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dairy-farmer · 2 months

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I call this the Highlander Au! >:Dc There can Be Only One! (Unless he REALLY enjoys the process and the world stops going to shit for like... FIVE god damned minutes!) (The second is sadly unlikely)

Tim? Fully Cis gendered male. Not terribly ATTACHED to this, physically, but certainly identifies as Male and has a male body.

Maybe it's been all the near misses. The "all my friends fuckin DIED on my and I mentally spiraled like you wouldn't believe". Could be him finally reclaiming his life. Or yet another horrible mental spiral. Who knows!

But he's decided.

He wants to be a Dad. *sound of various Bats choking and/or dropping things*

Is even seeing anybody? Nope. How the FUCK is he gonna get a baby?! Oh, normal, Bat Paranoid fashion. Cloning tube. Same way Damian happened. He just needs to figure out the maternal DNA and he's golden. Figure out where to hide his tech to stop Villainous Baby Snatching Plots.

Because that's a very real concern.

No you can't talk him out of this. Timmy want himself a baby. Is already designing a nursery and studying child development books. Parenting manuals, getting those little animal onsies, lazer death grids to ward of Ra's ninjas. The works.

Bruce is off to the side, quietly having an aneurysm and choking to death on his own spit. Baby boy? Fatherhood? OFFSPRING!? Alone and not going to LET HIM HELP!? But why would he help!? Bad idea! But. But he needs to BE THERE to TAKE CARE of TIM and the future BABY! Aaaaaaaaa-!!!!!

It's a... "Fun" time. Dick is nearing a nervous breakdown. Bruce not far behind. Damians having Feelings(tm).

Then! At a Wayne Charity Event(tm)? Small glowing child. Looks alien. Is getting upset. People backing away IN A HURRY because they just watched this child WARP REALITY to turn the nearest table into candy.

Tim is there as the face of the family. A hero. Already feeling generally Paternal. Upset baby is Bad. So he goes in, dispite clear protests. Gets low and talks soothing.

But the alien Wants Her MOMMY!

And? Oh. Well there goes the protective amulets JLA Dark made for him. Now he's in an alien dress and? Very much no longer Cis. Guess he would have and DID inherent from his dad's side of the family, no boobs. Tiny. At least he got his mom's killer legs.

And the kiddo isn't scared any more. Since he "looks like mommy".

Except not even remotely, because she warps into being an HOUR later, looking for her daughter and is made of pure light. Thanks him. Doesn't FIX anything. And just leaves. Gee, thanks lady.

There were REPORTERS there. Tim Drake has tits now. Front page news. Great. Ra's is GOING to know and get WEIRD about it.

Tim shrugs. Off to Leslie we go, though. Check up time!

Yep. Full lady bits action. And, hey! Shiny new spleen! So that's nice.

It DOES change his plan though. He didn't, you know, collect any "samples" yet. But? Does... does he NEED too? He COULD concoct a story of "rich person hires mystic to get penis back" after going and getting magiced back.... OR?

He could have someone put a baby in him! *simultaneous Bat Choking Noises*

MUCH easier to defend. THEN he could be changed back, after the baby is weaned. The problem is who to trust? Ra's is ABSOLUTELY going to do everything in his power to get his seed inside Tim new puss. So a seed bank is out. And-

*hands slam on the table*

Obviously! We can't trust anyone outside this house! Villian plots and Ra's specifically! Bat paranoia! W-we will just have to make this sacrifice for you!

.....Weirdly intense, but okay.

Objection! Says Tim's newly no longer Dead team mates. Tim tried to CLONE Kon! OBVIOUSLY it should be Kon! And Bart! Bro Threesome! Let nature decide! (Then kid number 2 is the other Bro, is only FAIR)

ALSO a good point. He did have that promise, if one of them ever got turned into a girl. And a Kon baby WOULD be nice...

Shit! Grayson pulls "last of my legacy and I have so much to make up for" cards!

Is betrayed by his OWN FATHER (Bruce! How COULD YOU!?) Who plays "you saved me from the time steam and nearly died for me, let me help(emotional)" to devastating effect!

Cheating! Howls the Speedster! You're CHEATING!!!

And Tim stands there... kinda confused but finding he's actually Really In To This as people argue over how much THEY want to be the one to put a baby in him? He's never felt this badly WANTED. Desired.

He may not want to go through the whole "actually carrying a baby for 9 months then pushing one out" thing more then once.... but the fighting over him thing? This might be awaking something.

And, well, Kon already made a good point. Why try to control it? Let nature decide~

Everyone can help.

The argument stops dead. For all of the seconds before "who goes first?" Occurs to everyone.

Sadly for THEM, Bruce is a bastard willing to play dirty to get what he wants. And his house his rules. He goes first. After all, he no doubt smirks, none of THEM have the... experience, to handle a virgin properly.

He refuses to allow Tim hurt on his watch.

Got it? Good talk. Tim, with him.

Which is what leads to Tim clawing at the bed and begging like his life depends on it, soaked in sweat, hours later. As Bruce STILL gently, teasingly, RUTHLESSLY eats him out. Puddles worth of lube ruining the sheets and easing his way, as he works calloused fingers DEEP to find spots Tim didn't know he had yet. As they rub and tease and fuck against those spots so relentlessly it feels like Tim's coming apart.

He didn't even know he could MAKE half these noises.

His hole is so wet and sloppy, it's like it's given up. Like his body can do nothing but quiver and twitch under Bruce's hands. Given how big he is? Probably the point. Because he crawls up to loom over Tim like a giant. Presses kisses to his whimpering, sweaty face. And rocks into his exhausted body, filling every inch of him.

It doesn't even hurt. Something that big probably SHOULD for his first time, but Bruce isn't a legendary playboy for nothing. And it just fills and Fills and FILLS. Rubs against everything in a way that makes his toes curl. Makes him want to gasp and cling, even though he's so exhausted.

Bruce just shooshes him. Pulls him close. He won't have to do a thing. He can just cling to Bruce and feel good. Bruce is here. He's got you.

And it's the best thing Tim's ever felt. Forget masturbation, sex is AMAZING. Bruce rocking then thrusting then pounding into his body. Holding tight like something precious. Hammering his good spots still he sees stars. Til he's nearly sobbing, hiccuping, from how good it feels to have his insides all messed up.

Bruce fills him up. All gooey and warm. Picks him up and carries him to a clean bed to get wiped down and tucked in. Cleans up then joins him. Fills him back up and tucks him close. He feels boneless and precious. Sleeps like the dead.

Discovers sex with a puss is AWESOME.

Next morning, he's barely out of Bruce's room before Dick is scooping him up and dragging him into his room. Almost franticly bending him in half as he presses him to the bed, kissing the air out of him. Holding his face as he whispers filthy praise into his lips. Hips relentless as they slam home, pounding at just the right angle.

Like he's trying to make for YEARS of mistakes by pouring it all into pleasure NOW. Clinging tight and trying to fry Tim's brain with how good he can make him feel. Dick buries his faces against Tim's neck and rutts like he's making up for lost time. Fucking Tim through orgasms, spilling again and again, like he's determined to drain his balls dry and wring every last bit of pleasure he CAN out of Tim's exhausted body.

Tim has to threaten to hit him with an alarm clock to let him up. Tim wants LUNCH damn it. They missed breakfast. By a LOT.

But then work calls. Damn it. So he has to get dressed. Double damn it. And he does it, but refuses to be pleased about it. Resolves things. Even gets ahead on work. Only for DAMIAN to walk stiffly into his office. Sus.

The gremlin hands him a frankly VERY well put together report on why he, Damian AL Ghul... should be allowed to fuck a baby into Tim. He has brought along a slide show and genealogical report.

.......Explain.

Damian does. He REALIZED some things about himself. When Tim was discussing becoming a Father. Using the same method as he, himself, was created. Went through a whole "go to the Kent farm and have a life change adventure" character growth arc, as you do. And? Now realizing that he potentially COULD be DIRECTLY involved in the Hypothetical Child's life instead of as an uncle?

He wants in. They could be glorious, combined. AND he firmly believes Tim will be a magnificent Mother. Let him Father your child.

It's a bad idea. Tim knows this. He literally JUST slept with Bruce yesterday and nothing good comes from sleeping with AL Ghul's. They Obsess. But? Fuck it. Maybe THIS is the thing that finally stops the Tim-Gremlin cold war and bring peace to house Wayne once and for all. He unbuckles his belt. Walks over to his resting room.

And Tim KNOWS, even as he's being urgently fucked into the fold out bed, that this is an AWFUL idea. No way in HELL, from the desperate and sloppy thrusts, clinging, panting and whines, is this NOT Damian's first time. He's utterly undone.

Pounding load after load into Tim because it feels too good to stop. All enthusiasm and no skill. Half the pleasure Tim's even GETTING is his own hand, relentlessly teasing his own clit. But? Oh. The feeling of being wanted so BADLY. Of cum, gushing and gushing into him. Knowing it's HIS hole that's so good, it's driving Damian incoherent.

He feels... sexy. It DEFINITELY does something for him. He may not be able to go back. Could see himself enjoying being a milf.

But of course. Business hours end. And he PROMISED! Is swept up by Bart for their threesome. Which, after several rounds and untold loads of near-no-refractary-period speedster cum dumped inside him? Is kinda spotty, in his memory.

All he knows for certain is he wakes up to his sheepish best friends, "Sorry we fucked you unconscious repeatedly" bribes, no voice, and a warm bath. He's also plugged up and FULL full of that premium speedster/half-kryptonian blend cum, because apparently his friend intend to WIN and nothing says victory like overwhelming odds. He'd call them fuckers, but they ARE and hold no remorse. He can't move.

Carry him you bastards.

When he asks where Cassie is, he learns she's apparently trying to harrass the magic users into a making her a temporary "turn me into a dude" amulet. Both as a gift AND so she can join the race for Father Of Tim's Baby. Huh. Interesting new options.

Obviously, throughout ALL of this, ninjas. Because Ra's has never wanted to smash so hard in his LIFE.

Instead, Tim is out here, on Jason's shitty couch. Getting lifted up and slammed down onto his cock. Called baby girl. Princess. Jason's never been harder. Already planning their kids graduation dinner and baby number three.

Tim feeling precious and taken care of and DESIRED. Like the young adult with a first shitty apartment he never got to be. Something so close to normal. Put a baby in him. Fuck him like you love him, like they do this every Saturday night, then eat pizza and watch trash TV. Fill him up.

And if course~ it's a VICIOUS game of Fuck The Tim keep away, up until one day he starts to show. Then Everyone is loving and coddling and in a "No I Am The Father" cold war. The birth is a nightmare, because Tim is slender and more scar tissue then not. But?

Adorable quarter-Kryptonian! With the biggest blue eyes and Tim's porcelain doll face.

Tim is NOT doing that again. Ffffffuck giving birth. And being pregnant! Granted, the EARLY part? He loved. He glowed. Getting pregnant was AWESOME. But later stages? God awful. Clone tube babies from here on out.

Absolute Devastation in the Tom Fucking Community. Babe no! You can't MEAN IT!

