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sashannarcy · 3 years

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hi op what are your thoughts on uhhhh *spins wheel* sasha's season 2b arc (hope that's not too broad a subject)

edit: putting this under a cut bc it got LONG but. enjoy (???)

okay I gotta start by saying I didn't expect the depth of it at ALL; I knew Sash was featured prominently in the ending episodes of s2 based off of what my friend informed me, but like. I was not expecting 4.5 episodes to be almost ENTIRELY centered on their character arc and design (the .5 being the first half of True Colors).

that being said, I think Sash's 2b arc is PHENOMENAL bc of the way the nuance in it is written so incredibly well. this character is about to perform the most antagonistic move that they've pulled in the whole series so far, which is the act of betraying both Anne and Marcy in order to support Grime and get them home safe, if they so choose to go home (as an aside, I think at this point Sash has probably decided that she likes it more in Amphibia than back home, and there's one line that I'll get to that seems to be VERYYYY indicative of that. and if this is the case, it makes sense to me why Sasha would want to help Grime at all and why they don't really seem quite eager to follow Anne and Marcy back home. but! important to note that they still give those two the choice to go back if they wish, because at the end of the day Sash loves them and wouldn't try to force them to stay). and yet we see!! this back and forth!! this FIGHT that's happening in their mind, the way there's a flash of guilt they express at the very end of The Third Temple directly after confirming to Grime that things are still going according to plan, their convo w Anne at the end of The Dinner, the entire plot arc of BotB, and ofc the Sashanne duel in True Colors. I want to make an analysis post for each of these episodes because they're so fucking PACKED w shit to analyze, but I'll try my best to touch on all points here.

obviously we first learn of Sasha's plans to betray Anne and Marcy in The Third Temple. but what's important is that throughout the entire episode, there's several points where Sash switches back and forth between manipulation and honesty. I can talk abt this w confidence just based off of the whole. *gestures vaguely at myself.* but Sasha's initial apology in this episode was sheer manipulation, I think we all know that. however, when Sasha has to do their final test in the temple, those few lines they exchange w Anne in the moments before they raise themself up off the floor and launch themself into battle... those were genuine. they know they've been a shitty friend, and they're willing to accept that. so you have this game, almost, where Sash keeps flipping between putting on a mask to ensure they can keep up their facade until Grime secures the city and genuinely acknowledging their behavior and knowing that what they are doing is not going to sit well w Anne and Marcy.

so with that, The Third Temple sets the premise for the rest of the episodes of the season as far as Sasha's character arc. The Dinner is such a good fucking episode to follow with, because it hammers in the fact that Sasha has not changed. what it ALSO hammers in is she is still acting in her own self-interest - to put it in her words, she wants to get the friendship back under control. they still lash out, they still have a short fuse, they're still heavily opinionated and rough around the edges and prickly because this is an environment where they feel threatened. they're finally reuniting with the two people that mean the absolute most to them, only to realize they've been left out of the narrative. also not for nothing, but their trauma in Reunion got joked about in this episode which led to them blowing up over it, and like. I'm giving that one a pass bc man. anyway. at the end of the episode they say they like who they are, but it's said with a frown, which I think is fucking GENIUS. because there's an actual meaning to this line - they don't ACTUALLY like who they are. we have plenty of evidence that they don't like themself. what they MEAN is that they don't want to change, because that would mean giving up a security that they need in order to keep themself together. AND THIS IS DEMONSTRATED CRYSTAL CLEAR IN BOTB. they literally PURPOSEFULLY detach themself from Anne and Marcy bc they know they want control but they ALSO know that their behavior is just going to hurt the other two, so instead of compromising, they just go hey I'm gonna do my thing and you guys can do yours. and we'll both get what we want. and if that's not evidence that this character is fucking GRAPPLING with how to grow and change as a person, idk what is

and then. sigh. we get to True Colors. ofc Sash goes through on their betrayal - they're loyal to a fucking T once you dig beneath the surface, and they wouldn't just not follow through for Grime. what is absolutely KEY here is the fact that they are still leaving room for their friends' best interests, as in they're not trapping them in Amphibia but rather explaining how they're gonna help Grime take over, implying they'll go back home once they're done, but if Anne and Marcy wanna go back now, that's cool. if she didn't give a fuck abt their wellbeing, she'd just keep them there w her. but she doesn't. and then Anne starts retaliating, and. well. we ALL know Sasha does NOT do well with criticism of any kind. so they just go okay I'll send you back now then (and this is STILL an action motivated by what they think is best for Anne). BUT THE LINE. OHHHH THE SUPER IMPORTANT LINE THAT MADE MY HEAD SNAP UP AND MADE ME PHYSICALLY GO "YIKES" OUT LOUD. is Sasha saying "say hi to your parents for me." it's like a goddamn full-on sucker punch packed into one sentence - seven words, and all of a sudden we know for sure this kid does not have a good home life. I could go into elaboration on Sasha and the way she views familial ties throughout the show, but I won't bc that's gonna take this already super long answer and make it even worse. regardless, Sasha has once again flipped the switch and is indulging in their worst behaviors, which is full on controlling and holding power to act on what THEY think is best in the moment. and the moment Anne snaps, the moment Anne yells about Sasha being a horrible person, literally EVERYTHING shifts and the reaction from Sasha is VISCERAL. and what I mean by that is. it's not just the look in their eyes at those words. it's not just the sudden and complete loss of meaning, of self, of motivation after they've lost Anne's support. it's not just the way they stare at their own reflection in a sword that represents the color of the person they're trying their hardest to protect. it's the way that for the rest of the goddamn episode, they spend it trying to do the one thing they fear the most: giving up control. I'm gonna elaborate on this whole aspect in a different ask bc I was asked abt it, but the way Sasha acts towards Anne after the fallout, especially at the beginning of the duel and during the confrontation w Andrias, is fucking monumental. they struggle so much with how to change their own behavior, yet the very moment they lose the support of the people they've been trying so hard to love and care for in their roundabout way, they can change the way they act. because who the fuck is Sasha Waybright without Anne Boonchuy and Marcy Wu? in her mind, no one. she doesn't have any idea of who she is outside of this, so ofc she can act differently when she's thrown out in the cold. after all, it doesn't take much to warp an identity that doesn't exist.

tldr; god. how do I sum this up. Sash's 2b arc is smth that's incredibly intricate and complex from the way they constantly flip between desperately needing control and feeling guilty that this is the way they need to live. and True Colors is able to finally demonstrate to us the final piece in how they operate - without their friends, they lose sense of who they are, and their personality comes undone. in 4.5 episodes the writers managed to give us 1000 aspects to their character that we hadn't gotten to explore, and we can see that Sasha was never meant to be the villain. so. final review is that's some good shit👍

#this is so so so so long holy shit anon I am sorry #but the s2 2b arc is like. oh my god it sure is smth #PLEASE GOD IT'S 2:56 AM. I HAVE CLASS AT 9:30 GMFMDMDM #why do I do this shit to myself #sasha waybright #amphibia #anonymous #ask #long post

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pigeonsatdawn · 3 years

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law school ep 15 (and solhwi overall)

gonna put in my two cents for the line that singlehandedly caused the solhwi nation to implode.

(apologies in advanced because my thoughts are too messy for me to neatly put it in a post but i want to say it anyway—also this is just the way i view solhwi so please don't come screaming at me if you disagree!)

i'm a diehard solhwi shipper and i love their relationship, and think they have one of the best relationships out there in the fictional world, and also definitely one of the healthiest. but to me, their relationship extends far beyond the romantic relationships we so often see portrayed in media.

kim beom said in one interview that this relationship between HJH and KS is kin to that of a soulmate relationship that's not necessarily romance, and i find myself agreeing with that notion. while soulmates are typically used to describe romantic partnerships, it doesn't necessarily have to start with romance. (many people have pointed this out in other posts so i won't go further down the fact that HJH x KS's relationship is a friends-to-lovers slow burn but you get me.)

but in fact, this bond between soulmates (or at least how i define it), in my opinion, is far beyond what we usually see in romance. as in, it's not just someone you like, but it's someone whose changed your life in a certain way. i know some may be averse to the idea of having to change for the one you love because loving is the notion of accepting someone in spite of the person's flaws, but what i mean is that when you love someone in this way, you want to change because of them. you see them, and they inspire you, and you grow in your own way. once again—growth is a very subjective idea, and even for HJH and KS we can see them grow in different directions—but we can clearly see how they have impacted each others' lives.

it's quite obvious, imo, how KS's life has been impacted by HJH's. she's,, not the "smartest" out there, and we can't deny that. we know she probably won't make it through law school if not for HJH's help. HJH is always there, a step ahead of KS, but he's not just being proud about it, instead opting to help her understand what the laws are and why they are the way they are, which KS especially needs, being a particularly empathic person. but we've also seen that HJH has helped KS beyond simply academics. he's always been there to protect her—almost all their interactions have proven that (the camera outside her house, the hungover soup, the switching seats—i think literally everything?..?..?.??). maybe she doesn't necessarily need protection, but surely thanks to his protection she's much better than she might've been without, especially knowing her terribly miserable life.

but i often wonder why HJH is so heart-eyes of KS of all people. i mean, i know love is love and sometimes you just catch feelings, but i believe there's more meaning behind their relationship than meets the eye. like you don't just look at someone so lovingly for it to be just a crush, y'know? the first reason that comes to mind is clearly simply KS's amicable personality. she definitely stands out: she's not that intelligent, struggling and barely surviving, but she has insane passion to pull through even despite truth attacks (like SJH saying she should reconsider her life decisions, saying that a chance of passing isn't something to be proud of, etc). she treats everything with such a positive outlook, and, well, KS is just an adorable human, so it's hard not to have a little crush her.

what makes KS stand out most, the core of her personality, is that she has hope, despite everything. she's been through shit because of her circumstances—left by her twin sister without a word, been in juvie, has no money to deal with it—you know, entire backstory. but instead she fights her weakness, even though she feel like it should've been her sister, even though she's not smart enough, because she has to do this. she keeps going, even though things keep turning out for the worse for her, holding hope when circumstances are most dire. but why? because she strives for justice. she doesn't want to be wronged. she wants the law to own up its mistakes, wants to make sure the law gets its own revenge. that's why she wants to work in law, yeah? and so she keeps fighting, even when hope seems lost.

okay but why did i mention this? because i think this is what HJH sees in KS. why? because this is what he needs.

HJH had lost hope. in an episode (i don't remember which), he mentioned he doesn't trust anyone, and it's obvious why: his uncle. it's the worst kind of betrayal that causes your ideals being burned down. he realized that even people who work in law can be corrupt, people who he thought he could trust above all others, people who seemed utterly good. and then he just begins to regard everyone with baseline amity, and no further. many have pointed out he doesn't have real friends (other than KS), even though he looks outgoing and friendly. it's not quite shown, but it must've been lonely. and a lonely fight, trying to prove that he will be a better prosecutor than his uncle was. and we know that HJH's nature as a person is to be calculating, objective, seeing things through facts and statistics; it's what makes him so intelligent. what that also makes him is realistic, and more often than not, that is almost equal to pessimistic—because reality just... sucks, as has been proven by the betrayal of his uncle. and further into the drama we see only more corrupt people in the business, so we certainly don't get out hopes fueled.

there's scarcely anyone in what we see who's actually pursuing law because they're passionate about the law, or if they are, they're not often very... human in doing it. examples: YJH, SJH, KSB are all very cold and indifferent types, people who really just come and do what they do, focus on studies (in the case of YJH, his teaching), and interactions with others are treated as "lesser". SJH and KSB in particular—they're good at the law, sure, but they seem to prioritize their position in law first and foremost. SJH and KSB don't hesitate to call out their losses, and even would rather not intervene for justice if it meant their position would be compromised. not that they're bad characters, not at all; i mentioned them simply to compare them to KS, who, despite not having the brains to do half the things she's supposed to do and earning herself nosebleeds everytime she tries, still does what she does for justice, passionately, hopefully, all for righteousness.

okay this was longer than i intended WHEW so i'll cut to the chase: long story short, HJH needs KS because KS gives him hope. hope of a humanity where people actually work in law and choose to fight for justice against all odds, even if the system itself is infiltrated by filth and corruption. KS is someone who, in her first lecture, was grilled the fuck out by Yangcrates, yet the first thing she does after she nearly throws her guts out is ask HJH whether he can tutor her. she does not ever lose hope, and that, truly, is what stands out to HJH, what he needs.

and KS needs HJH because he is her hope as well! hope by itself does no good if you can't actually do something about it, and KS knows this. HJH, despite seemingly just being someone to help her in her studies, is someone she needs if she wants to achieve her goals, if she wants to get back on the law the right way. which is why, in the end, KS and HJH are, while independent in their own way, dependent on each other in terms of their growth—KS gives HJH hope in humanity, HJH helps KS realize (make real) her hopes that would have been dreams if not for her.

oh my god i've rambled on this long without stating my point: THE DAMN LINE.

HJH saying he owes her makes sense in this light because, indeed, KS's positive outlook in everything keeps him going. it gives him a reason to keep wanting to work in law, because she is a reason to believe in goodness and justice, that there will be people who keep fighting for justice against all odds. he owes this to her—and perhaps that is why he goes all out to help her achieve that hope, perhaps that's why he goes out of his way to care for her. because they are each other's missing puzzle piece, the other half. soulmates.

sigh ok this was long ONE FINAL POINT. everyone has their own opinion on a solwhi ending, so i might as well chip in mine.

certainly, as a solhwi shipper, i want them to end up together. i believe they're really the best of soulmates, two people who just complement each other so well. but in the current timeline, them having a romantic relationship out of the blue would be,,, simply unnecessary, imo. they're still very much in the stage of friendship, and are both dealing with their own personal baggage, that shoving a romance would just take away the focus from their growth. i personally think even this platonic relationship is already a beautiful one, one that outshines many of the romances i've watched, even without having to flood everything under the romance light—which i think many can agree with me, seeing as how solhwi is shipped so much. i still want to see them end up together, though, so SEASON TWO LAW SCHOOL MANIFESTATION. please please please directors writers make it happen i am begging you. thank you.

sorry for this long ass post, thank you if you do read it and leave any thoughts! again this is just my opinion, you're free to let me know if you think differently or anything, or shoot me a message if you want to scream about solhwi or whatever i'm just solhwi brainrot 24/7 🤸🏻‍♀️

#sorry this was so long i have absolutely no self control when it comes to law school #law school #law school jtbc #law school kdrama #로스쿨 #solhwi #han joon hwi #kang sol a #kang sol #kdrama #kim beom #ryu hye young #mine #analysis #opinion #netflix

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ot3 · 3 years

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i watched red vs blue: zero with my dear friends today and i was asked to “post” my “thoughts” on the subject. Please do not click this readmore unless, for some reason, you want to read three thousand words on the subject of red vs blue: zero critical analysis. i highly doubt that’s the reason anyone is following me, but hey.

anyway. here you have it.

Here are my opinions on RVB0 as someone who has quite literally no nostalgia for any older RVB content. I’ve seen seasons 1-13 once and bits and pieces of it more than once here and there, but I only saw it for the first time within the past couple of months. I’ve literally never seen any other RT/AH content. I can name a few people who worked on OG Red vs. Blue but other than Mounty Oum I have NO idea who is responsible for what, really, or what anything else they’ve ever worked on is, or whether or not they’re awful people. I know even less about the people making RVB0 - All I know is that the main writer is named Torrian but I honestly don’t even know if that’s a first name, a last name, or a moniker. All this to say; nothing about my criticism is rooted in any perceived slight against the franchise or branding by the new staff members, because I don’t know or care about any of it. In fact, I’m going to try and avoid any direct comparison between RVB0 and earlier seasons of RVB as a means of critique until the very end, where I’ll look at that relationship specifically.

So here is my opinion of RVB0 as it stands right now:

1. The Writing

Everything about RVB0 feels as if it was written by a first-time writer who hasn’t learned to kill his darlings. The narrative is both simultaneously far too full, leaving very little breathing room for character interaction, and oddly sparse, with a story that lacks any meaningful takeaway, interesting ideas, or genuine emotional connection. It also feels like it’s for a very much younger audience - I don’t mean this as a negative at all. I love tv for kids. I watch more TV for kids than I do for adults, mostly, but I think it’s important to address this because a lot of the time ‘this is for kids’ is used to act like you’re not allowed to critique a narrative thoroughly. It definitely changes the way you critique it, but the critique can still be in good faith. I watched the entirety of RVB0 only after it was finished, in one sitting, and I was giving it my full attention, essentially like it was a movie. I’m going to assume it was much better to watch in chunks, because as it stood, there was literally no time built into the narrative to process the events that had just transpired, or try and predict what events might be coming in the future. When there’s no time to think about the narrative as you’re watching it, the narrative ends up as being something that happens to the audience, not something they engage with. It’s like the difference between taking notes during a lecture or just sitting and listening. If you’re making no attempt to actively process what’s happening, it doesn’t stick in your mind well. I found myself struggling to recall the events and explanations that had immediately transpired because as soon as one thing had happened, another thing was already happening, and it was like a mental juggling act to try and figure out which information was important enough to dwell on in the time we were given to dwell on it.

