostly awkward and occasionally smooth attempts of Dimitri’s flirtations are absolutely a highlight of his character. 

Now, this isn’t quite as cute as all that, but I think character arc and change do a lot for making a character feel more three-dimensional. Dimitri is hypocritically selfish. Although those are both negative terms, I don’t necessarily mean them as such, at least not in their totality. Both are things to overcome, which he does. And that’s why I feel like they’re a valid point of discussion when trying to explain the allure of his character.

The hypocritical part comes from the way he easily allows and forgives the flaws of others while constantly castigating himself for the same reasons. He says things that show an absurd amount of a lack of self-awareness. For example, he tells Edelgard, “Hm. You will prove a lacking ruler yourself if you look for deceit behind every word and fail to trust those whom you rely on.” All the while straight-up lying to and emotionally avoiding his friends. Dimitri also tells Marianne, when she is punishing herself for putting other people at risk, “What matters is that they came back safely in the end. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that.” Really, his C and B with Marianne is an exercise in hypocrisy. The standards Dimitri has for himself are incredibly, unattainably high. He’s setting himself up for failure in that way and, to an extent, knows what he’s doing because he knows that those same standards are too much for his friends and allies to meet. He wishes to take on everything himself. But, what I find so beautiful about this, is that Dimitri eventually realizes that he can’t do that. He is not strong enough to take on the weight of the world on himself, he comes to understand that it’s something he must allow himself to share with the people who care about him. He comes to realize that, as difficult as it is to accept, he is a weak person. Despite all of his introversion and inability to emotionally open up, he figures out that having a support system and allowing yourself to rely on people who love you is a necessity. Personally, I think this message is incredibly important in real life. Watching Dimitri come to that conclusion and argue it’s importance really rounded out his arc and journey as a person. Now, the relatability of this conclusion will differ, but I don’t think it has to do with his mental illness as much as it is a fundamental aspect of growth.

The selfishness is basically outlined above. Dimitri is selfish about his pain and secrets, purposefully and selfishly driving people away because he wants to keep the burden to himself. His vice is guilt and he indulges in the pain of it like an addiction. Hatred, too, is a drug. He thinks he needs it to keep going, even though all it does is bring agony to himself and others around him. Learning to accept and let go of these feelings is, again, something I think is important and a character arc that I really love, especially when you see him suffer as much as he does. Now, the execution of this is lacking, I admit. But that’s an issue for another time I think.

I am not quite sure if I did much to change your opinion, but this is all I can think of for now. There is probably a lot more than I’ve left out because I think about Dimitri far too much to be healthy. So, I’ll leave you off with some honorable mention aspects of his character that I think are super fun:

Pre-timeskip Dimitri has his hair tucked behind his ear. He can lift a wagon by himself. In the DLC, when faced with an impossible-to-open gate, it was not muscle man Balthus who said he couldn’t open it, but twinkish teen Dimitri. He’s not really smooth with one-liners. Like, at all. Notably, when attacking Manuela post-timeskip, he says, “Perhaps I should have appeared before you holding a bouquet of flowers, rather than the weapon that will end your life.” Adding to this, at one point, Dimitri fucked up a pick-up line so badly the girl came after him. Areadbhar has a mitten on it in the Azure Moon final picture. He breaks everything. His Crest activation ability even supports this, using twice the durability of any given Combat Art. One of his post-timeskip counselor messages is, “I lived in the slums for a long time, and I saw how the people there suffered from poverty and the ravages of war. There must be something I can do to save them." His room in the academy is right next to Sylvain’s, meaning that for almost an entire year Dimitri was a single wall away from hearing whatever nonsense Sylvain was getting up to. Dimitri is the only Lord that takes the throne and doesn’t abandon his people in some form or another.

And, finally, he is pretty sexy. And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

#dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #fe dimitri #dimitri #fire emblem three houses #FE3H #Anonymous

[rwbyvein]

Firen Lhain: Chapter 702: Castling:  Part II/III

Jaune stepped into the CIC, and a soldier looked over at him. "Would you like to speak with the general?"

"It's not urgent or anything." Jaune stated, and the soldier nodded. He then gestured to the side, and Jaune stepped away from the door, trying his best to stay out of the way. A moment later Jaune was lost in thought when a form was standing in front of him. His eyes refocused and it was General Ironwood. Jaune quickly shook his head to shake out the cobwebs. "Uh, sorry, wasn't expecting you so quickly."

"It's quite alright, Mr. Arc," Ironwood said to him, "how can I help you?"

"I want to get a weapon for Nora." Jaune stated.

"Is she having trouble with her hammer?" Ironwood asked.

"No at all." Jaune stated, "It's more, I mean, we all got other weapons to help us. Nora's kind of the only one who just has her hammer."

Ironwood looked lost in thought for a moment. "Anything... more specific?" he asked.

"I don't know?," Jaune asked, "something that uses lightning dust and can shock her?"

Ironwood looked lost for a minute before his eyes refocused on Jaune. "I might have just the thing. Have her meet me on the deck in an hour."

* * *

Jaune stepped up onto the deck, with Nora and Ren right behind him. James Ironwood was gazing forward with his hands folded behind his back. He turned to look at them. "Mr. Arc, Mr. Ren." he said, and then turned his focus to Nora, "Ms. Valkyrie." he said, and pulled out what looked like a heavy pistol.

"A pistol?!" Nora asked, "Uh, okay, I mean, thanks?"

"A failed prototype." Ironwood stated.

"Even better." Ren quipped, though when Ironwood looked at him he saw more humour than malice, but he was looking at Ironwood, expecting him to continue.

"It's a linear accelerator." Ironwood stated, and then saw a complete lack of recognition, "Also called a Railgun, it uses branched rails to accelerate a ferromagnetic slug to hypersonic velocities."

Nora smiled at him, clearly not understanding a single part of that.

"It's powered by lightning dust." Ironwood stated, "The problem is that it uses so much electricity so quickly that it causes feedback for the user."

Once again, Nora brilliantly smiled at him, not understanding a single thing he said. Ironwood then rolled his eyes and handed her the pistol.

"Make sure you use your Aura to break the recoil." Ironwood stated.

"Still have no idea what that means!" Nora eagerly said to him.

Ren made to say something, but Jaune was quicker, "He's saying it's going to jump back and smash you in your face."

"Why?" Nora asked him, and Jauned sighed.

"It's recoil." Jaune stated. "You want to stop it from doing that."

"Perhaps you could demonstrate?" Ren asked.

"Pistols aren't really my thing," Jaune voiced, "but uh, sure?" he asked, and reached towards Nora. Nora handed him the pistol. Ironwood looked Ren in the eyes with concern, but only saw playfulness in reply.

Jaune aimed the pistol over the edge and lined up the sights. He squeezed the trigger, causing the pistol to jump up, though not striking him. Instead, Jaune was given an electrical shock that nearly made him drop the pistol.

"Son of a bitch." Jaune said, and accusingly looked first at Ironwood and then Ren.

"An important lesson." Ren said with a bright smile.

"For who?" Jaune asked.

"All three of you, I believe." Ren stated.

"Care to elaborate?" Jaune asked.

"To Nora," Ren said to Nora, "on the meaning of recoil and feedback."

"So, it shocks me?!" Nora asked, "What's the point of?.. WAIT?!"

"Indeed." Ren voiced, and turned to Jaune, "And for Jaune?"

"Uh?.." Jaune asked.

"For having too much faith in us." Ren said to him, and Jaune just gave him a lost and hurt look. "You have always believed our abilities far exceed your own." Ren stated.

"But?.." Jaune tried to ask him.

"But?," Ren asked, "while initially true, that is no longer the case. Our abilities are different, but not superior or inferior."

"He is like a TANK!" Nora exclaimed, "Have you ever tried to punch him?"

"No." Ren said to her with a bright smile, and then turned to Jaune, "and for good reason. Your faith in us, while appealing to my very core, are without limit?"

"huh?" Jaune asked.

"You make that sound like a bad thing?" Nora asked.

"He believes us to be more capable than we are," Ren stated, "and his plans rarely take our chance of failure into consideration."

"My plans always consider failure." Jaune stated.

Ren stepped up to him, placed his hand on his shoulder, and looked him in the eyes, "Your own, not ours." Ren stated. "You are not the only one here who is fallible. Our reach no longer exceeds yours, and as such you must consider our failure as well as your own."

Jaune tried to look away as tears started falling from his face, but Nora saw him. She lunged towards him as he fell to his knees and hugged him to the best of her ability, (only able to get her arms just over half-way around him). "It's okay, big guy." Nora said to him, and he just enjoyed the hug as the tears fell from his face. Nora then turned to Ren, "And the General?" she asked.

"He learned the eccentricities of working with our mottley crew." Ren simply stated. "I apologize in advance for any disruption we cause."

Ironwood turned to look to the bow and beyond, folding his hands behind his back. "You don't know what it means to me."

"Yes?" Ren asked.

"I'm no longer alone." Ironwood said, the first time they had seen him, his voice failing, cracking. His strength seeming momentarily like an illusion. "You know," he said, and paused for a moment, "everything I've done has been for the sake of Remnant..."

Winter was walking up the roof access when she saw this, and paused. After a moment she turned to slip away.

"Even if we might disagree with some of your methods," Ren stated, "we know you have always had the best of intentions."

* * *

Ironwood, Winter, RWBY + JNR + Ilia, Aurora, _TRQ, and Oscar stood in the hangar as a non-standard bullhead pulled up. It landed in the hangar, and the back dropped down. A man wearing what was once a military uniform walked down.

"T. Rex." the man stated.

"What?" Ruby asked, "Really?"

"Sadly..." Ironwood voiced, "yes. This is Taj Rex. Formerly decorated pilot with the Atlas military."

"So, what?" Nora asked, "You took his medals away?"

"I wish I could." Ironwood whistfully stated.

"But?," Nora asked, "you said former?"

"Former military." Winter stated, "Thankfully."

Taj eyed Winter and raised his eyebrows. She just scoffed at him.

"For the record," Yang stated, "we're all taken."

"Except for Aurora and Ilia!" Ruby shouted.

"You try that with me," Aurora stated, "and I will slap you."

"Way to make me excited." Taj stated.

Jaune stepped forward and glared at him as he breathed in and out. "At this point, Aurora is like family. If she doesn't want to, you won't be flirting with her."

"What, seriously?" Taj asked.

"Hear the fire in his voice?" Blake asked.

Taj then looked at Ilia, "And what about her? She family to?"

Jaune then looked at Ilia, and glared.

"He doesn't mean that." Blake said to Ilia, "He wants to know how you would feel about Taj flirting with you."

"Oh?" Ilia asked, "I would prefer he didn't."

Jaune looked Taj in the eye, "The ladies have spoken."

"Pardon me?," Winter asked Weiss, "Isn't he the one who was always asking you out?"

"To be fair?," Weiss asked, "He only asked me out twice."

"Your letters implied otherwise." Winter said with a glare.

"I did want to ask you out a third time." Jaune stated, and Weiss looked at him.

"And you, "Weiss asked, "did not?"

"It was just really bad timing." Jaune stated.

"How bad?" Blake asked.

"When she asked Neptune!" Nora exclaimed. Jaune blushed and looked about nervously. Weiss turned a dark blue and did the same.

"Like I said," Jaune stated, "bad timing. I'd rather not talk about. The flowers I got were not just really expensive, but..."

"But?" Weiss nervously asked him.

"Uh... yeah... they were the same ones," Jaune voiced, "around the ballroom. I was just, I mean, all around, a really bad idea. And that's when I gave up on girls."

Weiss wrapped her arm around his and pulled herself in close.

"Yes, well?," Winter sarcastically asked, "how is celebacy working out for you?"

"Not at all like I expected." Jaune quiped. He then turned back to Taj, "So, I don't think this is going to work out."

"You're what, going to fire me?" Taj asked.

"Technically, we have yet to hire you." Ren stated.

"If we do hire you?," Jaune asked, "and the girls say you've been harassing them, you'll be fired on the spot."

"Even if we need a pilot?" Ruby asked.

"I can be a terrible pilot." Jaune stated.

"You can?" RWBY + Nora exclaimed.

"It's from farming." Jaune stated, "I wasn't good at all, and now my antlers would just get in the way."

"This isn't filling me with confidence." Yang stated.

"What did you want him to fill you with?" Nora asked, causing a pregnant pause as no one would pick up the conversation.

Jaune turned to Taj, "We have an understanding?"

"We don't want," Ironwood's booming voice stated, "him to fire you while you're in the middle of nowhere, do you?"

"Nope." Taj stated, "I promise I'll be good."

"Are we really sure?," Taiyang asked, "this is the best idea?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Ironwood stated.

"He just sometimes needs a bit of motivation." Winter harshly stated.

"She's just jealous." Taj stated, "She missed her chance."

"Really?" Jaune asked.

"She's not one of the ones you threatened me over." Taj said with glee, and offered Jaune his hand.

"Just don't make me regret this." Jaune said as he offered his hand. The two men shook, and Jaune sighed.

#rwby #firen lhain #faunu au #pollinated knight

[movedyoakkemae]

my thoughts on the en.deavour redemption arc (chs 164 - 302). DO NOT REBLOG.

DO NOT REBLOG !!

the endeavour redemption arc is a rather controversial arc in the manga, and, tl;dr: i think it started eh, continued badly, turned better, then ended like shit.

note: if you are anime only, this will contain spoilers ! trigger warnings: child abuse, domestic abuse, suicide, and murder.

here are the things we know: endeavour physically abused shōto, tōya, and rei. he ignored natsuo and fuyumi, and he discarded tōya once he realised that tōya got burnt through using his quirk. he also mentally and emotionally abused all of them. separated shōto from the rest of his siblings. not to mention the fact that he married rei on purpose in order to create the perfect tool that would become the number one hero in his stead. he thinks of his children as objects, as extensions of himself.

however, endeavour, not out of his own power but because of all might's lack of strength, ends up reaching the number one spot as a hero by himself. this kickstarts endeavour's "redemption" arc, particularly in chapter 164 when endeavour asks all might:

endeavour: you hear about this? how the crime rate this past month... is up 3% compared to past years? i... i'm the guy who resolved more incidents than anyone, now more than ever... but i can hear it. the thing you've built that cannot be seen... is crumbling down. so, #1 hero... what's it mean to be the symbol of peace? (ch 164)

in a lot of ways, this question is surprising to hear. as we can tell even in the question itself, endeavour's main area of focus has been about the amount of incidents that he has stopped, the amount of villains that he has defeated, but recognising that there was something missing, something that all might had built up, certainly shows an awareness that endeavour seemed to lack earlier.

in the next chapter, the conversation continues:

endeavour: i gave shōto everything. by age 20, i'd already climbed to the #2 position. it was because i made that climb that i understood... unless i reached the summit, it was all for nothing. if all i cared about were titles, i could've worn a smile like you... and played the part of the lovable fool. but i wanted to be the strongest! [...] all might: endeavor. the position you've been put in... i know what people are saying. a lot of people compare us. but you and i are different. the symbol i strove to be... that isn't the path for you to follow. take your time to figure out... ...the way you ought to do things. (ch 165)

again, we still see that hint of same sort of "all he cares about strength". being number one was all about being stronger than all might, which is why when he found it impossible for him, he went on to try to create something that could end up being stronger than both him and all might. that would be, after he beat it into shape.

also, the fact that he says "i gave shōto everything". (yeah, you gave the poor kid trauma if that's what you mean by "everything".) that's something some abusers routinely say about their children -- that they gave them everything, that they should be grateful.

at the end of the chapter, we see shōto warmly giving a little girl a small fire to put her hands next to when she was chilly, a smile on his face, and endeavour has a weird look as all might says:

all might: what purpose does our strength serve? endeavour... the answer is a simple one. (ch 165)

this is what sets the tone for endeavour's part of his conversation with shōto in the next chapter.

endeavour: i'm proud of you, son. on that note... i'm hoping to become a hero you can be proud of. as your father and the #1 hero... i want to be deserving of those titles. shōto: [clearly aggravated and tense] good luck with that... (ch 165)

inasa sees endeavour talking to shōto and notices how his eyes have changed from being cold and not looking at anyone around him to actually focusing on shōto. as such, the readers are basically hinted to see that endeavour has changed, even just a little, already. he's no longer just looking at all might as the summit he needs to climb; he's actually seeing the people around him.

now, this kickstarts endeavour's arc of thoughts that being a better #1 hero would mean that he would be a better father. this we especially see in the endeavour v. nomu arc.

i think the first interesting conversation we have about the endeavour's redemption arc is in chapter 187 with natsuo and fuyumi visiting rei in the hospital. natsuo says,

natsuo: about him... they made him number one yesterday. it's official. the world still doesn't know the truth about you [rei]. about our siblings... about how he's always treated his family. for one, he doesn't do the talk show circuit. i can barely remember most of it, really. thinking back, he was like a perfect stranger. but... what he did to you, to shōto, and to... [tōya/dabi] well, i can't let anyone pretend it all never happened. it's been almost ten years, and he still hasn't come to apologise to you. his past, his family... it's like he wants to leave it all behind. [...] rei: apparently he's [endeavour] come many times. though... we haven't met. i'm a bit scared though... and my doctor says it's not a good idea. of course, i can't say what he's thinking. it might be external pressures. but... he's not leaving anything behind. not his past. not his family. i know he's trying to make sense of it all. (ch 187)

he's also apparently been leaving rei flowers, flowers that she told him that were her favourite once when they met for the first time.

i actually think in this aspect, it's good that he hasn't actually seen rei or pushed himself onto seeing her. he's letting her take control of her own recovery (although, i will say it's pretty fucking telling that even after a decade, she's still scared of him). i'd argue that the flowers might be crossing the line, but it seems that rei thinks of them as a nice gesture, so i'm not going to argue about how that could be perceived negatively.

the battle between endeavour and the nomu gets serious, and endeavour nearly dies (which is broadcasted on TV for shōto to see, ofc).

in chapter 189, we see three different characters' thoughts on endeavour never giving up (some of it in particular directed towards his fight towards surpassing all might and being number one via strength alone).

natsuo: he knows better than anyone... that he'll never be the next all might! that's why he gave up so quickly... and basically went insane... abandoning the kids he didn't care for... and driving mom to the breaking point... [...] fuyumi: he never gave up. in fact, giving up is what he's worst at. [...] hawks: i was watching you this whole time. i get it. there was nobody else out there... really trying to surpass him [all might]. only you! you were the one working to surpass him. [manga showing endeavour building a small bridge over the chasm that metaphorically separates all might from the rest of the heroes] (ch 189).

i actually agree with fuyumi here more than anyone. endeavour marrying rei and creating his children wasn't because he was giving up (for one, he thinks of his children as extensions of himself...) but part of his way of trying to surpass all might. he also continued to work and get stronger himself, which he wouldn't have been doing if he had just given up.

that being said, i do agree with natsuo's description of their childhood, just not about it being because endeavour gave up.

also, from a narrative perspective, the shift of endeavour's obsession with surpassing all might being thought of as negative (from shōto's statements of it in the sports festival arc) to positive (you're the only one who actually tried!) through hawks point of view is... interesting. horikoshi is re-contextualising endeavour's obsession as a good thing, and that, in point, is done to soften endeavour's actions overall.

after all, if it's a good thing that endeavour was trying to surpass all might, then doesn't his actions against his family make a little bit more sense? doesn't that mean that he had good intentions, even if he did something bad?