Woah, hey! He never said he'd STOP. "Getting Pregnant" is very, VERY enjoyable. He's just refusing to carry SHIT. Birth control for HIM. Scooping that slurry of "leave it up to Nature" out and storing it. Now... Kon stop being smug and hold your son.

-🐼🐼🐼

😭😭😭 tim getting everyone to come to dinner and they all think it was alfred and are like 'this was a great idea alfred! we should all get together like this more often' only for tim to cough and say well actually i called you all here, i figured you all deserved a heads up since i'm going to be undergoing some serious life changes. everyone's confused and then tim says he's going to have a baby.

immediate panic and some disappointment from bruce because he thinks this is a teen pregnancy and he expected better from tim only for tim to have to yell to interrupt everyone and say there is no 'girl', not yet anyway. he's just announcing that he's GOING to have a baby. they're not yet conceived and now the family is dealing with whiplash of how of course TIM would do something like this now they're sitting their listening to him talk about the ideal gene pool given tim's family has a history of mental issues and he's going into some very detailed things like nurseries and everyone just wants him to slow down because tim is still a kid!!! dick is older than him and even HE doesn't feel ready. so everyone is trying to talk tim out of it while tim insists he's ready, he's been going to a therapist for 11 months trying to deal with his issues so he COULD be ready to be a parent.

which of course baffles them even more because???? dick has been trying to get them all into therapist for years and tim just???? went??? on his own????

bruce is of course the least welcoming of tim's ideas of teen parenthood. because what about highschool, college? at least ONE of his kids has to go to college!

tim however says no, says his GED is more than enough.

bruce tries finding other angles, asking what if he just sets tim up with babysitting gigs? make him see kids aren't that great and tim just huffs and said he already did a bunch of babysitting and volunteering at the children's centers in gotham as part of his adoption application!

which ???? just stressed bruce out even more?! because tim had tried to adopt a baby first? but apparently got rejected because of his age, lack of partner, and lack of job which tim loudly says is unfair because bruce was in his 20s when he took in dick and HE hadn't had a partner or a job!

so the family is protesting, despertly trying to get tim to change his mind,,, then tim gets a womb and suddenly the protests die down VERY quick.

#answered asks #asks #anonymous

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zvtara-was-never-canon · 2 days

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Was aaron ehasz wife a zutarian or is it just made up

Do you think the comics and lok are so messed up because aaron is misding or was it a great team work of all of them 3

I don't know what Elizabeth's thoughts on the ship, assuming she had any, but I know she wrote The Southern Raiders and I think on the script she did use the word "zutara" instead of saying "Zuko and Katara" during one of the action scenes. It does not surprise me if people took it as confirmation that she liked the ship, and who knows, maybe they're right.

She wouldn't be the first writer on the team she said she liked it - it's surely way more believable than the idea that Aaron was fighting to make Zutara a thing but evil Bryke stepped in, like it was in the infamous "interview" zutarians still quote even though he has repeatedly said that shit is fake.

While I think Aaron was a part of why the original show worked so well, and his job as lead-writter meant he had a HUGE impact in it, it's not fair to pretend he was the only one who truly mattered. Bryke were the ones to come up with the very concept of the show and they were pretty heavily involved in it, and the other writers (like his ex wife) deserve credit too for developing the story. And we gotta remember, Aaron also approved of bad parts of the show. Nobody is perfect.

So no, I don't think he alone could have saved the comics or Korra - especially since Bryan and Mike would still have the final say on the matter and they were clearly more than okay with all the awful creative decisions that ruined these projects, including letting Yang project his daddy issues onto Zuko's plot, accidentally reverting his character to the point that I'd argue he became WORSE than pre-redemption Zuko.

I consider both the comics and Korra to be bad storytelling - that had POTENTIAL to be good. It's why you have little moments of good writting, or funny bits, or even good ideas that were simply not handled well but are not inherently bad. Hell, the newest Azula comic was THE best thing we got since the original show, and not in a "it's the best of terrible content" way but in a "this is genuinely good and mostly coherent" way.

Is it possible that maybe Aaron would have noticed some, or maybe even ALL of the major issues with the comics and Korra? Sure. And is it possible that maybe he could have made Bryke change their mind about SOME of the things they were about to give the greenlight to? Yes.

But that's the issue. MAYBE he'd notice. Or maybe he wouldn't. MAYBE he'd do a good job of explaining it to the people calling all the shots. Or maybe he wouldn't.

There's too many maybes to say "Aaron would have made the comics and Korra be great." Personally, I'd say he would have at most made them decent, but not genuinely great like the original show because his presence/abscense is not the ONLY factor that changed.

He was not the only one who left and there were new people around. And nearly 20 fucking years have passed. Aaron changed, Bryke changed, everybody changed. Putting all the old team in the same room is impossible because they're not the same people they were in 2005.

And in my opinion there's another factor here: while ATLA still had storylines that could be turned into a sequel show/comics (what the hell happened to Ursa, what's gonna happen to Azula, how will the Gaang help rebuild a world that spent 100 years at war, is Toph ever going to confront her parents, the dropped idea for an episode centered on Aang's parents, etc) I just don't think Avatar could EVER be turned into this big franchise that keeps going on and on for decades that Bryke wants it to be.

First they made the mistake of not giving that show the fourth season it clearly needed even though it fucked up the pace of book 3, and now they're making the mistake of not letting the story end even when they don't seem to have anything left to say. Ehasz can't fix that.

#anti zutara

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cosmos-dot-semicolon · 1 year

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saw a post that really annoyed me but also made me have sort of a breakthrough

Another thing seasons 8 to 10 have an issue with is how the writers never manage to pick what they actually want the 'new, darker' ninjago to be. There's several elements of good plot threads in there, but the writers are still basically working off their usual formula, and ultimately they end up mashing idea several ideas that don't work.

Case in point: Harumi.

(for the record. This isn't an anti-Harumi post. This is an anti-Ninjago writer post.)

I've heard lots of praise for Harumi, sure, but none of it ever seems to be like. directed towards the character in the actual show. She's supposed to be seen as someone who was pushed to their limits for reviving Garmadon fully evil, except when Lloyd points out that she'll end up killing several other families like hers and she just says 'nah fuck them'. She's supposed to be evil, except she does legitimately donate food to the poor of the city. Her death is supposed to be a tragedy, but she's said she wanted to torment Lloyd in gruesome detail on screen after manipulating him and generally being creepy as all hell.

Most egregiously, her motivation of losing her parents is supposed to be more 'morally grey' than the other villains, but in actual fact it's just Nadakhan and Morro's backstories stitched together with edgy black thread. In actual fact, she lost her parents as a child - which is admittedly traumatic, but then she was adopted into royalty, and then proceeded to start a criminal empire.

Nobody fucking goes that far. They dismiss some of that inherent privilege by saying 'oh she had to go through a lot of training to be perfect at all times', but they don't fucking show that. You have to make that up.

In all honesty, as someone who's gone through a tough upbringing myself, season 8 put a very bad taste in my mouth of what the writers think happened to traumatised kids. All we really see is a princess with the most twisted, villain-ball idea of how to do good in the world, but who also might've been right in her own way despite that.

This frame from OSP's video on villains pretty much sums up everything I think about Harumi.

These are both quite good bases for an antagonist, but Harumi never fully gets to be either of them because the show never decides what they want to do with her. It would actually be pretty biting if she was like... an Elon Musk-like character - a rich shut-in who has actively damaging ideas of what would improve society that people believe purely out of hype - or if her resurrection of Garmadon was supposed to be his season 2 self, because he did far better for Ninjago than the rest of the team, and she was actually blinded by the fact the resurrection wouldn't work for lore reasons or whatever.

But the thing is, if you try to have both, you pretty much just have a brat. While that can also work - see Morro and Nadakhan - you have to then have their actions reflect more on your protagonists than their own sympathetic side, and also you have to make it clear that THEIR IDEAS ARE BAD AND THEY ARE BAD FOR DOING THEM. It also helps to not have so much of a focus on them versus your protagonists if they're not actively being fun - otherwise they just eat up screentime before getting killed at the end of the season.

On the flip side, if you truly want a sympathetic antagonist, you have to write them with a complexity on the same level as your protagonists. Ninjago has only had that luxury once, and the character that was with had five seasons to do so, and was carried by his voice actor and relationship to Lloyd. Harumi has half that time, half that charisma quadruple the crime list, and is put in a place where we have no reason to really want her to change for the better.

It still frustrates me to this day that people took Harumi (and by extension the trilogy) as good purely because of the presence of tropes that can be done well, but actually just rip the tone of the show in half. Admittedly a lot of us were teens entering our emo 'no longer a kid' phase but like, as someone who'd seen something similar going down in MLP at the time, it was terrible to see a lot of the fans falling for the lazy writing tricks that were being pulled here.

[...this post was actually supposed to lead onto how the OP of the annoying post misinterpreted Garmadon's changed character as good because they justified it in canon, but this has gotten long enough for now :/]

#ninjago critical #dots dots dots #I don't want to tag this as 'anti-character' because it's not like. I hate harumi #she doesn't exist. she's a representative of the larger problems with the writing and the tone in the oni trilogy #but also I don't want to tag her directly either because I've seen people be accused of misogyny for criticising her as opposed to morro #which is fair enough but like morro ALSO has these problems #it's just that he isn't pushed as 'good' as much across 2 whole dang seasons

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muutos · 1 year

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🖊 for both Jude and Flora.

