#or the identity crisis implied by 'am i me? is he me?' | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

2kiran · 11 months

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“COD MEN REACTING TO YOU COMING OUT AS GENDERFLUID”

characters simon “ghost” riley. john “soap” mactavish. john “bravo six” price. könig. alejandro vargas. keegan p. russ genre fluff cw lowercase typing. slight hurt/comfort. suggestive dialogues. mentions of homophobia. implied violence. swearing. google translated language.

simon riley

• he's really really confused

• he knows about the Igbtq+ community as he’s seen people of the same gender on the base giving romantic affection to each other

• he just doesn’t know what it means

• after you explain it to him, he blinks a few times and goes like “oh”

• he doesn’t mean it in a bad way, he just doesn’t care about that very much

• he’s supportive and protective of you, if anyone badmouths you he’s already beating their ass

• if you’re already dating him, he immediately accepts you

• “that’s fine with me as long as you’re comfortable with who you are.” he would tell you as he holds your hand

• if you’re crying while telling him, he would try his best in comforting you by giving you an awkward pat on the back

• he’d research more about your gender and the community

• he’d ask you which name or pronouns you’re identifying with almost everyday just to make sure he doesn’t offend you

• “that's my boy/girl/lover”, “atta boy/girl/love”, and “good boy/girl/love”

• he tries to refer to you neutrally, just in case

• “mmhf, you’re s’good to me.”

• “k-keep goin’, love.”

john mactavish

• he has probably heard about it at least once

• he’s curious, so he might’ve stumbled across some information about it

• “that’s nice.” he smiles at you

• he’s really supportive of you

• if you’re already dating him, he’ll tell you “you’re my lover and nothing’s gonna change that.” and pulls you closer to him

• if you’re crying while telling him, he tries to crack a joke to make you feel better and tells you that it’s completely okay with him

• “yer s’ cute!” he'll exclaim while squishing your cheeks once you’ve calmed down

• he’ll remember which name or pronouns you identified with last week and attempts to find a pattern like it’s some kind of mystery and he's trying to solve it

• “i can’t believe i’m your boyfriend!” you caught him speaking to himself, well, more like a picture of you on his phone

• definitely giggles when seeing a photo of you, in an appreciative way

• begins to be curious about his own identity

• “wait... so what’s my sexuality? pansexual? or–”

• has his own identity crisis

• he’d spend his time locked in his room trying to figure it out

• after thinking about his identity for so long, he starts to say the stupidest shit

• “wait... what if... i’m not soap? am i even john mactavish?! what is happening?!”

• he nearly gets a panic attack because of that

• he also says corny pick up lines

• “hey, are yer a cupcake? 'cause yer so sweet.” with a wink

• “can’t believe i didn’t make ya do this t’me sooner, hah.”

• “ya taste s'good, mmph.”

john price

• he’d also be confused at first

• “i’m proud of you.” he’d say while having a loving smile painted on his lips

• very supportive

• he’d attempt to help you be more comfortable with your gender

• immediately researches once he gets to his office

• frequently compliments you

• if you’re already dating him, he just accepts you with kisses pressed onto your face

• if you’re crying while telling him, he’ll immediately pull you into a hug and telling you that there’s nothing wrong with that and that it’s okay

• when you’re feeling masculine, he’d go “just me or you’re a lot handsome today?”

• when you’re feeling feminine, he’d go “i got you this. it's pretty, just like you.”

• when you’re feeling more neutral, he’d go “you look very amazing, as always.”

• protective of you, he’s already tasing the people who badmouthed you

• he shows you off, especially to laswell

• “that’s my lover right there.” he boasts proudly. laswell responds with, “i get it, price. go do your own work.”

• “fuck, love. right there.”

• ”ah, you're g-gonna be the– mm... death of me.”

könig

• “huh?”

• poor könig is afraid that he’ll misgender you

• spends his entire night researching about it

• he’ll frequently ask you what you’re identifying with

• he’s trying his best

• you have the extremely tall scary dog privilege whenever you’re with him

• cusses people out in german when they shit talk you

• people are scared of him, so they’ll whisper to each other about you but könig still manages to hear them

• guess who’s got a bloody nose? neither you nor könig!

• bingo! it’s the shit talkers. they'll hide in the infirmary away from you and könig

• if you’re already dating him, he nods along and tells you “that’s nice, mein schatz. what are you.. uh, identifying with currently?” ( my darling )

• if you’re crying while telling him, he immediately tries to comfort you but he doesn’t know what to exactly do to help

• “w-what? it’s okay! that’s great!?” he waves his hands around in panic

• he’s baffled on what to say and do but he’s got the spirit

• he calls you pet names in german

• könig is a proud boyfriend

• he isn’t very poetic, but he tries his best to write poems for you

• he just wants to be romantic for you

• “you look very handsome... like you always are, i-i mean.”

• “beautiful... i mean! uh... you! yeah, i- you're very beautiful.”

• “woah- sorry, sorry! you're just very eye catching.”

• “ah, mein gott. s-slow down, bitte.” (my god) (please)

• “b..bitte! hör nicht auf.”(p..please! don’t stop.)

alejandro vargas

listens intently

definitely a sweetheart

he knows about it because some of the people at his base are also apart of the community

“thank you for telling me, mi corazón.” ( my heart )

he’s really proud of you for coming out

buys you your favorite food

if you’re already dating him, you most likely would’ve came out to him during a date with him or just a stroll near the base

if you’re crying while telling him, he immediately wraps his arm around your shoulders and shushes you, both of you end up just sitting down

he wipes your tears away with the back of his hand

you sobbed more because he was so sweet to you

hands you his handkerchief to wipe away your snot and tears

“you’re just as amazing as ever, mi amor. don’t let anybody say otherwise.” ( my love )

ensures that you’re comfortable

death glares anyone who seems to want to talk badly about you

feel free to use his rank as a way to scare people off because he uses it against them too

“if anyone talks bad about you, you tell them that you’ll tell colonel vargas about it and that he won’t be tolerative about the situation.”

he gets really curious about it sometimes so expect to be bombarded with questions every now and then

“tell me i’m doing good, please, mi vida?” ( my life )

“d-demasiado, cariño. ay dios mío. hng– se siente tan bien. mierda.” ( t-too much, sweetheart. oh my god. hng– feels so good. fuck. )

keegan p. russ

literally does not care

he’d say “good for you?” in a questioning tone because in his head you’re acting like he asked you

you most likely came out to him while he was cleaning his gun

“keegan, i’m genderfluid.” he glances at you, “ok.” then he focuses on whatever he was doing again, “that’s it?” you were confused, “i got something to do, kid.”

it wasn’t obvious at first that he supported you

you just thought that he was neutral about it

until a rookie on base looked at you in disgust when you corrected them about your gender and you’ve never seen keegan more pissed off

multiple people along with their comrades pried keegan off of the rookie who had offended you

“you look at ‘em like that again and i’ll fuckin’ blow your head off.”

you stood there frozen, brain only functioning again when he said that

you didn’t expect keegan to be protective of you like that

if you’re already dating him, he’ll genuinely listen to you while you explain what it means

if you’re crying while telling him, he’ll unintentionally gawk at you while trying to comprehend what you’re saying before he puts his hand on your back

he doesn’t mean to be rude, he just doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say

suddenly recalls that you came out to him one night then he started doing research

he would definitely surprise you with “hey, what’re your pronouns?” leaving you puzzled

bombards you with questions randomly

“sweetheart, please move.”

“please just touch me already.”

masterlist

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veryextraincorrectfegbaquotes · 4 months

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And now, the special edition "Goop Lyn has horrible identity crisis nightmares" story

This one has got lots more dialogue, so if you like reading the Lyns talk to each other then boy is this the story for you!

To say ‘it was a memory, but not her own’ wasn’t exactly a unique thing for Goop Lyn. She has all of Lyn’s memories, underneath her own memories that only really started about a week ago. So for her to ‘remember’ something she wasn’t present for was if anything, painfully normal. But to have a memory that Lyn wasn’t present for either? That was, or at least should be, impossible. But as hard as she tried, she couldn’t recall any time Lyn had this conversation.

“Not in real life but I know what you’re talking about.”

She hadn’t said anything, but he was responding. As she stood there, frozen, trapped in this place and time she’d never been, she could only watch as he looked aside, smiling and bemused. As he looked back, visibly trying to not look condescending and failing, he said something that made her feel sick.

“Wendy buying 52 unique knives would be devastatingly expensive.”

That’s not me. I’m not her. Don’t call me that. I fought to be who I am. Look at me. I became this. I fought to be this. Acknowledge it. Acknowledge me. Look at me.

Every part of her was trying to scream out, demand he call her by her own damn name, but the sound wouldn’t come out. She felt like she was choking, then it got even worse as she felt her form giving out on her, melting away the person she was into the anonymous pile she refused to be ever again. She tried desperately to claw back herself but it just. Wouldn’t. Work. All because Hector had called her Wendy.

Then she woke up. Of course, phrasing it like that implies that ended the situation. She still felt awful, she woke up coughing and fell out of bed trying to get up. She was on her hands and knees, struggling to breathe, but at least she was in her room. Undeniably hers, specifically cleaned and prepared to be hers. It was proof that she was here and that she was herself. Because this was Her room. With her spit on the floor from struggling to breathe. Once she stabilized her breathing, she went to the bathroom to wash her face and calm down.

She walked out of her room, went down the hall and entered the bathroom. It was still late at night or early in the morning, so she had to turn on the light. She turned to the sink, looked in the mirror, and went to hell. It was wrong. It was lying, it had to be. She reached up and pulled at the lie, but it was still there, a bright pink stain on everything she was. She pulled harder, trying to yank it out, like pulling out the lying pink would show the green truth that had to be underneath. She was choking again, her throat not just feeling clogged but visibly in the mirror pulsing and changing.

Lyn’s hair was not pink. Goop Lyn’s hair is not pink. My hair isn’t this. Get rid of this fake hair. Why won’t it come out. Why is the mirror showing me Wendy’s hair. The mirror is wrong. I need to break it.

The next time Goop Lyn woke up, she was bleeding from the forehead and the mirror was broken. The streaks of red blood in her hair briefly made her feel like she was choking again, but they were just streaks against the green. Her green. Lyn was standing over her, looking in the part of the mirror that wasn’t broken while she brushed her teeth. She spat in the sink, briefly looked down at Goop Lyn, said “Hit your head like a dumbass, huh.” then left the room.

Goop Lyn jumped to her feet, rushed out and grabbed Lyn by the shoulder.

