#well. clearly i do idk if you recall but i just named the last 7 books in perfect order. but anyways. im excited but also Lorddd i forgot | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

poptod · 3 years

Text

Pull the Stars Out of the Sky (And Gift Them to Me), pt. 7, (Ahkmenrah x Reader)

Description: Protection.

Notes: idk when i started writing smut so willy nilly but here it is, another fuckening. Pretty big warning though: dubious consent. It’s clearly consensual later on but at first there is no given consent. WC: 6.8k

He had yet to leave your side, taking you with him in every which direction as he, in his own words, marketed himself. It was a process that consisted of being charming and making witty jokes; simple things that had people trusting him. You stood mostly silent beside him, wringing your hands, stuck in distant thoughts. If anyone referred to you, you didn't notice.

They did, though––but if anyone asked about you, Ahk would make up a quick explanation, one he knew you wouldn't mind.

Your silence was originally your constant state, traipsing about the palace with a chain keeping you at Ahk's side. Over the short course of time between Amun first awakening and coming to stay with the Persian nomads, he had already grown used to your laughing, the snide comments always on your razor-sharp tongue, and that lively spark that filled your eyes whenever your heart thumped in your chest.

"You're quiet," he murmured as the two of you walked. You gripped reins in your hand, keeping your camel with all your bags beside you.

"I don't... like travelling with people," you said through gritted teeth, side-eyeing a group of whispering friends to your left.

"It's safer, isn't it?"

"For you," you mumbled bitterly.

"Oh, you're above joining in a caravan?" He said with a teasing lilt.

"I am simply experienced in this," you said, sure to speak under your breath, "and I know how to take care of myself."

Due to the size and needs of a caravan such as Mahud's, you would need to stop thrice a day, each time setting up a little bit of a home at the riverside. Inbetween those breaks, your legs ached with a familiar burn. Long walks had been your staple for a long while. Though your long break from the lifestyle had left you a little out of shape, your previous experience allowed you to navigate your way back in without too much trouble.

Ahk was taking the physical exertion overall well, despite his aching hunger. The stops would allow him to eat, a fact he was very happy to learn, going by the massive grin on his face when you pointed it out. At a few points he was partial to complaining, but always ceased if you glared at him.

The next stop for the slow-moving caravan was by an outcropping stream flowing from the Nile and out into the desert, allowing a small oasis to grow further from the river itself. Although there appeared to be no fruits growing on the tall trees, a few men and women took up nets and spears, wading out into the water to look for fish.

Numbness filled up your legs as you collapsed on the ground, leant against your camel who had also drawn to its' knees. Heat had already pooled in your face and in your feet, burning from the long day, and ready for anything to drink.

"Here," Ahk said as he rounded a bush, kneeling beside you in your shady, isolated spot.

He handed a cup to you, filled with hot tea. Not the most satisfying drink, but it was safest, and you dutifully sipped away. As you watched the other travellers Ahk shifted his position, scooting nearer to you and pressing himself to your side. Instantly his heat began to overcrowd your senses.

"Ahk, it's too hot for me to be touching anyone," you said, shifting away with your back to him.

You probably should've expected him to pull you into him and keep you there, which made you feel all the more foolish when he did it anyway and you didn't expect it at all.

"Ahk..." you whined, half suffocated by his arms wrapping tight round your chest, his face buried in the back of your neck.

"Mmm," he hummed as he took all of you in, nuzzling you with his nose. "I am... tired."

"I'd be astounded if you weren't, but you can't sleep. It's still day and we won't stay here long," you said matter-of-factly, pushing his face away from you.

"I'll just keep you here," he decided, his voice muffled through the fabric of your shirt. "Sleep forever."

"Right," you said, rolling your eyes.

You wormed out the moment he loosened his grip, much to his disappointment.

By nightfall the distant murmurs of a city sounded from ahead, blurred with singing crickets and the steady flow of the Nile beside you. Ahk had spent the rest of the day trying to cheer you up, mostly with bad jokes, but the sentiment was nonetheless there. Still, being surrounded by people for the past fourty-six hours had already taken its' toll. You hardly spoke, your chest felt caved in on itself, and your eyes were trained on the ground below you.

The city ahead, while heralding certainly crowded streets and filled taverns, would suffice as a hospice away from people who had come to learn your name. Whispering in your ear, Ahk informed you this was the city Piye had wanted the two of you to stay at for a little while. If things got worse, you'd move further south, and if they got better, you would return north down the nile.

While at first you tried to sneak away without Mahud noticing, Ahk insisted on giving the man a proper good-bye, and backed this up with the fact that you had been lent a camel. You wouldn't be able to take it with, but it was still a nice consideration for the trip to Aswan.

"We'll be stopping here," Ahk said once Mahud's attention was on the two of you. "We're to meet a friend soon."

"Ah, then I wish you safe travels," said Mahud, patting Ahk on the shoulder with a firm hand.

"Thank you. To you and your family as well. Will you be staying here tonight?" Ahk asked as he gestured to the outer markets of the city, filled with traders who came from far away to make their living, and couldn't afford a roof over their heads.

"I believe so. Tomorrow we make our money and head off again."

"Good luck to you then," Ahk said, silently urging you to say your own farewell.

"Good-bye," you said quietly, bowing your head respectfully.

As you entered the outer rim of the city, the first thing you noticed was the quiet. It wasn't all that late––the sun had set only a little while ago, and it always did that much earlier in the day during the colder months. So you kept your footsteps quiet, instructing Ahk to do the same when he didn't pick up on the eerie silence.

With no one around to direct you every which way, you had to rely off what memory you had of Aswan, as little as it was. You had visited several times, but never for very long. Most of the city was still unexplored to you.

The long light of burning torches cast itself upon the street in front of you, approaching from around the house to your right. Instantly you were darting for cover, hiding the whole of your body behind a large barrel, while you watched Ahk look around the corner.

"Ahk, you fucking idiot, get over here," you hissed, the pounding in your heart begging him to listen to you.

He looked over his shoulder, finding you mostly-hidden, and quickly made to do the same. His spot was on the opposite side of the street, guarded by a practical wall of broken-down stalls. Once Ahk was fully secured you slipped back behind the barrel, calming your quickened breath as footsteps passed you by, numbering somewhere in the tens.

Only when you were fully assured that whoever passed you was not coming back, you joined Ahk in the middle of the road and continued onwards.

"Did you get a look at them?" You asked immediately.

"Yes, but... I'm not sure if I actually saw what I saw," he said, his brow furrowed intensely.

"What does that mean?"

"They had these.. heads on them, feathered and beaked, with massive eyes. Fucking jacked, too," he muttered, pausing to check both ways before crossing the next street.

"Like your Gods?" You asked.

"Like Horus," he said with a nod. "What on Earth are they here for?"

"Just guessing right now, but they might have something to do with you."

He took your hand, and after a long while of searching the streets, you found yourself at the step of a tavern whose lights had long gone out. Again, strange; neither of you remarked upon it, but you did turn to each other with dubious eyes. The smell of mead still came from it, not yet soured or rotten.

Ahk took a cautious step forward, reaching for the door and easily pushing it open. Inside there was the expected darkness, surrounding the knocked-down chairs, broken tables, and spilt beer. Both of you stopped, your shadows stretching before you on the wooden floor as you scanned the whole of the abandoned room. The bar, where you were sure there was once an attendant, was left unmanned and covered in shattered cups, sticky with sweetened alcohol.

The door behind you swung shut, making you whip around. Fortunately it was only Ahk letting go of the door, leaving it to join you nearer to the center of the room, where you could try and peer over the counter.

"Um..." you said.

"Good evening," said a voice, accompanied soon by a man popping out from behind the bar. "How may I help you?"

"Uhhh.. what... what, uh, happened here?" Ahk asked, his expression contorted as he glanced around the room.

"Nasty Egyptian soldiers. They've wrecked up the place, and every time I fix it they come back in and ruin it, so I stopped fixing it. The party's upstairs, if that's what you're after," he said with a too-bright grin on his face.

"Really? And they don't notice that you're up there?"

"Well, they are bird brains," the man said as he leant in, though spoke in a much quieter voice.

"Wait, are they the soldiers with the bird heads on them?" Ahk asked as a revelation came to him.

"Yes, sir. Where've you been?"

"Travelling for the last couple days. How long have they been here?"

"About a week or so now," said the man, looking away as he recalled. "Heard they're crawling all over the other cities, too. So you folks want a room?"

"... sure," you said in a quiet, low voice when Ahk failed to answer.

He handed you a wooden coin with a symbol engraved with fire, informing you that the door with the same symbol was yours. There were no locks and he made sure to tell you that, as well. After offering to carry your bags and earning a 'no,' from you, he pointed you up the stairs, and returned to his spot hidden beneath the bar.

"Odd man," Ahk whispered to you as you climbed the steps.

"Ahk!" You scolded, hitting his shoulder. "We're still in earshot."

How the Horus soldiers hadn't managed to find this place was beyond either of you, as the moment you entered the upper floor you were bombarded with the tunes of dancing music, twirling and playing with the veins of each listener. The thick scent of searing meat filled the whole of the room, rivalled only by the scent of sloshed beer. Most of the food and drink came from a single corner, where a large cask of beer had been set up alongside a furnace, where the one manning the food also managed the distribution of drink.

All around you, people sat and stood, dancing in the middle or resting on the sidelines. Every crate and usable chair was taken up, most people taking seats on the floor instead in great groups of public conversation. You instinctively grew closer to Ahk, trying to keep as far away from others as you could, even as he began to wade through the crowd.

"Hey, don't you think it's a little loud in here? Won't the soldiers find us?" Ahk asked a random stranger, who had happened to stand as the two of you passed her by.

"Egyptian soldiers are hardly valued for their intelligence, young man," she said with a knowing chuckle, before continuing on to the bar.

"Told you," you murmured in his ear as you watched her disappear in the crowd.

"Oh, shut up."

After setting away your bags and manually jamming the door, you rejoined the party on the second floor, partaking in what food and drink you could afford. Piye had given you a good deal of money, but you had no way of knowing how many days or months you would have to stretch that amount across. It was better to keep a good eye on your finances, something Ahk didn't know much about, and left in your capable hands. Though, that hardly stopped him from complaining.

"We got more food when we were staying with Mahud," he whined, his cheek squished against your shoulder.

"That's because it didn't cost any money," you said.

"You are a cruel lover."

"I am, but this has nothing to do with that since we are not lovers."

"We're not?"

"No," you stated, leaning your head back against the wall with closed eyes. "We are, at best, accomplices."

There was no ignoring the sudden change in his energy. He grew quiet, as he so rarely did, and hardly moved to breathe.

As he sulked, you took care to remind yourself of what he was capable of––the strange things he'd said to you, even if they weren't entirely harmful, that had set you in a month-long mood of unease.

"You will stay here. Any attempt on your behalf to leave and I will have to punish you. Understand?"

"Then I am a prisoner," you said, your voice hoarse and broken.

"You are what you make yourself," he said in a much more stern tone, looking down at you with knowing, wary eyes. "If it is a prisoner, then so be it. But you will be, throughout all actions and situations, mine."

"I..."

"You belong to me."

He had not relented in his usage of that claim. In times of peace, in political unrest, he had kept you with him. In times of great bounty, of danger and uncertainty, you had not left him once, and you wondered how sick you would've gotten if you were to go back in time and tell your freshly-met self that you would spend the longer half of a year with him.

You supposed that, in the end, you had joined his collection. The only catch was that it cost him everything else in his ownership, including his kingdom. And yet he seemed perfectly content to lean on your side, even if harsh words came before the silence, and to wait till you returned his affections.

As he touched your shoulder, his muscles went lax, letting him fall limp against you. The moment he intook your scent he was gone, hypnotized by his own adoration for you.

Though your mind fell into a quiet stupor, dancers still circled the room in beat with music. For a moment you wondered how they'd react if they found out the Pharaoh was in their midst.

Aswan was a very Egyptian-type city considering it was still within the borders of Nubia. That meant less worker camps, less fear of Egyptian soldiers, and less knowledge on the impact the Pharaoh stressed upon higher up Nubian cities. Keeping that in mind, you assumed they would try to cozy up to him––spend some of his riches, flirt a little––however it was also possible they worshipped Amun and had already heard of Ahk's treason.

Music began to fade from your mind as the faint sound of footsteps sounded from below you, seeping through the cracks in the mud and wood. They appeared more succinctly the closer you listened, and soon you could identify the number, all marching in unison.

"Ahk," you shook him awake, eyes trained intensely on the floor, "we need to get out of here."

"What?" His sleepy face gave way for concern. "What? What's happening?"

"There's soldiers coming," you said, your grip on his arm tightening.

"Well – the man at the front said they come by every now and then. They haven't found the upstairs yet, they probably won't now," he said.

Muffled voices muttered from below the floor. Ahk opened his mouth to speak again, but you quickly silenced him with your hand, carefully tuning back into the conversation beneath you. A loud crash was followed by silence, and that combination had you jumping to your feet.

"What is it?" Ahk asked, much more panicked now that he noticed your own fear.

"They're coming upstairs," you said as you backed up through the crowd, disturbing those you bumped into.

"They're – oh fuck." Ahk's expression dropped. "The soldiers are coming!"

Ahk yelled his warning over the music, certainly loud enough to assure the soldiers that there were, in fact, people up here. Lutes and harps stuttered to a halt, the pounding of footsteps now clear through the walls.

Panic seized the partygoers. People trampled over one another reaching for their belongings casted aside, hurriedly adjusting them back onto their bodies and making for the windows. Like rats they climbed out, writhing over each other into a mass of fabric and limbs, followed eagerly by you and Ahk. Massive backpacks made it so you were the last out and the only two to see the soldiers yourselves.

The pounding door had you stuck in a trance, only able to back up towards the window. As it slammed open, you finally caught sight of the falcon-headed soldiers, their sharpened spears and sharper eyes, staring empty-minded at you as Ahk pulled you out the window.

"This way!" Came a voice from above you.

You and Ahk quickly looked up, finding a young woman offering you a hand from the rooftop. Ahk took no hesitation in grabbing it, allowing her to hoist him upwards. When he reached down to find your hand, he felt nothing, and panic struck his heart like a searing knife. He ducked his head down, watching the room upside down.

Muscled arms wrapped around your chest and face, blocking your mouth from making practically any sounds at all. The only sound you could make was from kicking your legs frantically.

He jumped back to his feet on the roof, spinning round to the woman who had helped him.

"I need a sword," he said in a rush, desperate eyes already begging.

"Um – ask Imar, I believe he has one," she said, pointing to the man who worked at the bar downstairs. Ahk thanked her in a rush and left.

"Imar!" He called as he jumped from one building's roof to another, approaching where most of the party-goers had gathered. "I need a sword, or a weapon of any sort. Crossbow even."

"I've got a sword, but I need it. There's a stock of axes over there. Don't know who they belong to, though, so take at your own discretion," he said. Ahk once more gave his thanks before running off.

The kink in your neck had only gotten worse the more you struggled, spiking pain down your spine and into your skull each time the soldier's golden bands pressed into the side of your neck. Your already travel-worn shoes were now nearly in shreds, pulling and pushing on the rough gravel roads, occasionally cutting the soles of your feet open. Thus far you had not been allowed to speak, one massive arm nearly cutting off your oxygen supply.

Although you couldn't tell for sure where they were dragging you, you assumed it was towards a temple, as the buildings around you slowly grew more complex and well-kept. A temple seemed a proper place where you could be thrown into whatever underworld Amun lived in.

Being a commodity fought over should've scared you more. There was a panic seizing your nerves, but you were numb to the surprise, instead saving your energy till you could outsmart the soldiers.

Squawking interrupted your harsh breathing, crying out from behind the falcon soldier. You opened your eyes to the dark of night, spying through the shadow-filled alleyway a running figure, followed by the heads of soldiers falling from the city's silhouette. It was then you recalled a very important fact––Amun and his soldiers might've been strong, but Ahk held within him a hunger unlike that of the starved. The hunger of the rich––of pigs and cannibals. A hunger that terrified you to your core.

The first soldier in your sight that emerged from the shadow of buildings soon stopped in its' tracks, tumbling down past its' own knees as the falcon head slipped off human shoulders. Your shocked eyes watched intently, darting upwards to see Ahk with a broad axe.

His blade came down on the last remaining soldier walking behind your captor, blood splurting from the veins and splattering on his face. Much of it landed on your foot, leaving a trail of red as you were dragged, legs still shakily kicking.

He held a finger up to his lips, hushing any muffled screams that might've come from you. Whatever he had planned, you let him do what he deemed necessary, and kept quiet to avoid the suspicion of the soldier restraining you. He raised his axe high above his head, as though he were to strike you down. Terror filled your eyes when the blade came screaming down, splitting the soldier's head in two before it could ever reach you, leaving no mark on you but the pouring blood of the falcon head. The grip on you loosened, and as you pushed yourself away the corpse fell to the ground.

Blood and nerves squelched as Ahk tore the weapon out of the skull, a horrible crack resonating in the empty street when the base of the skull finally split. He panted, droplets of blood falling into his open mouth as he turned to you, eyes frozen and wide.

"You alright?" He asked softly, in a tone so out of character from his current state.

"... yeah," you breathed out.

The axe clattered onto the ground, followed shortly by Ahk falling to his knees. From there he crawled the short distance to you, gently wrapping his arms around your middle, and pulling you into his lap. He buried himself in your neck, hid away in your warmth. The blood covering his midsection soaked through your shirt.

"Ahk, we need to leave, you know there's more of them," you said, though you did not cease in stroking his hair.

"I know," he mumbled, pressing himself tighter to you for a moment before releasing. "They didn't hurt you?"

"Nothing but bruises," you huffed. "Let's go."

You kept near the entrance to the tavern as Ahk wandered back inside, checking behind the counters and in the attic for any trace of the fleeing people. From the roof you could hear muttering, though you couldn't see anyone, and you could vaguely make out the words they were saying.

"Are you the one they're looking for?" A woman asked.

"I did anger an Egyptian god, yes," Ahk said with a curt nod.

"Imar!"

The man from the downstairs bar appeared from over the horizon of another tall rooftop. He was drenched in sweat, practically glowing in the dim moonlight.

"Yes?"

"These are the ones they want," she said, gesturing to Ahk.

"Really?" He said as he dusted his hands off. "The hell did you do?"

"I, um, attacked a God in order to save my.. um... Amoke," he answered rather sheepishly.

"You cannot stay here," Imar said firmly.

"I'm sorry, but we have many other people looking for protection. We will not risk them for two people who have private business with whatever kind of God you worship," the woman said.

"I understand. Keep safe. Do you have any ideas on where we could go for the night?"

"Try the old graves up on the hill. They hate desecrating the dead," she said before sending Ahk back off down the stairs.

Footsteps drummed for a moment before the door swung open, revealing the Pharaoh still covered in blood. By now it had dried, leaving much of it to flake off his clothes and skin, now a muddy brown instead of the vibrant red of before.

"Have you ever slept in a grave before?"

"What?"

You had expected him to ask, considering what you heard of the conversation, but you weren't wholly convinced he would actually allow himself to sleep in a tomb.

"A long while ago, I died for a little while. Well, I guess not that long ago. Two or three years. My brother killed me," he began as he started off down the steps, taking you with him as he directed you through the streets, "and I was buried. Piye returned from their banishment shortly after and dug me out of my grave... used their gift to give me life once more."

"... you're really expecting me to believe that?" You asked, almost ready to burst out laughing.

"You saw Amun come to life. There are flowers growing out of your arms. What part of my story is unbelievable to you?"

"Right," you mumbled. "Good point. So... did you sleep in that grave or something?"

"It's complicated, but I was conscious for some time, locked underground. Not Piye's magic. Khonsu's, I believe. Either way, it's not horrid if you have someone with you," he said, patting you on the back with a smile.

"Did you have someone with you?"

His expression fell, the hand on your shoulder going with it.

"I did," he said softly, offering no more than a bittersweet twitch of his smile.

Ahk caught it before you did––the trampling of numbered footsteps, growing steadily louder the closer you came to the upcoming street. You remained within your own thoughts, plagued by questions, and mostly ignorant to the slowing of his pace. Eventually he had to grab your hand, forcing you to hide behind the shadow of a tall building. You opened your mouth to say something, but he set his hand over your mouth, staring at you with an intensity that had terrified you only a little while earlier.

"They're coming," he mouthed in your ear, breath barely passing his lips as he spoke.

Steps grew louder and he pressed himself against you, squishing you to the wall with his chin on your shoulder. Pressure tightened around your chest, constricted your breathing, hastened the beat of your heart as you relied solely on your hearing.

Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

The clattering of armor, weapons, and shields rang through the marching steps, sending the imagery of shining, sharpened stone and arrows glinting in the moonlight.

"We need to go," he said beneath his breath.

Before you could ask what he meant, his hand encircled your wrist once more, pulling and forcing you down the other side of the alley. Chirps and squawks came from behind, making your pulse rush and swell beneath your skin. They would find you––bird brains though they were, they were still soldiers of a God, with eyes adapted for darkness. They would pull you into their hell and murder your... your Ahk.

