#but the Rand parts were so spot on

[butterflydm]

more WoT s3 spec - what we know vs what we're guessing at

I've been poking at what we know about s3 vs what we can reasonably guess, so I wanted to break that down a bit.

So there are a few things we know just about the structure of how the show has worked so far: we know they shoot in blocks of two episodes each and that each of those blocks is going to have the same director for both episodes. Because of this info, we can make some guesses at where specific episodes may land. We also have some casting info (wotseries.com being a great resource here).

They tend to have a major reveal in the fourth episode - Nynaeve being incredibly powerful in the One Power in 1x04; Selene being Lanfear in 2x04.

What we know for certain:

Rhuidean & the Waste will appear (Rand & Egwene's storyline).

Tanchico will appear (Nynaeve & Elayne's storyline).

The Two Rivers will appear (Perrin's storyline).

Rand and Perrin will each get focus episodes akin to Nynaeve having "What Might Be" and Egwene having "Eyes Without Pity" in s2.

We have four episode titles: "To Race The Shadow"; "A Glimpse of Crimson"; "Goldeneyes"; and "He Who Comes With The Dawn".

Sea Folk are confirmed for S3.

Potential leaks include:

Mat, Min, and Thom all being part of Nynaeve & Elayne's storyline in Tanchico. Big change for Mat & Min, but matches canon for Thom. And since show-onlys have only seen Thom with Mat and Rand, it would make sense to use Mat to re-introduce us to him.

Reports of the actresses reported to be playing Morgase and Elaida seen at a castle which is almost certainly in Caemlyn (Andoran banners spotted), most likely for the first or second episode due to the timing.

An actress playing Maigran (one of the Aiel from the Rhuidean glass columns sequence) is listed under the director who is being used for eps 3 and 4.

An actress has been cast to play an older version of Latra and I really like @wheeloftimeofficial's idea that we'll see her as the ancient Aes Sedai who establishes Rhuidean in the glass column memories, especially since the younger actress also has s3 listed on her CV.

We have (unofficially) confirmed castings for Faile & Galad.

Hints we've gotten from interviews & bts info:

In an interview filmed before the actors' strike, Daniel mentions Lan having some really good relationship scenes with Nynaeve, so we know that there's interaction between those characters before their plotlines separate, implying that we will not begin with everyone already all off on their separate journeys, like they were in 2x01.

Also from Daniel, it's implied that there are training scenes between Lan and Rand (could happen at any point, since Lan is likely to be in Rand's storyline the entire season).

From what Josha has said, the show will be pivoting to a more familial relationship between Egwene and Rand next season (which matches the book timing).

Rafe made a point of mentioning that Elayne healing Rand was to flag to the audience that this was a relationship to pay attention to (which implies we'll get at least some movement on that relationship in s3).

Josha also says that there is "way more togetherness" for Two Rivers' characters in s3 than in s2.

In an unrelated interview on screenrant, Rima Te Waita (Sheriam) mentioned that she will not be in s3 but, if s4 is greenlit, she will be in s4.

Josha and Ayoola posted some cute instas of each other after finishing up the South Africa shooting stint near Cape Town, which might be a hint towards our potential AviRand interactions (could also just be the actors being cute!).

Guesses based on book & show knowledge:

It seems likely to me that Gawyn & Galad will be introduced in the same episode as Morgase and Elaida, which I am tentatively going to guess will be episode 2.

I think that Verin, Alanna & their Warders are going to be getting out of Cairhien as quickly as possible. And that they are pretty conveniently set up to head to their TSR storyline.

I am pretty torn about when the coup will happen! I feel like it happening this season feels pretty much a lock because there really isn't any more "White Tower storyline" until the coup happens, and they do already have the set made. But it could either happen pretty early on or fairly late in the season. Maybe episode five? That lets us meet Elaida in episode 2, gives her and possibly Gawyn & Galad time to get to the White Tower, maybe we get some scenes of her politicking in the WT in episode 4, with the trigger being pulled in episode 5 or 6. But another possibility is that the coup happens right away, while all those Sisters are still in Cairhien and we see Liandrin take the lead on something like stilling Siuan and Leane, which would put the White Tower in chaos before Elaida even arrives. There are at least two Black Ajah Sisters in Cairhien, after all, and Liandrin likes to act extra-judicially, and she might want to try to make sure that Siuan is taken care of before anyone has a chance to out her (Liandrin) as Black Ajah. But there is also a chance that it might happen in the finale, so that we can parallel Moiraine & Siuan's 'downfalls'. So really this one is a wildcard for me. It isn't really directly tied to any other specific events in TSR, so it can happen whenever.

We will get the glass columns in episode 3 or 4. In the books, it happened as soon as Rand landed in the Waste, basically, but the show could potentially do Cold Rocks Hold first, depending on how Rand is getting to the Waste. I used to lean towards it happening in ep3, but after learning the leak about Mat being in Tanchico, it made me wonder about ep4, maybe, as that could potentially lead to Mat going through the doorways (just speculation with zero leaks or spoilers to back it up but I like it a lot lol) from Tanchico to Rhuidean either at the end of ep4 or the start of ep5, leaving Nynaeve & Elayne's storyline and going to Rand & Egwene's.

I do keep thinking about Josha saying that the Two Rivers' kids would have "way more togetherness" than in s3, which seems difficult if they all separate by or after ep2 and then don't reunite the entire season. I guess technically it would be true because they don't reunite in s2 until the final moments of 2x08 but feels somewhat underwhelming to mention, lol.

I do still suspect that we're getting Lanfear & Moiraine with the doorway at the end of the season.

So, a tentative outline. Now we leave behind the more solid leaks and knowledge and enter into the wild speculations. Please check out @markantonys' recent post too, she's got some fun speculations!

3x01: To Race the Shadow

"Way more togetherness" between the Two Rivers group than in s2, so says Josha. This is also where we have to be getting the Lan & Nynaeve romantic scenes that Daniel keeps hyping up, lol.

Moiraine and Rand are going to be arguing about his next plans.

Something will happen that makes them realize that Something Is Up in Tanchico -- this might be a first Dream from Egwene that leads them in the direction of the museum? Which also leads to her talking to Amys, which is why she decides to go with Rand instead of going with Nynaeve & Elayne. The big question for me is if they are going to Tanchico because of Liandrin or if they go for other reasons and then run into Liandrin also being there to get the same thing that they're getting.

Now Mat may go into a doorway here as speculated by @markantonys (the room of curiosities) but for this specific outline, I'm going to say that he doesn't, and instead he chooses to go with Elayne & Nynaeve because he's running away from Rand (after the Stabbening). This pulls in something that Mat tries to do a lot in the books but gives him a new motivation that fits his show character.

I think Lanfear is going to warn Rand about the rest of the Forsaken being free but potentially also send Liandrin to Tanchico to try to get the, uh, plot token for her potential use in the future (a girl needs a back-up plan).

Lanfear talking to Rand might be another thing that Rand and Moiraine argue about.

Rand and Egwene are going to have their official 'break-up' and then we'll see their more platonic relationship develop over the course of the season. I also feel like we have to have at least a scene or two with Rand and Elayne to establish them feeling Some Kind of Way about each other, to build on that moment from 2x08.

3x02: A Glimpse of Crimson

Good episode title for a Red Ajah & Andor episode!

I'm going to guess that Rand & co are going to be stopping in Caemlyn (my feelings are similar to @markantonys about us potentially getting a garden introduction between Egwene & Gawyn here, and then having Rand & Egwene meet Elaida & Morgase (and Galad?). Elaida will have her Foretelling about Rand and freak herself out.

Our group hears the rumors about the Two Rivers, and Perrin decides to go investigate. The question is how is Rand going to get to the Waste from Caemlyn? I don't feel like they would introduce Portal Stones as a one-off if they haven't done it before, so I think there's a chance that Loial might go with Rand instead of Perrin, as Perrin doesn't need to go through the Ways to get to the Two Rivers (of course, then they would need to change how the battle resolves in 3x07).

(alternatively: there's always the Lanfear express, I guess, lol)

This could also be when Elayne, Nynaeve, & Mat arrive in Tanchico, and their introduction to the city is our B plot. I don't think they would throw all the plots at them at once and I feel like just introducing Thom first would be a good start for the first episodes in Tanchico.

3x03: Unknown

Rand & co arrive in the Waste, but I'm going to send them to Cold Rocks Hold for now, instead of straight to Rhuidean. This gives Rand and Aviendha time to bond, Rand and Moiraine time to fight, Rand and Lan time to train together, and gives the audience a chance to get to know the Aiel culture in a bit more of a relaxed setting. Then we get an attack by Shadowspawn and Rand gets the reminder that the other Forsaken have been let free and don't share Ishamael and Lanfear's feelings about him.

Another plot will be in Tanchico, involving Nynaeve, Elayne, and Mat investigating, running into Min and/or Egeanin or Tuon taking Egeanin's role. This may be where we get our early encounters with Moghedien (she Compels one or more of our characters to spill the beans to her about their plans) and potentially where she reveals herself to Liandrin & co as one of the Chosen and takes control of their group after playing servant for part of the episode.

We also have Perrin & co arriving in the Two Rivers and getting the lay of the land. This could be a fairly emotional episode for Perrin, due to memories of Laila's death. Maybe when Perrin says goodbye to Laila (putting his ring on her grave/memorial?) and potentially our first sighting of Faile.

3x04: Unknown

Rand goes to Rhuidean and into the glass columns. This is the main plot of the episode and Rand's focus episode of the season.

We get the history of the Aiel here, and learn about Rand's ancestors.

Subplot: Aviendha is told that she is destined to be a Wise One (maybe she accidentally channeled during the fight at Cold Rocks Hold?) and deals with idea that she has to leave behind being a Maiden.

Our Tanchico B-plot leads to Mat entering through the twisted doorway in the museum, For Reasons, and getting his prophecies. Maybe this same plotline leads to Elayne and Nynaeve finding dream ter'angreal, and to Tuon/Egeanin realizing that Elayne and Nynaeve are channelers, and potentially learns that all sul'dam are, and then leaves our main plotline at this time.

3x05: Unknown

When Rand leaves the glass columns, he finds Mat hanging on the tree outside, and saves his life (we've gotten a few different pieces of foreshadowing about Mat being hanged, so I feel like it will happen at some point). Mat says he was just in Tanchico.

We catch up with Perrin in the Two Rivers, with him learning to move past his grief as he gets to know Faile.

Because we've already done Cold Rocks Hold, this means that Rand & co can go straight to Alcair Dal at this point.

Aviendha and Rand bond over their lives being dictated by being able to use the One Power and not having any choices about their future.

On the way to Alcair Dal, we meet the traders, who are hiding Lanfear and Asmodean in their ranks, and Lanfear sees that Rand is getting closer to Aviendha and Does Not Approve.

Nynaeve and Elayne worry about where Mat has disappeared to and experiment with the dream ter'angreal that they recently discovered in the museum (might only be one: the twisted stone ring, so that channeling isn't needed for it), and run into Birgitte in the dream. She gives them a warning but they realize that this is the same place that Egwene was talking about in 3x01 and are excited that they might be able to communicate with her.

3x06: Unknown

Another journey into TAR for Nynaeve (maybe a successful contact with Egwene?), and she encounters Birgitte again, but Moghedien too, and this leads to Birgitte getting ripped out of TAR and bonded by Elayne to save her life.

Moiraine tells Rand that he needs to go to Tear, to fulfill more of the prophecies, but Rand is resistant.

The Two Rivers ramps up for the battle.

This would also be a good spot for the coup, imo.

3x07: Goldeneyes

The Battle of the Two Rivers. Potentially Perrin's focus episode as well, as he comes into his own as a leader. I think that it would be good to push any confirmed Perrin/Faile romance forward into the future, so they will still just have some vibes for now.

We get some pieces moving into place for the other storylines: Rand arrives at Alcair Dal; Nynaeve and Elayne make plans to return to the museum.

3x08: He Who Comes With The Dawn

Desperate to get through to Rand and worrying that he is focusing on the Aiel instead of being the Dragon Reborn, Moiraine went back to Rhuidean to try to use the doorway, as when Mat talked about his experiences there, she recognized what he was talking about and wants answers of her own.

Rand announces himself at Alcair Dal, drawing the attention of Lanfear, who makes her pitch to him that We Could Rule Together, worrying that she's losing her hold over him after seeing him getting closer to Aviendha. She tells him about Asmodean and about him potentially teaching Rand so that he can reach his potential.

Inside the doorway, Moiraine gets answers that she doesn't like about Rand and Lanfear (sort of merging her going into the doorway in Tear with her going into the silver rings).

On the Tanchico side of things, we have our big Tanchico encounter between Nynaeve and Moghedien, which results in Nynaeve breaking her block. Nynaeve and Elayne escape Tanchico on a Sea Folk ship, heading towards Tear, potentially bringing Min & Thom along with them.

After talking with Lanfear, Rand is let out of his 'bubble' at Alcair Dal as Couladin declares that HE is the Car'a'carn and he will prove it by leading the Aiel to conquer the wetlands (setting up s4 to be a combo of TFoH/LoC, with a hint of TDR with the destination being Tear instead of Cairhien). Rand realizes that the fake dragons on Couladin's arms were put there by Asmodean and goes after him -- Asmodean Skims back to Rhuidean and he and Rand battle, and Lanfear arrives, puts the block on Asmodean and offers him up as a teacher to Rand. Moiraine takes advantage of Lanfear's focus on Rand to yeet both of them into the doorway while channeling, based on the knowledge that she learned inside, melting the doorway. We see in the Tanchico storyline that the other doorway melts at the same time, leaving them no exit.

And I agree with @markantonys that possibly the most effective stinger would be the reveal that Tuon is the DotNM, but if there is no Tuon in this season, we could have it be a Forsaken (Sammael) setting up shop in Tear, to set the scene for the upcoming season.

It is a lot more cliffhanger-y than our previous season finales and I'm sure that my thoughts on it will change as we get closer and learn more spoilers, but that is my wild speculation for this specific week!

#wot #wheel of time #wot on prime #wot book spoilers #the fires of heaven #wot speculation #wot s3 speculation

[fandomnsfw]

The HalfBreed - Ragnar Lothbrok x Reader

Pairing: Ragnar Lothbrok x Reader

Prompt: a request from @alisha-jade

Warnings: smut, cheating (on Aslaug so is it really though), breeding kink, slight asphyxiation not much.

no beta again so spelling errors may occur feel free to message me if anything is too bad!

ENJOY!!

******

You stared in fascination as your father brought Ragnar and his group into the castle. They were a brash bunch but you couldn’t help your fascination as they began shouting and laughing at the fear in the Christian’s eyes. 

You peeked around the corner of the dining hall that was also the throne room. Suddenly your fathers eyes shot up to meet yours. He rolled his eyes and beckoned you out of hiding spot. 

You strolled over to him with grace only a princess could hold. Your red dress swaying slightly as you came to a stop. All the mens eyes were on you and a few were making crude jokes clearly not realising you spoke their language. 

“I think even in your villages it isn’t proper to talk about a princess like that. Am I wrong?” You spoke in there home tongue making them all pause even the beautiful blonde woman that was sat with them.

“You speak our language?” The blonde woman asked. 

“That is what happens when your a halfbreed. Right Father?” You spat at his kingdoms most frequent words for you. 

“Your part Viking?” Ragnar asked with an amused smile. 

“Yes my mother was a shield maiden. My father took an interest on many years ago when she was washed up on our shores.” You answered honestly as your father smiled at the memory of your mother. 

“I see.” The blonde woman chuckled as she watched Ragnar stare at you intently. 

“So which gods or god do you believe in?” A wide eyed, slender man asked his eyes narrowed in a glare. 

“I do not worship their false god if that is what you are asking.” You paused not knowing his name. 

“Floki.” He stated his eyes still narrowed like he didn’t believe you. 