“No. We’re talking about this. Lyn meeting.”

“That Isn’t a thing.”

“Well as a 50% shareholder in Lyn inc, I’m making it a thing. And calling one. Bitch.”

“As the other 50% shareholder, I make a formal motion for you to blow yourself.”

“Motion denied, you freak.”

“You’re the bigger freak. Objectively.”

“Can you shut the fuck up so we can go start the Lyn meeting!?” “I thought this was it.”

“Sometimes I’m baffled by just how someone as great as me could have started out as a copy of you.”

“You’re really inspiring confidence in the company, miss 50% shareholder.”

“Shut up and go to the table!”

The Kitchen/Dining area, the most ‘open-plan’ area in Lyn’s (or as is more accurate Lyns) house was the standard place to discuss anything they didn’t want to end up resolving through fighting games or just regular fighting. Since Lyn was more argumentative than she let on and Goop Lyn was exactly as argumentative as she let on, it was a space they used a lot. Lyn slouched in her chair, one arm slung over the back to make it visually apparent she did not care and was not paying much attention. Goop Lyn sat with her elbows on the table, fingers steepled infront of her face.

“I hereby bring this Lyn Meeting to order. Pausing for applause.”

“Go fuck yourself. Meeting adjourned.”

“You should really make a better choice of words around your clone.”

“... Okay you got me.”

“Now then. First point of business. I… had a nightmare.”

“Damn, that sucks. Meeting adjourned.”

“Take this seriously you shitting piece of fuck!”

“Any more cusses you wanna string together or can I go.”

Goop Lyn slammed her fist on the table “It was a nightmare that was one of Wendy’s memories! I was her! Can you imagine why that would freak me out, Hm!?”

Lyn leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. “... I guess?”

“You fucking GUESS!? I woke up and I still had Wendy’s hair and you GUESS that’d bother me!?”

Lyn sighed, waved her hand to pre-emptively stop Goop Lyn from saying ‘don’t you fucking sigh at me’, then leaned forward and looked her alien clone in the eyes.

“Listen. I’m the foremost expert on whatever the fuck you are. That doesn’t mean I get it. You have my memories, so you know I don’t have any actual experience with your whole deal outside of this. So yeah, I guess dreaming you were someone else and then waking up with their hair would mess with you, I guess because I don’t fucking know. Don’t give me shit about it, alright?”

Goop Lyn paused then looked to the side.

“Maybe I was being unfair because I was stressed out of my fucking head. Maybe. It doesn’t sound like me to make a mistake, but there is a lot of you in here and you do make many, constant mistakes so…” she trailed off, then her eye widened. “There’s a lot of you, but plenty of other people. That’s how I got my strength back, by absorbing it from the mass produced clones. They must’ve put more in me than I thought.”

“Cool, we’ve cracked the code, good job team meeting adjourned.”

“Meeting not fucking adjourned, now we have a theory on why this happened, that doesn’t mean I’m over it.”

“Well get over it, there are other things I want to do today.”

Goop Lyn started moving to hold herself but stopped out of pride.

“You Listen to me this time. I don’t have a lot that’s ‘me’, okay? I’m still trying to figure out exactly where you end and I begin, but I know I like this form. It’s mine. It’s a lot like yours, because I am a kind of Lyn, my own kind. And that means a lot to me, it means pretty much everything. So can you understand why it not looking like it should, looking in a mirror and seeing someone else's hair when there’s already so little proving that I’m me would freak me out?”

Lyn paused for a moment to take it all in, this was a rare case where she couldn’t dismiss something.

“This is like, heavy shit for you huh?”

“The only thing heavier would be Lloyd coming back and yelling in my brain again.”

“Shit dude. I think this is something people would normally like, get therapy about.”

“But that’s not an option for an alien clone living in hiding.”

“And I don’t think they teach shit like that in psychology 101.”

“They’d have to reach at least 709 to start getting into my problems.”

“So what do we actually do about it?”

“... I don’t know if there is anything. I don’t think there’s ever been anyone like me, so there’s no info to go off of. For all I know this’ll never happen again, or maybe it’ll happen every night. I just don’t know.”

Lyn recognised the fear hidden in Goop Lyn’s voice. Only someone who knew her as thoroughly as Lyn did could. They were both intensely prideful and unwilling to show vulnerability, it was beneath them. Even to each other. So she knew that it was taking a lot for Goop Lyn to express this. And since they had no solutions to her problem, all Lyn could do is respond in kind. Even if she hated doing so and thought it sucked bad.

“Well if you figure out anything I should do about it, just tell me. Even if I have to sleep in your bed with you to hold you down if you wake up freaking out again. I’ll look out for ya. Not like anyone else does.”

“You better, I’m only alive and like this because of all your self confidence. You owe me.”

“Yeah yeah, I’ve got your back til death do us part.”

“Don’t fucking say it like that!”

#Lyn #Goop Lyn #Written stuff #I enjoyed writing dialogue that is specifically meant to read like set dialogue but without da pictures

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evilwickedme · 1 year

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You seemed sad that nobody's asked for jayroy fic recs. I want jayroy fics! I am a simple creecher with simple needs.

God what a mood tho. ngl I'm obsessed with these two

I've already recommended some of my favs in previous posts! here and here for your enjoyment

anyway here we go

ace-spectrum!Jason

one of my favorite hc and with a lot of support from the text imho; I have more of these these are just my favs

Kiss Me, Kill Me, Take Me Home - 5+1 times somebody kissed Jason, ace!Jason

Jane Austen Never Said Anything About Speed Dating - this one's pretty long. an au where Jason never died and is dealing with trauma from an abusive ex. again, outright ace!Jason and his ex absolutely raped him, so dark subject matter but it's still so good. Jason's brothers try to get him back in the game after the breakup and he ends up running into Roy at speed dating; they decide to fake date to get both their families off their backs. some nice Lian stuff here too.

Between These Pages (Is a Wonderful Place To Be) - ace!Jason gets extremely injured and Roy reads to him, cute little oneshot

(can you feel) the fire burning through your veins - nothing wrong with a little bit of self promo, right? this is demi!gay!Jason figuring his identity out and navigating his changing relationship with Roy. it takes place in a slightly alternate timeline where he's been to therapy for a couple of years and he never slept with Talia so it's his first time with pretty much everything. there actually is smut but it's Jason's first time :D

there is sex in this

I’ve Got the Feeling You’re the Right Thing After All - more poisonivory??? yes please!!! Roy's has had feelings for Dick since their teen titans days, but still ends up in a fwb with Jason when he's asked to help Jason run the iceberg lounge... somewhat plotty, smut in basically every chapter, so fucking good

Let me shipwreck in your thighs - we all have a thing for Jason's thighs, lbr

Arrows and Bullets - a two fic series. injured Jason falls into Roy's apartment and stays there until he heals. once again, some quality Lian stuff here. the sequel fic has some minor Jason-comes-back-home and surrounds christmas.

Boys Don't Cry - trans!Jason. I think this does have a minor plot?? I can't remember it's basically just fifty thousand words of marathon sex over the course of like at least a week

there's a middle ground between ace and outright smut actually

Some Kind of Disaster - this is actually one of my favorites and I've reread the whole thing more than once even though it's a mildly long series (although tbf I've reread longer). instead of outright dying at sanctuary Roy is just grievously injured and Jason runs to his side the moment he hears and refuses to leave. there's a lot of angst. one of the fics is smutty; halfway through the series Roy discovers Lian exists and that's where the plot really kicks in. so good

The Midnight Snow - Robin!Jason is in a time loop and Roy gets trapped in there with him

Flowers Are My Love Language - Jason keeps trying to get Roy to date him using flowers, and Roy simply refuses to get the message

Around Red Hood's Barn - Neighbors au where Roy and Jason are still partners as vigilantes, Roy just doesn't know Red Hood's identity, and Roy CANNOT STAND his new neighbor Jason. I love me some good identity shenanigans in a superhero fic

Magnet Tar Pit Trap - I already linked one cowboy au in the first fic rec (linked above), why not one more

other

remember how canonically Roy died in Heroes in Crisis? ow. I actually already rec'd my favorite one of these in the first Jason fic rec (linked! above!) so check that one out too

It is only, and all about Roy - I actually really regretted not putting this in the original fic rec (again, linked above). Jason shows up in Star City and ends up collaborating with Oliver. JayRoy is only implied but either way Jason is clearly deeply grieving Roy's death and so is Ollie

Please, come back - JayRoy were together before sanctuary and Jason grieves his death deeply. happy ending tho!

anyway yeah that's some good fics believe me when I say I could've rec'd twice as many honestly. unfortunately I had to stop somewhere so that's it for now

#there's so much good jayroy+lian fluff I wish I'd put more here but again. this is already so much #like fifteen is just so much #I also tried to include mostly fics that are actually respectful towards Roy cause a lot of jayroy fics are really only interested in Jason #jayroy #roy harper #jason todd #lian harper #oliver queen #arrowfam #batfam #dc #dc fic #fic recs #gail speaks #ask #vote-4-crow #jason todd my beloved #jt

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telekinetic-electronica · 10 months

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let’s talk about neo metal sonic.

Metal Sonic has definitely been a fan favorite over the years. He’s one of Sonic’s first rivals, next to Knuckles. He has been in many games. And Heroes, was to be honest, his big role overall in terms of story. I want to look at what his Neo form means, canonically and how people taken his Neo form within the fandom.

First, let’s start off with something, I’m gonna call Metal Neo from here on out. Neo, at his core, is honestly an insanely tragic character. He struggles with an identity crisis, the moment he has free will. He wants to be his own person so bad, but he’s still VERY much tied to Sonic. The purpose he’s meant to destroy and overcome.

And I also wanna say, a lot of Neo’s issues come from Eggman. I also wanna say, Eggman is nothing like his portrayal, fanon wise. This man is very selfish. He berates his creations, threatens to hurt them, and sees them as something he can use. Neo isn’t exempt from this. And before any brings up Sage,

I do like Eggman having a human moment with Sage, but just because an abusive parent is nice to one kid, it doesn’t mean he didn’t abuse his other kids. I don’t know where this whole “doting father” thing came from, but it’s fanon and something heavily Ian Flynn leans into, and it isn’t canon. (Like he literally blew that conch thing and just like. Messed up with the Zeti’s heads because they “disappointed him, and listed off things he’s “done for them”, Ik he’s a villian, point still stands.)