Your Ahk.

You arrived back in your body when Ahk turned into an open, empty street, running uphill as he trained his sights on the tomb-filled mountains.

"We're not actually going to stay in a grave, are we?!" You asked as you ran, trying desperately to keep up with the long strides of the former Pharaoh.

"It is our safest bet," he said, tightening his grip on you. You still attempted to squirm out, however fruitless your struggle, and the proceeding panic had you soaked entirely in fear.

He kept you running till your legs burned, till he was fumbling over his own steps, too full of adrenaline to fully control his feet. Pebbles, rocks, and dust filled your sandals, scratching at your skin as it clung to your sweat. Your throat was still too tight to take in enough breath, leaving you part-way wheezing. Soon your own legs began to give way, scraping your knees and palms across rough dirt.

"Come, up," Ahk muttered as he helped you back to your feet, casting wary glances towards the city still ringing with the cries of falcons.

A few more minutes of scrambling up unused paths and you came to the foot of the hill, where the first graves had been set up. The long tunnels led into darkness, to a place you had never been before, where death would paint every wall. Few things in life truly terrified you––death was not among them, but the cruel afterlife of the Egyptians did. The tales you'd heard of the spells necessary to memorize, the weapons, the escorts, the protective magic one needed to have to brave what they called Duat had done that to you.

He didn't take to the first grave you saw, whose door was sealed shut from the outside with rope and wood. In fact he took you past halfway up the hills till he finally found a hole in which to hide, shoving you into the overwhelming darkness, and shutting the door partway.

All that you could hear was the trembling of your own breath, echoing in the empty, dank chamber. Despite the chilling cold the ground beneath you seemed wet, as though it had rained within the earth.

Clicking came from somewhere in front of you. Instinctively you pressed yourself against the wall, surprised to find not a cave wall but a carved granite wall. A flame burst before you as you realized this, revealing the whole of the cave, each wall covered in paintings of life and magic. Hieroglyphs lined every scene, rivalled only by the collection of yellow and white stars painted onto the lapis ceiling.

Your eyes scanned the walls around you and the ceiling, wandering down the pillars and towards the dirt floor. Across from you, Ahk leant his back against the wall, a flicker of light dancing on cloth ripped from his skirt. Now the material covered only the upper half of his thighs, leaving little to your imagination as he drew nearer to you.

"I'm afraid Nubian graves don't quite compare to the luxury of Egyptian graves," he said, setting his hand on your knee and running it up your thigh.

"When will we leave?"

"When our hunger becomes too great."

Ahk might've had good impulse control and lots of self control, but you did not.

"That'll be in days!"

"You're not very patient, are you?"

"Not when I'm stuck in a fucking tomb!"

"Screaming won't do you any favors, Amoke," he reminded you with a quirk of his brow.

Though you hardly had the consciousness of mind to recognize what he was doing, his hands had set to separating your legs, wedging himself inbetween them instead.

"I don't think the volume of my voice has anything to do with our predicament," you said scathingly, crossing your arms and turning away.

"Well, no, but you will hurt your voice. And my ears. This is a small room."

He had a point, but you were adamant in your decision to avoid his gaze. So instead you looked to the floor, your arms still crossed, and a small pout on your lip. Your eyes widened as you felt warmth on your neck, soft and somewhat wet. Ahk was kissing at your neck, one hand dangerously high on the inside of your thigh and the other squeezing your waist, in the middle of a tomb.

"What the hell are you doing?" You asked, beginning to worm in his grasp. The curt movements soon turned to struggle, your heart racing as he simply held you tighter, biting harsher at your neck.

"I could've lost you so easily today," he said softly between the ministrations of his lips.

"Amun almost kidnapped me, too, and you didn't act l –" he bit down and you gasped, "like this."

He simply chuckled and continued.

"I wanted to," he admitted after a moment. "He had no right to do anything to you. I've already lay claim."

"What?"

"You're mine. I found you first." Motions began to grow rougher, hands tightening on you as kisses became hurried and desperate. "My beautiful little toy... I won't let you go, never."

"Ahk, we're in a grave," you said, attempting to pull his hands off you.

In one swoop his hands caught yours, pinning them above your head. The weight of his body still rested between your legs, keeping them apart, and allowing him access to push and grinded himself against you. His strained breathing kept your shuffling feet company, a distraction from the heat welling in your stomach.

"Ahk..."

"You are a most beautiful sight," he murmured against your flushed skin. "Truly fit to be a god yourself."

The fear rushing through your blood was one unfortunately familiar––that same fear when you first met him. When he tied you to his bed for hours. When he stood above you with angered eyes, scanning the whole of your over-exposed body.

"This isn –"

"You told me you didn't love me... do you remember that?"

"... yes," you said, still unable to meet his eyes even as he pulled away to look you in the face.

"Then I suppose I have nothing to lose," he murmured, leaning into gift the softest of kisses, barely gracing the bow of your lip, "as all I want in this realm is your love."

"And what of your kingdom?"

"My kingdom is my duty. I do not enjoy ruling, but it is something I must do for the safety of families who now rely on a government to protect them. You, however..." he trailed off for a moment, biting into his bottom lip with a grin, "... you I enjoy very much."

A quick kiss to your lips and he resumed what he started, letting your entwined hands fall in favor of feeling you. His touch slipped up your shirt, feeling the heat of your skin until it grew too much to bear, and he began untying the knots of your clothes. Once he pulled the fabric off your shoulders, he leant back to pull his own coat off. The space gave you ample time to wriggle out of his weakened grasp, though you barely raised to your feet before he grabbed your ankle, pulling you back down and scuffing you in the process.

You turned onto your back, watching with heavy, quickened breaths as he pulled you to him till your hips met, hands and piercing eyes pinning you into place. For a split second an image flashed before your eyes––rope in his hand, silk beneath you, and a servant watching it happen. You shook your head to clear it away, opening your eyes in time to see him lay you flat on the earth.

"I love you," he murmured with a reverence so deep you could swear there were tears welling in his eyes. The hands on your hips slowly ran up your waist and over your chest, squeezing and teasing your senses. "Beautiful..."

He dipped down, like a hand of God descending from heaven to grasp the unholy that sits beneath. Kisses landed on your sternum, trailing up towards your neck, where his nipping teeth had already left dark marks. Unsure what to do with yourself, you let your hands sit above your head and allowed him to do as he pleased.

"I have waited forever to indulge in you," he said, the heat of his words beneath your jaw.

Your eyes flew open.

Haji warned you about this––or maybe it was Naguib, but he didn't seem to like you all that much. Either way, you recalled a spare bit of information given to you concerning the Pharaoh; he might've originally locked you in the castle to have his heirs. Was this what he was doing? Giving into what he'd first taken you for?

"Will you give me this?" He asked, inches away from your face, your leg kinked up upon his hip.

"What?"

"The easiest form of love," he said through a crack in his voice. From here you could clearly see what you'd spied earlier––tears. "I cannot seem to win your personal love. But I will take anything you give me, and I want this."

"... what?"

He ground his hips into yours, till you could clearly and distinctly feel something hard pressing against you. A soft groan fell from him. Part of you already knew what he meant, but another part was still stunned into stupidity, your wide eyes nothing but empty.

"I need you," he murmured.

Even with all the thoughts in your head, you couldn't manage a single word. Your mouth hung open, gasping when stimulated, but mostly silent with your own confusion. There was an appeal to Ahkmenrah––his beauty, his intelligence, his humor. Quite the array of good traits even without the fact that he held massive amounts of power, or did at one point. Yet you still couldn't let go of what you'd seen him do. It loomed over you like an eclipse, blocking your thoughts and stilling your mind in its' presence.

He didn't have the strength within him to stop himself. He would need your ardent refusal, even though he knew silence was a quiet no, to regain his control. It was a funny thing, seeing him so desperate––a man as composed as him, as aware of himself as him would be remiss to be such a shameful sight.

And it was you.

You driving a Pharaoh to his knees. You taking a man whose very essence was his control over his identity and tearing his image apart. Making him a devil in his people's eyes. You weren't even asking him to ruin himself, to take himself apart just to appeal to you even in the slightest––he was doing that himself. Willingly.

Your chest felt concave upon itself as he continued, numb to the realizations in your head. He pulled off your skirt, the ties in your clothes, till both of you were nude, him still locking your body to the ground. From this angle he could thrust against you, almost fucking your thighs as your wetness grew. Gasps and moans built in your mouth despite your efforts to keep an even expression. He delighted in your own embarrassment, laughing when you squirmed with your eyes shut tight and a hot blush on your face.

"Gods, you are... perfect," he said, devolving into a long, soft moan as the head of his cock began to prod at your entrance.

A rush of excitement––or perhaps just the simpler anticipation––ran through you, and you couldn't stop the sounds that left you as he pushed in. He stretched you, filled you perfectly, and for a moment you wondered if you had been denying yourself a taste of bliss.

As he kissed you, bitter iron filled your mouth and painted your tongue. At first you wondered if he had bitten too hard (or if you had), but in a short time you realized it was the dried blood, still caked onto his face and body.

Blood passing between your lips. Mingling with your breaths and moans. It became hard to distract yourself with the forceful thrusts of the Pharaoh above you, your mind instead set fierce upon your sense of taste, and the watchful, hooded eyes Ahk looked down on you with.

He soon noticed your sudden daze, and his thrusts slowed down, going deep instead of fast.

"Are you alright?" He asked softly, though he didn't stop his movements entirely.

Your wetness squelched slightly, making you shut your eyes tight with embarrassment, your arms coming to hide your face from sight. Of course, Ahk was having none of that––he took your arms, carefully pinning them to either side of your head.

"A little shy, are you?"

"... this is my first time," you finally mumbled, turning away so you wouldn't have to see his reaction.

"Oh."

He stopped grinding into you. But you couldn't help yourself––you wrapped your legs around his hips, pulling him back into you and moaning when he was fully sheathed.

"Fuck," he groaned, eyes rolling up into his head. "Perfect little pet."

He pinned you to the floor as he finished, keeping you from scrambling away. There he kept you, warm on his cock, filling you with his seed as you whined helplessly.

Although he made an effort to take care of you, gently stroking your skin and kissing away what marks he made, the whole of the day left you both exhausted, and the bout of 'exercise' certainly hadn't helped. In the end you asked him to stop worrying and simply sleep at your side; he acquiesced, using his arm as a pillow as he faced you.

"Still hate me?" He asked, and though they would've been teasing words out of anyone else's mouth, you found sincerity in his expectant eyes.

"No."

#ahkmenrah x reader #Ahkmenrah #Night at the Museum #rami malek #rami malek character #ahkmenrah x male reader #ahkmenrah x female reader #rami40

37 notes · View notes

somestansomewhere · 3 years

Text

Frank’s Dementia in 11a

Points to discuss:

Moments where Frank forgot.

Things he might be able to remember.

Other characters finding out.

Aftermath...

So to start of, I made a list of every instance in SEASON ELEVEN A, where Frank’s memory seemed a bit off, I’m not gonna analyze the whole series for this but I’m sure there’s more there. Now:

Moments Where Frank Forgot

11x01

1. Frank’s History of Chicago

While this does appear to imply just the opening monologue, there are actually several moments throughout the episode where Frank is talking about the Gallagher’s running Chicago to Alan. And while this seems like typical “Frank being drunk nonsense”, plus a spectacular opening to the season... I now see it in a different light especially after:

2. Frank’s Memory Elixir

Frank LITERALLY has a line asking for “memory elixir”, meaning booze, which Alan hands him. Ironic since he has ALCOHOLIC DEMENTIA. You can’t tell me that wasn’t intentional!

3. He Forgot Bars Were Closed

Now, I may be reaching here... BUT when Frank enters The Alibi for the first time this season (what a grand enterence btw) he says “I heard somewhere all bars were open again”. V responds by saying something along the lines of “three weeks ago maybe” and that the mayor shut them down again. Frank says “Well who the hell can keep track”. And okay, yeah maybe Frank genuinely didn’t know... but this is the bar he goes to EVERYDAY. Not to mention if they shut down less than THREE WEEKS AGO, Frank should know... idk this one might not count but I added it anyway. Kermit is unaware of bars being open/shut down in 11x03 so moving on:

11x02

4. The Alibi’s Secret Enterence

Okay, again REACHING! However, when Frank entered The Alibi through the Keg Zone door he forgot to use the “secret knock” and Kev had to remind him about it. Now in 11x01 he used the front door (and I’m not sure he knew to use the other door in that ep) but still at least he remembered to use the correct door in 11x02.

11x03

This is where it got noticeable.. strap in, here we go:

5. Taking Franny to School

He took her to the wrong school. This is the same person that knows the Southside perhaps better than his kids (lol), like the back of his hand! He not only took her to the wrong school but a middle/grade school. Franny is in elementary/preschool school. You can see in WHM’s face here that Frank was confused...

6. Uncle V and Aunt Kev

Maybe just a comedic slip up, but Frank calls Kev and V “Uncle V and Aunt Kev” as opposed to what they really are. Maybe he forgot? I’m reaching LOL.

7. Debbie Is Not Fiona

Frank talks about one of his favorite MEMORIES with Franny’s mom: Debbie, but “oh no, maybe that was Fiona”. Small moment, typical Frank but... nonetheless, poor memory. The writers are smart by mentioning Fiona in this scene... it’s “a Fiona mention”, we’re going to remember this, and that’s probably why they did it.

8. The Paper Store

Yeah, this was the first red flag for me and if I can recall, the moment EVERYONE knew something seemed off. Frank, walks out of the paper store with Franny and cannot remember where he is, or where they are headed. Once he is reminded of their “goals” for the day (by Franny, a five year old) he proceeds to head to the paper store... Franny once again let’s him know that they already went there and Frank notices the paper already in his (Franny’s) backpack. Ouch.

11x04

9. The Nation of Islam

Ooo this one hurt! After Frank suggests to visit The Nation of Islam in an attempt to get their help to get rid of the Milkoviches, him, Kev, and Liam do. We SEE them go there. It’s a whole scene, so later in the episode when Frank suggests to go ask them for help AGAIN as if it were a completely new idea, we as an audience know they already did that. As Kevin says they “JUST did that”. Frank forgot. Shit.

11x05

10. Mrs.McCurdy

Frank discusses with Kev about murdering Mrs.McCurdy, later he tries to murder her. We see it, we remember it becaue she grabbed Frank’s dick. It was funny, the scene evoked laughter, it forces the audience to remember it. Frank mindlessly walks into The Alibi and Kev asks Frank if he “did the thing”. Now at first Frank is confused. They were using “quotation talk” earlier so yeah I get it, but then when Kevin is more direct with Frank, Frank thinks Kev is implying that he had sex with Mrs.McCurdy... Frank is clearly confused. Only then does Kev point out that he meant MURDER. Frank takes a second, again if you watch he does not know what Kev is talking about, but then it hits him, and he remembers. Thus continuing the convo like nothing.

11x06

11. Monica

Now this one REALLY hurt. Frank’s first scene of the episode is a sex scene between him and Letty. She’s blonde, and Frank calls her Monica. He truly believes he is sleeping with Monica, only Monica is dead, she been since season seven. When Letty mentions that she isn’t Monica (thinking Frank calling her that was only a sex thing), we see WHM’s brilliant preformence once again. Frank doesn’t know what Letty means, he thinks she’s Monica. Then when he realizes she isn’t, he gets this lost dejected look on his face. He’s confused and knows that he keeps getting confused.

Frank says “I gotta get to work”. Letty asks him where he works and Frank is left bewildered.

12. Seven

Okay so remember Frank and Franny’s adventure in 11x03? Frank visits a dry cleaners to get some weed. They make a point of Franny saying that Frank will pay SEVEN for the weed. No offer is made and Frank must get it somewhere else. Throughout the episode Frank refterences SEVEN to Kev & V as the asking price to sell. We as an audience are forced to remember SEVEN. Also in 11x03, as Debbie frantically looks for Frank/Franny, she visits the dry cleaners where they were (retracing their steps). We as an audience have been there twice.

Now, in 11x06 Frank goes to pick up an order but like, we already saw him go there episodes ago. When the woman behind the counter literally tells him she has nothing for him and he argues with her, WE KNOW she is right. Once again, Frank forgot. I’m so sad. Not only that but Kev and V don’t have Frank going on runs anymore. Ian & Mickey are doing it... Frank is legit lost and forgot that he’s not doing that anymore, Kev tells him he’s not in 11x04.

Ms.G even says to Frank that she doesn’t need to write anything down to remember it because the “Mind’s a steel trap”. She doesn’t owe him... she can use her mind to remember where Frank cannot. The irony.

13. Pedestrian, Blue, Handlebar (abc)

a) Frank getting hit in the head results in him having a visit to the hospital where a nurse discovers that Frank has no clue how he got there and more specifically, how he got hit in the first place.

b) The saddest part, when asked his name he remembers FRANK. But has to look down at her sheet to know his last name is GALLAGHER. This is the man who walks around saying “It’s up to Frank Gallagher to save the neighborhood”. He forgot his last name.

c) The scene goes on, the nurse asks him to remember three words: pedestrian, blue, and handlebar. They discuss other things, then she asks him to tell her those words. It’s so abundantly clear that Frank just cannot. He doesn’t remember. He was told like 30sec ago and gets, for the first time ASHAMED. He’s the most shameless person ever (hence the title of the show) but now the tides have turned. He “doesn’t wanna play this game anymore”. Frank can recognize AGAIN that he is confused, only now he is forced to face it. The nurse noticed, she runs some tests and Frank learns that he has early stages of alcoholic dementia. This isn’t his liver, he can’t get a new one, this is his brain.

14. + 15. Letty & Terry

Just two bonuses, Frank wanders aimlessly into the Alibi again (like in 11x05) because it’s routine for him. Letty calls him over. Frank forgot they were supposed to meet there. :(

Frank and Terry on the porch: Maybe it’s just bad writing or they were trying to make a point but like a “Gallagher-Milkovich War” never happened??? We watched the show for 11 seasons... Also are the Milkoviches actually from Poland Frank? I’ll excuse that one cuz Ian mentioned it too, but I thought they wer Ukrainian. These seem like writing mistakes tho so oops.

Things He Might Be Able To Remember

Frank has his and Franny’s name tattooed on his body... he literally forgot his last name at the hospital. And if he forgets a bunch in 11b then that’ll be the payoff for the tattoo... he might not know why the tattoo is there or who the people are listed on his arm, or even what it means exactly, but he will know that Frank loves Franny.

Where he lives. Frank never threw out the paper with his diagnosis. He might remember his home, however the conflict comes in the fact that the Gallaghers might be selling it. He needs to be around people/places that are familiar to him. This could jeopardize his memory.

The Alibi is where Frank seems to just walk to or go to whenever he has no clue where he is or going but it’s subtle. I could see him getting lost and no one knowing where he is and Frank just being at the Alibi beacuse idk muscle memory? He’s on autopilot.

Early stages of ALCOHOLIC Dementia can improve. Like if maybe Frank were to tell someone and if he wasn’t removed from the Gallagher house, and oh I don’t know if Frank STOPPED DRINKING, he could remember. But I don’t think we’re heading in that direction, especially if the house is sold, and let’s face it... it looks that way.

Fiona? Will he forget her... this all feels reminiscent of 4x11.

Other Characters Finding Out

Franny, Kevin, and Liam, are the only people who have REALLY been subject to the possibility of noticing... but think about it. Franny is too young to notice anything, Kevin is not the brightest bulb, he doesn’t seem to realize it either, and Liam was exposed to it once, but at that time he was so scared about the Milkoviches that he didn’t notice it. Maybe if he saw it again, he would. Liam is smart enough.

I wonder if the Gallaghers will just find out the hard way (,like those stills from 11x08 are making me think,) or if anyone will begin to seriously pick up on it. I intially thought they would show Frank forgetting in front of each character until someone was able to notice but scratch that. They seem to be setting Lip up on the “alcoholic path” this season, (and I may go more into depth about that one another time, it’s another big post if I do get into it). But what will the Gallagher’s reactions/feelings be towards Frank’s diagnosis? Mickey and Ian had many Terry/Frank discussions in 11x06 literally setting up for it. It hurt when they all kept dismissing Frank because yup, they don’t know yet. They would have to help him in order to keep his memory maintained, but that��s the thing... Frank’s pride. He might deny their help even if they actually were to give it to him... Either way, I’m “looking forward” to see how this all unravels and how everyone finds out and what their reactions will be, which brings me to my final topic:

Aftermath...

So what happens? Will they sell the house, potentially causing Frank to forget? Will he not know his kids, his history? Will he die? Will Frank finally stop drinking... yeah I doubt that... So what WILL happen? Will the Gallaghers be left to take care of Frank? Will they even do that? Will he remember them?

What if in 1x01 Frank’s narration IS his memory? We see him talking about his kids to someone? It circles back? I don’t know, but either way I expect this whole thing to pull on our heartstrings. When the rest of the regulars find out... it’s gonna get real, and rough.