“Hmm…You remind me of the god Loki.” You stated with a grin as his eyes widened. 

“I think he is Loki.” Ragnar whispered making me giggle which seemed to make the older man happy. 

“You must be Ragnar’s wife then. Lagertha?” You stated as you looked at the beautiful woman. 

“Ex-Wife.” She scoffed making you catch the smile that made it’s way to your lips. 

“I see. It doesn’t seem to matter where men are from. They are all brash and unfaithful bastards.” You snorted causing everyone to start laughing especially the shield maiden. 

“I like her.” Lagertha gave a pointed look to Ragnar who rolled his eyes. 

You nudged your father on his excessively large seat at the head of the table. He sighed but moved up so you could sit down next to him. 

You gave him a sweet smile which made him laugh before kissing your head softly. You were your fathers favourite and everyone knew that. Especially your brother who hated you with a passion. 

“So did your mother train you in anything else?” A big man with long wavy hair  asked carefully as he sipped his ale looking at Ragnar who nodded in interest. 

“If you asking if I could take your head off with a sword then the answer is yes. You are Rollo yes?” You asked softly making him clear his throat as he sat up straight.

“My father has told me a lot about your spree around England with Ragnar.” You commented making him nod quietly in response.

You father understood a little of their langue because you had taught him but instead of joining in he allowed you to socialise with your fellow pagan’s. 

Everyone ate and enjoyed each other company before finally your father rand Ragnar began talking about there deal. You rolled you eyes before blocking your father view of Ragnar. 

“I want to go with them.” You stated as he stared up at you with sad eyes. 

“Y/N my sweet rose you really want to leave your poor father?” He asked softly his sadness radiating through his small smile. 

“Father you have your successor and I shall visit when I can. I want to fight! I wanna fall in love with someone who believes what I do.” You sighed in your fathers home language making Ragnar look at you. 

“I understand child. I will see to it then…I love you my little rose.” He whispered the last part in your ear making you smile fondly and return his sentiment.

“Ragnar. I have another term for our deal, I ask you take my daughter with you when you return to your home. She wishes to be with her people.” Your father asked gently making Ragnar nod in understanding. 

“Princess Y/N wishes to come back to Kattegat with us.” Ragnar announced in his home tongue causing everyone to stop there chatter. 

“We are not taking another Christian home with us Ragnar.” A gruff man in the group scoffed and before anyone said anything there was a knife flying through the air straight passed his ear to the throne room door. 

He touched his ear to find in bleeding before standing up and starting towards you. You jumped up, lifting your skirt you could take out your other knife. He got in your face like he was about to beat you but you put your knife to his intimate area. 

“Do NOT call me a Christian. I will cut off your tiny little friend and feed it to my wolf.” You spat in his ear before he finally got the point and backed away.

“We will take her back.” You had expected Ragnar or maybe even Lagertha so say these words however you had not expected Floki to say it. 

“Thank you.” Your father said in their language so they’d all understand. 

******

You stared in amazement as you saw the village come into view as you absently petted your dark grey wolf. People were flocking to the docks waiting for there loved ones or congratulate people along you smile as you glanced at Ragnar who was staring at you.

“Is there something on my face Ragnar?” You chuckled making him smile.

“You are very beautiful.” He stated mischievously as he stepped closer.

“Don’t you have a wife waiting for you?” You replied teasingly.

“As my ex wife would say. That never stopped me before.” Ragnar chuckled as the boat pulled up.

“I see well maybe you should come visit me once I am settled.” You whispered in his ear before hopping of the boat with the help of Floki. You kissed Floki’s cheek before he bid you goodbye and rushed off your see his Helga.

“And who might you be?” A tall slender woman asked with a bright smile.

“You are dressed like a Christian yet our Floki does not treat you as such.” She added as Ragnar hopped off the boat following after you.

“This is my wife. Aslaug.” Ragnar introduced like he hadn’t just been trying to bed you.

“I see Lagertha has told me a lot about you.” You replied sweetly but she could sense the unsaid words that you did not like her.

“I see.” She muttered with a fake smile.

“Rollo said he would show me where I could stay so I will see you later Ragnar.” You said to the blue eyed man with a smirk on your face.

“Of course princess. I look forward to seeing you at the hall.��� He chuckled, his hand brushing across your lower back as Rollo approached you.

Rollo grabbed your belongings hauling them up with ease as you stared at his muscles contracting. Viking men were built different and it honestly had your stomach clenching in need. These men could easily throw you about like you were a rag doll. 

You follow at his side as your wolf Shadow followed closely behind you, staring at people as we passed them. Everyone seemed wary of him but you ignored there looks and stroked his fur as you walked.

“I see my brother has taken an interest in you.” Rollo snorted as we approached a little hut.

“Hmm, perhaps but if I was to bed him the main reason would be because I don’t like his wife. I believe women who like to reck happy homes are witches that need a taste of their own medicine.” You chuckled making Rollo laugh whole heartedly.

“Your honestly is refreshing. You remind me of Lagertha back when she was your age.” He chuckled softly as he got a dreamy look in his eyes.

“You love her.” You stated softly as he lowered you belongs to the floor in the corner of the hut.

“Yes but she has never seen me like that. As long as I can fight with her I can accept that.” He sighed quietly making you smile.

“You’re a sweet man when you want to be Rollo. Maybe if you showed her this side she may change her mind. Women like Lagertha are independent and don’t need a man but that does not mean they don’t want one. Do you know her favourite food or drink?” You asked casually as you began to take your belongings out of the gold and wooden chest Rollo had brought in for you.

“Yes.” He answered curiously before sitting down on a bench that was in the hut.

“Well when we go to the great hall maybe bring her some food and a drink. Don’t say anything just sit next to her quietly maybe even converse with people around you.” You answered sweetly as you dug out your gold and jewels. 

“That seems a little simple.” He huffed with an eye roll.

“Women love when a man knows them. Think of it like Shadow my wolf would. When he wishes to mate he brings his female food and provides comfort for them.” You stated simply as you ran your finger through his fur.

“I see.” He nodded in understanding before glancing at your wolf.

“He seems rather large even for a wolf.”he commented as he stared at the giant dark grey wolf that came up to Rollo a waist meaning he was up to your shoulder.

“I know I have no idea why but I’ve had him since he was a pup. I found him in the woods when I was training. It was snowy and cold. His mother was dead next to him along with two other pups who were dead. They’d starved and then frozen by the looks of it but shadow was smart he caught a squirrel and then burrowed underneath his mother and sister. I buried his family and took him home.” You answered sweetly as Shadow nuzzled into your hand.

“He’s very loyal to you. Most wolves prefer to stay in their own territory but he happily followed you here.” Rollo added before he stood up causing the bench you were both sat on to rattle under you.

You let out a laugh making him roll his eyes once again before he set off to the great hall. You took your jewels and started towards a stall you’d seen on your way here that sold clothes. 

Once there you looked through the clothes before picking out a few things and asking the shop keeper how much. She stared at you with a frown before looking down at the gold with wide eyes.

“This is too much miss.” She stated as she tried to pass you it back.

“I know but I very much like your clothes and you work hard on them I can tell. Even my royal seamstress wasn’t that good.” You chuckled making her flush slightly as she gave you a nod.

“If you would like I could braid your hair for you after you change. You are going to the great hall for the celebration?” She offered kindly making you smile brightly.

You knew how to braid but not as well as the shield maidens so it was nice to have the offer which you gratefully took. She asked you what it was like to grow up around people in England and you asked her some tips on braiding it was pleasant and a lot different from any interactions you’d had with anyone in Wessex.

People may have not said much to your face as you are a princess but that didn’t stop you over hearing the horrible things people said behind your back.

You gave her your thanks and left the old dress with her telling her she could reuse it for whatever she wished. You collected Shadow from the hut before making your way to the Great hall with directions from a few people.

You opened the doors to the great hall your wolf at your side as everyone stared before Floki ran up to you with a childish giggle. He dragged you over to meet Helga who was sweet and very calm compared to her lover.

Rollo sat down next to you but not before passing Lagertha a drink of something and food. You smiled at the action as he engaged you in conversation. Lagertha looked shocked at the action but chose to eat her food and drink from her cup as she kept side eyeing Rollo.

“Well I’m glad you could make it Princess.” Ragnar’s voice stated behind you causing your wolf to growl as you jumped.

“Settle boy.” You whispered to him as he laid back down at your feet. 

“It appears your wolf does not like me.” He huffed playfully as he took a seat next to your other side. 

“Maybe he can sense you devious intentions Ragnar Lothbrok.” You giggled making him smile down at you, his ocean blue eyes shining with there usual mischief. 

“Would you like a tour of our lovely Kattegat?” He asks suddenly and his wife’s eyes found yours with a glare. 

“Hmm I would love to.” You answered sweetly, not taking your eyes off Aslaug. 

You stood up but as you wolf started to follow, you told him to stay making him whine. You rolled your eyes before pointing to Floki.

“Go sit with Floki.” You instructed and he glanced at the man before huffing and walking over to him. Floki stroked his fur as he waved at you to go. 

You were walking beside Ragnar for a few minutes before he moved slightly closer his arm brushing against yours. The white long sleeved dressed was comfortable in the slightly nicer weather Kattegat was experiencing. The dark brown detail down the front was pretty and you were happy to not be wearing the heavy dresses you’d worn as a princess. 

“You seem to be fitting in very well.” Ragnar spoke suddenly causing you to jolt a little.

“Everyone is nice here. It makes a difference from how people treat me in Wessex.” You chuckled as you looked at the small beach in front of you. 

“You were a Princess, how badly could they of treat you.” Ragnar asked sceptically. 

“Men were disgusted by me. Women were afraid of me. To my face they would acted accordingly however I overheard a few things they would say about me behind the kings back…behind mine. They would call me a witch,  say the only bride I could ever be was Satans which by the way is an angel that was kicked out of his heaven and banished to run hell, which is full of demons and people that have sinned.” You rolled your eyes making Ragnar laugh wholeheartedly. 

“Yes Athelstan told me much about Christianity. I believe everyone should worship who they want. I believe in my gods and Athelstan believes in his one god. We are friends despite that.” Ragnar replied with honesty his face serious as he looked down at his boots.

“I believe the same.” You replied softly as you took off your boots before stepping onto the sand with your bare feet.

Ragnar followed your lead, taking off his shoes before stepping onto the sand. He caught up to you his hand coming to rest on your lower back as you contrived strolling, watching the sea. 

His hand felt warm on your lower back, as his eyes gazed at you. You could feel it as it sent shivers down your spine. He shifted a little closer to you, his hand curling around your hip before pulling him close. 

You were pressed against his side as you finally stopped moving down the beach. You could feel his eyes on you as if trying to see your reactions to his sudden closeness.

“Do you love your wife Ragnar?” You suddenly asked making his eye widen though his hands did not move from your hips they weren’t gripping so tightly.

“I thought I did however I think I love that she has given me many sons.” He answered honestly his eyes staring into the darkness that covered the sea.

“I see.” You replied with a small smile.

“I could make you my second wife but I tried that with Lagertha and she left me.” Ragnar sighed softly making you smile.

“I am not surprised Ragnar I would’ve have left too. I have no desire to be your wife Ragnar. If you would like to take me back to my hut and fuck me though, I could definitely agree to that.” You whispered seductively before walking ahead of him towards your hut.

The walk wasn’t long and once the door closed to your hut Ragnar was on you. His right hand tangled in your hair, his lips were on yours as his left hand grabbed your waist pulling your closer.

His tongue stroked across yours gently yet passionately causing you to moan into his mouth his hands immediately trying to rip off your dress. You’d slapped his hands, pulling away from his lips with a grin. 

“Do not rip my new dress Ragnar.” You chuckled softly as you untied the brown leather belt and let it fall to the floor before lifting the white dress over your head and putting it on your chest. 

Ragnar took in your naked form appreciatively as he began stripping. His body was covered with a light amount of hair and muscle definition that you’d never seen on the English men you’d slept with. 

He was built like a beast and it made you clench around nothing, dampness making its way down your thighs. He finally stripped and was back on you, his hands immediately reaching for the back of your thighs to lift you up and laying you on the cold wooden table behind you.

His lips pressed wet, harsh kisses down your sternum nipping at the skin occasionally. Your soft pants and moans filling the air as you stared down at his very clearly hard member. He was big, bigger than you’d had before. 

Ragnar kissed your hip bone before nipping at it the sensation causing a shiver to run down your spine and a deep sultry moan to erupt from your chest. He glanced up at you with a smirk before he continued his path. 

When his lips pressed a kiss right above your slit you were desperate making you thrust upwards to try to get any kind of friction you could. However Ragnar decided hat wasn’t acceptable and slapped the inside of your thigh causing a shocking amount of pleasure.

“Stay still. Naughty girl.” He scolded softly before looking up to see your reaction to his slap. 

You flushed under his gaze as you avoided his eyes. Was that normal? To react like that to being slapped, you thought anxiously. Ragnar’s hands grabbed your hips tightly before he flipped you over so you were bent over the table. 

Before you could question it his hand came down on your ass the sound ringing through the hut. You whimpered, spreading your legs a little so you could push backwards, rubbing against his member. 

“Dirty girl.” Was all Ragnar said before thrusting two fingers inside of your warm wet heat with no warning. 

You let out a startled moan before pushing back onto his fingers eagerly. His free hand massaged the ass cheek he’d just slapped before delivering another one making you moan desperately against him. 

“Ragnar!” You moaned loudly as his fingers started hitting inside you at a different angle causing you to dig your nails into the table beneath you. 

“W-What is that?” You whined softly, trying to push back against his finger.

“I don’t know but I like to call it the magic button.” Ragnar chuckled before thrusting into that spot again. 

“Oh fuck.” 

Your moans were getting louder as they filled the hut, your stomach tensing as it prepared to unravel that amazing feeling you’d only had once or twice. Ragnar’s fingers sped up as he continued his assault on that magic button. 

“Cum for me sweet girl.” Ragnar whispered before his tongue was on your hooded bundle of nerves. 

The angle was awkward for Ragnar it he didn’t care as his tongue lavished you, his finger still never stopping. You clenched around them as his hand came down once against to slap your left ass cheek.

“Oh fuck Ragnar!” You screamed as you finally came around his fingers, your face pressed against the table as you hair splayed messily around you some of it over your face.

“You taste addictive.” He mumbled against you, giving you one last long lick before pulling away from your heat with a wicked smile on his face. 

“You ready my little vixen.” He whispered as he bent over you, his lips tickling against your ear. 

“Mhmm. You gonna fill me up Ragnar? Want you to.” You moaned, your tone needy but quiet. 

Suddenly he thrust into you with no warning just like he had with hi fingers before, causing you to push your back against his naked chest as you pushed him so far in your swore your felt him in your stomach. Your hands gripped his hands that were clutching your hips in an almost painful grip.

“You’d like that wouldn’t you. Want me to fill you up with my seed? Hmm fuck you so good and full.” He growled in your ear one of his hand coming up to wrap around your throat, not quite squeezing it just resting there. 

You felt so dazed from your previous orgasm and his words all you could do was nod to his teasing question. His hand squeezed softly as he continued fucking you slowly but hard. 

“Ah ah. Use yours words sweet girl.” He scolded his hand around your throat tightening again so most of your air supply was gone. 

You should’ve been scared but it only served to bring you closer to anther orgasm. You turned you face to look him in the eyes as you finally opened your mouth to speak. He released his grip but never moved his hand as he stared at you expectantly. 

“Want you to fill me up. Fuck me full with your babies.” You moaned, your head leaning against his collarbone. 

“Fuck. I have many sons. You gonna give me more darling?” He asked as his thrusting started getting faster and more rough.

“You gonna drop everything when I’m big and fat to fuck me when I need your cock?” You moaned as you threw your arm up to grasp at his hair as his tightened around your throat again. 