And because of this, it drives Neo, but at the cost... of a lot. It’s often hinted at that Neo actually really doesn’t fucking like Eggman and hates of the shit he says to him. Him failing to finally end Sonic. Him always being left to the side lines to just... die.

Sonic just leaving him, after the day ends. Or Eggman just leaving him there. Until he’s ready for the next mission, and whenever Eggman feels like it. Neo has no support system, and he’s just driven by this overall need to prove himself. To prove he’s not some unlovable failure to Sonic and to his creator.

youtube

“I WAS CREATED FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF DESTROYING YOU. BUT I COULD NEVER SEEM TO DEFEAT YOU. THAT IS WHY I TRANSFORMED MY OWN BODY WITH MY OWN HANDS. BUT THAT WAS THE PAST. NOW YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A SPEC OF DUST TO ME.” “SEE ME AS I AM, NO LONGER AFRAID OF ANYTHING.” Like, it’s quite clear that Neo DOES have feelings. If he weren’t alive, in some way, he wouldn’t be able to use chaos control during his fight with Sonic and co. And I think we all know what he’s afraid of. Afraid of, what they implying and saying about him is right. The only REAL person to try and reach out to Neo is, Shadow. And guess who was also used as a living weapon?

(I know Sonic has done so as well, but let’s be honest, those moments are kind of rare?)

They both were. Neo, really doesn’t have, anyone. He was viewed as a heartless, monster, who is obedient to Eggman, no matter what. He had nobody, and let’s be honest, Neo definitely ran away from Eggman to develop his Neo form and Metal Overlord. He was alone and gone, for God knows how long, and I’m gonna be honest, I think this form was him having a mental break down.

This stage is literally called “Metal Madness.” And God, let’s talk about his Neo form, for a bit.

Neo broke away from Eggman’s control and is FINALLY taking action for his own life. Sure, evil purposes, but still to him, he’s freed from Eggman shackles, and can you really blame Neo for doing so? He was basically raised to be nothing but to do evil shit, and with no warm or kindness extended to him. Or it was really fucking rare. He had nothing but just bitter and anger to drive him, revenge to drive him forward, and it tore him apart. No emotional system, he was just left. Alone.

Neo is taking control of his own life and forming his own destiny. Neo means new. New Metal Sonic. Neo Metal Sonic. Which is why I think a lot of fellow trans people, (I’m a trans male myself), have been flocking to Neo’s, well, Neo form. Because he’s no longer conforming to whatever Eggman wants him to be. He created his Neo form on his own, it’s HIS identity, and Eggman can’t take that away from him. He’s Neo and he’s here to stay. Now, God, getting to this part, it’s always just... so sad to me, from Neo’s POV.

Sonic and co. finally defeat Neo, and we here him cry out. Now, they’re all happy and cheery, while Sonic taunts of him a rematch. He had put his all into these new forms of himself, he was so certain for ONCE, he was gonna win. He was gonna be able to prove he’s not some fake Sonic or a mistake. And when he did his best, he failed. Miserably so. “AUUGH! NO! WHY?! I HAD IT ALL!” when he says this line, you can just hear how... miserable he sounds. Because to him, he was finally doing something RIGHT for once.

“IT’S NO USE... BUT WHY CAN’T I DEFEAT YOU?”

I think, after everything I said, speaks for itself. And has he says this, he reverts into his base form and turns off. Omega holds him in his arms and Shadow looks somberly at him. The two people who were used as nothing but seen as living machines, also holding a fellow seen as nothing but a living machine.

It’s a very somber feeling, looking back on it all. The big question for Neo is: will he be free or just... stuck in a cyclical cycle of being defeated and just loosing?

I think his theme song: What I’m Made Of also just highlights his character perfectly, too.

#abuse tw #sonic the hedgehog #neo metal sonic #metal sonic #metal overlord #metal madness #sth #sth neo metal sonic #sth metal sonic #sonic the hedgehog analysis #sth analysis

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withgreatpowercomesmyfuckingdick · 6 months

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i am just here to talk not very a ask because if i can't say it, i will probably destroy someone house.

i have been thinking what was going on in cloud's head before tifa went in and put him back together ?

Like i think that we all could see how cloud talk about the nibelhiem accident. Even if he was just putting himself in place of zack that is to much. it dosn't fell like the zack from crisis core you know ?

i think that cloud brain creat memories by taking a vag felling of how the things went and use the emotion accociate with it, then fell it what is left of it with the " first class soldier, friend with sephiroth like you know zack ". wich give that hell of a fanfiction. cloud was next to his idol, so he must have quite the happy emotion, and sephiroth acted that way because in the logic of " cloud being zack" it wouldn't make any sense for sephiroth to not act on it even it may have been a little bit exagere by the feeling of that time.

and then there is that wierd felling that it dosn't stick with the rest of any implied memories. you know. i don't know how to explain it, maybe it's final fantasy 7 ( 1997) that is influenced me here. please tell me that i am not the only one who can see a 180° change in atmosphere when it's about that memory ( i know that they did it this way for the lovely fan we are but dang it's destroying my view of cloud. seeing cloud with emotion on his face has actually wierd me out, his the one wtih the stoïque one, you know ? )

plus has anyone ever ask what cloud remember in between the memory of tifa and being a first ?

and why does cloud shoose zack or not tifa or hell sephiroth himself ? plus he seem to remember zack before that little discour of his. what if when zack said to cloud that he would be his legacy, cloud broken mind took it literaly and for the event to have sense ,zack as a person had to go. it's why ex-first claas cloud do not have zack personality :"]

it's probably extremely wrong, i am still stuck with ff7 ( 1997 ) and can't get myself aroud the remake . like at all. stone face cloud, stays my favorite boy .

ooooooh this is a very interesting ask/ramble this might take me a sec to break down.

edit: this was in my drafts for a few days and ended up very lengthy, but I promise I didn’t forget you LOL. I’m going to give a header for each question for ease of reading. Thanks for the ask, and read more should you be interested in the rambles you set off for me 😂

What was going on in Cloud’s head before Tifa helped put him back together?/What’s with the tone change in his memories of Sane!Sephiroth?

The mind is very fascinating. The closest real life experience i’ve been able to relate to Cloud’s situation is friends I’ve had with dissociative identity disorder (DID). the mind on its own is very much capable of twisting events and compartmentalizing them between personalities. Cloud’s case is an extreme case in that 1) there’s a fucking alien involved and 2) the effects were basically amnesiac. He literally couldn’t retrieve the memories by himself because of how well his brain did in compartmentalizing his trauma, which is fucked up, since all it really did was leave him with the effects of his trauma without knowing the cause. So. Yeah lol.

I get what you’re saying with the memory thing and the gap though. The change in atmosphere IS stark.

I think the big thing to remember here is that Cloud’s brain isn’t just casting itself as Zack. He is Zack’s legacy, what Cloud interprets as being what Zack represents. Seeing as Cloud sees Zack through some rose-colored glasses for sure, there’s plenty of room for error. And who of us doesn’t look at our friends and think, “Everyone should love you like I love you”? Like you said, part of it could certainly be Cloud’s personal of bias of “how the fuck could someone not like Zack?” and it skews the memory.

However, I have a theory I personally prefer: The addition of Jenova cells in the equation. The lines between minds affected by Jenova cells is evidently thin, there’s no reason why it wouldn’t be even thinner between Zack and Cloud considering their trust in each other and everything they’ve been through. Couple that with Zack constantly telling Cloud past stories and you have falsely constructed memories all over Cloud’s brain. Maybe Cloud heard those stories and the ‘memories’ we see are his brain taking creative liberty. Like you said, taking what he knows and just filling things in based on how he assumes they would act. Maybe those are actually Zack’s memories, somewhat transferred due to their joint prolonged exposure to J-cells and each other, glorified a bit thanks to Zack trying to filter the stories for his paralyzed friend. We probably won’t get the full scope until Rebirth, but I’m pretty sure we’ll find out.

What does Cloud remember in between the memory of Tifa and being a First?

I’d say very little if any at all. There’s evidence in Rebirth that he hadn’t even remembered their promise on the water tower, a very important motive behind his wanting to become a SOLDIER in the first place, until she’d mentioned it. In fact, I’d say his memory of her is pretty much gone, and looking at it from the “I’m Zack” standpoint it makes sense.

Everything in Nibelheim is attached to a very heavy feeling of shame for Cloud. He wouldn’t even take his helmet off going back because he was so ashamed about talking shit he couldn’t back up. Tifa is the main person he feels he let down by not getting into SOLDIER. Reread that: Tifa is the main person he feels he let down by not getting into SOLDIER. The very existence of her memory is a threat to his alternate personality as a First SOLDIER. That shame and his fabrication can’t coexist, so it makes sense to me that Cloud’s brain pretty much eliminated Tifa before he sees her again.

There’s also evidence he doesn’t remember his time at Shinra at all aside from his ‘Zack’ memories. I don’t remember if it was in the OG, but the Remake makes it very pointed when Cloud runs into a soldier that recognizes him and he has no idea who they are. So this alternate personality thing pretty much erased his life aside from very basic knowledge, from my understanding.

(Which is why playing with his character is so fun for me because, technically, for all of FF7, Cloud is OOC. Crisis Core Cloud is the more accurate rendition of him. Smacking them together into one guy is the closest to Cloud’s true post-trauma personality we get. But that’s a rant for another day.)

Why did Cloud choose Zack and not Tifa/Sephiroth/someone else?

First off I’d like to say, and I think people forget this: Cloud thought he was the only survivor of Nibelheim for years. Cloud thought he was the only survivor of a genocide. That shit is heavy. And who was there after all of it plus all the bullshit with Hojo? Zack.

Sephiroth was his hero, but he turned to a villain. Tifa was his goal, but as far as he knows, she’s too dead to care what he does now. But Zack was Cloud’s friend, and that never changed. Zack was everything he had left.

And here’s another thought: I said earlier that Jenova cells in the both of them probably excaberated Cloud’s mental break. Cloud’s brain probably didn’t consciously decide “Oh, I’ll be Zack now.” What it did was replace his trauma with the safest option. If the majority of his trauma and grief is tied to Zack then, boom, we take Zack out of the picture. It was probably even convenient, since his memories of being paralyzed and experimented on are also inextricably tied to Zack. So naturally, they have to pack it up too. Zack is the one that got wiped out of Cloud’s memory because losing him is apparently where Cloud’s brain drew the line for trauma capacity. Even though Cloud went through a shitton with Sephiroth and Hojo, it was ultimately Zack’s death that pushed him over the edge. Out of everything that happened, Zack dying is what his brain decided Cloud couldn’t handle. Zack’s request for Cloud to be his legacy, as sweet as it is, probably didn’t help.