Interesting stuff coming up in 11b I’m sure. Let’s see how this plays out for our Protagonist and Patriarch: Frank Gallagher.

Omg, if you read through this, you are so cool and I really really appreciate you! Please send me an ask or write a note, I would love to get your take on the matter. 💙

Hope you enjoyed this analysis and I hope it didn’t go on too long.

#frank gallagher #season 11 #shameless season 11 #shameless #gallavich #dementia #my lists

39 notes · View notes

gaylorlyrics · 4 years

Text

Folklore Songs - what are they about??

This is a developing thread, but I’ve been listening all day so I’m taking a stab at it.

1."The 1"

Common consensus is that this is about Dianna Agron and what they could have been. Telling lyrics are the general idea that the relationship wasn’t truly given a chance (”it would've been sweet, If it could've been me”) and “Roaring Twenties”, referring to the below circus themed party pics with Diana dressed like a flapper

tbh im not totally sold on this - most because it seems more recent with lyrics like, “In my defense, I have none for never leaving well enough alone” sounds like a reference to ME! and “Roaring twenties” sounds like a reference to something that happened this year (2020). Also “throwing pennies in the pool” could be a reference to throwing Penni (Karlie’s agent) in the pool. Finally, Route 1 is the road along California’s coast, where Tay & Karlie drove on their legendary road trip...this makes my lil Kaylor heart worry.

2. Cardigan

This is the first installment in the Teenage Trio, which also includes August and Betty, and is told from the perspective of Betty. It’s about feeling so loved by someone but then being betrayed by them (”Chase two girls [Betty + August’s narrator] lose one”). The line ”And you'd be standin' in my front porch light” foreshadows to James professing love in “Betty”. Potentially Taylor is Betty - but I’m still thinking about that theory.

3."The Last Great American Dynasty"

We <3 a Rhode Island throwback. Here Taylor tells the story of her house in Rhode Island that Rebekah “Betty” (??!?!??!! more on that later) Harkness used to live in. Rebekah married an heir to Standard Oil which made her one of the wealthiest women in the USA at the time. She was also known for making a scene (”She had a marvelous time ruining everything”). Additionally, she founded the Harkness Ballet (”And blew through the money on the boys and the ballet”). After Rebekah’s death Taylor purchased the house and it is now best known as the place of many epic 4th of July parties.

4. Exile

Such a sad song! This is a duet between Taylor and Bon Iver, telling the story of a failed relationship that they have tried to mend many many times. Interestingly, this is also about a love triangle (like the teenage trio) - "I can see you starin' honey/Like he's just your understudy." This line specifically feels like it could be about bearding, and seeing someone else with the person you love, but feeling like - or knowing - it’s fake. “You were my town Now I'm in exile seein' you out” references and end to the relationship Taylor discussed in False God “Staring out the window like I'm not your favorite town I'm New York City”. To me this indicates that it is about Karlie and them breaking up or going through a rough patch - continually trying to fix things - and eventually being unsure that it could ever be repaired.

5."My Tears Ricochet"

This is pretty clearly about Scott & Scooter - “And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake? Cursing my name, wishing I stayed” and “You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same” seem to be a reference to them trying to exploit her work and how her leaving Big Machine really ruined the business - plus there’s some LWYMMD imagery. “You wear the same jewels that I gave you as you bury me” also seems to be a clear reference for trying to use Taylor’s own work against her, taking the profits, and pushing her out of the deal. As if we needed more evidence “You hear my stolen lullabies” clearly references her stolen masters.

6."Mirrorball"

Big 80s prom vibes from this song. Mirrorball is about being famous and all of her work - her most personal thoughts and dreams - just becoming different ways for other people to see themselves once she releases her music into the world. Part of being an artist is knowing that your work will reflect more of who the viewer is than who you are yourself. Here she uses the metaphor of a disco ball to explore that idea, and worries that she is losing her own identity through it “I'm still trying everything to keep you looking at me”. She also alludes to her fears that she will age out of relevancy “I know they said the end is near”, something she discussed in her documentary Miss Americana. Obviously this is internalized misogyny because we love Taylor and will listen to her music always and do not subscribe to the belief that women need to be young to be relevant because if they were a man then they'd be the man, and tay’s the man <3

7. “Seven”

Personally, this is one of my favorite songs on the album. It’s so sweet and pure and lovely. This is about young love, with imagery of summer, toys, and child’s dreams to runaway together. Many people have speculated that it is about the same girl that the two unreleased Taylor songs “Sweet Tea and Gods Graces” and “Me & Britney” are about.

[Side note: initially I wondered if Me & Britney was about Britany Maack, Taylor’s long time friend who recently got married, but the names are spelled differently. Also the line in Seven “I can’t recall your face” indicates that this is about someone who Taylor is not currently in touch with.]

Both M&B and STAAG seem to be about the Seven relationship because there are general parallels with outdoor scenery, childlike wonder, and ( in the case of STAGG) sweet tea. Also all three songs indicate a gay relationship: STAGG - “And you can love like a sinner and lose like a winner”, M&B - “That boy she went ran off with, well, I thought he was crazy. Maybe I was just jealous that he'd come between me and Britney”, and Seven - “You won't have to cry or hide in the closet And just like a folk song our love will be passed on”.

8. “August”

This is the second installment in the Teenage Trio, told from the perspective of the “other woman” who James meets while on summer vacation. The other woman (she doesn’t seem to have a name...unless it is August...which it could be? idk) is in love, but realizes that James isn’t in love with her - “Will you call when you're back at school? I remember thinkin' I had you”. The line “Remember when I pulled up and said "Get in the car" references the same incident which is retold in Betty, but this time with James telling Betty it was just a summer fling that didn’t mean anything.

9. This Is Me Trying

Here we have a break up song, about Taylor trying to win her lover back and feeling completely lost without them, unable to concentrate or be around people, and turning to self sabotage. It’s about the general loneliness that one feels when they’ve lost someone they truly love, and the miscommunication that can happen in a relationship when you’re not understanding each other or receiving love in the same way (hence the song’s title). I think this could be about Karlie, it seems clear that their relationship has not been smooth and that they have had many on-and-off times. It could also be serving a purpose of building the Joe break up narrative, but only time will tell for that.

10. “Illicit Affairs”

Taylor loves her secret love - this song reads like a sad version of “I Know Places”. It seems clear that this is about Karlie Kloss. “Tell your friends you're out for a run” is one of my favorite lines because Karlie started Klossy run club, where you commit to running a certain distance in a month - and she posts about it on instagram CONSTANTLY. But overall, the song details a relationship of a woman being with someone she doesn’t love (kushnerd) and sneaking around to meet up with the person she does love (tay!). The line “Tell yourself you can always stop” is so sad to me, the idea that Karlie got into this and keeps telling herself that it will only be a little longer and she can leave when she wants, but staying in her fake marriage anyway.

11. Invisible String

This is pretty much the only pure love song on the album - about feeling connected to someone throughout your whole life, knowing that that somebody is out there, and then finally finding them. Taylor talks about being in Centennial Park in Nashville as a teen, and then eventually showing her lover around. The song is really self referential, with lots of easter eggs for her past work, including Bad Blood and Delicate. She also references Joe Jonas with the line “Cold was the steel of my axe to grind For the boys who broke my heart Now I send their babies presents”.

Some people have pointed out that there is a similar idea presented in Jane Eyre - when the protagonist says to her love interest “I have a strange feeling with regard to you. As if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly knotted to a similar string in you."

12."Mad Woman"

Another Scooter one - “It's obvious that wanting me dead has really brought you two together”. “The master of spin” is word play referencing the masters records scandal. “Watching you climb over people like me” points out that agents and labels are making money off the performers they find and pushing them around. There’s also a reference to Scooter’s wife Yael and how he cheats all the time, but she doesn’t do anything likely because of her own internalized misogyny - “has a couple side flings. Good wives always know. She should be mad, should be scathing like me”.

13. “Epiphany”

The first verse of this touching ballad is about Taylor’s grandfather in WW2, storming the beaches at Normandy - “Crawling up the beaches now "Sir, I think he's bleeding out"”. The second verse is about a nurse helping patients with Covid-19 - “Holds your hand through plastic now "Doc, I think she's crashing out"”. The bridge here talks about wishing there was some great epiphany, some magical solution for the suffering in the world. The chorus refers to experiencing trauma with others and staying loyal even in the hardest times, even if it means literally dying. Although this seems like a departure from the themes of rest of the album, the whole album examines loyalty and considering what you would do for the people you love - so I really don’t think it’s a departure at all.

14. “Betty”

Obviously this is the gayest song on the album and an early fan favorite. It is the final song in the teenage trio, told from the point of view of James, going to win Betty back after betraying her and sleeping with someone else (August!?) over the summer. The line "Will you kiss me on the porch in front of all your stupid friends?”, a line that is very clearly about wanting to kiss a woman, is especially striking (& gay!) when sung by Taylor. The clearest version of this plot is someone begging for forgiveness after betraying the person they love.

There is also a bit of a nod to a line in “Picture to Burn”, a break up song off Taylor’s first album. In PTB Taylor says “So go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy that's fine, I’ll tell mine you’re gay”. This lyric has since been changed in versions available online, but on the original album that's what it was. This is interesting because she’s calling attention to knowing that someone is gay and hasn’t told their friends...which you would definitely know if you had dated them.

The names “James” and “Inez” are both mentioned in the song, which are the names of Blake Lively and Ryan Reynold’s daughters. James was already featured on a Taylor Swift album, as the lil baby voice at the beginning of “Gorgeous”. Worth noting that “James” is traditional a male name, but that this character is named after a female.

ALSO I have this theory I’m working on that Taylor is Betty and this whole album is in the same world with the same people, but WILL POST MORE ON THIS LATER.

15."Peace"

Ok - this is Archer 2.0 for me, about how she is worried about how no one will ever love her or stay with her because its too much work - “the rain is always gonna come if you're standin' with me” and “No, I could never give you peace” are pretty telling lines about her concerns that people will think it is not worth it to be friends with or in a relationship with her due to all of the baggage that comes with it.

The opening lines - “Our coming-of-age has come and gone Suddenly this summer, it's clear” feed into my emerging theory that all of these songs exist in the same universe and are about the same three characters...but I’m still figuring that one out. The line “And you know that I'd swing with you for the fences Sit with you in the trenches” reference Seven and Epiphany, respectively - further supporting that all of these songs are in the same world.

16. “Hoax”

Out of all of the songs that make my little Kaylor heart ache - this is the most heartbreaking. Specifically the line “My eclipsed sun” refers to Karlie, who Taylor has called “sunshine” on multiple occasions, and her light being covered up by her contract with Kushnerd and Scooter. The line “Don't want no other shade of blue But you” makes it clear that this song is in reference to the muse for the album “Lover” - aka Karlie.

However, this is a song about betrayal and completely trusting someone, only to find that they stabbed you in the back, as is clear by the line ”Your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in”.

Additionally, the line“You knew it still hurts underneath my scars” seems to again feed into the idea that all of the songs on the album involve the same characters. This one is a bit more clear, it seems that - if this theory is correct - Betty is the narrator of this song, as she referenced her scars before “Drew stars around my scars” in Cardigan.

OK- I'm going to go deep into song by song later, but I just wanted to get something out there!!! Also def interested in hearing what everyone else thinks!

EDIT: I just found some lyrics from The Lakes in an article from Billboard. I wanted to add them in even though we don’t have the full song because I felt like we really ended on a sad note with hoax and then when I saw these I was like there is hope!!

SO the lyric Billboard included in their review was “A red rose grew up out of ice frozen ground / With no one around to tweet it” which is a continuation from the line from “Hoax” - “ This has frozen my ground”. What I’m taking from this is that in the final song Taylor finds hope <3

#folklore #kaylor #Taylor swift #Karlie kloss #betty

165 notes · View notes

irondad-not-ironsad · 3 years

Text

WandaVision Episode 1 Reaction

Spoilers below!!

I enjoy the music over the marvel logo

But also a 43 second logo feels kinda long for a 29 minute episode- is it just for the premier or is this gonna happen before each ep?

Also I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that there is a title sequence, which will probably be similar in length. Combine that with the lengthy credits people have been complaining about, it seems that the percentage of the thirty minutes that is actually the story is lower than it should be

not that I don’t love a good title sequence! But I’ll take a well fleshed out episode over fancy logos, title sequences and credits any day

now that I’ve got that of my chest, on to the actual show

I like how they have the frame shaped like that of an old timey tv, combined with the black and white it really adds to the old timey sit come vibe

I like these bells

Ok I know I complained about to much time being wasted with logos and such, but i LOVE how cheesy this theme song is and I love them showing vision and Wanda driving tp there house in wedding attire

“A regular husband and wife” 2 seconds late *vision disappears into a cloud of sparkles*.... 1 minute 8 seconds in and I love this

Even there acting is reminiscent of an old timey sit com this is amazing

feel like I should note he title sequence ends at the 1.36 mark approximately, which may not seem like a lot but again the show is less than thirty minutes so it adds up

Wanda talks with a fifties accent: I already love this show

Also I wish I had magic I could use to clean, I’m moving back into my dorm right now and Wanda’s powers would be SO helpful

Also I LOVE the laugh track

Also Wanda’s short curly hair is so cute

I love how neither of them knows what the heart means so they play it off by being like “yeah of course I know what it means, how could I forget? Do YOU remember what it means

Also Vision is literally part computer shouldn’t he have a photographic memory?

Also how old is Wanda? I could have sworn someone said she was 19 in civil war, which would make her like 21 here? I think?? Idk tho, as a 19 year old I don’t think she has ever looked 19 in the movies, even back in Ultron she looked at least in her mid twenties

The face Vision makes when he makes himself human is so funny

Also Vision blowing Wanda a kiss and her reaching back to grab it is the perfect amount of corny that makes it still cute

Also I wonder what vision’s job is

The backing music is so funny

I can already tell Agnes is going to be some great comic relief in a show that’s already hilarious

“I assure you, I’m married. To a man. A HUMAN one!” I know I’ve said before that I was never the biggest fan of Wanda or Vision but I love Wanda in this show

Obv there is something clearly off here, but I feel like I need to mention that it’s clear this is some warped reality. If I had never seen any of the MCU before, I may believe it was just witch and her robot husband living in the fifties, but the little details really make it clear to the audience (the majority of whom I am sure are familiar with the mcu) that something is off. This scene is one of those, where Wanda cannot seem to recall how long her and Vision have been together and plays it off by saying “It feels like we always have been together”

Is Agnes giving Wanda advice for the bedroom? is this really what I’m watching? Or have I wildly misinterpreted this?

Love the old timey lingo

Vision working a desk job is so funny

Love that vision doesn’t even know what they do at his job, I know it’s part of the false reality thing but also lowkey relatable

“you’re like a walking computer” “I most certainly am not! I’m a regular carbon-based employee made entirely of organic matter”

I started this like twenty minutes ago and have only gotten 7 minutes in because I keep stopping to type my reactions. I am going to try to shut up and watch, and stop screaming about every little detail for a bit 😂

Real quick though does Vision just go by Vision at work?

Ope apparently he does.

I wonder if Vision took Wanda’s last name

Or is he Vision Stark-Banner since it was Tony and Bruce who made him??

He probably isn’t called that but I think it would be funny if he was

Love that instead of writing “dinner with boss” or “Dinner w/ Harts” or even just “Harts” he drew a freaking heart like im dying

if my lack of emojis seems weird I’m typing this on a computer which I never normally do and I’m to lazy to pull up the emoji keyboard, so basically imagine there’s a cry laughing emoji after everything funny

“No skeletons in the closet?’ “I don’t have a skeleton sir.”

Yup I was right, Agnes is giving her sexy time advice

“you should stumble when you walk in a room so he can catch you. It’s romantic!” that is the only way I will be flirting from now on

Also I got to say, I'm guessing it’s a fifties thing but those pointy bras don’t look comfortable

So she answers the phone “Vision Residence” Is Vision also their last name now? Does he go by Vision Vision??

They make the best facial expressions

This phone conversation where Wanda think they’re having a date night whereas Vision is talking about his boss coming for dinner is comedy GOLD

also I love the fact that they’re giving us stereotypical sitcom drama while keeping it clear that there are bigger problems than dinner with the boss

Fake commercial break is at 9.56 (these time stamps are for myself I want to calculate how much of the episode is actually the story)

I do love the fake commercials tho! And I suppose in a way they ARE part of the show

They missed the chance to make it the toastmate three thousand and make every ironman fan cry

The beeping toaster sounds like a ticking bomb..... also the little red light is the only color we’ve seen this episode I think

Commercial ends at 10.46

Also love that it was an SI toaster, still wish they had made it 3000 instead of 2000

How did Wanda confuse Mr. Hart with her husband? Not that I’m complaining, her coming out in a robe and covering Vis’ Boss’ eyes is HILARIOUS

“This is the traditional Sokovian greeting? Didn’t I tell you my wife is from Europe?” “How exotic!” “We don’t break bread with Bolsheviks”

Visions pants are SO high waisted

“It’s our anniversary!” “Our anniversary of WHAT?” “WELL IF YOU DON”T KNOW I”M NOT GONNA TELL YOU”

Poor Vision is trying to figure out what kind of company he works for this is sooo funny

Agnes coming in clutch with a full meal

So Wanda needs the ingredients in order to magic a meal she can’t just make one appear

Vision breaking into song was amazing

How did one chicken turn into like 30 eggs

Vision is singing old McDonald with his bosses wife this is great

“Diane!” “That must be my wife summoning me!” “She calls you Diane?” “Yes... it’s her pet name for me” “I’m coming... Fred”

So many clichés in this show but it’s done in such a purposeful way that it’s still funny

Also we have only seen three rooms: the kitchen, the living room and Vision’s workplace

“Well I think tonight’s going SWIMMINGLY”

Mrs. Hart is SO NOSY

But I love that they don’t know the answers

Wanda looks SO disturbed when Mr. Hart is demanding her and visions story, you can tell her mind is fighting itself and it’s so sad

Mr. Hart is choking, is it bad that I think he deserves it?

Mrs. Hart keeps cheerily repeating stop it, and gone is the stereotypical sitcom camera angles and and the backing music is switched for something eery

This is lowkey scary, Mr. Hart Dying while his wife keeps cheerily saying Stop It and it just feels creepier the more she repeats

Wanda looks distressed and vision is just looking to her for what to do, her old timey accent is gone and she sounds nearly robotic as she tells Vision to help

Poor Wanda, she is so clearly going through it mentally right now

Laugh track is back, and just like that the Harts are leaving, despite only having one bite of food

And somehow Mr. Hart is impressed? Was Wanda rewriting reality to make them so?

I know that this is clearly some alternate reality and nothing is right, but wanda and vision deciding to choose that day as there anniversary and this little convo here is soooooo cute

Aw her making them rings and them both saying I do is soooo cute

And vision saying “and they lived happily ever after’ is so sweet but also so sad in context

What is that little remote vision is holding meant to be?

And love the hexagon closing in on them with the cute music playing to end the episode

Are the people in these credits real? Because it lists the start as Wanda Maximoff and Vision but are the rest actual people?

So there is some sketchy dude watching the maybe fake credits so there's something going on there

The actual credits start with 7.13 left and I’ve been told there's no mid or post credits scene. I’ll let them play while I finish this up anyways

8 minutes and 49 seconds of this show is the logo, title sequence and credits. Out of 29.36 total this means only 20 minutes and 47 seconds is the show, which I suppose is standard for a sitcom but I think I felt deceived by it showing as 29 minutes

Also 50 seconds of “commercial takes the show time down to 19.57 if anyone was wondering

I swear tho I’m not all that bothered by the length, just did the math in case anyone was curious like I am.

I thought I was going to really enjoy this going it, but it still really surpassed my expectations and I can’t wait for episode 2!

This is my raw reactions, but I’m sure that as I mull it over more I’ll be posting more about the show

This is somehow a perfect combo of lighthearted comedy and mild horror

I wanna let this episode stew for a while, so I prob won’t watch episode 2 for at least a day

Also what are your guys’ thoughts on this format of reaction? Did I write to much?

Also what did y’all think of this episode? Feel free to let me know what you think of my reaction, and whether you agree or disagree. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

#anna reacts to wandavision #anna reacts #wandavision #mcu #marvel #avengers #scarlet witch #vision #wanda maximoff #disney plus #wandavision spoilers #wv spoilers #mcu spoilers #marvel spoilers

22 notes · View notes

lizzytheauthor · 4 years

Text

Why not, right? Might as well just post it chapter by chapter. I might need to figure out how to like...archive all of them in one post or...maybe I could just do a page or something on the blog? Idk. I’ll figure it out later. Here’s the first chapter

Chapter 1

Yellow. Blinded by yellow. I feel wind? When did I get outside? I feel...peaceful.