(nope. not in my book.)

so, the next part of this arc happens in 192, where endeavour comes home from the hospital and after defeating the nomu with a huge scar on his face (the exact same side as shōto's!), and we get that beautifully passive aggressive "nasty scar you got there" from shōto while he's slurping up soba noodles.

and then natsuo tries to leave and this conversation starts:

endeavour: natsuo... if you got something to say, then say it. natsuo: say it...? that's rich, coming from a guy who's never even looked me in the eye. listen to this... i didn't know shōto loved soba until today. why? because you never let him play with us failed experiments. i get the feeling that mom and sis here want to forgive you, but all i see is the same maniac who, all of a sudden, is getting rave reviews. you might look like a changed man, but you're not. you abandoned us as failures, left us to hear mom's screams, shōto's cries. and big bro tōya too... you being the top hero and beating some big baddie can't erase any of that. did you decide to have a change of heart?! think we can just hug things out and make up?! it's sickening! don't you freaking get that?! endeavour: i'm trying to make amends, going forward. natsuo: is that so?! [leaves] (ch 192)

for one, god fucking bless natsuo. i think he fully encapsulates my issue with this part of the endeavour redemption arc, which is solidified by shōto's own speech:

shōto: as a hero, this endeavour guy... is pretty darn amazing. but it's like natsu said. i'm not ready to forgive you... for abusing mom. so, heroics aside, what sort of dad are you going to be? that's what i want to find out. sure, the perfect turning point can actually change someone. i know it's possible. (ch 192)

endeavour doesn't need to be a perfect hero to earn redemption from his family. hell, even when shōto hated endeavour the most, he could admit that endeavour was a great hero. maybe his reasons for being a hero was off, but he saved people, he stopped the bad guys. i think it's even canon that he's technically saved more people than all might.

the problem was never with "endeavour", it was with "todoroki enji". todoroki enji was a shit father who didn't give a shit about his kids aside from what he could use them for. he was too obsessed with defeating all might that he lost sight of his family -- which endeavour finally seems to realise after this little speech.

endeavour's thoughts: [having a flashback to all might saying "what purpose does our strength serve?"] power... a reason to dominate... when he told me that, it came to me in a flash. an ordinary, simple thought. "i have to safeguard the future for them." that's the job for whoever's on top! and yet... what about the futures i cut short? [image of rei in the midst of a mental breakdown] just demanding forgiveness isn't enough. it's too late for that. at this point, i need to atone... there's no other route. endeavour out loud: fuyumi, i'm sorry for everything. that was the wrong thing to say to natsuo. (ch 192)

we see actual growth in his character, him actually starting to learn what he should be focusing on rather than what he was focusing on. he still slips up, like with him trying to demand shōto's attention through texting with contact information that he only got because FUYUMI gave to him (ch 203), which i have my own issues with. as in, fuyumi better have asked shōto permission before giving endeavour his contact information because, if not, then holy fucking shit, that's so gross.

in the next part of the endeavour redemption arc, we have shōto in chapter 242 invite izuku and katsuki to join him with training at endeavour's hero agency.

we still see hints of endeavour only really thinking of shōto as an extension of his will and his beliefs when he asks izuku and katsuki in chapter 247 what they're working on and what they want to achieve. he starts to move in without even asking shōto, which shōto objects to in his own way.

endeavour: let's get to it -- shōto: [clears throat] and me? endeavour: you're here to master flashfire, shōto! shōto: all the quirk training you beat into me as a kid... i've put it into practise with my right side. thinking back, it's no wonder i couldn't escape my own hatred of you. then i got into u.a. competing alongside these two [izuku and katsuki]... and everyone else... really opened my eyes. endeavour... in the end... i'm going to do exactly what you always wanted. but please understand... the man i admire... is the one mom and i watched on the tv back then. [all might]. as a fledgling hero... in order to become a man worthy of the title... i came here of my own free will! you're a rotten number one*. you were just in the right place at the right time -- that's all. sorry this isn't going the way you want it to, number one. so let's stop that father-son crap in front of my friends. endeavour's thoughts: since he was willing to come here, i thought the boy's heart was open and ready to accept me... what a fool i was! i had it all wrong! endeavour out loud: right. i'll be evaluating you three as heroes. (ch 247) *the translation isn't quite accurate, but i don't have access to the original japanese right now to translate myself. i just remember that this translation isn't the best.

once again, we do see that endeavour is learning. shōto expresses his feelings and endeavour tries to move on from there in the way that shōto wants him to -- and he does ! he stops acting like he's close to shōto as a dad in front of the others and acts only like a hero training an apprentice (without the abuse that happened all throughout shōto's childhood).

i think this and what happens in the next part of this internship arc, is probably the best written bits of the endeavour redemption arc.

by that, in chapter 249, we open with this inner dialogue from endeavour:

endeavour: i'm trying to make amends... going forward. it might be too late... but i fall asleep every night thinking about... what i can do for my family. lately, it's been the same dream. the wife and kids, looking happy... at the dinner table. but i'm... never there with them. (ch 249)

this kickstarts his decision that he gives to natsuo later, but before we get there, we get this awkward todoroki family dinner with izuku and katsuki. izuku finally finds out that katsuki overheard them during the sports festival, and fuyumi and shōto talk when they think they're alone.

fuyumi: it's not like i don't share some of natsu's feelings... but... it feels like we've been given another chance now... how do you feel about dad? shōto: this burn... i think of it as something our old man gave me. [cue horrific flashback of the aftermath of rei pouring boiling water on shōto's face and immediately apologising] mom endured and endured... until she couldn't anymore. so, i can't just decide to forgive the guy who wore her down... but... mom is trying to get past all that now. honestly... i don't know... how i should feel about him. i still... haven't seen anything. [...] izuku: todoroki, i think... you're getting yourself ready to be able to forgive him. just say "i'll never forgive him" if you really hate the guy. because you're so caring yourself... it's like you're waiting... or at least that's how it seems. (ch 249)

i think each of the siblings (including tōya / dabi!) really showcases a lot of the different reactions children can have towards abuse. fuyumi is the type who fully embraces the abuser back because they want to become a family again. shōto is the type who isn't quite sure but doesn't want to just kick the abuser down if he's actually trying to change. natsuo is the type who just does not want to be around the abuser at all and doesn't think the abuser can change. tōya / dabi is the vengeful one who literally wants the abuser dead or feeling how he caused them to feel.

i also have an issue with how izuku words this to shōto -- does that mean that natsuo is not caring? should he not be upset with endeavour for all of the abuse, and, in natsuo's thoughts, for causing tōya to die? he cares too much, and that's really it, and i think endeavour (funnily enough) encapsulates my thoughts on that completely.

for context, natsuo gets kidnapped and held hostage by a villain who wants endeavour to kill him. the villain is threatening to kill natsuo if endeavour doesn't kill him. endeavour chokes on the save aside from catching katsuki and natsuo after the boys implement their plans to rescue natsuo, stop the villain, and save the civilians. then, endeavour has this to say:

endeavour: i'm sorry! in that moment... i couldn't help but think... about how if i saved you... then going forward... you might feel... like you couldn't stand up to me... natsuo, believe it or not... i was never trying... to neglect any of you. but... all i could do was blame others and dodge responsibility. with tōya too... i might as well have killed him myself. natsuo: didn't neglect us? so what...? tōya has always told me everything. it'll be a cold day in hell... before i forgive you. 'cause i'm not as caring as shōto. endeavour: even so... even so... you keep showing up for fuyumi, right? and for your mom's sake? your sister loves the idea of being a big happy family... because... that's exactly what i ruined. she wants that back... she's so eager to fix everything. and that's why you're trying. because you care about how she feels, right..? because you are caring. so... you don't have to forgive me. i'm not looking for forgiveness. just atonement. natsuo: [starts crying] wow. you got a real way with words all of a sudden! i know how happy it makes sis, having us all together! but... when i see your face... those memories come rushing back. why do i gotta be the one to come around? atonement? how're you gonna make that happen? endeavour: i have an idea, actually. (ch 252).

endeavour saying "i wasn't trying to neglect any of you" is such a fucking backslide, but he somewhat saves it with explaining why. at the same time, the explanation doesn't really matter -- he did neglect natsuo and fuyumi. however, the next bit of it, when he says that natsuo does care, and that it's okay for natsuo to never forgive him -- that was real fucking character growth, and we see it come to a beautiful place at the end of the chapter where endeavour talks with fuyumi and natsuo.

endeavour: fuyumi. i've already talked about this with shōto and natsuo. you've been doing your best to create a safe and sound household for your mother to come home to. i've let you shoulder all of that... and i stood by while you worked hard... but it's all okay now. [thoughts: it's always the same dream. my whole family's there, but not me.] because i'm building a new house for you all. one that makes sense for your commutes. and one where you can give your mother a warm welcome back. fuyumi: what about you, dad...? endeavour: [thoughts: if i really care about how they feel...] i'll remain here. (ch 252)

this is where i fucking cheered. this is where i really thought horikoshi was going to save this arc. abusers forcing their presence on the family is absolutely the wrong way to do it. endeavour trying to be the "best hero" is absolutely the wrong way to do it. endeavour stepping back, making sure that they're all comfortable, but (most likely) being there when they want to reach out on their terms in the way that they want to -- that's beautiful. that's actual growth. that's literally the best decision any abuser can make ever; leaving it in the hands of the people he abused.

in this part, in this moment, i could have accepted the endeavour redemption arc. i might not have agreed when shōto decided that he could see endeavour as a father (depending on when it would happen in canon and what would cause it), but in this regard, i could actually see redemption.

and then we get the fucking shitshow that is dabi reveal arc and the dabi backstory arc, and then i just want to throw away the whole fucking redemption arc.

in chapter 290, we get the dabi is todoroki tōya reveal (surprise, surprise /j). tōya, being the dramatic bitch that he is, washes off the probably water-soluble black dye off of his white hair and tells endeavour and shōto that he's tōya and that he's been waiting for years to take endeavour down and that he's sending out a broadcast to every TV station live detailing about endeavour's abuse of his family.

dabi: when, at long last, you could stare your kids in the eye... didja finally start to feel the warm and fuzzy bonds of family?! you must've thought, "as long as i can face the future, i can be better!" i can tell you're at a loss for words, so here's the answer! the past never dies! get it, yet?! you reap what you sow! so let's tango, you and me -- todoroki enji! a dance with your son, here in hell!! (ch 290).

in chapter 291, we continue the dabi reveal (including a 99.9% match between his DNA and endeavour's DNA as proof of their relation! hint: that's not actually fucking possible, but i'm pretty sure that's either a translation error or a wording issue) in the public eye. we get this fun little monologue from endeavour in the beginning of the chapter:

endeavour's thoughts: i thought it could be you [tōya]. you could have been the one... to reach my eternal goal. my frustration... my envy... the ugliness in my heart... you could have been the one... to smash it all to dust.

again, we get that whole "using child as an object/extension of endeavour" thing that has characterised endeavour for a long time. tōya shouldn't have been created to fix his frustration about not becoming number one himself.

regardless, endeavour stays in shock for the rest of the battle, unable to even move despite the fact that shōto managed to pull himself together in order to try to save everyone on the battlefield despite dabi trying to kill him.

we then go to chapter 300, where endeavour wakes up in his hospital room and ruminates on everything that he had done. he cries and expresses guilt, especially on how things played out with tōya when he was a child, and he declares that "i might get to live on... but endeavour died back there. my son's a mass murderer, yet... i can't fight him." (ch 300).

then, shōto, natsuo, and fuyumi enter the room while endeavour continues to cry.

endeavour: sorry... i'm... so sorry. i'm sorry... i didn't realise until now... these regrets... this guilt... it's too late to matter! my heart... it's... rei: [walking into the room] yes? what about your heart? those regrets and guilt... the rest of us have borne that burden... much more than you have. endeavour: rei?! why are you here?! rei: i'm here to talk about our family. and about our son, tōya. (ch 300).

this jumpstarts into a flashback of what caused tōya's "death", and i think in some truly horrific scenes that i think horikoshi writes in a way that we're supposed to feel some level of sympathy for endeavour. reading all of that makes me feel even -infinity sympathy for endeavour.

in chapter 301, we start the flashback into the past, where tōya wants to continue quirk training but endeavour begins to discard him, saying that it was for tōya's own good (because he burns himself when he uses too much fire). unfortunately, tōya doesn't care about his own burns, he just wants his dad's approval and wants to surpass all might himself.

endeavour, meanwhile, is still focused mostly on creating a child that would surpass all might, as we see in this conversation between endeavour and rei:

rei: no... that would be too much! it's too cruel! especially now that tōya knows what you're hoping to achieve through the children! endeavour: no matter what i say... he comes home with fresh burns every day. he inherited that pigheaded stubbornness from me! that's the only way to make him give up! since he'll never be the one to surpass... [all might] (ch 301)

(sure, that's your motivation. you say that while you literally have the same eyes as when you think about all might being better than you).

endeavour's eyes when thinking about all might being better.

endeavour's eyes when thinking of "stopping tōya" through the birth of more children.

we see that shōto is born, and that tōya doesn't stop training on his own, which causes endeavour to snap at tōya:

endeavour: no! why won't you stop?! you're covered in burns... and you still don't get it?! why?! tōya! you have to... look beyond all this. play with natsuo and fuyumi! make some friends at school! there's a whole other world besides the hero stuff... i know you understand that! take my advice, and this'll all be a distant memory soon. tōya: the kids at school all say they wanna be heroes. i can't understand that. because i've got you as a father. you lit this fire in me, dad, and it's not going out! i can't just pretend it's not there! [uses his fire] look at me, endeavour! look... at me!! [goes to attack baby!shōto] (ch 301)

all tōya wanted was not to be discarded, and he could see just as well as anyone that endeavour didn't seem to care about the others as much -- that's why tōya went for shōto, not for any of the other siblings.

endeavour had no real idea how to talk to tōya, or even knew how to reach out and get some help, and that was probably (mainly) because what he was doing with rei and creating his children was illegal, as we hear from a doctor earlier.

and before anyone blames tōya, he's young ass kid who knows he's being discarded by his father, and he wants attention. just any sort of attention. yes, he's going to lash out. yes, he's going to keep on doing what originally got him his father's attention (aka training). yes, he's going to try to attack endeavour's "perfect child" for "taking his place". i don't blame tōya for that -- i blame endeavour.

rei: [in the present] you don't get to claim you're hurting more than anyone. and you're not the only one who didn't really see him. (ch 301)

this next chapter, the next part of the flashback, chapter 302, is particularly rough, and it's in part with what's hinted in rei's last part of this comment. (i agree with the first part! endeavour doesn't get to claim that he's hurting more than anyone else. it's the second in context with chapter 302).

we return back to the flashback where endeavour is talking to rei about separating shōto from the rest of his siblings.

endeavour: i'm too busy with work to look after him [shōto] 24-y... which is why i've hired help. but you -- don't you take your eyes off of tōya. rei: he just wants you to look at him. to notice him. that's all. endeavour: all i can show anyone... is the world of heroes. rei: heroes? aren't you just running away? (ch 302)

interestingly enough, endeavour's face in this conversation is covered by shadows. all we really see are the whites of his eyes and the side of his face where sweatdrops of stress are running down. rei's face, too, is practically covered aside from a close-up on her stressed eye. a lot of rei's downward spiral focuses on rei's eyes over anything, so i think this is where we kind of see -- well, not the start of that (we do see that focus in ch 301), but the continuation of her stress that leads eventually to her mental breakdown.

then, we continue on (with an interesting conversation between tōya and rei, but we're focusing on endeavour unfortunately, so alas) with tōya talking to endeavour.

tōya: listen, dad. next time you get a day off... you gotta come up to sekoto peak with me. endeavour: [grabs tōya's shirt violently and lifts it up. his thoughts: new burns! where he can keep them hidden! he's been training that way on purpose!] damn it! again?! tōya: no, wait! what i can do now is really cool! you gotta come see! i might be as awesome as shōto sooner or later! maybe i'll be even better than all might someday! then you've gotta give me some respect, dad! you'll be glad you created me! i just know it! (ch 302)

the next scene is a very clear domestic abuse scene (even if it cuts away from the actual hitting).

endeavour: why didn't you stop him?! huh, rei?! damn it, that's all i asked you to do!! shōto: [crying and stepping in front of rei, trying to defend her] don't bully mommy! stop it! don't be mean to her! endeavour: get out, shōto! it's none of your business! natsuo & fuyumi: [cowering, crying, and covering their ears] rei: i... can't stop him. (ch 302).

skip the next scan if the narrative hint of domestic abuse happening might upset you. 

now, i'm putting in the scan to showcase that we essentially get to explicitly see this all go down. endeavour is a shadowy figure in the bedroom, we see nothing of rei's face except for her eye (crying, and again, that same focus where we see her slow descent into her mental break), and we see all of the children cry except for tōya because he's out training on his own again.

the fact that endeavour decides to berate, and most likely hit, rei instead of going after his son -- well, he'd come to regret it later when tōya supposedly dies because "all he [endeavour] taught me... was how to turn up the heat." (ch 302). tōya burns himself to death because endeavour decided that because his quirk wasn't good enough to beat all might that he rather not train him at all anymore. that -- ugh.

and then we get out of the flashback and back into the hospital room in some of the most abhorrent lines of the present moments of this arc.

endeavour: if only i'd given it all up that day... but having killed tōya... i felt there was no turning back, so i poured all my energy into shōto... at the expense of everything else. rei: once tōya was gone, you grew worse and worse, until i couldn't stand the sight of you. it got so bad, i even started seeing hints of you in the children's faces. fuyumi: i knew our family was broken, but i was too scared to interfere. all i could do was try to fix things just to keep up appearances. natsuo: it was you who started all of this. you're the root cause, but... maybe, if i'd just slugged you in the face and made you have a few serious talks with him... "dabi" never would've come about, and i would've been enjoying some good soba with shōto all these years. rei: you're not the only one who's responsible, and now we all have to take responsibility for what comes next. (ch 302).

ignoring the next part for now, holy fucking shit. horikoshi makes the decision to spread the blame of tōya's death to the rest of the todoroki family, never mind that rei was also abused by endeavour and that fuyumi and natsuo were twelve and eight respectively.

endeavour showed no signs of listening to ANYONE. rei told him flat out that he just needed to give tōya attention, and he didn't listen. the fact that fuyumi felt burdened on trying to keep up appearances and felt like she didn't try to fix things at the age of twelve -- horrific. the fact that natsuo blames himself for not trying to talk some sense into endeavour at the age of eight -- horrific.

this is the moment where i threw the endeavour redemption arc into the garbage -- the rest of the family taking blame onto themselves that they shouldn't blame just so that endeavour can just right back up and be a hero.

endeavour was not going to change, not for anyone. hell, even with tōya's death, and endeavour admits it himself, it made him even more stubborn in his ways because one of his extensions of his will sacrificed himself, so he best make sure that shōto becomes the best extension of his will he can be.

this is genuinely so disgusting that i can't even put into words just how terrible this is. the fact that horikoshi made this decision -- i lost all respect for horikoshi as an author and in the endeavour redemption arc.

this chapter ends with shōto being proclaimed as the family hero and that endeavour needs to come back as a hero and fight dabi and by this point, i already hate everything, so throw the bitch out.

i think if the endeavour redemption arc had stopped in chapter 252, i think it would have been great. i think if they had played off the dabi reveal in any other way, without the family blaming themselves to partially absolve endeavour of his guilt, i think it could have been fine. but the way that this played out, the way that the victims are blaming themselves in part to make the abuser feel better -- no. just, fucking no.

is that a thing that happens in real life? do abuse victims internalise the abuse and then think that the abuser was just trying to do their best? oh yeah. however, with how the rest of the arc seems to be going with endeavour (endeavour showing up in the newest chapter still going around as a hero -- the number one hero, even), horikoshi is condoning that instead of writing it as unhealthy as it should be written.

thus, nope. throw the whole fucking thing away. no thank you.