(Clawing at my hair because Zack, you could’ve said literally anything else. I know it’s symbolic in his approval of Cloud and his trust in his friend etc etc but couldn’t you have said something with LESS emotional and psychological damage? Goddamnit, Zack.)

Naturally, logical vacancies are left. Who’s the First SOLDIER that helps Nibelheim? Hm, must be Cloud. But if he helped Nibelheim, then who discovered Sephiroth in the Manor? Must be Cloud. If he talked to Sephiroth in the Manor, then he must’ve known Sephiroth, and how does one know Sephiroth? You should be a First SOLDIER. In Cloud’s head it comes full circle because there’s a SUBSTANTIAL gap that used to be filled with Zack. We could say that either 1) J-cells made his memory fucky and having some of Zack’s memories in his head accelerated his faulty logic or 2) the memories we ‘see’ aren’t even real and are just wallpapers Cloud’s brain hung over the holes in his memory.

Enjoyed breaking this down, but overall you’re very correct! And I mean, it’s fair to favor the original over the Remake! I think we all subconsciously default to the 1997 canon, because I certainly do. I’m literally using the 1997 canon and just nabbing little details from the Remake because I like the world building and the NPCs and the new visuals we have for battle and magic and what not. Thank you so so much for this ask and I’m sorry if my text wall was a little much in reply 😂

#ff7 #final fantasy 7 #cloud strife #sephiroth #ffvii #ff7 cloud #zack fair #final fantasy vii #ff7 zack #liddle’s asks #ff7 cc #final fantasy vii remake #final fantasy 7 remake #rambles #liddle theories

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phoenix-before-the-flame · 1 year

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Iam looking at your phoenixverse laxus design with both eyes OPEN 👁👁 but now im so curiojz as to what else the phoenixverse has to offer. PLEASE tell me youve got any headcanons about how zeref refived natsu. Like any thoughts at all on that?

Ohohohohohohohohohoho anon my guy my dude, my man (genderless) I am about to speak. Pull up a fuckin chair bro. Also puttin this under read more because uh, long lol

This is actually one of my favourite things to think about regarding Natsu (apart from yknow, END lol) and Zeref because it is such an interesting little story point.

For Natsu, the interest comes from the fact that he's not who he thought he was. Natsu's always confident about his identity, he's quick to announce who and what he is in a situation and he's proud of who he is. The knowledge that yeah sure, you are Natsu Dragneel, but uh Natsu's not who you think he is buddy- that Natsu, in some way died so many centuries ago but was pulled back and reshaped, reborn- repackaged even- into you in a body that you thought was human but is some almagamation of that and more? All tied to a book? Can he still say with confidence that he is Natsu Dragneel when he hardly knew the truths about himself? And if sayin that is even true when he could easily just be something molded to look like what Zeref lost? (Ofc we the readers know otherwise but imagine the dilemna man) The reality of it would've- should've- been earth shattering. It would've been an identity crisis and then some.

For Zeref, oh man. Zeref's whole thing stems from the fact that he loves Natsu. He loves Natsu so much (and his parents too i guess) that when the tragedy struck and he lost everything, it fucked him up. He just couldn't deal with the incredibly unfair hand that life dealt him that he was willing to turn the world on its head and essentially change the course of fioran history to try and undo what happened to him. To save something from his old life that he loved.

But heres the thing about Zeref's love. It's twisted. It's fucked up. It's dark.

Working years, decades- possibly even centuries- on the single minded task of reviving his brother (and why just Natsu? Why not the parents well? Why only the younger sibling? Did he intend to bring them all back but became single minded on just his brother?) could lead to obsession. Obsession with making him perfect, no longer just as a human but more than that. Stronger so he won't be killed as easily. Obsession with keeping him close, tying him to his soul in such a way that if Zeref goes, Natsu goes as well. Making sure that he's pulling the strings that when it comes to, when he finally closes his eyes at the hands of his brother, he has a comfort in knowing that his brother is going with him and he won't be left alone, like what his very first tragedy did to him. (Plus also making Natsu, his creation that he brought to life, kill him would be a back stab at Ankhserham. Because the god cursed him for fucking around with life and death, so having his demon kill him would be Zeref controlling the life he chose to create and determining his own death. It'd be a last gotcha).

Zeref may have loved Natsu enough to bring him back, and he still loves him in a way, but it's messed up. Because the whole ordeal of everything messed him up.

But I digress, this is just side stuff, your question really. How did Zeref really bring Natsu back?

Now since you asked specifically for phoenixverse, i can get a lil bit loose with canon details and not feel as restricted.

So we have our hard facts- Natsu and Parents die in Zeref's youth, Zeref fucks around tryna undo their deaths and finds out by getting cursed for doing this, then proceeds to use the curse to his advantage and over an undisclosed amount of time to create his demons and what not.

'Undisclosed amount of time' being the key thing here.

Canon implies that the time between Natsu's death, Zeref getting cursed and Zeref reviving Natsu happened within a relatively close period of time. And if it's anything I love, it's spacing out events.

I'd like to think that between the loss of his family and when he gets cursed is a decent gap of time, like a decade or so to really push the fact that he's so fixated on the loss. Then after getting the curse he sets to work of reviving Natsu over the course of decades to almost a century and a half.

(Am i implying Zeref to be a bit older than the 400 years? Yes, yes i am. The way I saw it the events of 400yrs past were inciting incidents i.e Zeref giving Natsu to Igneel, slayers gettin sent to the future, and not the actually set date where everything happened. And again, I like the idea of Zeref fixating on this for a very long time. Him being older drives home the single-mindedness and determination to get it done)

As prodigious as Zeref is, creating life and being the first wizard to do so, i don't think he could do it so easily within a few short years which is why i personally love the idea of Zeref taking so long to be able to revive Natsu. A touch of realism to something magical kinda grounds it in a way, gives it some weight at the very least.

Specifically Natsu being Zeref's final project ever and all the other demons he created over the years prior being experiments and steps taken to perfect the process so Natsu would be the culmination of all that he learnt (demons like deliora and lullaby being demons of inorganic matter given humanoid form-> tartarus- esque demons being humanoid demons with animalistic features (organic matter) -> Natsu, human demon and hybrid traits all working together in cohesion).

And speaking of a touch of realism, or sorta realism anyways, riddle me this.

Zeref needs something to make Natsu well, Natsu. Sure he could probs make a demon that looks like him, but thats not what he wants. He wants his actual brother so, what could he get to add into the mixture to really do that? Why a few samples of course :].

But Phoenix! I hear you cry, how could he have gotten samples if you said in your version that it took him forever to finally revive Natsu?

And so leads into the actual true definitive answer to your question anon.

Zeref, in needing the most important ingredient in the Natsu stew took things from the OG body to help build the new one. But! The kicker here is the samples I imagine him using aren't blood but instead, bone.

Maybe he realizes a decade or 2 down the line in his demon experiments that he missed a step in what he needs to see this through. Maybe he thinks he's too late because what can he do now at that point. Maybe he realizes that he can use not flesh and blood, but what remains for his plan. Maybe he commits another sin in the hopes of it bringing for another and digs up his young brother's bones. Maybe he whittles them down piece by precious piece over the long period of time after failing so many times (am i also implying failed Natsus? Failed ENDs? Hell yeah i am) and coming dangerously close to it all ending for naught, with the last shard of bone. And maybe after so long and so many atrocities, he finally succeeded?

TL:DR Zeref snagged OG Natsu's bones and used those to help in the process of quite literally rebuilding him from scratch to give us our Natsu.

I dunno man, it just adds a layer of fucked up-ness to the whole situation of how far Zeref was willing to go- even defiling his brother's bones to get him back.

And on Natsu's side learning about all this would just twist the knife of his identity crisis even deeper (especially on that implication of failed END attempts before him).

Also like, by stretching out the time of events and making Natsu being the very last demon Zeref ever made bring so much for layers of meaning to the name END in itself.

END, being the literal meaning 'Etherious Natsu Dragneel'

END, signalling the last demon Zeref's made. An end to his experimentations.

END, as in the last and perfected version of his brother, with the last remains of OG Natsu's bones going towards his creation.

And END, as in Zeref's end, where he intends for Natsu to kill him thus ending his life.

#fairy tail #fairy tail headcanon #natsu dragneel #zeref dragneel #fairy tail natsu #fairy tail zeref #i fuckin LOVE characters who were basically lab made #characters who for all intents and purposes comes off as your average living creature but its the circumstances of how they came to be #being fucked up and made from scratch and the hands of another #is a special sweet spot of characters i adore #shadow the hedgehog mewtwo hunter owl house #especially when its implied that there were multiples of them made before hand to add another layer of sweet sweet intrigue #which is why when natsu was revealed as END i was like yippee!!!○_○#but as we all know by now that didnt really pan out to anything substantial #i dunno #maybe im thinkin too hard on this but its still an idea that i love and hold onto #also anon sorry this got long u uh #u activated my trap card lol #*grips your shoulder tightly* but do you understajd my vision bro #do u get it #the implications #the layers #makin the situation all gray and muddled instead of set black n white

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absolutebl · 1 year

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This Week in BL - 2023 Begins!

Jan 20232 Wk 1

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most.

Ongoing Series - Thai

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) 4 of 12 - I keep saying this, but I can’t get over how delighted I am to have Perth back on my screen, and under the GMMTV umbrella. He is a stellar actor. I like that the first kiss of this show wasn’t btw the leads. Felt more realistic to high school. Big drama next week!

My School President (Fri YT) 5 of 10 - I missed these two so much last week. But also there was A MUSICAL INCIDENT and it caused a bit of a rant from yours truly.

Between Us (Sun iQIYI) 9 of 12 - no ep this week, resumes tomorrow WATCH ALONG HERE.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) 7 of 11 - Game remains my spirit animal (pushy fucker), and the plot of the main couple is interesting even if I don’t like the cheating component.

Cutie Pie 2 You (special) 1 of 4 - Oh it’s a full on special. Very very pretty and, is possible, more sappy and full of manufactured angst. Nuea protecting Hia’s interests was sweet. Lots of making out. So... more of the same, basically. What year are we in now, anyway?

I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) 8 of 12 - (note from my Thai language spy rgr ep 5: the writing on the stone tablets was their names + 2 family members) And now we are suddenly firmly in BL territory and baby Dom is just a baby Seme. No bisexual identity crisis needed... just diving into cheese fest.