*chinhands*

Send me a “🖊+an OC“ and I will talk about that OC! / / @dilffactory

flora is just this like huge catch-all for like, things that i love. imagery, powers, inspiration from my zodiac & like, she's the kind of thing i think of when i think of ideal femininity & in humanity, in terms of being thoughtful & connected, careful while also not losing your spontaneousness or becoming stagnant or boring. she feels like she is all things, and she is feminine in the face of all the ways she isn't. her enormous stature, her unconventional features & wide build. as well at the enormous physical strength she possesses. she's a contrast & somewhat of a good fit for the creature she became. driven by a maternal love & possessiveness over the universe, & her ability to become one with it. she's a balance of darkness, with the light. something else i've come to learn is a balance we all need to find, & her personal beliefs while rooted in empathy & life, does also extend to empathizing with the darkest of creatures. flora is a bright grey area, as she knows that there is no good without evil nor evil without good. she's just a very full soul, & while she's so accomplished -- she still has so much to see, so much to learn. also, monsters are inherently something i've always loved which has attracted me to the ghouls early on. the flowing fabrics, the ethereal beauty one would associate with the birthing of harvests or a being who can summon the rain to quench the thirst of drying children in the earth.

in turn she holds this power so relevant to the church yet again so seemingly a heavenly gift brought to a damned creature. she belongs in hell yet she is wasted there. she's a contradiction that is so right, if you strip away all her surroundings and expectations. you're left with a realist, but a positive life-force with the power of protection, & the capability for vengeance of a scorned mother nature. i also think it's very interesting that the full extent of her power is almost unable to be truly uncovered. she's a healer, a mother, a daughter, a friend. there's something in me that feels every element touches her as the basis for what powers the earth, & is needed for its continued rotation. though i also believe while she is afraid of fire in the traditional sense of one rooted in the ground.

okay, as for judith - okay, so the basis for judith was very much a sort of fleeting one. i think i am a big contrast person, for such a little girl to be able to create such a loud sound, even if it's not with her mouth or with her physical expressions. the idea she could get behind a kit & everyone would smack their jaws on the floor. surprised that someone like her would so much as even fuck with the kind of music she does, let alone play it so seamlessly. drums are my favourite instrument in traditional music, especially what i listen to - & i'm usually very attracted to the drummers in bands in terms of them becoming favorites of mine. & since i do know how to play the bass guitar, the rhythm of songs do mostly interest me. i figured perhaps because of my passion for the instrument itself it would be a good catalyst, & a good angle between the sensible christian girl, & the teenager who wants to experience her life for the first time. also her backstory is somewhat inspired by my favourite drummer, & how he became acquainted with the drums in his school's orchestra, as his parent's were famous in the opera/orchestra scene in europe at the time.

obviously religion is a pretty common theme around here. judith came up after duke, i kind of wanted to explore the other side of the dynamic, & she's ripe for different plots. like slotting her into ghost was so easy, as she yearns for a place where she can be free - but all she knows is the structure of religion and that of her parent's household. i have a preacher's daughter au, an au where she still volunteers at her church into her 20's instead of leaving, or also like you suggested - the christian rock take. the wide eyed lamb out for slaughter trope. i don't play females often, but when i do they're usually very young (younger than me anyway) & mentally unstable, usually manipulated by one or more parents. piper, rae, jude - they all have that vibe. even missy, in a way. just a more hyper feminine lane, like judith.

i also love how jude isn't -- like? the religion isn't stopping her from being who she is. she left the church (or well, kind of) & she realized that she still loves the way she dresses, her style, her hair. she's never changed despite not only her ability to adapt to what's going on around her, but the constant changes & codependent behavior of her mother. despite their being a lot of gaslighting in their relationship not to mention mental gymnastics on jude's part. i'm not sure if she ever develops proper boundaries with maryanne, tbh. i think her father is more likely to never speak to her again, once she leaves their house. i feel like she's really fun to play because despite being naive she's not stupid, so to see her faking something till she makes it versus being herself, around someone?

#misc * / answered #dilffactory #misc * / out of character #<3 <3 #i popped off sorry #lol

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alexsfictionaddiction · 1 year

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Review: How To Keep A Husband for 10 Days by Jessica Hatch

What is about these simplistic, warm colour paletted book covers that makes them absolute catnip for me? I can’t seem to resist at least having a look at rom-coms dressed in covers of this cute style. Unfortunately, I really need to break the connection that my brain has made with these adorable covers with good reads because this really didn’t deliver even a little bit!

Lina and Brown’s friends are coming to stay unexpectedly but to admit that the pair are actually going through a divorce and living separately is unthinkable. So, Lina convinces Brown to pretend that everything is fine just for ten days. What could possibly go wrong?

I knew that this book and I weren’t going to get along within the first couple of chapters, when Lina appears to believe that telling those closest to her that she’s getting divorced is the worst possible thing in the world. I couldn’t understand this at all. Just does not compute with me as a person or indeed, I believe with 95% of people I’ve ever met. I should clarify that Lina isn’t devoutly Catholic or of any other faith that explicitly teaches that divorce is inherently bad. So, considering that hiding her divorce is Lina’s primary goal throughout the narrative, I knew that I was never going to be on board with the book as a whole.

Lina and Brown have a friend called Sophie, who appears to think that she’s given them a ‘couple name’ by calling them ‘Bellini’. Their names are BRown and LinA. Therefore, an actual couple name would be Brolina or something. Bellini doesn’t work as a couple name for them. What’s even crazier is that the author has chosen to call the guy Brown. She could have chosen any real name in the world but instead she named him Brown. If she wanted them to have the couple name of Bellini, it would have been much more sensible to name him Ben or something. You know, like an actual, real life name.

Of course, this is a romance, so we know that during this pretence that they’re still together, they’re probably going to rediscover each other. However, Lina behaved in a completely erratic manner, considering she was the one that initiated the break up. I genuinely have no clue why she decided that divorce from a man that she never stopped loving at all was a sensible thing to do at all and I really don’t believe it’s a decision that any actual, sane woman would ever do.

Lina was without a doubt the most unlikeable, frustrating character I’ve read. She constantly gave Brown mixed signals and treated him appallingly. She then had the arrogance to question whether he ‘still felt the same way about her’ after he’d read some pretty horrific things that she’d written about him. I just really wanted her to leave the poor guy alone and let him find someone who deserved him because it certainly wasn’t her.

How To Keep A Husband For 10 Days is a very dull, infuriating romance that features a completely-unrelated-to-anything plot about affordable housing that seems to go on and on. I couldn’t help but wonder where everyone’s family members were. Not one of these people in their late 20s/early 30s seemed to have parents or siblings or anyone related to them that they had any regular contact with -literally no one was even mentioned! They also had a non-binary friend called Freddie who was obviously more masculine-presenting because they used he/they pronouns and there were references to when they were a ‘he’. I wasn’t sure what the author was trying to do with Freddie’s gender identity other than shoehorn it in to add ‘diversity’ because if they’re non-binary, I shouldn’t KNOW that a character is biologically male unless it’s very relevant to the plot. It was just a very unfunny romance with absolutely no substance and an abhorrent heroine.

#how to keep a husband for 10 days #jessica hatch #romance #rom-com #book review #review #books #bookworm

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leogichidaa · 1 year

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Okay, so if Regulus doesn’t succeed in bringing Sirius back home and people know he killed James (half-giant Hagrid was also believed to be a murderer, I can’t recall if he was officially convicted because the Wizarding Legal System is a joke, and he was allowed to remain on the grounds of the place the murder occurred at, so a Black of all people sure isn’t being convicted of murder), I feel like that also can influence how others regard Sirius, because it’s super obvious Regulus targeted James because of his brother, so how would they handle knowing that this particular friend of theirs is the reason why their other friend was murdered? You’re giving me so many questions and thoughts about this fic, I’m already invested and I’ve only read a snippet

Hmm, I think if people knew Regulus killed James he would at the very least be kicked out of Hogwarts. Hagrid and everyone Dumbledore graces with his support get full legal immunity because 🤷🏻🤷🏻🤷🏻 the Ministry is a joke. But Dumbledore isn't going to go to bat for the murderous Slytherin who killed the talented and beloved Head Boy. And this is in the midst of the war, with the wizarding legal system headed by Crouch Sr., so the corrupt and ridiculous "legal system" isn't going to be working in his favor either. He could maybe avoid Azkaban with his family's support, but I imagine he'd have to be somewhat in hiding until tides change.

Regardless, it would still of course impact the way others see Sirius and would still, I imagine, lead to Sirius being held at arm's length and considered with deep suspicion. Why did Sirius let his homicidal maniac of a brother near James? Surely he must have known that Regulus had it out for James. Why didn't he warn James? Is he helping to protect Regulus now? Hey, remember that time Sirius almost killed someone he hated? I wonder what Sirius is capable of.

If that isn't enough to kill the vibe, the fact that Sirius was the indirect cause would come into play. Mostly, I think, because Sirius would be carrying so much guilt. You know in PoA when he tells Harry he killed Lily and James? He's going to be bringing that same energy. "I killed James. This is my fault. I brought Regulus into his life, I as good as killed him." I think he would isolate himself, in this instance. I definitely don't think he'd stay with the Potters or keep in touch with them because he would think he's done enough damage. He might cut off Remus and Peter in a misguided attempt to protect them too.

Peter's feelings about it are going to be complicated because Peter was also indirectly involved in this murder plot, albeit unknowingly (this part I am sure of because he gets roped in almost immediately). I can see Remus feeling some type of way about Sirius because he was always wary of Regulus and Sirius never seemed appropriately concerned. Well, now look. I don't think he would blame or resent Sirius for making James a target by befriending him. Remus knows what it is like to feel like befriending someone is inherently risking their safety. But he might blame Sirius for not intervening more aggressively when Regulus began to take an interest in James.

I think James' parents would just feel super devastated. They would not, imo, blame Sirius at all. They would feel like they lost two sons because Sirius is now afraid to talk to them. Tragedy all around, truly.

I appreciate these asks, they are helping me brainstorm and think things through :)

#ask #anon ask #incubus fic #incubus!regulus #regulus black #sirius black #house of black

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actuallylorelaigilmore · 2 years

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monarch rant

here’s a oops not so little review because i watched the first two episodes with @actuallylukedanes which meant no liveblogging but i won’t be watching any more so it’s time to share my thoughts (spoilers behind the cut):

literally the best thing about this show is its logo. i had to see it multiple times before i realized there was a glittering gold thin-as-wire butterfly embedded in the title card, and i had a genuine moment of enjoyment at the wordplay i hadn’t even understood they were trying to go for. i’ll always be the girl who got a cheap butterfly tattoo for no reason as soon as it was legal. give me a butterfly and i’m happy

this show was heavily marketed as ‘susan sarandon plays the matriarch of a reigning country music family, full of drama about the business and relationships.’ it was NOT marketed as ‘susan sarandon plays the country star who is the center of a family, and she DIES IN THE PILOT to kick off the drama and will only appear in flashbacks and weird hologram contrivances for the rest of the show.’

because susan sarandon’s character was by far the most compelling one, as well as the center the family revolves around, killing her off immediately lessened any interest i had in the show, and turned all the other characters into worse versions of themselves.

she and anna friel honestly played a great mother and daughter dynamic, they were interesting to watch (for the one episode of screentime they got). but anna friel is better than her character and the writing, tbh.

when she’s told she has to sing backup for her father instead of advance her solo ambitions, she declares all fiercely to her brother that she’ll find a way to make her stardom happen. i had a moment of excitement during the performance that followed, thinking maybe she would surprise everyone and blend a song of hers with what her dad was singing, show she had unexpected talent and was her own person. but nope, she did what she was told, and that line didn’t lead anywhere.

so far, that was true of the whole show--no surprises to be found. the show’s ‘twists’ were telegraphed so hard and far in advance that they only surprised me when i expected them to do something else because they couldn’t possibly be that obvious, and then they did the obvious thing.

the show also clearly thinks that guns are inherently dramatic, as if they can replace actual drama and plot--there were two firings of a weapon and two menacing scenes of caressing or bracing with one, just in the two episodes i watched. again, these were played for drama and often as cliffhangers...like ‘in three months an unknown person will be shot by this central character. you have to stick around now until we tell you who and why, right? right?!?’

the only thing monarch apparently loves more than casual gun use is people having affairs. the grand family of country in this universe includes the parents and their three children. the big regret (and drama) in susan sarandon’s life involves a youthful barn arson she committed with a person inside, and it’s implied that she was trying to kill her husband’s mistress.