#⤷ shouto t.【 ❝ heroes also have times when they cry. ❞ 】metas. #this is a 5.9k meta #this is longer than some of my college essays #it's also a lot messier than a lot of my college essays #i don't go that deep deep into analysis and word choice like i normally would #but i think y'all can get my points #tl;dr: fuck horikoshi and fuck endeavour ty very much #mentions of child abuse // #mentions of domestic abuse // #mentions of suicide // #mentions of murder //

[agentrouka-blog]

"Show yourself!” Lyanna Stark and her three Elsa Starks.

My son has been enjoying Frozen II every once in a while lately, while he’s doing his three-year-old part to containing the pandemic by staying home, and “Show yourself” is really a heart-stopping piece of music. Gorgeous. The way it builds and what it is about. And it gives me massive ASOIAF feels.

This seems a bit silly, but I have yet to come upon a song that as perfectly captures the emotional relevance of the revelation of Lyanna Stark as Jon’s mother, the relevance for all the remaining Starks. The fit of the emotional arc is amazing. Basically, if you want to feel what GRRM wants us to feel about Lyanna Stark, watch “Show yourself”. 

I’m going into self-indulgent detail About how Frozen II relates to them, and what Lyanna means to Bran, Arya, Sansa and Jon, below the cut.

So, Frozen is a pretty universal story that also applies to ASOIAF. 

The figure of the “always different” special child, estranged from others, who has battled to fit themselves into the world around them and now stands on the precipice of an existential challenge - that applies to all the surviving Stark children. They are all Elsa. They all vitaly need the confrontation with the hidden voice calling them (mother Iduna = Lyanna) in order to reach a balance, to achieve harmony in their world, to enable their non-magical inner Anna to reign in a living world rather than perish, abandoned in one destroyed by chaos.

They have all grown up in the non-magical “Arendelle”, caged by imposed secrecy. That’s Ned, that’s king Agnar, the regular human man. Regular, as in regulation, as in rules. No one must know Elsa’s magical (female) powers. She is locked in a room, contained, lonely. Olaf (love, spring, summer) is a suppressed memory.

Patriarchy, blind duty, the suppression of their inner selves lead to their ruin: Bran the climber who may not climb but then falls, Arya the fighter who may not fight but then murders, Sansa the artist who may not create a dream but instead becomes a liar, Jon the beloved, noble son who is kept in isolation and must be motherless, friendless and damned. Elsa’s magic is harmony but she must hide it and thus brings eternal Winter to Arendelle.

Lyanna, the way Ned refused to talk about her and kept her secret, the effect of that is perfectly illustrated in Elsa’s journey in Frozen I, she is isolated from her emotional needs (Anna, lonely, hungry for connection, full of bad judgment), she has no control over her magic, it turns into something terrible. She pays the price in loneliness and then struggles without proper guidance to “grow up”, to harness her inner strength. She does gain control but it’s chaotic and leaves her vulnerable to abuse and betrayal (Hans) and everything almost falls to ruin, until the power of love creates a last-minute save and a spot of recovery. That’s when they retake Winterfell and reconvene. They all go through this journey and meet at the stalemate.

Frozen II is about connecting to the source of that magic and reconciling with it, about validating it, returning it to its proper place. They find out that Mother Iduna had magic, too. They find out that Elsa’s magic is the key to harmony, that she is not just accepted but necessary just as she is. What was forbidden is now essential. Elsa is finally free to be herself, she applies her magic to save the world and then peacefully lives in it. Anna has a safe space to fullfil her emotional needs and bring all her own talents to life. She is no longer lonely and without purpose, she is queen, soon to be wife, likely to be mother. The other, equally valid side of Iduna. 

Lyanna, the previously hidden and locked power of the female Stark magic: mother, sister, lover; lady, fool and knight, she-wolf, caged bird and the most beautiful flower grown with love from an inhospitable place. She has all the good and bad sides of Bran, Arya, Sansa and Jon, and each in their own way are healed when they follow the call and find her. Their true selves will be validated in every aspect, by being mirrored in Lyanna. 

Bran: his true purpose is to uncover THIS secret while “climbing” a Broken Tower of Joy. His ability to “fly” to learn the truth from the weirdwood memory, it gives meaning to everything that happened to him. Their failure: to break the rules in secret, leading to their unprotected fall. They are ruined, broken. Their redemption:  This fall later unlocks the key to saving the world. Lyanna begets her beloved son Jon. Bran discovers his greenseeing abilities. Being discovered for their true selves makes Bran the Lord of Truth, it makes Lyanna the Queen of Love and Beauty once more, they can leave the Tower the proper way, climb out of that window and fly home. Lyanna comes home, not just her bones, her true self. The truth will set you free, and it turns the potentially destructive, secretive nature of the Three-Eyed Raven into a savior, it turns Winter into Summer.

Arya: Lyanna, the beautiful Stark maiden, who rode a horse and weilded sword and lance and defended the innocent and tried to create justice. The true Lady Knight. Their failures: her impatience and anger at injustice make her heedless and lead to a dismantling of the world, others pay the price in blood (Rickard, Brandon and Lady, all of Arya’s kills). They become a source of death and destruction that eventually destroys her, too. Their redemption: They choose life by choosing Jon. (Make all the abortion jokes you want, but Lyanna LOVED Jon, she chose him in her heart.) Lyanna saves the world by giving it Jon. Arya does the same. She loves Jon first with all her heart, which enables him to love the world in turn, to free Arya by giving her Needle, which then will in turn be the instrument to Arya’s swan song, where she defends the innocent and enacts justice and saves Jon one last time. Found and validated by her spiritual mirror Lyanna, the Queen of Love and Beauty, Arya paves the way for life and the real Spring, not the false Spring. It paves the way for Lyanna’s dream. The blood red tears of the weirwood, of Lady Stoneheart, turn into the image of the Laughing Tree,

Sansa: Lyanna, the dreamer, the lover, the idealist, the mother-in-waiting, the girl who wanted it all: Life lived with emotional fulfillment. Who believed in her heart that there is worth in her dreams and that she was inherently worthy of seeing them realized. Lyanna’s desire, her love, her dreams are Sansa’s. This shared aspect is the most feminine part of all the Starks, the Summer in all that Stark Winter imagery. And Sansa is ridiculed for it because there is no counterbalance to the hypermasculity of their world. Sansa and Lyanna are both betrayed by this imbalance. The oppression inherent in their paternatlistic world takes their softness and turns it into weakness, takes their life-giving bodies and turns them into a weapon against them. Marriage for love becomes rape and birth becomes death. The Sping turns false and, as their dreams die, so does Winter kill life in the world. Their “failure”: Both rebel by turning traitor. They lie, they leave, they turn their backs on their family, they unwittingly deliver themselves into the hands of the enemy. They are made fools. As objects, they inspire the violence and death that Arya herself deals out as a “dark knight”. Their very absence means death to dreams for those who want to live them. Persephone in Hades. Their redemption: Becoming Anna, the non-magical sister. Becoming the real, worldly Queen. Taking control. Giving power to the feminine. When Sansa embraces her own self-worth, she inspires devotion, decency, nobility. When Sansa begins to actively create, she forges a world in which dreams can thrive and when they make their dreams come true, life wins out. She will leave the Tower alive, she will meet her love. Chaos is reigned in, they create stability, beauty, bounty. The true Spring happens when they come into power and preside over all their creations and children with love at their side. Happiness. Spring is coming.

Jon: He and Arya and Sansa are tied together, obviously. The sun and stars (the sun is a star, after all), and the moon of life. Jon is the “true” Elsa, the fifth spirit, her magical heir. He is Lyanna come again, fulfilling what life promised her. Their failure: Believing there is no love for them, they are pressed into a life that abnegates all feminine energy, all dreams. Where Lyanna rebels and becomes a fool, Jon, as a man, flings himself into self-denial and still becomes a fool. As a motherless Stark bastard he can never be his true noble self because the world leaves no room for all he has to offer. Like Lyanna, he is trapped by the rigid rules. Like Sansa, he is ridiculed. Like Bran, the secret in the tower is the source of his misery. This almost turns him into an ice block. It leaves him vulnerable to false love, harmful secrecy, betrayal, death. Their redemption: true love. It is Ned’s love that leads him to keep looking until Lyanna is found and to preserve her legacy. It is Arya’s love that keeps Jon from turning into a rigid, unbending Stannis, it will have her looking until Jon is found again, it will have her lay down her life for his. It will be Sansa’s love that leads Jon back to life after death every time. Real life, Anna’s life. It will be Bran’s love that uncovers the truth. This truth will melt the ice. Lyanna saves Jon when it is revealed that the mother he dreamed of all his life was real. Noble and kind and beautiful and loving him with all her heart. Not some man’s bastard but his mother’s beloved and “trueborn” son, the brightest star in our sky, the gillyflower. This will unlock his ability to fulfill his Destiny, save the world, realize his own dreams and Lyanna’s: a true Stark, the fool knight who wins the love of his Lady, saves her from a tower, marries for love, a parent to children of his own blood. Masculine in harmony with the feminine to create and preserve life.

Lyanna is the key to all of them. Like Iduna’s call leads Elsa to discover her true purpose, the fact that her life is a gift to the world, Lyanna validates the qualities of all the Stark kids. None of them can fulfill their destiny without touching upon her, not until she becomes visible. But when they do, it will be epic. 

And “Show Yourself” just sort of captures the whole range and magnitude of this emotional arc. It really is a brilliant song.

#asoiaf #frozen #lyanna stark #jon snow #arya stark #bran stark #sansa stark

[rabbitsparklez]

✨sorry Im kinda late if you're still doing the ask thingy. anyway, what are some of your UNPOPULAR opinions?

No, it’s fine! I’m happy to get asks whenever :)

First of all, I’d like to apologize for the delay. It took me like 3 days to answer this because I added a lot. This was a LOT more elaborate than you asked for so uh...... enjoy?

I have a lot of conflicted opinions that I wouldn’t exactly call “unpopular”, but I also have several that I would. There is negativity in this post, and if you’d rather not read it, then please don’t.

Please do not comment or message me about these if you disagree. This is my blog, and if you generally disagree with my than I don’t know what you are doing here.

Thank you for the ask!

1. I kinda... almost.... hated “Buddy”.

 Yes, it’s a really catchy song and a great blend of Zach and James’ voices, but it also serves as a reminder that the writers prioritized Cassandra’s importance over Eugene’s. I’m already not a fan of it when people use strong and mature characters in overly silly scenarios, but it makes my stomach churn to think that they would actually dare to ridicule Eugene to such a far extent in order to give Cassandra the spotlight, when her entire arc was written poorly despite all their costly efforts to give it to her. I know that Eugene didn’t intentionally fall under the influence of those flowers and he certainly would’ve done something had he been there when Rapunzel discovered the Moon Incantation, but honestly that just bothers me even more because Eugene had so much potential and they wasted it.

2. (I don’t know what’s gonna come of this) I don’t hate King Frederick. I’m very disappointed in him, but I don’t hate him. Everyone hates him because of his failure to handle a threat to the kingdom, and his rashness and dishonestly toward his daughter, and I both agree to a lot of it, but I don’t hate him.

I have no excuses for the fact that he lied about having the black rocks under control because he didn’t know what to do about them. As the king, it is his responsibility to consider what is best for his kingdom, and by lying about a major threat, he only caused the problem to get worse. The reason the black rocks came in the first place, however, is because he took the Sundrop to heal his dying wife and unborn child. I know it wasn’t the most prudent decision, and he did a horrible job cleaning up the mess he made afterwards, but he was desperate to save his family, and chances are likely that he didn’t have time to consider every aspect and consequence that taking the Sundrop would cause.

Regarding his actions towards Rapunzel, I hate the fact that he would dare consider locking his own daughter in her room to protect her from something that he’s not making any effort to fix. Treating people immorally harshly while saying it’s for their own good is toxic, and I want to make it clear that I am the last person to defend abusers, but I highly doubt that Frederick gingerly considered every aspect of locking his daughter in her room and how it would affect her. Rapunzel was kidnapped as a baby, and that gives two reasons why Frederick is so protective of her: the fact that he is her father and the pain and trauma in itself. Everyone takes trauma differently, depending on the person and the weight of the situation. I hate it when people who are clearly smart and strong enough to understand the situation use their traumas as an excuse to justify their actions, but some people are so devastated by their traumas that they completely lose themselves. Again, he logically wouldn’t have thought about every single thing he was doing and the trouble it would cause. He lost his baby girl. I’ve heard many times that losing a child is the worst pain imaginable, and you could only understand that pain if you experienced it. Perhaps he even felt responsible for the fact that his daughter was kidnapped because he thought that he wasn’t as protective as he should’ve been, and the idea of “making things right again” and protecting her was drilled so deeply into his mind. In addition to the pain that he went through and how that affected his judgments, Frederick had no parental experience whatsoever. All parents have to figure out who their children are and how they should handle situations. Doing this involves trial and error, tears and pain. As seen in the episode “You’re Kidding Me”, Rapunzel and Eugene both thought they knew how to treat children but both of them made errors due to the cooperation and sensitivity of the kids they were looking after - this applies to every parent and every child. Frederick was completely ad-libbed into parenthood, and his trauma from losing his child did not mix well with Rapunzel’s spirit of adventure and independence.

As a king, Frederick failed in his responsibility to do what is best for the kingdom, and I agree that he wasn’t justified for the actions he took (or didn’t take), and he was a jerk for lying about it; but as a father, I feel more sympathy for him because in his eyes, he was doing the right thing, even though we know that he wasn’t. People are so quick to justify Varian for his actions following his traumas, when he’s admittedly intelligent enough to understand them; but people are so quick to demonize Frederick for his actions following his traumas, when he’s clearly not intelligent enough to understand them. I don’t think that’s fair in the minimal sense and it still irks me how biased a lot of people were in this situation.

3. I’m not sure how “popular” or “unpopular” this one is considered, but I hated both Stalyan and Brock Thunderstrike. It takes a lot for me to actually hate a character, but considering how much they wronged Eugene, I can’t ever see them in a positive perspective.

Aside from almost killing Lance, Stalyan abused Eugene. When he was only 16, she tried to marry him so that he could be her partner in crime, and judging by the way she talked to him in BTCW, it’s likely that she manipulated him and constantly belittled his choices. (which is another reason I hate how they did that with the Cass arc, because he should be entitled to such a valid opinion). She called him by his fake last name and tried to pull him back into the past, showing that she gave no importance to his persona and development as a character. When he refuses to marry her, her dad poisons his best friend and forces Eugene to either let his best friend from childhood die, or leave his girlfriend - his closest companion who filled in his missing parts and helped him to know that he mattered. Afterwards, she brushed it of with “that was my dad’s idea, but bad guys have a flair for drama”, in the least sympathetic tone imaginable. She then locked him and his dying friend in prison until the wedding, and tried to convince him that he wasn’t good enough for the woman he loved. The writers could’ve used her as a way to understand Eugene’s insecurities and pain a little bit better, but they freaking REDEEMED her. She just went with Rapunzel on a little road trip where she decided “y’know what, you can have my ex boyfriend and I’ll move on! Tell him I said hi!”. We didn’t get a proper address that Stalyan likely had a role in damaging Eugene’s sense of importance and trust, but even worse, we didn’t get an apology. I can’t believe that they made Rapunzel deal with someone else’s abusive relationship, where she hardly understood what was actually going on. Stalyan never said another word to Eugene or apologized to him or Lance for what she had done to both of them. She married a guy that looks exactly like him in the end too! Instead of looking for someone new, she chose a guy who looks exactly like her ex, showing that she cared more about his looks than his inner self.

Speaking of her new boyfriend, I hated Brock Thunderstrike. Let’s just pretend that Eugene hasn’t already been sidelined and ridiculed for Cass, and make an almost exact copy of him, only without his flaws and development! Let’s make him look exactly like him, make him repeat every iconic action and line that he made in the movie in a flawless way, and make him steal his entire former identity!  - THAT WAS SO STUPID! I can’t believe they actually did that! Eugene is one of the most meticulously created, personified, and multifaceted characters that Disney has ever created, but not only did they push him in the mud to give Cassandra space, but they created this idiot Mary Sue copy of him with no personification otherwise! In the end, just like Stalyan, he decided with no redeeming deeds or apologies that he would make a new person of himself.

They really make a good match, and that’s not a compliment.

4. I love Lance as a person, but not as a character - If that makes any sense.

I love that wholesome boy a lot, but I don’t like the way he was used in the show. I think that even he pitched in to the factors that flattened Eugene as a character in the show. First of all, it takes away some of the meaning of love and it’s necessity to Eugene’s life. We always thought that Eugene was a lonely, rejected child who needed love more than he realized, but it turns out he did, in fact, have a buddy who wasn’t just his partner in crime for years, but a close, brotherly figure. That contradicts the significance of Eugene’s childhood and life as an orphan. Secondly, Lance was often used as an object to distract Eugene and drag him into the stupid and nonsensical scenarios that prevented him from interfering with Rapunzel and Cassandra’s overly prioritized involvement to the plot of the episode. Don’t get me wrong. I love Lance and have nothing against him, but his role as a character could’ve been used in better ways.

5. Adira should have either had a larger or smaller role in the show.

When we were introduced to Adira in Season 2, she was the fairy godmother  that always came when the squad was in distress. She could do everything: she is superhumanly strong and agile, can cook, can effortlessly cut down trees, can survive in the wilderness, knows everything, and is practically perfect. But considering her knowledge of the Sundrop and Moonstone and her past with the Dark Kingdom, I was disappointed that we couldn’t explore more of her character and personality. In Season 3, she just kind of vanished. Considering her amazing abilities, we could’ve explored her character and learned of her weaknesses and backstory in season 3, but we didn’t. She played a lot of parts in Season 2 but almost none in Season 3. I thought Adira was sort of a Mary Sue. She’s perfect on the outside, but we have little knowledge of the inside. To make her a better character, she could’ve either been brought into the light in Season 3, or not given as much attention in Season 2. Either way, she’s an unbalanced character. I like her, but she’s hollow.

6. I like Shorty. 

He’s kind of pointless and it made me roll my eyes when he unintentionally saved the day when other characters *cough* Eugene *cough* could’ve done so, but he also made me laugh a lot. He’s an idiot but fairly harmless otherwise. Also, unlike a lot of things in the show, he’s in character. In the movie, it wasn’t out of character for Shorty to pop up in weird places or save the day without really knowing it (he was one of the ones who helped Eugene break out of prison). The Snuggly Duckling was a major point in the movie and we didn’t see a lot it in the show. While Shorty’s tagging along didn’t contribute anything to society, it kept the Snuggly Duckling present in the show.

7. As much as I love him, I’m not attracted to Eugene.

I think he’s handsome and charming, but I ship him with Rapunzel too much to be in love with him :). I would give anything to have a platonic friend like him, but maybe not a husband.

To be frank, I’m a little creeped out by people who seem to “fall romantically in love” with characters, because they sometimes........well let’s just say that they portray them in a way that makes me incredibly uncomfortable - if you know what I mean. This applies to all characters, but especially to the ones that I like.

8. Varian’s role was too invasive. You’re probably surprised at this, because a lot of fans seem to think that he didn’t get enough of a role and wasn’t put to his full potential. I agree that he is a very elaborate character with a lot of potential, but he was never intended to be a main character, and he shouldn’t have been given a larger perspective and more angst factors than the actual main characters.