Remember Me (Sun Gaga) 13 of 14 - I would have kept JaFirst apart for longer, quite frankly. I mean otherwise why bother split them up in the first place? Please just end this show already.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

The New Employee (Korea Weds Viki) 3 of 8 - I love them so much, and they are so cute, and this is not open to discussion. Viva la age gap!

The Director Who Buys Me Dinner (Korea Weds iQIYI) 7-8 of 10 - There is a lot implied about the leads history together, but it was still nice to get backstory plus GAT KISSES. I love it when they flip the dynamic and give the uke agency. I’m really enjoying this show now, I’m even invested in the love triangle.

HIStory 5: Love in the Future (Taiwan Weds Viki) 2 of 10 - Side couple ascension: Daddy Long Legs trope, it’s been a while since I have seen this in ANY romance drama. I’m not really into the main couple, at least not yet (and I totally missed that they hadn’t met each other in person yet), but I really love the side dishes. It’s like H4 all over again only with less dub con.

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) 4 of 8 - nothing this week.

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching It

Love Bill (Vietnam Sat YT) - Bah Vinh is back but I’m too distracted. Also there’s a lot of fund raising stuff going on with them. I can wait.

The Star Always Follow You (Vietnam YT) - same Team RL peeps we have seen before (Sunshine, Stupid)

Moonlight Chicken GMMTV’s Midnight series (Weds YT) 1 of 8 eventually - first segment has begun bit it’s not the EarthMix messy gays. Sorry all, I’m so not interested in messy hets, so I’m waiting until they grace my screen.

Questions!!!

Should I watch The Warp Effect? Tublr seems excited about it and BL bits look good? Will they end happy? Thoughts anyone?

Till the World Ends (Thai YT) finished at 10 eps, the heat looked good but I don’t know about the ending with that kind of title, so did anyone risk it and want to tell me what they thought? I haven’t seen much chatter on my feed so I am not optimistic.

In Case You Missed It

2022′s The Usual Night (Twitter account) from Japan is a 10-ep fake documentary series starring the members of Jpop group the Fantastics. It flew under everyone’s radars but apparently has a BL subplot featuring Yagi Yusei (My Beautiful Man) and Seguchi Leiya. This officially means they beat OnlyOneOf to the punch as the first inter-group BL pairing. Keito Kimura (Onoe from Candy Color Paradox) is also a member of Fantastics and in the show. Source reddit. No word on official international release. Japan is like that.

OnlyOneOf’s Nine dropped the last (?) in their BL Kpop series, 'beyOnd' (be #6)

I posted all my 2022 wraps, top picks, industry stats, etc..

Next Week Looks Like This:

Jan 19: Individual Circumstances 8 eps - A reunion romance between a movie director who was once promising and a writer who disappeared due to past wounds. Stars JunQ (main rapper of 2nd gen group MYNAME) and Han Jung Wan (Mr International Korea winner).

2023 forthcoming BL master post is in the works... wait for it... I had to finish all the 2022 wrap ups first. Also waiting for the last of the studio announcements.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Never Let Me Go

Ah the love triangle.

The Director Who Buys Me Dinner caught himself a live one.

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? You gotta check out VIXX (sub unit) new single. Gonna Be Alright = 2 BL stars in one croon. (Hyuk Color Rush 2 & Leo Happy ending Romance). *props chin on hand and bats eyes winsomely at Ken* So?

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hamliet · 1 year

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Emerald and Mercury, Chemical Wedding

So Hamliet wrote a meta about Renora, Bumbleby, White Knight, and Rosegarden getting chemical weddings (several posts for White Knight now since they just had their second one). But at the time I remarked that I didn't see any specific symbolism for Emercury.

I was dumb, and I'm sorry. There is a wedding, and it's very clearly coded as one, and I missed it. Lulz?

It's from the same manuscript as Yang/Blake's first wedding, and Renora's. It's less directly referencing the specific imagery in that neither Em nor Merc are using lances or riding animals, but it's still packed full of obvious symbolism.

The point of this image is actually that fights are often symbolic of chemical weddings. Think Jaime and Brienne having a fight with swords in front of a river in A Storm of Swords. There's a specific risk of penetration involved here (yes that's subtext), and the first chemical wedding is often violent. I'm not going to get super into the Freudian penetration symbolism because that's not really what happens, but I am going to point out that Mercury and Emerald do penetrate each other's armor symbolically here.

If you look at the framing when the fight starts, it's comparable to Weiss and Jaune's before their second one begins.

Emerald is in front of sunlight and fire. Mercury, associated with the moon, is in the shadows. Emerald is associated with red as well.

But the fight starts off with Emerald essentially asking Mercury what am I to you? But she includes Cinder in this, which is a sign of immaturity, because Cinder is explicitly paralleled with a parental figure here (Marcus). Don't bring your parents up in romantic situations, kids.

And Mercury responds kind of cruelly:

Emerald: I mean, there has to be something you want from this, right?

Mercury: Salem's promised us everything. We win this thing for her, we'll be top dogs in her new world. What more do you want?

Emerald: I just... (sighs) Cinder was the only family I ever had. She cared about me, taught me things... But without her here, I don't know if what we're doing--

Mercury: Wake up, already...

Emerald looks at him in shock upon hearing this.

Mercury: Cinder doesn't care about you! She doesn't care about either of us!

Emerald: You don't know what you're talking about!

Mercury: You're in denial. And if you're gonna start having a crisis of identity or some crap... keep me out of it.

Still, Emerald does directly tell Mercury that he and Cinder are family to her. That's pretty clearly implied.

Emerald then starts to meet Mercury where he's at. She responds to him with fights and kicks, and only when she does that--using a language Mercury understands, because for him family=pain and physical violence--does Mercury open up to her.

In fact, this is the specific framing of the exact moment he tells Emerald about Marcus stealing his semblance. He's stepped into the fire, absorbing qualities from Emerald.

Whenever Mercury makes important statements, he says it in front of the fire. For example, he tells Emerald "I think I'm right where I'm supposed to be" in front of fire (scene below).

The fight also takes place in a vault that is very much modeled on a church. I mean, don't tell me this isn't a church. It's a church, a classic wedding allusion.

The ending pose is both of them unified in light and shadows, staring at Tyrian in horror.

Because Tyrian is another key factor in this. He interrupts the wedding. He does a very creepy pose over Mercury and using his tail to make the subtext extra creepy. This makes it pretty clear that Tyrian is Emercury's Adam or Cinder/Curious Cat--an antagonistic Mercurius who represents a threat to not just Emerald and Mercury's relationship, but their very live.

I would also bet this scene foreshadows exactly what will happen later, since elevated, second chemical weddings in RWBY tend to be inverses of the preceding ones.

My prediction is Emerald and Mercury physically fight it out at some point. Tyrian will intervene and go for Emerald, but Mercury will get in the way and not allow Tyrian to kill Emerald, and they'll defeat him together.

#rwby #rwby meta #rwby theory #emercury #alchemy #chemical wedding #emerald sustrai #mercury black #tyrian callows

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mytly4 · 1 year

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I’ve been writing a Vorkosigan Saga fanfic about Miles’s children’s lives and the general socio-political situation on Barrayar after Miles’s death. The entire fic is far from complete, and maybe never will be complete, but at least I have written a few scenes I’m happy with. I’m particularly happy with a chapter in which Gregor contemplates retiring from being emperor and handing over the reins to his eldest son (named Xav in this fic). So I have decided to post the following scene, which is an outtake from that chapter, since it’s fairly standalone and can be understood even without most of the context from the rest of the fic.

For some brief context, though: As the books imply that Miles will die (permanently) fairly young, considering his multiple health problems, in this fic, Miles dies at the age of 56. This scene takes place a few weeks later. Gregor (who is 62) has asked some of the women in his life – Cordelia, Alys, Drou, and Ekaterin – for tea to discuss the possibility of retirement with them. Laisa is present as well. Ekaterin is the POV character (though in this scene, she’s mostly just there as an observer). Btw, Simon is also already dead. Ivan is on his second career, as a diplomat.

‘I wish Aral were here, so I could talk to him about this. Or Simon. Or Miles,’ Gregor sighed and held his head.

‘Did you talk to Ivan about this?’ asked Ekaterin slowly. Alys raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

‘Yes, actually I did. I managed to get a chance to talk to him after the funeral. Just about half an hour, since he had to leave immediately to get back to Rho Ceta, given the delicate political situation there. But he did give me some fairly straightforward advice.’

‘Which was…?’ asked Alys.

Gregor smiled. ‘He told me bluntly that I was a fool for not considering retirement sooner. He said that I should hand over the reins to Xav as soon as possible, and then take Laisa on a long and very leisurely jaunt through the Nexus, visiting all sorts of touristy spots and lying on as many beaches as possible. He particularly recommended the beaches of Ylla. I’m not entirely certain he was sincere about that last part, since I once sent him and Tej to Ylla as a punishment. But the rest of his advice seemed solid.’

Alys nodded in approval. ‘Now if only he’d take that advice himself and retire. And bring himself and his daughters back home to their grandmother who misses them so much,’ she added with a sniff.

Ekaterin, Cordelia, and Drou shared a look, while Gregor tried to come up with a diplomatic response to this. Laisa, a practised diplomat and familiar with Alys’s moods, put in smoothly, ‘We really couldn’t spare him right now, Alys, what with the continuing crisis with the Cetagandans. After all, Ivan is currently our foremost expert on relations with the Cetas.’

Alys looked slightly mollified at this undeniably true fact.

Cordelia tried to get the conversation back on track. ‘Do you think Xav is ready to be emperor?’

‘He’s twenty-five; he’ll be twenty-eight by the time this is a done deal. Surely he is old enough,’ said Laisa, a little maternal anxiety underlying her positive words.

‘I was five when I became emperor. Twenty-eight is certainly old enough,’ said Gregor with a snort.

‘Surely you don’t want his experience as a new emperor to be anything like yours?’ said Cordelia, raising her eyebrow.

‘No, my god, not at all,’ replied Gregor, with a shudder. After a few moments of contemplative silence, he resumed, ‘I suppose I’m not the most objective person to gauge this. After all, I’ve been emperor nearly my whole life. Being emperor is completely intertwined with my identity. I have genuinely no idea how anyone else – even my son – would handle the same responsibilities. But that’s also one of the reasons that I want to retire. Not just to hand over my responsibilities, I mean, but to find out who I am when I am not emperor. Who is Gregor Vorbarra? There are times when I’m really not sure. And I’d really like to know before I die.’