“I’d drop everything to fuck your pretty little flower sweetheart. Mmm you feel so good can wait until your pregnant and desperate for me all the time.” He groaned against your neck his hand on your hip coming around to wrap around your waist tightly as he began pounding into you at an animalistic pace. 

“Oh fuck! Yes!” You screamed loudly as you felt yourself clenching round him as you felt yourself at the edge once again.

His cock was drilling into that special spot that made you see stars, his thrusting becoming less calculated as he neared his end too. You tugged at his braided hair moaning his name as he tightened his grip on your throat and waist.

“Shit. So close.” He moaned in your ear as he brought his hand from your waist to your wet heat, his fingers massaging your little bundle of nerves.

“Cum for me Ragnar fill me up with your seed.” You moaned loudly before kissing him passionately.

Finally you felt your orgasm rip through you like lightening, your eyes falling shut as you pushed back against him, riding out your high as he finally came too. His hot seed filling you up so much you could feel it.

You didn’t get long to enjoy the aftermath as Ragnar flipped you back over and held you legs up in the air, your knees rest over his shoulders.

“Stay still sweet girl. Gotta make sure you stay filled up with me.” He groaned as he looked down at your abused hole.

You giggled at his actions but made no move to stand up, letting him have his way. You were starting to realised there wasn’t a lot you wouldn’t give to him.

After sometime he finally moved to wipe any spillage with a rag. You gave him a stuttered moan as he gave you a single lick his eyes filled with mischief.

“Beautiful.” He whispered before helping you up.

He didn’t leave immediately instead he pulled your firs over in front of the fireplace before starting a fire and laying down beckoning you over.

 “Your wife isn’t going to be happy.” You chuckled as you cuddled into his chest.

“Yes well I don’t much care.” He chuckled his hair undoing you braids gently, letting your hair fall free around your naked shoulders.

BANG!

“Y/N it worked she-” Rollo paused in his words as he took in your naked form cuddled up to his brother.

“Never mind we can talk tomorrow.” He snorted as he sent you a subtle wink.

“And what was that about my little vixen.” He asked in amusement.

“I may of given him tips on how to seduce your ex wife.” You smirked at him making him roll his eyes before placing a kiss on your lips.

“I can’t say I’m that surprised. Now come here, gonna fill you up again pretty girl.” Ragnar growled playfully making you giggle under him.

#vikings #vikings request #vikings imagine #ragnar lothbrok #ragnar lothbrok x reader #Ragnar x reader #Ragnar x you #Ragnar lothbrok x you #Ragnar lothbrok imagine #imagine #smut

[markantonys]

You saw the leak huh? Mat might go to Tanchico instead of the Waste in s3

i hadn't seen it until i got this ask! i looked it up and here's the source: WoTUp video. usual disclaimer that these are leaks so may not be 100% reliable, although i thiiiiink WoTUp has a pretty good track record for accurate leaks. UPDATE: they actually have a spotty track record with leaks and have reported false ones before (such as that faile would be in s2), so we should definitely be taking this one with a grain of salt!

to summarize the video, the only new piece of info is that mat, thom, and min were (allegedly) spotted filming scenes with elayne and nynaeve for the tanchico storyline. (he also says that elayne, nynaeve, liandrin, ispan, and moghedien were spotted filming for that storyline, which is of course not surprising!) HOWEVER, he says that he has no idea where in the season these scenes fall or whether it means mat is *exclusively* part of the tanchico storyline in s3, so at this point we can't say mat is 100% spending the entire season in tanchico instead of the waste - there's still a chance that he's in the waste for a portion and tanchico for another portion.

now, time to speculate! full book series spoilers below. this will be long because my mind is going a mile an hour!

fact #1: mat's hanging and missing eye were foreshadowed multiple times in season 2

fact #2: in this podcast interview, donal referred to mat's season 2 knifestick as a "makeshift ashandarei" (it could be he was just speaking with book knowledge about what a real ashandarei is, but to me it implies that show!mat will also be getting a real ashandarei. besides, the greatest general of the age inarguably needs a better permanent weapon than a knifestick!)

these facts make me still very confident that we will be getting at least 1 Mat Doorway Trip in the show. but that doesn't necessarily guarantee he'll go to the waste - it could happen anywhere. rhuidean is the book version, but falme has a "room of curiosities" per season 2, and tanchico has a museum thingy per the books, so there are several options for where mat could come across a doorway.

unless they're changing the doorway aspect of the moiraine vs. lanfear showdown (which i don't have any reason to believe they will, especially given mat's missing eye foreshadowing, which indicates moiraine will still get trapped in the finn realm and mat will rescue her), then there needs to be a doorway in whatever location the two of them find themselves in at the end of season 3 (or at least that's my best guess for when the showdown will take place). and i doubt moiraine would get over to tanchico, or that she would've carted a doorway from falme to the waste, so a rhuidean doorway for that plotline still feels the most plausible for me. however, there could be multiple doorways in the show, as there are in the books, so mat could go through a different one. so this entire point actually may be moot then, i guess haha but i will keep it in here nonetheless!

here are the overall options i can think of right now - note that i'm assuming only 1 Mat Doorway Trip for now to keep things simpler, but it's not impossible that he might still have 2 trips like he does in the books.

#1: mat goes through a doorway in falme at the beginning of the season (and gets cpr from rand, who went to the doorway to get his own answers)

-> #1A: mat is told by Falme Finn to go to the waste and does so, but partway through the season he heads over to tanchico (perhaps to fetch elayne at rand's behest because of rumors of trouble in caemlyn)

-> #1B: mat is told by Falme Finn to go to tanchico, and he never goes to the waste at all

#2: mat initially accompanies the tanchico crew of his own volition and goes through a doorway there (and gets cpr from someone who is not rand), and he never goes to the waste at all

#3: mat initially accompanies the tanchico crew of his own volition and goes through a doorway there, but he gets spit out of it in rhuidean (and gets cpr from rand, who has conveniently just emerged from his glass columns trip)

#4: mat initially accompanies the waste crew of his own volition and goes through a doorway in rhuidean, but he gets spit out of it in tanchico (and gets cpr from someone who is not rand)

i will be more crushed than you could ever comprehend if Cauthor CPR doesn't make it into the show in SOME way haha but i will start girding my loins now for the possibility (although i do still think it could happen). and no matter what happens, at least we'll always have Cauthor Homoerotic Stabbing Feat. Extended Cradling!

in all honesty, mat doesn't really Do that much in the waste plotline aside from his doorway trip. i would be incredibly sad to lose out on bonding time with rand and egwene (yet thrilled to get mat-elayne-nynaeve bonding - when god closes a door, he opens a window!), but in terms of mat's overall long-term story arc, there isn't anything for him in the waste arc that MUST take place in the waste, i don't think?

but on the other hand, if they're going to add him into the tanchico storyline, they have to have a good reason for it - it can't just be for the sake of having fun shenanigans and bonding with elayne and nynaeve. so of course, my immediate supposition is that this would be absorbing the ebou dar plotline and thus that the ultimate purpose of mat going to tanchico would be to meet tuon.

and honestly................that's a REALLY good idea! i've said a million times over that tuon and her relationship with mat need to be introduced much earlier in the show than they are in the books in order to have enough time for proper development, so combining the wondergirls' two different trips to seanchan-infiltrated west-coast cities into one trip and thereby having mat meet tuon by the end of season 3? that could be a very clever adaptational choice. we know so so little about season 3 so far that i really don't want to get myself stuck into any assumptions THIS soon haha so i'm going to try not to get to hung up on this idea, but i do feel pretty strongly that the best reason (and perhaps the ONLY good reason?) to add mat into the tanchico storyline is if they want to combine it with ebou dar and use it as tuon's introduction. and this would also work very well with mat's doorway trip, because he'd be getting his marriage prophecy in the same season as he meets tuon (though he and/or the audience may or may not not become aware of it until a future season).

but what would a season 3 mat-tuon meeting mean for future seasons? maybe they would just cross paths this season, then go their separate ways for some individual arcs and cross paths again later for the romance to begin. or maybe tuon would get caught up in mat's plotline for season 4 and potentially beyond.

(i do worry that making mat & tuon meet THIS soon could mean they believe they need to aim for the 5-season model instead of the full 8 because i'm not sure what tuon would do for 5 more seasons after this, but i'm already so far out on the limb of speculation here that i don't want to go any further until we know more! and they could certainly invent plenty of stuff for tuon to do seeing as she did not do SHIT in the books and desperately needs to lmao the seanchan heir being a channeler is something that is huuuuuuugely rife with story potential.)

going back to mat, let's think a little about HIS future storylines, in the scenario of him meeting tuon by the end of s3. i think the only other major pre-ebou-dar thing he needs to do is form the band of the red hand, which could be shuffled around to after meeting tuon instead of before. there's lots of possibilites for it - all mat needs to do is participate in a battle where a lot of other people are also fighting. maybe the seanchan try to invade tanchico, and he rallies the locals to protect the city. maybe in season 4 he carts tuon along with him back into rand's plotline, where he forms the band during one of the many City-Conquering Rand Battles the show has available to choose from (cairhien, tear, illian, caemlyn). i do feel hopeful that even IF tanchico stands in for ebou dar, it won't be the point of mat splitting off from rand & the main gang for the entire rest of the series never to return like ebou dar was in the books. especially because he barely does anything of story significance between ebou dar & moiraine rescue heist, so it wouldn't be hard to just move up the schedule of his & tuon's meeting and then return him to his TFOH/LOC storyline.

(............which again makes me worry they're aiming for 5 seasons total because what would MAT do for 4 more seasons if everything but the moiraine rescue heist is accomplished by the end of s4? but, again, don't want to go too far out on the limb of speculation. and 8 seasons has always been a very very lofty goal in today's era of television, so getting 5 would still be wonderful! and so much of books 7-13 is filler & sidequests that i think they could absolutely tell the most important parts of the story satisfyingly in only 5 seasons.)

@butterflydm and i have also speculated that elayne & nynaeve could potentially reunite with the waste crew by the end of s3 or early in s4, in order to give them some bonding time with those characters (particularly rand & aviendha and lan, respectively). so, if mat is in tanchico with them, maybe he could come along! maybe rather than getting split up in a seanchan attack, mat and the girls all kidnap tuon and flee the city together, and make their way back to the rest of the gang.

and finally, on a different note, min's presence in tanchico. intriguing! my first thought was that maybe liandrin kidnaps her from cairhien because she finds out min knows she's in cahoots with ishamael and doesn't want min to snitch, and that's how min ends up in tanchico. this would prooooobably mean she skips the tower coup plotline entirely, which i think is okay because siuan, elaida, gawyn, leane, and possibly logain would probably be enough to anchor that plotline for us. it would also give min the bonding time with elayne & nynaeve she didn't have time for in season 2, and if my tuon speculations are correct, then potentially min would enter her orbit this early as well, which would be interesting. rescuing siuan in the coup is The Only Thing min does in 14 books so it would be funny if the show cut it djkfjg but they can (and already have) invent new stuff for her to do instead, and honestly, min doesn't really fit in with the coup & salidar plotlines that well anyway since she isn't a stakeholder in anything relating to the white tower - none of that stuff truly MATTERS to her character, she just happens to be present for it. so IF she doesn't end up being in that plotline in the show, not a huge loss imo (though of course, she could still make her way to the tower later on, or maybe she starts in the tower but then siuan sends her to tanchico to investigate liandrin or something).

anyway, i think i've reached the end of my speculation for now, although i'm sure i'll think of more stuff later! in conclusion, this is my current mood:

#anonymous #answered #wot book spoilers #wot show spoilers

[moresinfulmockingbird]

IMPREGNATING THE RANDS | Bronya & Cocolia Rand

PAIRING: Bronya & Cocolia Rand x GN!Reader

WARNINGS: Smut, NSFW, Dom!Reader, Sub!Character(s), Incest(Kinda), Dirty Talk, Degradation, Humiliation, Impregnation, Headlocking, Doggystyle, Masturbation, Creampie, Mentions of Breeding, The Rand's like sharing, Reader has a cock, Alludes to Serval joining later

AUTHORS NOTE: Written for @vrncaes. Thought I'd write something from the horny rambling that happened. Hope it's to your liking.

THE SITUATION you were currently in was one that had become all to familiar. Being in the Supreme Guardians personal bedroom, having her pinned under your body while her daughter sat to the side watching was what you called normal.

For the past few months you had gotten into an... interesting relationship with both Rand's. What had started as you just dating Bronya had turned into having her mother, Cocolia join. Why? Because the heir saw just how much her mother liked you and how you were into her, so as a loving gesture to her mom, she offered to share you.

And you couldn't complain about the offer either, because being in a relationship with two powerful females was just to appealing for you to refuse. And you were glad you didn't, cause you wouldn't be having the pleasure of fucking them both whenever you wanted, just like now.

"Easy, easy. You can take it." You whispered, your lips caressing Cocolia's ear as you held her firm on her bed, rutting your hips into hers from behind.

The Supreme Guardian let out a strangled sob, burying her face into her pillows, her hands clawing at the sheets under her as she felt you pound your cock repeatedly into her pussy. "G-Gah! I- I can't-!"

"Yes you can." You sternly stated, pressing your lips to the side of her head, your hands holding firm onto her hips as you leaned over her back. "You've been able to take me this rough before. You can do it again, so be quiet and take it."

Cocolia whined at your words, squeezing her eyes shut as she tried to suppress her tears. She moaned and whimpered, clutching onto the sheets for support as your cock hit every spot deep inside her. She was going crazy, her mind heavy with lust, drunk on the feeling of your cock spreading her perfectly and reaching such deep parts.

Fuck, she was truly and utterly obsessed.

Not that she was the only one, because besides her resided her only daughter, Bronya, in a fucked daze from the previous fucking she endured from you. She had her legs spread, eyes glued to the sight of your cock appearing and disappearing into her mother. She was trying to keep all your cum inside her as she watched, a reason why her fingers were stuffed inside her abused pussy.

She was whining and panting, her fingers caressing her inner walls, playing with your mixed cum that she desperately tried to keep in. Her other hand was subconsciously toying with her clit, the need for some stimulation prominent as she watched you absolutely ruin her mother.

Bronya would never get over the sight. The sight of seeing her mom, the Supreme Guardian, a whining blabbering mess under you was intoxicating. How you, just a relatively normal person, was able to turn her mother this way was beyond her comprehension- not that she was able to comprehend anything at the moment.

"Y-Y/N please!" Cocolia begged, turning her head to the side to look back at you as you began thrust more roughly into her.

"Please what, hm?" You cocked an eyebrow up at her, showing your distaste for her not being more vocal about what she was begging about or for. "Use your words if you need something. Your daughter's learned that already, how come you haven't?"

Cocolia shudders at the mention of her daughter, her eyes subconsciously shifting towards the side where the said girl was roughly toying with her clit, completely lost in her own world as she watched you fuck her mom. It was always humiliating to the woman to know her daughter was always to the side, watching her get fucked dumb by you.

Why did you need them both present when you wanted to fuck one of them?

"I-I'm so close..!" Cocolia choked out, as she tore her eyes away from Bronya and back to you.

"Oh your close, huh?" You repeated, smiling at her before leaning down, pressing a kiss against her cheek as you slowed your thrusts down just a bit to make her whine in distaste. "Well hold it, okay. Don't cum till I tell you, understood?"

"Y-Yes..." Cocolia nodded her head, her body shaking as she began to tense, trying to hold back her increasingly building orgasm.

"Good. Now just keep your eyes on Bronya, watch your daughter touch herself." You state, and the woman reluctantly looks back over at her daughter.

The Supreme Guardian flushes in embarrassment as she stares at her daughter. Her eyes subconsciously glued to the sight of Bronya's fingers stuffed inside her puffy pussy, and the way her other hand played with her throbbing clit. It was surely a treat to see, one Cocolia so dreadfully was delighted to see.

What had you turned her into?