I blink my eyes, and suddenly I’m laying in my bed. I look at the clock, 8am. On the dot. I look over and see a still vacant bed. I don’t remember going to sleep last night, but I...I don’t think I saw this Pete person. Maybe he’s not in yet, maybe he’s arriving later. I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to be doing. My “treatment” is at 9. Which is in an hour. I can only assume that the treatment in question is some kind of hypnosis. I don’t believe it personally. People going under and acting strangely? Nonsense. They insist that after three or four treatments I’ll be cured? Impossible.

I can’t have been sitting there for more than 5 minutes, thinking about what to do with my time. But a quick glance at my clock read 8:50am. I swear it hasn’t been 50 minutes, yet the clock betrays me. Maybe I’m just zoning out. I’ll have to mention it to the doc-

Knock. Knock.

8:59. Hm.

I go over to the door, and open it to see one of the large men from the front. He just grunts, and I assume that means I follow him. His pace seems a lot slower, probably due to his hulking mass. It allows me to look at everything around me with more detail. The doors predictably all look the same, the halls are a bland beige with a dark blue line at about doorknob height. Occasionally there’s a potted plant at a corner, or alcove. It all reeks of hospital. I don’t like it, nor do I trust it. I especially don’t trust the time. I’ve heard of time blindness, but...surely it’s not this bad?

We round a corner, and start climbing some stairs. Strangely, it does feel like I know where I’m going? Maybe it’s just cause I’m following a large man who clearly does know. These steps feel a little more daunting. I get a sense of apprehension about just climbing them. Like...Well. It sounds silly. I feel like the stairs go on forever? It doesn’t, I mean, I can see the top. It’s right there. But it feels like it.

This thought made me turn around. I felt like I had climbed at least a dozen or so steps, and sure enough the landing is simply 6 or 7 steps down. I don’t know how to parse this information. I think it’s better to ignore it for now.

The hulking man never said a word, didn’t notice anything strange I guess. We did reach the top, after an agonizing amount of time, impossible for me to trust my own sense of time. The top of the stairs was dark. As we reached it, the light came on overhead. All I could see is an endless expanse of darkened halls. I suppose they’re motion sensors, and I’m the first treatment of the day. Maybe.

A split second, I could’ve sworn I could….hear something. I’m not sure what. Maybe it’s just the hum of the lights as they slowly gain heat from being on?

We pass door, after door, after door. It seems endless, monotonous, boring. Finally, after probably the longest walk down like 3 halls and some stairs, of my life. The large man stops, and gestures to a door.

I open it, and walk through, cause I can’t exactly tell that kind of man no, ya know? Inside the door, is a small room, there’s a single chair, under a light fixture, it’s somewhat reminiscent of a dentists office. But with less actual equipment. The door is closed behind me, and I decide to sit in the chair, cause I’m sure as hell not gonna stand. And I wait.

I wait. I wait. I wait. There’s no clock in here, so I don’t know how much time passes. If you pressed a gun to my head and asked me to tell you how much, I’d say 3 hours. Finally, the doorknob turned, and in came a doctor. A woman, early thirties probably. Long black hair, pulled into a ponytail. She’s wearing a white lab coat, and has small rectangular glasses, which she adjusted as she entered.

“Hello, uh” she looks at her clipboard, which I didn’t notice her holding previously. “Ralph. That’s a nice name.” she gives a smile, this one feels genuine. More sincere some how.

“Yea...uh...Hi?” I let out, I try not to stammer my words, I don’t even know why it’s hard for me to talk.

Her smile maintains, almost alleviating my previous concerns. Almost.

“My name is Cera. Cera O’Hara.” she extends her arm, to give me a handshake.

I think that’s what’s throwing me off, she’s the first person that seems..well...like a person. A genuine, sincere one. I take her hand, and shake it.

“Uh, can I. Hm.” I pause, maybe this is a weird question. “What time is it?”

“Oh!” she pulls out a pocket watch, it seems basic at a glance. As I stare at it, I notice there is an almost beautiful intricate etching in it. “It’s 9:15. Right, sorry about the lateness, I overslept on accident.” She puts away the pocket watch. “So, this first session isn’t going to be all that exciting. I just need to perform a basic analysis of your mental state, so I know how to properly proceed with treatment.” she lets out a light chuckle, “Not that I don’t trust the state’s doctors, but ‘C-PTSD’ is hardly a comprehensive diagnosis. It doesn’t even state causative traumas, attempted treatments, possible co-morbid diagnoses, et cetera.”

I nod my head as though I understand, but this is all way over my head. Honestly, it’s a little boring, and I almost feel as though I could fall asleep to her voice.

“So, let’s begin!” she says, with a clap.

Then, suddenly. I’m in my room. I...How did I get here? I don’t...quite remember…

A look at the clock above my door, it says it’s only 10:30...the sun is out, so it’s still morning. I remember in those ghost stories, that digital stuff is always unreliable, and old stuff works better. I focus my hearing, and I feel like with the silence of the building I can hear the motor in the clock, along with the Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Not digital. I breathe a sigh, but I don’t know if it’s from relief or...hm. Wait. No, there’s no apprehension. If I see Cera I’ll have to thank her...I’m sure this is probably her doing. It’s been...a while since I felt no tension in my shoulders.

I look at the calendar, and see there’s nothing on the schedule. Or rather, it’s more accurate to say that the only things on the calendar are treatment times. So I guess I have free access? I feel hungry, so I guess breakfast is as good as anything to start my day with. I hear it’s the most important meal of the day.

I chuckle at my dumb thought.

I begin to leave the room, and bump into him. I would not have expected pete to look like this, but I mean, he’s entering the room, so surely it’s him. He has curly red hair, glasses that seem more like binoculars on his eyes, and he’s so skinny, and short.

“Oh, uh, hi!” I try to let out, as I step aside letting him in.

He doesn’t respond immediately, instead goes to his bed and sits down. It takes a moment of agonizing silence, before he finally looks up, and notices me.

“Hello!!” he waves with this with a surprising cheerfulness, like I suddenly snapped him back into reality. “My name is Pete, are you just arriving?”

I nod, “uh, erm. No, I” I point to my bed, expecting it to be messy as I don’t remember making it. But… “Ah, well..uh, no. I came yesterday, I think.”

He looks mildly confused, but shrugs it off, “So you’ve had your first treatment then?”

“I...I think? I don’t remember. I remember the lady saying we weren’t doing anything today, but then I-”

“-’Woke up’ in your bed?” he finishes for me. “It happens.” he shrugs.

“So, that’s normal then?”

Pete thinks for a moment, “Uh, normal isn’t normal here. You’ll see, I think.” he takes out a drawing pad, and a pencil, and he starts drawing.

Not wanting to disturb my new roommate, I check the clock. 10:35. I could swear that it was longer than 5 minutes, but I suppose my sense of time is just shot. Oh! Breakfast, right. I’m hungry. My legs moved on their own, and I began to walk through the halls, I felt like I was on the second floor still, but a window I passed by betrayed me. I was on the first floor. I don’t recall any stairs. Maybe I was zoning out way harder than I thought. Finally I made it to the cafeteria.

“Hey ralph!” the jovial man handing food out addressed me, “You’re a little early for lunch, unless you want a second breakfast?” He waits for my response.

“Uh, wait, second? I never had a first.”

Brian winks at me, “Oh, I see, well here, how about some pancakes?” he seems to be sharing a one sided inside joke that I do not get.

“Sure, that sounds great!” the enthusiasm that erupts out of me surprises me.

The enthusiasm puts a thought into my mind that maybe this isn’t such nonsense. Brian puts a couple pancakes on my plate, and I walk to the table. I think about all the creepy stuff, but maybe it’s not actually creepy. Maybe it’s strange, yea, but I mean, if this fixes me, then why not? I feel better already, I think. And that was just after one treatment, which I was told wasn’t even anything.

My eyes feel kinda heavy. I should eat a little bit, for energy. I think.

With a blink, I’m transported away. A field of wheat. I notice immediately, that I’m alone, and the wheat seems endless. There’s no house, no building of any kind, no trees, nothing. Just endless wheat. I notice second, that I’m not scared. It actually feels peaceful.

I felt compelled to start walking, feeling the wind on my face, the wheat against my hands. I can almost hear voices carried by the wind, but no. I can’t make anything out. Honestly, it feels nice to just not be fearful. Stressed. I must be dreaming, right? I can’t quite wake up. Or rather, I can’t feel my sleeping body. I guess. It’s not another nightmare, yet, so I’ll just enjoy this. I’m sure it’s not unusual for a 19 year old to pass out in a cafeteria.

I walk endlessly, it feels like forever, and I know I can certainly not trust dream time. I can’t even trust my real time, so there’s no point really. I just walked. A building begins to blur into focus, in the distance. I decide to go towards it, I have nothing else to do. The building doesn’t seem to get any closer. Hours upon hours I walk towards it.

I think for a moment, that this actually IS another nightmare, but that’s not the feeling I feel. I still feel that serene grace. That quiet peace. Just walking. Maybe it’s the wind, maybe it’s the sun on my face. I don’t know. I continue walking. This seems...Fami-

CLAP.

I’m ripped out of my dream. I don’t recognize the room I’m in, but it’s not a bedroom. I try and take in my surroundings, but everything seems fuzzy. Like, like trying to imagine your childhood room, by someone who is describing it through old pictures that are worn. You can almost tell where you are, but not quite.

“Hey, come back to me.” a girls voice. No, woman. Older for sure. Not terribly old.

I try to look at the voice, but it’s so hard to focus. Why can’t I focus?

“Feel your senses returning to you, become aware of your surroundings. It’s not terribly difficult. I do apologize for the abruptness, but this is the first time you’ve been alone.” as she says this, things start coming into focus. Slowly.

The woman in the room with me, has long brown hair. Her face feels gentle, even though it’s still slightly fuzzy.

“My name is Valerie. But please don’t call me that. Call me Val.” her attitude seems different. Normal? Well, not normal for this place. But, like, normal for outside.

I become acutely aware of the room. We’re in a gym or something. There’s weights, and exercise machines. We’re the only two in the room, and it’s much bigger than I thought it was at first.

All I can mutter is, “What?”

“Come on, surely you realize what’s happening?” she waits, and I just stand there. Clearly irritated, she continues, “Hypnosis? I mean really, you’re in a hypnosis institute. Did you think it’d be therapy and gumdrops for your stay?”

She goes to the door, and checks both ways out the halls.

“Hypnosis?” I ask. I still struggle to find my thoughts.

“Ugh, yes.” she hands me a watch, “Don’t let them see this. Try to not lose time.”

I check the watch, it’s digital. 3:39pm. I lost 5 hours.

“No, no no. This has to be wrong. It was only 10 something a second ago.” I protest, but she waves her hand dismissing it.

“Missing time means they’re stealing it.” she glances out again. “Hey, go to reception, and ask for a journal. They hand them out to everyone that asks. Keep track of...well. Keep track of anything that feels important.”

“What?” but it’s no use, she’s out the door and down the hall.

I guess...I guess I’m going to go to reception and get a journal. I step out of the gym, and try to get a feel for where I am. I honestly don’t know. I see some people who look like people who work here, and decide to approach them. After all, I haven’t done anything wrong, there’s no reason for me to fear these people. Right?

“Hey, I think I’m lost.” I start, “I was eating lunch, and then all of a sudden I was in that gym.”

Which isn’t entirely the truth, but also not a lie. Surely they’d understand.

“You’re not lost.” one of them says.

I take a step back, I...what?

“What? No, I...” but then it hits me. I do know where I am. No, wait. I don’t. I swear I don’t. But my feet are already moving. Whatever panic might have started building is swiftly replaced with a calm. I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.

I just, try and convince my feet I want to go to the receptionist. I pass some people dressed in clothes similar to mine, they don’t acknowledge my existence. I notice they seem happy, it feels genuine. Maybe. I doubt it. I continue walking down the light beige halls, with it’s green line at doorknob height. It seems off, but I can’t quite place my finger on it.

After a handful of minutes, I arrive at the receptionist desk. I see Miranda, typing at her computer. The computer looks like an old 90’s era computer. Not what I expected in this new age institute. At any rate, Miranda notices my presence.

“Oh! Ralph! Hello! Can I help you with anything?” her cheerful attitude is still overwhelming.

“Uh, y-yea. Can I have a journal? I want...I want to write my thoughts down.” I don’t quite know what I’m going to write, but…

“Oh, pesky thoughts. Always getting in the way, I think. Maybe writing them down will rid you of them!” she smiles at me, I don’t fully get her meaning, but that sounded threatening. She reaches under her desk and pulls out an all black notebook. It looks leather? I take it. “Off you go now, it’s almost time for bed!”

I look at the clock on the wall above her. 7:40. I glance to the front doors, to confirm that it is indeed night already. How did I lose…

“Uh, oh. Ok. Yea.” I turn and go back down the hall. I feel Miranda burning a hole in my back with her stare.

After I’m well out of Miranda’s gaze, I take the watch out of my pocket. 4:39pm. I don’t get it. I don’t understand. I look around the halls, and there’s no windows. I look at one of the plaques, and see I’ve already made it to my room. I...this is strange. I don’t understand. I shouldn’t, I mean. Once again I feel the panic start to build, and it swiftly gets crushed. Nothing. Calm? No, that’s not quite it.

I walk in, and see out the window, the sun is out. It’s not right. Nothing is right. I’m not. I don’t think I’m crazy. Am I?

“Hey dude, I’m about to go get some dinner.” Pete was still drawing on his bed. I don’t know if he’s moved at all from that spot, though he is laying down instead of sitting now. He looks at me, “Whoa, hey, you ok? You’re sweating.” he sits up, and grabs a remote to turn the ceiling fan on.

Did we always have one? I don’t remember.

Am I sweating? I must be, my clothes feel damp.

“Uh, I think I’m gonna lay down...Could, you..” I pause. I don’t know what to say. How do you explain this? Maybe he knows. “Do you lose time?”

He looks at me, concerned, “Yea. I do. Hey, let me grab some food for you, just lay down, take it easy.”

He walks off. I decide to write this in my journal. Maybe taking note of things will help me retain my sanity. I hope it does. I keep the watch next to my journal as I write, I really don’t want to ‘lose’ any more time. They don’t deserve it, it’s mine.

After writing how I felt, the time loss, the way this building seems to claim my sanity. I just lay there. I feel exceptionally exhausted, yet somehow still relaxed. Is this intentional? Is this fixing me? To be fair, I haven’t thought about my parents. I feel frustrated. Again, the feeling gets squished by a larger pacificati….that’s it. Pacification. That’s what I’m feeling.

Last time I looked at the watch it said 7:06pm. A little early, but my body needs the rest. Wait, wasn’t Pete going to bring me dinner?

I hope he’s ok. I can’t help but feel myself drift off to sleep at this thought. Yellow. Again, that blinding yellow.

#my writing #horror #gaslighting #time blindness #issues with reality

11 notes · View notes

svtskneecaps · 4 years

Text

i’ve been enabled

here’s the sitch on the goddamn harry potter hogwarts mystery app game

it fucking sucks

here’s my main issues in a handy list i’ll go down later:

the gameplay

energy

art / visuals

the story

the writing

the choose your own adventure like elements (technically gameplay since there isn’t much else l m a o)

and i have receipts for most of this stuff. fun fact, i’ve been taking videos of all plot relevant events since year 1.

some context:

i’ve played up to year 3 myself. i have watched up until the very beginning of year 5 in someone’s youtube series (will bits? that was his main character [henceforth referred to as MC]’s name, however that was a year ago and it was in the background like a podcast so the details are sort of fuzzy. i have not played the game since march (it’s september, ish), but i’m loading it up as i type this just to get a feel for it

idk whether to assume my audience has or hasn’t played the game. i’ll keep my complaints as clear as possible.

i’m mainly an author so the storytelling sections are where i’m really going to pop off, since that’s something i have the most experience with and passion in, but i’ll be touching on everything else because compounded it’s all pissing me off lmao

[a couple hints at spoilers for maybe an event in year 1, and year 3, but nothing major]

let’s start with: THE GAMEPLAY

there isn’t any

literally. there’s like. zero gameplay.

you tap some highlighted figures, and then sometimes you get to trace a little shape, and sometimes you get to play rock paper scissors to fight somebody (they did manage to make duelling slightly better but it’s still not good by any standard)

sometimes you get to choose between three dialogue options, but those have barely any impact on the story or on your character. any impact they have is limited to a couple stat points, or maybe some house points, or like. some event at the end of the year. but like barely any make any real serious difference (but i’ll touch on that more later)

and then there’s the factor of stat points (and this gets kind of mathy, so feel free to skip to the bolded sentence)

for those who haven’t played the game, you have three stats (empathy, courage, and knowledge) that you can level up by taking classes, 1, 3, or 8 hours, for various rewards

back when i stopped playing, i had gained 8914 points in courage. if i recall correctly i was only about halfway to leveling up that stat. if you take an 8 hour class, you receive consistently 200 stat points, with a possibility of extra rewards that i can’t count for since those are randomly generated.

to get those 8914 points, i would have had to take 44.57 8 hour classes (while 8 hour they only take about 7, counting for the 2 hours it takes my energy to recharge to full). with 44.57 classes taking 7 hours each, to get halfway to level 24, i would have had to have done:

THIRTEEN STRAIGHT DAYS OF GRINDING, ASSUMING THAT ALL I HAD BEEN DOING WAS CHECKING ON THE HARRY POTTER HOGWARTS MYSTERY APP

and again, I WAS ONLY LIKE HALFWAY TO LEVELLING UP

I AM BARELY BEGINNING FOURTH YEAR. I AM NOT EVEN HALFWAY THROUGH THIS GAME.

i think they’ve fixed this now; it said i had 8914/1550 courage and when i got stat points it fixed itself and jumped me from level 23 to 28, so thanks for that jam city.

but it doesn’t change the fact that the grinding is fucking horrible and i’ve done my fair share of hours, and who knows what it’s going to look like when i get to a higher level again

the energy

yes, i know it’s an app game. i know they want my money. but holy FUCK the energy recharges disgustingly slowly, and every bit they expand my energy bar is an insult

“here, have another energy capacity!” they say, and then add to the amount of energy it takes to complete a task at the same time, so now shit just takes me even damn longer

it’s an insult. don’t think i didn’t fuckin notice jam city.

since it’s an app game, naturally, energy requires paying real world money or the (semi) rare in-game currency to get more if you blow through your bar. they want your money. i know they want my money, but it doesn’t make me any less disappointed by how damn blatant they’re being. app games like bakery story probably also want my money, but at least those are still fun to play.

the art / visuals

now i’m not an artist. nor am i a 3-d modeller. but if solo indie devs and 10 men teams can make video games that have to have models with a much fuller range of motion (since there’s ACTUAL GAMEPLAY and not just little cutscenes of characters moving around) and that don’t make me sick to watch, then jam city working on a HARRY POTTER GAME should be able to (jk rowling fucking sucks but her books have brought in so much goddamn money that they can afford to pay their devs enough to make the game look good; in this case i’m not entirely sure where the blame lies)

there’s like. 10 motions characters can use while in the cutscenes and talking. like 10. and i can recognize every one of them, and there is not a single motion unique to a character. the characters are something i’ll touch on later in the storytelling sections, though. just, please god give them SOMETHING even SLIGHTLY different. like make two versions of a couple of the crowd animations at LEAST, so that when people celebrate at the end of the year there’s not twenty people in the shot doing the same “pump my fists in the air in celebration” motion at the exact same time. PLEASE.

sometimes animations in story events and classes sync up too, which is. beyond distracting. like it’s completely immersion breaking and i mean please, please jam city, if you haven’t fixed that please fix it. please.

the animations that roll in flying class are fun, ONCE. when you’ve seen them eight hundred thousand times because you’re grinding up your courage stat, they get hella boring. all of the classes are like this to some extent but flying is the biggest offender since those were the longest animations. if they haven’t implemented a skip button since i last played it, they should. they fuckin should.

also the fertilizer animation in the greenhouse scenes is gross. you pick up a deformed cone of dirt with your shovel like a slice of cake and then shove it clipping through the edges of a pot, where it disappears without a trace. i hate it. jam city please make the game look good.