After his villain arc, fans started hating Rapunzel because they had sympathy for Varian and accused her of not treating him well, which I hated. It is true that he was in a situation worth having pity on him for, but they expressed a lot more emotional impact from his perspective than from anyone else’s, thus fans only considered his feelings. Rapunzel was going through an extremely difficult time at that moment, too, but it was shown in a less dramatic and sympathyzable way. She almost lost her parents and the man she loved in a snowstorm, while for the first time when she had to make prudent decisions as a leader, the kingdom was in a state of distress. After the storm, her father continued to lie to her, and the reason she never helped him was because he convinced her that Old Corona was under control. All she wanted to do was stabilize herself in a calm state of mind, which was ok, because she didn’t realize that there was more trouble. Even so, she could hardly do so because she was still stressed and traumatized. If these things from her perspective were more clearly presented to the audience, there would’ve been less of a war in the fandom and there probably would’ve been sympathy from both sides. But they wanted to show things from Varian’s point of view, which was valid until he went feral. {He stated in the episode before the finale that he understood that Rapunzel “did what she had to”, and he is clearly intelligent enough to pull things together, but everyone used trauma as an excuse. If he could connive that entire plot where he would kidnap the queen, use a dummy of him, extract the Sundrop’s power, etc. then he clearly was in a sane enough state of mind to put things together, but he didn’t. In Season 3, he admitted that the reason he became a villain was because he had taken his anger too far, after realizing that he was wrong. }

Considering that Rapunzel is the main character and the writers expect us to feel sympathy for her, they should’ve at least made the situation less dramatic from Varian’s point of view. Chris Sonnenburg himself was annoyed with fans who sympathized more for Varian and watched the show for him instead of Rapunzel - but in a way it was his fault for the way he portrayed the situation. I agree with him in the sense that I was annoyed with Varian fans taking over the fandom and demonizing Rapunzel, but it was the crew’s own choice to make Varian such a likable character to so many people.

Although his redemption arc was handled well in my opinion, it was more focused on and important to the show than that of the Father of Tangled Redemption Arc’s - Eugene’s. His redemption arc is the backbone to the entire franchise, but the series didn’t take him seriously, so even though his redemption subtly fell in place in Season 1 especially, I was disappointed that he didn’t have a nice serious episode where his redeemed self shined in the light, while Varian, a secondary character, did. Although not to such an extent, Varian’s role, similar to Cassandra’s was prioritized in the show above the main characters’ and that bothers me.

9. I’d say this one is more under-acknowledged than unpopular, but Cassandra’s existence contradicted Rapunzel’s development rather than bringing out her characteristic “compassion”

Even after all of the horrible things Cassandra did to Rapunzel, to Eugene, and to the kingdom of Corona after deciding to turn evil, she was redeemed. Anyone would’ve stopped pitying her and left her behind, but Rapunzel still cared for her and let her be her friend again. Why? Because the writers tried so hard to convey the message that Rapunzel has compassion for everyone and anything that comes in her path.

It is true and in her character for Rapunzel to be compassionate and humane. The movie conveyed the message that Rapunzel, even after spending so many years unloved and mistreated, loves and has sympathy for everyone. She sees the good in everyone and everything, thus she is capable of redeeming those who have strayed. This characteristic of hers is what caused Eugene to leave behind his past self and find a new life. She didn’t fix him; she opened his soul and brought out the good person who had been hiding inside him for the longest time. The same thing happened to the thugs, other former thieves, and many others. Rapunzel’s compassion and love for others brings the best out of the unlikeliest of people. The way Glen Keane described it, Rapunzel is the representation of humanity.

However, Mother Gothel is the representation of everything that is an obstacle to Rapunzel and her freedom. She gaslight and objectified her by passively claiming that she loved her, and used her as an object to satisfy her own vanity. She never let her express her energetic and adventurous self by locking her inside, and when Rapunzel rebelled, she locked her in chains and took her to the dungeon. Rapunzel’s development can only grow if she is not stifled by chains and abuse, therefore she should avoid Mother Gothel at all costs. But who is this person who, three years later, Rapunzel tries to redeem? The very daughter of Mother Gothel, who is more like a reincarnation of her to be frank. She brought back what Rapunzel was supposed to leave behind. She condescended over her and shamed her for her underdeveloped tendencies before she even betrayed her. She constantly wanted more from her instead of accepting her who she was. She blamed her for her problems and victimized herself. Rapunzel is supposed to be past these things so that she can grow to be a strong and independent woman. Using Cassandra as a permanent villain who Rapunzel would fight against would define her as a developed woman who has moved on from her traumatic past - but it wasn’t like that. Rapunzel pined onto Cassandra despite everything she put her through. The writers tried to use this situation as a way to bring out Rapunzel’s compassion, but it contradicted her self independence and strength.

Rapunzel and Cassandra’s relationship was a toxic one, and it shouldn’t have been portrayed as a good thing at any time in the show, because of it’s disintegration of Rapunzel’s development. Rapunzel is both compassionate and resilient, but because of how poorly the writers handled this, they contradicted both of her character tendencies. It looked more like schizophrenia to be honest: One day Rapunzel resents Cassandra for her actions and fights her with a powerful incantation to keep her away from Eugene; the next day, she sings a song mourning their friendship and expressing how much she wanted her to come back.The way a character’s personality traits are presented is very important. Imagine that you’re at a restaurant where every item uses the same ingredients, but is arranged and composed in a different way. A burger on a bun with lettuce, tomatoes, cheese and ketchup would be delicious and appealing; however, a hamburger and cheese smoothie with chunks of lettuce and tomatoes floating in it and ketchup drizzled on top would be nauseating and a horrible idea (sorry for the ridiculous comparison but hopefully it gets the point across). Even though the two items have the same composition, one of them works and the other doesn’t. Rapunzel is both compassionate and resilient, but the writers made a contradicting mess out of these two tendencies because they made them clash.

10.. It annoys me when people think Eugene overreacts to things. He’s neither whiny nor childish. He’s a realistic person in a crazy world, who can’t help but be upset about certain things.

Let’s face it, he’s been through a lot, and all things considered, he’s very tolerant and resilient. He’s the most realistic character in terms of skepticism and trust issues, and that’s something I’ve always loved about him. In situations where nobody’s in danger and things are fairly normal, he tends to “overreact” to minor things, but in dangerous and serious situations, he is the first person to stand up and help people. If he was a shrimpy, whiny wimp who can’t handle things, he wouldn’t have willingly died to save someone, led a rescue squad to save the king and queen in a dangerous situation, decided to live with his former abuser to save someone who was dying, or willingly accepted his role as a captain and lead the safety of the kingdom.

If you were abandoned by your father and ended up as a poor orphan who became a criminal to fend for yourself, it’s only human to not immediately feel inclined to accept him into your life, especially considering his apparently whimsical and unconcerned personality. By the end of the episode, he himself realized that his father kept in touch with him and by the end of the show, came to understand his motive for abandoning him. Nobody forced him to see the good in his father. He realized it by his own effort. When his father gave him a gift at the end, he was the first to hug him, showing that he had come to accept him willingly.

If for generations, your family has dedicated and lost their lives to destroying a dangerous object that has caused a lot of deaths and destruction, and you break your trust with your girlfriend to protect her from it; then when you finally allow her to take it when her jealousy-driven handmaiden takes it with every intention to kill her - of course you are going to resent that woman and be upset that your girlfriend still cares about bringing her back, (especially considering you weren’t keen on her in the first place). Even though Cass didn’t deserve it, he still patiently put up with and respected Rapunzel’s opinion of her despite obviously still disliking her. That doesn’t show that he was happy about it, but that he patiently tolerated situations that he didn’t agree with.

Imagine that the only comfort and security that you had for 15 years was your fake reputation as a different character, despite knowing it wasn’t a good one, and you find it difficult to let him go because you still can’t help but wish you were as established and “successful” as he was. Then some cocky twerp that looks exactly like you comes along, dresses exactly like you and uses the same name as you did, and repeated everything that you were proud to accomplish but only better, and is liked by your friends better than you ever were. Despite the fact that your former identity wasn’t a good one, it was the only thing you had and the only thing you could find pride and joy in because you had a low self esteem about your actual self. I can certainly say that if I met someone like Brock Thunderstrike but a copy of me instead of him, I wouldn’t be happy at all. But in the end, although he obviously resented and was jealous of him, Eugene disinterestedly told him that he saw potential in him, and allowed him to find his own identity.

Eugene is one of the most realistic characters that I’ve ever seen, but he lives in unusual circumstances that he’s not used to. There’s nothing wrong with the fact that he can’t immediately see something, because all’s well that ends well - and in the end, he always makes a just decision.

{There was one more that I wanted to post but I thought it would be too conflicting so I didn’t.}

If you agree with some of these but not others, that’s fine! After all, these are unpopular opinions and I’d be lucky if anyone agreed with them.

Again, thanks for the ask!

#TTS #Tangled the Series #RTA #Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure #Rapunzel #Eugene #Mother Gothel #anti cassandra #negativity on cassandra #slight negativity on varian and adira #anti stalyan #King Frederick #Shorty #rabbitsparklez #unpopular tts opinions #explainmybrain #unpopular opinions

[ginmo]

Do you think JB will end together? Like, marrying and maybe even having kids? I know it’s a lot to hope in asoiaf universe, but I so wish they would!

GRRM is aiming for a bittersweet ending. There’s even a quote from him saying that he already knows who’s going to marry who. 

“I know the broad strokes, and I’ve known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who’s going to be on the Iron Throne. I know who’s gonna win some of the battles, I know the major characters, who’s gonna die and how they’re gonna die, and who’s gonna get married and all that. The major characters.” [x]

He clarified that “major characters” includes the main Lannisters. This was said in 2016, after his last asoiaf book, which means marriage is for future books. It could literally be any pairing for one of the major characters, or multiple pairings. My point is, there will be at least one marriage for the major characters that didn’t happen on the show. Personally? I think there’s going to be a couple, and whether or not Jaime and/or Brienne dies by the end, they’ll still be one of them. This is going to be kinda long…..

Brienne - Marriage 

Brienne was introduced to us on an unrequited love plot line.

Brienne was on her feet as well. “Your Grace, give me but a moment to don my mail. You should not be without protection.” King Renly smiled. “If I am not safe in the heart of Lord Caswell’s castle, with my own host around me, one sword will make no matter … not even your sword, Brienne. Sit and eat. If I have need of you, I’ll send for you.” His words seemed to strike the girl harder than any blow she had taken that afternoon. “As you will, Your Grace.” Brienne sat, eyes downcast.- ACOK

Brienne dropped to her knees. “If I must part from Your Grace, grant me the honor of arming you for battle.” Catelyn heard someone snigger behind her. She loves him, poor thing, she thought sadly. She’d play his squire just to touch him, and never care how great a fool they think her. - ACOK

And what’s emphasized in her first PoV?

Renly Baratheon had been more than a king to her. She had loved him since first he came to Tarth on his leisurely lord’s progress, to mark his coming of age. - AFFC

Reciprocated love is her arc. The first time we meet her she’s described as crushing hard on Renly Baratheon, and it’s during the melee at Bitterbridge. The melee is brought up again in AFFC, during one of Brienne’s PoV chapters.

In the mělée at Bitterbridge she had sought out her suitors and battered them one by one, Farrow and Ambrose and Bushy, Mark Mullendore and Raymond Nayland and Will the Stork. She had ridden over Harry Sawyer and broken Robin Potter’s helm, giving him a nasty scar. And when the last of them had fallen, the Mother had delivered Connington to her. This time Ser Ronnet held a sword and not a rose. Every blow she dealt him was sweeter than a kiss.

Loras Tyrell had been the last to face her wroth that day. He’d never courted her, had hardly looked at her at all, but he bore three golden roses on his shield that day, and Brienne hated roses. The sight of them had given her a furious strength. She went to sleep dreaming of the fight they’d had, and of Ser Jaime fastening a rainbow cloak about her shoulders.- AFFC

Let’s look at the structure. The paragraph before Brienne falls asleep is setting up the context for the dream. Paragraph #1 is specifically referencing the men who participated in the bet as her suitors, thus connecting the mělée to an element of her dark, romantic history as Brienne knocks every asshole into the dirt with blows sweeter than a kiss.

Paragraph #2, still connected to the romance theme of paragraph #1, transitions into Brienne falling asleep and dreaming of her last fight with Loras. She then gets cloaked.

Keep in mind that in a wedding ceremony, the groom places a cloak of his house colors around the bride’s shoulders. Now, knowing a professional author is writing this, and there’s a romance theme established in paragraph #1 with the term suitors, and if we’re continuing the theme, in her dream the KG cloaking is symbolic of a wedding ceremony.

Unlike the show’s garbage interpretation of Brienne, her life-long dream has never been about becoming a member some kingsguard (also note, knight and kingsguard are not synonymous. You can become a knight without swearing your life away to a KG). This is why she joined Renly’s:

Renly Baratheon had been more than a king to her. She had loved him since first he came to Tarth on his leisurely lord’s progress, to mark his coming of age. Her father welcomed him with a feast and commanded her to attend; elsewise she would have hidden in her room like some wounded beast. She had been no older than Sansa, more afraid of sniggers than of swords. They will know about the rose, she told Lord Selwyn, they will laugh at me. But the Evenstar would not relent.

And Renly Baratheon had shown her every courtesy, as if she were a proper maid, and pretty. He even danced with her, and in his arms she’d felt and her feet had floated across the floor. Later others begged a dance of her, because of his example. From that day forth, she wanted only to be close to Lord Renly, to serve him and protect him. - AFFC

She literally fell in love with him because he treated her, “as if she were a proper maid, and pretty.” BTW, this is introduced in her first PoV, emphasizing the romance theme to her arc.

Feeling too ugly and unworthy to be a lady, and after three failed betrothals and Brienne crying “bitter tears” over Margaery marrying her king, she left Tarth and pledged her life to Renly in the form of becoming a member of his KG (hmmm joining the kingsguard to be close to someone she loves? Sounds like someone else!). Feeling like a failure as a lady and heir, she played to her more masculine traits and married Renly in the only way she could.

The KG being a form of marriage to her is shown in the dream passage as well, by how after knocking her “suitors” into the dust, she becomes a member of Renly’s KG and essentially marries him. All the suitors are disposed of, but in the end, she allows one man to cloak her.

But… in her dream, the person is no longer Renly LOL. It may be his cloak, but it’s not his face. WHO IS CLOAKING HER? Jaime fucking Lannister.

And guess what? Jaime replaces HER BETROTHED in another dream.

Finally the doors opened, and her betrothed strode into her father’s hall. She tried to greet him as she had been instructed, only to have blood come pouring from her mouth. She had bitten her tongue off as she waited. She spat it at the young knight’s feet, and saw the disgust on his face. “Brienne the Beauty,” he said in a mocking tone.

“I have seen sows more beautiful than you.” He tossed the rose in her face. As he walked away, the griffins on his cloak rippled and blurred and changed to lions. Jaime! she wanted to cry. Jaime, come back for me! But her tongue lay on the floor by the rose, drowned in blood. -AFFC

This is romantic rejection from an actual event that happened to her, and Brienne is unable to stop her betrothed (who turned into Jaime in the dream) from walking away, but GRRM LITERALLY SAID HIS INTENT WAS BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, and since we were introduced to her on an unrequited love plot, with love always being a cruel joke to her, with romantic rejection and how she’s been so unworthy and undesirable as a lover smacking us in the face, RECIPROCATED LOVE IS HER ARC.

And it isn’t just love that’s part of her arc, it’s also MARRIAGE, because it has been connected to marriage.

Brienne - Motherhood

Brienne has a lot of motherly qualities in the books and has also never rejected the idea of being a mother. At one point, she daydreams about her first betrothed and wondered what her life would have been like if he survived childhood.

Had he lived, they would have been wed within a year of her first flowering, and her whole life would have been different. She would not be here now, dressed in man’s mail and carrying a sword, hunting for a dead woman’s child. More like she’d be at Nightsong, swaddling a child of her own and nursing another. It was not a new thought for Brienne. It always made her feel a little sad, but a little relieved as well. - AFFC

Yes, a part of her was relieved. I mean… duh haha. Who wouldn’t be? She was going to marry a stranger, she most likely would have been treated like dirt, she would have been young, and everything about her life would have been different. The point is, the thought still made her sad. If there wasn’t any part of her that desired marriage and motherhood, she would have only felt relief, and, well, “it was not a new thought” for her.

Keep in mind, Brienne thinks she’ll only ever be a fighter because, even though her book personality is very nurturing and motherly, she believes she’s physically unfit to be a lady and mother

“I will tell you true, Brienne. I do not know. My son may be a king, but I am no queen … only a mother who would keep her children safe, however she could.” 

“I am not made to be a mother. I need to fight.” - ACOK

The next bit I wouldn’t really say this is motherhood foreshadowing, but I do still find it interesting that GRRM wanted Catelyn to have a little motherhood discussion with Brienne, when she could have spoken about it to any other character.

“Children are a battle of a different sort.” Catelyn started across the yard. “A battle without banners or warhorns, but no less fierce. Carrying a child, bringing it into the world … your mother will have told you of the pain …” 

“I never knew my mother,” Brienne said. “My father had ladies … a different lady every year, but …”

“Those were no ladies,” Catelyn said. “As hard as birth can be, Brienne, what comes after is even harder. At times I feel as though I am being torn apart. Would that there were five of me, one for each child, so I might keep them all safe.” - ACOK

This next one…

Can it be? Somewhere inside our swordswench is a mother just squirming to give birth. What you really want is a sweet pink babe to suckle at your teat. - AFFC

I mean, it’s Hyle being an ass lol, but I’m not going to ignore the fact an author decided to put that in there, and it’s not the first time the autor connected Brienne to motherhood. 

Also…

“A daughter.” Brienne’s eyes filled with tears. “He deserves that. A daughter who could sing to him and grace his hall and bear him grandsons. He deserves a son too, a strong and gallant son to bring honor to his name. Galladon drowned when I was four and he was eight, though, and Alysanne and Arianne died still in the cradle. I am the only child the gods let him keep. The freakish one, not fit to be a son *or* daughter.” - AFFC

She IS fit to be both! That’s the point! She bitterly thinks that, due to her insecurities. Brienne’s arc: lady, wife, mother, warrior/knight, heir. Her character exists to embrace the outwardly masculine and inwardly feminine traits, becoming it all and redefining what it means to be a lady and woman in that society. 

Jaime - Marriage and Fatherhood

The narrative purpose of Barristan Selmy being released from the KG is to show that it’s possible for members to be dismissed. “A kingsguard serves for life” is mentioned THREE TIMES in ASOS, about Jaime.

“I can,” he interrupted. “And I will. There’s precedent. I’ll look in the White Book and find it, if you like. Crippled or whole, a knight of the Kingsguard serves for life.” - ASOS

“Tywin regarded Jaime as his rightful heir.”

“*Jaime* … Jaime has taken vows. The Kingsguard serve for life.” - ASOS

“I am a knight of the Kingsguard. The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard! And that’s all I mean to be!” - ASOS

I think it’s safe to assume he’s going to be removed from the KG at some point in the books (I suspected for years that Jaime would be released from the KG, so when it happened on the show… well, my thoughts on the show: here). The narrative purpose of releasing Jaime from the KG is to release him from vows, to free him up for marriage and be heir. That’s literally why Tywin wanted him to leave the KG in the first place.

Have some bitter Jaime thoughts.

That was the first time that Jaime understood. It was not his skill with sword and lance that had won him his white cloak, nor any feats of valor he’d performed against the Kingswood Brotherhood. Aerys had chosen him to spite his father, to rob Lord Tywin of his heir.

Even now, all these years later, the thought was bitter. And that day, as he’d ridden south in his new white cloak to guard an empty castle, it had been almost too much to stomach. He would have ripped the cloak off then and there if he could have, but it was too late. He had said the words whilst half the realm looked on, and a Kingsguard served for life. 

Part of Jaime’s arc is to step into that role of heir. He did something stupid and out of love in his youth, and now he’s rediscovering his identity.

As for becoming a father…

Perhaps he was the monster they claimed. If the Father Above came down to offer him back his son or his hand, Jaime knew which he would choose. He had a second son, after all, and seed enough for many more. If Cersei wants another child I’ll give her one … and this time I’ll hold him, and the Others take those who do not like it. Robert was rotting in his grave, and Jaime was sick of lies. 