‘I know who Gregor Vorbarra is. After all, I wouldn’t have fallen in love with him, or married him, if I didn’t know that,’ said Laisa, leaning over to kiss him on the cheek gently. ‘But if you need to find out, then I’m happy to support you in that, darling.’

#vorkosigan saga #vorkosigan #fanfic #gregor vorbarra #cordelia naismith vorkosigan #ekaterin vorsoisson vorkosigan #alys vorpatril #laisa toscane vorbarra #drou koudelka

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loganically · 1 year

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Characters that are Trans (Because I am Tran)

Note: These are all headcanons unless states otherwise!

CW: Creepypasta, Danganronpa, Harry Potter, IT, MHA

Jeremy Heere (A he/him trans guy)

Rich Goranski (a short, bisexual he/him trans guy. he will punch anyone who calls him a confused lesbian)

Eyeless Jack (doesn't understand the whole "label thing" but uses he/it pronouns)

Homicidal Liu (the angst I have behind this headcanon--he/they)

Leon Kuwata (the song sk8 boi is about him /j. uses they/he pronouns)

Mondo Owada (biker he/him trans guy)

Hajime Hinata (identity crisis 24/7 he/they)

Korekiyo Shinguji (he's only here because I project on him--he/him pronouns)

Dipper Pines (HE/THEY walking bisexual disaster. Both twins are bi and trans)

Ron Weasley (he's AFAB and ginny is AMAB. he is also pansexual and ginny is bi. Ron uses he/him)

Harry Potter (oh, how his aunt and uncle hate this. he/him)

Sirius Black (he/they, ever the family disappointment /j)

Remus Lupin (he is me, i am him. he/him)

Richie Tozier (read above)

Adrien Agreste (daddy issues trans masc)

Felix Fathom (issues trans masc)

Luka Couffaine (hairdye trans masc)

Marc Anicel (canon; genderfluid)

Kyoka Kiro (enby, actually, they/she)

Percy Jackson (because i said so. he/they)

Will Solace (his dad is apollo? there is NO WAY he is cisgender. he/him or they/them. depends on the day)

Alex Fierro (canon; genderfluid, often fem)

Loki (canon; genderfluid, often masc)

Larry Johnson (reminds me of my boyfriend, so of course he's here)

Sal Fisher (no one with blue hair is cisgender)

Bow (i am not explaining this. he/they)

Double Trouble (canon; non-binary)

Jewelstar (Canon; FtM)

Peekablue (Canon; GNC)

Oskar (it/they/he)

Lars (implied to be trans; not confirmed, he/they)

Shep (canon; non-binary, they/them)

Hunter Noceda/Deamonne/Wittebane/Clawthorne (he/him)

Luz Noceda (implied to be GNC--note; I HC her to be genderfluid. They mainly use she/they but somedays use she/he)

Raine Whispers (canon; non-binary, they/them)

Masha (canon; non-binary, they/them)

The Collector (canon; either demi-boy or non-binary, he/they)

Viktor Hargreeves (canon; FtM, either he/him or he/they)

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crisiscutie · 1 year

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I always wonder why SQEX use the title 'Crisis' to almost every prequel of FF7, i.e Crisis Core, Before Crisis, Ever Crisis. Is 'crisis' really implied toward Sephiroth?

Also, I'm apprehensive on playing the next part of FF7R because I don't want to beat up poor Sephy again (TT_TT). No matter how many ppl say he is strong or evil, to me he's just a poor baby.

But I'll definitely play when SQEX decide to release a sequel where Sephiroth as the main character. I even got in a habit of apologizing to the monitor whenever I finally defeat Seohiroth. Am I weird? Does anyone else feels like this?

No anon, don't feel weird about being yourself~!

༻❁༺ Crisis Cutie's Favorite Word?

Personally, I think "Crisis" could be applied as a collective term to FF7's cast. It's definitely one of Sephiroth's special words alongside reunion and despair, though. We know little about Sephiroth's role in EC now, but I wonder if his story arc will be another variant of his identity crisis, like in Crisis Core and Before Crisis. It'd certainly be an emotional crisis regardless, though.

I feel you on Sephiroth but at the same time; I understand the need to put him down, and it brings such heavy feelings to my heart. 💔💔💔 I've noticed that almost no one seems to give Sephiroth any empathy, even Aerith, who's pretty much the Sora of the series.

Sephiroth's actions brought everyone deep sorrow and crisis. It's clear why they felt such despair and hatred towards him. Quick disclaimer, I'm not blaming anyone or anything here, just pointing something out. Also Aerith just knows there is no turning Sephiroth from the path of evil. In 7R, she's completely right when she told him that everything about him was wrong, in every sense.

༻❁༺ Cycle of Pain

I knew Vincent indirectly expressed empathy (from what I remembered). He understood how the circumstances of Sephiroth's birth lead him to who he is. That's why he couldn't bring himself to confront Lucrecia with the harsh reality of what her son had become...

And we as the audience have the benefit of seeing both sides of the story. I understand why Sephiroth's trauma of abandonment, emotional abuse, and killing/fighting was became much to bear, leading to his breakdown in Nibelheim.

And I can imagine the despair and fury that Tifa and Cloud experienced when Sephiroth committed his abhorrent acts at Nibelheim. Tifa refused to be part of the cycle of pain that Sephiroth kept alive, and instead extended a hand to Cloud, saving him from his own descent. Without the bonds that Cloud had built, he could have easily become like Sephiroth.

Vincent, like Tifa, made the decision to break the cycle for himself. Despite his broken bonds and difficult circumstances, he was able to stay true to his inner goodness and remain on the path of good.

༻❁༺ Another Crisis Game Please!

I would love to play a game starring Sephiroth. Honestly, I think Crisis Core should've been the game for the First Class Boyos. It just had too much going on within the plot (IMO) and the game suffered from the constraints of originally being a handheld game. Zack is a great character, but honestly, he was just "there" a lot of times. He only took a permanent, active role closer to the end, which he had to for plot reasons. And I loved it!

Zack saw the results of his attempt to live heroically and play by the rules... It had not brought him to his hoped-for destination. He tried so hard to endure the terrible events and he did! But his prize was death and betrayal. Like Aerith, he was just too good for the world... It's interesting how similar his death is to hers. They faced immense hardships, but their powerful sense of morality and bonds kept them true to themselves while dying for a selfless and noble cause.

Honestly, the whole main cast of FF7 needs a fountain of hugs.

#Sephiroth #Miracle Cutie #Crisis Cutie #aerith gainsborough #Zack fair #Cloud Strife #tifa lockhart #Vincent Valentine #lucrecia crescent #final fantasy #final fantasy 7 #ff7 #c.c rambles #story analysis

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fordtato · 1 year

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So obviously Jersey Boy is written from Ford’s perspective, which gives us a beautifully intimate understanding of what’s Ford is going through. But that leaves me really curious about how Fidds feels about everything. Ford was pretty obviously crushing on the guy, Fiddleford even points that out himself.

(Sorry for asking two questions today; I literally thought of this one right after the other and it’s been eating at me. Being able to just ask the author of my current obsession is too much p o w e r. I feel like Dipper interacting with Ford.)

Also while I’m here, I might as well ask if Jersey Boy will have a happy ending. Ford deserves it, dammit.

(spoilers: Jersey Boy) First of all, I am always more than happy to answer questions about JB! Seriously. It is so cool that ppl gush over my story, and it 100% is getting to my head but also this is so rad i love talking about it

In the context of Jersey Boy, Fiddleford has had experience in Tennessee being intimate with someone who, in the middle of a crisis about their own sexuality, ended up hurting Fiddleford. That is very much informing how he is navigating all this with Ford. (I don’t think that’s been in the text itself, it’s more implied. I don’t consider it a spoiler, since I don’t think I’ll have a lot in the story itself about Fiddleford’s past.)

It’s why he let it alone when he saw that Ford was struggling with this - Fiddleford figured it isn’t his job to teach other men their own identity. They gotta figure themselves out, especially when he has no way of controlling how they might react. BUT even despite not doing anything, and not pushing it, and not flirting, and leaving Ford alone, he still ended up very hurt (in chapter 9.) And then he finds out that Ford tried to hurt himself. The response we see in Chapter 12, that frustration with Ford, the “why the fuck did you tell me that” is just the externalization of ‘I did it RIGHT this time, I didn’t push him, I didn’t even be the one to kiss him, he kissed me, and he almost killed himself because he couldn’t bear to be like me.’ And of course we want to sympathize with Ford, the person who HAD the crisis, but there is no right way to navigate this, and Fiddleford is hurt by this, and yes, he’s still angry. He gets it, but this is hard.

Lastly, no spoilers for the ending of Jersey Boy. But thank you very much for your question.

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sirjuggles · 1 year

Text

Worm Reading - Arc 8 Extermination

I finally gave in and simplified my naming convention.

So pretty much this whole Arc is the Leviathan fight, which is absolutely riveting, but in theory I’ll have less commentary here. (Hah we’ll see) I wrote up some of my thoughts in response to an ask about Leviathan a day or two ago, so some of that will get repeated here.

My first time ever hearing about Worm was years ago through an entry on the TVTropes "Godzilla Threshold" page, which talks about a threat of sufficient magnitude to justify putting aside all other priorities and disputes in order to address. I am a sucker for this trope/concept, there is something captivating in the way it allows for otherwise unredeemable characters to show a level of humanity and virtue that forces you to consider them as deep, complex characters. There’s a bit in the novel Good Omens where the angelic character thinks about what humans are capable of, and he has the thought “...And just when you'd think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved.” And the older I get the more I see that.

From what I recall, through this entire confrontation with Leviathan, Coil never shows up. He has a ton of resources in manpower and supplies, and while we don’t get a close look at the evacuation/shelter effort we see no indication that he is contributing any of the things he could to support. I’m very curious if this will ever be addressed in-text, because I think it’s very telling of this man who claims he wants to take over and run this city yet who won’t lift a finger to help others in a crisis. From what we later learn about how his power works, I would be very curious to hear what two timelines he had running during the Leviathan attack.

As the capes group up and try to rally before facing the endbringer, we get a dump of a TON of new names and faces. Some very cool characters here, can’t wait to get caught up on this so I can dive into all the fanart of these capes that I’m sure is out there.

Shoutout to Narwhal for clearly being Unicorn-coded and choosing to not make that her name/identity. You know there’s gotta be a story behind that and I love it.