"Bronya, dear, eyes on your mom." You stated, and the sound of your voice directed at the grey haired girl knocked her from her trance.

Bronya quickly looked at her mother's face, mouth opening slightly as she saw the blissed expression she held. She wanted to be her mom again, just getting plowed by your cock and filled to the brim. Except her turn already happened, so instead she was left to remember it and rub at her clit to quench her thirst.

Cocolia's face heated up in embarrassment as her eyes connected with her daughters. She always got so embarrassed and humiliated when she had Bronya staring at her while she was getting fucked by you so roughly. It made her squirm under you, trying desperately to shrink away from the other female's gaze.

You huffed in annoyance at her squirming. Cocolia could never sit still, and it always annoyed you, because why couldn't she sit still and obediently for you like Bronya does. So in order to get her to stay still, you wrapped your arm around you neck, trapping her in a headlock and pressing your body down onto her, trapping her under you.

Cocolia whimpered as you did, her squirming coming to a stop, mainly because she couldn't squirm anymore. Feeling completely trapped in your arms made her shake, the feeling of your body pressing her onto the bed as your hips repeatedly slapped against her ass and hips, was becoming too much. There was no way she was gonna be able to hold back her orgasm.

"C-Cum... gotta cum!" Cocolia squealed, eyes shutting tight as the knot in her stomach was becoming increasingly painful.

You grunted, slamming your cock harder into her, letting out a growl. "Hold it. I'm close, so hold it."

The woman whined, her hands dragging against the sheets, trying to hold onto something firm to stabilize herself before she could cum. It was so painful, there was no way she'd be able to hold out.

"Fuck, gonna fill you. Knock you up along with your daughter." You growled against the woman's ear, your thrusts becoming sloppy, your own orgasm achingly close. "Do you want that? Want to be pregnant with my kids along with Bronya?"

Cocolia didn't stop her head from nodding against your hold around her neck, her eyes flashing to the small bulge on Bronya's stomach. The second she had found out her daughter was pregnant, she desperately wanted to be impregnated by you as well. Fuck, she loved the idea of carrying your child along with her daughter.

"F-Fill her..." Bronya whimpered breathlessly, looking at you pleadingly, have the same wish along with her daughter.

You glanced at her, let out out a deep grunt and fully buried yourself into Cocolia, your deep moan being drowned out by the woman's cry as you both succumbed to your release.

Bronya whined as she squirted her juices, reaching her own release as she watched her mother cum as you filled her with your seed. It was a breathtaking sight, Cocolia going numb with pleasure as she shook in your hold, hands flying up to hold onto your arm desperately, needing support.

You didn't dare move an inch as you shot ropes of your cum into the Supreme Guardian, making sure to fill her right up, to ensure she's not walking out of this not carrying your child.

And fuck you did knock her up. You impregnated both Rand's successfully, so now it was time to see about having a certain rockstar join the mix.

ENDING NOTES: Kein got me obsessed with Cocolia after writing this, especially making Cocolia go fucking dumb with fucking her. A reason why I maybe focused on her more...

#*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟsins writings #honkai star rail #honkai smut #bronya rand #hsr!bronya #sub!bronya #bronya rand x reader #bronya rand x you #cocolia rand #hsr!cocolia #sub!cocolia #cocolia rand x reader #cocolia rand x you #cw!incest

[trashlie]

ILY FP 231

ALRIGHTY KIDS WHO’S READY FOR STALKYOO WEEKEND WHO’S READY FOR ME TO TALK NONSTOP ABOUT ILY AND TENSION AND FEELINGS AND EXECUTION AND SUBTEXT I’M RARING TO GO picture me frothing at the mouth rattling the bars of my cage because that’s been me and that WILL remain me! 

Look I’m about to choke out 246 different posts but I’m going to do my best to try to keep this one on topic... but we know how I get so uhhhh. Brace yourselves lmao 

This episode is just CATNIP for me, and I know I keep saying that but forgive me, everything we’ve been getting in these arcs is jus tailor-made, it’s the stuff I feast on, it’s got me scurrying up walls like a lil lizard chewing on the rafters shrieking like a banshee. I am FED and I am addicted and I WANT MORE!!!!!!! 

Nana + Shinae is just unhinged chaos I was completely unprepared for and getting to see them play out more in this episode is a HOOT. I say this with affection, but I am SO GLAD she’s not MY grandma cos WOW I, too, would be so embarrassed. (Actually she reminds me a lot of my mom, pls understand the embarrassment I have endured at her hand!) Shinae and Nana bonding over their mutual dislike for Rand was SO funny - like oh shit wait you don’t like that old geezer OR that witch? Oh you have TASTE (also there’s a subtle little... dig if we want to call it that “Oh I like this one” [eyes]). All the while Nol just sits by watching with that EXPRESSION LMAO 

In fact, all of Nol’s expressions are SO funny and SO good! I cannot get over his deeply mortified blushing when Nana called the headband his “comfort headband” and pretty much aired that he was so upset that he was fiddling with it lmao LIKE COME ON (BUT ALSO HER INSINUATIONS? NANA U NASTY FREAK LMAOOOOOOO implying he’d done something unholy with it I SIMPLY CANNOT) His expression as he fucking!!! Throws!!!!! His blanket over her with his lil eye buggin out? PURE COMEDY I LOVE IT 

But obviously the meat and potatoes of this episode is the Shinae Nol confrontation - and the elephant in the room. Nol says so much while saying so little - the subtext is off the charts and it’s INSANE to me that they are just.... confessing between the lines lmao 

Let me get this out of the way, my favorite point to yell about: Nol cannot resist Shinae. He tries and he always fails. He is so weak in the face of her - and now he finally understands why. She doesn’t seem to realize it, but she manages to elicit truth out of him, she keeps him rooted to the spot. He’ll purposefully distance himself from her - angle away, sit away - but he still ends up angled in towards her, drawn in. She gets to him in a way that, as far as we can tell, no one else can. It’s what made it so difficult for him to actually part with her - why he stumbled and clutched her before he finally snipped the cord, why he had to block her and when she got around that (her message in his spam) he had to drown it out with alcohol. Her gravitational pull on him is so great and he is now aware of it. 

I think he did have every intention to talk to her. Maybe he wasn’t going to be as open as we hope. He seemed like he wanted to at least try to clear something up. But his tune completely changed after she brought up Dieter, after she made him realize that Dieter saw it all, that he knew what Nol knows. Ngl I find this simultaneously funny and frustrating because it DOES put them in such a precarious position and Shinae is just SO unaware of it yet!!!! 

Nol knows that when it’s just them, things cease to matter. It’s the way he phrases things - like how he talks about when they thought everyone was asleep, because it was that cloak of secrecy that allowed him to be so bold. It was the belief that the whole world was asleep and they were alone in their bubble, no thoughts, nothing else, acting on their whims. He knows he made a move on her, and he knows it was intentional, and it would never have happened if Dieter and Soushi were awake. But that’s the thing about when Nol is alone with Shinae - he seems to forget everything else. She disarms him and he acts on his whims. 

The range of his expression is so good here - going from guarded and cautious to the moment he’s putting the dots together and he closes his eyes and screws up his face. Nol isn’t an asshole - he knows what Dieter must be feeling, what it must be like to have witnessed that, to listen in on that. Shinae may not have processed how loaded it was, but Nol can see it easily from Dieter’s perspective. 

And here’s the thing about Dieter, too. He’s not a fool, he knows what he’s up against. I don’t mean it in that he’s competing with Nol, really, but we know he compares his relationship with Shinae to other peoples’ relationships with her. We’ve seen him voice his insecurity to Minhyuk - that he doesn’t have with her what Nol does. When he told Shinae she loves Nol, he obviously meant it as a friend, the way he does - but I still think he was voicing a fear that he already had in his heart. Like Nol, though, Dieter isn’t good at resisting Shinae, and he lets his hope build up when he knows better. Dieter knew he was playing with fire. 

That doesn’t make it hurt any less, though - to basically have it confirmed almost behind your back. Dieter can see it for what it was - not just the way Nol was acting, the way he looked at her, the way he literally put the moves on her lol but it was the way she received it, the way she flusters under his gaze. It was how she stayed at his side the whole time, how her concern for him outshines her need for sleep or food. 

Nol’s guilt is SO strong, it permeates this episode, but I think it’s also very much twisted with his fear. It’s easier to use the guilt, to frame around that, because in his mind he fucks things up all the time, he makes things worse, his existence creates more problems. I love that Shinae calls him out on the fact that it’s not his fault that his plan to get her and Dieter together didn’t work because it’s true. While he’s not wrong to some degree - pushing Dieter and Shinae to be friends does kind of prolong the pain, at the end of the day, they all make their choices. Dieter chose to collect those moments with Shinae knowing they were supposed to be strictly platonic, everything as friends. Shinae still chose to confide in him, to open up, to let him in. Just because Nol pushed the friendship it doesn’t mean they had no agency in the matter. 

But obviously the real issue is not that he pushed them, that it draws out the pain for Dieter. It’s that he did all of that and in the end, he was the one who hurt him the most. It wasn’t that Shinae didn’t reciprocate - it was that Nol has feelings, too. 

Now, I want to make a point here that I’m sure we’re all on the same page about. No one is really “at fault” here. It’s not like anyone has done anything wrong. Sure we can argue that Shinae has gotten Dieter’s hopes up unintentionally. Sure we can argue that liking someone your friend likes is bad. But human feelings are messy and don’t exist in a vacuum of good vs bad. The whole thing about dibs is so gross in general - it denies someone agency and instead rests on those who like them. Is Nol a bad friend for falling for someone his friend also likes? Is Shinae a bad person for falling for the friend of the guy who likes her? Obviously there are things that need to be cleared up - she needs to sort out her feelings for them, but the point remains. No one is at fault. 

But that doesn’t mean Nol won’t feel guilty, won’t feel like an asshole for finding a new way to hurt the people he cares about. 

I know this sounds crazy but I kind of lmao like the way he told Shinae she needs to go, that “You can’t be here alone with me any longer.” 

Nol has acknowledged his role in this. He acknowledges the way he deliberately hurt Dieter, even though it wasn’t his intention. And what’s more is what he’s not saying - the subtext. That she can’t be alone with him because they will continue to say and do things that will hurt Dieter, that will create more pain. Nol knows how easily Shinae can disarm him if he’s not vigilante. All it takes is her bringing him ease again, him falling back into that comfort, forgetting the rest of the world, acting on it again. 

There’s something that feels so urgent about it? Intense? That she NEEDS to go because he doesn’t have the willpower any more. That he’s trying REALLY HARD to be a good person, a good friend, but it’s so difficult. He says it every which way besides with words, and if you read between the lines he’s practically screaming it out loud. 

I actually think he’s handling it pretty well, even if it doesn’t clear things up for Shinae in the moment. He’s acting on Dieter’s behalf - but also on his own. And hers. Shinae needs to come to the conclusion he has and it’s not for him to tell her. Part of why it’s so easy for Shinae to let herself feel that way with Dieter is because she knows he likes her. He’s safe and comfortable. Had he never confessed would she think anything of the way he looks at her? Would she think anything of the comfort he brings her? But because she knows, it has affected her view. I don’t say that like it’s a bad thing, because we all respond to people based on how they feel about us, I think. But if Nol were to speak those words out loud, if he were to tell her “it’s because I like you!” how would it make her feel? Would it influence what she thinks about him? Surely it would! 

Nol is trying to get Shinae to come to the same realization he has, and more so, he’s trying to get her to be clear about her feelings. Do you like me or not? Do you act this way with everyone? He sees the way she gets flustered, he knows the effect he’s got on her. He’s probably sure she reciprocates those feelings and hasn’t figured it out yet - but there’s still a shadow of a doubt. There’s still the fact that maybe he’s reading into it, maybe he’s seeing something that isn’t there. Maybe she’s someone who cares about him and he’s misread it because he’s so desperate to matter to someone, anyone. 

Look we all know better, but we also know how doubts persist! 

There’s so much ANGST but it’s SO good! It’s not angst for the sake of angst, it’s not drawing something out just to make the story last. Nol’s expressions cause me PAIN, Shinae’s make me ACHE. He feels like a guilty asshole, he wants her to go, but he can’t even look at her and say it - he looks away, his mouth set in that way holding back all the things he believes he should not say. Honestly they are so good at hurting each other ;______; it hurts ME, too! 

But also, I get it. I’m with Nol here. How can he bear to look at her when he’s pushing her away again? How can he bear to look at her when it’s all his fault (according to him). He can’t even look at her when he tells her Dieter was awake the whole time. It’s such a loaded statement but unfortunately it doesn’t QUITE land because Shinae can’t quite grasp the significance. 

Actually this whole part is both so funny and so unbearable to me lmao because Nol is all but saying that Dieter oversaw them having a very non-platonic moment and she’s like i don’t get it why’s that a big deal LMAOOOOOO ;____; Nol is going THROUGH it okay! She keeps insisting that it meant nothing, that it’s just friends, what’s wrong with that. And Nol can’t come out and say the truth - that it looked romantic that it felt romantic, that he meant all of it and that’s why it’s so wrong. The whole time he’s trying to get her to understand WHY that hurts Dieter and she’s just hurting him at the same time LMAO OUCH 

I LOVE those panels where we can’t see their faces - where it’s Nol’s frustration and anguish that she doesn’t get it, that he’s trying, that he feels awful because of course those feelings are still there why wouldn’t they be. His frustration, the faint lines on Shinae’s face. 

Maybe it’s there at the back of her mind - something faint, something distant. Maybe for a moment she understands what Nol isn’t saying, the implications of what Dieter oversaw, overheard. But if it, she doesn’t acknowledge it at all. 

Nol’s hand over his face in frustration, that panel where we close in on his eye and Shinae says “You’re not intentionally trying to hurt him!” But... he is. Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt Dieter - but he IS intentionally doing things that hurt him. And he still wants to! That’s the thing, that’s why he needs her to go. It’s so easy to fall into that, to act on that, to forget Dieter exists and instead indulge a little. It may not be his intention to hurt Dieter, but it’s his intention to do things that WOULD hurt him, and she doesn’t get it. 

But GOD lmao the way she just starts to rub salt in the wound!!!!! “Whatever he thinks is just a misunderstanding. There’s NOTHING going on here!” 

In ILY universe, nothing is always Nol. There is Nol going on here. 

And look, I feel for him here, a LOT. This must be SO hard!!!! Not just the pushing her away, not just knowing he hurt Dieter, but having this whole conversation, her not getting it, her taking a moment that clearly meant SO MUCH to him and saying it meant nothing. Again, there’s so much that is LOADED when she says “We’re all friends here!” and he says that resolute “No”, his eyes hidden from us, his hands firm on the wheelchair. 

Shinae misconstrues it as no, we aren’t all friends, but what Nol means is that no it’s not just friends. It’s two different people who like her a lot. It’s knowing he acted on something that hurt his friend. That moment wasn’t platonic, wasn’t just friendship - not for him. Clearly she’s unready to see it, but he knows it. No. We’re not friends here - we are people who like you so very much. 

GOD, THE ANGST, THE ANGUISH. I AM SWINGING FROM THE RAFTERS I’M HOOTING. 

I LOVE the moment he says he can’t take this - he can’t keep having this conversation, can’t take being shut down like this, can’t handle her downplaying a significant moment. If she wants to tell herself it was nothing but to keep reiterating it to him? Unbearable! But also I LOVE that Shinae stands her group and puts her foot down, I love her calling him out because like I get it! I understand both of them. She’s had no time to process any of this, all she knows is she wants him to stop pushing her away, she wants him to stop boxing her out, she wants him to be OPEN. 

In a way, they are fighting for the same thing, but they keep obstructing each other. They want the same thing but they’re speaking in different languages. He WANTS her to see it - that it wasn’t a platonic moment, that he meant it that it matters that their fingerprints are all over it. He wants her to see what Dieter saw. She wants him to show himself, to open up, to stop hiding, to be vulnerable. They are trying SO HARD to get the same thing, but they just keep butting heads and getting in each others’ way. 