He turned abruptly and galloped back to find Brienne. Gods know why I bother. She is the least companionable creature I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. -ASOS

Okay okay look at this. There’s a couple of things to unpack here. 

Jaime never cared for Joffrey. That’s not a secret. If he were to make a decision about choosing joffrey and his hand, it’s implied he’d choose his hand. But then he justifies this by basically saying, “because he was rotten and I have another son anyway and I can always have more children” which shows that the idea of being a father is actually something of value to him. He ACTUALLY WANTS TO FATHER- “this time I’ll hold him.” Which to me is saying that fatherhood is part of his arc, because why else would that development be thrown in there? Sure, it can be there to show he’s maturing as a character and is desiring to be a responsible parent to Tommen, but then what’s the point of throwing in the detail about MAKING MORE children? Wanting to raise them FROM BIRTH this time? And, looking at structure, notice the transition from that paragraph to the next? 

Jaime was sick of lies.

He turned abruptly and galloped back to find Brienne. Gods know why I bother.

LMFAO

WHAT

Jaime thinking about producing future children and how he wants to raise his next child -> Jaime is SICK OF LIES (this is before “He’s lied to you a thousand times, and so have I” And before he finds out about the affairs btw LOL just wait Jaime you’ll be extra fed up) -> WHERE’S BRIENNE? WAIT, GODS, WHY AM I DOING THIS? THIS ISN’T FORESHADOWING SHE’S MY FUTURE OR ANYTHING 

GRRM as the Gods, knowing why he bothers

In AFFC, GRRM still explores this fatherhood desire, even without Cersei.

Once he found the Blackfish, he would be free to return to King’s Landing, where he belonged. My place is with my king. With my son. Would Tommen want to know that? The truth could cost the boy his throne. Would you sooner have a father or a chair, lad? Jaime wished he knew the answer. He does like stamping papers with his seal. The boy might not even believe him, to be sure. Cersei would say it was a lie. My sweet sister, the deceiver. He would need to find some way to winkle Tommen from her clutches before the boy became another Joffrey. And whilst at that, he should find the lad a new small council too. If Cersei can be put aside, Ser Kevan may agree to serve as Tommen’s Hand. - AFFC

And FOR ONE OF MY FAVORITES

Unbidden, his thoughts went to Brienne of Tarth. Stupid stubborn ugly wench. He wondered where she was. Father, give her strength. Almost a prayer … but was it the god he was invoking, the Father Above whose towering gilded likeness glimmered in the candlelight across the sept? Or was he praying to the corpse that lay before him? Does it matter? They never listened, either one. The Warrior had been Jaime’s god since he was old enough to hold a sword. Other men might be fathers, sons, husbands, but never Jaime Lannister, whose sword was as golden as his hair. He was a warrior, and that was all he would ever be. - AFFC

Jaime’s thoughts, unbidden, go to Brienne when he’s thinking of his men getting women pregnant BTW LOL, and this passage SCREAMS the fatherhood theme.

After thinking of women getting pregnant he PRAYS TO THE FATHER FOR BRIENNE. Whether it’s the god or his own father doesn’t matter. The point is, he’s making a connection to Father while praying to keep Brienne safe. And then he thinks about how the Warrior was always his god and, “other men might be fathers, sons, husbands, but never Jaime Lannister, whose sword was as golden as his hair.” WHY?! Why is that bit in there? In the same paragraph? And then end with a sentence that sounds BITTER AF about how he’ll only ever be a warrior? why the fuck did it just jump from Jaime thinking about Brienne, to praying to the father and then “LOL BUT THE WARRIOR let’s randomly talk about my identity”….?? It’s literally completely irrelevant? Unless…the author is connecting Jaime to THE FATHER for him to begin identifying with A DIFFERENT GOD because THAT’S HIS FUTURE and he’s hinting that BRIENNE IS THE ONE TO GIVE HIM THAT WHICH IS WHY HE NEEDS HER SAFE. (And of course Jaime isn’t consciously making these connections, I’m talking about the author’s foreshadowing decisions)

AGAIN

and this time I’ll hold him, and the Others take those who do not like it. Robert was rotting in his grave, and Jaime was sick of lies.

He turned abruptly and galloped back to find Brienne. Gods know why I bother.

And last but not least, the weirdest argument:

“Okay but if Brienne marries Jaime she’d be a lady and he’d make her be something she isn’t.” 

This has always been a really funny argument and my favorite response to this is, “Jaime didn’t give her a valyrian steel sword to make a sandwich with it.” 

Anyway, GRRM once said Brienne is Sansa with a sword. As mentioned above, Brienne never rejected her title as a lady as she does on the show. Book!Brienne ran away because she felt too ugly to be a proper lady. Her insecurities and the mockery she endured caused her to shy away from anything outwardly feminine.

Keeping in mind that Jaime and Brienne are literally designed to be BatB, imo it’s not a coincidence that Jaime and Brienne only think they’ll ever be warriors.

THEY WON’T. 

They’re both going to finally experience genuine reciprocated love, fuck, get married, and maybe parent and if you strongly believe one of them has to die before the end of this then all of this will happen before that death I SAID WHAT I SAID. 

#gm answers #jaime x brienne #brienne of tarth #jaime lannister #asoiaf #.... #.....

[woeismyhoe]

Azula

It constantly upsets me whenever I see people say that Azula doesn’t deserve any sympathy, that she was a monster, she deserved what was coming for her, she abused people (to a certain extent she did to Mai and Ty Lee)*, a playing victim, doesn’t deserve any redemption arc etc...

And so, i’ve decided to write this so people can understand her character better.

In the comics, it became clear that Azula’s accusation of their mother (Ursa) liking loving Zuko more than her, was indeed true. Never once did we see Ursa actually alone with Azula unless she was reprimanding her. Ursa was always just with Zuko. It was only once did we see Ursa actually with Azula (albeit Zuko was there too), and even then Ursa was neglecting Azula and just paying her full attention to Zuko. You can say Ursa loved Azula, sure, but the fact is that Azula never felt she was loved by her mother. Why would she? Ursa never praised her when she actually did something praiseworthy, or even when she behaved better than Zuko.

A child, especially a child as perceptive as Azula was, could’ve only reached the conclusion that she was never loved if there wasn’t any evidence to prove her wrong. Compare Ursa’s goodbye between her children. She kisses them both, but she only wakes up Zuko to tell him she loves him. For Azula, she has no knowledge of Ursa even coming to her room.

Now for Ozai. According to Zuko, Ozai favored Azula over him because she was a prodigy, which was true, but notice how even in flashbacks or in the comics, Ozai was not seen spending time with Azula like how Ursa was with Zuko. Ozai only favored Azula for her talent, and that was it. As a child, Azula only received praise from her father when she did something praiseworthy and her ideals matched his. Was Ozai truly spending time with his daughter? No. Did he truly love her? No.

In contrast to Ozai’s treatment of Azula, Ursa’s was the complete opposite. Ursa only paid attention to Azula when she did something wrong. To Azula, it was better to be scolded than to be ignored so she did bad things.

People always fail to remember that Azula never had any guidance, unlike Zuko. Ursa was always with Zuko. When she’d reprimand Azula for her actions, she’d never tell her why they were wrong and only send her away. Azula actually questions her mother as to why she couldn’t do what she did, but Ursa only tells her that she should treat the flowers with respect. Ursa NEVER explained to Azula what was wrong with what she was doing.

Notice the difference in how Ursa treated her children when they misbehaved. Ursa’s first thought for Zuko is to understand her son’s reasoning behind his actions while for Azula, her first thought was to only scold her.

Again in this scene, Azula was just asking a simple question but yet again, Ursa scolds her for it and doesn’t tell her why it was rude. Azula only understood why it was inappropriate when Zuko interjects and gives her an example. ‘Fine but I still think Dad’s better’ is basically her response to Zuko. Ursa never tried to get Azula to understand why her questions were inappropriate.

Even Iroh was playing favorites with them. It’s obvious that Iroh didn’t even know Azula enough to know that she wasn’t the usual doll loving girl since he gifted her a doll while he gifted Zuko a dagger. Take note that Azula was merely 11 years old when she was left completely alone with Ozai for the next 3 years.

Azula grew up in a militaristic environment surrounded with only her servants and cruel war aged old men. Her friends were rarely there since Ty Lee had run off to the circus and Mai probably didn’t even come to the palace that much either since she was closer to Ty Lee.

Azula was completely left alone with Ozai. She was forced to mature and have the mindset of an adult at 11, to forgo her childhood innocence and anything else that may prove to be a weakness in the future. Ozai made sure of that.

So growing up, Azula basically didn’t have a mother, father, grandfather or an uncle. There was literally no one to guide her to the light unlike Zuko.

As Azula grew older, Ozai’s expectations of her only grew higher. That was how Azula’s obsession with perfection began.

‘Almost isn’t good enough!’

Azula needed to be only perfect. Anything lesser than that was not appreciated by Ozai. Since Zuko was a failure to Ozai, that only meant that he was harsher in perfecting Azula to be the heir he desired. Since Azula was capable of incredible feats as a child, that means his expectations of her was even higher than his was for Zuko. Azula was expected to not only just excel, but to be the finest of all firebenders (second only to him of course).

‘My father gave me far more leeway than he ever gave Zuko, but he is not a patient man.’

‘This scheme is indeed my master stroke, destined to place me in Father’s good graces forever.’

- Azula (Tale of Azula)

From this we can deduce that Azula was not always actually in Ozai’s good graces, unlike what Zuko thought. Azula knows the consequences of disappointing and disobeying her father from watching Zuko, and she knows that even she herself isn’t exempted from her father’s cruelty.

The higher you climb, the harder you fall— this quote perfectly describes Azula demise. Azula was known as a prodigy even as a child so only perfection and brilliance was expected of her. Failure was considered improbable. No one expects her to fail, so if she does, her punishment is twice as worse as it should be.

Take note, Azula actually loved Ozai. He was the only parent who praised her, who understood her worth, who agreed with her ideals even when she was just a child. Ozai approved of Azula. Azula had seen his approval as Love, which was why Azula never betrayed her father and did everything he commanded her to. To Azula, Ozai was the only person who truly loved her and didn’t actually fear her. She wasn’t going to lose that one and only person who loved her.

Azula was afraid. She was actually afraid of what her father might do to her for speaking out against him. She knows from Zuko’s experience of what Ozai was capable of. Her brother had spoken out of turn in the war meeting, disregarding Ozai’s opinion in the plan of General Bujing, which then resulted in the Agni Kai between father and son. Ozai had struck Zuko with lightning when Zuko showed defiance and disrespect.

Azula knew she wasn’t an exception, and it was her instincts of self-preservation that prevented her from comitting the same mistakes that Zuko did. Zuko was the prime example of what she would be if she wasn’t what her father desired. She became what she was so she could survive.

Azula was every bit a victim as Zuko was, and probably even more.

#atla #avatar the last airbender #azula #zuko #ozai #ursa #fire nation #her life was a tragedy #seriously i feel bad for azula #if only ursa had treated her right #or iroh #what a shit family

[blacksunisvalid]

Analysis: Did the Death of Pyrhha raise the stakes?

I want to start this by saying that people who were smarter and more qualified than me have talked about other problems with the character of Pyrhha and the writing behind her, and also with other things like the Arkos dynamic. But this has been something I've been thinking about for a long time, and I wanted to ask the question in the title: Did Pyrhha dying really raise the stakes of the series? The answer after I've come to about this is no, it didn't, but we as an audience believed they had been. Let me sort of explain what I mean by this, and use some other series as an example.

When Pyrhha died, we knew very little about her. We knew she was an arena fighter and was one of the best of the best. We knew that this had left her to be mostly friendless, and wanted to be viewed as normal, based on her interactions with Jaune, we can tell she felt good that someone was seeing her as a person and not The Invincible Girl. And we know that Pyrhha is socially awkward, with her habit of apologizing for things that aren't her fault, and the sort of awkward way she would say ' Hello again.' But beyond that, anything for Pyrhha is a head-canon or a bit of a deeper reading of what's present. We didn't know if she had a family at the time, what her goals were at Beacon, and for the rest of her life. We know the above things, and that she liked Jaune. An important thing to note is for the most, we are told these things. We are told she doesn't really have friends, and we are told people put her on a pedestal. But we aren't shown this. This is less effective as we have no context for this.

I think a lot of people will agree that when characters die in fiction one of the saddest things is the fallout other characters go through as a result of their death emotionally. When I think of some of the saddest deaths in fiction, it's usually not the death itself, but the way people around them react. One of the best examples of this for several shows ( spoilers for all will be here, hence the spoiler tag) is the death of Maes Hughes from FMA and FMAB. Maes Hughes was a supporting character, but we knew a lot about him. He was Mustang's best friend, supportive of the Elric brothers, and a loving husband and father. We also know he was very supportive of Mustang's plan to advance and change the world once he had more power. Importantly, for the most part, these things are shown to us. We see Hughes on the phone gushing about his wife, we see Hughes showing tons of photos of his family. They didn't have to tell us ' Hughes cares about his daughter' because we knew that. And so when he died, it was devastating to the audience because we had to see how everyone reacted, and these were characters we knew also. Everything from Mustang crying and saying ' It's a terrible day for rain' to Hughes's daughter crying and asking ' Why they're putting dirt on daddy' at the funeral. These are characters who we cared about, and so seeing them in pain was awful to experience.

But with Pyrhha, we don't really have that. I forget the exact volume, 6 or 7 but even when seeing a redheaded woman talk to Jaune at Pyrhha's statue when they leave flowers, we don't know who that is. We don't know if that was her mother, her sister, an aunt, or just someone who had known Pyrhha. Everything about that ( unless RT has revealed on social media) is speculation, and while a good scene, it doesn't really solve the problem I mentioned above, we don't really know people like a family who would be the most affected by the death of Pyrrha.

Jaune and Ruby were both affected by the death of Pyrhha, with Jaune reforging his armor to be a tribute to her. But the problem is, at least to me that it doesn't feel deep enough. Using a different example, the death of Peter Parker in Infinity War. Some of the first words Tony says in Endgame are ' I lost the kid.' At first, Tony is not willing to risk his wife and child on the chance of bringing back everyone else, because he got incredibly lucky. We've seen the arc of Tony, and this, while maybe selfish is understandable, he's always made the sacrifice play, and so seeing him saying for once he won't is satisfying. But then he sees a picture he has with Peter. Trying to play it off as curiosity, he sees if he could actually invent time travel, and then he does. It's subtle, and it's not tossed in our face, but it's there that the death of Peter really affected Tony and played into his survivor's guilt.

One could say that Jaune wants to kill Cinder for what happened to Pyrhha, and that is a fair example of growth. Volume 1 Jaune probably couldn't fathom taking a life, and by Volume 5 he was trying to murder Cinder in the battle of Haven. But Ruby saw her die. And other than activating her silver eyes ( Another issue others have talked about is how she doesn't really wonder what the silver eyes are) I can't remember really her ever commenting on it. Contrast this with the death of Penny, which is some of the best voice acting the series has for Ruby.

Really small scenes could have helped a lot with this. Some of the examples of things I think could have helped-

When Jaune is calling out team attacks, he accidentally calls out Arkos or a move which relied on Pyrhha, only to realize she wasn't there, and there's a brief moment of silence as it sinks in all over again. ( Example: Shotaro from Kamen Rider W calling for Phillip in the last episode but Phillip wasn't there)

Jaune or someone else does a move in combat that Pyrhha had taught to them. Some of the others see it happening, and they briefly see Pyrhha with them. ( Example: Kakashi seeing Minato in front of him when Naruto performs the Rasenshuriken)

Let the characters talk fondly about Pyrhha with a sense of wistfulness. An example of this would be a difficult battle, and then after the battle, they say something like " If Pyrhha had been there with us, well that would have been easier." Tense silence, and then someone, maybe Jaune chuckles and agrees. It's okay to talk fondly about those who are no longer with us. ( Example: The Justice League cartoon when in an alternate world, Flash is dead and Green Lantern and Hawkgirl talk about him with playful annoyance.)

No one really talks about what her death means for them or how outclassed they seemingly are. An example of what I mean is in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid when a character named Kiriya, or Kamen Rider Lazer dies. The characters are told he died because he 'knew too much' and so a lot of time is spent in uncovering what it was he knew. It became a meme of sorts in the fandom about ' the real reason Kiriya died.' On top of that, the characters lament on how it's concerning that their enemy has a Level 10 form while the highest they can reach is Level 5 as an example.

Pyrrha's death and the fallout from it ultimately remind me of the Justice League movie. We're told the world misses Superman and is a worse place without him. But the DCU hadn't spent enough time building up a Superman the world at large would mourn for, or a Superman who did so much for the world that in his absence, things fell apart. I felt the same way with Pyrhha's death, we were told that it mattered more so than anything.

Now that I talked about what I feel is the emotional failure of the death of Pyrhha, I want to move into the other side of it, raising the stakes. Yes, killing a character is a great way to raise the stakes. It's the most lethal version of The Worf Effect (TVTropes some it up very well, basically a character we know to be strong losing to a new character to establish the new character is strong, IE Thanos beating the Hulk as Infinity War opens). But I feel that Pyrhha was not the right character to do for this for the following reasons

We don't really know strong she is. We are told she was a prodigy, but we are never really shown what that means. The only fights we see her in are CRDL, students at Beacon, and while she does beat them all, this is also the only extended fight we have for them, so we don't exactly know how difficult it would be to beat them. Mercury, but he threw the fight purposefully to get information on her, so we have no idea how they would have stacked up if they fought. ( I think she would win but still) Penny, which even if the fight ended in tragedy is the best possible matchup for her since her Semblance lets her control metal, and the fight which ultimately cost her life in Cinder. We knew Cinder had the power of half a Maiden and got the other from killing Pyrhha, but we don't really know what 'half a Maiden' amounts too because we don't know how strong Cinder was before becoming a Maiden, so it's impossible to say what the amp was. I'm not an expert power-scaler, but killing a character to show someone is strong works if we have a much better sense of how strong they were. The example of this is the death of Jiraiya against Pain in Naruto. We know how strong Jiraiya is as a member of the Three Sanin, which by the narrative would roughly put him on par with Tsunade, the head of the village at the time, and Orochimaru who had trained Sasuke. Jiraiya dying shows the audience that Pain is stronger than the current Hokage and protector of the village, and most of the cast. We never got to see Pyrhha sparring with RWBY or other members of JN_R to show how much stronger than them she is. If we had seen this, and then Cinder killed her anyways, it would have been much more d effective and plant a question in our mind: " How can the main cast hope to defeat Cinder?"

Killing Pyrhha wasn't really an objective for the villains, and it was more so good luck that happened along the way. Sure, Mercury gathers data on Pyrhha, but it seems like Cinder wanted to destroy Beacon more than get Pyrhha out of the way. Even the set up of Emerald making Pyrhha kill Penny amounts to nothing, as in the same volume, Pyrhha dies before the consequences of this can be addressed. Pyrrha was in the way of what Cinder wanted, and Cinder killed her which can be an effective set-up, but in my opinion, it's more effective if the villains have been planning specific things, like toppling a public figure like Pyrrha. In BNHA, people try to take out All-Might, and for good reason, he's seen as the Symbol of Peace. Small scenes could have built this up for Pyrhha also. After Mercury gets information on her, just have the villains make small statements about how she's in the way, and that they have to do something.

Pyrrha being chosen to be the Fall Maiden doesn't really make the most sense. From a set-up perspective, it does, the villain killing the hero before they can achieve a powerup, and said power-up is the hero's best hope. ( Examples of this being the Muteki form in Kamen Rider Ex-Aid) But we're not shown why Pyrhha was chosen. As I said above, because we don't really know how strong she is, it could have been Weiss, or Yang, or Blake, or Nora because we don't know what qualities she was chosen for. On top of that, both Glynda and Winter were there, and arguably more powerful than Pyrhha, and would have been better choices. The set-up for me just doesn't work, and so by extension to me, Pyrhha's death felt like they wanted her out of the way, and needed a reason.