both of her daughters are married to people who are actively cheating on them, and her son who isn’t married is the other half of one of those affairs. it’s a lot, but not in a ooh-how-scandalous way. it mostly just makes it harder to believe any of these characters care about each other or are worth rooting for.

the other half of that being the sisters dynamic, which i would have enjoyed if it had followed the arc it hinted at at first, where the younger fat and queer sister chose not to sing because her mother had belittled her into believing she wasn’t good enough. watching her come into her own and struggle with the way it would hurt her sister if she took the spotlight, because we initially see her loving her sister deeply, could have been interesting.

but as soon as we start to see her talent unfold, it turns out she secretly wanted to be famous all along and believed she was superior to her sister, and was basically ‘letting’ her have the spotlight in a patronizing way that made her unlikeable to me after that. i have no interest in a battle between two famous daughters who both believe they’re entitled to the crown and look down on each other.

meanwhile their abusive father takes his grief out on his weirdly-straight son...whose very first scene is SO queer-coded, leander and i were genuinely shocked he was sleeping with his sister’s wife.

if it isn’t painfully clear, i found the show really boring, and was forced to realize that i just don’t watch shows like this anymore. shows where the story is just ‘these people are conventionally attractive and interacting in today’s world and everything is very dramatic but their problems bore me.’

i watch a lot of dramas with supernatural or scifi or procedural elements now and comedies that also know how to make me cry...the only exception i could come up with after days of trying is succession, which feels so well-crafted and shakespearean that i never even think of it as a plain drama or a soap.

i wish i could say the music made the experience worth it, but i don’t enjoy classic country music much and that style is really prominent. there was one anna friel song that was kind of good, and one scene where the grandson sings--but it was only his voice i liked and he was singing with his grandfather. i read that there would be a ‘born this way’ cover and was looking forward to that, but it didn’t happen in the episodes i watched.

i’m happy to move on now, and needed to rant, because the viewing made for a fun discussion and hanging out experience but i cannot believe--given the people involved--what bad television it was.

#sorry if you like this show i have Many Thoughts #i'm just not made for broadcast television and their idea of the 'average viewer'#negativity #monarch #television fanatic #actuallylukedanes #susan sarandon #anna friel

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kellinrk800 · 3 years

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my thoughts on episode 11 of wonder egg priority

tw// neglect, possible abuse, murder, human experimentation

holy SHIT is there a lot to unpack.

first of all, everyone except ai and neiru have now experienced the truth of what happens when you complete the total amount of people to save. at the end of episode ten we saw momoe’s breakdown and panic’s death and at the beginning today’s episode we saw rika find out and mannen’s death. (i previously wrote that neiru and pinky had experienced it but after someone kindly let me know after a rewatch that it was in fact momoe, not neiru. sorry for the error)

however, ai is now the only one who knows about frill and what happened to her. speaking of, there are a RIDICULOUS amount of parallels between the two. i’ll be reblogging some posts that explain it a lot better than i ever could right after i post this.

what i really want to focus on is frill. despite her fairly questionable and downright evil actions, i can’t help but feel a shred of pity for her.

born out of quite literal boredom and under strict surveillance, she was almost destined to be unloved. she was not made to be a human, but simply something for acca and ura acca to love. in the way you might buy a doll for a small child. their mistake was adding such severe jealousy and stubbornness to something they had created to be perfection.

stuck at the age of 14 permanently, it’s no surprise her mental state was damaged. imagine the jealousy, the intense emotions, everything you go through at that age.

she is at least somewhat aware that she is artificial intelligence considering how open those who are around her seem to be about it. however, she does not seem to be keen on accepting it or believing it. after all, she is not programmed to. she is programmed to sense things in the way a human would. and that opens a whole world of other doors about how anyone could be an ai and not know it but i doubt wonder egg priority would get that meta this close to the end.

time to tie up all these loose ends. around midway through the episode we are introduced to a love interest (who i have forgotten the name of, apologies) who causes a split in acca and ura acca’s relationship (marriage), and she soon becomes pregnant with a child. a human child.

frill was programmed to be able to understand her parents in the way a daughter would. she begins to taunt ura acca about his husband cheating on him with the woman he loves and once she finally finds out that the baby is a girl, she decides to kill the mother.

the motivation behind frill’s mental deterioration is slowly becoming clearer and clearer. i strongly suspect that she felt she was being replaced with a human child and realised the inherent inferiority she was going to have once the child was born, and became overcome with jealousy. not only would she now have to take on the role to be a big sister (which she was not programmed to accept or do. she was programmed to be stubborn and jealous in the way a 14 year old girl would be) but she would lose the ability she had to be perceived as a human daughter by the parents who raised her.

imagine being created for the sole purpose of being the perfect daughter for somebody to love, and then being replaced. i am by no means excusing murder, but it’s hard not to see her motivation.

as punishment and as relief of acca’s grief, frill was then locked away with nothing but her ai machinery for anywhere between 12 and 15 years*.

enter himari, the child that survived despite frill’s attempt at murder of both mother and child. she is described as having “saved” ura acca and acca from their state after the mother’s murder and the abandonment of their artificial daughter. when we see her able to talk, she is shown asking ura acca to marry her once she is older to make up for the pain of the loss of her mother. she is stated as being in junior high at the time (*my timespan reasoning for the time frill was locked away). while this scene made me greatly uncomfortable, it might be to show frill’s impact and influence on himari. if they had come into contact, frill would arguably do anything in her power to gain back control of her parents.

perhaps himari asked this purposefully to anger frill, which is supported further by the fact himari was found dead (cause of death suicide) the night later.

suicide. what’s the entire theme OF the eggs? i don’t know about you but i can hear lightbulbs beginning to flicker.

ura acca and acca began research into girls suicides at that age, and found a steady surge around the same time as himari’s death.

acca and ura acca are trying to bring back himari, possibly their wife, and maybe, maybe just maybe frill as well. i think that is the real purpose of the wonder egg project.

we also finally have our answer as to why girls and boys suicides are different with wonder eggs! acca and ura acca are indeed sexists, just not about suicide.

i’ll let you do the rest of the theorising.

now for the loose ends that i don’t think can be tied up.

why are hyphen and dot named after punctuation? is their goal to bring frill back to life?

what was neiru’s family’s involvement in the wonder eggs? in fact, where is neiru?

is frill alive or dead? is there even a way to distinguish with someone in her state?

what happened to acca and ura acca to make them.. well, to make them like that? last i checked, turning into mannequins isn’t a symptom of grief. are they even alive?

MOMOE. WHERE THE FUCK IS MOMOE. GIVE ME MOMOE OR GIVE ME DEATH.

there are a shit ton of new, unspecified entities we’re learning about. what actually are hyphen and dot? are they AIs like frill? perhaps not fully formed? and thanatos and eros?

where do the girls go once they’ve been freed? is “freed” even the right term?

what did mr sawaki say to ai about koito? why did koito die? is mr sawaki going to have a bigger role than a consistently fucking annoying red herring after all?

rika’s father? why have that as a big factor in an episode conflict if it’s never going to be addressed again?

the sketchy lesbian representation compared to the consistent positive trans ftm and gay representation? why have the only canonically wlw character be a product of a harmful stereotype after treating everything else so respectfully?

and most importantly, how the FUCK is this going to get cleared up in one episode?

i don’t even think that’s possible. if it is, i’m really disappointed. after consistent excellent pacing, writing, storytelling, and everything else, cramming everything into the last couple of episodes is just cheap and annoying. if i wanted to drone on for an entire series before an explosion of poor plot points for shock factor, i’d just go watch the second season of the promised neverland (/hj).

the only somewhat reasonable explanation would be a second season, but it is a terrible media decision and i can’t imagine much, if any, good coming from it.

in conclusion, what the fuck. how the hell is this going to salvage itself in one episode?

also i wrote this entire thing while on my sleep meds. if there’s logical, grammatical, spelling or just general errors i apologise and i’ll fix them when i’m not half conscious.

#wonder egg priority #how the fuck are they going to salvage this #wonder egg priority spoilers #wep project #wep #i really don’t know how to feel about frill #wep frill #a moment of silence for mannen and panic

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arcane-ish · 2 years

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Arcane characters and their parental figures

Piggybacking off my post a while ago about how Caitlyn is almost too nice and well adjusted for this fictional world, what struck me most about her is how sweet and generally supportive her parents seem to be. Yes even with the tension they have with over protectiveness and some disapproval. But the scene where they fix up her injuries just felt like a really heartwarming and natural rapport.

This in turn made me think of how sweet Jayce is generally with his mom.

And that in turn made me think that at least in League canon Ekko is supposed to have loving parents.

When I look at the characters in Arcane who I think are/will be “white hats” (ie “good guys”/”well motivated guys”), those are Caitlyn, Jayce, Heimer, Ekko.

They still might screw up and screw up badly, but they imo all have an optimism to them as opposed to characters who are motivated by spite or desperation, that to me makes the most sense because they had loving homelives.

(with Heimer as the exception, since we don’t really know whether Yordles, his species even has families, for all we know they just pop out of thin air, but generally the place where he comes from, Bandle City, seems super idyllic [watch Arcane contradict me and add a flashback with him having disapproving yordle parents who never wanted him to travel the world or something] [but I doubt it])

On the other hand we have Jinx who has a very dysfunctional father figure and with Viktor it is really striking how he doesn’t seem to have any family and siblings. He is mostly hiding his efforts to heal himself and is going through it completely alone, again as a stark contrast to Jayce who we see with his mother, running some things past her.

If Viktor has parents, they probably weren’t great due to this line that nobody ever believed in him, so he believes in himself.

Then we have imo the group of Vi, Mel and Sevika. Sevika mentions her father in passing and it sounds complicated, but not completely hostile. As a character, we do see her be mean spirited (ie telling Jinx hurtful things) but we also see traces of loyalty.

Then we have Vi, who had a pretty traumatic childhood with a lot of loss. We see her struggle with her temper and with dejection. But her big theme is how she has a good heart despite her upbringing (and of course a positive parental figure at least for a while in Vander).

A really interesting one to me is Mel. We don’t know where exactly her character will end up and 100% of what her motives are. In Act 3, it did seem like she was motivated by idealism (ie defending the Piltover way of life against Noxus), but there might be other motives as well (like getting to the top of Piltover’s society, making a name for herself).

In the flashback where her mother forces her to watch somebody murdered in front of her, I would say clearly qualifies as bad parentage and it’s interesting that she displays “a good heart” even back then. This makes me wonder, are we supposed to get from this that we was inherently good despite her dark circumstances? Or did she get it from somebody after all, like maybe her father is nice or she had a loving nanny? I also wonder whether her relationship with her mother will end up being more layered than it might seem (again killing people in front of Mel, forcing her into making horrible choices, calling her weak, sending her away), maybe with a dose of “she loves her daughter in her own way”.

BTW the more I think of it, the more odd it feels that in a show that is so heavily about family including parents and children (again showing us parents that aren’t essential to the plot at all for Jayce and Caitlyn, having even side characters like Sevika or Signed talk about parentage) , Viktor is the main character is who completely devoid of any parental/familial presence.