Which brings me to another point - pacing. Every event in the show, whether a character moment, a plot moment, or a fight scene, felt like it was supposed to land with almost the exact same amount of emotional weight. It all felt like The Most Important Thing that had Yet Happened. And I understand that this is done as an attempt to squeeze as much as possible out of a rather short runtime, but it fundamentally fails. When everything is the most important thing happening, it all fades into static. That’s what most of 0’s narrative was to me: static. It’s only been a few hours since I watched it but I had to go step by step and type out all of the story beats I could remember and run it by my friends who are much more enthusiastic RVB fans than I am to make sure I hadn’t missed or forgotten anything. I hadn’t, apparently, but the fact that my takeaway from the show was pretty accurate and also disappointingly lackluster says a lot. Strangely enough, the most interesting thing the show alluded to - a holo echo, or whatever the term they used was - was one of the things least extrapolated upon in the show’s incredibly bulky exposition. Benefit of the doubt says that’s something they’ll explore in future seasons (are they getting more? Is that planned? I just realized I don’t actually know.)

And bulky it was! I have quite honestly never seen such flagrant disregard for the rule of “show, don’t tell.” There was not a single ounce of subtlety or implication involved in the storytelling of RVB0. Something was either told to you explicitly, or almost entirely absent from the narrative. Essentially zilch in between. We are told the dynamic the characters have with each other, and their personality pros and cons are listed for us conveniently by Carolina. The plot develops in exposition dumps. This is partially due to the series’ short runtime, but is also very much a result of how that runtime was then used by the writers. They sacrificed a massive chunk of their show for the sake of cramming in a ton of fight scenes, and if they wanted to keep all of those fight scenes, it would have been necessary to pare down their story and characters proportionally in comparison, but they didn’t do that either. They wanted to have it both ways and there simply wasn’t enough time for it.

The story itself is… uninteresting. It plays out more like the flimsy premise of a video game quest rather than a piece of media to be meaningfully engaged with. RVB0 is I think something I would be pitched by a guy who thinks the MCU and BNHA are the best storytelling to come out of the past decade. It is nothing but tropes. And I hate having to use this as an insult! I love tropes. The worst thing about RVB0 is that nothing it does is wholly unforgivable in its own right. Hunter x Hunter, a phenomenal shonen, is notoriously filled with pages upon pages of detailed exposition and explanations of things, and I absolutely love it. Leverage, my favorite TV show of all time, is literally nothing but a five man band who has to learn to work as a team while seemingly systematically hitting a checklist of every relevant trope in the book. Pacific Rim is an incredibly straightforward good guys vs giant monsters blockbuster to show off some cool fight scenes such as a big robot cutting an alien in half with a giant sword, and it’s some of the most fun I ever have watching a movie. Something being derivative, clunky, poorly executed in some specific areas, narratively weak, or any single one of these flaws, is perfectly fine assuming it’s done with the intention and care that’s necessary to make the good parts shine more. I’ll forgive literally any crime a piece of media commits as long as it’s interesting and/or enjoyable to consume. RVB0 is not that. I’m not sure what the main point of RVB0 was supposed to be, because it seemingly succeeds at nothing. It has absolutely nothing new or innovative to justify its lack of concern for traditional storytelling conventions. Based solely on the amount of screentime things were given, I’d be inclined to say the narrative existed mostly to give flimsy pretense for the fight scenes, but that’s an entire other can of worms.

2. The Visuals + Fights

I have no qualms with things that are all style and no substance. Sometimes you just want to see pretty colors moving on the screen for a while or watch some cool bad guys and monsters or whatever get punched. RVB0 was not this either. The show fundamentally lacked a coherent aesthetic vision. Much of the show had a rather generic sci-fi feel to it with the biggest standouts to this being the very noir looking cityscape, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like something from a batman game, or the temple, which my friends and I all immediately joked looked like a world of warcraft raid. They were obviously attempting to get variety in their environment design, which I appreciate, but they did this without having a coherent enough visual language to feel like it was all part of the same world. In general, there was also just a lack of visual clarity or strong shots. The value range in any given scene was poor, the compositions and framing were functional at best, and the character animation was unpleasantly exaggerated. It just doesn’t really look that good beyond fancy rendering techniques.

The fight scenes are their entire own beast. Since ‘FIGHT SCENE’ is the largest single category of scenes in the show, they definitely feel worth looking at with a genuine critical eye. Or, at least, I’d like to, but honestly half the time I found myself almost unable to look at them. The camera is rarely still long enough to really enjoy what you’re watching - tracking the motion of the character AND the camera at such constant breakneck high speeds left little time to appreciate any nuances that might have been present in the choreography or character animation. I tried, believe me, I really did, but the fight scenes leave one with the same sort of dizzy convoluted spectacle as a Michael Bay transformers movie. They also really lacked the impact fight scenes are supposed to have.

It’s hard to have a good, memorable fight scene without it doing one of three things: 1. Showing off innovative or creative fighting styles and choreography 2. Making use of the fight’s setting or environment in an engaging and visually interesting way or 3. Further exploring a character’s personality or actions by the way they fight. It’s also hard to do one of these things on its own without at least touching a bit on the other two. For the most part, I find RVB0’s fight scenes fail to do this. Other than rather surface level insubstantial factors, there was little to visually distinguish any of RVB0’s fight scenes from each other. Not only did I find a lot of them difficult to watch and unappealing, I found them all difficult to watch and unappealing in an almost identical way. They felt incredibly interchangeable and very generic. If you could take a fight scene and change the location it was set and also change which characters were participating and have very little change, it’s probably not a good fight scene.

I think “generic” is really just the defining word of RVB0 and I think that’s also why it falls short in the humor department as well.

3. The Comedy

Funny shit is hard to write and humor is also incredibly subjective but I definitely got almost no laughs out of RVB0. I think a total of three. By far the best joke was Carolina having a cast on top of her armor, which, I must stress, is an incredibly funny gag and I love it. But overall I think the humor fell short because it felt like it was tacked on more than a natural and intentional part of this world and these characters. A lot of the jokes felt like they were just thrown in wherever they’d fit, without any build up to punchlines and with little regard for what sort of joke each character would make. Like, there was some, obviously Raymond’s sense of humor had the most character to it, but the character-oriented humor still felt very weak. When focusing on character-driven humor, there’s a LOT you can establish about characters based on what sort of jokes they choose to make, who they’re picking as the punchlines of these jokes, and who their in-universe audience for the jokes is. In RVB0, the jokes all felt very immersion-breaking and self aware, directed wholly towards the audience rather than occurring as a natural result of interplay between the characters. This is partially due to how lackluster the character writing was overall, and the previously stated tight timing, but also definitely due to a lack of a real understanding about what makes a joke land.

A rule of thumb I personally hold for comedy is that, when push comes to shove, more specific is always going to be more funny. The example I gave when trying to explain this was this:

saying two characters had awkward sex in a movie theater: funny

saying two characters had an awkward handjob in a cinemark: even funnier

saying two characters spent 54 minutes of 11:14's 1:26 runtime trying out some uncomfortably-angled hand stuff in the back of a dilapidated cinemark that lost funding halfway through retrofitting into a dinner theater: the funniest

The more specific a joke is, the more it relies on an in-depth understanding of the characters and world you’re dealing with and the more ‘realistic’ it feels within the context of your media. Especially with this kind of humor. When you’re joking with your friends, you don’t go for stock-humor that could be pulled out of a joke book, you go for the specific. You aim for the weak spots. If a set of jokes could be blindly transplanted into another world, onto another cast of characters, then it’s far too generic to be truly funny or memorable. I don’t think there’s a single joke in RVB0 where the humor of it hinged upon the characters or the setting.

Then there’s the issue of situational comedy and physical comedy. This is really where the humor being ‘tacked on’ shows the most. Once again, part of what makes actually solid comedy land properly is it feeling like a natural result of the world you have established. Real life is absurd and comical situations can be found even in the midst of some pretty grim context, and that’s why black comedy is successful, and why comedy shows are allowed to dip into heavier subject matter from time to time, or why dramas often search for levity in humor. It’s a natural part of being human to find humor in almost any situation. The key thing, though, once again, is finding it in the situation. Many of RVB0’s attempts at humor, once again, feel like they would be the exact same jokes when stripped from their context, and that’s almost never good. A pretty fundamental concept in both storytelling in general but particularly comedy writing is ‘setup and payoff’. No joke in RVB0 is a reward for a seemingly innocuous event in an earlier scene or for an overlooked piece of environmental design. The jokes pop in when there’s time for them in between all the exposition and fighting, and are gone as soon as they’re done. There’s no long term, underlying comedic throughline to give any sense of coherence or intent to the sense of humor the show is trying to establish. Every joke is an isolated one-off quip or one-liner, and it fails to engage the audience in a meaningful way.

All together, each individual component of RVB0 feels like it was conjured up independently, without any concern to how it interacted with the larger product they were creating. And I think this is really where it all falls apart. RVB0 feels criminally generic in a way reminiscent of mass-market media which at least has the luxury of attributing these flaws, this complete and total watering down of anything unique, to heavy oversight and large teams with competing visions. But I don’t think that’s the case for RVB0. I don’t know much about what the pipeline is like for this show, but I feel like the fundamental problem it suffers from is a lack of heart.

In comparison to Red vs. Blue

Let's face it. This is a terrible successor to Red vs. Blue. I wouldn’t care if NONE of the old characters were in it - that’s not my problem. I haven’t seen past season 13 because from what I heard the show already jumped the shark a bit and then some. That’s not what makes it a poor follow up. What makes it a bad successor is that it fundamentally lacks any of the aspects of the OG RVB that made it unique or appealing at all. I find myself wondering what Torrian is trying to say with RVB0 and quite literally the only answer I find myself falling back onto is that he isn’t trying to say anything at all. Regardless of what you feel about the original RVB, it undeniably had things to say. The opening “why are we here” speech does an excellent job at establishing that this is a show intended to poke fun at the misery of bureaucracy and subservience to nonsensical systems, not just in the context of military life, but in a very broad-strokes way almost any middle-class worker can relate to. At the end of the day, fiction is at its best when it resonates with some aspect of its audience’s life. I know instantly which parts of the original Red vs Blue I’m supposed to relate to. I can’t say anything even close to that about 0.

RVB is an absurdist parody that heavily satirizes aspects of the military and life as a low-on-the-food-chain worker in general that almost it’s entire target audience will be familiar with. The most significant draw of the show to me was how the dialogue felt like listening to my friends bicker with each other in our group chats. It required no effort for me to connect with and although the narrative never outright looked to the camera and explained ‘we are critiquing the military’s stupid red tape and self-fullfilling eternal conflict’ they didn’t need to, because the writing trusted itself and its audience enough to believe this could be conveyed. It is, in a way, the complete antithesis to the badass superhero macho military man protagonist that we all know so well. RVB was saying something, and it was saying it in a rather novel format.

Nothing about RVB0 is novel. Nothing about RVB0 says anything. Nothing about it compels me to relate to any of these characters or their situations. RVB0 doesn’t feel like absurdism, or satire. RVB0 feels like it is, completely uncritically, the exact media that RVB itself was riffing off of. Both RVB0 and RVB when you watch them give you the feeling that what you’re seeing here is kids on a playground larping with toy soldiers. It’s all ridiculous and over the top cliche stupid garbage where each side is trying to one-up the other. The critical difference is, in RVB, we’re supposed to look at this and laugh at how ridiculous this is. In RVB0 we’re supposed to unironically think this is all pretty badass.

The PFL arc of the original RVB existed to show us that setting up an elite team of supersoldiers with special powers was something done in bad faith, with poor outcomes, that left everyone involved either cruel, damaged, or dead. It was a bad thing. And what we’re seeing in RVB0 is the same premise, except, this time it’s good. We’re supposed to root for this format. RVB0 feels much more like a demo reel, cutscenes from a video game that doesn’t exist, or a shonen anime fanboy’s journal scribbling than it feels like a piece of media with any objective value in any area. In every area that RVB was anti-establishment, RVB0 is pure undiluted establishment through and through.

#long post #really long post guys. look out !#rvb

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elisabeth515 · 3 years

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(Some) Greek Gods as Historical Figures

So some days ago I secretly logged back into Mythology and Cultures amino and I stumbled across post of casting historical figures as the gods from Greek mythology. Of course, I hated it, so I made my version of this.

Note: Of course, this is going to have quite a lot of Napoleonic figures, since I am more familiar of this period, but please do reblog this post (or tag me on another post) with the hashtag “#mythical figures as historical people” and add some more of your historical figure Greek God fancasts!

Note 2: this post is for entertaining purpose, and just me introducing some guys to y’all and I am not a historian myself and hopefully you all would still like my takes😅

1. Zeus - Louis XIV of France

First and foremost, I shall introduce the king of gods featured in Greco-Roman myths. You may ask, why don’t I cast Henry VIII of England? Well, my reason is very simple: Henry is far from accurate to Zeus in actual myths.

To be honest, Zeus has a more “absolute power” energy in it, and Louis XIV totally has rocked it (like that iconic line “l’état, c’est moi (I am the state)”). Well, Henry also has that kind of energy but everyone only remembers his six wives and the uncountable number of bloodshed (not to mention Catherine of Aragon is a much better fighter than him—got this from Horrible Histories OwO)... Anyways, Louis XVI is basically a Zeus.

2. Hera - Catherine of Aragon

This brings to Catherine of Aragon herself. She’s a total Q U E E N and if you have watched “Six” the musical you already got what I mean (like, being the wife who married to Henry the longest). There’s also the early warlike aspect in Hera (featured in Homer’s works) that Catherine has it as well (at least you know that she’s getting more victories than Henry if you have watched Horrible Histories season 6, in the episode with Rowan Atkinson playing Henry VIII (which is sad because I want Ben Willbond to play him—he iconic to the HH fandom)), making her a great casting of Hera.

Hera, in my opinion, is a very strong woman who has to take Zeus’s shit and I could totally understand why she took revenge on the girls that Zeus has slept with—but anyways, hopefully you guys would like it :3

3. Aphrodite - Pauline Bonaparte

This is half-self-explanatory, really—just look at that statue she posed as Venus, the Roman equivalent of Aphrodite.

Pauline was famed for her beauty in her time, also a big chunk of scandals from her affairs (which bugs her big brother Napoleon, a lot). Nevertheless, despite her big spending habits and a great sexual appetite, she always helped Napoleon in some surprising ways (like she sold her house in Paris to the Duke of Wellington to get the funds for Napoleon).

Just like Aphrodite herself, Pauline harnessed her beauty very well. Thus, I rest my case.

4. Apollo - Joachim Murat or Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria

(Warning: long content ahead)

Firstly, let me briefly introduce them because you guys might not know them much.

Joachim Murat was a marshal of France, also one of Napoleon’s brother-in-law, grand duke of Berg and Cleves from 1806 to 1808 and the King of Naples from 1808 to 1815. After the wars, he attempted to escape yet was caught and executed in 1815 in Pizzo, Italy (if you have read of Alexandre Dumas’s “Famous Crimes” you might know him—by the way no one has cut his head off and sent it to that big nose King Ferdinand).

For those who have watched “Elisabeth” or the “Sissi” movies, you might know Franz Joseph I of Austria already but you might not know much about himself besides being the husband of the (in)famous Empress Sisi (ie. Empress Elisabeth of Austria). He was the Emperor of the Austria from 1848 to his death in 1916—one of the longest reigning European monarchs in history. During his reign, the empire had been through a lot of change, most notably, the creation of Austria-Hungary. Nevertheless, he was also the Emperor who started World War I and he died of old age in the midst of the Great War.

For Apollo, I’m not casting musicians because this is quite overdone. I rather want to shed a light to the other arts that he represented in Greco-Roman mythology. This makes me want to draw a parallel to Joachim Murat as he was also a great sucker of classical literature. Plus, he also was known to be a flamboyant dresser (his nickname was “the Dandy King” by the way), also the designer of the uniforms of the Neapolitan army (with an excessive amount of amaranth, perhaps his favourite colour). Really, everyone just sees him as a great flamboyant himbo but in reality, he’s iconically badass in the battlefield as the First Horseman of Europe. Well, also he’s known for being extremely good with women even though his wife Caroline was fierce as hell. So, in my opinion, he fits the image of Apollo that we know.

However, you guys might feel surprised why I picked Franz Joseph for Apollo. Well, he really... was a rather mediocre ruler in my opinion, and perhaps our most memorable image of him was the senile emperor who signed the declaration of war to Serbia. Nevertheless, he was a well-liked man among his subjects, at least to some old citizens of Austria-Hungary telling future generations. Besides, culture flourished in Vienna under his reign—with notable figures like Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Erwin Schrödinger. Despite the series of unfortunate events which made the empire started to crumble, Austria-Hungary arguably has its cultural importance in Europe. Sounds like what Apollo would do if he’s a ruler, somehow.