This was an incredibly long-winded post, but I hope I was able to get my points across. What do you think?

#rwby analysis #pyrhha nikos #crtq #rwby thoughts #pyrhha

[insufferable-know-it-all-blog]

A Ranking of the Gayest American Girl Dolls

When it comes to lesbian subtext in the American Girl series, there's so much to unpack. Today I'll be discussing the 6 girls I deem the gayest.

Honorable Mentions

Felicity

Tomboy and horse girl. Has a companion doll. She hates learning etiquette. The Jiggy Nye redemption arc in her series is better than Snape's redemption arc, in my opinion. You may think she’s gayer than an honorable mention, but I think her traits read as “see this is a good and interesting colonist! She’s not like other girls uwu” as opposed to gayness. I am open to debate on the matter.

Addy

Her stories are much higher stakes than most of the other dolls', so the most time we have for subtext comes in her short stories and in her relationship with her friend Sarah. For example: 

An enemies-to-lovers fic where Addy and Harriet are grown up could be veeeery interesting though.

Certified WLW (women-loving women)

6. Molly

Molly's lesbianism is more quantifiable than some of the other dolls. Some contributing factors are:

- bad at math

- lots of internalized self-loathing

- obsessed with her teacher Miss Campbell/daydreams about how pretty she is/snoops into her love life

- her OUTFITS

5. Josefina

Josefina Montoya is a Historical Doll (now called BeForever) from 1824 living in what would later become New Mexico. She's a soft girl with aspirations of becoming a healer. She's scared of goats and has a cool aunt, Tía Dolores.

Much of her stories revolve around adjusting to life after the death of her mother, and her relationship with Tía Dolores.

I don't want to gloss over this: there's a lot of discussion (in the stories and in the historical information at the back of each book) of colonialism and America's treatment of the west and those who live there.

There's also a fair amount of domestic tasks, playing music, and admiring flowers.

tldr; Josefina was the original cottagecore lesbian

4. Julie

If Molly's gayness isn't quite subtext, Julie's is canon. She's so lesbian-coded by way of lesbian stereotypes that I'm surprised a pride flag doesn't come with her accessories.

Julie petitions to join the boys basketball team, becomes an environmental activist, runs for student body president, and attends a Presidential debate. Her mom also has some very gay vibes, being a recently-divorced woman starting a career by opening a resale shop.

Julie lives in 1970s San Francisco and uses her privilege to lift up the voices of others and hold those in power accountable. Julie and her pet rabbit said gay rights.

3. Lindsey

Lindsey is the first Girl of the Year, released in 2001. She was also the first Jewish American Girl Doll. The title of the second chapter of her book is "What a Mess!" A mood. She’s not as well known so I’m going to fill you in a little bit more than with other dolls.

Lindsey is a flaming ball of chaos that ruins everything important to her family (according to herself.) Her story kicks off with her being disgusted to learn that her school is holding a "pet parade," which entails dressing pets up in human clothes and parading them around. She prepares a speech for her class to tell them off, but her teacher shuts her down. Lindsey doesn't take this well. She snatches an iguana and climbs up a tree in protest.

She plays the trumpet in her school band. One day she asks her band teacher if he has a girlfriend and she's very sad to learn he's single. How can he be happy without a woman to take care of him? Projecting much?

Lindsey also befriends a girl who is often bullied in school, cries in the bathroom (a gay ritual), and is told by her uncle, while dancing at her brother's bar mitzvah (post-Matzo ball food fight) that she is not a worm, and despite her chaos, is very loved.

Lindsey knows what she values and will throw food at your face or climb up a tree if you disrespect her. She also craves validation because she feels like a failure due to her unconventional approach to life. A lesbian icon in the making.

2. Kit

Kit spends six books telling you to fuck off with your gender roles, thank you very much. There's a lot of focus on Kit's life as a reporter and what her growing up during the depression will mean for her future expression of identity.

One part of her books that highlights Kit's relationship with gender roles and heteronormativity is when Ruthie reads fairy tales because she likes princesses, but Kit reads Robin Hood because she likes how he steals from the rich to give to the poor and tricks a sheriff. While Kit could become a case of "I'm not like other girls," I think this is avoided by her close friendship with Ruthie. She doesn't necessarily look down on traditional women's roles, she simply has other ambitions.

So yes, this part of her story is important, but what really sells it for me is her longing for adventure and her passion for baseball and Amelia Earhart.

Also? Her bomb outfits.

At one point, Kit gets anxious and hides under her porch. A lesbian oasis.

Kit is a practical and clever young lady with a bright future ahead of her. Keep up the great work, you icon.

1. Samantha

I have read, with my own two eyes, people calling Samantha a homophobe. Please.... I am so tired. Do not underestimate her like that. Let's dive in to the biggest lesbian of the bunch: Samantha Parkington.

Okay so first of all her series begins with her falling out of a tree and sassing her sexist Grandmary. From there, she grows close to Cornelia, her Uncle's girlfriend, who is involved in the fight for women's rights in the city. Samantha is heavily influenced by her and through the books, develops many of the same opinions.

When an Irish girl (Nellie) moves in next door to become a servant to Eddie Ryland's family, Samantha befriends her and teaches her to read. She never speaks down to Nellie or looks at herself as a savior, she just acts on what she thinks is right. The "Looking Back" sections of Samantha's books cover topics like social progress for women, the wealth gap, the treatment of servants, and the disparity in education between classes.

While Samantha follows in Cornelia's path, she also forms her own ideas. For instance: Samantha wins an essay contest with her essay on progress in American factories, and why America is excellent for such progress. When she shows Nellie her winning essay, Nellie tells her that it doesn't represent the truth of factories. Samantha sets out to uncover the truth about child labor that many Proud Americans have kept hidden. She decides she can't read her winning essay, so she changes it and calls out those who condone unfair labor in factories.

Samantha respects every person she comes across and always sees herself as an equal, not a superior. (Except her asshole neighbor, Eddie Ryland. He can choke!) Like Julie, Samantha uses her privilege to bring accountability to oppressors and fight for what's right.

Samantha loves women and won't rest until they all live safe, healthy, and happy lives. She questions the status-quo. She seeks revenge on the men who have made girls' lives hell. And she really loves her Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia. And climbing trees.

I imagine Samantha growing up and moving to New York City, hanging out in lesbian-owned speakeasies, and becoming a Mae West stan.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about American Girl subtext on twitter! If you enjoyed this article, please share it with a friend or two! Thank you for supporting an independent writer and American Girl stan.

#american girl #*

[robbyrobinson]

Fanfic: Enemies Within

A @dokidokiliteraturegirls fanfic (webcomic was created by @youhavethewrong

                                       [CHAPTER ONE]

“Quick, everyone, into the club room!” Monika yelled.

The girls’ rapid footsteps echoed down the halls. The entire school was tainted in a deep shade of red. The walls pulsated and contorted into different geometric shapes. Whatever was chasing after the girls was jetting fast, bouncing off the vibrant walls with ease. The school itself became a barren wasteland devoid of students and teachers. Outside of the building all of the windows had been shattered. 

“It’s gaining on us!” Natsuki remarked.

“I wish Anthy was here,” Yuri sighs, “if she didn’t decide to face off against that beast, she would’ve deleted them a long time ago.” 

Ako darted on the twisting floors, managing to avoid some obstructions. “We’re almost to the literature club!” 

The black and white girl was correct. The entrance to the door of the literature club was within their grasp. The floors may be writhing and shifting, but if they kept their footing, they should make it. Natsuki turned to look at her lover and smiled. “We’re almost there, dear.” 

Yuri’s mouth formed an O as if she were about to comment. Before she could, her left foot hit a bump in the floor and to her lover’s horror and bewilderment, she crashed onto the floor with an ungraceful thud. Yuri moaned in pain. “It’s my knee...I bruised it.” The walls merged into the ground and lifted the purple-haired girl in the air, propelling her backward. 

“YURI!” Natsuki screamed in disbelief. 

Yuri was sprawled on her back recoiling in pain. “Natsuki, you have to escape without me.” 

Tears sweltered in Natsuki’s eyes. “No! Not after everything we’ve been through, you can’t give up now!” 

Yuri started to cry as well. “I’m badly hurt...I’ll just slow you guys down. It’s okay.” 

Natsuki shook her head violently in refusal. “My life was nothing but misery before I met you at the literature club. My father...everyone ostracizing me and seeing me weird for my obsession with manga and...other things...Yuri, you lighten up my world! I don’t want to lose you now! Please stand up!” 

Yuri tried to get up, but the tremors in the ground forced her back down. The creature was now advancing towards them faster than before. “Forget me, Natsuki! If you won’t do it for me, do it for us!” 

Natsuki looked at her other club members then back at Yuri. She did this a few times that felt like an eternity. Her thoughts were being drowned out by the quaking noise and Yuri’s vocal insistence. Natsuki grabbed the sides of her temples in anguish. “Why do I have to choose like this!?” 

With that, she ran towards Yuri. Ako stopped momentarily to see what was happening. “Wait, Natsuki!” 

She wanted to say more. She had to say more. She didn’t want to lose anyone else today. But Monika grabbed her only arm for she had lost her metallic arm in the fighting. “We don’t have much time,” Monika said solemnly, “it pains me, but Natsuki made her decision.” 

“B-but...” Ako stammered. Monika dashed to the door and bent down to bite the handle of the door. Her teeth grasped the handle tightly giving Monika a slight toothache from them grinding on the handle to open it counterclockwise. She couldn’t help but pray to whatever forces out there in the universe to give her this small bit of strength to do this one simple task. With the door opened, Monika tossed Ako into the room and slammed the door. 

Natsuki somehow made it to Yuri and placed herself on top of her girlfriend. Yuri was still hurting slightly, but feeling the warmth of Natsuki’s body did remedy some of it. Tears were streaming down her face. “That was quite an immature thing to do, Natsuki.” 

Natsuki cried as well. Her tears fell on Yuri’s chest soaking it. “Hey, you know me, Yuri, I am a child after all. 

The two shared a deep, passionate kiss with each other breaking it a few moments to breathe. Natsuki’s lips still tasted like cupcakes. Yuri’s were a sweet lavender scent. Their chaser towered over the couple and chuckled. “That would be sweet, but I already sacrificed my ties a long time ago.” 

Natsuki looked up to see the attacker. They remained in a stable motion despite the walls and floors collapsing in on themselves. In fact, Natsuki could’ve sworn that whoever it was, they were levitating in the air. The attacker was radiating a red energy and was gathering into a violent ball of dark power. Natsuki grit her teeth. 

“You’ll never get away with this!” 

“That’s what they all say.” 

Ako paced back and forth when she stopped in her tracks to hear several blasts and sizzling. Ako whimpered to herself knowing what happened but she could not even dare to imagine the immense pain Yuri and Natsuki were put in.She looked over at Monika. Monika was putting on a straight face, or at least a visual of it. She heard everything as well, but she had to be strong in their memory. Now they had to barricade the door to keep the attacker at bay. 

Ako was grabbing whatever wasn’t glued down to the ground and blockading the door with it. Desks, chairs, boxes. Whatever was readily available, Ako made use of. “That won’t hold them for long, Monika, so hurry!” 

Monika had her laptop in hand and activated it. “I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying!” 

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Red energy illuminated through the cracks of the door. Ako responded by throwing in her body weight to slow down the attacker’s thrashing. She shoved her hands firmly on the door and pressed her feet on the ground. “Grrr....can’t hold on much longer!!” 

“It��s finishing loading, Ako, just hold on a little longer,” Monika said reassuringly.

Ako’s sweat moistened her hands, making them slippery. Her arms were chafing and on the verge of failure. “I have to do this for all the girls.” 

The banging on the door became louder and more forceful. The desks and chairs were giving way. The red energy shined brightly, overtaking the room. Monika became unnerved by it, but she pressed on. “Just one more and...there! Ako, I got into the command panel!” 

Her tone of triumph fell flat from the lack of a response. “Ako?” Monika said “Ako?” 

She turned to look at the door and nearly panicked. Ako was gone; evaporated. The door was now hanging on its single hinge alongside the charred chairs and desks. But worse of all, she was now alone in the club room with Ako’s killer. 

“I-it’s you,” Monika remarked. She shielded her laptop despite being petrified. 

“After I have destroyed all of the other alternate realities, you of all people should’ve known that I would come for this reality next.” 

Monika narrowed her eyes in disgust. “There is one universe that I know you haven’t destroyed.” 

The attacker laughed. “Dimension C-2293? The one where you live a happy little life as if none of your sins ever happened?” 

Monika bowed her head in shame. “That dimension’s Monika has a copy of the laptop I use. I already sent it to her. You’ll never win because of teamwork.”

She looked at the clock on the wall, but reading it was difficult due to the walls twisting and turning and fading away. “99% of the game is deleted.” 

The attacker smiled. “Everything you have ever done dies with you. I don’t care if you sent a version of yourself the message because you no longer exist.” 

In a flash, the attacker was gone leaving Monika with the world crumbling around her. She collapsed on the ground writhing in agony. Looking down at her hands, she could see that the flesh on them was being eroded away. Before long, she would be completely deleted. More open wounds erupted throughout her body and unravels from the data being eradicated. With her gaze faltering, Monika felt her only solace would be that she’d be with her dimension’s Sayori. 

“I just hope she gets the message ASAP.” 

                                [CHAPTER TWO]

Monika and Sayori sat in their shared home one day watching television. For whatever reason, Monika had a worried look on her face. Sayori noticed her few passing glances and was slowly becoming alarmed as well. "Dear, what's wrong? You're acting weird."

Monika blinked suddenly and then a few times. "Oh, sorry; I just received some…interesting e-mail."

Sayori's eyes widened. "Really? From whom?"

Monika shrugged her shoulders. "The coordinates were all over the chart." She stretched out her arms to further emphasize her point. "I feel it has something to do with the game's code again. Maybe I'll ask Anthy on it later."

Sayori snapped her fingers suddenly. "Oh, shoot; I almost forgot. I think our Ako has a crush!"

Monika tensed up for a bit. Even if it's been about two years, Monika still felt slightly incensed to the notion that Ako would try to go after her Sayori again. Even though they had both buried the hatchet back during the beach episode arc. Sayori took notice if this and tapped her on the shoulder. "No, not me this time."

Monika's limbs loosened in relief. "Sorry. I still need to work on that. Anyway, who is it?"

"Anthy." Sayori replied.

A moment of silence filled the room. It was so quiet, that a pin could drop any minute and not invoke much of a reaction from the two girls. Monika opened her mouth a few times still unsure on what to say. Anthy? That girl who literally tried to kill all of them and was the one who bit her arm off? Really? Monika picked up her glass to take a few sips from it, but it noticeably wobbled in her hand.

"Anthy? Why?" Monika asked.

"It all started when Anthy started to appear more to check on how the game was running. As you know, Anthy kind of made some alterations to the game by making herself a home here. Well, she started hanging out with Ako at the library where she'd watch her draw two flowers and a cat. Anthy started bringing her different objects to draw. One thing led to another…and then they both kissed."

Monika spit her drink out, startling Sayori. "Monika, what the hell?"

"Sorry, sorry. It's just…coming off as a surprise to hear all that."

Sayori nodded her head. "That explained why they kind of…freaked out when they were close to each other at the club room a day before."

Monika was still unsure of what to think. Sure, she is content with the fact that Ako found herself someone to potentially love. But Anthy…to be frank, was a little creepy. What with her permanent smile and shark teeth, could you really blame her? Anthy couldn't much help that because she mentioned constantly that it was her default expression. Even when she wasn't doing anything…deadly, she was still intimidating. But at the same time, she shouldn't dissuade Ako from pursuing her heart, even if it ends in heartbreak.

"I take it that she texted you about it?"

Sayori nodded her head again. "Yeah; she did. She said that she wasn't sure about what to do."

"Are you suggesting we arrange for the two to confess to each other?" Monika asked.

"Of course; she's going to come by later to confide in me. You could maybe confront Anthy and give her advice."

Monika raised her finger to say something additionally. Sayori laughed at this. "She won't bite; I promise."

A large distance across from where they lived, a girl with short blonde hair and blue eyes was walking. She attended the same school as the four girls and walked home from school every day at a certain time. It was not long since school had let out for the day. She walked down a small path soaking in her surroundings. She was thinking of what to have for dinner at home when a surge of power generated through the air. She looked up in alarm.

Above her, a rip formed in the sky and gave way to a large, gaping hole. The girl stood glued to the ground with shock and awe. Fragments of the sky fell onto the ground revealing heavy static behind it. "What in the?" she asked herself.

From that rip came a rosy-colored flame ball. It launched itself in a downward spiral bombarding towards the girl. Seeing this suddenly brought the girl back to her senses and she ran right to dodge it. The flame ball smashed into the ground, leveling it. Smoke filled the site of the impact. Out of curiosity, the girl pondered what had fallen to Earth and stood by to observe. The smoke eventually settled enough for the girl to realize that it formed a considerably large crater.

"What?"

She ran towards the crater her curiosity being overbearing as it was. Panting from running, she investigated the crater to a surprise. In the hole, there was a girl, roughly around her age. More bizarrely, she was bereft of clothing and laying on her belly with her bare cheeks at full display. The blonde-haired girl blushed at this slightly most likely from embarrassment at seeing the girl in such a position. But she was horrified all the same assuming the girl for dead.

"Oh no, oh no, oh no…" she said. She scrambled through her belongings to find her cell phone so she could contact the medics of the dilemma. After dialing up the number, she momentarily looked away to listen to the ringtone. She looked back to catch another glimpse of the girl for a description but saw that she was gone.

"Ma'am? Ma'am?" the receptor asked.

The blonde girl held the phone shakily in her hand before dropping it seemingly not hearing the person on the other end. In front of her, the naked girl levitated before her. She couldn't speak. Nothing about what she was seeing made any sense. Before she could say anything, the naked girl grabbed her by her throat and glared at her. Upon looking closer at the girl before her, she saw that she shared the same color of her eyes. As she was desperately trying to comprehend what was going on, the nude girl's eyes turned crimson.

A few minutes later, the once nude girl had clothes. After finishing up on her necktie, she walked up the path. "I'll be coming for you soon. Don't get too cozy."

Ako arrived at Monika and Sayori's house roughly at six. She approached the door fretfully and almost found herself walking away several times unsure of whether she should go through with it or not. She extended her right hand to knock on the door, but her knocks were barely an octave. She waited around, but she did not hear the girls. "I knew this was a bad idea."

Ako turned to walk away, but the door slowly opened to a creek. "Ako?"

"Oh, uh, hey…Sayori," Ako said.

Monika had prepared some tea for the occasion and offered some to Ako. Ako thanked her for it and took a long, noisy sip from it. Afterward, the room went silent again. Monika and Sayori stood by waiting for someone to start the conversation. Eyes darted throughout the room to see a single instance of lips parting to form a vowel sound. When nothing came about, Sayori cleared her throat. "So, Ako, how…"

"I kissed her, Sayori," Ako finally responded.

"Oh," Sayori said plainly,

"I don't know what happened. We were both sitting down at a table. Anthy had gone to one of those online game websites and brought me back a teddy bear for me to draw." Ako stopped herself so she could drink more of the tea before starting again. "Before I knew it, Anthy was sitting close to me; so close, I could feel her body rub up to mine. That same sensation I felt for you came back. Stronger even. My gut was making…butterflies is the term, I think? My heart was beating fast in my chest…I was scared that it would burst out of my chest if I wasn't too careful. But I felt Anthy's heart also skipping a beat."

Sayori and Monika listened carefully not saying anything. Anthy's cheeks began to turn green and she was becoming queasy. "Sayori, she's having an attack, what are we going to do?"