if you still play the game please tell me it looks better; i’ll be playing through a couple things after i post this but it’s hphm. it’s gonna take me a goddamn long time to hit all the points and confirm whether what i complained about has been fixed or not

also also, wearing dresses is so distracting, especially while dueling. the way the dress flexes around your legs is like you’re wearing clothing made from jello and when my character does the idle animation her hands clip through her skirt, and there’s all kids of glitches with hair where it clips through outfits (and why in the fuck do the necklaces float a full foot from the character’s body)

the storytelling

alright there’s a lot to cover so strap in

i’m not mad about the story having some of the same beats as harry potter. whatever, right? if it worked, it worked. having a big climax at the end of the year just works well for storytelling. having a school bully antagonist also works well for easy storytelling (it’s kinda cheap, but whatever works, right?) it’s what you DO with the archetypes you use that makes or breaks your story

jam city broke it

i don’t know how to organize my thoughts so here’s a bulleted list

it is very clearly obvious they wrote this as they went along (ex. a previously unseen character pops up in year 3 and was supposedly the best friend of your greatest enemy in previous years) and didn’t think to fix the plot holes

there’s too many goddamn characters (i love them, but with a big cast comes a whole host of problems [I WRITE FOR A KPOP GROUP WITH 13 MEMBERS, I HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE WITH THAT], and we’ll get there)

there’s too much goddamn filler for the sake of forcing us to spend time and in-game energy (yes i KNOW it’s an app game and they want our money but THEY COULD BE A LITTLE MORE SUBTLE ABOUT IT)

what honestly pisses me off the most about it is that IT COULD BE GOOD

IF THE STORY WERE GOOD, I WOULD FUCKIN IGNORE ALL OF THAT OTHER SHIT

but it’s not, and here’s the biggest gripe i have:

none of the choices you make matter. none of them. to the point where it’s immersion breaking at BEST

for example, while my MC is a hufflepuff, i know a lot of people play in slytherin. scenes where snape gets upset with your character and takes away house points no longer make sense for a slytherin MC, because snape would be infinitely more likely to give you three years of nightly detentions, or pitch you off the astronomy tower, than he would be to take house points from slytherin

honestly, they should have waited. if they wanted to put choose your own adventure elements into the game, they should have planned out every single one of those story arcs in detail, and THEN released the game. they could leave some of the more basic choices in and those choices only mattering for short term effects wouldn’t irk me as much as it does right now because THERE WOULD BE CHOICES THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE.

your very first choice over how you felt about your brother’s disappearance only matters for what wand you get (which i immediately forgot which really says something about the impact of that choice :)))) ). no matter what you pick, you still end up chasing after him for the rest of the game, so who cares?

story beats don’t land different based on your house. you could absolutely play it that merula hates you regardless of your house, that’s fine. just remember that if your MC is slytherin and lives in the female dorms, she probably shares a room with merula. which makes things fucky for all kinds of reasons, none of which jam city addresses in the current game, as far as i’m aware

also, there’s the deal with rowan

rowan is a character that goes into your mc’s chosen house no matter what (and as rowan changes pronouns with your player, i’ll be using “they” [or “she” as my player is a she and that’s what i’m used to; i’ll try to refrain but i might slip up occasionally] ). as far as i can tell, rowan’s personality remains the same no matter what house you’re in. they don’t try to play up the traits that match the house, rowan is just usually a sweet bookworm. why would the hat have put them in gryffindor? rowan khanna for me has never seemed to display any gryffindorish traits; or at the very least, no traits that should be prioritized over, say, the ravenclaw traits they have VERY STRONGLY (since rowan fills a sort of hermione role; rowan knows things about things and is your go to for research)

can we just put rowan in ravenclaw? sure, it would make it hard for fans in different houses to communicate between each other about the story for a time since certain sequences of events would play out differently, but here’s the thing:

if events play out differently based on your choices, people will want to play your game multiple times to get every ending

that’s the fun of a choose your own adventure game. if events play out distinctly differently if you’re a hufflepuff or a ravenclaw or a slytherin or a gryffindor, then people will want to play through the game four times at LEAST, once for each house, to get all the fun pieces of story (WHICH MEANS, they’ll be spending more and more time and using more and more energy, so you can make the same amount of money off people buying energy and watching the ads and maybe MORE while being able to cut out some of the more shitty pieces of filler)

in the current version, your house is just, what color are your robes and who is your prefect. i haven’t watched anyone who wasn’t a hufflepuff, but i’m sure that certain scenes and conflicts play out the exact same no matter what house you’re in

as an example, your house should affect how the duelling confrontation in year one should have gone. snape and flitwick should have different dialogue based on whether you’re a slytherin, or a ravenclaw, or a gryffindor, or a hufflepuff. snape fucking hates gryffindors, so he should be far less lenient against gryffindors, and on the flip side he should be battling between himself with how strict to be if you’re a slytherin; maybe he hates your guts because of a grudge against your brother, but you’re still in his house and we all know snape plays favorites. flitwick should be more disappointed if you’re a ravenclaw, because that’s his house and he had higher expectations for you. neither of them have many ties to hufflepuff that would skew the confrontation in a drastic direction, but had this been the first version of the game, then the confrontation that plays out in the current version we have would work fine for hufflepuff; you’re one of flitwick’s favorite charms students and he taught you this skill, and he’s disappointed to see you use it in this way, but not nearly as much as if you were one of his own

AND NOW PEOPLE WANT TO PLAY THE GAME MULTIPLE TIMES TO GET ALL THE DIALOGUE, WHICH MEANS MORE TIME, MORE ENERGY, AND MORE MONEY, JAM CITY, ARE YOU HEARING THIS??? MORE MONEY!!!!! IT’S A WIN WIN FOR EVERYONE

while we’re at it, change jacob to match his house. if you’re still gonna make him have the same house as the MC, make him match it. from how all the characters describe him that bitch is as slytherin as they come, if you’re gonna make him a hufflepuff with me then give him a clear, hufflepuff motive god damnit

finally,

the characters

there’s too many.

the problem with a big cast is no one gets enough screen time and some characters end up getting shunted to the side. that’s just what happens. you HAVE to zero in on four or five side friends and let the rest of them slip to the side. looking at my friends menu there are 17 characters you can befriend, not including hagrid, the quidditch crew, dobby, talbott, and chiara (since those are, as far as i know, unlocked via side quests, which are... fine. i don’t have any particular gripes about the side quests except for the thing with lupin being twice the size of tonks which, if you’ve read the seventh book i don’t need to explain how weird that is to you)

and BECAUSE there are so many, a lot of them have to be defined by one trait. ben is a coward, rowan’s clever and booksmart, penny has her hand on the school’s pulse and makes potions, liz likes creatures, charlie fuckin loves dragons, tonks likes pranks (seriously that’s her whole personality), andre likes clothes, barnaby is a dumb jock that likes creatures

like, traits are fun. but if that’s ALL THEY HAVE, that’s when things get a little fucky

how many of these characters have dimensions? i’m in year 4 chapter 4. the first screen recording of the game i took was on december 5 of 2019, and assuming i played about a minimum of 8 hours a day (”““played”““) until the final screen recording [may 20, 2020] before i dropped the game for about six months (i know for certain it was more than that, since i had some kind of activity going on at just about all times for at least a month of that, but i’ll take the generous estimate), at bare minimum that makes 1344 hours i spent playing this game, or about 56 days (keep in mind, this is a LOW estimate)

in those 56 days of gameplay, i don’t know ANYTHING about the characters other than their utility in my quest. i don’t know penny’s favorite color or even her favorite potion to brew, or how and why she started and when [there’s a reveal in third year that i watched someone play through, but i don’t know if i ever played through it myself; i don’t have any screen recordings of the event]. i don’t know anything about ben or his family aside from the fact that he’s muggleborn. i know some basic facts about barnaby’s family, and that he’s tough and likes creatures. rowan grew up on a tree farm and i have a vague recollection of her mentioning siblings. do we know anything about them?? do i know anything about how the characters interact with each other?? are barnaby and liz friends? they both like creatures. do they talk to charlie?? do ben and penny hang out while we’re not there? are ben and jae friends?? are jae and charlie??? DO THESE CHARACTERS EXIST WHEN THEY AREN’T NEEDED FOR THE CURSED VAULTS???

why in the fuck don’t i know these characters?? why don’t we know anything about tonks other than her affinity for pranking?? there’s a sharp bias in who the writer’s favorites are (they like the characters with angsty pasts they can twist around; what do we know about ben aside from his blood status? and he’s been around since first year; he’s the second friend you unlock. i know more about barnaby and i’ve known him for a much shorter time)

if you separate the routes, you get a chance to zero in on certain characters and actually develop them. if you’re a gryffindor, you befriend ben, charlie, and jae much more quickly and they make up the closest of your friends, along with rowan, if jam city is determined to keep their tutorial character constant across all plotlines (i still think rowan should be solely a ravenclaw, but i’ll allow rowan’s house to change so long as their personality shifts to emphasize certain qualities in order to match the change in house; your house should not just determine the color your robes are)

if you’re in slytherin, maybe you befriend barnaby in place of ben in the original game, or maybe there’s an arc where you clash heads with merula (who can still be an enemy even if you’re both in slytherin; merula doesn’t like competition and the MC is exactly that) and the rest of the slytherins in your year find themselves caught in the middle; maybe there’s an arc where your MC finds themself totally alone without allies due to the conflict between them and merula (might i suggest year two, while coming up on the climax of the year?)

hufflepuffs get to focus on tonks and penny much closer. ben can also be in this plotline, but he shouldn’t take center stage (characters should cross over plotlines, but only take center stage in one, aside from perhaps rowan if rowan remains constant). maybe chiara can get implemented into the main plotline to fill out the roster, and if not, diego caplan can get implemented earlier (i haven’t met him yet and know nothing about his character)

and ravenclaws get the ravenclaw characters BUT YOU GET THE POINT, i don’t want to bore anyone by repeating myself; this is long enough as is

what i’m saying is, these characters all have a different enough base that each route will be different just by focusing on different characters; ben and jae will respond to a situation much differently than penny and tonks might, which would ALREADY shake up the storyline of each house based on which house you choose in the beginning, and then characters overlap plotlines so you could leave hints in each route to the other characters’ unique backstories and motivations that leaves the player wanting to get to know the rest of your WELL DEVELOPED CAST (((MAKE SURE THEY’RE WELL DEVELOPED OR THIS WILL NOT WORK)))

WHAT I’M SAYING IS, THIS GAME COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD

if they put more effort into the story then maybe i would have gunned through the hufflepuff route so quickly and then restarted to go through all the rest of them. if you want people playing your game for longer then THAT is the way to go

yes, it will take time. yes, it will take effort. but you know what?

IT’LL ALSO MAKE YOU A FUCKTON OF MONEY FROM PLAYERS PLAYING EACH ROUTE IN FULL AND THEN PLAYING THEIR FAVORITE ROUTES AGAIN SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR

anyway, what i’m saying is, i hate this game so much because of the potential it had to succeed, and the potential it had to be a really good game. even if they didn’t change the gameplay much, even if they didn’t change the models, i could get past ALL OF THAT if the story was interesting

so uh. jam city, if you’re reading this, please. i will let you take away all of my days of playing this. i will let you render all of my progress obsolete and send me plummeting back into my first year at hogwarts to go through the game again, if you JUST, MAKE, MULTIPLE, ROUTES!!! MAKE MY CHOICES MATTER DAMN YOU!!!!!!!!

i’m also willing to let you use the ideas i posited here without credit or payment. because that sounds like a legal hassle and i am far too lazy to deal with that sort of thing, i just want to play a good game. please. please give me a good game to play.

also, make energy take 3 minutes to recharge. please.

so uh

TL;DR : i hate this game. and i wish i didn’t hate this game.

2 notes · View notes

hamliet · 5 years

Note

I've never seen Game of Thrones but I've heard a lot about it and apparently many people are upset with the ending. Something about Targaryen becoming a villain at the last second for no apparent reason? Idk, could you explain what's going on? I heard it's based off a book series. Does the show stray from the original plot or stay loyal to it?

*starts sobbing* SPARE YOURSELF

Honestly I’d sum it up like how @mercyandmagic summed it up: image Harry Potter wins the Battle of Hogwarts, but in the very moment he wins, he snaps and the Voldemort horcrux inside him suddenly takes over the rest of his soul and he murders almost everyone and Ginny has to put him down at Hermione and Ron’s urging.

That’s what happened. It was a tone-deaf plot twist in this day and age, misogynistic, ableist, and racist in its execution, and it was poorly written as well--like, there was no foreshadowing for this twist of events.

The thing about the books is that they aren’t completed. We are 5/7 books through. The creator told the showrunners the bare bones of the ending (who lives/dies/gets the throne), so I’m hoping this isn’t his endgame exactly. Others speculate it might not be (for example, the main ship--Jon and Dany--might still have one killing the other, but it might be more in a sacrifice than in a “put the mad dog down” scenario like the show gave us. Still hate it, but not “burn it all down”).

We know they cut some characters from the books whom at first I assumed the fact that they were cut meant that they were extra fat, and... well I am now hoping that’s wrong because combining their arcs with the characters we have left would explain a lot about it being shit.

So, the primary defense I’m seeing of Dany Villain is that she’s a tragic heroine, and her descent just wasn’t written properly. I’d agree that it’s not written well, but I’d also argue that in both the books and in the show, Dany is not presented as a tragic heroine at all, but as a hero on a gritty version of the hero’s journey–just like Jon--but one of the cut characters is indeed a tragic heroine.

The thing about tragedies is that you have to manage expectations and clearly show that your tragic hero is doomed from the very early on–ie you have to show them making steadily worse and worse decisions (see: Eren Jaeger in SnK), if not directly tell your audience at the very beginning that this is a tragic story (ie see Greek choruses and Shakespeare, the prequels from Star Wars because everyone knows Anakin is Vader–plus I’d argue Anakin’s arc only works because we know he comes back to the light in the end–Kaneki Ken in the first Tokyo Ghoul, etc).

We don’t have that with Dany or with Jon, and we’re 5/7 through the books which is, frankly, too late. If they intended to show Dany as a tragic heroine they needed to start foreshadowing that in, oh, book 3/season 4-5 at the latest, and show divergence from Jon Snow’s arc instead of increasing parallels. But they haven’t, which gives me hope at least that the book’s ending plays out a little bit more like Dany burning a city as the “abyss/underworld” part of her hero’s journey (which she is on, and so is Jon) and then redeeming herself in the end fighting a greater enemy.

A hero’s journey includes a step in which the hero confronts the darkness, the shadow. For Jon, it’s a cold death and the fact that winter is coming. For Dany, it’s her father and her heritage’s legacy of fire and blood. The end of Book 5, the last book published, pretty clearly showed both of them falling to the abyss (well, teetering on the edge, and it’s going to get worse before they’re both reborn). But the important thing is that it’s not the end of their journey.

Audiences don’t like reversing on set up/undoing structure. To make Dany a tragic heroine is to go against the structure of her arc in both show and book. That’s why people don’t like it, even if the books makes it seem more believable.

You know who is set up as a tragic heroine destined to descend and die because of her flaws in the books, whose arc has almost certainly been combined with Dany’s in some sense in the show?

Arianne Martell. (and another character known as f!Aegon)

The show pretty clearly merged Jon’s (main hero’s) arc with f!Aegon’s, even giving him his name (in a nonsensical way. In the books, f!Aegon believes he is Aegon Targaryen, Jon’s brother, though he really isn’t as Aegon is dead; in the show, Jon’s dad apparently named… both his sons Aegon. Mmkay). Characters who are the mastermindsbehind the Aegon plot, supporting him over f!Aegon, take Jon’s side against Dany in the show. Similarly, the show is merging Dany with Arianne, retconning her as letting her demons overtake her in the end, when that is just not Dany’s arc’s set up at all, in the books or in the show.

In the books, Arianne is incredibly ambitious, and especially resents her brother and his quest for power. Like Margaery (another tragic character), Arianne seeks power and is intelligent and manipulative in her quest for it. But Margaery’s fatal mistake is that in seeking power and prestige, she’s become more a pawn than anything else for a villain (Cersei). She chose to play with lions, and she’ll be torn apart; that’s not surprising. Arianne, as her chapters hint, is going to almost certainly marry f!Aegon, playing with fire, and die burning for it.

Arianne’s grasping for her own power is never portrayed as cruel or stupid like the main human villain (Cersei); on the contrary, we empathize with a girl who truly cares about her people, but resents her father’s preferential treatment towards her brother. That’s the difference between Arianne and Cersei: Arianne cares. She is not cruel. But her pride is still going to get her killed.

The books as I recall have always, always portrayed the Others (White Walkers) as the primary threat, not the game of thrones. People who get involved in the game of thrones–it doesn’t end well. The thing about Dany, though, is that she sees herself as a revolutionary. “Break the wheel” isn’t in the books (yet), but it’s a pretty good character moment for her that rings true. But this sets up Dany’s primary conflict: does she want to be like her father or not? Throughout the books, she hasn’t wanted to be. But she can’t have her cake and eat it to. If she goes for the throne–symbolic of her family and her father and those ghosts, as it’s always been portrayed as corrupting–she will indeed probably become more like her father. To be unlike her father, she’d probably have to not play the game of thrones anymore at all, and the Others are like… RIGHT THERE to provide this motivation for her.

But the show said “fuck it she’s her dad let me show you a snap two episodes after she saved the world from the Others who after being the primary threat for 7.5 seasons are now an afterthought and defeated after a single day because we gotta go with Bitches Be CrayCray as a plotline”

Man, I remember being disappointed the show cut Arianne and f!Aegon, but honestly it wasn’t until this season that I’ve been realizing how wrong my thinking that “they must have just been fat that could be cut” might have been. I shouldn’t have trusted D&D, that they knew what they were doing. They did not.

Or this might all be wrong and Jon and Dany are just doomed to be victims of bad writing in any case. *shrugs* Who knows if we’ll ever get those last two books (there’s been an 8+ year gap from the last one) so. Yeah.

That is probably way too long and complicated. I am sorry. I needed to vent lol. Also, the Dany and Arianne and f!Aegon theory is not mine--other meta writers for the books have written about it, but I find it convincing and honestly it gives me hope; see here.

#ask hamliet #game of thrones #got meta #got negativity #daenerys targaryen #jon snow #asoiaf #arianne martell #aot-snk-4238

271 notes · View notes

yurtletheturtlehenderson · 5 years

Text

Something There || Mike Wheeler x Fem!Reader

Requested: "Hey! Can you make a Mike Wheeler imagine where the reader is looking for Dart instead of Max and Mike walks in and it's basically the same scene but with more fluff! Also, if it's too much to ask, can you involve Eleven being jealous (because she's so cute that way) and the reader without a skateboard? Thank you <3"

A//N: I tried my best to follow the scene but also make it just different enough. Like with the whole skateboard thing it was harder than I thought for this scene not to have a skateboard in it, what with the whole zoomer thing, and long story short you have skates. That’s your thing. You like skating in your free time, you always have, you’re better than most. You’re abnormally good at them. Idk, when your not going between classes, (basically, when it’s any sort of emergency, or you have nowhere you need to be, or both, what have you) you strap them on so you can go places quicker. You love skating you would do it 24/7 if you could. Sorry if that’s not the case for you in real life. But yeah, its the kind that you can like attach to your shoes and you carry them around in your backpack and when you guys went looking for dart you decided now would be as good a time as nay so yeah... Not my best idea, I know but I couldn’t think of any alternative to zoomer so... here we are!

Pairings: Mike Wheeler x Reader

Warnings: Jealous Eleven. If your a hardcore Mileven fan this might not be for you.

Make friends, she said.

It’ll be worth it, she said.

When you and your mom moved to Hawkins Indiana, you figured it would be like any other typical cheesy movie plot where the girl moves to a shiny new town, has to make new friends, is a little angsty about it, but then everything falls into place later.

Well, not so much.

And by not so much, I mean, not at all.

Your first day at a new school, you figured you get into the routine of things before even trying to make new friends. No big deal, you just needed some time to settle in is all. But then two boys caught your scent and they practically follow you everywhere like puppy dogs and show no signs of stopping any time soon.

Normally, you’d be creeped out. And you’d admit, you were a little at first. But you soon realized they were harmless enough. They even made the effort to invite you into their friend group.

And boy, were they persistent.

After giving it lots of thought, you figured what could be the harm in giving them a try. It could be fun.

Boy, were you wrong.

You were beginning to get sick of all the hushed whispering and secret ‘party meetings’ they were determined to keep you out of.

Now there was a weird lizard frog that Dustin - one of the two boys, who would not stop drooling over you - discovered. His friend Mike, wanted nothing to do with you, insisting you stay out of everything. Will the other boy, who was quite shy, but the nicest of the bunch. And Lucas, the second boy who had shown quite a liking to you. You figured that at least Dustin and Lucas would stick up for you against Mike.

You know, given that they pestered you to join making you believe you were actually wanted at this school. And now, they were being all weird and secretive and letting Mike kick you out.

You were starting to think it was more of a cult type situation than a friend group given all the hushed whispers and exclusive meetings.

And one strange thing after another kept happening and now you were all spread out across the school looking for the weird lizard-frog thing that escaped. Knowing you’d personally cover more ground if you were your skates and given school was technically over you pulled out your strap on skates from your backpack and attached them to your shoes, leaving the rest of your belongings in your locker util you found the thing, you got to work.

After checking the gym and coming up empty you found yourself in the boys' locker room. You were kneeling down looking towards the back of an empty locker shelf that had the potential to be hiding Dart. When you found nothing, you rose to your feet, moving on to the next open locker. You stuck your hand inside and felt around, pushing some objects which you gathered to be cleaning supplies, that knocked each other over.

You cringed at the sound, hoping you didn’t scare Dart away if he was in here.

Out of nowhere, someone starts screaming behind you. You flinched at the sound but quickly whipped your head around to see Mike pointing the end of a broom threateningly. His face fell into a frown when he realized it was just you.