Well, enough of his political achievements, let’s talk about his private life... which was probably the actual reason why I picked him.

Enter Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria, the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, also known as Sisi.

On a side note, Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier of France, Prince of Neufchâtel and of Wargram, was Empress Sisi’s grand-uncle in-law via his marriage to Duchess Maria Elisabeth in Bavaria

Absolutely love Pia as Elisabeth in the musical so please don’t mind me using a gif from this :3 ((also, “Elisabeth” spoiler alert

Franz originally was to marry her sister Helene (nicknamed Néné), nevertheless, on the first meeting in Bad Ishl, he has fallen for the young Elisabeth, head over heels—making him defying his domineering mother, Archduchess Sophie, for the very first time. Elisabeth also liked him and did not expressed her refusal either, so they got married in St. Augustine’s Church in 29th April, 1854.

However, the marriage was not well. Sisi was not accustomed to the strict Austrian court especially Archduchess Sophie (also she was not really a fan of intimacy). Poor Franz was rather helpless in situations between his mother and his wife, and eventually, Sisi chose her freedom over her duty as Empress, traveling around the world. They two briefly went back together during the Austro-Hungarian compromise, yet she was constantly not there. Eventually, Sisi was assassinated by an anarchist named Luigi Lucheni during her stay in Geneva, Switzerland, and Franz was devastated over her death (“she will never know how much I love her”).

To Franz, he loved her so, but he really didn’t understand her needs. Even though he had countless mistresses and female companions in Vienna, he still missed his wife. I say, he was really unlucky when it comes to love. Like Apollo himself, he dated countless nymphs and humans, but a lot of his notable relationships did not have a good end. (Probably Cyrene was the most lucky one, yet she also has chosen to be left alone after mothering several children with Apollo.) For this, I picked Franz Joseph as Apollo.

5. Ares - Jean Lannes or Michel Ney

As usual, for those who don’t know much history, I shall briefly introduce my babeys these two great soldiers.

Jean Lannes was one of the marshals of Napoleon, known for being one of Napoleon’s closest friends and his fiery personality, and is considered one of the best marshals of the 1st French Empire. His finest moments including the Battle of Ratisbon in which he led his men to storm the well-guarded city with ladders (hence his nickname “ladder lord” in our very humble Napoleonic marshalate fandom :3). Sadly, he died of the wound he received in the battle of Aspern-Essling in 1809.

Michel Ney was also one of the marshals of Napoleon, known for his extreme valour (yep, he is known as the “Bravest of the Brave”). As you might know, he was one of the marshals who was in Waterloo, yet, his finest hour was during the retreat from Russia in the disasterous 1812. Sadly, he was arguably the most prominent victim of the White Terror under the second Bourbon restoration, executed in 1815 (**I am not accepting any kind of conspiracy theories of my babey survived and died in America😤).

Speaking of Ares, I have a lot of things to say (that’s my dad ;-; no jkjk). He is really not that bloodthirsty idiot who casually hates humans. Well, he’s more like a fiery dork and a man who was very faithful to his lovers, and fights very well (by the way also one of the best dads). So, the bois that come into my mind are automatically two of the most courageous marshals of France.

Lannes, if I have to get him a godly parent, it would definitely Ares. He resembled the god a lot (also I sometimes imagined Ares as a smol bean with dark hair), probably looks the most like Ares himself. He got that fiery temper, that faithfulness to his wife Louise, also being a very courageous fighter in the field—well he literally was like, “NO LEMME STORM DAT CITY *grabs ladder*”.

There you have it, my big bro our ladder lord Jean Lannes who can pull off a perfect Ares.

Ney is like a slightly introverted (and mature) version of an Ares person. You can guess his temper already through his famed auburn hair, and indeed despite his shy exterior his temper sometimes was a bit explosive, and a bit impatient (which was somehow one of his fatal flaws). He was a great fighter, known as a skilled swordsman in his youth. And you all know how brave he is in his famed epithet. Michel Ney is purely badass (and C U T E) you know (and he needs a lot of hugs because he has really been though a lot in the wars, and was a possible case of PTSD which was shown in his arguably suicidal behaviour during the battle of Waterloo). That’s why I casted him as the Greek god Ares OwO

And there you have it, my interpretations on the Greek gods via people in history. I originally would like to include more but somehow I realised that I have written too much about my picks. So, if you want to add more, reblog this post or tag me on the post you made on this topic (and please use the hashtag “mythical figures as historical people” so that I could look into your choices via the search bubble on this app🥺).

Last but not the least, I hope you all lovelies like this, also have learnt something new via my brief introductions on some historical people. Have a great day!

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onlydreamofmysoul · 3 years

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Let Them Eat Cake Part VI

Here we go!!! I’m so so sorry about the extra wait for this one guys, but thanks for sticking with me!!! I hope you like it!

Tonight on The Great British Bake Off…

“Are you talking to yourself?”

“Now get out of here you cheeky buggers.”

“The person not going to the final is-”

The morning of the signature and technical challenges, Remus woke up with Sirius in his arms.

Remus smiled down at Sirius still asleep, his dark eyelashes brushing the tips of those high cheekbones. Ever so carefully, Remus reached to grab his phone and turned off his alarm - it only had two minutes left in it anyways and now Remus could wake Sirius up slowly instead of subjecting him to that heart stopping adrenaline rush that came from having a blaring noise announce the dawn on a new day.

“Sirius,” He whispered, kissing the other man’s forehead. “It’s time to wake up, love.”

Remus watched, unable to take his eyes away as Sirius’ breathing changed from that deep relaxed state to one more aware of the world. His eyes flickered open and focused immediately on Remus’ own.

“Re?” He mumbled sleepily, moving forward to press his face against the hollow of Remus’ throat and securing his grip around Remus’ waist. “Time is it?” Remus slipped his hands under Sirius’ shirt, relishing the feel of Sirius’ ridiculously warm skin against his hands. “It’s a little past seven, we have to get up, we’re filming today.”

Remus shivered as Sirius’ sigh was warm against his skin, but soon Sirius sat up, stretching high into the air, his joints cracking. Remus laughed and threw a pillow at him as he slid out of bed and padded to the bathroom.

“I’m just going for a shower, I’ll just be a few minutes.”

Sirius nodded, still yawning. “I should go back to my room anyways, before the world is awake and all that.”

Remus nodded and returned to his side to kiss him goodbye. “See you tonight?” He breathed. Sirius rolled his eyes laughing, “Re, you’ll see me in like, an hour.”

“Yeah,” Remus pouted, “But then everyone will see you. Only I get to see you tonight.”

Sirius smiled, lazily twining his arms around Remus’ neck, leaning against him. “That’s very true, I suppose I’ll see you then too.”

Remus grinned, then pushed his boyfriend away gently. “Go,” He said reluctantly, “Before anyone sees.”

Sirius kissed his cheek, then shoved his feet into his shoes and vanished out the door. Remus wandered to the steaming bathroom in a daze, not quite sure if this was all still just a long, elaborate dream.

He and Lily wandered down to the tent together, as was tradition at this point.

“I’m not superstitious,” Lily was saying, “But I mean, I’ve gotten this far and if there’s anything I’ve done that’s helped me get here well I’m not going to risk it.” She turned and changed the topic so quickly, Remus was pretty sure he’d get whiplash if he wasn’t so accustomed to her ways. “So how’s Sirius.”

The topic of himself and Sirius was a secret to the world, bar two people - Lily and James. Sirius and Remus had both agreed they wanted a little time to see let their relationship grow a little before being exposed to the public, but there was no denying that both of them needed to tell their best friends. In Remus’ opinion, getting to tell your best friend was one of the very best things about even being in a relationship.

Remus knew the smile on his face was ridiculous and yet he just couldn’t help it. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

Lily stuck out her tongue at him. “Very funny. You know what I mean, how are the two of you getting on?”

Remus wrapped his arm around her shoulder and gave her a little squeeze before pulling away. “So fucking good.”

“Well you sure as hell look like a love-struck idiot.”

It was Remus’ turn to stick his tongue out at her, but his cheeks flushed a little. “Oh hush. You’re one to talk, you’re not too far away from being a love struck idiot yourself.”

Sirius and Remus had a bet to see when James and Lily would finally get their shit together and start dating. Remus said before Bake Off ended. Sirius said after. Remus was trying to do everything in his power to make sure it happened before the end of filming the final (The official ‘cut off’ time) because if there’s one thing to know about Remus Lupin, it’s that he liked to win.

(And also that he thought he might be falling in love, but it was far too early to entertain such thoughts).

The tent was cooler today than it had been other weeks and Remus was glad for it. It was always chilly starting off, but the tent quickly warmed up and Remus would take any reprieve from the overwhelming heat that he could get. Tonks was already at her bench and Remus and Lily went to her, chatting before they had to get in their places.

“It’s weird without Peter isn’t it?” Tonks said, glancing at his vacant station.

“So weird.” The others agreed, all looking over. Can you believe next week is the final?”

“Shh, Lily don’t jinx it.” Remus said, covering her mouth and then ripped it away cringing. “You licked me!” He rubbed his hand on his apron before going to the sink at Lily’s station and washing his hands.

Lily just shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You totally just licked me, ew.”

Tonks blinked, the picture of a perfect alibi. “Lily is far too civilized to ever lick people Remus, don’t be ridiculous.”

Remus pointed a finger at Lily. “I’ll get you back for this.” He swore, not at all satisfied when she just stuck her tongue out at him.

“I look forward to it.” She chirped before Marlene called time and everyone went to their own stations. Remus snuck dirty looks at Lily when the camera’s weren’t on him (and once accidentally when they were - Remus could only imagine the ‘Lily and Remus Fight?’ all over bake off twitter). Sirius and James headed to their spot at the front of the tent and suddenly they were off.

“And we’re back! Welcome everyone to The Great British Bake Off!” Sirius started, smiling broadly for the camera. “Things are getting exciting, aren’t they James?”

“Oh yes,” James continued seamlessly, “Things are really heating up, we’ve made it to this season’s semi-final! I almost can’t believe it, it flew by didn’t it?”

Sirius nodded along. Remus had to smile a little at the extra bits of banter they had to slot in now that there were fewer bakers to cover. Sirius’ eyes flitted to Remus, just for a second and then he scanned the rest of the tent, but Remus knew Sirius was really looking for him. “For sure James, for sure. I think no one expected such a good year!”

Lily snuck him a little smirk and Remus rolled his eyes, miming licking his own hand to turn her mind to other things. Tonks was far more perceptive than people gave her credit for and Remus wouldn’t be surprised if she figured out about himself and Sirius just from a couple of well placed looks.

“Our lovely judges have decided that today marks the start of biscuit week!” James said, motioning to the two judges standing to the side. “Any words of wisdom for our bakers?”

“They should taste good.” Dumbledore said pleasantly, as if it wasn’t the entire point of the competition and Remus had to couch to cover the sound of him snorting.

“Well thanks for that absolutely useless piece of advice.” Sirius said with a brazen grin. “For our signature challenge, our judges would like you to prepare twenty four short-bread biscuits.”

The camera’s turned to capture the baker’s reactions while James continued.

“They should be crisp and crumbly, but still able to maintain their shape, with a golden bake, but be careful that they don’t burn.”

The bakers nodded, more than ready to begin, just waiting for the official go-ahead.

“On your marks,”

“Get set,”

“Bake!”

“So Remus,” Sirius said as he came up to Remus’ station a little bit in. “What’re you baking for us this week?”

‘You’d think you’d remember, considering I’ve been hand feeding them to you all week.’ Remus wanted to say. But of course instead he just smiled and continued weighing his sugar.

“Lemon and lavender.” He said, offering a sprig of lavender to sniff. “It tastes good, but it also smells so good. It’s a win-win really.”

Remus very pointedly did not look at the way Sirius crushed the flower between his thumb and forefinger before lifting his hand to his face to take a delicate sniff. Remus had to bite down a retort about his etiquette and instead began grating the lemon rind.

“Well it certainly looks good so far,” Sirius said, so perfectly camera-ready and ready to make some wholesome family entertainment. Remus just smiled at him and returned to his work as Sirius drifted off to chat to some of the others.

Remus made the biscuits in a bit of a haze to be perfectly honest. He had originally been surprised when he discovered the challenge was shortbreads - he thought they might be a tad simple for something as grand as the semi finals, but he learned pretty quickly that if you looked away for a second, these little bastards would go and burn on you.

“You look all nice and innocent now,” Remus said to his dough as he folded in the lemon and lavender. “But I know it’s all for show.”

“Remus, sweetheart?” Marleen asked, coming up to his station.

“Yes?”

“Are you talking to yourself?”

Remus flushed. “No… I’m talking to my dough,”

Marlene nodded bemused. “Because that’s much more normal.”

Remus bit his lip. “Yes?” He said again a lot more hesitantly. Marlene just laughed and began to move on. “You sure are one hell of a man Remus Lupin.”

Remus just chuckled as he started rolling out his dough.

“What’ve you done now?” Lily asked, half teasing, half curious as she came back from the bathroom. “I leave for five minutes and I miss everything.”

Remus flicked a bit of extra flour at her as he passed by, leaving tiny white flecks speckled like snow in her hair. “Nothing you haven’t heard a hundred times before.”

“Oh were you talking to your cakes again?”

“Yup.”

“I should’ve known.”

Remus sat with his back against Lily’s station as he stared at his oven.

“Remus?” James said tentatively.

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever hear that expression - ‘a watched pot never boils’?”

Remus just raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look towards James. “Likewise I think you could say; a watched shortbread never burns.”

James laughed as he slid onto the floor next to him. “You know what? That’s fair, I can get on board with this.”

Remus knew several cameras were trained on them but he didn’t look. “Oi, James, I think you’re using talking to me as a chance to sit on your arse.”

James slung an arm over Remus’ shoulder. “Oh Remus, my love, my life, how you wound me.”

“You can stay if you make us tea.” Remus offered and nearly choked on his laughter when James half-flew from his perch to boil the kettle.

“You drive a hard bargain, but you have yourself a deal Remus.”

Remus smiled and a few minutes later he happily accepted a steaming mug from James as they both just stared into his oven.

“Psst, Remus,” James whispered. Remus gleaned over at him wryly.

“Yes?”

“Is it supposed to be this boring?”

“Doing practically nothing and getting paid for it? Why yes, yes I believe it is.”

James laughed but didn’t say any more for a moment. Remus was suddenly very aware that he was sitting next to one of the very few people who knew about himself and Sirius. He liked James, he liked him a lot and while they got on great, they had never really spent any time just the two of them. And while this wasn’t exactly the two of them hanging out - they were literally working, surrounded by people and being filmed nonetheless, it still felt a little important. Remus wished he could say something, but there was no real way to say ‘Hey, I’m falling for your best mate, let’s get to know each other better’ and be totally discreet. But James reached over and ruffled his hair once and when Remus shoved him off, laughing, he knew.

James was thinking that too.

Remus kept staring at the oven, but on the inside, he was smiling. He and James would be good friends.

James moved on after a little while, but Remus stayed where he was. At one point, he took the tray out of the oven and covered it loosely with tin foil.

“You cover it lightly, like this, see?” He explained for the camera, “This is a good trick for cakes especially - it’ll keep cooking but it prevents the top from burning. Our oven when I was growing up was a bit dodgy and it loved to burn the tops of my cakes while the inside wouldn’t even be cooked, that’s why I picked this trick up.”

Marlene grinned and gave him a thumbs up. “That might be the longest time I ‘ve filmed you without you cursing.”

“Fuck yes! Wait shit, I mean fuck, I mean, ugh just go.”

Marlene left laughing and Remus popped his tray back in the oven, making sure the tin foil was only covering the top - not secured around it, otherwise the cookies would just sweat inside and go soggy.

Remus had just taken them out of the oven to start plating them when Sirius called the ten minute mark.

“Christ this will be interesting.” Remus muttered, again to himself as he started transferring the, still hot, biscuits onto the plate.

“Don’t break, don’t break, don’t break.” He chanted, managing to get ten transferred successfully until the eleventh split in two.

“Oh you fucker.” Remus cursed, rearranging everything so he could hide it under the others. The rest however went well and in the end he had twenty four pretty good looking biscuits, all stacked neatly.

The judges came in, smiling at them. Remus had thought they might become more open when there were fewer of them, but it had seemed the opposite. He figured they must to want to get attached to anyone, let it influence or bias their decision. That was the best call, but Remus was still a little disappointed, he’d looked up to them all his life and he had barely interacted with them ever since he’d arrived.

“Mr Lupin,” McGonagall greeted as they arrived at his station, “What’ve you got for us today?”

“Lemon and lavender.” Remus said and it only took about seven weeks, but his voice didn’t tremble at all.