I find it interesting how Taylor kinda fixates on Eidolon for a minute here. She thinks of him as being among the “big 5″, the capes who you have to rule out when discussing power levels because no one else compares. Except the of the five she lists, I have my doubts about the humanity of four! The endbringers make up three, and even before we get Lisa’s interlude to learn that Leviathan was never human they are all basically treated as forces of nature; these monstrous beings who exist in this perpetual cycle of destruction and hibernation. The other one is Scion, who appeared decades ago as this sort of beatific figure, almost messianic, who appears to neither speak nor rest. Scion strikes me as very inhuman, the way he just appeared fully-formed and interacts with the world with a single purpose. He also chose the name “Scion” for himself, which does imply that he is the descendant of offspring of something else even if the world doesn’t have any idea of what that refers to (huge question mark there). So we have these four basically supernatural entities... and then we have Eidolon, who is implied to be just another cape who was a regular dude and then got powers. Legend is the big #1 superhero in America supposedly, but this guy Eidolon is ranked above him on the hero ranking equivalent of the “banned from tournament play” list. What is his deal???

The armbands are a super cool idea and absolutely necessary. In such a chaotic, fast-moving battle as this is about to be, with so many participants involved, battlefield communication is absolutely essential. Without some form of coordination this would be a completely hopeless fight.

As the capes split up by group, we see a point I made before come up: Skitter is not a heavy-hitter, and she has no particular mobility or defensive abilities. In combat against a single powerful foe, she has basically no ability to help or defend herself. Later on as she is running around the battlefield basically trying to give basic first-aid to downed heroes, I can’t help but think that it would be more effective to have a few teams of EMTs out here. I understand why the paradigm is “capes fight endbringers,” but in this situation Skitter is basically no different from a civilian. She does end up managing to do some basic location tracking of Leviathan through getting some bugs on him, which is helpful, but I’d argue her presence on the battlefield is of equivalent usefulness to any trained first-responder. Which raises the question of either why is she there, and why are they not?

Interlude 8a: Lisa - This is something I’ve been hoping to get for a while, a better glimpse into how Lisa’s power works! Interesting to see the limitations involved, as well as how she truly was just living on the street and basically running fancy pickpocket scams before Coil picked her up. Absolutely love the moment when she’s casing her target and figuring out where he keeps his wallet, and then her power continues just a little bit farther: “Wallet in left jacket pocket; intended to help mask presence of gun holstered at left hip.” And she immediately just NOPES right out of there. Or tries to.

During this interlude we get to see Lisa use her power on Leviathan, which gives us a tiny piece of info that I think may end up being crucial. I actually have a theory based on this, and the entire time I was reading this arc I was waiting for my theory to come true. It never did here, but I still hold some hope. When using her power on Leviathan, Lisa gets the following pieces of info: “Nonstandard nervous system... No brain... Irregular biology... Not human, never was human.” Back when Brian saw Taylor controlling a crab on the beach, she explained that her understanding of what she could or couldn’t control was “I think all it takes is that they have to have very simple brains.” With enough focus and growth and effort, could Taylor control an endbringer? I know that is a very huge leap, and frankly probably too convenient to be true, but there’s a chance that the pieces could line up.

This whole fight is fully of crazy intense moments. A personal standout for me is seeing Bastion trap Leviathan in the collapsing building with himself and yelling at the other heroes to bring the building down on both of them. I’m a massive sucker for a heroic sacrifice and that’s a great one.

Also cool to see Ms. Militia using the leftover explosives from Bakuda against Leviathan. Shame Bakuda was like she was, just think of how helpful her inventions could have been in this situation.

The freeze by Clockblocker is so critical in this fight. If he hadn’t given the capes a chance to pause and regroup that battle would have continued to wear all of them down. It feels like with the huge amount of power and utility all these capes have they should be able to do more damage to the endbringer, but he’s just so fast and slippery that they can’t seem to hold him down in one place long enough to bring those powers to bear.

The fight between Leviathan and Armsmaster is cool, but becomes more important in hindsight as we learn about how Armsmaster arranged it. We definitely get a clear picture of how arrogant and driven Armsmaster is here, he really does a supervillain-style monologue about how he’s beating Leviathan while he does it, only to have it backfire in his face.

I do feel like there’s something here that’s not quite clicking for me. After Armsmaster loses the fight and his arm, Taylor runs in to try and help him, and he repeatedly tells her “you’re dead, he killed you.” We later find out that he set up the whole group to be wiped out, but I’m not clear on why he thinks specifically Taylor was killed? We learn that the armband reported her dead because the armband broke, but Armsmaster was the one who caused it to break so he knew that wasn’t the truth. Maybe he saw one of her swarms get swiped out and thought it was her, or he just assumed everyone had been killed and he’s currently in shock from his injuries? Either way, I don’t see a direct reason why he he would have been convinced enough of her being dead to remark on the subject while he’s badly wounded.

I do find it a little bit amusing how much joy Wildbow clearly takes in describing superheroes and their costumes. It makes sense, given they decided to tell a story that features so many of them, but you can just feel a little bit of the enjoyment of the author every time they pause for a moment to describe new capes, their costume designs and colors and identities. And I’m very much not saying this is a bad thing! It really fleshes out all this huge cast of characters and makes it clear that everyone has their individual identities, such as the ways that a family of flying blasters like Lady Photon and Laserdream set themselves apart. It’s endearing.

The scene with Rachel and her dogs coming to the rescue is heartbreaking. I knew they were gonna take losses eventually, and I knew it was gonna punch me in the gut. Honestly this is a lot better than it could have been, they dive in at a crucial moment against an impossible opponent and buy enough time for Scion to show up, so it feels like a worthwhile sacrifice, but it still sucks. The fact that Rachel jumped in here and sacrificed her dogs to save Taylor says to me that they really had formed a connection, even if Rachel wouldn’t admit it, and also explains why Rachel is so vicious with the perceived betrayal to come.

Seeing Scion fight Leviathan just reinforces my idea that neither of these figures are standard parahumans/capes. I think the both of them are roughly on an equal level, some sort of outside entities which happen to be wrapped up in a struggle on earth.

Honestly, for me the scariest and most tense part of this entire arc is the time Taylor spends handcuffed to the hospital bed. Fighting Leviathan is dangerous and exciting, but this whole idea of lying there in pain, partially paralyzed, restrained, unsure of whether her friends survived, and fearing that the nominal “good guys” are going to use this opportunity to eliminate her and there’s nothing she can do about it? Horrifying. Total grounds for a panic attack.

Ok, a few big things happen in quick succession here, so some of these notes are a little out-of-order.

I’m a little unclear about how the whole hospital scene went so bad. I understand from an administrative perspective why the nursing staff aren’t allowed to talk to patients here, and that they’re swamped and trying to do triage. And when I think about it, it does make sense to restrain capes to avoid anyone from walking around and causing exactly the situation Skitter causes with Sophia. But none of that is communicated to anyone! This is not the first time this has happened, you’d think they’d have some sort of protocol for communicating “we’re going to give you what care we can, we can’t have you walking around, please be patient.” Instead they take all these capes with various levels of power and ingenuity and paranoia and handcuff them and keep them in the dark. Of course you’re going to have someone freak out and try to escape! And yeah Panacea made things worse by trying to spook Skitter, but once again this could have been avoided if they had just made clear what the protocol was up front.

On that same note, I don’t totally understand why the Protectorate wanted Panacea to come heal Skitter before they come talk to her in-person. Later they say they were going to offer her a place on the Wards. Are they giving that same offer to every single young villain? Legend and the heroes he has with him are huge names, presumably there is a lot of work for them to do in the wake of this disaster, this feels like a weird thing for them to all be doing personally. I just don’t understand what was supposed to happen here before Skitter tried to run and caused the standoff.

Honestly props to Tattletale for handling that, if she hadn’t been there Skitter would have been absolutely screwed. I very much understand why she refused to join the Wards or give an identity trade to Sophia, but that basically left her only option as going to the Birdcage, so...

Oh man the Sophia reveal got me. Honestly in hindsight it makes sense, everything we’ve heard about Sophia and Shadow Stalker totally lines up. Super messed up, but it adds an extra layer of explanation to all of the resistance from the school to applying any serious punishment to the bullies. I kinda avoided making any predictions about people Taylor knew in civilian life secretly being capes, I figured it would be too much of a coincidence, but this one works. It also gives some context for why Emma flipped on her so hard, which is something I’ve been wondering about for a long time. Not that it justifies it, but it’s some sort of explanation which we’ve been missing.

The ending of the hospital scene felt a little weird to me. The heroes are so freaked out by the potential for a villain to have uncovered the secret identity of one of their Wards, fair enough. But then they find out that Armsmaster secretly did some sketchy stuff and they all get distracted by him, ok that makes sense. But they’re so distracted that they let the villain just... run out the front door? There’s no Protectorate member there who feels like they should maybe grab her and get this resolved? I know Tattletale was trying to convince them to let Skitter go, but I didn’t get the sense that they were ok with that yet. Also Taylor is crushed by having her secret come out, so she just... runs out into the night? Felt like a weird note for everyone to leave off on.

On the other hand, the scene at the memorial is nice. It’s good to see the doggos on there, they deserve to be there too dammit.

I gotta say, I am very glad that I’m reading this after it’s all written. I can imagine hitting some of these cliffhangers and having to wait for the next installment would be torture. I am curious as to how significant the difference in reading experience is by being able to read it all back-to-back. I know for a fact that the extra time to think and process installments between releases does change the way the reader processes the story. I especially noticed this with the upcoming Wards interlude Arc, that felt like a very nice way to space out the “books”.

Gonna end this here. The Coil interlude had some interesting moments I might touch on, but I am really excited to talk about the Wards Interlude Arc, I have strong feelings about basically every installment of that arc so that might need to break up into multiple posts.

#Worm #Wormblr #Wildbow #Worm Readalong #Worm Spoilers #Mine

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fortycumber · 3 months

Text

so having read @mindmeltonabun-blog 's analysis of the plagiarism in My Demon, I felt strangely compelled to give my own review, since I have been pondering on it for quite some time now ever since I've finished it.