(okay Ekko and Heimer also don’t have a parently presence in the show, I’m just infering that they have/had positive childhoods)

(now I kind of want a fic where Ekko’s mom or dad tries to appraoch Silco to find out what happened to Poweder because they can tell how distressed Ekko is about Powder)

#arcane #mel medarda #vi #jinx #caitlyn #jayce #ekko #heimerdinger #viktor

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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I am briefly pausing my normal RWBY content to talk about something completely different: Kang Soo-Jin.

I binged True Beauty recently. As in, “I haven’t managed to watch anything new in half a year, discovered this drama, and promptly marathoned 14+ hours of content,” so to say I’m enjoying it is an understatement. I might do another post sometime about why I think the show works so well, but for now, like many (drama only) viewers, I’m specifically grappling with Soo-Jin’s descent into antagonist territory. At first I was just as shocked and disappointed as others seem to be, but upon reflection I don’t think this is badly written in the way many fans are claiming. To frame this as, “I can’t believe they would make wonderful Soo-Jin suddenly OOC and bully Ju-Kyung over a guy!” is ignoring core parts of her character. I’m as sick of the girl-hates-girl-over-guy plotline as the next viewer, but in the interest of acknowledging that there are exceptions to every rule, I think this is one of the times where that choice makes perfect sense.

Soo-Jin has been abused throughout her life and I’m not simply talking about the fact that her father hits her. Though that’s obviously horrific, what I think is more pertinent to this conversation is the intense competitiveness her parents have instilled in her. The physical abuse comes about because Soo-Jin fails (in their eyes) to be the best, which is where Ju-Kyung comes in. The Soo-Jin we knew in earlier episodes wasn’t faking. She isn’t an inherently evil person who was just waiting for the right time to show her true colors. Rather, at the start of the story Ju-Kyung—crucially—was not in competition with Soo-Jin. Or rather, Soo-Jin did not perceive her as competition. She’s after the best grades in the school and Ju-Kyung is notoriously at the bottom of the class. All she has going for her are her (new) looks and her easy-going personality that makes her popular, two things that Soo-Jin isn’t interested in. Even if she were, those things already come naturally to her too. She’s already friends with Soo-A and, as is commented on multiple times, naturally beautiful without any makeup on. Soo-Jin has been taught—literally had it beaten into her—that she must be the best and in the beginning of the show she pretty much is: popular, mature, confident, smart… just not the smartest in her class. Ju-Kyung doesn’t threaten any of that, so friendship initially comes easily for Soo-Jin, the sort of friendship that allows her to chase perverts off busses or hide her friend’s real face.

This changes once Soo-Jin’s “perfect” mask begins to slip. They’re heading towards college, she’s running out of time, and she still hasn’t managed to take the top spot in the class. Worse, she drops out of the top ten. This exacerbates the abuse to the point where, as we see, she’s constantly in the bathroom trying to cope by washing her hands. Any tiny deviation from that “perfection” — like, say, leaving your tutoring session when you realize your lifelong friend just got devastating news — results in the sort of yelling/physical abuse she can only escape from via a locked door. While things get worse on her end, they get better on Ju-Jyung’s. Her grades go up some and she becomes even more popular, attracting not only school-wide attention, but the attention of the two hottest guys too, including Soo-Ho. For a while this is still fine from Soo-Jin’s perspective, but things really take a turn when Ju-Kyung changes Soo-Ho. Meaning, she helps him come out of his shell and teaches him how to be a kinder person… which includes being a better friend to Soo-Jin. The Soo-Ho who suddenly lies and announces that they have to go study just to get Soo-Jin away from her father’s insults, all of it stemming from a small tick he paid attention to, or comforting her while she sobs over the abuse… that Soo-Ho didn’t exist at the story’s start. He was too wrapped up in his own grief and has been that way for a long time. They may have known each other since childhood, but Soo-Jin and Soo-Ho don’t appear to be particularly close in the past—all Soo-Ho’s flashbacks are with Seo-Joon and Se-Yeon. But that starts to change once Soo-Ho himself changes. Soo-Jin’s ability to keep it together is unraveling, Soo-Ho is opening up and becoming more emotionally available (something Soo-Jin even comments on), then her whole class starts eagerly talking up how good they would be as a couple… so Soo-Jin sees a lifeline. Soo-Ho will care for her even when no one else will. Of course he will. She’s already seen him be that person multiple times.

The problem is that Soo-Ho has his own life and his own problems to grapple with. Between grief over See-Yeon, panic over telling Ju-Kyung how he feels, and the initial rush of dating—what couple doesn’t want to spend all their time together at the start?—he doesn’t have much energy for Soo-Jin. Which from his perspective is fine. They don’t normally hang out together outside of study groups, so yeah, he can put off a conversation with her… not realizing that Soo-Jin is now putting all her emotional eggs in his basket. By the time her feelings are coming to light, Soo-Jin is actively sabotaging her own attempts to get attention and compassion from Soo-Jin. By manipulating them—here’s a new scrunchy to remind you that you’re my best friend and you can’t ever betray me, here I am showing up unannounced at your apartment and guilting you into not spending more time with me, etc.—Soo-Jin has put Soo-Ho (rightfully) on his guard. He’s wary of having a private conversation with her about something she won’t name when he knows Ju-Kyung has been a mess over losing her friendship. He has no desire to listen to her confession of love after she’s just tossed Ju-Kyung’s beloved necklace into the fire. In her efforts to ensure that Soo-Ho pays attention to her, she only succeeds in driving him away.

All of which makes Ju-Kyung the enemy in her eyes. The new competition. To her mind, friendship and love cannot co-exist because Ju-Kyung stands in the way of that love, therefore one has got to go. (In contrast Seo-Joon, coming from a loving family, is in time better able to accept that he can be friends with Soo-Ho even though he likes Ju-Kyung. We can discuss the problems inherent in giving one plot to the girl and the other to the guy, but as they are, these characters have concrete, in-world reasons for their different reactions to what’s essentially the same situation.) And why does love (“love”) win out over friendship? Because Soo-Jin has latched onto Soo-Ho being her boyfriend as the way to finally “win” at life and fix all her problems. It’s fine if she’s not the best provided she’s dating the best, just look at how much Dad fawned over him. Second place academically is suddenly an option provided the top student is on her team, so to speak. The fact that Soo-Ho is also one of the most handsome, a great athlete, super rich, and one of the few people to provide her with feelings of safety certainly doesn’t hurt matters. And the only thing that stands in her way of securing this life-saving “win” is Ju-Kyung. Who is she? No one compared to Soo-Jin. Her grades are terrible. She’s not wealthy. She’s pretty… but oh, only with her makeup on.

Soo-Jin doesn’t need makeup, so why not win this competition by showing the whole school—showing Soo-Ho—what a fraud Ju-Kyung is?

From Soo-Jin’s perspective she’s done the math and come out on top. Everything that (supposedly) matters she either has equal to Ju-Kyung, or is superior, therefore it’s obvious that Soo-Ho would choose her in the end. She says at much: If I had confessed first you would have loved me first, so now that I have confessed you’ll break up with her. Hell, even Ju-Kyung believes this. She has the nightmare about Soo-Ho learning that Soo-Jin has feelings for him and immediately, publicly breaking up with her. After all, if he suddenly has both as an option the winner is obvious, right? It’s all about competition, what they’ve been taught to believe is a competition: Ju-Kyung through her bullying and Soo-Jin through her abuse. The difference is that Ju-Kyung has had the whole series with Soo-Ho (and others) helping her slowly unlearn this mentality. Soo-Jin had the rug pulled out from under her in an instant.

Soo-Ho says no, I wouldn’t have loved you if you had confessed first and I’m not going to date you now. It’s important to realize that this shatters Soo-Jin’s entire world. It’s not about a girl being upset that she can’t get the guy — not even about Soo-Ho as an individual, really — it’s about an abused girl not knowing how to grapple with the fact that she finally did everything “right” and still couldn’t “win,” coupled with losing the last bit of security she had. Soo-Ho broke the unspoken rules Soo-Jin’s father beat into her and she doesn’t know where to go from there. She literally has no one else to turn to. So she falls back on the only way she does know how to handle a situation like this: by still trying to win. If Soo-Ho won’t admit that she’s better, she’ll force him to realize that by plastering Ju-Kyung’s “ugly” face all over social media. Which, to be clear, isn’t an excuse. This isn’t meant to be a way of absolving Soo-Jin of her absolutely horrific actions, only a means of explaining them. Her descent, while shocking to those of us who loved her initial character, is well written because it’s a nuanced look at what can happen when you abuse a kid her whole life and teach her that competition is everything. Oddly enough, she’ll apply a competitive outlook to everything and deal with her stress in unhealthy ways. Ju-Kyung is a victim of Soo-Jin now, but Soo-Jin is a victim too. Her home life has ensured that she does not know how to accept failure—or what true failure even means—so it was inevitable that when things got bad, she’d try to fix it in ways that hurt both her and those around her. It’s all she knows how to do.

So far less “Perfect girl goes ooc and abandons her friend over a boy” and far more “Abused girl falls into a terrible, but predictable cycle that the other stressed high schoolers around her are not equipped to break.” Soo-Jin’s story isn’t bad writing, it’s tragic. Thanks for coming to my three page TED talk ✌️

***

2/4/21 FINALE UPDATE!

#abuse tw #true beauty #kang soojin #mymetas #true beauty spoilers

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asotin · 2 years

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tbh, I (and surely more people) would be very happy to hear those demon slayer thoughts

aww thank you! [insert my usual apology for taking so long]

i’m using a read more because this is going to be long and include things from season two and beyond, but i’ll separate each of them with three lines, each with a dash, and a warning that’s bold and red

in the overall sense, what i love about demon slayer are the things people hate about it: the simple plot, cliché/tropey characters, the demons being “redeemed” as they die (a stupid take that i’ll discuss below), etc.

i love cheesy content. tell me that love will save us, and i will eat that shit up. show me a kid who takes the time to bow to a dying demon, and i will show you a woman in her twenties crying in public

the many types of love it shows: the warmth you can give someone just by offering kindness to them (inosuke warming to tanjirou and the old lady), the relief of someone believing in you when you feel alone and useless (aoi’s self-loathing for not being strong easing a little when tanjirou tells her that she still has worth), the duty you happily carry because you value others (rengoku dying without regret because he used his strength to keep the passengers alive), the confidence you have when you know you're loved (tanjirou not doubting himself despite enmu’s demon art because he knows his family would never hate him), devotion to someone even when they stray from the path (rui’s parents promising to go to hell with him)- beyond tanjirou’s dedication to nezuko, demon slayer is full of characters who are full of love inherently or are filled because someone else gives it to them

it also values the loss of love. how far rui goes trying to recreate the love he cut himself off from. senjuro’s uncertain hope about winning his father’s respect if he just gets strong enough. the panic of the lower moons as they're slaughtered by muzan, who's essentially their father. zenitsu's desperation to be loved because when we meet him, he's been abandoned by all but one person

the fact that gyomei says it wouldn’t be right to try to bring in people who haven’t been personally hurt by demons was so good

everyone who follows or talks to me wants me to shut up about this, but the first demon tanjirou kills in the final selection is perfect. a boy who was turned into a demon and ate his brother? who was scared and wanted his brother to hold his hand? which tanjirou then does? because he can smell the boy’s sadness? it’s the best reminder that nezuko isn’t the only victim and that she could have done that to tanjirou

which leads me to another detail i love: tanjirou’s hands. at the end of his first solo mission, the guy whose fiancée got eaten notices how rough and callused tanjirou’s hands are and says that they aren’t the hands of a boy. if you look at later points, his hands are still marked up.