Dumbledore took one first, breaking it in half. “It doesn’t have the ‘snap’ we were looking for, but that’s probably just because they’re still a little warm.”

They both took a bite and there was the awkward sound of nothing but their chewing for a moment. “These are excellent.” McGonagall said and Remus thought this was it, he could die happy now. An ‘excellent’ from McGonagall, he was set.

“The flavours are lovely, and you balanced it quite well, I was worried the lavender would be too overpowering.”

Remus laughed, remembering the first time he had tried it, using so much lavender they had tasted more like soap than cookies. “A little goes a long way.” He admitted.

They both nodded, smiling as they chewed and then they were gone. Remus sighed as he sat down, those challenges were getting simultaneously more and less nerve wrecking. He was growing accustomed to them, which helped, but the stakes were infinitely higher than they had ever been before.

Remus welcomed the lunch break gratefully, all of them taking the hour to relax. They had all done really well on the challenge. Which was good, Remus supposed, but it meant there really was some tough competition if he wanted to stay.

They grabbed a spare tablecloth and threw it on the grass, collapsing down on it. Lily lay with her head in Remus’ lap and Remus had to hide his laugh when both James and Sirius looked slightly put out by it. Tonks spent the entire time trying to re-do her hair which had all fallen from the tight braids she had that morning, until Kingsley offered to take over, his fingers quick and nimble, even with Tonks’ short hair.

“Damn Kingsley, a man of many talents.” Sirius said with a low whistle.

“I think,” James began grandly, “I think that we should all just go to sleep.”

“That would make a riveting episode.” Remus agreed, I can see it now, half an hour of footage of us just sleeping.”

Lily snorted. “I mean, we could finally clear up the ‘does Remus snore’ issue. I vote yes.”

“Nah, he doesn’t.” Sirius said, Remus’ eyes snapping to him, heart pounding in his chest as he watched Sirius realise what he said. “That’s what I’d vote for anyway.” He said quickly, rushing to recover. "Look at him, does he look like someone who snores to you?”

Remus laughed, trying to move past the moment. “It’s Lily who snores.”

“I do not!” Lily protested, sitting up. “You know who snores? Tonks.”

Tonks flicked her newly plaited hair. “I shall neither confirm nor deny.”

“Translation,” Sirius added, “She definitely snores.”

“I think everyone snores, they're just all in denial.” Kingsley said, and everyone laughed, continuing eating.

“Except for me.” James said, breaking their silence and everyone just groaned. Remus lay back, staring up at the sky through the trees. All was good.

“Welcome back for our technical challenge!” Sirius welcomed as soon as the cameras had begun recording. “For today’s challenge, our judges would like you to make jammie dodgers.”

A burst of surprise lit in Remus’ chest, he had never actually made jammie dodgers, but they were a favourite of his grandmothers, so he used to always have them whenever he would go visit her.

“The biscuit should be buttery and hard, with a jam filling of your choosing.” James elaborated, clasping his hands together. “Judges? Anything to say?”

“We’d also like to see a shape in the centre of the cookie.” Dumbledore added. “Which is of course, of your own choosing.”

“Okay well thanks for that.” Sirius said, beginning to shoo them out. “Now off you go, you cheeky buggers.”

The entire tent burst out laughing and Remus knew he’d have to mock Sirius for that one later.

“Alright well, if no one see’s Sirius after today it’s because McGonagall has given him detention.” James quipped.

“Ready?”

“Set.”

“Bake!”

Remus lifted the white and blue checked cloth to peep at his little pile of ingredients and equipment.

“I don’t think I’ve had jammie dodgers since I was ten and visiting my gran.” Lily called and Remus chuckled, turning around.

“That’s literally exactly what I was thinking.”

“Hot take,” Tonks said, throwing a tea towel in their direction to get their attention, the cameras circling them all like vultures. “Only grannies like jammie dodgers, McGonagall set this challenge and hence, she has big grandmother energy.”

“Um, no,” Remus sassed. “If anyone’s the granny of the pair, it’s obviously Dumbledore.”

“Remus is the granny of our group so I think he knows best.” Lily agreed, gesturing wildly at Remus’ cream knit cardigan. Remus just laughed as he rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands.

“If I’m a granny then I’m those cool ones who teach the kids curse words and give them ice cream even when the parents say no.”

Kingsley looked up from where he was intensely studying his recipe and nodded. “Remus is a cool nan; confirmed.”

Everyone applauded and Remus took a little bow. “Thank you, thank you very much. It's such an honour and as much as I’d love to address it and give you guys an hour long speech, I’m not gonna ‘cause we have a fuck ton of work to do.”

“Remus!” Marlene shrieked and he blew her a kiss. All in all, things were going well.

“These biscuits are going to be the death of me.” Remus half sang to himself as he coated his cookie cutter with far more flour than one would ever deem necessary but the dough kept sticking and Remus’ perfect circles were looking a little less than perfect. Or circular. They were more like strange blobs. His actual grandmother would have found them charming. McGonagall on the other hand, well Remus figured she’d think otherwise.

“Come on you little fucker.” He murmured and finally he managed to cut one out properly. “Oh thank fuck. Okay right let's keep this going.”

His dough seemed to agree that holding it’s shape did indeed seem to be the best course of action and pretty quickly, they were ready to be filled with jam.

“Hey Re, how’s it going over here?” Sirius asked as he came over, leaning his elbows on Remus’ counter.

“Alright, I’m just about to put the jam in.”

Sirius perked up, peering into the pot waiting on the hob. “Ooh, what kind of jam did you make?”

Remus grabbed a teaspoon and gave it to Sirius. “Try it and see.”

Sirius eyed him, “Just so you know, I’m sure your jam is excellent but I will have no idea what flavour it is.”

Remus laughed, grabbing a spoon himself to start coating the biscuits. “Just give it a go, I think even you will get this one.”

Sirius looked dubious, but did as he was told. Remus didn’t watch the way his boyfriend’s lips closed around the spoon, nope, no sir. He was a perfect professional.

(But for the record, Sirius had lovely lips).

Sirius hummed for a minute, taking his time. Taking so long in fact, Remus had assembled four whole biscuits by the time he finally, tentatively mumbled; “Raspberry?”

Remus grinned. “Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!”

Sirius’s face lit up with such excitement, Remus would swear he was like a little puppy. “Really? Is it actually raspberry?”

“Yup.” Remus affirmed, popping the ‘p’ as he placed the top on another cookie. “You’re doing amazing sweetie.”

Sirius grinned and moved on just as Remus finished putting all the pieces together. E had to say, he was pretty happy with how neat the all looked, finally shaped like actual circles with a perfect little hole in the middle. He sprinkled some castor sugar over the tops and popped them in the oven, setting the timer and then he could finally relax for a moment.

“Does anyone want a cup of tea?” He asked the crew and spent the next few minutes boiling and reboiling the kettle as he took orders and made more cups of tea than Mrs Doyle in ‘Father Ted’. The remainder of all their biscuits from the last challenge were still hanging around, so Remus and the others passed them out too, everyone enjoying a nice tea break in the middle of filming. None of this section would make it into the actual final cut anyways, it never did. No one wanted to spend their night watching a bunch of strangers stare into their ovens.

The puff of hot air when Remus opened the oven was intense, but it softened and soon the tent smelled warm and welcoming. Remus transferred his biscuits carefully (none of them breaking this time) and put them on the plate just before Sirius called time.

“Alright bakers, please bring your biscuits to the table at the top of the tent.

The table looked strikingly empty with only four pictures on it. In Remus’ mind there were still ten of them, but moments like this swiftly brought in back to reality. His place today was the last in the line, furthest away from the judges, just after Kingsley. They all took their seats and then; the judges were brought in.

“Hello again everyone.” McGonagall greeted. “I hope you all haven’t been cheeky buggers.” She said with a glance towards Sirius. Sirius shot her a wink and Remus hand to cover his mouth to stop himself from laughing.

“Right then,” Dumbledore cut in, “Let’s get started shall we?”

Lily was first and her blueberry jam went down nicely. Tonks’ elderberry jam wasn’t quite as well received - she had been a little light on the sugar and it was a tad tart apparently. Not that Remus would know but, he took their word for it. Kingsley’s was ‘unexpected’, a salted vanilla jam that Remus absolutely had to try and finally, it was Remus’ turn to be judged.

“These are a lovely golden colour to start,” McGonagall said as he picked one up, biting into it. And then she smiled.

Remus nearly stopped breathing, he got a smile from McGonagall.

“These remind me of my youth.” Dumbledore commented, unaware of the absolute chaos that was Remus’ brain in that moment.

“Me too, I love the raspberry - sometimes it’s nice to stick to the classics.” McGonagall said and then they were finished and talking quietly amongst themselves to rank them. Remus was holding hands with both Tonks and Lily, Lily on his right and Tonks on his left.

“Okay right, let’s start.” McGonagall said and once again, they were off.

“I can’t believe you called McGonagall a cheeky bugger.” Remus said as he lay with his head on Sirius’ chest that night, tucked under the quilt all snuggly and warm.

“I regret nothing.” Sirius hummed, squeezing Remus’ waist. “You know what I can believe? That you won the technical.”

Remus let out an amused huff. “You’re an eejit oh my god.”

“A loveable eejit though.” Sirius countered. Remus rolled his eyes but agreed. “Yeah, a loveable eejit.”

“Half way through this week’s episode.” Remus commented, stating the obvious. Sirius’ chest rumbled gently beneath him when he would speak.

“Woah, we’re halfway there-”

Remus twisted, resting his chin on his hands so he could peer up at Sirius. “Are you really singing Bon Jovi right now?”

Sirius shrugged, smirking. “Living on a prayer, baby.”

Remus traced Sirius’ bottom lip with his thumb. “I always hated ‘baby’ as a pet name, but you say it and I just…” His words left him so he just pressed forward, kissing Sirius. The arm around his waist coiled tighter and his hair was lovingly pushed back as he pulled away.

“So it’s good?” Sirius asked softly.

“Yeah sweetheart. Yeah, it’s good.”

“It’s time for our showstopper challenge!” James announced, looking far too peppy for seven o’ clock in the morning. Remus made a little mental note of that - Lily was a morning person too.

He was still tying his apron when Sirius continued; “For this challenge, our lovely judges have asked you to make any 3D structure or statue of your choosing.”

James picked up right where Sirius left off, the pair in perfect sync. “Your structure can be made of any kind of biscuit, and as many different types as you like, but it must be 3D and unsupported by anything inedible.”

“Basically,” Sirius translated for the audience, “We need to be able to eat it all.”

“On your marks,”

“Get set,”

“Bake!”

Remus cracked his knuckles and set to work, moving quickly. He had managed to perfect his idea in practice, he had even managed to do it all within the time limit, but he was cutting it close. He could do it all, he just had to move fast.

“How’s the house going Lily?”

Lily grinned, looking up from where she was measuring flour. “Well I’m not gonna lie Remus, currently, it’s not looking great.”

Remus laughed and went back to weighing his own ingredients. Lily was making a little replica of her house back at home. Or what she said was a replica. Honestly she could build Buckingham Palace and claimed she lived there and no one would be any wiser.

Remus was working with a lot of gingerbread today. For no particular reason, aside from the fact that it was easy to work with and good for holding its shape. Gingerbread houses were made of gingerbread for a reason. He also knew however, that everyone else had gingerbread in their structures somewhere, so they were all working to try to find ways to make theirs just that little bit different.

Remus had just put his first batch in the oven and was melting chocolate on his Bain Marie when Sirius arrived at his side.

“So Remus, what’ve you got for us today?”

“I’m making my bike.” Remus said, sliding the reference picture he had brought across the table. He saw the camera’s zoom in on it as Sirius looked it over.

“You ride a bike.” Sirius was saying. “Of course you ride a bike.”

Remus blushed. “It’s a good method of transportation I’ll have you know.”

“Can you drive?”

Remus glanced up from his chocolate at that. “Technically? Yes. Legally? No.”

Sirius laughed and all Remus wanted to do in that moment was lean forward and catch it, taste that laugh on his lips. Instead, he gave the chocolate a bit of a stir.

“Well I’ll leave you to it.” Sirius said and with that, he was gone. Remus left his chocolate melt as he went to make the biscuit for the wheels. They were going to be matcha an white chocolate and Remus just hoped they tasted okay because none of them were gluten free so he had never tasted them himself. The ‘metal’ part of the bike was gingerbread that would be coated in chocolate.

He took the gingerbread out of the oven right as he put the matcha in, taking a deep breath of the warm spicy scent. He quickly set them out on the cooling racks, as spaced out as possible because he needed to get them cooled quickly. While he was waiting in everything, he began setting up the plate he could be presenting it on, brushing it all with edible paint to look like grass with a country lane cutting through the middle. He grabbed one of the biscuits he had made just for this purpose and crumbled it up, sprinkling it over the plate to look like dirt.

After cutting the gingerbread ever so carefully into the shapes he needed, Remus coated them all with chocolate before pulling the matcha cookies out of the oven. He let them cool while he melted white chocolate and dark chocolate separately.

“Wow Lupin, you’ve got a lot going on here.” James said with a low whistle, standing back to watch Remus go back and forth between his several little tasks, stirring and cooling and assembling.

“Hi James. Can’t really talk - lot’s to do.”

“No worries, we’ll leave you to it. Just a heads up - there’s twenty minutes left.”

“Fuck, okay, thanks.” Remus said, not even glancing up as he went from the white chocolate to the dark.

He dipped the matcha in the white chocolate, setting those aside to cool as he ‘glued’ the bike together with chocolate, holding them in place as they dried.

“Fuck, fuck, I need more hands.” Remus glanced up frantically and spotted Sirius just leaving Tonks’ station. “Hey Sirius? Could I borrow you please?”

Sirius nodded and half jogged over. Remus sent him to wash his hands first, and then Sirius took his place holding the bike together while it dried so Remus could work on everything else.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He said, coming so close to kissing Sirius’ cheek before freezing and just moving past him.

“That’s alright.” Sirius grinned. “I’m here for more than just my good looks you know.”

“Oh really? What reasons would those be? Certainly not your sharp wit anyways.” Remus quipped, tapping Sirius’ hip lightly with his own.

“Oi! I could just leave you know!” Sirius said in mock outrage and Remus laughed as he filled his piping bag with dark chocolate.

“No, no, I’m sorry, please stay.” He met Sirius’ eyes and there it was just a second, but it might as well have been forever.

It would be easy to fall in love with him, Remus thought.

He blinked and secured the nozzle on the piping bag, pulling the matcha cookies close and piping the spikes and wheels of the bike on, trying to keep his hands steady and lines clean as possible.

“Okay Re, these are dry.” Sirius said, pulling his hands away to reveal all the pieces holding together on their own.

“Oh my god, amazing, thank you so much, I hereby set you free.”

Sirius brushed back a stray strand of hair, flashing that iconic Sirius Black smile. “No problem. Okay, this is your five minute warning.”

“Oh Christ, okay thanks go away so I can work please.”

Sirius’ laughter filled the tent but Remus wasn’t even smiling as he focused on setting the finishing touches. He added the wheels and carefully transferred the whole thing onto the plate-

“Bakers! Your time is up!”

Remus let out a sigh of relief as he stepped back, his bike looking pretty good, all assembled and plated. He was just pulling out his stool and sitting down when the judges walked in.

They loved Remus’. They loved all of them to be perfectly honest. This was the final, and everyone had brought their A-game. Tonks had made the leaning tower of Pisa. Kingsley had made a lovely little bookshelf, complete with little novels. Remus was more than a little jealous of that one, he had to admit. The judges were gone as quickly as they had come and the four contestants moved to sit at the top of the tent as they waited for their return.

“This is it.” Lily murmured. “Here we go.”

For the first time that day, Remus’ stomach was rolling. He wanted this so bad. It wasn’t even about winning - he just wanted to make it to the final. To prove it to little Remus, to his younger self who had dreamed about this. To his future self who could look back at this.

The judges emerged with Sirius and James, their faces blank and impossible to read.

James spoke first; “Today I have the honour of announcing our star baker.” He looked around at the four of them, pausing for dramatic effect. “Tonight, our star baker is… Kingsley.”

Remus grinned and patted Kinsley’s shoulder in congratulations. He nodded at them and at the judges, a little smile on his face, but his eyes were sparkling.

“That means I have the horrific job of announcing who’s going home.” Sirius said, his face looking actually drawn. Remus’ chest clenched, was it him? Was his boyfriend about to tell him he hadn’t made it?

“The person who won’t be joining us in this year's final is… Tonks.”

Remus’ heart soared and fell at the same time. He was staying, his friend was not.

He turned and pulled Tonks into a tight hug, her arms slipping around his waist.

“It’s alright,” She was saying, ever the positive presence, “I’m just happy to have made it here in the first place.” She pulled back and kissed Remus on the cheek before hugging Lily, the judges and presenters coming over to join them. Remus could hear McGonagall and Dumbledore talking to her, telling her how close it had been and that she was a truly fantastic baker and Remus smiled to himself. He met Sirius’ eyes and suddenly he wanted all of this to be done with so he could give a hug to the one person he actually wanted.