In short, my opinion would be, that the drama is a rather shallow, superficial, but visually stunning rendition of a popular trope that has been done a gazillion times before. It leaves a lot to the viewer's interpretation and their imagination due to the lack of proper explanation of major events in the plot. Think, an adaptation of a popular teen novel from the 2010s- short on everything but chemistry between the main actors (Fallen from 2016, The Mortal Instruments from 2013, heck even Twilight as the post stated as well and many more). The author laid out a nice blue print of a story that could have worked, had it been better researched and had she paid more attention to details. My particular problem with this drama was Gu Won's obvious identity crisis, which stems mainly from the fact that the author herself didn't really know what he was supposed to be. Like is he a demon, plucked from the many or is he the devil himself? He calls himself a demon, then then devil, he often claims that God's his boss, God herself says that she sent him there among humans, because she needed a "worker", which to me heavily implies that he's an angel..? Am I the only one who couldn't quite understand that part? And after the small discussion I had with certain commenters on Mydramalist, I guess I agree with the fact that he's supposed to be some kind of a fallen angel, mirroring the real devil, but that still doesn't explain as to why God called him "her worker". I guess, everything's part of the author's scarcely explained lore.

The Christian elements of the story, especially the Joseon Era part, were interesting (like I would totally watch a standalone drama following only that arc of the story, it's ten times more original than the main one), but totally lacked in execution and research which made a complete jumbled mess of the whole story, I did catch a few references to the Bible here and there, dunno if they were intentional or not.

Do Do Hee, to me, seemed like an even more washed out replica of Nam Ji Ah from The Tale of the Nine Tailed, mainly in how she was structured: she was strong, independent and formidable until she met her male lead and in a way she served as a feisty enigma for him to solve throughout the first few episodes, until he did and she fell flat, constantly in a need of his protection and reassurance. The "Succession" part of the show was an absolute chaos, it was obvious from the beginning who the culprit was and his tactics were honestly laughable, he wasn't terrifying at all, yet alone secretive and elusive, his whole character seemed to have escaped from a makjang if you ask me. There was no real fight, no palpable hatred and conflict between Do Do Hee and him, he spent strategically more time stroking Gu Won's magical book and chatting up the maniac he hired in sketchy chatrooms, instead of doing evil things. I would so preferred if the guy who was obsessed with Do Do Hee (for whichever reason we'll never find out btw or maybe I missed it, dunno) was the real villain instead of Noh Suk Min, he at least, evoked pure disgust and uneasiness in me, while Noh Suk Min made me laugh, literally. Oh and what a marvelous waste of Lee Sang Yi, his role was literally useless he was just there to be pretty (I love you boo <333333). Let's not forget the detectives please- they were even more useless, they just existed to be clueless about their jobs and look raggedy and lost most of the time.

The whole tone of the drama should have been different and more graphic. For a drama that deals with such heavy topics, it should've been darker, grittier, scarier, Gu Won should have been more dangerous, bolder, more seductive, sexier and more lethal, I mean he's a literal demon and given his tragic backstory he should have been truly ruthless, preying on people's misfortunes and feasting on the terrible outcome, in fact I think I would prefer for him to have been a libertine living an absolutely lavish and debauched life in the human underworld, where he would find most of his potential clients instead of the doleful theatre owner who mopes around clock towers looking for "his next victim", it just doesn't match the person he became after seeing Do Do Hee's past version dead and killing all of those people because of it (I mean Song Kang is more than a capable actor to do such a character, I wanna cry thinking what we've been deprived of seriously). For someone who boldly exclaims his hatred of people, he seems quite timid in hurting them, he should have been shown literally torturing people who didn't adhere to the contract and who wanted to escape it, instead he is just stuck in a dress up game with a plot that progresses nowhere and most of the time selectively "borrows" elements from other famous dramas. In fact the same thing could be said for Do Do Hee as well; as much as I liked most of her outfits, she was presented as this notorious business woman in episode one, but all she ever does in the rest of the episodes is just drive around town, looking like a Barbie doll.

I'm sure there were more things that irked me, but I just can't remember at the moment so I'll just stop here. The sole thing that saved this show was the chemistry between the leads.

#my demon #kdrama #song kang

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necrophilemagpie · 5 months

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why this whole thing has such a grip on the brain

is the oc insert because i am obsessed in putting the dragon in situations? perhaps, but frankly

it's mostly about putting the trio in situations because the canon doesnt quite have anyone who'd provide the exact flavor of sheer identity crisis

[whoops this thing is way too long]

someone that is revealed to, before all of this, to have for a very long time simply kept on living in the human world anyway despite their inhumanity is arguably a description that doesn't... add up cleanly ideologically with how Hellsing operates, does it?

Though, funnily enough, 'ordinary human' doesn't apply cleanly to even any of the actual literal human major characters of the story except for maybe the wild geese.

There is a reason Pip has to give the speech about grieving the burning city and Sir Penwood had to make his strategically important sacrifice. The Iscariots dont read like normal people enough for something like this. Integra may be a sort of messy symbol for humanity narratively but the way the actual story treats her?

She's as much an outsider to humanity as the monsters are.

Been that way since that fateful day since she was 12, depending on how you imagine she was raised, maybe has always been to a degree.

Highly doubt Integra had much of a taste of normal human society. She's clearly not even remotely friendly with the other knights. Sure, she found Penwood amusing but i highly doubt they were in any capacity close. It doesn't appear the woman even Really leaves the manor outside of her job. We see her in civilian attire Once for fucks sake and it felt very 'what are normal people clothes again' to me personally. Walter and the vampires are realistically the only real close relationships she really ever had.

Seras too, has lived through something incredibly traumatic as a child and has been given no community or support, seen as at most a nuisanse. We do not get any mention of an adoptive family or other previous life to come back too, and its a context where in real life omission alone would be very telling.

Through that she has arguably too been robbed of being 'allowed' to be truly human long before she became a vampire. She was around people, sure, public school, foster care, what have you, but I somehow doubt a girl with severe ptsd would be understood much considering the time Hellsing is set in. If you're unwell as a kid you quickly learn just how conditional the care of strangers can be. Even if on paper they're meant to take care of you. She's kept up a mask of humanity with varying success but likely had known very little warmth a human life supposedly entails.

Alucard is strongly implied to believe that his humanity was torn away from him. He openly mourns it, but feels like he's been all but thrown into the grave of undeath by being forced to protect himself, and he's since only dug it so, so much deeper that he can scarcely see the sun anymore.

The very idea of being anything besides monstrous is very ludicrous to him, and he's so very jealous, of anyone who seems to have had even the slightest bit of a choice.

He was impatient and annoyed with how long it took Seras to accept her new nature because to him. It confused him to no end why Integra would never just make it official and admit her humanity was too incomplete to keep.

monsters are one way, humans are the other.

Humans have friends and family. They have homes to come back to, take care of each other, like many other animals they play and express individuality. They love, and love in uncomplicated, unconditional ways.

Monsters are inevitably alone. There isnt really a place for them to belong, they're solitary and must learn to enjoy it. Violence is, if not enjoyable, grimly necessary to a monster. A monster's attachment to others is a laborious, painful thing.

There is a clear line. You can't be both, you can't be one but keep some traits of the other.

But that's just one way of thinking, is it?

The dragon certainly starts out fitting so very neatly into the monster box. Glassy eyes, little priorities, truly alien relationship to the self. Their illness makes them appear like something that Should be dead. The way they seem to rationalize their situation comes off arguably even less human than even Alucard does.

And that would make sense! They weren't human for hundreds upon hundreds of years, in fact they were never human at all. There are some universal human experiences like how most acessible in modernity human food tastes or childhood they are fundamentally external to.

But as time goes on, as they realize that for the first time in the last few years, they're fine to stop running on empty and rest? As they find it safe enough to speak earnestly? The line gets increasingly blurry.

They start to talk of first sensible subjects like music and prose and history, but increasingly you'd find they're not simply 'making polite civilized conversation,' no. They've known some of the histories they speak of first hand, were friends with some of the writers mentioned even. They're intimately familiar with Making music, what goes into a play, and know a surprising amount about notably dated by now music production hardware and software. There's silly stories they have on hand to share.

Community to the degree Integra likely hadn't really ever known.

They've accepted certain few as siblings, they even apparently know how to take care of a child. They are currently the primary caretaker of their mysterious """benefactor's""" child because 'the woman might've wanted the kid but doesn't much care for raising one.' They genuinely care for the kid, and not Just because its someone else hurt by the same person. They seem to have Opinions on what's good for a child that seem to come from experience. It's not their first time around.

The culture to whom the human that caused them to exist belonged to? They still identify with it. Kept track of the family even, for actual hundreds of years they've been the distant relative that visits sometimes.

They seem to earnestly love the people they speak of and miss those no longer alive or who've they been unable to reach for the past nine years, which is most of them.

Family in a way Seras struggles to even imagine having.

Their illness, though something specific to nonhumans, is suddenly rather easy to recontextualize as a collection of individual rather human symptoms. Integra even has similar complaints about her joints. Their sometimes stilted speech isn't hard to accept as a mixture of something like neurodivergence and having modern english be about 5th language they learned. Humans do plenty of these same things with gender and sexuality too, thats nothing too special.

Even their suffering under the control of the woman in red, if you pay closer attention... starts looking a good bit more like plain old domestic abuse.

Yet they're very obviously Not a human, they say as much too.

The way they grieve is from a different angle, from one colored by hundreds of years of losing people, unable to forget even one. The way they love is similar, encasing every moment in amber of their eerily clear memory. They know too much historical context for every aspect of society to take much seriously, looking right for the outsiders of it for something truly interesting.

For fuck's sake, it's barely even blood what courses through their veins, even their internal anatomy is a touch off.

Somehow though, they lack Alucard's characteristic violent self hatred about it. Even in their current situation, having the very 'justification' for their abuse be that they're not human, they are very firm in the fact that being a dragon IS a cornerstone of their identity, that its not something that can be removed or altered, they wouldn't particularly want to be a human, and they're not worse off for it, they just Are who they are.

At peace with their belonging outside of humanity. Something Alucard swore to never be as much as complacent with.

They dont come in trying to challenge anything particularly, they just happen to be the kind of person the trio's worldview hadn't truly been tested against.

If any luck, maybe it'd get them to give some much needed attention to their own traits that have never quite fit the ideology either.

You know.

The real reason Integra had long known she wants Hellsing to cease to exist, at least in the way it does now.

Besides, it's kind of pointless rummaging through the shadows searching for boogeymen when monstrous humans are just as real.

"the woman in red" as the dragon calls her, may just be one.

#integra hellsing #alucard hellsing #seras victoria #hellsing fanart #hellsing oc #necrowriting #dragonshapedpuzzlebox #doodle only semi related i just wanted to have Some visual on here because its such a long block of text #this is very long and rambly oops #if you're backreading through my blog for the actual story writing feel free to skip this one its way on the unedited side

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