and now, the complaint that i hate the most: demons are “redeemed.” idk what show y’all are watching, but tanjirou explicitly says that he can’t forgive demons for killing people. demon slayer repeatedly reminds us that demons aren’t just hurting the people we see. everyone they’ve hurt and killed matters. even though tanjirou feels bad for them because he empathizes with their suffering, he doesn’t absolve them

i get that it’s hard to follow a plot that stretches over weeks and months, but catering to its audience’s memory isn’t a story’s responsibility. demon slayer plants plenty of clues that, if you think about what you’re hearing and seeing, there’s more going on with demons. i definitely agree with the general consensus that demons are trapped in their trauma. their blood demon arts even tie into it. it makes sense that we get their flashbacks after they die because that's when they're finally being released. they don’t have to fight anymore

we also meet demons who aren’t repentant, and even the ones who are don’t necessarily get to be happy. like i mentioned earlier, rui’s parents say they’ll go with him even if it’s to hell. you’d expect them to forgive him and bring him to heaven with him in most shows, but before they were killed, his father said he’d die with rui for the sin of killing. that sin hasn't disappeared, and at the end of their scene, all three dissolve into flames

because demon slayer takes death seriously, it pauses for it. demon slayers dig graves for the dead. tanjirou stops to pray for demons and dead humans alike

on a different note, i love how often demon slayer shows people freezing in fear. maybe i’m weird (i'm not because this is a well-documented response), but when i’m afraid, i’m more likely to do that than run or fight. we associate freezing with prey animals, which works so well with demons, you know, hunting humans

idk it just feels like media right now wants to show us deaths to make us sad and demon slayer wants to show us deaths to make us remember we matter

season two spoilers:

gyutaro is probably my favorite antagonist. i always find villains who were conditioned into hating themselves/the world compelling. the visual cue we often get is that ugly = evil. in this case, gyutaro is ugly and evil, but he wasn’t born evil. because we’re primed to make that connection, the audience doesn’t think anything about making it. and that's exactly the reaction that caused people to shun him in the first place

meanwhile, the way gyutaro talks and his abilities are directly tied to his past. he and daki are fixated on beauty because that’s what dictated their worth. his sickles are like the “toy” he played with as a kid. the poison is like the venom snakes have and a metaphor for him being fed poison (self-hate) that he then spreads

all of which culminate in my favorite line:

“it was as if all the curses in the world existed for me.” it tells you so much about him internalizing what he was told about himself when he was a kid (and how would he know his mother tried to kill him before he was born unless she or someone else told him?) and the stance he takes that he’ll always be a monster

to me, of the many ways gyutaro and daki parallel tanjirou and nezuko, the fact that both pairs of siblings grew up poor is one of the most important. the kamado family made the best of things. they loved each other and worked together to be happy. tanjirou is helpful, so the people in town love him. gyutaro and daki didn't have any support. the way gyutaro made money alienated him from the people around them. daki and nezuko are both beautiful, but nezuko isn’t defined by her beauty the way daki was. her livelihood wasn't built on being desirable like daki’s was. for kids who had nothing, the idea of taking what you’re owed before anyone can take from you is a reasonable mindset. gyutaro and daki also grew up in a dirty area right next to a rich area. tanjirou and nezuko’s family lived in the woods where they didn’t have to see how little they had every day. no one made fun of them or threw rocks at them. their poor community supported them, but gyutaro and daki were alone

i love that we get to see a weak spot in tanjirou’s love in this arc. nezuko pointing out that he’s angry at their father for dying is one of the best moments for me because we don’t see much of that. tanjirou was just a boy when their father died. it's natural that he would be hurt and, as the oldest, never be able to deal with that

tanjirou gets upset because nezuko got hurt. he keeps apologizing to her for that. other than daki when she gets burned, demons don’t react to pain, but he does anyway

he gets angry because daki doesn’t respect life, but if you look back, daki is just like rui: she acts like a child. she’s impulsive and cries easily. she thinks she’s stronger than she really is and wants to be looked after

introducing gyutaro by having him heal her was *chef kiss*. that’s the one thing tanjirou can’t do for nezuko. he can try to protect her, but he can’t always be there for her. he definitely can’t heal her. meanwhile gyutaro can do that, but he belittles daki while he does

again, there is no redemption for demons. tanjirou tells them that they shouldn’t fight because no one will forgive them- more than that, they’ll be hated for what they’ve done, and in the end, gyutaro, who believes he has to be a monster, walks into hell because he couldn’t shake the ugliness he was taught to see in himself, and he brings daki with him

this is one of the least subtle backstories, and idk how so many seem not to have noticed any of the hints

assorted spoilers for the rest of the series:

it doesn't make tanjirou super special. if he'd had to go one v one against any hashira except maybe shinobu, they probably would have dropped him

gotouge didn’t make ubuyashiki or gyomei have special blind person powers!!! they’re just blind!!! and no one makes blind jokes!!! thank god

not to go on about strangers on the internet, but the fact that a common reaction to sanemi and obanai being unwilling to accept nezuko is to call them ugly is so telling. gotouge definitely designed them to be suspicious to an audience, and people fall for it. they assume that because they’re ugly, they’re bad people (just like with gyutaro). but we learn later on that their suspicions are fully justified. of course they don’t trust her. their own families attacked them

sanemi criticizes the quality of demon slayers because they didn’t follow directions, but at the end, it’s the faceless, nameless weaklings who die to protect the strong. so many stories forget about the weak except to use them as fodder to build up or motivate the heroes. in demon slayer, the devotion the lower level demon slayers have drives them to jump on muzan in waves despite knowing they'll die. they didn’t need orders to do that. they knew what they had to do, and without them, he could have won

rengoku said that it’s the duty of the strong to protect the weak, so it’s a beautiful turnaround that at the end, the weak are the ones who protect the strong

after the final battle, the truth of gyomei’s backstory broke my heart. he spent years thinking those kids abandoned him, but at the end, they explain that they ran away because they were trying to help. they knew they couldn’t fight a demon on their own and that he was blind, so they went to get help. it’s another instance of the weak trying to protect the strong

i love when disabled characters a) stay disabled and b) still find happiness. tanjirou and kanao are adorable, and i love that healing doesn’t mean they get their sight back

also, obanai and mitsuri are adorable, and i love that they get to be together when they’re reincarnated. 100/10, thank you

eta: i forgot to include so many things...

GENYA. my beloved gun boy. he and sanemi, who performed his gyutaro duties to a t, need to reunite in the afterlife and obliterate their dad. then they need to hug and be happy

i cannot think about tokito's backstory. it's going to make me cry. he was an obnoxious kid, and then gotouge hit us with the same twist: yeah, he is a rude kid, but he suffered terribly. i refuse to engage with how much rengoku's hilt mattered because it will also make me cry

same with obanai, but hello and thank you for being there, shinjuro

shinobu making her own body poisonous to demons. idk how i forgot to say that because it's a crazy good idea and such a perfectly her way of doing it

muzan being taunted by tamayo? top tier content

ubuyashiki blowing up himself, his wife, and two of his kids??? i wasn't ready for that at all. demon slayer turned around and said "you thought the hashira would live? you thought the blind man was a former powerhouse? you thought he'd stay behind while other people fought? THINK AGAIN"

the fact that tanjirou, who spent the whole story supporting the people around him, was propelled away from muzan and toward the people reaching for him by the hands of the dead was so beautiful

and finally, kiriya sobbing because he's a little boy who's just lost his parents and had to help conduct a battle for the fate of the country, if not the world, was exactly what i wanted. this poor child had to carry all of that pressure. i'm glad he got recognition, but i also want him to get hugs for eternity

#asks #anonymous #demon slayer #kny #long post #obviously there are a number of plot holes/inconsistencies but i'm not saying it's perfect

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fermented-writers-block · 3 years

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Lus and the Human Portal Clone Theory

Even before Keeping Up A-fear-ances aired, I have been working for almost a year now on running through all the possible various suspects with wonderful folks like @sepublic , @anistarrose , and @elementalist-kdj . Like the post title indicates, from sheer process of elimination, the only conclusion that made sense to me was a clone made of Luz by the portal door, and I’ve been working on refining and reworking said conclusion up to the version I will lay out here.

Now, as @safetayy , @theowlhouseheadcanons , and @50shades-of-blue have heard from me before, the portal I've long suspected was not made to go from the Demon Realm to the Human Realm, but rather to go from the Human Realm to the Demon Realm by humans, for humans. This is because it then could tie into the hypothetical existence of a Luz clone without having the issue of asking where Eda, Lilith, and King's clones are, as the clone in this case is the result of a function of the door to create a basic level duplicate of any human that passes through it rather than it happening for just anyone that passes through.

With this, it's because the suitcase form of the portal looks as thought it indicates it was used for temporary trips to the Demon Realm, much like how suitcases were used when railways and international boats made travel more accessible for the middle and lower classes. For example:

Going by the way the door “faces” and the way it swings open, the ergonomics of the portal makes it look an awful lot like a right handed out swing door, with the Human Realm on the “inside” and the Demon Realm on the “outside.” And the arrow in the diagram depicts the general direction of traffic that such right handed, out swing doors are typically design with in mind - ergo, showing what way the portal appears to facilitate travel in.

Now, before you ask, the reason why I think the portal could have been created in the human realm in the first place is that it might require an extra component/bit of help or two from the Owl Deity which I’ve discussed before in the past as hinted by these connected designs:

I’ll explore how I feel the revelation that such a twist about the portal’s origins could play into the themes and narrative of the show under the cut, but overall, I feel these are potential significant details to keep in mind for the rest of this arc of building a new door and handling the idea of Lus having initially been made as a temporary-duration clone, hence how "Luz" comes off so uncannily in the letters as she wasn't meant for long term impersonations.

That, and why I named this the Human Portal Clone theory, for those wondering about the name.

Alongside this, my thought has been that walking back through the portal to the Human Realm basically makes the portal send a recall signal to tell the clone to return to it, where the clone would be reabsorbed into the portal and its memories are given to the original. However, with Luz going back into the Demon Realm for a brief time in YBOS, I am of the mind that it doesn’t just make another clone, but rather that doing so merely made the door turn off the recall signal and allowed "Lus" to resume the impersonation.

And as for the clone itself and why they’re writing letters to Camila, well, imagine it from Lus' perspective. To her at the time of creation, the last thing she probably knew was that she had been chasing the cute little owl that took her Azura book into the woods, and right when the bus to Reality Check Camp was about to arrive.