He sent Sirius a quick text a little later that he and Lily were going to be with Tonks, helping her pack. He laughed when Sirius responded with “Help her pack, or watch her pack?” Before he set his phone aside and went with Lily to Tonks’ room.

“Knock knock.” Lily said aloud, pushing the door that had been left slightly ajar, open. “It’s me and Re.”

“Hey guys!” Tonks said, her bright head popping out from the bathroom. “Come on in!”

Tonks was packing her toiletries so Lily and Remus threw themselves on her bed.

“We brought hot chocolate.” Remus boasted, luring Tonks out to them.

“Of course you did.” She said, sighing fondly. “I would expect no less from the two of you.”

Remus and Lily pulled her onto the bed, sitting her between them. They all sat with their backs against the headboard, legs out in front of them as they sipped their drinks.

“I can’t believe you’re not coming with us to the final.” Lily sighed, resting her head on Tonks’ shoulder.

“I know,” Tonks said, sliding her arm around Lily’s shoulder. “But I’ll be watching from home don’t you worry!”

“Any advice?” Remus joked.

Tonks raised an eyebrow, knocking her foot against Remus’. “I don’t think I’m the best person to get baking advice from, considering I’ve just been sent home, however I do have one or two things to say.”

“Oh?” Lily prompted.

None of them were even looking at each other, just staring straight ahead, but it was nice, peaceful. The window was cracked open ever so slightly, but the room was still warm and snuggly, made all the better by the abundance of hot chocolate.

“You, Lily Evans, need to get your act together and ask James out.”

“What?” Lily cried at the exact moment Remus enthusiastically nodded his head in agreement.

“Sorry Lily,” He said, leaning forward so he could see her. “But you totally do. The pair of you are mad for each other.”

“Oh you’re one to talk.” She scoffed, then covered her mouth, her eyes wide. Remus waved her off.

“It’s alright, I was going to tell her anyway.” He said to Lily, before turning to look at Tonks. “Sirius and I are dating.”

Tonks nodded. “Oh I know. I was just waiting for you to bring it up.”

Remus blinked a few times. “Wait, what?”

Tonks nodded like it was obvious. “Yeah, since like, the first week, right? It was so obvious, sure you were worse than Lily and James.”

Lily blushed, but Remus flushed harder. “We only started going out last week.” He spluttered, skin burning. That was the first thing that had surprised Tonks all night.

“Wait really? Fuck, why are boys so dumb?”

“Hey!” Remus protested, looking to Lily for help, but his friend just shrugged.

“It’s true.” She said, “They are.”

Tonks turned to look at her in accusation, pointing a long finger at Lily. “Exactly. Boys are dumb. You know this. That’s why you have to be the one to put James Potter out of his misery before you make the rest of us go insane just from watching you.”

Remus just laughed at Lily’s face and pulled Tonks in for a hug. “I’m gonna miss you.” He murmured as he kissed her iconic hair.

“Me too, but you guys can come visit, yeah?”

Remus smiled. “Oh, just try and stop me.”

Remus crept to Sirius’ room carefully, checking the hallway was clear before knocking on the door. Sirius opened it straight away, stepping aside to let Remus in before pulling him in for a kiss as soon as the door was closed.

“Hi,” Remus said, all breathy and amused. “I missed you.”

“You were with me all day.” Sirius quipped.

“Ah yes.” Remus agreed, wrapping his arms firmly around the shorter man, “But as you pointed out so astutely, there were other people there today.”

Sirius hummed happily into another kiss. “I do make an excellent point.”

Remus laughed and guided them both to the bed, the pair exhausted after a long day on their feet.

“Wanna watch a movie?” Remus asked softly as Sirius curled into his side. Sirius nodded and Remus grabbed the TV remote, turning it on with the press of a button.

“You made it to the final baby.” Sirius whispered, his voice smooth with sleep. Remus smiled, running his thumb soothingly over the skin of Sirius’ waist, just under the elastic of his sweatpants.

“I did. Now sleep love, I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Night Re.”

Remus smiled and brushed back Sirius’ inky hair as a movie began to play.

“Night darling.”

#let them eat cake #let them eat cake chapter 6 #LTEC #wolfstar bake off au #wolfstar #wolfstar au #Remus Lupin #Sirius Black #Lily Evans #tonks #nymphadora tonks #kingsley shacklebolt #minerva mcgonagall #dumbledore #the great british bake off #tgbbo

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supercharmed-forever-mine · 3 years

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Today I will be addressing SuperCorp and some of the issues that have been floating around about fandom. And I will be saying some stuff that both is for it and could be used against it even though I am ultimately a super big supercorp fan. Like it says in the tags you're free to express your opinion but they will not be changing mine but I am always open-minded to opinions that can actually be explained and eloquently expressed (receipt's needed) and aren't just basic. Also just so what is noted I have been a part of this fandom since the first episode I have literally shipped Kara with everyone from Lucy to Cat even James.But Lena has just stuck out the most for me but I'm Equal opportunity.

Number #1, Lena's character in no way shape or form has ever been xenophobic she has never once shown any hate towards aliens her problem with Kara in season 5 Wasn't because she was an alien it was because she was a "Super" like Kara could have been a flying purple fucking octopus from the planet of shzjxfdf and Lena wouldn't have gave two fucks but no she was a "Super"but let's dig deeper on that point if we really look at why she was mad it wasn't even the whole alien aspect it was because she wasn't told and no I don't think she's entitled to it but I do think it played into the fact of a trust issue she has with the fact that people would think she would be just like Lex if she had been told Sooner. Which is disproved in 5x13 (also personal note: I also think she wouldn't have reacted half as bad if Kara had just told her that night at game night or the next day when she wanted to probably still would have been pissed but not to the same extent). But okay with that being said I do disagree with the kryptonite entrapment torture scene and basically half the s*** she did in season 5 it was shown that she truly can tap into her Luthor side and be dark when wanted but fortunately she does always return to the light and in all fairness it has been shown several times that Kara has a dark side of her own that could rival the luthors.

Number #2, I do disagree with the abuse of actresses and actors just because of a ship and or character they play don't blame them it's just a job they have I think Melissa and Katie do a beautiful job of bringing Kara and Lena's characters to life couldn't imagine anybody else playing them.

Number #3, I also will say about the reason bombarding of comments on Nicole's social media at least I saw the video via tiktok in that video was fucking hilarious I love Nia, Dreamer,and Nicole in general she's funny and beautiful and is an advocate for everything good in life and well it is normal to even ask other actors if they have the scoop on anything it does not mean we need to be bombarding them in videos on something relating to their character or their love of something a simple comment or so maybe but what I saw NO.

Number #4, The William of it all well I think though his character seems like a nice gentleman he also seems to be bland as hell also I did not know he was a POC to be honest I thought he was a tan white man and we'll be doing further research on people in the future as I can learn from my ignorance also but unrelated I did not know that the woman who played Maggie was apparently just a tan white woman I thought she was of some sort of Hispanic descent but apparently not according to various things I've read on here tonight... But anyways back to William I feel like a lot of people might have perceived him as a white man therefore that might play into the whole scenario of people hate that they just want two white woman together when it proves if she was a man they wouldn't give two f**** about it whether that's true or not I don't know but mine two cents.

Number #5, I will never bash someone for being for or against a certain ship and or character and well I am allowed to certainly disagree with their opinion all opinions are valid because we all see the world a different way some see it bright and shiny and others like I'll admit myself see it through the glasses of trauma. And I think that's why we all have the opinions we do most of the time when you like a shipper character it's because you relate to them somehow even if it's the most minor thing to someone else it might be huge for you. You never know what the person on the other side of the screen is going through in those characters or ship or fanfiction might have literally saved their lives.

Sidenote: Like okay personal story I was been both mentally and sexually abused as a child so I relate to both Kara and Lena respective childhood trauma so that draws me to them. And I kind of see them both as the opposite attract trope (two side of the same coin) because well we never fully get over trauma Kara had a great support system with the Danvers whereas Lena didn't get that with the luthors I mean sure she had Lex at first but even that was only to a certain extent because of his psychopathy that was starting to manifest he couldn't perceive human emotions the same as Lena who in my opinion is just a big mushy nerd who can be a badass when needed as evident by the season 6 episodes after she's quit L-Corp she's constantly trying to help out inventing new stuff and she's wondering how Nia's suit works and it just shows that she just has a curious mind and also she looks happier even with the guilt she feels over Kara's phantom zone incident when Nia called her a part of the family that smile could lit up a city all she's ever wanted is to belong and I can relate to that therefore to her.

Number #6, I feel like this should have been addressed in earlier number but as far as sexuality goes I would want to believe Kara is pansexual because of everything I've ever read and saw I don't believe she perceived sexuality like humans do because of her Kryptonian upbringing for the first good chunk of the life. Like even though she says she's not gay in the first episode, A. It was the first episode so they didn't even know where the story was going in future seasons if they got them also that means maybe she just didn't perceive herself as the Earth's definition of gay. B. Even in the first season she made a comment about how she bought Lucy was gorgeous and hell she would date her. C. She made some comments about Irma and other woman that don't sound totally heterosexual and don't get me wrong women can admire the beauty and intelligence of other women without it being sexual but as a bisexual woman it just struck a cord in me you can tell the difference when it's coming from a straight woman mouth. Now on the subject of her and Lena strictly I do think there are instances of "queerbaiting"because just because you perceive they haven't been promised to us doesn't mean that some of us haven't picked up on things or the fact that they're simply queerbating because somehow they do hype up Kara and Lena to keep a nice chunk of the audience who ships them mainly those of the gay variety interested in the show which is also considered queerbaiting. Also the fact that they've been called sisters or family or my personal favorite "that's what friends are for"doesn't mean crap because honestly at this point the overuse of friends just sounds more like they're trying to convince themselves than us.*** Also I don't know about you but even on the basic level of things they've done I've never shown half those feelings towards my friends and the ones I have it's because I started to think of them as more than friends.

Now with Lena's sexuality no they have never shown her as anything besides straight canonically but don't get me wrong she totally sends off that college experimentation vibe especially with Andrea for some reason but that may just be me.

Number #7, my main point is let's just be kind to one another because guess what there is toxicity from every ship in a fandom there will always be shitty people on both sides and then there will be those of us who just want to see the characters together for one reason or another and yes I'm not afraid to admit that part of my reasons I want to see two gorgeous woman kiss sue me LOL.

Number #8, the conclusion of my rant is that how about we leave the hating to the ones who want to do that and the rest of us like adults or whatever your age is in the fandom that has any type of maturity behave because I truly do wish the best and in the end well I hope they end up together I'm realistic that they probably won't especially due to the CW Network motto of "homophobia and racism"because they've already broken up several good gay and interracial couples on that show. But at the end of the day my true wish is just that all of the characters end up happy and healthy.

Best of luck to all shippers out there anti and supercorp and or any other couple alike may we try to make it out of this with a modicum of sanity and even if they fail us we always have fanfiction thank you and good night.

#SuperCorp #anti supercorp #anti lena luthor #supercorp endgame #melissa benoist #katie mcgrath #william dey #supergirl #wlw ship

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silvadour · 3 years

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Attack on Titan: The End of an Era - Final Chapter Review

Disclaimer: This blog post contains MASSIVE spoilers towards the ending of Attack on Titan as well as the greater series. If you wish not to be spoiled on certain story aspects and character revelations, I kindly suggest reading the manga or waiting for the 2nd half of the Final Season to be released in Winter 2022. Furthermore, if you are not caught up with this and read this post anyway, kindly refrain from spreading information presented here as not to spoil the experience for other readers and watchers that have yet to see the very end of the story.

And now without further ado, let is begin with the blog post.

Well, we’ve reached the endpoint, we arrived at that scenic view. Attack on Titan’s story has finally ended and if I’m being frank with you…I’m satisfied with it.

I have to say it’s always a weird feeling of coming to face the truth that a story you like and have invested many years reading has finally come to an end, there’s just an underlying feeling that you wanna deny the reality of it but you also can’t deny that sense of closure you gain from it either. While the series started way back in the year 2009, I did not get invested in the manga’s story until late 2013 when the anime’s first season finished airing. And my experience with AoT has been a strange one. As a young teen, I was impressed by the action on display so much that I began craving more of it like a crack-headed squirrel; this, in turn, led me to read through internet message boards and forums for possible new information on the stories developments which unsurprisingly led me to find spoilers of later events (particularly the case with Reiner and Bertholdt’s identities) However, even by the time I reached that revelation in the story in the existence of the Coordinate plot element came into play, I was aboard for the dramatic thrill ride ever since. And by the time I was reading it and the story shifted from fighting humanoid monsters to actual humans in the Royal Government/Coup d’etat arc, I started thinking of Attack on Titan as a rather niche series that only a few people could understand even with its ridiculous surge of popularity in the early 2010s, and I never could have anticipated back then on how emotionally attached I would be to this series nor how well it portrays a morally grey story where both participating parties of an ongoing war suffer from the circumstances of their character and nature.

The opening page to the series

As a modern monthly shonen series, I can say that it’s certainly a step above other manga of its type in how it re-frames familiar shonen archetypes in much more grounded and grim settings, and I find that it’s because of that grounded feeling found in its writing and setting that Attack on Titan has garnered such a large following for the elements in the story make themselves easier for audiences to distill themselves in similar situations, the narrative creates a sense of audience inclusivity that allows readers to imagine themselves in situations of survival. However, once I heard the series would end at 139 chapters apart of me was wondering if the series would have enough time to address aspects of established lore and give character arcs a fitting conclusion, and suffice it to say, the series accomplished that though some feelings on them I’m still processing. So knowing this I think it would be best to tackle the ending of Attack on Titan by discussing each of the established themes and characters one at a time, starting with the theme of freedom and liberty.

“To either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain”

Freedom and Liberty:

One of the major recurring themes in the story of AoT is that of the nature of finding true freedom. Freedom as a concept is described as the ability to speak, act or think by one’s own accord; freedom can be individual yet it can also be shared with various individuals. The story always made the best attempts at portraying both the positive and negative aspects of freedom in a morally grey manner. While the idea of wanting to do something of your own will, it all becomes a different story altogether depending on what the actions initiated from that free will end up being. One person’s freedom would naturally come to blows with the freedom of a collective group and trying to determine who is more rightfully just in their expression is never given a clear cut answer, case in point Eren’s yearning to be free of a world where he and his people aren’t demonized or viewed as cattle comes to blows with the antagonists’ (the nation of Marley) yearning to freely put him and the other Subjects of Ymir in their place as the two parties eventually engage in a long-standing war that has spanned for centuries. In an essay by John Stuart Mill, he presents an argument for the nature of human liberty that frames it as a double-edged sword; while it may stand as a tool to defend oneself from oppression and tyranny, it in of itself can be used as a tool to enforce other individuals into compliance and agreement should they not initially comply to certain established schools of thought. The expression of freedom is never displayed in an absolute black and white morality as each of the opposing parties have valid justifications for their expressions of personal freedoms (the nation of Marley’s long history being under the terror of the old Eldian Empire, and the island of Paradis being constantly invaded by Titans from Marley due to their history), rather the expressions freedoms are made due to self-interest.

Zeke describing Marley’s plan of action in order to ensure its future as a world superpower.

This is seen numerous times throughout the series, Ymir (104th Cadet) being used as a scapegoat for the cult that took her in, Erwin’s planned scapegoat execution during the royal government arc to ensure the original monarchy’s total rule over the population within the walls, the world nations following the bandwagon of Eldian discrimination as a political tactic of gaining advantages for the development of their nations through the extortion of the many Eldians around the world. Even with the characters that are standing on the “good” side still hold feelings of seeking self-interest as they are allowed so, solely due to the fact to want and something and act upon is part of their birthright just like any other human; case in point Eren and Historia at their most standout moments before the time-skip which would eventually coalesce with Eren’s meeting of the Founder, Ymir Fritz. This now brings me to the man himself, Eren Yeager.

Eren Yeager/Ymir Fritz:

When I first got into Attack on Titan, my opinion on the writing for Eren, especially in the manga’s early run, landed generally around middling. However, over time as I got further invested in the TV adaptation, I made attempts on doing retrospective rewatches to see whether my opinions on certain aspects of the story had changed; and during this time I found that my opinion of Eren changed to that of a more positive one. Throughout the series I saw this driven teenager coming to terms with his situation as a potential key for his people’s future, learning to quell his anger, as well coming to face the reality of his various failures all to eventually crack under the weight of the expectations he has placed onto himself, finally re-discovering his self-worth through the relationships he’s made with people closest to him only to have his reality crash right into his face when he finally discovers the truth of the world which bruises his idealistic nature.