AND WHEN SHE TELLS NOL THAT SHE’S NOT NOT INTERESTED IN DATING DIETER? OH MY /GOD/ lmao alkjfkjafkjafkjafkjja alfjakfjj SHRIEKS 

Not ONLY has she basically downplayed this whole romantic moment, downplayed whatever is transpiring between them but she goes on to say SHE’S NOT NOT INTERESTED IN DIETER?! LMAOOOOOOOOO Again I reiterate no one is at fault here!!!!!! But lmaooooo the OUCHIES of this whole conversation! Isn’t it bad enough that she says it was nothing it doesn’t mean anything, and then she goes on to be like I mean i don’t totally NOT not like him idk..... LMAO 

He’s clearly frustrated both in trying to get her to understand what he isn’t voicing, but also because he seems like such a resolute person? Or at least, he tries to be. I assume it’s kind of like... he realized he likes her and that’s it. It’s not that he thinks he might like her, it’s not that he might have some feelings. He knows he’s all in, all feelings, all eyes on her. And she appears so wishy washy - flirting with him but doesn’t acknowledge it, unintentionally stringing Dieter along and igniting that hope. 

And the thing is she isn’t doing any of this maliciously. She’s tried to be clear with Dieter! It’s not her fault that he keeps getting his hopes up. She’s had no time to process her feelings for Nol, has had no experiences to compare any of this to. I love this conversation between them because it illuminates how little Shinae knows about feelings, about love, about romance. She hasn’t let anyone in in a long time, has guarded herself so tightly, and now that she has, how is she to understand the ways they affect her, what their significance means? 

It’s easy to see why she keeps trying to box her feelings about Nol into a box they don’t fit. Of course she cares, of course she worries, that’s what friends do. It’s not that she cares, though - it’s why. Does she care as a friend or does she care as something else? That’s what he’s trying to get her to answer - and I think he got close. But she needs to distance herself from the night, too. She needs to dwell on those feelings - and not just the intensity of trying to hang on to him, but the other feelings, too. The butterflies, the fluttering, the fluster, the way she can’t meet his gaze, the way she starts to fluster if he looks at her for too long. 

Someone said that Shinae is practically confessing to Nol and doesn’t even realize it and my god they’re right lmao. The way Shinae argues back that she knows Nol didn’t like it when she left after they danced, that she knows he was bummed, can you really throw all that away what we’ve been through, how effortless we are? lmao SHE REALLY JUST. Goes on saying it!!! AND SHE DOESN’T RECOGNIZE IT FOR WHAT IT WAS. 

(I mean she did a whole damn love soliloquy in front of Minhyuk for Nol so like. It’s been an all night thing lmao) 

Also it hurt when Nol admits that Dieter doesn’t have that with Shinae - not even as her friend. Even if she does not not want to date him, even if a part of her DOES like him - does it compare to what she feels about Nol? Does it compare to what he means to her? He can’t look her in the eye, and even as she tries to play it off, to say hey all friendships are different does it really matter SHE can’t meet his eye. 

Consciously Shinae may not be aware of it but on some level she must know. On some subconscious level, that ghost of a thought passes by, a faint wave of shame. She doesn’t share with Dieter what she shares with Nol. It’s true that there’s something there, but it’s something she’s avoiding, something she consciously cannot face yet. 

BUT LISTEN, MY GOD. NOL ASKING HER WHY SHE CARES /SCREAMS JUST SCREAMS ALJKFKJAFJKAFLJ AFJALJJAF AFJAKFJFA

He’s pushing!!!!!!!!!!!

I love that Nol is a ball of contradiction. He wants Shinae to acknowledge what he isn’t saying out loud, he wants her to realize that it means something to him, that there are feelings, that it’s not platonic, and he wants her to acknowledge so she understands why he’s pushing her away. But I think he also wants her to admit it herself. Confirm what he suspects. She fights SO hard but she can’t say why. She cares so much but she can’t elaborate. 

Convince me. 

LKJFKJAF LAJFKAJFA F /SCALES THE WALLS PARKOURS ACROSS ALL THE ROOFS IN THE NEIGHBORBOOD. 

He knows. HE KNOWS. Convince him he’s wrong. Convince him it’s not what he thinks. Convince her that her extent of care of need her desperate desire to keep hold of him to make him show himself to her to be vulnerable with him is platonic. Convince him. 

AND SHE CAN’T!!!!!!!!! 

Again, she averts her gaze! Again, she flusters and blushes. Again he disarms her just by looking at her and he takes advantage of the moment to finally kick her out. 

GOD WHAT AN EPISODE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I JUST WANNA BARK BARK BARK WOOOOF RLKJJKJ RRRRGGHHR RRRRHGHGHG LDKJC YIP YIP YIP 

IT’S SO GOOD. THE SUBTEXT, THE EXPRESSIONS, THE DANCE AROUND THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, THE ANGST, THE EMOTIONS. 

And no matter which standpoint you look at it from it’s just GOOD. 

Nol feels guilty, like an asshole, he has hurt his friend. But more than that - it’s how he knows he can’t be alone with her, how he knows he can’t stop himself any more from acting on what he wants. He needs to PHYSICALLY remove her because that’s how little resistance he has, because that’s how much she gets to him, how much she affects him. It’s the way it hurts to have this conversation - where if he says the words out loud it makes them real and it becomes a weight she has to carry. If he can make her reach the conclusion on her own, maybe it won’t be so bad. He won’t have to deal with the pain if she doesn’t reciprocate - if she comes to the right conclusion and keeps her distance. If he says them out loud and she has to turn him down? He can’t handle that he can’t bear it. But at the same time, every time she denies that their shared moment meant nothing, that the way he looked at her, the way he treated her (HOW HE TOUCHED HER?????) was just platonic to him???? HOW CAN HE BEAR TO ENDURE THAT CONVERSATION?! 

And it’s not that it means nothing - she just needs the space and time to process it, to really play out what happened. I think, too, on some level she IS subconsciously repressing it. Isn’t it scary? Especially because Nol is a person who comes and goes, who pushes her away and then shares these intense moments and then shoves her away again. What good is it to acknowledge what he means when she can barely keep a hold on him as a friend, when she can barely make him understand his significance. Nol and Dieter both are such good friends to her, people she can rely on, people who make her feel safe. Sure Nol may not make her feel secure all the time lmao but when it’s just them, when they’re lost in that little world, for the moment, he does. It’s scary, to think of losing any of that. All the relationships she’s ever been privy to have fallen apart. There’s no photos, no memories of her family as a whole unit. She’s seen what Rand and Yui look like. She’s got no experience of her own, and now that she has friends she loves so much, she’s too afraid to lose them. 

How can she begin to dissect what Nol means to her when it makes him feel more fleeting? How can she begin to understand what exists between them is romantic when she’s never really witnessed a healthy successful romance exist?

The thing that makes friends to lovers SUCH a good trope, and why I love it SO MUCH is the stakes, the risk vs the payout. What if you take that step and it all goes wrong? What if you mess it up and you lose someone who is SO important to you, someone who means so much? What if all goes wrong and you can’t put it back together and you make something beautiful all wrong by getting your fingerprints on it and chipping the corners? You start to fear even the possibility because sure it could go well - but if it goes bad you lose it ALL. Everything. 

But what is life if you don’t take some risks? Can you live with that regret, if you never take a chance, if you miss out on something you wanted? 

That’s the thing about Dieter, isn’t it? He knows the risks. He knows he’s playing with fire, knows he doesn’t quite have with Shinae what Nol does. But he still tries. He still lets his unwavering hope go, even if it hurts him. He can’t ever say he has any regrets because he’s given it his all. Sure, it hurt a LOT and it’s going to, until he gets over her and can find a way to move on, but at least he tried. At least he made the effort and can say that he did his best. 

It’s funny that Nol and Shinae stand in that place. She’s doing her best, she’s making an effort so she can’t regret not trying - but she just can’t see the full picture, can’t acknowledge WHY she’s fighting WHY she’s pushing. But Nol is the other part of it, the understanding, but also fear. It’s not just Dieter that stops him. If she continues to deny that it means anything, if she continues to say it was nothing.... that hurts. It’s bad enough to have feelings - but for the person you like to deny them? GOD. ;A; 

At this point there’s a lot of conversations that need to be had, and i think I’m looking forward to (hopefully?!) seeing Nol and Dieter talk it out. I think as much as Dieter is hurt, I can’t see him as the kind of person who would stand in the way of his friends happiness. If they make each other happy, who is he to tell Nol to back off or something? Shinae is a person with agency who can make her own choices and if she comes to a realization that she reciprocates Nol’s feelings well.... he can’t really stop her just because she doesn’t like him. He’s not an incel alkfkjafjaf lmao I don’t think it’s the kind of thing that would make him hate either of them. 

I’ve said it before but Dieter loves Nol, too, so he can understand why Shinae would fall for him. And likewise, as a person who likes Shinae, I’m sure he can understand how Nol would unintentionally fall. There’s a lot that’s happened between Nol and Shinae that Dieter doesn’t know about - the things that draw them together, that make them reach out to one and other. I think he can probably get that sense - there’s just SOMETHING ELSE there that isn’t with him and Shinae. 

I like to think Dieter might encourage Nol, or at the very least perhaps tell him to stop pushing people away. That one of these days he’ll push and she won’t come back and can he really live with that? While Dieter doesn’t know as much as Shinae, he at least seems to have the sense that there’s a profound depth to Nol, that there’s a lot of pain (as evidenced between him and Kousuke) and that his life hasn’t been as easy as Yeonggi made it look, so maybe he, too, will what it means for Nol to open up, to really truly fall for someone who feels the same as him. Who is he to deny their happiness, just because it makes him hurt? 

On the other hand, a part of me dreads Dieter and Shinae talking because WHEW BOY we know it’s going to hurt either way it goes. Will she deny her feelings about Nol, try to continue to write them off as friendship because it scares her, because she’s so afraid of losing him that she’s willing to swallow them down, because she doesn’t want it to get in the way? Even if she did, Dieter would see through it. I think now that he’s seen it, really seen it at play, he knows he can’t keep pretending. That’s why he’s distanced himself. If she were to try to play the card that it meant nothing wouldn’t he get more upset that she’s lying? God it just feels like a painful conversation ;___; And if she’s honest with him, if she sets him straight that she should have been clearer, that she hurt him, it just makes it hurt more AAAAAHHHHHHHHHH 

JUST AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

All that said, I love how good of a subversion of “why does my kokoro go dokidoki”. It’s not that Shinae is naïve - it’s that she’s inexperienced and scared. It’s that she hasn’t had the time to process, it’s that she has this mix of feelings that she’s had no time to sort them out and untangle them. For so long she held people at arm’s length and now her heart is too full! And because it’s subverting that trope, I don’t think we’ll see it drawn out for a terribly long time, and she’ll put on her big girl pants and try to make it right. Right now she’s afraid to rock the boat. She’s been hurt so many times by people, she doesn’t want to be the one who hurts others, she doesn’t want to be the one who inflicts pain. But I think when she realizes the truth, she’ll realize that trying to ignore it causes more pain, drawn out. That’s what Nol is getting at. That as long as she doesn’t definitively have feelings, it only hurts. It drags out Dieter’s pain every time he thinks there’s a chance. It drags out Nol’s pain, that she can’t sort out the feelings. 

I love so much that Shinae cares about peoples’ feelings - especially because in the beginning she so badly wanted to believe she doesn’t care if people think she’s a bitch. She’s so empathetic and caring! But at some point we have to realize that avoiding a problem only makes it worse. It’s so much better to be up front and get it out of the way. Dieter won’t be able to heal until the wound stops getting ripped open. He WILL be okay, he WILL get over. But it won’t happen until she makes things clear. 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 

I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS SO MANY FEELINGS I HAVEN’T EVEN TALKED ABOUT NOL’S RESOLVE BUT I’M SAVING THAT FOR A SEPARATE POST AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS 

#I Love Yoo #ILY Brainrot #ILY FP #ILY Spoilers #Stalkyoo #Shinae Yoo #Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn #Nol #Dieter Becker-Wulff #Shieter #WHAT MORE CAN I SAY I AM BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS OKAY I JUST HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS I WILL BE BACK TONIGHT WITH MORE THOUGHTSSSSSSSSS #gonna keep the tags short this time because i'm just completely feral RARRLKAJRJAJRRRRrr

[agent-of-sam]

My Big Rambling List of Perrin Thoughts

@toastandjamie asked for thoughts on Perrin's arc and the subsequent essay felt too big to be a comment so I made my own post.

Note it's not really an essay and more just a jumbled list of impressions from someone who tried and failed to complete a re read of the series.

The Gentle Giant thing is technically true but I think it's a misleading place to start with Perrin. The term feels more accurate for Loial who is both physically larger and less inclined to violence. And I do think there's some deliberate paralleling between the two as Loial spends a fair amount of time in Perrin's storyline. As an Ogier Loial is Pure Nature and Pure Creation, while Perrin's Wolfbrother connection is…something something, Primal Man, domestication of wolves as the man's first step towards civilization, something something idk.

In terms of personality, Perrin is deliberate and pragmatic. He's a good problem-solver, able to break things down into logical steps and can often surprise people by seeing to the core of an issue or by approaching it from an unexpected direction. But like all the Emond's Fielders this comes with a unique set of blind spots, biases, and hypocrisies. Perrin, in particular, feels like a very linear thinker who thus struggles with problems that don't have clear answers. (waves vaguely at his entire relationship with Faile). Thematically, as other people have said, I think Perrin's "arc" isn't a distinct line. It's a journey towards acceptance both about himself and about how the world works. Am I a Wolf or Man? Both. Am I Peaceful or Violent? Both. Is it Wrong to Kill? Yes but sometimes you have to do it anyway. How will I know when it's Right? You won't but you'll have to make a decision and follow through. How will I know when to Stop? When it feels right.

He's a character who fundamentally wants clear rules and structured morality and demonstrable cause and effect and the world won't line up the way he wants.

I think he's the character who holds on longest to his old life and his old identity, at least among the guys. Like, Rand is never "happy" about being the Dragon Reborn but once it's proven he commits to it, hell or high water. Mat is famous for loudly proclaiming he's something other than what he clearly is. Perrin choosing to leave Rand in Tear and go back to the Two Rivers is described as a physical tearing as he resists the pull of Ta'veren. He insists he's a simple blacksmith even as people are calling him Lord Goldeneyes and waving his banner and the Two Rivers is literally changing and modernizing around him. -I think there's something about acceptance as a theme in all the characters. Pushing against Fate and the Pattern and the world telling them who they are, trying to change them. Except, the Pattern didn't change them. They were always who they were, they just didn't know it until the journey revealed it to them. Whether they like the revelation or not is irrelevant. Rand was always going to channel eventually. So were Egwene and Nynaeve, probably. The Wolves were always going to find Perrin. Most of them eventually come to a sort of subconscious realization that they, ironically, have the most agency when they choose to go with the flow instead of trying to swim upstream. I think Perrin, with his specific brand of quit stubbornness, takes the longest to actually reach that turning point.

This next part might all be projection but In terms of writing style, I think there's something to the idea the Perrin operates with a certain separation from his own emotions. Rand angsts, he pushes down his feelings but he stills feels them. Mat's got his whole comedic irony thing going on. I think Perrin straight-up doesn't register his emotions 90% of the time. Which doesn't mean they aren't there, he's just kind of blind to them until something big happens and then suddenly it's a tidal wave. It tracks for someone who's like, "To figure out this situation I must be direct and logical. First step is to put my personal feeling into a box because they aren't relevant right now." And it works so you do that for every problem. And over a lifetime you kind of just…lose the ability to regulate. Your emotional responses become Nothing or Way Too Much. Everything in the box gets mushed together into a big soup.