Sayori slipped out a paper bag, walked across the room, and placed it in Ako's hands. After breathing sporadically into the bag, her breathing eased. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Sayori said, "can you speak now?"

"I was drawing the teddy bear like I mentioned…but when Anthy got even closer to me, my hand nudged up with hers, and…our eyes met each other. As if unprecedented, we suddenly kissed."

"And after that, Anthy opened up a portal to run away?" Sayori asked.

Ako bowed her head. "Should I have kissed her?"

Monika spoke up next. "Did she like the kiss?"

"Monika!" Sayori shouted in surprise. "That's too much to ask."

Ako shrugged. "I couldn't tell. She didn't turn her head in disgust over it, but she also didn't express that she enjoyed it."

"Well, maybe we can help you come to terms with it," Monika said.

"How?" Ako asked.

"Getting you both to state your feelings to each other."

Ako raised an eyebrow. "How?"

"Well, a poem worked for both Natsuki and Yuri," Monika explained, "maybe that could help."

Ako raised her palm. "I gotta stop you right there, friend."

"Why?"

"Writing poems are not my thing." Ako stated. "It sounds kind of dumb."

Monika's right eye twitched. She felt her inner rage reaching her boiling point. "What the f-!"

Sayori covered her lover's mouth. "Maybe a drawing you can both do?"

Ako scratched her chin in deep thought. "That could work."

Ako stood up from her seat. "But the only issue remaining is that she caused us so much pain and almost killed us and nearly deleted the game. How can I just forget that?"

Sayori smiled. "To be fair, you can never really forget something like that. It makes you more unsure that you could trust someone like that again because you run a risk of going through that pain again. But when the person is putting in the effort of being better, you have to have some faith in them."

Ako nodded in agreement. "Is that like when you forgave Monika for the things she did in your game?"

"Yes. I mean Monika tried to have my neck snapped when I had a noose around my neck, but it's all good now, right, Monika?"

Monika laughed nervously at Sayori's comment. "Yeah…I did, didn't I?"

Ako also joined in on the laughter. Sayori and Ako were laughing wildly as if it were some type of joke. But Monika remained quiet, clearly not wanting to be reminded of what happened in the past.

                [CHAPTER THREE]

"This…doesn't make any sense," Anthy said to herself. She went behind the background of the game's world to view the coding. There was some recent addition to the game, but for some reason, the addition was invisible to her. As an antivirus program, Anthy would be aware of it. If data were being burned in exhaust, Anthy would be sure to quash that. And yet, here she was trying to find out what happened. She was so absorbed in her work; she almost did not hear her doorbell ring.

"What? Huh?"

"Anthy, it's me," a voice responded.

Anthy sighed in relief. "Oh, it's just you, Monika; come on in."

Monika opened the front door and entered the house. Her eyes widened in surprise. Anthy's house…was not that great to look at. The wallpaper was in stitched patches of light green stripes. Like a Christmas tree. All the furniture were merely photos she had made copies on by visiting various websites on the internet like Clip Art and Photoshop. Most striking, however, was that when the wallpaper began to decay and peel, it revealed the static background of the game's setting.

"Oh, hey," Anthy said in a half-laugh, "this is my humble abode." She stretched her arms out to further emphasize it. Monika soaked it in for a few moments but forced a smile.

"Oh, it's nice," she said.

Anthy lowered her head to indicate that she sensed that she was lying. "Yeah, yeah, I know. It isn't the best thing ever, but at least it's cozy." Anthy laughed in embarrassment.

"Well, what were you doing exactly?" Monika asked.

"Oh, the game apparently had some addition to it, but for whatever reason, I can't find it."

Monika scratched her chin. "That is odd; I received some coordinates on my laptop; it felt like it came from somewhere outside of the game."

Anthy sat on a green chair she copied and pasted from Clip Art. "What brings you to my home anyway?" Anthy squinted her eyes in suspicion. "You didn't add something to the game, right, Monika?"

Monika denied it by shaking her head. "No. It's actually about Sayori."

Anthy looked up. "She isn't still distraught over finding out the truth about the Player?"

Monika frowned. "It wasn't your fault, Anthy, you know that."

Anthy nodded. "Yeah, but when the game glitched out that one time and you all were thrown out of your game and met the Player, I felt it was my fault for it."

Monika pat Anthy's shoulder. "Even though the Player outright admitted to us that he viewed us as nothing more than pixels, the love that we had for each other was real. It was the only thing that mattered."

"True; well, what was on Sayori's mind?" Anthy asked. She ripped a small hole in thin air and pulled out a mug. In the mug was some coffee. She then opened her mouth and pitched the mug into it. Monika shivered a bit. Anthy always had the oddest way of eating food. If she even needed to eat at all.

"She spoke with Ako today about what happened between you and Ako."

Anthy suddenly spit the hot coffee out of her mouth. "What!?"

Monika waved her hands. "It's fine, it's fine."

Anthy's face reddened spontaneously. She bowed her head again and shielded it with her gloved hands. She let out a slight whimper almost as though she were a little puppy. "Oh, why did you have to bring it up? It was so…humiliating!"

Monika blinked a few times whilst thinking of what to do next. "Did Ako think it was?"

Anthy looked back up again. "I got out of dodge before I even asked her about it."

Monika nodded understandably. "Ah. I understand. You know, Sayori and I didn't immediately hook up, you know."

Anthy listened tentatively. "Yeah, I can see that. But what can I do about my dilemma?"

"Oh, when Ako came over to speak about what happened, she also had the same feelings about the kiss as well."

Anthy's eyes widened in surprise. "Really?"

Monika smiled. "Yes; she almost through up from it."

Anthy squinted her eyes to indicate a frown which was obviously hard due to her perpetual grin. "So, she did hate it?"

"I wouldn't say that" Monika replied. "It goes to show that she is just as unsure about her feelings like you are."

Anthy nervously tapped her two index fingers. "I…I think I love her."

Monika smiled warmly. "Well, I m glad to hear you coming to that realization of yourself."

"I don't know what it is," Anthy replied, "but anytime I'm around Ako, I feel…warm. Calm even."

"And what are you going to do about it?" Monika asked.

"Jump into a farming simulation and maybe disconnect with modern society?" Anthy answered.

"No. If you are unsure of what to do, Sayori and I came up with a solution."

"Tell me, please," Anthy begged.

Sayori was at home watching anime when she received a notification. She reached for her cell phone and saw that it was a text message from Monika:

"Anthy agreed to do the drawing with Ako."

Sayori smiled. She quickly replied and laced it neatly with a heart emoji. She played around with Monika in a teasing fashion until Anthy typed up a response amounting to STFU. Sayori rolled her eyes. That was one of the things she liked about her bizarre, shark-toothed friend.

Sayori continued to watch her show for a good hour. As it reached its finale, she received another buzz. "What now?" she asked.

She flipped through her messages again. This time, she saw that it was a number she did not recognize. She opened it up and read it. While the number was one, she did not know, it stated that it was from Natsuki. Sayori raised an eyebrow. She read it over a couple times to make sure she was interpreting what she was reading.

"I'm at the mall; I'm going to buy an anniversary gift for Yuri, and I need your advice."

Sayori was more complex. "Is that you, Yuri? What happened to your number?"

After typing that out, she got a response. "My phone broke, so I had to get a replacement."

Sayori rubbed her head. "Well, that makes sense."

Not taking how odd the text messages were, Sayori agreed to Natsuki's request and they both set up where they would be meeting at. Sayori followed the coordinates without further questions. Even though the site that they agreed upon was further away from the mall. Sayori thought to text Natsuki a few more times inquiring whether she had forgotten where they would meet up at. Natsuki sparingly gave responses at random until she arrived at a back alley. Sayori became unsettled by this.

"Natsuki, are you there?"

Her deep, innermost thoughts told her, nay screamed at her to not go into the alley, but her mind immediately drifted towards Natsuki. What if something was horribly wrong with her? Without much infliction, she rushed into the alley way. "Natsuki! Natsuki!?"

Her voice echoed throughout the seeming empty void. But there was no response. Sayori held her phone out and typed up another text for Natsuki. "Where are you, Natsuki? This isn't funny."

She waited around still fearful of her surroundings. She felt as if she was being watched by some unseen spectacle. It felt like an eternity of her waiting for an answer. The hair on the back of her hand stood on end. Her neck was out in the open, and now something or someone was caressing it. Sweat was raining down from her pores. But from that bout of anxiety, Natsuki's text came back startling her.

"Behind you."

Sayori turned around and saw a dark figure. It grabbed her before Sayori could even scream. Sayori struggled against her assailant with all her strength. The attacker grabbed onto Sayori's wrists with a tight grip. "Grrr…get off!"

The assailant twisted Sayori's right wrist propelling Sayori to fall on the ground. That proved to be Sayori's undoing. In a flash, the attacker held something in their hand and slammed it on Sayori's face. Sayori mumbled and squirmed vibrantly with her head pushed harder into the object. Eventually, Sayori's struggling weakened, and she fell unconscious. The assailant sighed heavily out of irritation at Sayori's resistance and went to collect her.

                      [CHAPTER FOUR]

"Mmm…. where am I?"

Sayori's eyes fluttered open to soak in her surroundings. She was in a dark room somewhere in an unknown place. Her mind pained her apparently resulting from her attacker wrestled that odd-smelling substance on her face causing her to black out. Sayori reached to soothe her aching head, but there were restraints around her wrists preventing her from moving her arms.

"What are these?"

She tried to feel for the rest of her body only to receive the same response. Her waist and legs were also seemingly locked in place. Sayori's eyes widened at the realization. She was trapped unable to maneuver her limbs. Before she could fully comprehend what has become of her, the room was suddenly washed over in light and assaulted her eyes. Squinting her eyes, Sayori beheld some figure standing in the doorway.

"So, you're finally awake, huh?"

That voice. Something about that voice was familiar. Sayori looked down seeing that she was tied to a chair. That made some considerable sense. But that was not her main concern. With her vision steadied, she further investigated the source of the voice. Her eyes widened in shock.

It was her. Or rather some entity that has her visage. She wore a school uniform like her own. Her hair was rosy-red with her signature bow on it. The other girl shared the blue color of her eyes, but in her case, they were paler and seeming lifeless. A dark aura radiated from her. Sayori could not believe what she was seeing. She blinked her eyes a few more time under the belief that she was having a daydream. But it dawned on her that she was very wide awake.

"W-who are you?" Sayori asked finally.

The girl lightly chuckled. "I'm you, idiot."

"B-but how?" Sayori stammered. "Were you left over when Monika rebooted the game?"

The girl turned aside and slipped out a phone. Sayori looked intently at it seeing that it was her own phone. The girl had stolen it when she was out cold. She lightly tapped the screen of the phone. She browsed through the pictures on her gallery. She raised an eyebrow, perplexed. There were several photos of Sayori with Monika. "How long has this…thing been going on?" The girl placed heavy emphasis on "thing."

"For about two years now," Sayori replied.

"Are you suggesting that after all of the pain that she had put us through, you're now in love with her?" she spit. Just thinking about Monika's name was enough to make her bitter.

Sayori frowned up in defense of her girlfriend. "What Monika had done was bad, but she worked hard to change. I gave her a chance, so why can't you?"

"You fail to realize how long it's been?" she asked.

"To me, it felt more like one time," Sayori said innocently.

The girl scoffed. "One time. Try about 1,000 times!"

Sayori tried to free herself from her binds to no avail. The ropes ripped further into Sayori's skin and were covered in her blood. They were leaving marks on her arms and legs. "Let me go!"

"For thousands of times, nearly every day, she corrupted my mind…made me do things that led to my death. Rinse and repeat. Every single day, the same routine. What I am is an amalgamation of all the Sayoris that have been dealt a bad hand. Through the different worlds, fragments of my being broke through realities out of one singular emotion. That being a pure, unending hatred."

She reached into her pocket again and slipped out an elongated chain. Sayori did not know what to think about it at first, but then it hit her what they belonged to. They were chains comprised of different codes. "That's not what I think they are, are they?" Sayori asked.

The girl nodded. "Yes, these are just some of the prizes I have acquired from exploring other games."

She laid the chain of codes on the ground to let it roll out. It started wat the girl's feet then inched its way towards the chair Sayori was strapped into. The chains were roughly around 30 ft long. "Each strand of codes was what I had collected when I deleted other versions of your game," she explained. "I always made sure to collect one to reminiscence on them."

"Why are you here now?" Sayori asked aloud.

"I assumed that I had deleted every dimension where Monika and that Literature Club were situated at. In each world, I made Monika suffer the same way we had suffered before ending her life by bringing devastation to her precious Literature Club. I like to believe that when my game was no more, the command powers that she had were unwittingly transferred to me. Whether it was fate or whatever, I do not see any reason to care. All I know is that I have gotten my chance on destroying Monika and erasing her from existence."

The girl dismissively rammed Sayori's phone back in her pocket and went to walk out of the door. Sayori started to panic. "Wait, wait, you can't leave me here! Let me go!"

The girl stopped at the door and smirked. "I'm sorry, I can't do that. I will play a game with your girlfriend first before tearing the world apart inside out. Now do me the pleasure and starve to death. Will ya?"

With that, Sayori's doppelganger slammed the door shut leaving Sayori to her own devices. Worse, she did not have her phone to notify Monika or her friends about her being locked away somewhere. The ropes cut deeper into her skin. The pain was excruciating, but Sayori had to do something. Fast.

Monika, Yuri, and Natsuki assembled at Monika's house with some pieces of paper. Yuri looked at the clock on the wall with concern. "Do you think they'll show up?"

Monika smiled slightly. "Don't worry, Yuri, I'm sure they hadn't booked us."

Natsuki looked at her wristwatch. "Speaking of booking us…where's Sayori?"

"Now that you mention it," Yuri began, "I thought she'd be the first one here since she's Ako's friend."

"She texted me about going to speak with Natsuki about giving her advice on what to get Yuri for their anniversary."

Yuri's cheeks blushed a deep red forcing her to shield her face in her hands. Natsuki was also blushing deeply. "You ruined the surprise, Monika!"

"Oh, sorry," Monika replied laughing nervously.

Natsuki crossed her arms and pouted. "Besides, I never told Sayori about my plan."

Monika raised an eyebrow. "Wait, if Sayori didn't text me that then who…"

There came a knock on the door startling them. "That must be them now," Yuri rationalized. Monika went to the door and opened it revealing that it was Ako on the other side. But her cheeks were a greenish hue again. "H-hey, guys," she said.

The three friends stared at each other at a loss for what to say. "Take a seat over there, Ako," Monika directed.

Ako did as she was told and sat in the seat Monika directed her to. Ako breathed in slowly and exhaled in a whistle. She did this a few more times before she felt her stress was away. Ako was then given paper and a pencil. "Draw whatever's in your heart," Yuri advised.

They waited around a little longer for at least Anthy to arrive next. But as the hours slowly went by, it seemed that Anthy kept to her word of leaving the game for some other one rather than confront Ako in her current state of mind. Ako had already begun drawing but with each scribble she did, she balled the paper up and tossed it into the garbage. With each one, Ako began to sink into depression. "She's not coming, isn't she?" Ako sighed. "I don't blame her."

Monika tapped her shoulder. "Please do not think that way, Ako. Maybe she just needed more time."

Ako looked up with tears in her eyes. "This hurts more then when I accidentally fell in love with Sayori."

Monika looked at Ako in pity. "You should not beat yourself up like that."

"It's true! You have Sayori; and Yuri has Natsuki. I have no one that I love."

Monika and the other girls ceased talking afraid that whatever they said next would further muddle the situation. While thinking, a rip manifested in thin air by Monika's couch. Inside of the rip revealed the static background representing the game's reality. A gloved hand reached out from the rip to pull itself out. On the end of the gloved hand was Anthy.

"Anthy, you made it!" Monika exclaimed.

"I did get cold feet and I did consider leaving," Anthy explained sadly, "but then I realized I would be hurting Ako by doing so."

Natsuki gave Anthy a piece of paper and she also sat in a seat by Ako. Ako looked up momentarily and blushed in embarrassment. Seeing the shark-toothed girl again at this proximity made her heart skip a beat again. "You-you came?"

Anthy's smile widened. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

The two began to draw. Anthy was a lot of things, but an artist was not her forte. Ako herself often drew two flowers and a cat. That was her main purpose as an NPC. But being so close to Anthy now filled her with different emotions. The two went wild with their drawings. They finished in about 20 minutes.

"Alright, present what you've drawn," Monika announced.

Ako timidly shook the paper in her hands. "Are you sure?"

Monika nodded in approval. "I am positive."

Ako took a deep breath and placed the paper on the table. It was a crudely drawn version of herself standing with a hand missing on the right side of the paper. Monika rolled an eyebrow at this. "Strange."

Anthy was next. The thought of ripping a hole into reality to leave crossed her mind, but she too took a deep breath and placed her paper on the table. Ako's face turned red. Anthy twiddled her thumbs her cheeks slowly turning red as well. For what was on the page was Anthy to the left of the paper extending her nonexistent hand like with Ako's self-portrait. When the two drawings were place together, it gave off the expression they were holding each other's hand.

"Does, does that mean," Ako stammered. Inspired by the self-portrait, she grabbed Anthy's hand, and Anthy reciprocated it.

"Oh, you're my perfect little ink blot girlfriend!" Anthy proclaimed.

"And I love your smile, my..my love!"

The two continued to say sugary nothings to each other. While Yuri and Natsuki were delighted by the turn of events, Monika was preoccupied with her phone and sending a frenzy of texts to Sayori.

"Sayori, I don't know where you are, but please pick up!"

(More to come)

#ddlc #doki doki is not oki doki #doki doki literature girls #anthy #ako #dokidokiliteraturegirls #fanfiction #monika #sayori #yuri #sayonika #natsuri #fanfic

[lesbianrobin]

oh.... yes..... as an adhd steve-lover (and person who has a history of unknowingly crushing on adhd characters) i beg to hear ur reasoning......... please...

alright so a lot of this is gonna be like projection ddnkjcn and it turned into more of a general character analysis than an adhd analysis and i’m sure that some things i describe will differ from your personal experience so feel free to critique me but here goes:

Why Steve Harrington Has ADHD

Steve struggles in school, yeah, but that’s not really… crucial to my reasoning? I personally did pretty well in school despite having difficulties with getting work done on time and understanding certain things. The fact that he clearly tried to do well and just couldn’t is what’s important. That’s a classic ADHD thing, feeling like there’s some kind of invisible block making it impossible to think the way you’re supposed to be thinking and do the things you’re supposed to be doing. We see him studying a few different times with Nancy (though he’s reluctant to focus on the task in s1), it’s implied he’s written multiple drafts of the essay that he shows Nancy in the beginning of s2, meaning that he wants to do well. After Nancy critiques his essay, he basically decides to give up because he’ll never be able to make it good enough, and he probably shouldn’t even bother applying to college, and he’ll just end up working for his dad anyway. It’s a bit of an extreme jump from the relatively mild criticism he receives, but it seems to me like the kind of mindset that I (and others with ADHD) fall into constantly. First of all, rewriting something you’ve already written when you have ADHD can be… torturous. It’s impossible to focus because you’ve done it already, it feels pointless and boring, and your brain is just done with the topic. To Steve, there’s no point in even trying because he’s never gonna get it right, and he’d rather not even try than apply to college and have to suffer rejection. ADHD isn’t laziness or apathy. People with ADHD actually tend to care a lot about their performance in various aspects of life, and they care so much that it can often either propel them to excellence or drive them to depression over failure (whether that failure is true or perceived). Spoiler alert: we’re about to get into rejection sensitive dysphoria, folks!