To many of the fans that have seen Eren’s exploits in the latest season, his change in character might have come as a jarring shift since he has shifted to focus on eradicating the Titans to now eradicating the invaders of his home island. While the shift to different targets might seem like a strange change on the surface, fundamentally, Eren Yeager is still relatively the same character he was initially portrayed as, the only difference is that some of his more notable traits such as his anger, his battle tactics, and self-expression have just been more hardened due to the nature of his and homeland’s circumstances.

Eren is a prime believer of freedom, that any person is entitled to live free without feeling as if their freedoms are being imposed by others, solely on the basis that they were born into the living world. Should someone pose a threat to his freedom, he will not hesitate to steal freedom from others. And from the beginning till the very ending of the series his character writing remains consistent. Eren is a man lashing out against a prejudiced world that views him and his people as pure evil, he lashes not just for the sake of his freedom but for the freedom of those he cares for. However, throughout that lashing and emotional hardening he becomes something different from how he initially perceived himself.

For most of the manga’s final arc, Eren’s detached demeanor he presents onto his friends serves to highlight how he faces his challenges; he is more of a person that suppresses his grief and other vulnerable emotions because he has no choice but to appear strong and move forward when he cries out the world for something he wants, as a person ostracized by the world, his actions are indicative of the world telling him that he is not allowed to be viewed as a human being. His repeated fighting against Marley and the other allied nations can almost be interpreted as a cry for help. And throughout these actions, Eren was always consciously aware of his actions and the consequences that would be brought upon them, but he would never reveal his true feelings until he reached his two final goals, Ymir Fritz and his ultimate fate. When Eren first encountered Ymir Fritz he saw her as the absolute ruler of the Power of the Titans and wished to use her to finally make his true ambitions become a reality, however, during that process Eren realized that Ymir was so much more than a divine being. In his embrace of the Founder and in seeing her past through the Paths realm, Eren came to realize that Ymir was simply a human that much like him was ostracized and forced to harden her emotions out of fear of being further abused for appearing as weak; who trapped herself in ethereal realm due to her misguided understanding of “love” she had for her abuser, Karl Fritz I.

In recognizing her as a human, Eren sets Ymir free to finally act upon her own will for the first time in over 2000 years.

Personally, in this particular moment of Eren embracing Ymir with a hug and telling her the words she always wanted to hear “you are a human being”, I feel as if those words themselves are what Eren wanted to hear from someone who truly understood him and his reasons for going as far as does. Eren fights because he wants to end all fighting in the world, but he doesn’t know any other method besides fighting, much like Ymir, Eren needed someone to free him from himself. I find that Kenny Ackerman’s final words resonate with this scenario very strongly in retrospect: “We humans, are all the same…every last one of us. All of us had to spend our lives drunk on something or else we’d have no cause to keep pushing on. Everyone was a slave to something” (S03E10)

Eren’s “freedom” upon reaching that scenery he foresaw in his future visions.

At the moment of that embrace, Eren was fundamentally just like Ymir, a human child unable to cry due to repressing their emotions, Eren was only able to reach his external and internal goals in the final chapter through his relationship with Mikasa and Armin in their final interactions in which he imparted his freedoms and his dream to the two people he cared about most in the entire world. That being said in his fight for obtaining the ideal freedom for himself and his people, Eren only realized in his very last conversation with Armin that the freedom he sought after wasn’t only his. Armin’s final heart-to-heart made him re-acknowledge that the weight of his dreams for an ideal world shouldn’t be his to bear, even if ended endangering him and his loved ones. By refusing to entrust his dreams onto others, Eren was becoming a slave to his ambitions (in fact his appearance as the Founding Titan portrays him as a marionette), only to be finally set free (and possibly reincarnated as a bird, a common symbol of freedom in literature) by his best friend when he comes to understand him and offer him peace for all he has done for the sake of his people.

In his final meeting, Eren’s true self as the boy who lost all things he cherished in the beginning of the series confides with his best friend Armin on the actions and choices he has made, as well as finally reciprocating Mikasa's feelings of love.

Closing thoughts:

Overall, I find that Eren’s motivations and his character arc met my expectations of how I somewhat imagined the series would end. It didn’t end on a completely misanthropic note, but rather a bittersweet hopeful one. As even though the island of Paradis establishes a new military under Eren’s splinter cell faction, the Yeagerists, there is hope found in Armin carrying out the role that Eren always saw him, a hero and a purveyor of peace, as he, Jean, Connie, Annie, Reiner, and Pieck now taking on the role as ambassadors for the remaining population of Earth, embark to Paradis to begin peace negotiations. Whether the treaty succeeds is left entirely to the reader’s imagination (or Isayama adding more context in the volume edition of this chapter), but what I find truly beautiful about this ending of a series with clearly morally gray divisions, is that the people of those same divisions finally came to the realization that they are simply just people. They are not devils or angels, they are simply just people; not that much different from one another and willing to try and exist in a better tomorrow with each other. And what I love about this ending, even more, is that it finally bookends some goals and declarations that were said in the first half of the series: Eren wanting to eradicate the existence of Titans became a reality, after Eren’s death Armin took responsibility in claim he killed in turn that leads him to be viewed as a hero and purveyor for peace, Eren wrapping his scarf around Mikasa, all of these character declarations coming back in some unique form makes me love this series even more.

Your heart and soul to the cause.

Some may complain that this ending is not that great for it still doesn’t explain certain aspects of the story such as the nature of the Power of the Titans or the identity of Historia’s baby daddy or just general lack of presence in the final arc, but personally, I am content in not receiving a clear answer to some of those aspects, mostly because they either don’t matter or are already narratively complete, plus their open-ended-ness just offers me more chances to think about some aspects of the story and promote discussions around it. And while the use of mental time-travel ala Seers from Game of Thrones that were displayed by Eren’s use of the Attack Titan’ innate ability in the Paths realm, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t unsure or somewhat conflicted by the existence of mental time-travel; especially when time-travel as a narrative concept is INCREDIBLY easy to mess up. However, aside from these minor gripes, these were my overall thoughts towards the ending of Attack on Titan, we have reached the end of the story where Eren, Mikasa, and Armin’s respective character arcs came to a narratively true and satisfying conclusion. This is definitely a notable end of an era in the world of manga and pop culture. And without much left to say, all I can do is offer a salute to the author Hajime Isayama for his dedication to this story.

Thank you, Hajime Isayama.

#Attack on Titan #manga #AoT spoilers #AOT 139 #snk spoilers #text post #long post #shingeki no kyojin #thank you hajime isayama #Eren Yeager #Ymir Fritz #Armin Arlert

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blorbosexterminator · 3 years

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Sergio's not gonna die, he is needed for a possible re-opening of the show. Palermo is too obvious (and that matters to pina), Raquel was already fake-killed. OTOH, Denver: has a lot more protagonism this season, with flashback and all, he is a universally beloved character (always a good candidate to kill), Jaime Lorente has been seen in some town with pedro and alba filming (prob flashback but why with those 2?). 90% sure he's the dead (if anyone).

Honestly, the only thing that would truly surprise me at this point if they indeed don't kill anyone next volume. Would be a move™, I'll give them that. But yes, I do think that they'll go with Denver too, and it has been foreshadowed to be honest. Doesn't change how much I dislike and genuinely disagree with that choice though. I don't think the actor would be up for a spin-off honestly, but anyway Sergio only has the element of surprise and the parallel with his father (the show is too fond of parallels lmfao) not much else to make his death a good choice.

And as you said, Palermo is predictable. And I imagine, with how politically aware™ the show is this season, they might also try to avoid the 'bury your gays' trope.

The thing is, most of what you and I just listed are just meta-textual reasons. I'm not saying those reasons have no place at all when considering writing choices, of course not, but I do disapprove, generally speaking, of writers taking this too much into account when writing their finales.

Sergio would be shocking to a more extent than the others, but that doesn't make him any more a good choice. Denver would guarantee as much of an angry and frustrated reaction as Nairobi (Although I honestly don't dislike Nairobi's death as much as everyone else. I thought it was well-played to an extent) and would have a strong emotional response plus parallels with Moscu, but to me it would be very misplayed.

I wasn't really talking about what I expect from the show as much as what I personally believe is a good writing choice. I most expect Denver to die, but I think Palermo is the most fitting choice.

Like sure, those things are subjective, and they change from one fan to the other as well as from one writer to the other. But just because the death of a character is predictable doesn't mean it's not the most fitting choice for the situation. Not really, I think it means the audience sees something there.

Look, before anyone starts assuming I just *want* Martín to die to see some afterlife scene for my ship, or even a parallel. Yeah, sure, preferablly as a fan of them I'd love this, but I don't think they are in any way necessar. To me, they would just be peppering that would make the death scene nicer stylistically speaking. I don't even think the show canonized the after-life or something of the sort, again I just think they are a mere stylistic choice. I wouldn't be at all actually bothered if we got nothing of the sort.

I just wholly believe the best choice to go with for both textual and meta-textual reasons is Palermo. First, the meta-textual ones, despite the fact that I disapprove of how they got there, I have to admit that the show managed to get him to be more likable this season. General audiences that have previously hated the hell out of him like him enough now. But at the same time Martín is still not Sergio, Raquel, or Denver. His death would cause some sadness and emotional response in the audience but not literal rage and feeling of betrayel, like say for example how GOT fans felt. Also, Martín now has enough alive characters that care about him that would make his death sad. It's unlikely an audience would give a shit about a character's death if none of the surrounding characters do. But now there is Helsinki, who incidentally Martín is also much nicer and caring towards this season, so Helsi would have "good reasons" to react strongly to his death, Sergio supposedly also cares for Martín, and we can say Raquel respects him. So the characters around him wouldn't be indifferent, especially if his death has value in the narrative, say an actual sacrifice for the rest of them. The show itself is VERY fond of the sort of arc that goes along the line 'Selfish character who caused harm and pain to all around them reaches selfishness and then sacrifices their life for the sake of the others.' It happened with Berlin, it happened with Tokyo. And it seems is effective enough. So if I were the writer and wanted a death that is effective but won't anger audience too much, I'd 100% go with him.

And again, a point is Martín even has something that neither Tokyo nor Andrés did, he had a very direct hand in the killing of a very beloved team member. Sure, you can say Tokyo had a hand in what happened to Moscu, but Tokyo legitimately had very little choice because she couldn't find Sergio and she had no intention to do harm, she didn't know her entrance would literally cost the man's life. Martín knew very, very well what Gandia was capable of and this is exactly why he did what he did.

Martín is narratively still responsible for Nairobi's death and took no hand in even avenging her from Gandia. That was Bogota and then Tokyo. And the character seems to be weighted by that guilt to a large extent. And I think the absolute best way for the narrative to resolve this point is by Martín dying directly to save Helsinki, who the show also made a point of also incapacitating, and I'd imagine that would have repercussions on how efficient getting out of the bank would be on him. Characters rarely get injured just for the sake of it, Nairobi's terrible injury from Alicia made her much more susceptible to Gandia, who had a huge leverage on her as she was physically incapable of resisting anything. (I imagine Monica's situation would also have repercussions--hopefully just not on Denver lmfao)

So despite generally not being a fan at all of the pairing in any way or form, and how they generally make no sense to me, with how the show is going now it's definitely best for Martín to die partially for his plan and partially for Helsinki.

Like ideally, what I'd personally most love to see and what I'd personally write a 2573 different fic versions of, is for Martín to die for his plan and for Sergio. I personally believe outside of the plan, Martín's most important relationship in his arc is with Sergio. But the show already ignored their relationship enough this volume as a first and Sergio already got the strong death scenes with Berlin and Tokyo as a second, it could be seen as an excess. But with Helsinki it's meaningful on a different level. The character Nairobi cared about the most is Helsinki (and he's also nearly as well-liked by the audience), so this would balance what he did to Nairobi in a pretty significant way, not completely out-do it, but the two acts would definitely balance each other. To both the audience and to the characters, Martín would be truly "redeemed." Which despite how much I dislike, and genuinely don't agree with it, the show is already putting a lot of focus on his 'redemption'. I don't like redemption arcs generally speaking, I don't think Martín is fit for it, and I don't think it's happening in an organic way at all, and I frankly believe it made him boring, but alas, it is what is is, the show is already half-way there, it already took that route, so the only end for it is to finish it and go all the way. It would be very useless if he ended up surviving lmfao.

And of course the other reason is for Martín's personal arc. The plan is his life's work, the thing he showed most loyality and love to from the moment he showed up 2 seasons ago, the end of his arc is with the end of his plan. Never mind how A LOT of scenes would be useless if Martín doesn't actually die for the success of the plan; the whole reason Sergio opposed it so strongly is because, in his own words, it was completely suicidal. Sure, you can say that they already proved the plan is dangerous by the army going in and all of this "war", but there was no Rio, Raquel, Plan Paris or Plan Roman in the original plan, so there would have been no reason for things to go that bad in that respect, all that happened in volume one is by direct consquence of the plan changing, so that still leaves the question why was Berlin and Palermo's plan so wrong and so suicidal if we don't take into account this war? If there is no answer and if there is no answer that is actually anchored by a death in canon, then those were really all just empty scenes. And of course it's Martín, the mastermind and engineer, the artist who crafted this poem, that has to die for its completion and overall success. Since day one, his arc has been tied intimately to this plan, we barely even know anything about him beyond it. And like, three people died for the mint heist and it was a plan made to work perfectly without a single flaw, where does this put a heist that was just full of romanticism and complete focus on the gold with disregard to the people? All of the scenes we saw of Sergio rejecting the bank heist in the flashbacks on that basis have to mean something now.

Against all of this, what does Denver have? What will his death signify? Nothing, in my opinion. The man didn't even want to be there. Also I guarantee you, if he does die for Monica the way he said, every single fan will turn against her and the hate the character will receive will be insane. Like why end the story of those two characters this way? What is there beyond edginess and grimness for their own sake?

Martín's death, even if it causes sadness, will be satisfying for his character. Besides, Martín as a character is too much like Tokyo, I don't imagine he himself would be very satisfied growing old and dying under the radar somewhere; going with a blaze now, sealing off his life's work and having his death mean something too is a much, much more satisfying ending for him.

Tldr; Palermo in a very balanced position to kill, especially that he is currently the actual leader, a position the show has given him with more space and better, much nicer spotlight now than in the third season. And I imagine with volume two focused more on extracting the gold, his role will get only bigger in that respect. He's still responsible for Nairobi's death. And he should 100% die for the Gold and the completion of his plan.

#asks #lcdp #Martín Berrote #Sergio Marquina #lcdp Denver #Monver

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beatriceeagle · 5 years

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I'm more of a fantasy than sci-fi person, but consider my interest piqued. Why should I watch farscape?

Okay, the thing is, every Farscape fan’s pitch on Why You, Yes You, Should Watch Farscape ends up sounding very similar, and that’s because Farscape is a black hole that sucks you in and does things to your brain, and after you’ve watched it you are never, ever the same, which incidentally is basically the plot of Farscape.

I would summarize the basic plot for you, but that’s work, and luckily, the show’s credits sequence includes a handy summary that I will provide instead of doing that work: “My name is John Crichton, an astronaut. A radiation wave hit, and I got shot through a wormhole. Now I’m lost in some distant part of the universe on a ship, a living ship, full of strange alien life forms. Help me. Listen, please. Is there anybody out there who can hear me? I’m being hunted by an insane military commander. Doing everything I can. I’m just looking for a way home.“

So let me break down that monologue into its component reasons you should watch Farscape.

1) Some of the strange alien life forms are Muppets.

Farscape a co-production with the Jim Henson Company, and while there are many aliens played by humans in make-up, there are also a considerable number (including two of the regular crew) who are Muppets. By which I do not mean Kermit. I mean really gorgeous, elaborate works of art.

Also, even a lot of the humans-in-makeup aliens just look cool, and incredibly weird. Here’s an alien who appears in a single episode of season 1:

Not that there aren’t, you know, occasional Star Trek-style “these guys are just humans with weird hair,” or whatever, but in general, the aliens on Farscape look really alien. And that’s more than an aesthetic choice; it’s Farscape’s driving narrative principle. The aliens look alien, they act alien, they have alien values.

You know how a lot of sci-fi shows will have a stand-in for “fuck,” like Battlestar Galactica has “frak”? Well, Farscape has “frell.” And also “dren.” And yotz, hezmana, mivonks, loomas, tralk, snurch, eema, drannit, dench, biznak, arn, drad, fahrbot, narl. Some of those are swear words, but some of them are just words, never explicitly translated, that the alien characters will pepper into their speech, because, well, why should translator microbes be able to completely translate all the nuances of an alien culture? You’ll pick it up from context. One time, in passing, a character mentions that he’s familiar with the concept of suicide, but there’s no word for it in his language. I cannot emphasize to you enough how fleeting this moment is; the episode is not about suicide, we’re not having a great exchange of cultural ideas—at the time, the characters are running down a corridor in a crisis, as they are about 70 percent of the time—it’s just that the subject got brought up, and this character needed to talk around the fact that he literally didn’t have a word, in that moment. Things like that happen all the time, on Farscape.