I think he's got anger issues, but in that specific way where he's an exploder. "I'm fine. Everything's fine. No big deal. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. It's fine. Oh, look an Aiel Man in a cage. I don't like that." Then things get a bit blurry and suddenly he's got a bloody axe and there's a bunch of dead White Cloaks all around.

And for that kind of person the sort of primal, instinctual sensations he gets from the wolves is euphoric and terrifying.

For Perrin emotions literally become sensations at some point? The wolves communicate by psychically bombarding each other with images and scents and emotions. Then he gets his scent powers and Faile's jealousy is a hot spiky feeling that stabs at his nose and Aram's growing resentment and fanaticism is this itchy, alien smell that Perrin finds literally repulsive. But he can't smell himself so it's always this intrusive, upsetting sensory overload?

Anyway, it's a writing approach that I think fundamentally doesn't appeal to some people because there's less to grab onto and also what's there is simultaneously very big but also very direct and kind of "exactly what it says on the tin". Because Jordan can be a very subtle writer when he wants to be but, conversely, he can also be incredibly blunt sometimes. And I think he's at his most blunt when writing Perrin. Probably because that's just who Perrin is. Perrin's not a metaphor guy and he's not a philosophy guy. For Perrin a thing is a thing or it's not and if it's not then it's not worth thinking about. Or so he tells himself.

It also falls into Jordan's gender stuff where it's leans into a very Plain-Spoken Salt-of-the-Earth Man Does not Understand Complicated Thing Like Women or Human Emotions. I think, like a lot of Jordan's Gender and specifically Masculinity stuff, if you look at the series as a whole it's a functional critique showing the pitfalls and drawbacks of those kinds of mentalities both on a societal level and on a personal level. But it also takes 12 books to get there and, while it's hard to say exactly how various character arcs would have ended if Jordan had lived to finish the series himself, I think as a writer he favored slowly sliding people into place rather than big epiphany moments. And there is a large modern audience that either doesn't have the patience or just fundamentally isn't interested in that kind of story. Which is fair, I guess.

But I love Perrin. He's my guy. That's it, that's my essay.

#wheel of time #wheel of time books #wheel of time spoilers #perrin aybara

[best-underrated-anime]

[Test Poll] Format #1

This is to test what format would be best for the poll posts during the tournament. The media featured are Chinese BL novels (danmei), and propagandas are from my stack of old reviews so they may be quite long. No trailers, so I’m putting images as placeholders for where the trailer should go. Just vote as if this were actually part of the tournament, then later I’ll gather some feedback. You may also leave feedback in the replies of this post.

Group A Round 1: #A1 vs #A2

#A1: Man picks up fish, keeps it as pet, but then it turns into a merman

Summary:

Follows the story of Rand Sievers, the younger brother of the CEO of Deep White, the leading company for biological advancements. Rand was once kidnapped as a child, and when his brother Vincent finally found him years later, he no longer remembered anything.

One day, Rand picked up a stranded “fish” from the beach, kept it as a pet, and gave it the name “Munster.” Little did he know that he was actually raising a biological weapon… a real monster.

#A2: Mushroom turns into a man, goes after another man to retrieve his “child”

Summary:

The story follows An Zhe, a sentient mushroom, after he takes over the body of the dead human An Ze. Assuming An Ze’s identity, he enters the northern human base in search of his spore, which had been harvested by humans. All people entering this base first have to undergo a screening that determines whether or not they have been infected by the mutated creatures outside. If found infected, the person will be eliminated on the spot.

An Zhe isn’t human, but he isn’t infected either. The judge Lu Feng cannot determine his case, but he highly doubts that the man is human. Hence, even after An Zhe is granted entry, he still keeps a close eye on him.

Propagandas, visuals/trailers, and poll under the cut!

#A1: Man picks up fish, keeps it as pet, but then it turns into a merman

Trigger Warnings: Gore, cannibalism, violence, rape*, kidnapping, blood

*rape happens, but the perpetrator was drugged and did it out of his control

Propaganda:

The novel starts out slow and, dare I say, fluffy. It introduces Rand as naïve and oblivious, just happily raising his ugly little fish. Even when said fish begins exhibiting anomalous behavior, Rand has merely chalked it up to it being extremely weird.

Meanwhile, his overprotective brother, Vincent, is secretly engaging in a dubious biological project. Rand has been kept ignorant about it for his safety, but some things are just beyond their control.

When Rand picks up Munster from the beach, he inevitably gets himself signed up to the chaos surrounding Vincent. Mysteries arise and distorted truths unwind, and these are all gonna forcefully unearth the traumas of the past that Rand has forgotten. Like opening Pandora’s box, all hell breaks loose, and never before have I read a danmei novel more hell-like than Mermaid Effect.

The novel would forcibly configure stomach-churning images in my mind. With vivid descriptions of violence and claustrophobic portrayals of the characters’ struggles, one should have high tolerance for disturbing content in order to fully enjoy this amazing thriller. I didn’t think I could handle extreme gore and cannibalism before, but this novel really forced me to raise my limits

Throughout the story, it asks the question on what it is that truly makes a monster. Some characters seem friendly and kind, but inside, their hearts are full of darkness. And then there are those who you’d think were villains, but underneath all the scary exterior, were actually just misunderstood. This novel then explores the answer to the question by bringing out the worst in its characters, showing how every single one of them is a bit of a monster inside, blurring the lines between “monster” and “human.” In the end, all that remains is the essence of the person, who they truly are in spite of the skins they wear.

But at its very core, this is actually a heartwarming story. It’s a story of love and of family, and of healing and second chances.

How Rand develops from staying ignorant to being brave enough to face his past was really commendable. And this was all possible with the help of Munster, who, oddly enough, was at the very bottom of Pandora’s box. Munster gave Rand the push and support he needed to rip off his scars and fix what had been broken.

#A2: Mushroom turns into a man, goes after another man to retrieve his “child”

Trigger warnings: …It’s been so long since I read this, so I can’t remember

Propaganda:

It’s unlike those danmei zombie stories where the apocalypse seems like it’s all fun and games. There is no group of friends forming teams and going on missions. No treasure hunting, no power-ups, and no strengthening of the fort. In this novel, the “enemy” is not just another adventure; the enemy is a powerful and overwhelming force that can swallow one unawares, and no one can run away from it.

So many of the characters die, and most of the time, their deaths are not even meaningful. The author kills them off like they’re swatting away flies, and you can’t complain that it’s bad writing either because it’s a f**king apocalypse. People are supposed to die.

But either way, the sudden meaningless deaths still wouldn’t be bad writing. The deaths significantly contribute to the tense atmosphere of the whole story. The author setting up the great inevitability of death paints a vivid picture of what the characters are going against, which is important because the Boss enemy has no physical form. The characters can’t fight it head-on like with a zombie.

And amidst all this hopelessness, our main character An Zhe shines like sunshine in the rain. He is the one thing that saves this story from further sinking into the abyss. His character is not exactly sunny and all-smiles, but he has a certain charm that comforts the people around him, and the readers as well. He is the embodiment of hope in this novel, and I couldn’t have asked for a more fitting main character.

Overall, the story highlights the beauty of hope and human will—how humans, in the face of calamity, will struggle and resist. Some may give in, but there will always be those who will continue to fight. This is an apocalypse story that one shouldn’t miss, and I absolutely recommend it to everyone.

#poll test #mermaid effect #人鱼效应 #little mushroom #小蘑菇 #danmei #miyamiwu.src

[wafflebloggies]

the long con - part 5/7

a Don't Feed The Muse/Captain Disillusion crossover story. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

*

“Huh, he’s not picking up-”

Alan was interrupted- and terrified- before he could even lower his phone. As the ringtone went dead in his ear, the Captain drew in a sudden, sharp gasp and cried out, an agonized sound Alan had never heard from him before, and just as suddenly let go of the yoke and grabbed his head in both hands, doubling over as if he’d taken a heavy blow right between the eyes. Alan’s natural alarm and concern for the Captain become somewhat overtaken by circumstances in the next couple of seconds, as the shuttle, lacking direction from its pilot beyond an unfortunate knock from one of the Captain’s elbows, veered over to one side and launched into a high-velocity heartline roll, the dark clouds outside twisting into a crazy spiral against the windshield as it hurtled blindly into the night.

Alan screamed in terror, the Captain in terrified pain although if the two sounds could have been layered on a spectrum analyser there would have been very little difference to spot between them. Alan’s seatbelt was very carefully and neatly clipped on two buckles across his chest, and it held him safely in place. The Captain didn’t usually bother with silly safety devices contrived by people who couldn’t even withstand ten Gs, and the centrifugal force of the shuttle’s roll tumbled him into the air and over Alan’s seat like a bright yellow ball in a lottery machine.

With nothing else to do and every other reasonable thought that might have told him not to driven out of his head, Alan lunged across and grabbed the yoke. As his hands locked around the chunky black-and-yellow grips the spin stopped, but the upside-down-ness did not. A lot of the systems cluttering the holographic HUD were lit up and screaming, and although the view was still completely dark with thick cloud and rain that seemed to be falling upwards into nothing, there seemed, to Alan’s horrified perception, to be a lot less airiness to the nothing, as if most of what he was looking at was finite and very, very solid.

Various small bits and pieces that hadn’t been fixed down clattered past him, pattering against the windshield as the shuttle screamed onwards. Somewhere on the ceiling behind his seat, the Captain was struck in rapid succession by a dog-eared old Rand McNally, Alan’s phone, and the little plastic hula Beakman that usually sat on the dash, and although he could barely see with his hands clamped across his face, his realization of the severe nose-down tilt of the ship spurred him up, grabbing blindly upwards for the back of the seats.

“We’re in a dive! Pull up!”

“I can’t!”

“Stop us being upside down, then!”

“I can’t! I don’t know how!”

“Do that twisty thing I do!”

“The twisty thing?”

“Yes!”

“The one I hate??”

“Yes!!”

Alan, with a high yipping noise of distress, shut his eyes and violently crossed his hands across one another, one upwards, one down. The yoke span a full hundred-eighty-degrees in his grip, hit its endsprings with a savage thump, snapped back to level.

The shuttle corkscrewed through the clouds. The cabin revolved one final time like a funhouse barrel-room and returned to a blessedly upright orientation, and the Captain plummeted into the passenger seat on his head. Alan dragged back on the yoke with all his strength, and, through eyes open barely a slit, saw a single haunting glimpse of street-lights, trees wreathed in the dim white midnight glow, parked cars, a church spire looming up close like a ghostly vision- before it all rolled away through the clouds and the shuttle soared back up into the inky sky.

Alan slumped in his seat, murmuring a string of several words that his grandmother would have thrown a juggling pin at his head for saying within her earshot. His fingers were so tightly locked around the grips that every knuckle felt like a skin-tight steel ball as he tried to untense, tried to breathe.

The Captain pulled himself up and opened an eye, a glove still clamped across his nose and mouth. A thin stream of black was winding its way busily down his chin, dark against the chrome. His face- the human part, the differently-real part- was white as a sheet.

“Well done,” he mumbled, slumping back in the seat.

Alan started, risking a frightened glance away from the flying clouds.

“Oh, no. Sir, we have to get you to some kind of medical help- you’re delirious.”

“I’m not-” The Captain made a frustrated noise and dug through the scattered mess in the footwell, the litter of small objects dislodged from everywhere else in the shuttle, until he found a Kleenex. He cupped his nose with it in both hands, stemming the inky trail and mopping it quickly away.

“I’m fine, Alan. It’s just a nosebleed. Well- that, and you’ve broken the alpha timeline. It’s not a problem, I just need to take five to adjust.”

“I broke the what?”

“Oh, don’t freak out, it’s no big deal. You’re okay.”

“Sir, I am flying a spaceship,” said Alan, as calmly and evenly as he possibly could. He was gripping the yoke in both clenched hands, as if it was a wild animal that would burst loose and maul him if he gave it a moment’s leeway, and his eyes were so wide that he looked as if he was trying to grow at least four others by sheer will. Sweat was beading on his forehead. “That is, by definition, me incredibly not okay. I have very severe car anxiety. That is why I bike. There are a lot of things that look like alarms flashing at me and I don’t have any idea what any of them do. I’m- I’m- I’m dealing with a lot right now.”

The Captain tried to focus on the HUD, managing to open one eye above the wad of Kleenex, which was soaking black at an alarming rate. He reached out to tap an alert that was blinking urgently on the main holographic overlay, but his wavering index finger missed it by about an inch. “It’s a shuttle, not a spaceship, and you’re doing great, don’t worry about it.”

“Okay, now I’m flying a space- shuttle, all of the above, and you just gave me a compliment. I- I don’t think I can take much more of this, sir. Can you, I don’t know, yell at me? Tell me I’m doing it wrong? I think I’d feel a lot more normal.”

The Captain winced and swallowed, forcing his other eye open. “You know, Alan, all jokes aside, I’m starting to feel like there’s a fundamental problem with our rel- PULL UP, THAT’S A WATER TOWER.”

Alan pulled hurriedly back on the yoke. He leaned back a little easier in his seat as the shuttle lifted into the clouds, and let out a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah... that’s better.”

“Okay, that’s it. Out of my spot, go on, shoo-”

Flapping as if he was herding a flock of geese, the Captain flurried Alan out of the pilot seat and back across to the passenger side, taking the time to surreptitiously fasten his own seatbelt as Alan scrambled gratefully for his own. He blinked, shaking off the last of his disorientation, then swung an impatient hand across the console, bringing up a glowing, transparent overlay and typing rapidly, one-handed, still cupping his nose in the other.

“Don’t- don’t tip your head back like that, you’ll make it worse,” said Alan, worriedly. “Just pinch and lean forwards-”

“Try calling him again. It’s going to take a while for DRONUS to get a lock on, but there’s an array at Avon Park I can probably use to boost the signal.” The Captain pushed the overlay to one side as it began to resolve into the familiar grid of a map, twisting as it zoomed in on a tangle of long interlaced highways, county borders, landmarks, roads. He reached for the yoke, looked sideways at Alan over the Kleenex, hesitated.

“How G-force-resistant are you feeling right now? Just a rough ballpark.”

Alan winced and leaned back, checking his belt, bracing himself in the seat as he reached for his phone. “I’m gonna say… three? Maybe three and a half.”

The Captain snorted, flicked a few switches. On the map overlay, a set of cross-hairs cycled and re-centred themselves around a blinking yellow dot. “Pfft, okay. Hang on to something, Maverick. Here we... go.”

The dark clouds blurred. The bright neon bars of the readouts leapt skywards, and Alan’s stomach rolled slowly upwards to somewhere between his lungs and pancaked there. He clung to his seatbelt, gritting his teeth and shutting his eyes tightly as the invisible giant’s hand of gravity pressed his body ruthlessly back into the seat.

Obedient to its programming, the Captain’s mixtape swelled, synced perfectly with the acceleration, as the shuttle hurtled into the night.

*

It was dark, terrifically, absolutely dark. Maybe there were lights somewhere up on the road, but here in the wet darkness Mark could see nothing, not a light in the silent dashboard, not a sense of the space in front of him or the buckle of the belt strangling him across the chest. He had no idea where his phone was, or if it was even still in the car. He couldn’t see Anthony, and his own terrified breath and the racing of his heart in his ears drowned out every other sound.

“Anthony. Oh, God...”

He put out a hand and felt Anthony’s shoulder, his arm, his shirt already wet from the rain dripping through the windshield. The glass had to be broken, he could smell splintered wood and grass and he was afraid of reaching that way in case there were shards, but he spidered his hand out as far as he could, disoriented by the darkness, the tilted nose-down angle of the car. Water, metal, warmth from the dash, Anthony’s hand limp by his side. Mark tried to feel motion, life, anything, but his fingers were wet and cold and he could feel nothing except his own thundering pulse. He felt up to Anthony’s mouth and thought, tried to believe, that he could sense breath, but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t be sure.