Also, if you think about it, Lus being the work of someone we/don’t know yet raises way more plot threads/questions than answers compared to being the work of the portal, as outlined below:

TLDR at end of post for those wondering

Belos? How and why before YBOS where he actually started paying attention to Luz for the first time and actually got his hands on a portal?

Eda? Why would she do all this and not tell Luz she can goof around without needing to worry about her mom or the camp/in time to fool the camp, especially when it took a good amount of time for Eda to even start feeling that close to Luz?

Hooty got ruled out from the getgo since he can’t hold pencils, King just isn’t that subtle, and everyone else that Luz knows has the major issues of just straight up not knowing about the camp in the first place. Well, that and a lack of another known method of getting to the Human Realm in the first place.

The camp? Why would they worry about a missing camper whose disappearance is all HER fault and thus would more logically result in a call to her parent than some convoluted clone conspiracy?

And finally, some currently completely unknown third party?

If we’re talking a Changeling, A) it’d be easy for Luz to dismiss them and B) that just makes all the ominous portrayal of Lus super straightforward instead of a subversion like is the show’s shtick.

If we’re talking dimensional counterparts, A) they have to REALLY have led a very similar life to Luz’s in order for there to be enough common ground for Luz to listen, and B) dimensional counterparts aren’t even a confirmed or likely thing that people cooked up from Episode 1 side characters influenced by Amity’s concept art.

And if we’re talking some complete surprise third party group or another, it doesn’t make sense to introduce a third party and their motives and plans to the show this late in when Belos is already taking up the bulk of it all.

Hell, if anything, the continued existence of the duplicate in of itself would indicate that the target of the conspiracy is none other than Camila Noceda than anything to do with Luz or Eda, especially with the complete lack of anyone taking advantage of Luz and or Eda.

From the getgo, Witches Before Wizards already hard-baked into the show the idea that Luz is NOT inherently special or anything into the foundations of the show from the getgo - ergo, Camila likely just is an absolutely regular human being, someone who has no justification for such a convoluted conspiracy to surround them.

That said, I believe that the idea of the portal having originated from the Human Realm could potentially play into some interesting stories to be had with Camila and Lus here, especially as the conspiracy board shot from the promo was confirmed by Dana to apparently be from S2A, not from the episodes past Yesterday’s Lie:

After all, with Luz searching the library for a way home this coming episodes, perhaps she might figure out something the next couple of episodes that allows her texts to send through, which would logically lead to the above picture. That, and Camila and Lus being confused by and trying to figure out what’s going on there.

I mean, the cabin in the woods likely has a very close connection to the portal and it’s origins given how closely tied the two structures seem to be, and as far as we can tell, Luz never mentioned the cabin in her videos to Camila, but if Lus tries to retrace her steps, that would be a natural vector to lead Camila to the cabin and thus allow us a chance to actually investigate it.

That said, all following the trail would do is lead her and Lus to a dead end at the abandoned cabin, where they would have nothing else to do except discuss their complicated relationship concerning Luz and twiddle their thumbs while waiting for Luz to finish things on her end - which while something I think would be interesting to see, I just don’t see how much of a way to keep them in the greater picture of the show without some kind of project or activity that the two of them could work together on on screen.

And that’s what leads me to a particular train of thought here, starting with the question of what if Luz FAILS to make a working portal over the course of S2A and such?

With the possible in-universe mystery over what the heck is going on with Lus, perhaps the cabin might hold some notes from the original last human owner - if not potentially the creator - of Eda’s portal as well as potentially some of the same materials and such from previous trips.

Cue CAMILA building a working portal, following in the footsteps of the original creator and such and thus finding a reason to stay on screen, all the while potentially demonstrating both why Belos wanted the portal instead of making his own, as well as diving into the Owl Deity’s connection with the original portal. Heck, maybe the Owl Deity is only accessible in the Human Realm and that plays a part in Belos wanting to get to the Human Realm, which would bring Camila directly into contact with the magic her daughter has been interacting with.

Also, just imagine the internal conflict going on here with Lus. After all, helping Camila build a portal to get the original Luz -and hoo boy would that be a tough thing to grapple with- would most definitely do that and make both Lus AND Camila question how much the latter likes Lus vs Luz.

Like, just imagine it. There would be major chances for Lus and Camila to discuss what would happen if and when they’re finished with the portal, and what will happen to Lus’ relationship with Camila if and when Luz gets back.

Does Camila really prefer her daughter to be all more “normal” like Lus, or does she prefer the old, “weird” daughter from before the summer with Luz?

Perhaps she might be able to figure out how to strike a nuanced balance between the two, and all on a metaphorical journey to truly build a better connection between her and her daughter(s?).

TLDR: Or in short, I can’t help but feel it would be fitting to see Camila building a bridge WITH Lus TO Luz.

Particularly, by being the one to craft an actual working portal in the Human Realm instead of Luz in the Demon Realm, showing a parent putting in an active effort to get down to their child’s level rather than waiting for said child to try to get up to their parent’s level even if they can’t or find it incredibly hard to do so.

#the owl house #the owl house theory #owl house theory #toh theory #toh #owl deity hooty theory #camila noceda #lus #lus noceda #luz noceda #toh speculation #the owl house speculation

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sam-t-a · 3 years

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Okay.

*Deep breath*

I think I’m finally calm enough to put into words exactly why I hated the finale and why I wasn’t completely surprised that I hated it.

(Heads-up: this is really long and pretty negative. If you disagree, I would of course appreciate your point of view and love to hear it, but just thought I’d let you know in case this is the kind of post you would like to avoid.)

To me, it felt like every character on the show got betrayed in some way or another, but the main ones are Han Seo (devastatingly), Chayoung (obviously) and Han Seok (bear with me).

Cha Young:

She started out as a solid FL who annoyed some people for sure, but who had so much promise as someone unconventional and bold. The way her mother’s death affected her and caused a clear shift in her personality was a super interesting plot point that really never got explored. We have no idea how she came to sacrifice her morality in joining Wusang, just that she wanted to spite her father, which is a very superficial exploration. She gets cute idiosyncrasies in lieu of an actual character and an actual character arc.

We also, halfway through the show, seem to forget that her father's death was the initial trigger. Cha young does not suggest bold ideas or intricate plans, she doesn’t fill the gaps Vincenzo is incapable of filling (because that would require that Vincenzo have flaws, and that’s not something the writers can abide), and she’s literally victimized in episode 19 and bedridden in episode 20, and that is IT.

Someone who started out supposedly as Vincenzo’s equal just became another piece in his chess set, no matter how important a piece she may be.

So her role as a badass avenger is trashed. That leaves her role as a love interest. Now, as Vincenzo’s love interest, she was supposed to get kidnapped in like episode 5 or 6 at the most if the villain has any brains whatsoever (Han Seok may or may not, more on that later). We need a reason for that not to happen too early. Cue villain is somehow in love with her for all of 15 minutes or so throughout a 20-episode series because a love triangle is inconceivable with the show’s current structure and for its purposes.

So, she spends 15 or so episodes making the first move on Vincenzo, every time, putting herself out there, creating cute moments, getting nothing in return, and then he leaves. No confession, nothing much, he wasn’t even going to say goodbye or give her the choice of coming with him.

I’m sure more chayenzo-oriented fans have already expressed all the necessary outrage over this, so I’ll move on to the part that I’ve personally been way more emotionally invested in from the get go: the Jang brothers.

Han Seo:

I was among the minority that hated the “Vinny hyung” angle from the get-go and I’ve ranted about it in another post, so I won’t get into it here in-depth, but basically it was because I felt like Vincenzo hadn’t earned it, so to have the last words Han Seo hears be “You deserve to be my brother” or whatever the fuck he was on about PISSED ME OFF. It’s VINCENZO who doesn’t deserve to be Han Seo’s brother and hasn’t done a single thing to earn it. He was a good ally. The situation he allowed Han Seo to be a part of was beneficial to him, but Han Seo’s attachment to him was neither healthy nor heartwarming, and it certainly wasn’t returned on the level he offered it.

Vincenzo’s disregard of his death didn’t strike me as odd because I never saw enough indications that this was a two-way street and Han Seo’s safety and well-being came second so often that I didn’t get the impression Vincenzo was doing much to keep him alive. This is what I meant when I said the show was glorifying a torture survivor’s trauma responses. Han Seo himself, as a torture survivor, meant nothing to them. He was just there to create one more contrived comparison between Vincenzo and Han Seok. Instead of recovering from the trauma, it’s simply employed to someone else’s favor. He doesn’t go to prison for Han Seok, he takes a bullet for Vincenzo, and we’re supposed to see that as so much better.

All of that might (JUST MIGHT) not have ruined the show for me if he’d died better. 1) It was narratively pointless and totally avoidable, 2) they could’ve framed it as heroic, but instead Han Seok’s hand patting his head is pushing it down, so he can’t even get shot with his chin up and his back straight, Taec’s already taller, so the angle’s fucked and the whole cinematography screamed “kicking an injured puppy” and most certainly NOT “survivor finally stands up to his abuser”. The final nail in the proverbial and literal coffin is that he is mourned by no one. They’re FLIRTING not 3 MINUTES LATER, it felt so tone deaf and left such a bad taste. As I said, I didn’t expect significant mourning from Vincenzo (gotta say, I didn’t expect no mourning, that was a shocker), and Cha young and the tenants had no real interactions with him and no reason to mourn him, which left only one person who could.

Which brings me to Han Seok.

Han Seok started out as a solid villain, clear goals, clear skills that help him achieve his goals and basically make him a villain worth defeating, and a very complex relationship with both his own psychopathy and his brother.

Let me get it out of the way: I do not believe Han Seok is capable of killing Han Seo because he had every reason and every opportunity to do so in previous episodes and couldn’t do it (I say couldn’t because a certain degree of reluctance is in itself inability). Han Seo’s danger far outweighed his material value the minute he shot Han Seok and then completely lost any value once he came out to the world as the chairman and it became clear that the prosecution would be going after him if anything happened, and not his brother. But time and again, he’s proven he’s all bark and no bite when it comes to Han Seo (killing-wise, specifically).

The scene where he asks him to beat Vincenzo to death could be interpreted as him wanting to give Vincenzo the “painful death” he would have given him, but honestly, I think he was way past that point. He just wanted him dead in the “You crazy? we have to kill him before he kills us” sense. To that end, killing off a key ally of Vincenzo’s, who betrayed you and almost got you killed a bunch of times, should take priority, but Han Seok’s priority is reclaiming Han Seo by forcing him back onto his side. Now, much like his “love for Cha young”, Han Seok’s keenness on not killing his brother was essential to the writers so that Han Seo can justifiably make it this far and still be useful to Vincenzo (he can’t help if Han Seok completely excludes him from all events, plans and management processes, so Han Seok needs to want to keep him on his side enough not to do that even when it’s more prudent).