“The hell is your problem?” You demanded, heart, pounding against your chest.

“What are you doing? Why are you in here?” He asked angrily.

“Looking for Dart.”

“This is the boys’ room.”

“And?” You asked, matter-of-factly.

“So you should go home!” He spits out the words, threw the broom to the ground, and stormed back out to the gym.

Oh, that is it!

You were not going to let him treat you like this. You had done nothing wrong.

You quickly maneuver your way out of the room and after the boy.

“What is your problem with me, Mike? Why do you hate me so much?”

“I don’t hate you. How can I hate you? I don’t even know you.”

“Exactly! So why don’t you give me a chance?” You had to bring yourself to halting stop to avoid crashing into him when he suddenly stopped in his tracks and whipped around to face you.

“Because you’re annoying! Also, we don’t need another party member. I’m our paladin, Will’s our cleric, Dustin’s our bard, Lucas is our ranger, and El is our mage.”

A look of confusion crossed your face.

“El? Who’s El?”

“Someone. No one.” The words tumbled out of his mouth nervously.

Oh. So this about a girl.

You don’t know why, but the thought inflicts a small pang of jealousy that you quickly try to dismiss.

“Is it someone, or no one? Well?”

He seemed to have many thoughts clouding his brain but he quickly shook his head to rid himself of the thought.

“She was in our party a long time ago. She moved away, okay?” He said, voice leveling out.

You considered this and glided after him as he began making his way across the gym again.

“So she was a mage, huh?”

“Well, what could she do? Like, magic tricks or something?”

You considered your talents and a smirk crossed your face and you ran in pushed yourself off and gracefully positioned yourself so that you were now skating backward as you made conversation with the boy.

“I could be your zoomer.” You offered with a smirk.

He gave you an odd look like he wanted to be mad but he didn’t have the energy. You considered this a win.

“That’s not even a real thing.”

“It could be. I’m kinda an expert on wheels.” You offered amused, clearly hinting at your feet.

He gave you a look that said he couldn’t care less.

Feeling a new sense of confidence you began striding gracefully around him.

“You know, skating. See?” You teased.

You felt a sense of victory when you caught him fighting a small smile that tugged on the ends his lips as he tried to play it off with an annoyed eye roll.

You smirked at this.

“See? Zoomer!” You continued the charade by making strides in circles around him.

“Yeah, sure. Mind-blowing.” He scoffed, as you continued this, yet his eyes couldn’t seem to leave you as you as you circled around him. It came second nature to you, it was as easy as breathing.

Mike couldn’t help but silently note the subtle look of concentration that came naturally to your face when you weren’t looking at him. Or the way you smiled as you glided across the gym floor with no effort at all.

He even admired it. He refused to admit it of course, but he did admire it.

“Come on, you know you’re impressed.” You teased with a warm smirk.

A chuckle almost escaped from his lips but he choked it back in time.

+++

El strode through the halls, trying to recall the layout of the school from when she last visited over a year ago.

She made her way around a corner and passed some double doors.

“I don’t see anything impressive. You’re just going in a bunch of circles,” His words were critical but his tone carried a hint of amusement.

El stopped dead in her tracks. It was him.

Mike.

She was elated. She finally found him. But her happiness was cut short when she heard a soft lilting laugh float down the hall from the same source.

“Well, I’d like to see you give it a try. Now, THAT would be funny.” El did not know this voice.

All El knew was she did not recognize it, and she definitely did not like the feeling that accompanied it.

Her head peaked around the corner as the Mike and the unknown person continued talking.

“Come on, Mikey. Just give it a try” The voice teased.

The tone of voice and the silly nickname for Mike sparked something in El.

“No!” He argued. “And please, don’t ever, ever call me that, like ever again.” He couldn’t stop the small chuckle that escaped his mouth at the name.

“I stand corrected, you can smile.” The voice teased. “Come on, you can do it. If it’s not as hard as it seems, why don't you give it a try?”

“I don’t know how!” He said defensively.

“So, then you admit, it does take some skill.” The voice said.

“Well, I think that if I spent, like, all day practicing, I could do that.”

She slowly crept towards the double doors she had passed that appeared to be the source of the voices, afraid of what she might see.

“Ahh, mhmm. I’m sure.” The voice continued.

Even though El had yet to lay eyes on the mystery person she could tell that those words were said with a coy smile.

“Okay, you’re making me dizzy,” Mike said softly. “Please just stop. OR better yet, don’t. If you do this long enough, you’ll make yourself dizzy and fall and break something,” Mike teased.

Bracing herself El peeked through the small glass windows of the double doors and she was overwhelmed with emotion.

There he was. Mike. She missed him so much. Her heart was in her throat when she saw him. He looked older. He still had the same boyish charm that made her feel safe, but his features were more defined and he was much taller. She smiled when she saw him, but the smile quickly vanished.

“I wouldn’t worry about that.”

When she saw the source of the mystery voice, it felt like someone punched her in the chest. It was a girl, roughly the same age as herself. She had (h/l) (h/c) that framed her face perfectly and moved gracefully with her as she circled Mike playfully. She glided gracefully on her feet, she smiled warmly and leaned forward, expertly bringing one foot up in the air behind her so that she was now gliding on one foot, her eyes now closed. But that was not what hurt El. What hurt, was the expression Mike wore. He watched the girl with a smile on his face.

El couldn’t name the emotion expressed on his face but she did know that he had looked at her like that once before.

It stirred something in her and made her furious. Anger quickly overcame her and she tilted her head and focused all of her attention on the four wheels that supported the girl’s foot. And with a simple flick of the head, the girl was now lying on the floor in a daze, the wind knocked out of her.

The girl laying on the ground, hissing in pain. Mike quickly came to her aid much to El’s dismay. She turned on her heels and stormed out.

Meanwhile, Mike bent down to help you up. You gratefully took his arm and let him help you up. “So, you were saying?” He teased.

It was your turn to roll your eyes.

“That wasn’t me. I can skate like that in my sleep, but I swear it felt like something, I don’t know... Tugged on my wheels. I know that doesn’t make sense.”

Mike seemed taken aback by your words and he slowly looked over his shoulder to the doors to the hallway.

“What? What is it?”

Mike seemed distracted and also torn. Eventually, his words seemed to spill out of his mouth.

“Look, sorry, but I gotta go.” He then broke out into a jog and stormed through the doors into the hallway leaving you bewildered, and surprisingly disappointed.

You felt like you had finally gotten through to him. You almost could have sworn that you felt something between you two.

Something there, that wasn’t there before.

#mike wheeler #mike wheeler x reader #requested #stranger things #stranger things 2 #stranger things season 2 #zoomer #something there #beauty and the beast reference that was actually not planned at all #beauty and the beast #finn wolfhard #finn wolfhard x reader #mileven #eleven #one shot #stranger things one shot #stranger things imagine

451 notes · View notes

fen-ha-fuck-you · 5 years

Text

the 100 ask game

hi i was tagged by approximately a million of you for various things in the past few weeks, so forgive me if i missed you, but I believe this one included: @little-oxford-st — @yourereallyhere — @foreverandalwayscrysis — @clarkgriffon — @mamabearsdontthink

and i’m putting the rest of this under a cut bc she’s thicc ladies

1. What station on the Ark would you be from?

honestly, probably alpha tbh

2. What would you get arrested for on the Ark?

treason. i don’t know specifics, but it would absolutely be treason

3. Would you take off your wristband when you landed on the ground?

nah

4. What would the necklace Finn would make for you look like? (Clarke: deer/Raven: a raven duh..)

bold of you to assume i’d let that boy so much as speak my name

5. If you could resurrect any MINOR character who would it be?

gina martin, may she rest in peace

6. Create a squad of 5 characters to go on missions with. Who are they?

clarke and bellamy, clearly, and also lincoln, diyoza, and roan. i call it Competence Squad™

7. What Grounder Clan would you belong to?

get grounder culture 31596026746 feet away from me. skaikru.

8. What would your name be in Trigedasleng? (example: Octavia=Okteivia…just make it up!)

Abi

9. Thoughts on Finn? Some people hate him, and others love him, so I’m curious

from a writing perspective? fascinating character and arc from a personal perspective? boy can choke

10. Be honest. How willing would you have been to take the chip without knowing all the horrible things it does?

absolutely not, nope

11. What character do you relate to most?

clarke 100%

12. What character do you like the least?

currently? echo. the one thing I like less than a complete asshat of a character is one with absolutely zero development, and there she is, right there. don’t @ me

13. Describe your delinquent outfit. (Would you wear something like Murphy’s jacket with the spikey red shoulder patch or have a trademark like Jasper’s goggles? Be creative, yet practical)

clarke’s s3 fetish gear but like............... more leather

14. Favorite type of mutant animal?

i have a soft spot for the worms, idk why. i love their useless non-existent asses

15. What would your job be on the Ark?

i’d probably be doing some high-level organizational work or some shit. i’m good with patterns and recall

16. Would you have willingly pumped Ontari’s heart if Abby asked?

without hesitation

17. If Lexa wasn’t Heda, but she was still alive then who would have made the best commander?

let’s make it a democracy babey

18. How would you act if you ate the hallucinogenic nuts like Jasper and Monty?

i have no goddamn clue

19. How would you have dealt with Charlotte’s crime? A more John Murphy approach or Bellamy Blake approach?

neither. clarke griffin approach. protect the kid, but give her some tough love because holy shit, you can’t just kill people charlotte

20. Who should have been the Chancellor, if anyone?

clarke was basically the chancellor anyway and saved their asses more than any of the other “chancellors” so i’m gonna go with clarke

21. Would you have been on Pike’s side like Bellamy or on Kane’s side? Or Clarke in Polis?

kane’s

22. Mount Weather had a lot of modern commodities. (example: Maya’s Ipod) What is the one thing you would snatch while there?

gimme the tunes

23. What would your Grounder tattoos look like? Hairstyle? War paint?

a nice mix of geometric patterns and flow-y nature. undercut. classic american football shit

24. Favorite quote?

"You won’t do it.” / “You don’t know me very well.”

25. If all of the characters were in the Hunger Games, who would have the best shot at winning?

i keep answering clarke, and i’m gonna keep answering clarke. girl fights smart and dirty, and uses her surroundings to her advantage. plus she’s highly adaptable

26. Least favorite ship? Favorite canon ship? Favorite non canon ship? NOT INCLUDING CL OR BC OR BE

i’ll say BE is my least favorite ship if i damn well feel like it, and i do. very closely followed by CL. for writing reasons, specifically and bellarke might as well be canon already so i’m gonna say that for both of the other ones

27. A song that should be included in the next season? If there had to be another guest star like Shawn Mendes on the show, who would you want to make a cameo?

no more cameos.............. blease, i’m begging................................ but i’m gonna go with season 6 because i have a whole playlist for it and say The Devil Within by Digital Daggers

28. What would you do if you were stuck in the bunker with Murphy for all that time?

jam out and snark until we inevitably killed each other probably

29. You’re an extra that gets killed off. How do you die?

just let clarke kill me in a really hot way

30. A character you’d like to learn more about and get flashbacks of?

where the fuck is harper’s backstory jroth

31. A character you’d bang?

i would be in the middle of a blarke sandwich, thanks. the dream. alternatively, a roan/diyoza sandwich. the forbidden ship

32. Would you stay in the Bunker? Go up to Space? Or live on your own in Eden?

would i rather eat people, only algae, or a whole variety of fresh fruits and vegetables? are you joking?

33. In the Bunker, would you follow Octavia? What would you do to pass the time underground?

yeah, hard pass. i’d sure as hell train though holy fuck

34. What crime would you commit in the Bunker that lands you in the fighting pits?

again, treason.

35. Up in Space, who would you bond with first? Who would be the most difficult for you to get along with?

i’d probably bond with murphy and clarke first. i probably wouldn’t get along with jasper much

36. How long do you think you would last on Earth by yourself?

i’d be fine with the solitary element for a good chunk of time, it’s the outside survival part that’d be the problem

37. When the Eligius ship lands what do you do?

recon that shit

38. Favorite Eligius character? Least favorite?

DIYOZA. mccreary.

39. Would you Spacewalk?

fuck no space scares the shit out of me

40. Would you prefer to eat Windshield Bugs, Space Algae, or Bunker Meat?

... bugs. but people are a close second.

41. Would you start a war for the last spot of green on earth? What would your solution be to avoid it?

no??? a peaceful solution was right there. it wouldn’t be difficult. as long as i didn’t have a group of people staging a coup to remove the person i made a deal with and also someone who didn’t give a flying fuck about anything but war at the time. *cough*

42. Would you rather dig out flesh-eating worms or stick thumb drives into bullet holes?

i’d rather try to save someone’s life than cause so much damage to someone’s injury that it kills them, if that’s what you’re asking.

43. Are you willing to poison your sister for the Traitor Who You Love? What would you do to stop Octavia?

LMAO, i’d probably just straight up kill her, but i also don’t have a bellamy to be in love with, nor is she my sister

44. Would you go to sleep in cryo or stay awake like Marper?

cryo, fuck that shit

45. Who are you waking up first to explore the new planet?

clarke, bellamy, diyoza. everyone else is window dressing

#the 100 #tag games #long post

17 notes · View notes

calliecat93 · 5 years

Text

RWBY V6 CH8 Review: Dead End

Last week, Kerry revealed that the finale would take place on January 26th, which since this week was a holiday, totals to a 13 episode season. It's one episode short from last year, but hey 13 is a standard number for an anime season, so fair enough. Also sorry that this took so long, I had... stuff happen with the blog the past few days. But it's fixed now, I posted Chapter 7 yesterday, and now it's time to cover Chapter 8! Lets get to it!

Overview

Team RWBY, Qrow, and Maria at at Argus' military base, but are denied access by the... bizarre twin guards. I think that they may be based on The Cards form Alice in Wonderland, and it'll be more clear why in a bit. The heroes are forced to play the Weiss Schnee card, and it gets the guards to agree to fetch their commanding officer. But to the ire of all the Winter fans out there... it's not her. Maria thinks that she knows who it is though, and they happen to be enemies because said CO put Maria on the advanced screening list for life for taking cashews on a flight. Sheesh. But hey, maybe Maria's right and she's dead! Funniest moment of the episode BTW.

The CO of the Argus base is an egotistical elderly woman known as Caroline Cordovan. She displays much of the attitude that we expect from Atlas characters. Egotistical, boastful, authoritarian, and sees Atlas as the greatest kingdom of all. She had already refused to help JNR, who are also there, and it's pretty clear that she's not going to help the group still. They try to reason with her by explaining that they know that Atlas isn't at fault for Beacon, but it only makes it worst. Cordovan DOES offer to take Weiss home if she's come to her senses... but isn't going to do the same for her friends of 'questionable nature' while looking at Blake. Wow, she's a racist. Lovely. When Weiss questions this, Cordovan slams the gates int heir faces. I agree with Maria's previous sentiment, she's a she-devil. I'm pretty sure that she's supposed to be the Queen of Hearts considering her personality, which would explain the guards being the Cards.

With the plan reaching... well, a dead end, Qrow calls it quits and goes to drink. So he obviously learned nothing form Brunswick! JNR just suggests coming up with a plan without him, pointing out that they still have Ozpin. Que an awkward beat and we cut to later... where Jaune punches a hole in his sister's wall. I hope she has home insurance. So yeah... JNR doesn't take the truth well. Even Nora is pissed off. I'm... mixed about this. It's very understandable for them to be angry and upset, especially considering they lost Pyrrha due to this. But it does bring up a minor critique I have. The response to Salem being un-killable and Ozpin not having a true plan have all ha done reaction: anger and giving up. Some took ti worst than others, but it's still the same. The only one who hasn't is Ruby, which helps but it makes the fact that no one is wondering 'well maybe we can win without killing Salem' or 'maybe we can ask Jinn if there's a way to defeat Salem and not destroy her' hasn't been brought up once. It gets annoying when, even though you understand why everyone is reacting the way that they are, no one has had any logical thought since and continue to spew in their negativity, like Qrow is. All I'm saying is let the reactions be a bit more diverse, if only to keep this from getting either predictable or just irritating.

Oscar tries to calm everyone down, pointing out that they aren't the bad guys in this. Jaune questions this however before storming over to Oscar, wanting to know if he had known about this the whole time. Even when Weiss tries to say he didn't, Jaune grabs the farmboy and slams him into the wall, questioning where his loyalties stand and even if it's even Oscar that they're talking to. Throughout, Oscar is clearly terrified and it only ends when Ruby calls out Jaune. To the paladin's credit, this get shim to realize what he's doing and is clearly horrified. He backs away before going upstairs, Nora and Ren soon following and wanting to be left alone. The RWBY girls also scatter, leaving a clearly distraught Oscar. Great for none of you to check if he's okay or not. Doing a bang up job ladies.

As the others go to get food, Ruby goes outside to an absolutely beautiful butterfly garden. She's trying to call Qrow to find out where he is, but she gets nothing and throws her Scroll in frustration. It's clear that all of this is beginning to get to Ruby, something that Maria, who had gone back there to avoid the yelling, sees as well. Ruby explains how with everything happening, she's at a loss of what to do. Maria can't help with that, or at least she can't without it defeating the purpose, but she does offer to help Ruby feel better if she's sick of not knowing about things. Yes my friends, we are FINALLY going to talk about the Silver Eyes! I have waited for this for so long!!!

When Ruby explains what she does know, aka more or less nothing Maria explains that there isn't much known about the bloodline. She was lucky as she was trained by her father, who we can assume was also a Silver Eyed Warrior. He taught Maria all that she knew and it led her to scoring higher on the Huntress Exam than any other applicant without having to even attend one of the academies. But if the Silver Eyes are so powerful, why are they so rare? Simple, they were hunted down and killed by Salem. This is why Maria took on a masked persona and hid things such as her name, to hide her powers and not be a target. Of course, we all know how that ended, and Maria credits her survival to both her training and her Semblance. The latter is revealed to be what she dubs Preflexes, which is more or less Spider Man's Spidey Sense. She can sense things before they happen and can be one move ahead of her opponent due to it. Awesome!

Ruby is all set to learn to vaporize monsters with her eyeballs... which earns her a bonk on the head. I guess Maria attended the Rafiki School of Mentorship. The Silver Eyes aren't fueled by the desire to destroy Grimm, it is powered by the desire to protect people. On every case where Ruby used the powers thus far (Pyrrha's death, Jaune facing Cinder, The Apathy), she did so because she was trying to save someone and it allowed her to freeze the Wythern and vaporize the Apathy. Maria goes on to explain that where the Grimm were created by the God of Darkness, the light of the Silver Eyes comes form his brother, the God of Creation. How does Maria know this? Well remember in Jinn's vision when the God turned into the dragon for the first time? We saw a burst of light that vaporized the Grimm. I thought that was just the effects of the transformation.. wow I feel stupid! That is an awesome detail!

Now since the light only effects Grimm, any training that Ruby can get is going to be a trial by fire. But Maria does suggest that the young huntress can work to create a mindset that she can turn to in order to unleash the power when she needs to. But Ruby is confused by something. The light on works on Grimm, right? Well if you recall, Ruby was able to use it on Cinder back in Haven... IDK how she remembers this since Emerald knocked her out immediately, but still. Now we all know why that is, but Ruby doesn't. Which has Maria suggest that maybe there's something that the huntress isn't seeing. But anymore talk comes to an end as Ruby and JNR are informed that Oscar has gone missing. Well... shit.

Review

Of the episodes so far, it's safe to say that this may be the weakest. But only in terms of it being an exposition/build-up episode instead of an action episode or something along those lines. I can't call it bad though as a lot of good came out of this episode. The first half was pretty dang funny. Caroline is terrible, but her boastful personality makes her entertaining to watch at the very least. Maria was comedy gold here with her rant about the cashews and the 'Maybe she's dead!” line. Again, funniest moment in the episode. It's nice that we got to have a couple of laughs before the heavy stuff came back in because... haha, IDT we're going to be having many more light-heated moments in these last five episodes. Call it a hunch.

As I said, while I would like for the group to have some cold hard logic hit them already, Team JNR's reactions are completely understandable. Jaune especially. Really, he's got the most reason out of everyone aside form maybe Qrow to be angry. Remember, Pyrrha got killed because of this and even she wasn't aware of all the details when the whole Fall Maiden thing happened. We can argue about the circumstances all that we want, Pyrrha still died trying to do what was right, and ever since everything that Jaune has done has been to not let her death be in vain. So finding out that all of that was for nothing? I can't blame him for being angry or how he reacted. Am I defending him? Hell no. Oscar did NOTHING wrong. The way that Jaune manhandled him was horrifying and seeing this young kid clearly terrified was just wrong. But it still makes sense hwy Jaune reacted that way all things considered, and to his credit he DID realize what he was doing and stopped. And we find out that Oscar is gone, it is very clear that Jaune feels remorseful for taking his anger out on Oscar and of what could happen to him now. Out of everyone so far aside from Oscar, I sympathize with Jaune the most.