“God, please...”

Now, on the wrong side of the ditch, the merciless lens of his mind’s eye was bright and clear. Locked in this breathless darkness, his body trapped and his mind running loose, he could see everything with perfect, painful lucidity. He could see that Anthony, his perspective that much less tangled up in everything that was happening- one step removed- had only been trying to help.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Mark was barely aware that he was speaking out loud, of the words tumbling out of his mouth, a breathless, weak litany that sounded nothing like his own voice, made alien by terror and desperation. “Anthony, this is all my fault. Anthony- Anthony, please wake up. Please be okay. I can’t-”

He struggled against his belt again, but the clip was stuck tight, The strap wouldn’t budge. He fought it as hard as he could, tore uselessly at the plastic and metal and webbing until he subsided, panting, his hands raw and throbbing, his heart pounding through his ribs.

I can’t lose you. I can’t lose you too.

He found Anthony’s limp hand again, and thought it felt colder. The rain was getting harder, dripping from unseen branches, from the deranged angles of the broken glass that he couldn’t even see. It had been a minute since the crash, or twenty, or an hour. It might as well have been years, in this black, dripping cocoon.

Mark swallowed, tasted blood in his throat, coppery and sour. Rain spattered down, streaking his clouding glasses, catching in his eyelashes and sticking his hair to his forehead in soaking strands.

A buzz in the dark. Another.

Light.

Out of the footwell, out of the curve of the seat suddenly defined out of the darkness, his phone was ringing again.

Mark reached a shaking hand down towards the bright rectangle. It felt as if he was moving through molasses. He grabbed, fumbled, almost dropped it out of reach. A jolt of pure dread ran through his whole body, but he managed to get his fingers to respond properly and pulled the phone to him, the urgent buzz running up his hand like a livewire as he touched the rain-spotted little screen.

In the flare of the screenlight, blue-white and dimmer than dim but brighter than a sunrise to Mark and just as unthinkably, unbearably welcome, he could see Anthony. He could see the wet curls hanging down over Anthony’s face, how they trembled in a gentle, regular disturbance.

He was breathing.

*

Afterwards, Mark found that his memories of the next couple of hours were strangely fragmented. He was convinced that he hadn’t passed out at any point, and he certainly hadn’t slept, but events seemed to fall in on top of each other as if they were cards in a poorly-built house, so scattered that only a rough order remained, a puzzle of bits and pieces and a sense that everything had happened all at once, and continued happening for an unbearably long time.

(hi, Mark? This is Alan, um, Alan Amelik, we... what? Oh, my God...)

He remembered the voice on the other end of the line, but he didn’t remember what he’d said, the rest of the conversation, if there had been one, after he had managed to answer. He didn’t know how much time passed after that, how long he spent in the dark, quiet car, held fast in his seat by the belt that had probably saved his life, listening to the voice, watching Anthony breathe.

He remembered an incredibly bright yellow-tinted light, falling across the broken windshield in a blinding lowering wash and picking out the crumbled glass around the frame, scattered across the dash, like hard specks of gold. There was a tangled pause, strange sounds and breaking branches and what sounded like a distant argument-

(don’t move them! let me-

oh, they’re fine, they still have all their pieces-

sir, you don’t know anything about humans’ pieces! let me see-)

-and gentle hands had checked him over before something with startling strength had reached impatiently across him and pulled his seatbelt apart with a ghastly crunch of plastic and metal. He remembered that, he remembered giving in to gravity and half-falling out of the tilted car onto his feet that couldn’t hold him, collapsing into the wet grass, because that was the last part that had made much sense, for a good while.

Because then there had been the spaceship.

After a certain point, Mark felt that his mind had decided that it didn’t need any more input right now, thank you. He was aware of the concepts, he wasn’t resistant to the idea that there was a spaceship, as fantastical and unlikely as it would usually have been, but like water slipping from feathers the reality and sense of what was happening failed to make any impact on him. There was another blank, eventful and an age long but completely empty of detail-

-and then the ship was humming through the rain, scudding along just under the clouds, he could see a scrap of the sky from this dark cool place that felt like the back of an SUV, that he would have believed was just an SUV if it wasn’t for the fact that he’d climbed into it and seen it hunching over him on its landing gear like a stocky, aerodynamic yellow-and-black alien insect, just like he would have believed that there was only one guy called Alan Amelik who also went by Captain Disillusion if he hadn’t found himself sitting on bristly black interior carpet behind two seats occupied by two people who could have been twins, if it wasn’t for-

Mark didn’t care, just then. He sat with Anthony, Anthony lying quiet in the recovery position in a safe flat place between a bunch of stacked odd-shaped equipment trunks with a blanket on him and Mark’s balled-up sweater as a pillow, and counted the pale lines of neon, the only light that filtered back from the controls. He sat, with the bristly carpet poking into his legs and Anthony’s hand warm in his, Anthony’s pulse in his palm against his. Someone was talking, but it wasn’t Anthony, so Mark let the noise go by and counted lines and then-

A hurried, antiseptic blank, a flood of light, a lot of new voices asking endless questions, his own low, even, monotone voice answering them. The part of him that could think was pretty astonished by how calm and coherent his responses were. Someone gave him his sweater back. Someone else gave him a bottle of water. Very little else made an impact on the bright blurry procession of time, until things went quiet again and he was once again sitting by Anthony’s side, this time in a low-lit side-room somewhere, rain pattering against the dark window. Anthony had a thing on his arm and a dressing over his eye where a shard of glass had caught him. They’d given him something, and whether for some predictable medical reason or simply because Anthony was built like a willow twig and there was barely anything to him, it had knocked him straight out. It seemed a long time to Mark before he moved, half-opening his eyes.

“Mark?”

Anthony’s voice was slow, quiet, a little loopy. He moved, squeezing Mark’s hand.

“Mark, were we... in a spaceship?”

“You’ve got a minor concussion, Anthony,” said Mark, gently detangling his fingers, pulling his hand out of reach. “Your parents are on their way, you should be good to go by the time they get here. You’re gonna be okay.”

“...Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” said Mark, trying to sound convincing, but he needn’t have worried. Anthony was already out again, his hand relaxing against the crunchy white hospital pillow.

Mark sat back. He thought he knew how he should feel, but instead he felt flat, blank, aware of the room around him and his place in it but somehow apart from it, apart from Anthony, listening to the dim endless undertones of sound around him. Faint intercom sounds, feet squeaking on tile, the rush of an elevator, voices passing the door. The soundscape of the hospital was so familiar to him from his experiences of the past year that it was hard to hold on to a sense of place and time, to know who he was going to see when he looked back to the bed.

On the wrong side of time, of his choices, of every chance he’d had to turn back, he could understand that his best friend, kept in the dark but still guided by his simple and instinctive way of reaching for the heart of things always, had only been trying to preserve a scrap of something normal.

This small good thing they’d built together, a port in a storm.

All Anthony had been trying to do, flying blind as he had been, all he’d ever been trying to do was keep something good back from what must have looked, from where he stood, like the slow-motion shipwreck of Mark’s whole world.

Mark found himself thinking of the awful winter of his parents’ divorce, how it had been like a bitter current dragging everything along in its wake, tainting everything in its slow leaden flow. How Anthony had been there for him, always ready to drop everything to cheer him up, to give him all he had, without a thought, space and normality and his own cheerful goofy comforting self. The movie marathons he’d set up, the time they’d stayed up all night watching all the Star Wars movies back to back, how Anthony had made sure to find versions of the old ones that hadn’t been fucked around with and how they’d torn the new ones to pieces until Mark’s stomach had hurt with laughing and he’d forgotten, for the time he’d forgotten, everything hard and sour.

He put his face in his hands, smelling harsh hospital soap and feeling hot skin and stubble and the hard cool lines of his own glasses, and tried to breathe, tried to centre himself. Tried to think.

“Anthony?” When his friend neither moved or responded, Mark lined up his fingers on the edge of the bed’s metal rail, speaking quietly.

“It’s been a fun trip, huh?” He huffed, a dead sound that had nothing to do with laughter, put his head down again. Anyone taking a passing glance through the doorway might have thought he was praying, hands neatly placed, shoulders drooping under an invisible weight.

“You would be so much better off without me, Anthony. You wouldn’t be here. You- you’d’ve had a better weekend. You’d be running a YouTube channel with someone who wasn’t a total-”

His voice shook, broke.

“I’ll put it all back,” he said. “I’ll fix it. I promise. Anthony, I promise. I’m never going to lie to you again.”

#dftm #don't feed the muse #muse arg #mark mayhew #anthony williams #captain disillusion #alan amelik #alan the intern #my writing

[thegeminisage]

THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY breakdown

as always i am transcribing the little notes i took on my phone during the experience

the three things i knew about this film before i started were 1. valeris secret villain? some kind of mind-meld forced on spock? 2. worf's grandpa 3. kirk and bones sentenced to hard labor on planet hoth. other than that i went in blind

im glad they opened with CAPTAIN!!! sulu. i feel like he couldnt be there during filming but im so relieved he got parts anyway <3

also quite shocked to see janice rand?! god bless. she was like, i've undergone so much unbelievable bullshit. lemme get that star trek money. and then she did <3

the ship shaking in this movie was VERY realistic. the m,ost realistic yet. idk why they would have glass tecups in this situation though...maybe they just like to watch them break dramatically

uhura is still so beautiful in this movie. i don't know how she gets more beautiful in every star trek thing she appears in but she did it 6 times in a row. queen

first cry of the evening was when spock showed up but it was a SHORT cry because i had just cried about him in tng two days ago.

loved his little domestic spat with kirk at the beginning. the giant space between them. doing it in public. the absolute death glares. who's in the woodshed NOW (sorry for saying woodshed)

kirk being racist was an unexpected detail but i get it. you gotta have somebody being racist to nail home this story's message or whatever. i just figured it'd be bones. then again the klingons didn't kill his kid

that one bald klingon who kept eyefucking everybody he looked at. king. i know the phrase eyefucking is out of date because we overused it but there is simply no other way to describe it. he was there to leer at men suggestively and recite a batshit amount of shakespeare. and he did a great job

i had so much fun playing spot the tng set. they kept those rooms SO dark so we wouldn't recognize them but i did anyway.

the anti-gravity scene was SO so so so cool and good. like, the 90s cgi purple pepto bismol blood took me out of it a little but we have been saying every time something fucked up their little ship "how is the gravity still on rn." and the answer, always, is "it's on bc no-grav scenes cost money." FINALLY we got a no gravity scene. such a profound sense of both awe and closure

the violence was shockingly gorey too. like we had severed arms and real blood flying everywhere. idk that any of the trek i've watched so far has been quite that explicit

the scene where bones tries to save the klingon high chancellor. 10/10. bones the healer begging to be allowed to save lives. him jumping straight up onto that table and straddlign that man. him digging his hands into all that klingon blood. what a fine moment. it was a little homoerotic of that guy to grab kirk in the spiderman kiss pose as he was dying too

sarek cameo <3 it felt weird to see him alive right after he died

i did wonder why they didn't just have saavik in this film instead of valeris...i guess that saavik fans would have been mad if the send-off for the character was to make her a backstabber. but it would have felt more believable that spock be blind to her passions because she was also his protege. it also would've made the mind meld (WHICH. WOW. GETTING TO THAT) all the more tragic. valeris does a great spock eyebrow but she's not as compelling as saavik and she doesn't have the backstory so even if i hadn't had the spoilers i would have suspected her

things i didnt like: that one colonel guy saying terrorism and mr scott saying bitch. watch your mouth, gentleman.

the trial was fine (i still have trial fatigue) but i find it hard to believe klingons dont have tear ducts. what if they get something in their eyes? i loved seeing worf. i loved bones's little arthritis joke. frail little old waif of a man <3

kirk getting his ass handed to him over his personal logs is why you don't make personal logs. even funnier: their thing where they were like yeah but he has a record of [lists 1000000 crimes kirk has committed]. that was funny because it was true.

i love when they put dogs in costumes

bones collapsing in that blizzard was my ONE AND ONLY HOPE for this movie. i needed him to do it so bad so i could round out my collection and he did not let me down. true consistency. authenticity. king behavior. me when i go north fr

unexpected: both the cigar and the hot alien lady. i don't know what either of them were even doing there. she literally macked on kirk right in front of bones's salad. idk if we can count this as a close encounter though considering how short it was

i loved kirk's little fight where he nutshotted the alien. and their little prison outfits. and them snuggling up on bed together to stay warm <3 also bones being like and one day PFFFT kobayashi maru, that's it! quintessential bones behavior.

AMANDA GRAYSON RELATED TO SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE??? cmon.

mixed feelings about the shapeshifter. double kirks was great (once again: william shatner plays a woman) and hilarious especially when they smooshed poor bones. double especially when she was like yeah well i bet you always wanted to kiss yourself anyway. that little girl giving kirk a saucy wink was maybe less fun. it would have been a close encounter if they'd fucked i guess

spirk talking in the hall and their faces were soooo close together

spock's forced mind meld: i thought this was something done TO him, not something HE DID. imagine my shock. there's a little mirror spock in him after all. it was absolutely fucking ruthless. i have a little pet theory that everyone in the mirrorverse is really the same - it's only their circumstances that turned them into monsters. it's not always viable and it's not always as fun as them just being evil and edgy, but this does lend it evidence <3

spock "i've been dead before" absolute king.

the conference at khitomer!!!! the foreshadowing.........

spirk's conversation in spock's quarters in the dark...mwah. "the night is young" "i find that remark insulting" "i need you" i wish they had talked about valeris but this was still really good. bones should have been there.

TORPEDO SURGERY! IT'S AN AOS REFERENCE! aos bones is a damsel because he couldn't operate on the torpedo.

loved kirk's GET DOWN MRS OBAMA moment and he got to have one twice in a row and then pull the mask off that guy like he was a scooby doo villain. incredible.

you've restored my father's faith / you've restored my son's...wah. i didn't really care about david but i'm glad he got closure about it or whatever.

then the klingon slow clapping. incredible.

spock cussing and saying go to hell <3

"soon the enterprise will have a new crew" yeah a worse one. i did like the switch from no man to no one though during that final monologue. just subtle enough <3

I DID CRY AGAIN AT THE END.....................it was a very sweet ending. second star to the right and straight on til morning. i'm glad sulu got to say goodbye even on webcam he was such a g this film. i'm gonna miss them SO MUCH.

i now know spock's ENTIRE LIFE STORY except whatever happens in snw that i dont care about <3 if i wasnt busy it would have huge fanfic potential. give me time i guess.

#personal #star trek blogging #tuc lb #a tag i'll use again someday when i get to the novelization

[butterflydm]

wot on prime rewatch: 1x01 leavetaking

spoilers for all of season one of the show; I’m going to do a reblog of this post to include book-related thoughts that go past The Eye of the World.

1. There are several things that I really love about Moiraine’s intro scene: it sets up the two items that she uses at the EotW (the sa’angreal and the knife) and she is wearing PANTS thus immediately already trimming away one of Jordan’s super-weird continent-wide gender quirks where It Is a Weird Thing for women to wear pants. Moiraine’s traveling outfit gives me life. But, frankly, the pants were the first thing that made me believe that we would be getting a genuinely UPDATED version of the story, without all the super-weird stuff about how men and women are so impossibly different that they can’t ever understand each other (even when, ex. the woman in question is behaving remarkably similar to your male friend that you have no issue understanding, and vice versa) and that was so exciting to me. And I’m still excited about it! Another thing that I love is Moiraine talking about how arrogant the ~men~ were to believe they could cage darkness in one big pre-emptive strike and then that’s basically exactly what she takes Rand off to do at the end of S1.