Because more than anything else, Farscape is a show about culture shock. John Crichton is this straight, white Southern guy, at the top of his game—he’s an astronaut! he’s incredibly high status!—and then he ends up on the other side of the galaxy, where none of his cultural markers of privilege hold any meaning, where he doesn’t know the rules, where he literally can’t even open the doors. And he has to unlearn the idea that humanity is central, that he is the norm.

2) John Crichton, an astronaut, is pretty great.

A show that’s about a straight white guy with high status having to learn that he’s not the center of the universe could easily be centered around a really insufferable person, but one of the subtle things that makes Farscape so wonderful is that Crichton is, for the most part, pretty excellent. He has a lot of presumptions to unlearn because almost anyone in his cultural position would, but he’s also just a stand-up guy: compassionate, intelligent, open-minded, decent, forgiving, brave, hopeful.

And the galaxy tries to kick a whole lot of that out of him. It doesn’t succeed, mostly, but if Farscape is about anything other than culture shock, it’s about the lasting effects of trauma. How you can go through a wormhole one person, and experience things that turn you into someone you don’t recognize.

That’s kind of grim-sounding, but ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that Farscape is almost fanatically devoted to character work. Crichton is not the only character who sounds like he should be one thing and ends up being another. All of the characters—all of them, all of them, even the annoying ones—are complicated wonders. And you don’t have to wonder whether the events of the episode you’re watching are going to matter. They will. Everything that happens to the characters leaves a mark. Everything leaves them forever changed. Whether it’s mentioned explicitly or not—and often enough, it’s not explicit—the characters remember what has happened to them.

3) The living ship houses a lot of excellent women, among them the ship itself.

Ah, the women of Farscape, thou art the loves of my fucking life.

There’s Aeryn Sun, former Peacekeeper (that’s the military that the “insane military commander” hails from) now fugitive, currently learning the meaning of the word “compassion” (literally). She will break your fingers and also your heart. John/Aeryn is the main canon romantic ship.

There’s Pa’u Zhoto Zhaan, a priestess of the ninth level, current pacifist, former anarchist. Sorry, leading anarchist. She orgasms in bright light! (Oh my god, Farscape.)

There’s Chiana, my fucking bestie, a teenage(ish? ages in Farscape are weird) fugitive on the run from a repressive authoritarian state. Chiana is like a seductress con artist grifter thief who mostly just wants to survive so that she can have fun, damn it. Characters on Farscape do not really discuss sexualities (sex, yes, sexualities, no) and it would be fair to say that several of them do not fall along human sexuality lines generally, but I’m gonna go ahead and say that Chiana is canonically not straight.

Then there’s Moya, the ship herself, and it’s hard to get a straight read on Moya’s personality, since she mostly can’t speak. But she definitely has opinions, and things and people she cares about. And she moves the plot, though that gets into spoiler territory.

Past first season, further excellent women show up: Jool (controversial, but I like her), Sikozu (I once saw a Tumblr meme where someone had marked down that Sikozu would lose her shit when someone pronounced “gif” wrong, and that’s absolutely correct, and it’s why I love her), and Noranti (who is incredibly weird, and incredibly hard to summarize, but man, you gotta love her willingness to just show up and do her thing). Plus, there’s a recurring female villain, Grayza, who I could write probably multiple essays about. (I don’t know how you will feel about Grayza, as not everyone loves her, but I think she’s fucking fascinating, especially because she’s not actually the only recurring female villain. We also get Ahkna!)

(Side note: I should mention, here, that the cast of Farscape is really, really white. There is one cast member of color, Lani Tupu, but he pretty much represents the entirety of even, like, incidental diversity in casting for the series.)

Anyway, Farscape is full of awesome women, and also awesome and unexpected men, and it really enjoys playing with audience expectations of gender roles, generally. Literal entire books have been written about the way that Farscape fucks around with sex, sexuality, and gender. It’s a little weird because it was the late 90s/early 2000s, and sometimes that does come through, but Farscape’s guiding principle was always to try not to present American culture of the time as the norm, so like. It is not.

(An aside on Farscape and sex: Literally every character on Farscape has sexual tension with every other character. If you are a shipper, this is a Good Show, because no matter who you ship, there will not only be subtext, you will get a Moment of some kind. Multiple characters kiss the Muppet. Farscape is dedicated to getting into the nitty-gritty of the galaxy—I like to think of it as showing the guts of the universe—so a lot of the show is kind of squishy. They live on a biomechanoid ship, instead of androids there are “bioloids,” there’s a lot of focus on strange alien biologies, and lots of weird glowing fluids and things. I think the sex thing is kind of part and parcel of the larger biology focus: Farscape is really fascinated with how we all eat and evolve and live and die and, well, fuck. Which is in turn, kind of part of its focus on making everything really alien.)

4) Other stuff you should know.

Farscape as a whole is excellent, but it was kind of the product of creative anarchy—an Australian/American coproduction (oh yeah, everyone except Crichton speaks with an Australian accent) that was also partnered with the Henson company, whose showrunners were based in America but whose actual production all took place in Australia, and who was just constantly trying new things. So individual episodes can vary wildly in quality. It really takes off in the back half of season one, but no season is without a few off episodes.

It is extraordinarily funny, and I really think I haven’t stressed that enough. It’s one of the shows I want to quote the most in my daily life, but almost all of its humor is really context-dependent, and if you just wander around going, “Hey Stark? What’s black and white, and black and white, and black and white?” people look at you really funny.

It’s very conversant with pop culture generally (although obviously sci-fi specifically, and Star Trek most specifically of all) and really enjoys deconstructing tropes, often to the effect of, “Well, Crichton really does not know what to do here, does he?” but sometimes just to be interesting.

There are also a lot of themes about science, and its uses and misuses.

The whole thing is fucking epic, and if you get invested at all, will take you on an emotional ride.

This show is weird. I know that that’s probably come across by now, but I think it’s worth reiterating as its own point: Farscape is so weird. Like, proudly, unabashedly, trying its hardest, weird. An amazing kind of weird.

If you’re into fantasy, you should know that there’s a recurring villain who’s just a wizard. Like, they don’t bother to explain it any more than that, he’s just a fucking wizard.

In summary: You should watch Farscape because it is a weird, wild, emotional, epic romance/drama/action/allegory full of Muppets and leather and one-liners and emotional gut punches and love, and if you let it, it will worm its way into you and never let go, which, now that I think of it, is another Farscape plot.

Send me meta prompts to distract me from my migraine!

#farscape #meta

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iamdeku · 3 years

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Friday (I’m In Love): Oikawa x Reader

You don’t know Oikawa Tooru. You don’t want to know Oikawa Tooru. But when fate and circumstance bring you two together, you’re forced to confront, over a series of Fridays, your worst fear. You might have been wrong. Also, you might be in love.

Wordcount: 4.3k

Warnings: Some brief bullying from a girl I accidentally named Annoying. Pining.

Oikawa Tooru was one of the most obnoxious guys you had ever met. He thought he was the coolest guy in school, and he was not at all shy about sharing that opinion. He never stopped talking about himself in that high-pitched, whiny voice of his. You hated him.

So why you had agreed to tutor him was beyond you.

You supposed it paid well enough, but you were dreading your first session. You had prepared yourself to bite your tongue until it bled through his mansplaining. You were probably going to want to die by the end of the experience, but at least you would have some extra cash for the holidays.

Your boots kicked through the drifts of snow, pure as a coal miner after a long day doing overtime. The cold ice crunched under your weight, and you pulled your coat closer, wishing you had a scarf to help provide protection against the biting wind from the cold flushed skin on your face. Your headphones offered some protection to your ears at least, blasting your favorite song in an effort to raise your spirits.

The warm rush of the library’s heating system slammed into you in a wall of heat as you searched for the annoying setter. It took you longer than you thought to find him, expecting the loud man you knew and instead finding someone significantly more studious. He was hunched over one of the library tables, gray cardigan wrapped around his body, glasses perched on his nose.

You hoisted your satchel more firmly up your shoulder, bracing yourself for whatever weird thing was about to happen. Was he trying to look like he knew what he was talking about? Did he want to show off? You really weren’t sure.

You were hesitant to venture forward, but you did anyway, taking a seat next to him. Oikawa immediately looked up, blinking at you a couple of times before giving one of his usual smiles.

“Oh good, you’re here! As much as I’m great at everything, I have to admit that this has been giving me a little bit of trouble. I was so happy to hear you could help me. Iwa-chan won’t anymore, that traitor.”

You couldn’t blame Iwaizume for getting frustrated with Oikawa’s behavior, even if he had chosen to befriend the disaster sitting casually in front of you. You pulled out your books, writing utensils and laptop. You were a self-professed nerd, so you had brought a surplus of pens, highlighters, and other instruments to the table. You had a reputation to keep up after all.

“Well, I guess we should get to work. What part of this are you having trouble understanding?” You asked, pulling open your textbook.

Oikawa explained his troubles to you, and you were surprised to find how intelligent he was. Everything he found difficult to understand was...well, understandable. You could see why he would struggle in those areas, and for some of them you had struggled as well, despite this being your favorite subject.

Even more surprising, you found out he could be a good listener when he wanted to be. It was alarming, actually, how attentively he could listen. Damn it, he took notes on the things you said, writing down the important parts of your explanations.

As you started to pack up, you saw sparks of the Oikawa you knew.

“Thanks for that, cutie. You’re pretty smart, you know? Of course, you’re smart enough to already know that. Besides, I wouldn’t have asked you to tutor me if you weren’t the best.” He winked. “See you next Friday.”

He didn’t even ask if you wanted to meet him next week. Gosh, he was the worst.

Even with Oikawa “I’m the Worst” Tooru dragging you down, you were still resolved to keep showing up to these tutoring sessions. They weren’t half as bad as you thought they would be, and you hadn’t stopped needing the money. You could have gotten a better gig, but frankly this was a pretty easy job, easier than you thought it would be. It was, loathe though you were to say it, the best option.

Besides, you were the kind of person who kept their promises, though you weren’t sure you could say the same of Oikawa.

He was late. He was a whole 3 minutes late and you were only on your second session. If he kept up this kind of behavior you were going to have to have a serious discussion with him about timeliness. Your time was valuable, and none of this had anything at all to do with you needing something to justify your dislike of him.

You were halfway through writing your future lecture on timeliness when Oikawa arrived, slightly breathless and windswept, cheeks pink from the cold. Despite looking as though he had run all the way here, he had the nerve to still look all handsome and charismatic. It irritated you.

“Sorry about being late. The guys and I were practicing volleyball and we totally lost track of time.”

He gave you a sheepish smile, recognizing his mistake, and something in the general area of your chest did a little flip. It was probably a rib rotating in disgust.

“It’s alright. Just don’t let it happen again.”

Oikawa gave you his signature charming smile as he sat next to you.

“You know, you could stand to loosen up a little. I know you’re more fun than this, somewhere deep down in that nerdy little heart of yours.”

You rolled your eyes. “It’s not my job to be having fun with you.”

“Ah, but it could be.”

“Just open your textbook, Oikawa-san.”

He pulled the book out of his bag, flipping it open on the desk but not bothering to look down at it.

“Come on. Seriously. I got a way better grade than usual on the pop quiz we got this week. I feel like I should thank you for everything you’re doing for me. What are you doing tomorrow?”

The truthful, sad answer was that you were doing nothing at all, actually. You had tried to make plans with your friends, but they were all “busy” with something or other. While it pained you deeply, Oikawa was right. You had no social life.

You sighed. “I’m not busy tomorrow.”

“Well, that settles it then. The guys and I have practice. You can come watch the end of it if you want, and then we’re all going out for dinner. You should come.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Oikawa’s face lit up in a way you hadn’t expected, and he smiled down at his textbook as he turned it to the relevant page.

“Good. Prove to us that you can have fun after all.”

“Watch it. You’ll remember it’s in your best interest to stay in my good graces.”

Oikawa just laughed at your threat like it was meaningless. He was right to do it. You hated to admit it, but even now he was starting to grow on you.

Oikawa started explaining what he was having trouble with, and just as you were really getting into your subject, you were interrupted by a shrill scream. You stiffened in immediate panic, swiveling in your chair to find the source of the sound. Oikawa, on the other hand, looked momentarily annoyed before pulling his Prince Charming façade into place.

“Oh my gosh!!! Tooru-kun is that you!”

You felt a wave of deep-set annoyance go through you at the girl’s tone of voice. Not only had she caused you to be genuinely alarmed, but she was clearly being way to familiar with Oikawa, unless he had a girlfriend you hadn’t heard about.

“Hey there!” Oikawa turned to face the girl headed towards you, an indulgent smile on his face.

“Oh my gosh! I saw your practice earlier and you were like, so good.” The girl gushed.

“Thank you. That’s very nice of you to say.” Oikawa seemed genuinely flattered at this, if you were so bold as to assume you could tell the difference between the fake him and the real him.

The girl giggled, stars in her eyes before they turned to you, darkening dramatically. “Oh, who is this? Is she like, your girlfriend or something?”

You didn’t like the turn the girl’s tone of voice had taken. There was something distinctly catty to the way she said the world ‘girlfriend’ that made your stomach turn. You had met plenty of mean girls in your life, and now alarm bells were going off in your head.

“No, no. Just my lovely tutor. She’s helping me out in my worst class. She’s very talented.”

Oikawa seemed to have picked up on the change in tone, shifting slightly to be in front of you. Presumably, this was to block you from the daggers the girl was glaring at you.

“Remind me your name, would you?” Oikawa’s smile had grown tense.

“Oh, my name is Miko! How could you forget?” She pouted elaborately.

“Silly me!” If at all possible, Oikawa’s megawatt smile grew brighter as he caught her attention again, drawing her in once more. “I remember now. How have you been, Miko-san?”

You smirked to yourself at the honorific, so different from how she had referred to him earlier.

“I’ve been great! Way better now that I get to catch up with you. I missed you!” She stuck out her lower lip like she was trying to catch something with it.

“Well, I hope to see you at my next game, once we’re back in season. Thanks so much for stopping by!”

Oikawa’s body turned towards the table, clearly indicating that the conversation was over. Miko didn’t get the message.

“What are you studying? Maybe I can join you. I’m pretty smart, you know.”

You had officially had enough. You stood from your place, glaring at the girl in a similar fashion to how she had looked at you earlier, but for very different reasons.

“Listen, Miko-chan,” you said, purposefully pitching your voice up into an imitation of her own calling for Oikawa. “I don’t know who you think you are, but this is a tutoring session. So unless you intend to pay me for my services, I really am going to need you to find somewhere else in this rather large library to study.”

The girl turned to you, and you expected some kind of temper tantrum, maybe a few crocodile tears before she walked away, but what you got was far worse. She smiled at you sickly sweet, planting a hand on your table and leaning in.

“Pay you for your services? Oh, so I guess you’re nothing more than a common who-”

Oikawa stood from his chair, the legs loudly scraping across the floor as he grabbed her arm. He turned her to face him harshly, and you would never forget the look on his face. You had seen the prince of Aoba Johsai wear many faces, most of them some version of the charming, charismatic boy you knew. You had never before seen the look of cold rage he wore now, grip firm on her forearm as he practically snarled at her.

“You’re not going to call her that. You’re not going to call anyone that ever. If I see you at one of my games, I will make sure you are promptly escorted out. Leave. Now.”

The girl stood still for a moment, frozen in terror, before turning on her heel and bolting as Oikawa released her. You blinked in shock a few times, unaware that your classmate was capable of such emotion, let alone such anger.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” you said quietly, the first words to cross your mind. “She’ll go around telling everyone you’re an awful person now. I wouldn’t be surprised if you got in trouble or if she started some kind of weird hate club.”

Oikawa scowled as he sat back down, mind clearly still elsewhere.

“I don’t care. People shouldn’t talk to you like that. Nothing about what she just did was okay. Whatever repercussions I face for that, so be it.”

You stared at him in surprise. Oikawa had come to your defense, at no personal gain to himself. Sure, anyone should have done that, but you never thought he would. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

“Hey.” You nudged his side gently, and he softened, looking down at you. “That invitation to your practice still open? I think I’d like to see you play. I hear you’re ‘so great’ or something.”

He smiled again at your gentle teasing. “Yeah. We’d love to have you.”

As the months went on, you began to acknowledge that Oikawa was not what you had thought he was. Reluctant as you were to admit it, you considered him a friend now. As you had grown to know him better, it became obvious that everything you had thought about Oikawa before had been a mask he put up to impress people.

“If you keep poking me with that pencil, I will stab you in the eye with it,” you mumbled, not bothering to look up from your paper until a soft spring breeze floated through the library door as it opened.

“Iwa-chan! She’s being mean again!” Oikawa whined.

Iwaizume, ready to join your Friday study session, cast a lazy gaze over the both of you, assessing the situation in half a second.

He shrugged. “It looks like you deserved it.”