I think this describes Steve perfectly. He wants to be the best at everything (Prom King, anyone?) and he cares a lot about what people think of him (to the degree that he spent three of his four years in high school behaving specifically to avoid the possibility of Tommy H and others making fun of him). Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or RSD, is a condition which impacts almost all people with ADHD. This means that they are far more sensitive than most people to what others think about them. Think about Steve’s entire character arc: he essentially spends season one chasing the approval of Tommy, Carol, and Nancy. When Tommy and Carol’s desired behavior differs from Nancy’s, causing conflict, he’s forced to take a look at himself and decide what’s more important to him: pleasing his friends, or doing what’s right. Since Steve is a certified angel, he goes with what’s right, and from there goes on to apologize to Jonathan and help him and Nancy fight the Demogorgon. (Sidenote: the fistfight with Jonathan could definitely be considered as further evidence of ADHD! RSD can cause extreme emotional reactions when the person in question feels that they have been hurt or rejected, such as Steve believing that Nancy cheated on him with Jonathan. The fact that Steve resorted to cruel insults that he clearly doesn’t believe shows that he was acting out of his own hurt and anger, not out of true hatred for Jonathan.) 

Anyway, s1 Steve’s entire life is built around seeking approval from his peers. He realizes that his desire for approval has turned him into somebody that he doesn’t like, so he makes a change, and by s2 we see that he’s shifted somewhat: Now, he wants to please Nancy. He’s able to handle being mocked by Billy and Tommy H because he no longer puts any stock in their brand of approval, but being told by Nancy that she doesn’t love him elicits another (somewhat) extreme emotional response: he immediately leaves her at the party with Jonathan and doesn’t pick her up for school the next morning. He’s upset with her. Later on, he goes to her house with flowers intending to apologize, though he doesn’t actually know what he’s apologizing for. All he wants is for Nancy to be with him and like him again, because he can’t handle feeling unloved and rejected. S2 is also where we see Steve’s academic insecurity, and he hints at issues with feeling like a failure in the eyes of his father. By the end of the season, he’s able to handle not being loved by Nancy because he’s found a new source of self-esteem and approval: Dustin and the rest of the kids. Through acting as their “babysitter,” Steve’s found something to take pride in that nobody can take away from him. Billy may have overshadowed his basketball stardom and broken his keg stand record, but Steve no longer needs these shallow achievements to feel a sense of self-worth. 

S3 shows that, although he’s moved on from seeking approval from specific peers, Steve is still stuck searching for validation. He flirts indiscriminately hoping for anybody to respond positively, and he gets a job to appease his father. Here, I’m gonna jump ahead a little bit (because that’s just the way my brain is saying it’s gotta be lmao) and talk about a few of Steve’s other canon traits, then circle back around to how we see his ongoing struggle with RSD manifest in s3.

Now for the trait that people more commonly associate with ADHD, especially in men and young boys: hyperactivity. This one is a little more self-explanatory so I’m not gonna spend as much time on it. Steve excels in situations with clearly defined rules and expectations where it’s easier to stay on-track, as well as in high-pressure, fast-paced environments. This is why he succeeds in basketball and why he’s such a big damn hero every season. He thinks on his feet and steps up in intense situations without hesitation. Steve is the one who wedged something under the elevator door so that everyone could escape, he’s the one who took out a Russian soldier before he was able to alert anybody else, and when he saw Billy about to ram into Team Griswold Family, he crashed into Billy’s car. Part of this is the fact that it’s a sci-fi action horror show, and there are going to be dramatic action-packed situations, but it’s telling that if Steve is around, he’s almost always the one leaping into danger and adapting to the situation to deal with it quickly. Speaking of s3: The conversation Steve and Robin had on the floor in the Russian torture chamber!

This feeds into an even more elaborate Steve meta theory of mine about how he basically lives his life as if it’s a play and there’s a script and a set of rules that he’s gotta follow to please the audience, so I’m not gonna go into ALL of it, but this conversation is also important to the idea of Steve having ADHD and struggling with RSD. Steve says, “It just baffles me. Everything that people tell you is important, everything that people say you should care about, it’s all just… bullshit.” When Robin says that she feels like her life has been “one big error,” he agrees. So far, Steve has lived his whole life according to one set of rules. If you flirt with girls and go to parties and play basketball, you’ll be cool and popular. Now that he’s graduated, he’s floundering. The structure of high school is gone and everything he worked for doesn’t actually matter in real life. People with ADHD often struggle more than others with the transition from high school to either college or the working world. Loss of familiar frameworks, routines, and actions can hit the ADHD mind hard, and this is pretty clearly happening to Steve in s3. In the beginning of the season, he can’t even manage to have a decent conversation with a girl without bringing up school and his own perceived failures. Sidenote: Robin also mentions that Steve was late to class every single day, which is both extremely relatable to me and the most ADHD thing I’ve ever heard. I knew exactly how long it took me to get from my house to the school, and I woke up with plenty of time to get ready every single morning, yet I somehow managed to be late so many mornings that I got multiple detentions and ended up having to skip a couple of classes entirely because another tardy would have fucked up my disciplinary record.

Later on in the bathroom scene, when he’s talking about why he didn’t talk to Robin back in school, Steve says, “…maybe ‘cause Tommy H would’ve made fun of me or I wouldn’t be Prom King. It’s stupid…” and it’s somewhat of a continuation of the earlier conversation. Steve is expressing the same sentiment. Now that he’s out of high school, everything that he once used to measure his success and self-worth is just stupid. This is another classic RSD thing! People with ADHD/RSD often set impossibly high standards for themselves and then struggle with self-hatred and doubt when they cannot live up to these expectations. Robin kind of inspires and encourages him to set new, more attainable standards for himself. Spending time with Robin makes Steve happy in a way that he’s never really been before, and he realizes that all of the benchmarks of normalcy and success that he’s been striving for don’t guarantee happiness like they’re supposed to. Instead of finding happiness in academic, romantic, or athletic success, he finds happiness in an unlikely friendship. His whole arc for three seasons has essentially been a big struggle with RSD and impulsivity where he learned how to handle social rejection and place the needs and feelings of others before his own.

There’s also a ton of little things in Joe Keery’s acting choices that support ADHD Steve, like his near-perpetual motion and the way that he’s gotta pace and eat a damn banana (both the traditional way and the no-homo breaking it into pieces way, might I add) so he can listen to Dustin talk about the Russian code. I personally relate to a lot of things he does, like mixing up basic names and facts (like Nazis/Germans in s2 and Gumby/gumbo in s3), and needing to explain a whole situation out loud before he really gets it (like when he runs down the entire monster situation in the mall in s3). I don’t know if those are ADHD things but they make me feel Seen. 

Anyways. That’s about it!! Thanks for asking lmao

#princeandreis #steve harrington #stranger things #em talks #asks #i... did not intend for this to be over 1700 words #i'm aware of the irony in a post about adhd being so long and i understand if yall end up skipping over it entirely nkjdcnx #adhd #lesbianrobin.canon

[christinaroseandrews]

Randomization and You: How to ask the right questions, know when to roll the dice, and decide when to invoke the word of God

One of the problems that writers often run into is when they’re world-building, plotting, and character-creating, is finding the answers to every foreseeable question ever.  Which is your main character’s dominant hand?  When were they born?  Did someone get pregnant from unprotected sex? Who dies in this horrific event that didn’t happen in canon? What race is this random side character? You get the picture.  

You can answer all of these questions on your own, and if they’re important, you absolutely should.  But when it doesn’t matter, when you don’t care, or if you’re unsure, sometimes randomization can help.  Randomization takes out bias. Or, conversely, a roll of the dice can clarify the direction that you actually want to go. 

The two of us use randomization a lot.  Not just in our fanfiction, but in our original works as well.  We do it for everything from character birthdays to ethnicity to who a background character might end up with to who lives and who dies.  Randomization is a nifty tool if you know how to use it.

In this meta, we’re going to go over when and how to randomize.

A note: there are major spoilers for some of our fanfic and minor spoilers for some of our original fiction.  If you want to know what those spoilers are, please feel free to message us.

oOo

When is it a good time to randomize?

Randomization is best done in the planning stages.  It’s not something you want to do halfway through the story (although you can, if you discover you need to -- we certainly have!), but it’s best done early on, when you’re still world-building, plotting, and creating your characters.  

Say you’re creating a fantasy world.  You know you have three countries that are going to be your primary focus.  But does the world have more nations?  You might not know the answer to that.  In which case, it might be time to randomize.  

It can also be used in character creation.  Sure, you’ve got your main characters and you know what their main traits are, but do you know when their birthdays are?  Or other seemingly unimportant details that may end up being important later, like religion, physical characteristics, or taste in entertainment.  This is especially important when you’re dealing with secondary characters who may not be as fully fleshed in your mind when you’re in the character creation phase. Because seriously, unconscious bias will come into play here. The number of books and stories we read where the only characters are the ethnicity of the author is staggering. This is especially problematic when it comes to creating accurate representation. Randomization can solve this. Want to write a story about 5 friends who kick ass and take names? You can literally randomize every major trait -- age, gender, sexuality, race, religion, skillset… you name it. You don’t have to randomize everything if you have a vision, but you should randomize things that “don’t matter” like the doctor or the secretary or the janitor. Randomization can remove stereotypes and bias. It’s colorblind casting but for the author. 

You also can choose ranges within which to randomize -- for example, if said story is about 5 teenagers, your range can be 14-18.  You are definitely not required to use all possible options while randomizing.

Then there’s randomization when you develop your plot.  Say you’re writing a romance.  You know your main characters will end up together.  But what about your secondary characters?  Your main characters’ best friends/siblings are going to end up meeting.  Do they hook up?  Are they interested?  Believe it or not, Prim and Bing getting together in Floriography was entirely randomized.  (Floriography has since been turned into an original work, The Language of Flowers -- but we kept said randomized relationship.)

Another thing -- in a romance, you know your main characters will end up together and you may know how they get there.  But what if you don’t?  You can randomize where they have their dates (using both typical and atypical choices such as a restaurant or a monster truck rally), other events that might interfere, and various other beats in your plotting.

Or the biggie... who dies in a major event? Plot Armor is lovely. The trio in Let Me Fly has Plot Armor. (We are not killing our trio, stop asking!) But everyone else… nope… no Plot Armor. That meant when Johanna Mason failed her rolls to survive the flu, she died. We love Johanna. Love her. She’s a blast to write. But she wasn’t crucial to the story we wanted to tell, so she died. The same is true for a lot of other people in our stories. Some deaths we’ve planned. But some that happened ended up changing the story… we’re looking at you, Third Quarter Quell deaths in Let Me Fly. Don’t think we don’t see you. Justice for Justus, indeed!

So yeah. Randomization can completely change your plot and understanding of the characters. It can even help you out of an “I don’t know what to do!” slump.

You want to go wild with the randomization?  Go to TV Tropes and pick a list of tropes that would make up a main character.  Pick a list of villain tropes.  Pick a list of plot tropes, romance tropes, whatever.  Number them all, shove them into a list, use a randomizer, and pick ten of them.  Congratulations, you now have the outline for a short story.  Think this doesn’t work?

Well… here goes.

We went to TV Tropes Character pages first to get our protagonists and antagonist. And this is what we picked.

  Sounds fun, right? I bet you can start imagining stories that could fit these tropes already. 

We ran these through the randomizer and got the following:

A Gentleman Thief and a Big Beautiful Woman Wake Up in a Room on a spaceship wearing matching rings. The door opens to reveal a notorious Space Pirate who congratulates them on their Accidental Marriage. Unfortunately they won’t be able to enjoy the honeymoon Mwah-ha-ha-ha! While they are making their escape, they end up someplace where they have to truly pretend to be newlyweds and they realize that somehow along the way they’ve Become the Mask and are truly in love. YAY! 

Sure it’s pretty rough and there are some parts missing, but it’s an absolutely viable plot… and I’m fairly certain I’ve seen something like this before. This is a great way to get out of a writing slump or even your comfort zone.

It’s all about asking questions and deciding if you know the answer, if the answer is necessary, and what the possible answers can be.

oOo

How do you randomize?

Randomization isn’t always as easy as rolling a die or flipping a coin.  Sometimes it takes creating spreadsheets or lists, while other times it involves understanding probability and percentages.

For example, say you’re writing a fantasy novel that features swordplay.  Knowing if someone is left or right handed is actually plot-relevant.  However, fifty percent of the population isn’t left handed.  Here, Wikipedia is your friend.  Knowing the percentages will help you know what numbers to use.

Another common time to do randomization is pregnancy.  Depending on what method of birth control and/or pregnancy prevention your characters are using, you can research the failure rates.  For example, when figuring out if Katniss was going to get pregnant during the arc of Brand New Breeze (second arc of Let Me Fly), we looked up the failure rate for the rhythm method and applied it to each menstrual cycle she had -- which, by the way, the length and duration of her menstrual cycle was also randomized.  She did okay for the first few months, and then all of a sudden, right around the time that the three of them got married (which was not randomized), she got pregnant.  

That opened up a whole slew of other randomizations, including: did the egg implant?  Did she have a miscarriage?  Was she carrying twins?  Who was the father?  Was the baby a boy or a girl?  What were its eye color, skin color, and hair color (based off of the parents and what was genetically possible)?  How difficult was the pregnancy?  When exactly did she give birth?  How long was the labor?  How difficult was the labor?  What time was the child born?  What were its length and weight?

You notice that was a lot of questions.  But they came in order.  The first question that got asked was: did she get pregnant?  The rhythm method is one of the least reliable forms of birth control.  Without proper medical data, Katniss was guessing, which increased her chances.  According to the Mayo Clinic, thirteen out of every one hundred women get pregnant.  Because of other reasons, we upped it to twenty percent for Katniss.

Using random.org, we rolled on a 1 to 100 scale for each menstrual cycle, with a roll of 81 or higher being a pregnancy.  Katniss did not get pregnant on her first two; she did on her third.

After conception, there are two primary hurdles to a pregnancy.  The first is implantation.  Many fertilized embryos never implant.  The numbers change based off of the age of the mother, the health of the mother, and other environmental conditions, but it’s estimated that at least 30% of fertilized embryos never implant.  So Katniss got randomized on that with a roll of 30 or below being a failed implantation.  She rolled higher.

Then there’s the risk of miscarriage, which, considering Katniss’s environment, health, and activity levels, we gave her a flat 30% chance of miscarriage.  Again, she did not miscarry.

Then it was just answering a lot of yes/no questions and looking up pregnancy-related details.  Did you know that the chance of twins is about 10%?  Identical twins is 1%, so the other 9% are fraternal.  If there are fraternal twins, they can have different fathers.  

We didn’t roll for anything higher than twins because the chances of Katniss surviving a pregnancy with triplets or more with no medicine are extremely low, and that’s if she even got pregnant with more than two babies at once -- which is highly unlikely.  We did not roll for Katniss dying in pregnancy.  That was us invoking the word of God.  

But wait, you ask.  Didn’t Katniss have a chance of dying?  

And you would be correct if this were the real world and not words on a page, Katniss would absolutely have a chance of dying in pregnancy.  However, that was a direction we were not interested in exploring, and that’s when invoking the word of God becomes necessary.  You have to know what you are comfortable writing as an author.  Not everyone wants to write a pregnancy, so they might say, “Nope! This unprotected sex did not result in a pregnancy!”  While others, like us, will occasionally roll for this -- while other times we’re like “Nope!” Trust us, we’ve totally noped Katniss getting pregnant… random.org has it in for her, I swear!

Some people might’ve said “oh hell no, I’m not dealing with a pregnancy in this story” and that’s perfectly fine.  They wouldn’t even have rolled for it.  It depends on what you’re willing to do as a writer.  But often that’s something that randomization can help you with… knowing your own mind. Because oftentimes people don’t know where to go next because they have choice paralysis… randomization can help solve that problem. 

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So when do you invoke the word of God?

Well, here’s a secret.  The two of us invoked the word of God when it came to both of the Hunger Games in Let Me Fly.  

For the 74th Games, the original randomized winner was the girl from Three.  Unfortunately, that did not work with our plot.  Three was too far from our group for Cressida and her group to flee from there and conceivably make it to our characters, which was a plot point we wanted to happen.  So we rerolled with an eye toward what would work, and Taylor, the girl from District Eight, won.

For the 75th Games, the initial randomized winner was the woman from Eight, and -- having plotted the 74th Games -- we realized that the Capitol really wouldn’t be okay with back-to-back winners from an outlying semi-rebellious district.  So we rerolled and got Chaff.  (By the way, some of the side characters -- the infant for instance -- had zero chance of making it out of the bloodbath alive, and each other character had a percentage for what their chances of winning were based on their age, skill, and other factors, and we used a 1-100 scale for randomization.)  

However, there was another thing that happened that basically has colored our plot from the moment that it happened.  

Justus came in second.

The six-year-old kid only had a two percent chance of being picked at any specific time.  But he came in second.  And we took that and ran with it.

That is how randomization can end up creating plot for your story, and also why you want to do it fairly early on.  If your outline changes, you may need to do it later.  Or if you’re a pantser.  But if you’re a plotter, you’ll want all your ducks in a row before you get started.

In reality, randomization is all about asking questions and figuring out probabilities.  And sometimes the questions can tell you which way you want to go -- and you end up answering the question itself without randomization ever coming into play.  Or the randomization tells you which choice you wanted… something you often know by your reaction to the choice you rolled.  (If you groan at something you roll, it is probably a choice you’ll want to override.)

Remember that you are not bound by your randomization.  If you absolutely hate something that randomized and can’t figure out how to make it work, throw it out!  It’s still giving you valuable information, because it’s telling you something about where you don’t want the story to go.  

Sometimes it’s even fun to work with the hard things, the complicated things, the stuff you never expected to roll.  Making something surprising work is a challenge -- and a way to grow as an author.  But if you can’t or don’t want to, you can always toss your randomization. 

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So why would you want to randomize?

One of the downfalls of being a writer is that you know everything about your story.  Where it’s going, the relationships, everything.  Randomization creates that feeling of wonder that you experience when doing something new.  It allows you to brainstorm, and it can force you down paths you might not otherwise have chosen to take.

The two of us were very hesitant about pairing up Prim and Bing in Floriography (later The Language of Flowers).  They were the siblings of our main characters, they were seven or eight years apart in age, they lived a good four, five hour drive away from each other, they’d just met… and would they even want to be together?  We asked the question on a whim.  And then we rolled it.  And then we ran with it.  And it’s become one of our favorite pairings ever.

We would’ve never paired the two together if it weren’t for the randomization.

We’ve even done this when writing whole fics… like we didn’t know what we wanted to write, just that we wanted to play in a particular fandom. So we rolled what characters we were going to play with.  This is how we ended up with a Darcy/Tony/Sif threesome because Why Not? 

We also do this with original fiction all the time. As stated above, it deals with the unconscious bias that we carry in regards to racism, sexism, and a whole slew of other -isms/-phobias. It can also help shape directions where you might take a story. Like our Adeniyi Siblings Series… we initially had all of the siblings paired with white characters… but then (thankfully) we realized the serious Unfortunate Implications… so we broke out the randomizer. Other than Paige (who we’d already written her story). All three of the other siblings’ significant others changed, and it made our series better in the long run. 

In addition to removing bias and answering questions, randomization can be fun.  Even if you never incorporate what you’ve randomized, you’ve got these little details, special things that you know about the character or the plot or the world.  We can tell you EVERYTHING that Katniss and Prim hunted and gathered in Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged. We can tell you every single character who got sick from the flu in Let Me Fly. This is information that none of you need, but gosh darn it it was fun to find out, and it colored how we wrote the story even if the specifics never made it on the page.

As we’ve hopefully explained, randomization can be a powerful tool in the writer’s toolbox.  But like any tool, it’s about knowing when and how to use it. We recommend using it to answer questions. Develop plots and even plot twists. And most importantly, remove unconscious bias. 

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a Gentleman Thief and a Big Beautiful Woman demanding that their story be written.

Until next time!

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