All of this isn’t to say it’s unbelievable that he would kill Han Seo, but it’s DEFINITELY unbelievable that he would stay the same man after killing him. Someone here (I’m sorry, I don’t rememebr who) once said that Han Seo had become, over time, far more of a foil to his brother than Vincenzo was. To me, this means that Post-Han Seo Han Seok would be out of balance (tilted screen), unhinged in a way he never was before. The Han Seok we see shrugs and “oh, well”-s and moves on in a flash, not really any different from the villain he was four minutes and a whole brother earlier.

This is very consistent with the way the show has been de-humanizing him from the start. I’m not saying this to defend Han Seok in any way, he’s a serial killer, an abuser and a total maniac. But you can be all those things and still a human being. In fact, you can ONLY be those things if you’re a human being. The show used its villain vs villain idea to justify a lot, but in the end, Vincenzo had to be a protagonist. He had to follow up every “I’m a villain” with a contrived “but at least I’m not (insert something worse)”.

On the level of humans:

1) Vincenzo is supposedly different because he doesn’t hurt children or women (unless the women deserve it, and shooting a parent in front of their kid doesn’t count as hurting.)

But we never see Han Seok hurting women or children either. In fact, if we proceed with the “chayoung is the myung hee of the good guys” comparison, he hasn’t hurt any women nearly as badly as Vincenzo did.

2) Babel vs Mafia

Babel’s corruption is compared a lot to the mafia, with Vincenzo commenting repeatedly that the people are WORSE than the mafia...which is bullshit. Babel is a set of companies that provide goods and services, but use illegal means to maximize their profit, so they hurt/kill people in the process because they want more money and care about money more than ethics. The Mafia is an inherently criminal organization that functions PURELY on the basis of its criminality. Every single dime Vincenzo spends is blood money. None of it is clean. And while we’re on the topic, I find the whole “taking Miri under his wing” thing pretty unreasonable too because he tried to have her killed you guys, I cannot believe we’re just glossing over that. He had everyone who worked on that vault killed, just random fucking construction workers. And he’s not sorry. And the show tells you he shouldn’t be.

3) Repentance

Han Seok says outright he won’t atone, and while Vincenzo says no such thing out loud he just...doesn’t repent, I guess. He keeps the blood money, he goes back to being a full-time mafia dude doing mafia things. He leaves the same man he arrived.

So, if on the level of harm inflicted upon humanity, Vincenzo and Han Seok are pretty much equal (and Vincenzo might actually be worse), then why should we root for Vincenzo?

Well, my friend, that’s where the dehumanization comes in!

I was initially very excited to see their portrayal of a psychopath because of the very interesting ways in which the informal moral code and official justice system surrounding a psychopath/sociopath/narcissist affect their behavior and their chances of not turning out rotten, and the show looked like it was looking at corruption in general.

But as the show went on, the villain vs villain thing proved not to be enough, Vincenzo has to be better in some way (or if you’re as obsessed with him as the writers are, then ALL ways), so it became a villain vs monster narrative. Vincenzo isn’t ethical or fair or in any way interested in having a remotely positive impact on society, but at least he’s A HUMAN BEING unlike SOMEBODY. So, the characterization goes to shit, Han Seok becomes a cartoon card-board cut out of a villain and emphasis is put on how pointless his violence is, as opposed to how purposeful Vincenzo’s is.

This is dangerous on multiple levels (and I promise this is the last point I’m making).

1) For people in general, dehumanizing abusers/murderers/etc. makes us very liable to forget that you don’t have to be “a monster” to cause harm, and it makes people complacent in their belief that they are “not bad people” since they aren’t total monsters. The Banality of Evil is a thing, and in this series, it goes completely ignored. No one is inherently incapable of good or inherently undeserving of humanity.

2) For victims of abuse in specific, it’s dangerous to portray abusers (including serial killer and non-serial killer ones) as entirely bad and unlovable, because it poses the dual risk of making victims less likely to acknowledge their abuse if it comes from someone who cares about or loves them on some level because the idea that someone cannot both love and hurt you is so stereotypical. Your abuser can genuinely want you in their lives and need you and, on some level, love you, and IT DOESN’T MATTER if that love doesn’t stop them from hurting you.

On the other hand, portraying the victims of abuse as capable of flipping an off switch and hating the abuser with no hesitation or second thoughts to the point of unapologetically and cheerfully helping someone kill them and having no mixed feelings about it sends the message that if you CAN’T do that, then are you really abused? Are sure you’re not complicit in your own abuse? Do you even want to get rid of them?

So this is basically why the way the show ended was so painfully disappointing for me. And the main reason it hit so hard was that it was initially so good and had so much promise. I really expected more.

#Vincenzo #vincenzo meta #vincenzo spoilers #not that mad anymore but still so disappointed #hong chayoung #jang han seo #jang han seok #so much it to fix #my brother says hi #he is disappointed too

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ladyoftheblackpaint · 3 years

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Dad-for-One Theory Breakdown

So now that the big man is out and on the loose, I was reading about this theory, and honestly it’s pretty interesting.

All For One being Izuku’s father.

Other people could probably write better analyses of the theory itself than me, but from what I understand these are some main arguments to support this being a possibility:

Firstly, let’s talk about AFO’s appearance.

He’s shown with white hair in the anime when he was younger, as does his younger brother. His eyes are constantly shadowed even before his face got jacked up by All Might.

So genetically speaking, here are the traits that constitute Izuku and his parental figures:

One of Izuku’s parents would need to have freckles

One of Izuku’s parents would need to have green hair (check)

One of Izuku’s parents would need to have curly hair

One of Izuku’s parents would need to have green eyes (check)

One of Izuku’s parents would need to have his eye shape (check)

One of Izuku’s parents would need to have his skin tone (check)

The thing with genetics, though, is that they’re weird things and parents are not always the sole givers of traits.

As we can see, from the parts of All For One’s face that is visible, he doesn’t have curly hair OR freckles, which is sort of a big kick in the gut for this theory.

Irregardless, I do have to say that theory, though, does have a point with the fact that his eyes are hidden. Most of Izuku’s traits seem to come from his mother, and the fact that two of his most telling traits (his curly hair and his freckles) just so happen to be in the same spots that are covered up by scar tissue in the design of present-day AFO is pretty interesting.

Coincidental New Abilities Given To Izuku & Izuku’s strange pain threshold.

So this is one that I have been asking questions about. OFA is a stock piling quirk, but from the looks of it, only strength is actually passed down from one individual to the next, like an energy reserve. However, if that is the case, why is it that all of a sudden the vestiges decided to change the rules of the game and bestow onto Izuku all of their abilities.

Why not All Might? He was the closest to killing AFO in the past, so if they had done so with him he might have actually done it.

It’s possible that the reason they chose Izuku was because of the impending catastrophes that were obviously coming to fruition with the League of Villains and Tomura.

I’m left to wonder if there was another reason, though:

One of the themes of My Hero Academia is how quirks harm the user over time. All Might gets wounded and then forces himself to keep using his quirk, Bakugou hurts his arms if he uses his quirk too much, Aizawa gets dry eye, Ururaka throws up, and the most obvious of them is Izuku-- who breaks his bones with the intensity of his quirk.

This didn’t happen with All Might and apparently not with any of the past users, either, since All Might seemed surprised at the extent since it was easier for him, even though he suspected what the consequences might be. Add onto this that the ability is now supposed to be stronger than All Might’s was, and you get the picture.

The point is: Izuku gets wounded a lot and yet seems to have the pain resistance of a freaking monster I mean:

COME ON.

Taking that into consideration, AFO has been described as being concerned about how his quirk affects his body. Since he has so many quirks that could potentially harm him and overwhelm him. I mean, look at the experiments with the Nomu-- people are obviously not supposed to have more than one quirk.

So someone with the capability of wielding multiple quirks with possibly painful drawbacks would, probably, be able to pass on some of the needed traits to keep that up genetically to Izuku, amiright.

And it’s possible the vestiges could tell that Izuku could handle it because of this genetic connection.

He didn’t have a quirk, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t get other traits from AFO if he was his father, such as his endurance and pain threshold.

Which leads me to my next point:

Extra Toe Bone

I actually just thought of this when I was writing the last point, so if it makes no sense welp...

Izuku was born quirkless, something that is considered relatively rare, expecially as the generations go on. Quirks are genetic phenomenon, and so if two people who have quirks have a child, it is VERY slim that their child will be born quirkless, unless they had a grandparent or someone else down the line who was quirkless.

Now, AFO was part of the first generation of quirked people. Meaning, his parents would have likely been quirkless, something that would have made it much easier for his offspring to be quirkless, as well.

Fire-breathing Absent Father

This is one of the more easy and obvious ones.

Horikoshi has said that Izuku’s father would show up later in the story, meaning that he has had a plot planned out for Izuku’s parents. Whatever that might be.

So that obviously shuts down the idea that his father is simply an unimportant character. To be introduced so that into the story as if he’s a vital piece for the future story seems...strange. Pretty suspicious.

Anyways, there’s also the information that’s been given about Izuku’s father having the quirk of fire breathing, and, obviously, a man who has numerous quirks would have the possibility of being a fire breather.

There’s not much else to say about this point.

Parallelism

OH, this one’s my favorite.

Okay, looking at Tomura Shigaraki’s character for a moment, we see the connection he has with Nana, one of the previous holders of One for All.

This is a plot technique that is basically just a twist in the narrative. How could someone SO GOOD and someone that All Might looked up to have a grandchild so inherently evil? His family was relatively normal, even if his father was abusive (god, that’s a terrible thing to say but I digress). His father’s abuse came from the trauma he experiences when he was abandoned by Nana, but all in all his family was full of ordinary people. He had grandparents, a mother, a sister, and his abusive dad (oh god).

Even with the heroic heritage and the normal family life, Tomura becomes one of the worst villains in the series.

By parallelism, I mean, imagine the DRAMA if Izuku-- pure, wanting-to-be-a-hero, saving everyone’s ass, sunshine child Izuku-- was the most powerful villain’s child...that’d be fucking awesome. I would shit bricks. It’d be amazing!

Possibly predictable...

But amazing!

Plus, if you look at both Izuku and Tomura’s parents, if the Dad For One theory is true, they would each have one caring parent and one “bad” parent.

It would fit so well. With the narrative of the “heroes” of society not being inherently good (Nana abandoning her child-- even if she believed it was for his best interest) and villains simply being misunderstood until the point that they snap (look at literally ANY villain in the series. There’s some type of narrative about being abandoned by society).

One of the best heroes ever producing one of the greatest villains, and vice versa.

It’d be beautiful.

THAT’S some badass parallelism.

PLUS, it would fit with the narrative of ending the cycle of violence. For a story so based on the intricacies of society and what is truly “evil” and “good”, to have an ending where the two characters stray from their genetically defined path and decide their own destinies would be SO satisfying I’m getting excited just thinking about it.

ANYWAYS, I’m not so sure how much I believe this theory might come true, but I know that it’s not a silly theory at all. Looking at the narrative, the possible hints, the parallelism (GOD the PARALLELISM) it would make sense in the long run and, in my opinion, be super interesting.

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