“I’m wounded, Iwa!” Oikawa threw an arm over his chest, falling back in his chair.

You rolled your eyes even as a smile tugged at your mouth. You had gotten used to Oikawa misbehaving. Some might go so far as to say you liked it. Some might even go so far as to say you liked him.

You would deny it if asked, of course. The way you blushed when he complimented you was the same as the way you blushed when anyone complimented you. The warm tingle left on your skin when he touched you was just because he was warm, infecting you with it, burning you alive. And the way you couldn’t breathe around him sometimes? Well, nobody could prove that.

Nobody could prove that Oikawa Tooru was your best friend, and nobody could prove that you were in love with your best friend.

Oikawa rested his head on your shoulder, and you wish you could say you had long learned how to ignore the jump of your heart, but you were only human. You still caught your breath, still felt an ache somewhere in your chest when he did it. It was the sort of feeling you got when you saw something in a shop window you couldn’t have but amplified by a million. It was so strong that sometimes you wanted to scream it out, wanted to stomp your feet and throw a fit like a kid in the grocery aisle because you wanted something you couldn’t have but oh, how you wanted it.

It consumed you some days, the way you wanted Oikawa. The way you wanted to peel back his layers, make him reveal that real self you caught glimpses of when he was with you. The soft boy who cried during sad movies, the brave boy who fought for you when you were sad, the silly boy who made faces just to get a rise out of you. It creeped like a sickness through your bones until you wanted to throw up, wanted to lay in bed all day in your sticky sweet misery and sob taffy tears, taste them on your tongue.

“Who are you going with to the spring dance?” Oikawa asked you, breath blowing against your neck in a way he couldn’t know sent shivers through you.

“I’m not going,” you said, returning to your textbook now that Iwaizume had established his presence.

Oikawa sat up, posture stiff with his indignance.

“Not going? How can you be not going? I know for a fact there are at least 5 boys planning to ask you.”

“They asked. I said no. I’m not going.”

“Why not? It will be fun!”

You grit your teeth, trying to ignore the nasty feeling in your gut. You couldn’t very well tell him that you didn’t want to go just to watch him dance with every member of his little fan club. You refused to explain how absolutely heartbreakingly awful it would be to go and watch him rotate through his carousel of girls, all of them beautiful, all of them wanting him, none of them you.

“I’m studying. You know, that thing smart people do when they want to pass their classes?”

Iwaizume snorted.

“I know what studying is.” Oikawa glared. “I thought you would want to come, though. I figured you would already have a dress picked out and a date and everything.”

For a guy trying to convince you to go to this thing, Oikawa sounded almost sad talking about it. He especially seemed rather melancholy at the prospect of your date. You wondered if maybe one of your potential dates was somebody Oikawa hated or something. Not that it mattered, since you had turned them all away.

“I don’t really want to go. These things aren’t really fun anyway. Besides, all the guys who asked me were jerks.”

“That’s true,” Iwaizume said. “Didn’t Itsuki ask you? That guy got in 4 fights just this week. Pretty sure I heard him in the bathroom bragging about…actually, never mind. Point is he’s a jerk.”

“Trust me, I know. They were all like that, too.” You groaned. “If one decent guy had asked me, maybe I would have gone, but apparently there’s something about me that draws in the Itsuki’s of the world. So, I’m not going. I’m just going to stay home and watch tacky movies and do homework.”

“Go with me.”

You froze at Oikawa’s offer. He couldn’t be serious. Didn’t he already have a date? Didn’t he already have girls lining up around the block to go to this stupid thing with him?

“Don’t you already have a date? I thought…” You trailed off, unsure what exactly you had thought.

“No. I…I heard the person I was planning to ask was rejecting everyone who asked her. Didn’t want to risk it.”

For whatever reason, Iwaizume rolled his eyes from where he sat across from you.

“Okay. Well…can’t you just go with one of your fangirls?”

You weren’t sure why exactly you were fighting this. This was what you had wanted, but not like this. You had wanted him to ask you because he liked you, not because he was too afraid to ask some other girl who was apparently too good for the student body population.

“I don’t want to go with them. I want to go with somebody I like.”

Oikawa’s soft brown eyes were too earnest staring into your face. You couldn’t say no to him when he looked at you like that, so open and vulnerable you could almost pretend it was a confession. It would have been terribly cruel of you to turn him down now.

You sighed. “I guess I have to buy a dress now.”

Oikawa smiled. “Yay! You don’t deserve to be cooped up all night in your room. I promise I’ll make this fun for you.”

“You’d better,” you teased. “I’ll tell you once I know the color of the dress. That way you can match your tie.”

“Perfect.”

If you closed your eyes and didn’t think about it too hard, you could almost pretend it was a real date.

When the Friday night of the dance came, you really did almost believe it was a real date. Oikawa had told you he was going to pick you up, but he hadn’t told you that he was going to bring a corsage or charm the pants off your parents. He was acting like you were the girl he had wanted to take this whole time.

He opened your door for you before you got into the car, taking your hand to help you balance as you stepped into the car in your heels. You were dumbstruck when he reached over to buckle you in and make sure you were safe before heading over to the driver’s side. You tried frantically to control your breathing as he got the car started.

It was a short drive to the school, but the whole way there you could barely talk to him, trying to figure out his game. Was he doing this because he didn’t want you to feel like you were missing out? That had to be it. He was probably just trying to show you what a good date was like.

When you got to the school, he helped you out of the car, and you finally admitted it to yourself. When he escorted you in, despite everything, you sort of felt like a princess. Oikawa looked so dashing in his tux, his tie matching the shade of your dress, everything coming together perfectly for a moment before it came crashing down with the realization that you were not the person he had wanted to take to this thing.

In spite of that, though, he seemed intent to act like it. Oikawa’s fan club mobbed you as soon as you entered, but he ignored all of them entirely for once.

“Sorry ladies, but as you can see, I am escorting my date. Any other day you know you all have my attention, but I’m afraid tonight is all about us.” He flashed you a shy smile as he said it, cheeks turning pink on the word us. “Do you want to dance?”

“Uh….sure.”

He was being weird about this. You didn’t have much time to think about that though before he swung you out on the dance floor, swaying you to the beat of the music. The first few songs were fast, but eventually they played a slow song, and so you two danced a slow dance, Oikawa’s hands settled gently on your waist and yours around his neck. He had you pulled close though, enough so that his head curved over your shoulder and your ear pressed against his.

“So, I was thinking,” he said.

“Oh no. That’s always dangerous.” You laughed a little bit.

“Haha, very funny. But seriously, we’re graduating soon, and I…I don’t want to lose you.”

You couldn’t see his face with the position you were in, but you could hear the tenderness of his voice. Your heart ached with it even as he voiced the thought you had been having for a while now. You were coming to the close of your final year and you had wondered if, when you were no longer in school, you would have to face the reality of Oikawa no longer wanting to spend time with you.

“I don’t want to lose you either,” you said softly.

“Yeah but…” Oikawa released a shaky sigh. “I don’t know if that means the same thing to you.”

Oikawa pulled back, far enough to look you in the eyes. You were too astonished to protest, staring up at him with your mouth fallen open in surprise.

“I want something more. I know you’ve just barely accepted me as a friend and you hardly even tolerate me and I know I’m annoying and loud and brash and obnoxious. I know all of that, but I need you to know that you’re everything I’m not. You’re gentle and smart and careful and considerate and you were the one I wanted to take to this dance. You. Not anyone else. That’s all I have to say.” He laughed bitterly. “I guess that’s my confession. I don’t expect you to accept it.”

Before you could stop him, he let go of you, starting to retreat through the crowd of dancing bodies around you.

“Tooru!” You used his first name in your excitement, forgetting any need to pretend distance.

He stopped when he heard you, a look of desperate hope on his face. You grabbed his hand, pulling him back into you.

“I wanted to come to the dance with you too. You’re my best friend, but you’re so much more than that. I’m so stupidly in love with you, but I never thought that you would feel the same. I do accept your feelings. All of them. Even the big, loud, obnoxious, dramatic ones. I love them. I love all of it. So let’s not lose each other. I was thinking that after we graduate, I’m probably going to go to college, but I don’t know if you have plans to go pro with your volleyball, or maybe-”

You were cut off when he grabbed your face between his hands, crushing your lips to his. Right there, in front of everybody, Oikawa Tooru started making out with you in the middle of the dance floor. Nobody really noticed the two extra teenagers kissing on the dance floor, but you felt your heart soar.

“We can work all of that out later. For now, I just want to dance with you.”

“And kiss me?” You teased.

“Yes. I would very much like to keep kissing you.”

You laughed, leaning into his shoulder again. The song changed, picking up pace to something more upbeat, and you changed your dance style in accordance with it. You could see Iwaizume on the side of the dance floor looking at you two approvingly, and when you made eye contact, he gave you a thumbs up.

Later, you would have to worry about college and volleyball and everything else. Eventually, it would all work out in the end, though not without some troubles. That Friday though, you danced the night away with your best friend turned boyfriend, and finally admitted to yourself that Oikawa Tooru was the best.

#hq #haikyuu!!#hq fic #oikawa tooru #oikawa #hq oikawa #oikawa x reader #oikawa tooru x reader

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wizardysseus · 3 years

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i was thinking about once upon a time (abc) in bed this morning so i decided to write this list

subject to change, since awhile ago i was in the middle of season 6 when they took it off netflix and i never quite got around to picking it back up. i’m gonna finish if it kills me i promise

top 5 things about once upon a time

5. anna frozen

when ouat introduced frozen characters, most fans decided the show had jumped the shark. they were not wrong. however, it was this very thing that allowed the show to be fun again! after an excruciatingly bad season 3 (we will get to that), bringing on anna and elsa literally transported directly from their own unaltered story in cheap ass versions of their unaltered movie costumes allowed the show to let loose and do... basically whatever it wanted. this became the hallmark of the show for those who stuck with it: absolutely not making sense at all, but being fun about it. post-season-three ouat becomes a totally different soap opera from season one, but by god you are never bored.*

personally, the flashback episode where anna annoys rumpelstiltskin and gets the better of him and he’s so fucking mad about it is like top 10 episodes**

4. 2x16 “the miller’s daughter”

this episode is just another personal favorite. it exemplifies what this show was really good at when it was good, and also where everything went wrong. i think cora is a great example of a good ouat villain, i think the twist on the rumpelstiltskin story is great, i think the dramatic beats really work.

...and in typical ouat fashion, cora immediately dies and two more villains we don’t care about at all are introduced. (sonequa forgive me you know i’m in love with you but tamara was nothing. it’s not your fault.) yes we get that great scene of snow aggressively doing archery practice while listening to “bad reputation” but was it worth killing off a compelling villain just as you’d dug into her story?

3. the commitment to regina’s redemption

and lana parrilla in general. i mean i’m gay and she’s hot but the worse the show got, the more acting lana gave it. and this is just speculation, but i think lana is more comfortable with drama than with camp? because regina becomes a much more interesting character as someone conflicted and on the path to redemption than as a villain. and by god, they were gonna redeem regina.

if only she had been gay we really could have had it all.

2. rumpelstiltskin

the sweet spot with rumpelstiltskin for me was seasons one and two when he was unabashedly bastard, there was an attempt to make him sympathetic but nobody except belle actually liked him, you weren’t quite sure how much he knew, he was pulling all the strings, and he was just really fucking weird. it will surprise no one who follows this blog to hear that that is my type of wizard.

1. season one

it’s a good season. it’s a good season. there are some bad things about it, but it was extremely watchable. it was doing fairy tales with occasional disney nods in a (mostly) cohesive fashion. the lore and the magic hadn’t sprawled out of control yet. it had the strongest relationship, imo, between emma and henry, and emma and snow. as for iconic episodes, most of the greats are here, plus sebastian stan as the mad hatter and giancarlo esposito as a series regular. the crowning moment for me is the scene at the end of skin deep, when regina confronts gold in the town jail and he reveals that he remembers his real name (after beating the shit out of belle’s dad with his cane obviously). god. that is some good television.

worst 5 things about once upon a time

5. the adoption politics but everyone knows this one.

4. WASTING the talent

you had the love of my life sonequa martin-green and gave her nothing. you somehow scored oded fehr as jafar and gave him nothing. you had giancarlo esposito and regina literally forgot he existed. i will kill you

3. rumpelstiltskin.

it’s no secret that robert carlyle was acting circles around most of the cast; my opinion is that the showrunners felt that if they committed to either his redemption or his villainy, they would never find someone else with the talent to fill his shoes as bastard wizard. so they flip-flopped on him every half-season, which ruins his story longterm, slowly kills the light in robert’s eyes, and gets reallllllly old. it’s also no secret that my favorite rumpelstiltskin is bastard wizard, but they screwed over belle BIG time in the process and for that i will never forgive them.

also like. the rumpelstiltskin fairy tale is antisemitic to begin with and they did not minimize that by comparing him to a lizard and naming his storybrooke counterpart mr gold. they just. did that.

2. THE FUCKING NEVERLAND ARC GOD IN CHRIIIIIIIIIIIST THAT HALF-SEASON IS EXCRUCIATING

1. captain hook

*it’s my opinion that if you are bored, you’re watching a hook-centric episode. every time i dropped the show and forgot about it for months at a time, it was because i had been in the middle of an episode about hook and just could not get through it. how do i describe all the things i don’t like about what killian hook jones did to the show? with subpoints!

1a. the episode where gold gives him back his hand and he never changes.

**this is actually the same episode i mentioned about anna and, like i said, it’s one of my favorites and not at all boring. look, i’m not pretending this list isn’t subjective as hell.

remember when hook blackmailed mr gold into magically reattaching his hand, which gold has been keeping in a jar, because hook has a date with emma and wants it to go well? but also, gold tells him that if he reattaches his hand with dark magic, it will turn him evil? and then hook spends the episode doing evil things, only for mr gold to tell him “i was just messing with you! the hand was not evil, you gave yourself permission to be evil ;)”

yeah, that’s basically hook’s mo.

1b. episode where emma tells him his brother is lying to him and he learns the exact wrong lesson from this and never changes.

so emma goes to the underworld to get hook back after he dies (while being evil and doing villainous things). they find his brother down there, too, and emma senses that he has a dark secret (because he does) and is lying to them (because he is). but hook always idolized his older brother, so he won't believe her. when emma confronts the brother directly, hook interrupts to rant to her about how he knows what this is ~really all about.

actual dialogue:

HOOK: i don't need proof to know what's really going on here. emma, when are you gonna admit that this isn't really about my brother? EMMA: what else would you think it was about? HOOK: us. you think if you can prove that liam is a villain, then i’ll somehow feel like i was less of one.

who... would EVER come to that conclusion. and why is the lesson he learns at the end “perhaps i do deserve saving after all” (another direct quote), and not “NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU, BECAUSE EMMA WAS LITERALLY RIGHT ABOUT YOUR BROTHER LYING TO EVERYONE”????

1c. the emma dark one arc, where hook never changes.

this would be the arc that leads up to the above underworld arc, and it is deeply dumb, entertaining, and hard to explain. suffice it to say, during this whole arc, killian (along with emma) has all the powers and ~~~Darkness~~~ of the dark one (formerly rumpelstiltskin). unlike emma, he is not aware of this for most of the season. the moment he finally finds out, he turns on emma and goes through with all the revenge plans he’s apparently been holding onto since season two.

it’s supposed to be sympathetic, because emma made this choice for him to be a dark one, which is clearly awful, when he didn’t want it. so i get that. but on the other hand, it is..... boring. because (a) it's nothing we haven't seen him try to do and fail at before, his motivations really aren't that complex. and more importantly, (b) he was the dark one the whole time! the only thing that changed, that made him act evil, was finding out about it. at that point, it's not the ~~~Darkness~~~ making you do evil things. it’s just you. because you’re a dick.

how is this arc resolved? well, he dies. after the underworld arc (which i very much enjoyed tbf), a sizable part of robin hood’s death episode is devoted to people telling emma to slow down and grieve for killian, since at least two arcs have revolved around her inability to let hook go when he is literally dying or dead. (it’s been said a million times but being his girlfriend really sucked the personality out of emma and i miss her.) and in the end he just... comes back anyway. no explanation given; he says it must be a reward from zeus for killing hades... while he and emma make out literally in front of the coffin of robin hood... who actually died fighting hades. killian died half a season before. while he was evil. and emma reverts to tearful girlfriend.

it’s insulting. it’s grating. and it is a Killian Hook Jones Guarantee that his episodes will involve some measure of this.

like, is it more or less the same shtick that the writers kept giving rumpelstiltskin, too? backsliding and screwing over his love interest who gets less and less say in the matter? yes. definitely. the crucial difference is that i, personally, love rumpelstiltskin, while i find hook boring and not self-aware. but clearly i have had a lot of fun complaining about him! again, this is not an objective list.

conclusions

this show ran for 7 years. it got cancelled not because it deserved to, but because no one liked the soft reboot. it was on until 2018.

#thoughts #once upon a time #long post

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