Who I have lost my sympathy for however is Qrow. He is just...a mess. Brunswick was bad enough, but now? Look, I know how hard it is to let go of addiction, especially considering how bad of a mental state that Qrow is in. But after how his drinking caused him to be so out of it that he failed to realize that the kids that he's responsible for to get killed, it's becoming more and more difficult to feel bad for him. He SAW what his carelessness could have led to, and even now he hasn't learned. Because of it, Ruby has to be the adult trying to keep everyone going despite all the circumstances, and she has to try and find him on top of everything else. It's at the point where this can't go unaddressed anymore. Ruby or someone needs to give Qrow an intervention and outright tell him to stop. I imagine that it'll get ugly, but if something isn't done soon, then most likely Qrow is going to get either himself or someone else killed. It's time for him to stop the self-loathing.

Okay, lets try to talk about something more positive, like the Silver Eyes! First, I need to say this again. Maria has been a delight as a character and has just fit right in with the cast. Funny, sassy, practical, she's been a great addition and is the kind of character that Ruby needs to mentor her. I loved hearing some details about her past, like her relationship with her father and how she became a Huntress. It's exposition, sure, but it's used to show Maria's experience and wisdom. We learn more about a character that so far the fandom really loves, and it serves a purpose. We also see her intelligence as she pieced together about the source of the Silver Eyes powers just form Jinn's vision. She is very much what Ruby needs. She's an optimistic character, but also firm and wise. She can push Ruby in the right direction without being too harsh or too nice. Hopefully she sticks around after this season because she's such a welcome addition.

As for Ruby, she continues to be a bright spot in the season. She's trying so hard, but the weight is really beginning to get to her. She had to stop Jaune from physically hurting someone, is being ignored by Qrow and his unreliableness is clearly upsetting her, and she feels like she's letting everyone down due to how hopeless everything seems. She is meant to be an inspiring, hopeful figure and she is trying her damnest to be this way. After the initial plan went up in smoke, her first response is to comfort Weiss and again assure her that they won't leave her side. She's stepped up as a leader, but she's till a 16, maybe 17 if Lindsay can be believed, year old girl in a very difficult situation and with Qrow intoxicated and Oz gone, she has to be the adult. She has to look after everyone and keep them on track. She has to try and encourage them and not give up, and so far that doesn't seem to be working. This girl has so much pressure on her because everyone else has given up, and it's starting to weigh on her. Will this be the season where she breaks down? It's hard to say, but I do think that before the volume is over, we're going to see some kind of reaction out of her.

On the upside however, after so long, Ruby is finally learning about the Silver Eyes. She's asking questions. She's excited to learn to use this power. She actively WANTS to learn about it. This is what I have been hoping for ever since the end of V3. This is the moment where we are seeing Ruby beginning to go from a rookie fresh out of Beacon long before she was ready, to taking the steps to becoming the Huntress that she has always wanted to be. In light of everything and even with her doubts, Ruby has stepped up as a leader, has yet to give up despite how hopeless it looks, and is still determined to do what's right. Now she has a mentor to teach her to use her gift, something unique to her, and hopefully that can help ignite the will to continue on. Ruby's goal has always been to be a Huntress to help people, and overtime that has gone form naive ambition to seeing how dark the world can be, and wanting to do whatever is possible to do good because it's the right thing to do. Ozpin was right about what he said in V5, she truly is an inspiring figure, and this is why. Even in face of the hopelessness and everyone around her giving up, she hasn't. Will she? It's hard to say, but there is no doubt that no matter what tries to keep Ruby down, she'll face it and she will somehow pull everyone up with her. This volume, more than any other, has made that clear and I love it.

What helps that entire scene, of course, is both the setting and the music. The garden is absolutely beautiful, having a very calming atmosphere, which after the blowup was very much needed. The butterflies also added to the beauty and calmness. Apparently blue butterflies can symbolize change, and butterflies in general can symbolize life. You see it in anime all the time. It's perfect symbolism here as Ruby seeks to change herself and become a Silver Eyed Warrior, so it's a very welcome touch. And the music... gosh the music is so beautiful and serene. Jeff and Alex once more killed it, especially with the new renditions of Red Like Roses and This Will be the Day. Very nostalgic and it added to this being about Ruby taking that next step forward. Very well done!

Then of course we have the ending. Oscar is missing. For the moment, we will assume that he has left of his own volition due to the manhandling and the questioning of his identity, which was already a problem for him. And... is anyone surprised? I mean Jaune shoving him alone would be enough reason to leave. But the way everyone keeps seeing him as Ozpin, directing the anger at him even if unintentionally, and how no one seemed to care about how he's felt about all of this. Only Ruby ever did, and Qrow made sure to kill that. Of course he would leave. No one trusts him and now even he's questioning who he is and what to do now that it looks like they will inevitably lose. Hopefully he will be found safe and sound and will come back. And hopefully everyone will apologize, or Jaune will at the very least. For now, all that we can do is worry about his safety until Saturday roles around.

Final Thoughts

This may not have been the heaviest chapter, but it was still enjoyable. The first half was entertaining and did a good job of setting up the next obstacle for our heroes. The second half was very much emotional and Jaune's reaction was pretty much what we were expected. The exposition was welcomed and added to the scene instead of dragging it down. And of course we're left on a cliffhanger that is mean, but not 'Weiss just got stabbed' levels of mean. Overall, while it may be the weakest episode of the volume so far, I still give it two thumbs up! Great work!

#rwby #rwby6 #rwby reviews #callie reviews

4 notes · View notes

vote-loki · 5 years

Text

List of things my family did before I went to the mental hospital that made my anxiety way way worse because I feel the need to publicly shame my family since I’m mad at my mom for saying my phone causes all my health problems and my dad for similar reasons:

1.) my mom consistently told me I was faking absolutely everything. Every massive screaming panic attack I had when I was literally rubbing the skin on my arm raw, since I rub my arms when I get anxious, was just me faking. The migraines and stuff I get three times a week, she told me I faked those (because she used to get nine and that’s much more realistic and obviously not anything I could inherit) and that I was doing everything to get out of school

2.) spent the entire summer telling me I could do online school and then took me to enroll at a physical school. I had saved the money for the first few online school payments (I planned on getting a better job after my summer one ended) on my own and was working at a job that treated me like shit for it and when she did that I like weird panicked and stopped saving money and blew through it.

3.) when my mom called the school and had them block my car in with the school cop after my dad said I could go home which triggered a second panic attack and the assistant principal at my school had to watch me drive heave on the pavement and rub my arm to bleeding before he called my mom to tell her he sent me home

4.) after that incident I decided I couldn’t go back to Staley and my mom told me if I didn’t go to Staley, not even if I transferred to a different school in the district, that I would be forced to sell ALL of my instruments (20 of them are mine personally and this one is particularly mean since she knows I’d never be able to afford to buy them all back and a few of them belonged to family members who’ve passed), and I would have to start paying her rent, she’d take my car and phone AND I’d have to quit my job (which hello how would I pay rent?) none of it made sense and when I explained this to her she said she’d never said that

5.) everytime I’d panic, no matter where I was or why I was panicking I’d call my mom because I just wanted to talk to someone and couldn’t think well enough to remember to call anyone else but instead of talking to me she’d start fucking screaming at me and when I confronted her about this she said “well your anxiety triggers mine” okay? And your reaction to anxiety is to call your child a faking bitch and tell her that she doesn’t deserve to feel better? Likely. Those are direct quotes btw she really called me names when I was at my mental lowest!!!!

6.) I once texted my dad a full explanation about why I was so upset once and it was really long and he chastised me for sending him anything and said to talk to my mom, after telling me I could just talk to him since mom didn’t react well to me when I was upset and I told him this and he responded “I’m not reading that book. I don’t care that you’re upset.”

7.) I asked my dad why he constantly sided with my mom about things (like when I was 16 and she kicked me out for a month because I told her she couldn’t do my laundry, that’s a story. Or when I was fifteen and she beat me with a wallet, another story) and why he let her scream at me when I was panicking and why he let her threaten to take away my things and even things they provided that I didn’t care if they took away and he said “she’s my wife and she’s the adult so I don’t care what you’re defense for yourself is even if it is correct. She’s right”

8.) when I went to enroll in my senior year I kept threatening to do things that would hurt or threaten my life at school while we were there if my mom didn’t take me home and she didn’t put me in the hospital till almost October because I was clearly just “being dramatic”

9.) the last time my mom threatened to take away my things, including all my clothes and bed sheets most of which I paid for, and the only stuffed animals I still really have which is a big pillow I’ve had since birth and a pink hippo me and my great grandma both had that my aunt Kathy bought us when we thought my grandma was gonna die in the hospital but she didn’t die for like ten more years (you understand why that would be upsetting for her to take), I took 100% of everything out of my room and dropped it in hers and told her if she wanted it she had to find space for it because she couldn’t store her things in my room and she got so mad she called my grandma and they both said “she didn’t say that that isn’t what she meant” and got pissed at me for doing that, but like why were you threatening to take my fucking clothes away Bitch? My grandma showed up at our house even to help me put things back in my room and couldn’t understand why I was upset since my mom hadn’t said she was taking any of my things. She had. Explicitly.

10.) my mom called my grandpa to come physically drag me out of bed during a panic attack while my dad was out of town, my grandpa got there and saw what was wrong with me and refused since clearly I was upset, I was crying and asked him if he knew the time because I was late for school and needed to get up and get ready but I was too upset to just then and he gave me a hug and left my house after telling my mom to let me be, and so my mom went in and tried to lift me out of bed so hard it bruised me, and then my dad got home cause his flight had come in and the airport is close to my house and he went and screamed at me for panicking and didn’t understand why I was so upset that she’d grabbed me and was mad that I was missing school. I was already panicked I didn’t need to be grabbed and yanked because I was running late to school

11.) I’ve no idea if this actually happened but in an attempt to make me go to school my favorite sister who did very little wrong actually told me that my oldest sister wasn’t going to let me see my nieces ever again if I didn’t graduate from Staley. Both my sisters after my oldest either dropped out or flunked out of college, one of whom worked part time at sams club at the time and the other worked as a waitress. My oldest sister tho thot “well the two sisters that dropped out of school are fine but fucking Cassie wants to do online school so she’s a bad influence.” I’ve no idea if my oldest sister said that but it literally fucked me up so bad

12.) none of my grandparents, including the grandma and grandpa who live up the street from us and were already mentioned, did anything to help or stop my parents from doing what they did because I was am only eighteen, and was seventeen when all that happened and so they weren’t bothering to ask for my side since my parents are the adults and just assumed the narrative of me constantly screaming at my parents and being incredibly rude was true. It was to a point, because I get black out when I panic bad enough and would text my mom big long messages about why I was upset and then she’d start screaming at me and I’d tell her “you’re no fucking help don’t sit there and be a fucking bitch if you aren’t going to fucking help” I know that cause texts but I also don’t remember sending those and have profusely apologized. But my mom would only show them that text and not the text where she was screaming at me and playing the victim and turning it into “so I’m just the worst fucking mother ever huh?” Like I didn’t say that I said I’m upset stop turning the attention to you and please help me calm down

13.) got me a therapist that refused to see me after I got violently ill and called to reschedule an appointment the day before the appointment and then didn’t get me another therapist

14.) literally let me take two ssri’s at once and when I got seratonin syndrome (which can fucking kill you) didn’t take me to the doctor for a week until it was obvious that something was actually wrong because, and I quote, “well Cassie you have such a history of making things up I didn’t even know you weren’t lying.”

15.) again, saying I lied about all of my health issues. I have anxiety & depression, and migraines. Tied to the anxiety is ibs but that’s stomach issues. My depression probably would’ve developed on its own but. The anxiety, especially at school, was because I was missing so much school with stress induced migraines, my junior year I almost flunked out because I had teachers flat refusing to give me homework because they thought I was skipping, teachers never called my parents to ask what was actually wrong, they never asked me what was wrong, they just assumed I was skipping class when I was really sick. That coupled with depression and stuff caused me to develop really intense anxiety around going to school because no matter how hard I tried my teachers weren’t going to let me catch up and so while I did have anxiety before, the migraines didn’t help the situation. All of those issues are on my medical records too. I have been diagnosed with those issues. But I made them up. Obviously.

16.) didn’t take me to the hospital until I said “I’d rather be dead than feel this way.” I said way way way way worse shit before that but they told the doctors they were trying their hardest and that that’s why they brought me in.

Genuinely there was much more but the only person in my family who I have no memories that make me start crying to recall from August to October of 2018 with are my sister Cayla and her mans because they both had a lot of issues with school and never told me anything upsetting outside of letting me vent and offering advice when asked.

A lot of these things are said in favor of me and I still love both of my parents but you have to realize that even as the child in this situation I didn’t deserve anything they were doing to me. They could’ve sat down and talked to me and told me I wasn’t doing online school instead of letting me think I was. They could’ve been caring or not told me I was lying 24/7. Like idk how to paint my mom texting me, there are actual records of her saying directly, “you have to give me all of your things if you don’t do this and I will make you wear one outfit every day. You have to pay rent and sell all your instruments, because none of them can stay in the house. You also have to quit your job, but if you can’t pay rent I’ll kick you out.” In favor of my mom. I don’t know how to say that in a way that makes her look good without 100% denying that she did it. Which is what she did. A lot of the stuff that happened that I didn’t mention doesn’t sound bad but it just builds up and stuff. Like this is a really long post but I’m really upset because I’ve been waking up early and not sleeping well so no sleep which makes me upset and while everyone is asleep right now (I’m on vacation in Minnesota but everyone else in the room is asleep) I’m making a post about this because this morning my dad told my grandma I didn’t actually have insomnia, I had a phone addiction and wouldn’t admit it and he took some digs at me in the car when he thought I couldn’t hear and I’m still really mad about it.

Also I did graduate from Staley so I guess I get to see my nieces still.

0 notes

cashewramen · 7 years

Text

I was tagged by @starkidlabs Rules: answer these 82 questions and tag 20 people.

Last

1. drink? water

2. phone call? 10 days ago to a friend because i couldnt find him

text message? another friend about what cake to buy

4. song you listened to? Quando Quando Quando - Engelbert Humperdinck

5.time you cried? not sure. probably teared up watching some video idk

Have you ever

6. dated someone twice? No

7. kissed someone and regretted it? i remember very clearly this once when i was 6/7 i kissed my dad on the cheek and it was so oily and then i decided i didnt want to kiss him goodnight anymore

8. been cheated on? Nope

9. lost someone special? no?

10. gotten drunk and thrown up? Nope

Favourite

colors:

11. Blue

12. Purple (lighter shades)

13. White

In the last year have you

14. made new friends? yep several irl and online

15. fallen out of love? Nope

16. laughed until you cried? never

17. found out someone was talking about you? found out that this acquaintance whom i dont talk to makes it a point to tell my friend whenever she sees me around which is really odd. Also many other occasions but they’re all pretty benign

18. met someone who changed you? Yea i guess

19. found out who your friends are? uhh

20. kissed someone on your facebook list? Naaaa

General:

21. how many of your facebook friends do you know in real life? most of them are acquaintances

22. do you have any pets? i have a desk plant that is dying because i watered it too frequently

23. do you want to change your name? too much trouble. I dont mind a nickname though

24. what did you do for your last birthday? hmm probably nothing special on the day itself

25. what time did you wake up? 5.20am

26. what were you doing at midnight last night? sleeping

27. name something you can’t wait for? A levels to end

28.when was the last time you saw your mom? 3 hours ago?

29. what are you listening to right now? soft buzzing sound of my fan

30. have you ever talked to a person named tom? hmmmmm....not that i can recall

31. something that is getting on your nerves? hnngghhh academics??? my lack of motivation to study tbh

32. most visited website? (if apps count) snapchat. Otherwise tumblr

33. hair colour? black

34. long or short hair? long till my boobs now!

35. do you have a crush on someone? Not atm

36. what do you like about yourself? i guess i never really lose physical possessions and i remember names really well

37. piercings? nope

38. bloodtype? A+

39. nickname? Tsai i guess?? and like badly pronounced variations of my name if those count

40. relationship status? Single

41. zodiac? Sagittarius

42. pronouns? She/her

43. favourite tv show? the flash and veep (very different genres so i think im allowed 2 answers)

44. tattoos? Nope

45. right or left handed? Right

46. surgery? no

47. sport? ehh not a sports person but when i do do sports i like cycling and badminton and things that require throwing and aiming like archery/shooting/throwing crushed receipts into trash cans from a distance??

48. vacation? US (Broadway baby! or like hollywood is cool too) or most places in europe are exciting too

49. pair of trainers? yea a pair of purple sports shoes and a pair of blue converse and an old reebok i think??

More general

eating: Nothing rn

51. drinking: Nothing

52. i’m about to: wash up and sleep

53. waiting for: A Levels to!! be!! over!!!!

54. want: my life to begin!

55. get married? Eh probably??

56. career? product designer! or something of that sort. just hoping there’ll be enough jobs in the sector

Which is better

57. hugs or kisses? Hugs

58. lips or eyes? Eyes

59.shorter or taller? Taller

60. older or younger? Older

61. nice arms or nice stomach? Arms??

62. hook up or relationship? Relationship

63.troublemaker or hesitant? hmm troublemaker but not too much

have you ever

64. kissed a stranger? No

;65. drank hard liquor? no(t yet?)

66. lost glasses/contacts? nah

67. turned someone down? probably not

68. had sex on the first date? No

69. broken someones heart? probably not

70. had your heart broken? probably not

71. been arrested? i went on a guided tour of my neighbourhood police headquarter when i was 6. Exhilarating.

72. cried when someone died? like in a tv show yeah

73. fallen for a friend? Nah

Do you believe in

74. yourself? eh

75. miracles? nah

76. love at first sight? to a certain extent from a scientific standpoint but mostly meh

77. santa? let me tell you how devastated i was when it dawned on me what “santa is short on cash this year” meant

78. kiss on the first date? uh sure?

79. angels? mehhh

other

current best friend’s name: never have had a single “best friend”

81. eye color: black

82. favorite movie: (500) Days of Summer

I tag: @teddyrawrr @accordingtoaccordions @illegalaustralien @mxryxn @lmaowat @madamngirl @foxinabluebox @so-sick-we-re-dead and whoever wants to do it wew!!

1 note · View note

somestansomewhere · 3 years

Text

Debbie Gallagher: ALL Love Interests RANKED

Okay! I tried to rank all of Debs’ love interests and it was hard to do because I am not set on that ONE PERSON that I ship her with above all else, but these are my thoughts! Keep in mind that these are all MY OPINIONS and you are entitled to yours as well! Let’s talk about it! If you read all this ILY.

Here we go:

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

23. The Guy At The Pool (Season 5)

He thought Debs was special needs and she tried to flirt with him...

22. Kelly (Season 9-10)

I LOVE Kelly so much but she was not into Debbie! I really love her with Carl and Debbie should not have tried to interfere! I will however say that I really really REALLY enjoy their friendship and I wish that that would have continued on. They had some really good moments together.

20/21. Eugene (Season 6) & Board Game Guy (Season 7)

Alright so these two don’t technically count because Frank tried to set Debbie up with Eugene so that she’d be written into his will. And the Board Game Guy was from a deleted scene as one of Debbie’s “life partners” from that flyer she made. So enough said.

18/19. Tyler (Season 6) & Erika (Season 6)

Again, Frank attempted to set Debbie up with Tyler and while that “potential relationship” wasn’t as bad as what happened between her and Erika, I am grouping them together because Debbie wasn’t technically into either of them and it was set up to fail right from the start.

17. Larry (Season 6)

The pregnancy fetish guy! I’m not quite sure what the intentions were for this character in the long run but it was a funny joke in the episode he was in. Even in the beginning Larry gave off red flags, but Debbie was happy... until the truth was revealed. Weird.

16. Jared (Season 11)

Another irrelevant love interest: the gay guy that cheated on his husband with Debbie after giving her cocaine. Obvious issues with this encounter/plot line aside, I did feel that their interactions at the bar were flirtatious and I didn’t hate him.

15. Calista (Season 11)

ANOTHER irrelevant character that was used and never brought back!!! I didn’t totally hate her either, she was upfront about her ex-girlfriend and that whole situation. She helped Debbie and didn’t take advantage of her but the second she came on screen; I’m sorry but I did not give a fuck. Her last episode built up a potential friend/relationship opportunity for Debbie and they just did nothing with it. Idfk what else to say, not a fan but I did appreciate Calista trying to take care of Debbie when she clearly was drinking too much.

14. Sandy (Season 10-11)

Oh boy, everyone’s favorite partner of Debbie’s... Yeah, Sandy is so low on this list not necessarily because I didn’t like her for Debbie, or that I have beef with Elise (b/c I love her as an actor sm). I personally just hate the sheer fact that this character EXISTS in the first place. I never understood the hype, but I know that people only like her because she’s a Milkovich ie. related to Mickey. That’s the hard truth this fandom isn’t willing to admit. My disliking Sandy should be a post of its own but lemme get into her relationship with Debbie.

You could tell that Emma and Elise liked working together so the chemistry was sorta there (definitely not soulmate shit tho). Each time that they interacted in s10 I was over it. S11 was better in the sense that whether I would like to admit it or not, they did have some “cute moments” (mainly just Sandy calling Debbie babe/babes). The second shit hit the fan in regards to Sandy’s history, I immediately understood Debbie’s issue with her and why her character would not want to be with Sandy. But, with that being said, Debbie was also in the wrong because she made everything about herself throughout the entire course of this relationship! Sandy did call her out, ex: “who was supposed to take Franny to school?”, and things like that were nice. HOWEVER I am sorry to say, this relationship felt like a massive waste of time and it felt like they were trying to force something that shouldn’t have existed to begin with. I don’t have the patience to even analyze this anymore, but maybe down the line because clearly there is SO MUCH to delve into!

13. Alex (Season 9)

Omg I did not like this relationship/plotline at all. Alex had issues but Debbie was so inconsiderate! I never saw the appeal here! It was nice that Alex had the decency to go and help Debs with Ford after the fact. I just feel “meh” about this tho. They had moments but ultimately I personally wasn’t into it and Debbie’s random newfound self discovery of “lesbianism”.

12. Kyle (Season 3)

Emma Kenney’s first kiss! Kyle was a one episode character that did have the potential to be more than that. I didn’t hate the kid as Debbie’s love interest, but there also wasn’t anything special about him. He was just kinda there and then he left. Debbie really seemed to like him though, spelling his name in her peas, etc.. I do like that one line about cigarettes that Kyle had but again he was such a short lived character and when he turned out not to be related to Kevin it became unnecessary to keep him around... even if the episode alluded to him returning. They were sorta cute!

11. Claudia (Season 10)

So I didn’t like this relationship much either but there was a certain kind of stability in the relationship that felt organic and nice. Partly because I enjoyed watching Constance Zimmer and she made Claudia likeable. Do I ship it? No. Was it a problematic dynamic? Yes. Was it a tolerable relationship? Eh. I didn’t hate it entirely though. Debbie, being a Gallagher, eventually fucked it up. And while I did like the drama, Debbie wasn’t REALLY into Claudia as much as she may have believed she was. So, it totally felt like a one off that would end with Claudia not returning... and it was. So there was no time for an investment of any kind.

10. Hedi (Season 11)

Gosh... Debbie’s endgame(?). Hedi was introduced too late for me to care enough about her (At this point it would have made sense for Debbie to wind up with Calista because at least she was already introduced!). I don’t necessarily like Hedi as a character and quite frankly it was a “who tf does SHE think she is” kinda deal for me. At first I was interested and didn’t hate her (and I don’t), but then she “thought she was Jimmy” and I instantly got annoyed (LOL I GUESS it was a nice nod to him tho... I guess).

My (several) problems with Hedi as a character aside, there IS something about Hedi being presented as this “dangerous badass” who is (somehow) WORSE than Debbie, that worked well. I’m not a fan of the ship, but it is an interesting dynamic in the sense that Debbie could potentially be “living on the edge”. I fear for what trouble this could cause Debbie BUT it’s like Frank referenced: Monica vibes. I don’t think it’s “true love” like Debbie said to Franny. A constant storyline for Debbie has been “why can’t anyone ever love me” and so she falls in quickly. Maybe Hedi will leave her but that’s the thing, “she’s done worse” so idk, either way I don’t think it’s meant to last! But I guess I don’t mind them being together! Karma’s a bitch! Will Carl tell her what Arthur found? Would it even make a difference?

9. Julia (Season 10)

I would have actually rather preferred her with Carl too! It was never love between Debbie and Julia, but the relationship did create good conflict for my viewing pleasure. UNPOPULAR OPINION, I didn’t mind Julia as a character at all. She was fine for me. I also enjoyed how ultimately SHE was only using Debbie in the end. Julia does admit later on that she was experiencing with her sexuality so maybe she did have feelings for Debbie at one point, which I thought was interesting. Debbie got herself into this one. At least Julia was more age appropriate than Claudia... (which is ironic since Debbie got in trouble for being with Julia when the age gap is MUCH bigger between Claudia and Debbie LOL I love it)! I also found Julia annoying Debbie to be amusing, that’s not to say that I liked her a lot either cuz I don’t!

8. Matty (Season 4-5)

Man do I feel bad for Matty! Debbie raped him and it was horrible. From the get-go when Matty was introduced the relationship was hella awkward!! And not only that but Debbie was a MINOR! Matty did do the right thing and said they couldn’t be together but a part of me will always feel strange that he WAS INITIALLY attracted to Debbie before learning her age. That to me is still wildly inappropriate. He shoulda cut it off. He did try to be her friend and took her to that dance which was cute but ahhh this was just a MESS all around. Cringe. At least he didn’t take advantage.

7. Henry (Season 4)

Speaking of Matty and that dance, Henry was supposed to take her. He asked her as a joke in order for Seama to inflict revenge on Debbie. If that weren’t the case however... DAMN THEY WERE CUTE! The potential that this relationship could have had! If only it wasn’t all an act! It was a “day worth of love” and sure that’s not enough for two people to REALLY be IT, yet there was something charming about their connection that I wish was real. Or idk maybe Henry could have reconnected with her later and apologized and it could have been revealed that he did actually like her... but that wasn’t the case. Fuck him!

6. Simon (Season 1-2)

Debbie was NOT interested in Simon at all but at the time he was almost like the male version of her. Their banter back and forth was fun to watch and he probably would have treated her well. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get to even see their friendship progress. Their interactions were funny and he was a good guy!

5. Batiste (Season 10)

Y’all may not understand why this guy is so high on the list but a part of me wishes this character wasn’t a one off. Batiste is the dude Debbie tried to return her “unused” shoes to. If you can recall, he wanted a blowjob to take advantage of her. While this was a dick move (and the plot went nowhere) a part of me would have liked to see more! He did have an arc where he acted like an ass and realized that it is wrong to degrade women. I just think it could have been built upon and Emma may have had chemistry with this actor. There was something here that I didn’t hate and I felt it could have been expanded upon.

4. Little Hank (Season 2-3)

Debbie’s first real crush! It was interesting to see how he didn’t like her at first and then a “friendship/relationship” slowly started to develop after he gave her flowers. IT JUST NEVER CONTINUED! Little Hank was in no way the most upstanding, but it was cool to see Carl have a friend that Debbie crushed on (when she was little she wasn’t intentionally taking something away from Carl ie. Kelly, so I support it). Their interactions were fun to watch too! The fandom definitely has a soft spot for Little Hank! And at one point everyone was rooting for them to be together. Too bad we never discovered what ended up happening to this character!

3. Neil (Season 7-8)

The bathtub scene tho! Adorable! There was a short moment within this relationship that was super cute where the two of them really did seem to care about each other and may have both been in love. It goes without saying that Debbie was only using him, but they did have SOME potential and they found a common ground where they each benefited each other’s needs. Debbie once again was TOO controlling and self absorbed to make it work, but I don’t think she was entirely happy in a relationship with him. He deserved more respect!

2. Derek (Season 5-8)

Baby Daddy! I really did enjoy them together until Debbie took advance of him and Franny came into the picture, but at the same time that’s one of the reasons that Derek, as a character, has a deeper connection to Debbie and the audience. I always enjoyed their flirting back and forth and the relationship they had (the deleted scene with the card/push up game ahh my heart)! Debbie really did mess up due to her desperation to “belong to a family”, which is another one of her consistent character traits. She just went too far and tried to trap him. Then shit got messed up between their families. Derek did eventually ask for parcial custody and did have a desire to be a part of Franny’s life. Debbie said no and that plot line died until s10. Pepa!! Ahh! RIP to Derek, it was sad to me that he died. Definitely a character and relationship that I wish was incorporated more because I truly enjoyed them together.

1. Duran (Season 8)

Besties with benefits! Stop! Nobody talks about my guy Duran! Sure they both said that this relationship was of a sexual nature and that they were just a couple of friends but damn! The chemistry and dynamic was palpable! It is truly a shame that we didn’t get to see more of this friendship! They were on common ground and really did care about each other! I don’t know why but I really just LOVED them together! Duran was also in her friend group with Farhad and that was a group that seemed to have a positive impact on Debbie as a person. S8 Debbie was cool! These two complemented each other so nicely! Duran wasn’t by any means the best influence on her because he almost lead Debbie down a “Monica path” but come on, Hedi is worse in that department. He was getting his life together like Debbie was with her profession. Just think of the hair convos Duran and Tami could have had Lol. Idk, I just like Debbie with him a lot! It was healthy to an extent and he was supportive of Debs with Franny.

#I could write so much more for each of these but I’ll spare you #guys nobody talks about the AMOUNT of love interests Debbie had over the course of this damn show #I miss characters with a lot of depth!#I want to do more of these relationship lists for other characters #my lists #my favs #shameless #gallavich #debbie gallagher #franny gallagher #sandy milkovich #debbie x sandy

16 notes · View notes

gwynfish · 7 years

Text

World Book Day Meme

From @hikingofthenoldor (who tagged me): “Today (23.04.) is world book day and @pansytheleia came up with these beautiful book related questions.”

1. Who is your favourite author - from your country! / mothertongue I honestly can’t think of one? I mostly read in English or translations into German (from Russian, mainly), so, I don’t have anyone coming to my mind. Sorry, I guess. (Also I dislike most of “the classics” like Goethe or Kafka, so there’s that.)

2. Your favourite children’s book (it’s hard, I know) The first book I remember adoring when I was like, idk, between nine and twelve, was the Eragon series by Christopher Paolini, although I lost all interest in them after I read the third book. I also enjoyed “Die rote Zora und ihre Bande” (The Outsiders of Uskoken Castle) by Kurt Kläber/Held. It just had my imagination flowing like whoa. A series aimed at children that I profoundly like but did not read when I was in fact a child would be Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan (the follow-up of the Percy Jackson books) or “Coraline” by Neil Gaiman. Great reads, both of them.

3. A book that changed your life? Probably the first time I read “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman, mostly because it got me hooked on his works and gods, do I love them. His books as well as the various visual novels/comics are so, so great. His imagination and ways of building up a world inside things we consider familiar but end up being so fascinatingly strange, as well as his attitude as an author and creative being help me pick myself up and get inspired. I can’t help but collect everything Gaiman I can and might have forced some people close to me into reading them. (I just can’t help but want to share these magnificent works.)

4. The best book you read this year? I did not read nearly as much as I would’ve liked this year, but I enjoyed Brent Weeks’ “The Black Prism”. As well as Kameron Hurley’s “The Mirror Empire” (which I read last year or it would have made the cut) it shows a very refreshing approach to those old and same stories and characters you always end up finding in Classic Fantasy, and I can’t thank them enough for that. (Although I recently started Joe Abercrombie’s short story collection regarding his First Law books and I know they will just end up being the best read I’ve had so far when I finish them.)

5. And the worst book you read this year? Okay... I don’t remember reading something and thinking “this was so bad” but I recall finishing Drew Karpyshyn’s “Children of Fire” and being, disappointed? It wasn’t bad, it’s just that I looked forward to reading it for quite some time and after having read it, I don’t know why. It was entertaining, but I strongly dislike two of the protagonists’ tropes and don’t like the other two’s as well, although I ended up more or less liking three out of the four protagonists.

6. Which book is totally overrated? Oh boy. This question would be far easier if it concerned comics, movies or series. Or movie adaptions. But as it stands, I’m going with Stepheny Meyer’s “Twilight” etc, because while I think they were well written, the plot and many, many characters were, well, not nearly as interesting as they could have been. And I actively dislike all the hype, especially with the movie, they are just not that great. But I am mostly listing Twilight because I am completely oblivious to most hypes regarding books and this is the one book I clearly remember prompting me to roll my eyes several times at several people.

7. Randomly recommend a book. For whatever reason! Please, please, if you enjoy Classic Fantasy and the like, read Miles Cameron’s Traitor Son Cycle. The characters are witty, intelligent, fallible and extremely badass. The protagonist is an arrogant dipshit who you are going to love. The story is oh-so-complex and thoroughly thought-out, the worldbuilding (including magic and non-humanoids!!) is exciting, the conflicts are shown from several perspectives and very human, even if they include non-human creatures. I would literally kill to let Desiderata step on me, as it stands. I honestly can’t name all of the times I send some of my friends lines/paragraphs from these books because I had to laugh, to share. I also read the first book when visiting a friend living a fourteen hour train ride away and stopped reading only to eat and call my parents about the immense failings of the Deutsche Bahn.

#world book day #book recommendations

1 note · View note

no25 · 5 years

Text

redoing a survey i took 4 years a go!!1! :~)

1: Could you go the rest of your life without smoking a cigarette?

ya because i have asthma so fuck dat // yes

2: Are you single/taken/heartbroken/confused?

all of the above loooooool // taken uwu

3: What if I told you that you were pretty?

i’d say thank you, you are too // same answer!!!!

4: Ever been told “it’s not you, it’s me”?

probably // not that i know of

5: Are you interested in anyone right now?

nah // yes uwu

6: What are you looking forward to in the next week?

nothing. sleeping in on monday pretty much // nothing....

7: Do you want to be single?

i dont mind // not rn bc i am happy in my relationship atm!

8: Did you go out or stay in last night?

i went out and i had jollibee // i stayed in but i wish i went out...!

9: How late did you stay up last night?

til like 1 or 2 i think doing fuckin nothing lol // i dont remember but it was late!!

10: Can you recall the last time you realized you liked someone a lot?

junior year??? and RIGHT NOW ???????? LMAO!!! // yes (: rn!

11: Last three things you had to drink?

breakfast, lunch, and dinner: mocha cappucino, sprite, and water // water, strawberry lemonade, baja blast !

12: Have you pretended to like someone?

ya man i’m fake af lol // yes

13: Have you ever told somebody you loved them and not actually meant it?

ya man i’m fake af lol // not sure, but maybe...

14: Honestly, has anyone seen you in your underwear in the past 3 months?

my mom probably // my bf tony omg the answer difference

15: Is it hard for you to get over someone?

depends but not rly bc i’m fake af lol // idk wtf i was talkin bout but in terms of platonic relationships, it rly depends on my closeness with the person! and i’ve never been thru a breakup so i cant say anything...

16: Think back five months ago, were you single?

ya what was that like august? been single since i was born tbh // no uwu

17: What were you doing at 12:30 this afternoon?

getting ready to shower // i was still in bed lol!!

18: Hold hands with anyone this week?

trisha but she was only holding on to my pinky // tony!

19: Could you go for the rest of your life without drinking alcohol?

no bc it is too late for me // same answer lol

20: What would you name your future daughter?

clara after the singer or adora after that prodigy // who the hell was i talkin about... okay just googled who adora svitak was (the prodigy i was talking about) and sis was born in 97... i too was born in 97....damn i was mute for like half my life and sis was in a TED TALK at 12 so thats cool... anyway i want to name my daughter after my mom!

21: Do you miss anyone?

not really. just one person // yes :(

22: Have you kissed three or more people in one night?

yea but they were just quick pecks on the cheek // yes

23: Did your last kiss take place in/on a bed?

no it took place while i was sitting down in a chair and it was from my pops on my forehead // i do not remember actually LOL

24: Are you good at hiding your feelings?

ya bc i’m fake af lol… just kidding my friends say i make shit hella obvious sometimes guess i’m not as good of an actress as i thought i was // hmm no but i wish i was... but i’m a PISCES i ABSORB EVERY EMOTION AND IT SHOWS

25: Have you ever cried from being so mad?

fffuuuuuuck yyyeeaaaa // yes :(

26: Who did you last see in person?

my parents? what you tryna ask here // i dont rly understand the contxt of this question, im just gona say my roommates bc theyre in the room with me

27: Are you listening to music right now?

yes chandelier by sia // no i’m listening to an asmr video!

28: What is something you currently want right now?

to finish my hw but that’s not happening anytime soon bc f society // i was sooo angsty back then omg lol but i want new makeup, clothes, and accessories!

29: What is the last thing you said out lot?

this question because i read it out loud bc of the typo // hmmm i don’t remember! i think it was... can u wash my fork

30: How is your heart lately?

heavy // empty (: damn i’ve been depressed my whOLE LIFE huh

31: Do you wear the hood on your hoodie?

yes because my head gets cold // sometimes!

32: Are you wearing socks?

yes and they’re grey / not rn

33: What do people call you?

chacha or princess sometimes but not really mostly just charlene // charlene, char! not rly chacha anymore! i miss being called chacha! but ppl who arent that close to me started calling me it so its weird! but it might b my fault for pushing the nickname... but i mean nicknames are only a given IF ur close with that person right... so idk why ppl thought itd b ok right away! like cmon ppl!

34: Will you talk to the person you like tonight?

maybe~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~but if i do i’ll feel like i’m bothering him lol / maybe ! but it’s ok if we dont

35: Are there any stressful situations in your life?

you think this a joke ofc there are wtf!!!! // yes.. same answer LOL

36: Who did you last share a bed with?

my mommy // tony

37: Did you do something bad today?

procrastinate)))))): // same answer, add two shots of ~hate myself~ in there too

38: When was the last time a member of the opposite sex hugged you?

like two days ago? is that sad / today!

39: Do you get stressed out easily?

ya but it’s my own fault i’m hella dumb but in the end i’m just like oh well ALOT which is actually not healthy at all / yes! it fries my brain and i become numb to it lol

40: Will you sing today?

i sing everyday // i hope!

41: Have you ever wanted to tell someone something but didn’t?

yes because i am so bad at talking / same answer!

42: Who do you go to when you need to talk to someone?

kaithleen and i like talking to megs but when i do tell people stuff i feel like i am giving them more stuff to worry about so i usually end up not going to them at all lol / tony or my vocaloid sisters groupchat!

43: Have you ever been taken to the emergency room in an ambulance?

no; thanks jesus / no

44: What are you listening to right now?

we could happen by aj rafael / same asmr video!

45: What is wrong with you right now?

a lot of things / i need to find new ways of unlearning the harmful coping mechanisms and negativity i’ve internalized, but i know it takes a lot of work for self improvement, so i think it’s easier to just be sad :(

46: What is on your wrists right now?

my sleeves and my veins / wtf angsty bitch lmao NOTHING is on my wrist lol chill

47: Where did you get the shirt/sweatshirt you’re wearing?

t’s a house find and it says tiburon and conference center lodge so ig uess it’s from there / it’s a free shirt from a programming company! or gaming i cant remember....

48: What do you like better: hot chocolate or hot apple cider?

hot chocolate wtf is hot apple cider i never tried it / hot chocolate!

49: Do you make wishes at 11:11?

i used to / aww same answer, maybe i should start again! but i always lose track of time...

50: Are you a good artist?

fuck yeah. sike i’m a disgrace / no :(

51: Love really is a beautiful thing huh?

ew / yes!!!!!!

52: Do you miss the way things were six months ago?

who do you think i am do you think people like counting the months backwards? anyway idk i didn;t do shit in july / yes bc i would b at home with my cat!!!!!!!

53: Ever been on a golf cart?

no / not while it was moving!

54: Do you have trust issues?

ya bc i’m fake af lol / yes :(

55: Ever stayed up all night on the phone, with who?

tony or kaithleen kinda but she always falls asleep / tony!

56: Do you own something from Hot Topic?

yea think so from my middle school days but the only thing i can rly think of is this pikachu shirt / yes!!! that pikachu shirt, a goofy movie shirt, and a spirited away shirt!

57: Do you use chap stick?

i used to / not the brand chapstick but yes! i think my lips have become too dependent on it tho bc they dry out or sunburn easily if i dont use it for a while or if its a rly sunny hot day!!

58: Have you ever slapped someone in the face?

yes probably but on accident pretty sure i’d remember it clearly if it was on purpose / not that i know of!

59: Do you have a little sister?

no but if i consider my friends as little sisters i’d have like seven or soemthing / no!

60: Have you ever been to New York?

no but i would love to go / not yet!

61: Think of the last person who said I love you, do you think they meant it?

yes and i love them too / same answer !!!!

62: Have you hugged someone within the last week?

ya and it was the opposite sex dude you asked about earlier / yes!

63: What were you doing at midnight last night?

talkin to the late night people you asked about earlier / on my laptop watching asmr videos lol!!

64: Have you ever regretted kissing someone?

no / yes 😥

65: Is there one person in your life that can always make you smile?

ya like 10 / i cant believe i counted... but yes!

66: Were your last three kisses from the same person?

no / yes, tony!

67: Have you kissed anyone in the last five days?

i actually don;t remember oops sorry mom give me up for adoption / yes, tony!

68: Would you rather sleep with someone else or alone?

i am okay with both but i have to be close to you first to face you if we sleepin on the same bed lol / im fine with either !

69: Will next Friday be a good one?

i dont think so. everyday feels the same and i am bored all the time / im gona speak it into existence, YES!!!!

#personal #survey #enough about me has changed....#nostalgia is a LIAIR

0 notes