2. In S1E5, we find out that what Liandrin and her Red Ajah sisters do here is extremely illegal! They are not supposed to be hunting down male channelers and gentling them on the spot, they are supposed to take them back to Tar Valon for trial (...when they will get gentled, so for the actual men, it’s something of a distinction without a difference). This is also our first look at the ‘madness’ that afflicts male channelers due to the corruption and I’m really curious about how this will continue to be portrayed as we get more men channeling in the future.

3. The first appearance of Moiraine’s wishful thinking appears in this scene (arguably, the first appearance of her wishtful thinking is in the intro scene when she says that the Dragon might be reborn as a girl; that would definitely make things easier for her!), when she insists that the man that Liandrin just gentled CANNOT be the Dragon Reborn. She happens to be right in this case, but this attitude works less well for her when we get to the end of the season.

4. And then we get the super-awesome shot of the tall ‘moss-covered mountains’ that are actually abandoned skyscrapers. Perfect match for the Age of Legends scene that we get at the end of the season. Continue to love how they wove in the post-apocalypse threads. Subtle but once you know, you can see it in lots of place.

5. I really like how this opening scene with Egwene is all very metaphorical for how embracing saidar is described in the books. And getting our first glimpses of Egwene and Nynaeve is great, but I also like how it’s in the context of this woman-only group in their community because that’s a huge part of their story that they will need to navigate in the future (we know they’re both planning to head to the White Tower as of the end of S1). I do think it’s very interesting how the ‘Women’s Circle’ is not a governing body here but rather the community that all women join when they’re old enough for a braid. I don’t think we get any mentions of the Village Council or Bran as the Mayor either. The Two Rivers seems purely people chilling without a leader and just being a small community together.

6. The locations are so pretty. So, we get introduced to Moiraine & Lan, then Liandrin, then Egwene & Nynaeve, and now we have Rand and Tam. Tam is remembering the old days. Aw, this intro with Rand and Tam is cute, plus it does set up: wolves acting strangely, that Rand’s mom is out of the picture (implied dead), and him and Egwene as childhood sweethearts.

7. I think the show did a good job of marrying together the different backstories that Rand and Egwene’s romance have in the series. In the show, they’re first loves, currently in a relationship but inexplicably not married for reasons that perhaps neither of them could put a finger on if you asked them directly. Before Egwene gets the Wisdom apprentice invite, I imagine they would both vaguely say, “oh you know. we’ll get married some day” and then just keep not doing it.

8. This set of scenes in the Winespring does a good job setting up the friendship between the three boys. We see Rand and Perrin worrying over Mat losing money; and then Perrin also comes over to talk to Rand when he notices him brooding off by the wall. And Mat, in his more teasing way, is trying to make sure that the three of them stay connected as a friendship unit, even if Perrin is married and Rand is with Egwene and off in the mountains most of the year besides. And Perrin and Mat are both introduced in context of their friendship with Rand. This scene is also used to show how insular the Two Rivers is, hearing news of the world only second or third-hand.

9. Lan and Moiraine are such drama llamas, I swear. So Dramatic at all times. Nynaeve gets positioned as the village Protector even here in this introduction -- she’s the one that challenges Lan and tells him to name himself. Nynaeve and Rand are the two characters set up to be the most distrusting of Moiraine, but we see a lot of whispering between villagers in the background.

10. It’s an interesting set of shots that they set up here, actually, given some of what happens later. The people that Moiraine looks at: first, it’s Mat with the girl that we find out later that he stole from; then Nynaeve with Lan in the foreground; and finally Egwene with a shot that racks focus to include Rand and Perrin behind her (who will have a brief love trangle-ish moment later on in the season). But I like this shot of Moiraine looking around and clocking all the potential people who might be the correct age to be the Dragon Reborn.

11. Again, on a rewatch, Perrin’s secret crush on Egwene (and Nynaeve’s knowledge of it) is actually made pretty clear.

12. We get introduced next to Mat’s change in backstory which I’ve personally thought was a brilliant choice from the beginning. Mat’s background feels fairly disconnected from his characterization in the books and this new backstory grounds him as a character, gives him some strong motivations and some strong personal fears. It does add a slightly darker/seedier side to the Two Rivers, in that the Cauthons have clearly fallen through the cracks, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing either.

13. But the set-up here really is heartbreaking for Mat -- a father that is constantly breaking his mother’s heart, a mother who is so consumed by her husband’s betrayal that she’s barely a mother to her children, and Mat left to essentially parent his little sisters. And it sets up Mat as someone who has both strong reasons to want to be far away from the Two Rivers (to escape his family and the reputation his family would have in the village) and to return to the Two Rivers (to take care of his sisters). And he’s also set up as someone who only has his ‘true self’ seen by a handful of people -- his sisters, Rand, and... potentially Perrin, though Perrin doesn’t get as much screentime about it, and potentially Nynaeve as well -- and everyone else sees this surface gloss of who he is, including Moiraine, Egwene, and his own parents.

14. I do actually wonder if part of the reason that they cast the sisters so young was because filming just takes a long time, longer than the books are set in, so they may just be planning to have the events of the books take place over a longer time frame.

15. We do see here than Egwene and Rand’s relationship is definitely favored by both his father and her parents. Tam and Rand stay behind after everyone else has left to help the al’Vere’s clean up the inn, essentially acting as in-laws already. The scene between them alone is really good, too, and you can feel the tension of Egwene having something to tell Rand and being uncertain about it, and Rand is clearly aware that something is Going On but isn’t sure he wants to know, and so they ended up sleeping together first and then dealing with their actual issues afterwards.

16. I also really really love the platonic bath scene with Moiraine and Lan. Nonsexual and nonromantic intimacy between people who are essentially platonic life-partners at this point. It’s a great look under the ~dramatic~ surface that they were portraying to the villagers earlier. And it’s nice that our first bit of nudity is a guy’s butt. And I love the implication that, over the years, Moiraine has embraced some of the customs from Lan’s homeland.

17. Rand does essentially take this as something of a break-up while Egwene seems more torn on whether it is or isn’t. But then part of the issue that they end up running into later on in this episode and at the end of the season, is that Rand likes to process things alone in his head and Egwene wants to talk it all out as it’s currently happening, so they have some communication incompatibilities but it isn’t chalked up to Women are just Like This and Men are just Like That, the way that things like that tend to be spun as in the books.

18. And the intro to Padan Fain, where we find out that he acts essentially as Mat’s fence for items stolen from people in the Two Rivers works really well and it just... it does make me sad about how the show had to get adjusted post-Covid, and was not able to have Mat end out the season facing off against Fain, as I’m sure he was originally supposed to do. Fain’s whole speech about how he hated going to the Two Rivers every year would have hit harder if he’d been saying it to Mat.

19. We do see here, in a more subtle way, how most of the villagers are eyeing Moiraine and Lan suspiciously.

20. The sort of semi-post-relationship conversation with Egwene and Rand on the mountainside is very good as well. That she knows where to look for him when he’s in a thoughtful/brooding mood and the actual content of the talk as well. Honestly, I feel so puzzled by a lot of the complaints from some people about Rand’s behavior towards Egwene that I saw? It all makes perfect sense to me? She breaks up with him but then, next episode, she wants him to be instantly over any heartbreak and, at the same time, offer her boyfriend-type cuddles at night. And I get it from Egwene’s PoV too -- it’s a very stressful situation and she’s used to looking to Rand for comfort in stressful situations, so she’s going back to her instincts/old habits. But it’s just weird how I saw people call him clingy when she is the one who literally tries to physically snuggle up with him after she breaks up with him? How is he supposed to ‘just get over her already’ when she’s doing stuff like that? idk some people don’t seem to expect men to have human emotions and it’s weird to me. She’s allowed to be nostalgic about him to Aram but he’s not allowed to be nostalgic about her.

21. Rand had a whole Vision about his future (not the magic kind) and he needs some time to adjust to that vision changing. And, like... that’s fair and completely a normal human reaction to being broken up with and I do not understand why I saw so many people being weird about it when this set of episodes aired. It’s not like Rand had a made-up fantasy about Egwene -- they were literally in a romantic and sexual relationship! That ended extremely abruptly! And then they all got traumatized by having their village attacked! Even without the additional trauma that Rand was operating under, his behavior made sense.

22. Nynaeve and Moiraine do get off on such a hilariously bad footing here. Moiraine takes such a terrible approach to trying to feel Nynaeve out on her parentage, etc. Though I can see how the sort of overwhelming presence that she’s trying to use here would work against a lot of people, but it just majorly puts Nynaeve’s back up. I’ve thought a lot about how Rand might react to learning that Moiraine sent the Red Ajah after Mat, but Nynaeve would also have an extremely explosive reaction, especially because she shows a lot of sympathy and understanding for Mat in Primeverse.

23. Aaah, Nynaeve firmly establishing herself as The Protector of the Two Rivers Folk and she is, she so very much is. Zoë Robins is just so perfect as Nynaeve and I love her in the role so much. The casting is so on-point.

24. We get another establishing friendship scene with our three boys. And Mat just instantly can tell something’s wrong with Rand, even as Perrin is just like ??? about it. He susses out that it’s about Egwene and that it was Really Bad in terms of their relationship. Then a little later, we also get the bit where Rand and Perrin give some money to Mat so that he can buy lanterns for the girls. There really is kinda a vibe where Mat is extremely emotionally aware of both Rand and Perrin, and while Rand and Perrin are both emotionally aware of Mat, they are not particularly aware of each other. Which tracks with Perrin having a secret crush on Egwene and that making himself distance himself from Rand (slightly). Rand and Perrin still care about each other but don’t ever really get the one-on-one scenes that Rand and Mat, and Mat and Perrin get. But they did a really good job setting up these three as a close friend group.

25. And we do see that Egwene is also sad over the ending of her relationship with Rand (she’s crying on the bridge) and Nynaeve comes to listen to the wind with her. I do think it’s interesting that they set up both Nynaeve and Egwene as each having strong bonds to two of the boys but somewhat-to-mildly disapproving of the third one -- Nynaeve is very compassionate with Rand and Mat later on, but tells Perrin to go home to his wife; Egwene was in a romance with Rand and trauma-bonds with Perrin, but has a more antagonistic view of Mat. It makes things feel more complex than they were in the books, imo.

26. Oh, hey, that’s a beeswax candle! Nice. I love what they did with the candle ceremony. The show did such an interesting thing where it made the whole Wheel and the reincarnation feels a lot more like a vibrant cultural aspect than it does in the books. It influences the Two Rivers beliefs here and it influences the Tuatha'an people’s beliefs when Perrin talks to them in later episodes. It just really grounds the people’s behavior when it’s attached to these spiritual rituals (and I am saying this as an atheist who does not personally perform any spiritual or religious rituals -- I don’t do it, but it is a very common part of the human experience and it makes sense that it would have this kind of impact on people who live in this world). And the whole idea that the candles light the way for souls to come back and then you have a celebration to remind them of what’s worth coming back for.

27. The little touch of Nynaeve setting out the candle on the other side of the river and wiping away her tears immediately and walking away, because she feels like she needs to be strong for the village and not let them see her show her pain. And then her not dancing at Bel Tine. Those little touches showing how she has to set herself slightly apart from all of them.

28. The horror of the Trolloc attack in the middle of the dancing works really well, imo. We don’t see any of this in the book because we’re entirely in Rand’s PoV but this whole section does set up a lot: we see Mat going back into danger to act as a protector, we set up Perrin having an understandable trauma centered around the violence of the axe, we get Nynaeve trying to protect the villagers and Egwene by her side ready to fight with her, we see the initial panic of the villagers and then them rallying together, we have Padan Fain sneaking off in the middle of the attack, and we get Rand and Tam dealing with that same horror in isolation up mountain. And we get to see how well Aes Sedai and Warders work as a team, which was very cool and useful. They did a good job with the choreo there, because it really does feel like they can anticipate each other’s moves. And Egwene and Nynaeve both get a close look at what Aes Sedai are capable of accomplishing.

29. We don’t get to see Rand and Tam’s conversation in the woods here, but since this is a rewatch, we all know that it happened and will impact Rand’s behavior going forward. He just found out that his dad picked up a kid in the aftermath of a battle and took him home, so he’s got an identity crisis going on in the background of every scene that he’s in from this point forward.

30. I’m just gonna feel bad for Egwene for a moment, because she went through the rough journey of believing that Nynaeve was dead from here until they’re reunited in E6, and then post-E8, she is potentially going to be told/implied to that Rand is dead as well. Anyway, like I mentioned above, I totally understand why Egwene seeks Rand’s comfort in E2 because this is a very traumatic experience.

31. Moiraine and the Winespring collapsing together is such a cool shot. I really love it. Epic. And Lan covering her to shield her from the debris. What an amazingly visual illustration of what a Warder does.

32. Rand arriving back to the absolute ruin of the town. Heartbreaking. Ah, and Egwene telling Rand that Nynaeve ‘is gone’. Just this whole section of people counting up their losses is heartbreaking. And the little moments of connection in the tragedies, like Egwene and Rand hugging each other or Mat putting his hand on Perrin’s shoulder. Interestingly, the hand motions that Moiraine does here to heal Tam are similar from what I remember of how she draws Shadar Logoth’s corruption from Mat, both scenes that Rand witnesses.

33. Rand immediately challenges Moiraine which was another thing that viewers held against him despite it... making sense? He talks about the same sort of logic later on re: Thom as well -- that it’s possible that the convenient stranger who showed up right before the trouble conveniently helped them in order to win their trust. Rand doesn’t know that Moiraine is getting Protagonist Hero Shots.

34. The things that Moiraine tells them (notably: she tells them because Rand challenged her): that an Aes Sedai saw glimpses of the future twenty years ago, that the Dark One is waking, that his whispers are in the backs of their minds, and that the Dragon (the one person who can stand against the Dark One) has been reborn and is one of the four of them. And that they need to leave, because the Trollocs are chasing them, specifically, and if they stay then the town will be destroyed.

35. I’m also intrigued by the implication that maybe the entire village just learned that one of their four kiddos is the Dragon Reborn? Since Moiraine isn’t leaving in secret the way that they did in The Eye of the World. It’s difficult to say, because everyone else is busy working on the town and we don’t get reaction shots. But everyone does know that their four kiddos are very publicly leaving with the Aes Sedai and it’s clear that there were goodbyes, if short ones, so even if they don’t know that the Dragon is involved, they do know more than the Two Rivers knew in the book.

36. Love getting that iconic ‘a wind rose’ line. <3

#wot rewatch #wot on prime #wot #wheel of time #moiraine damodred #lan mandragoran #nynaeve al'meara #egwene al'vere #rand al'thor #mat cauthon #perrin aybara #the wheel of time #wotwatch

[ankh-morporkianpostalworker]

Now that I've finished The Path of Daggers and Winter's Heart, we're gonna update the Most Based Wheel of Time Character List:

10 - Min: While I don't mind Aviendha, Aviendha is also the sworn sister of the nost cringe character in the series, making her cringe by association. Min not being totally cringe (and her really cool power and supporting Rand without trying to control him) gets her the number 10 spot.

9 - Perrin: It's not Perrin's fault he got burdened with a filler arc. Saving his wife is a worthy goal that shows loyalty and caring for her, but reading the parts where he's just tracking her down in Winter's Heart, coming off the high of his performance in The Path of Daggers, really lost him some points.

8 - Lan: As much as Lan is a Wife Guy, he's also willing to help summarily execute people who tried to kill the man who was, for a time, his friend. He also stands up to The Dragon Reborn despite knowing what he can do, which shows courage, a based property.

7 - Davram Bashere: One of Rand's best men, Bashere is also willing to call Rand out when he does something deplorable, like his use of Callandor resulting in the wanton slaughter of Rand's own men. Rand trusts him completely, and such loyalty is pretty based. He'd cracked the top five no problem if it weren't for the fierce competition he faces.

6: Lews Therin: The Original Dragon. His moments of increasing lucidity provide some of the most interesting lines in the series thus far. The fact that he's growing more and more aware of Rand, and thinks Rand is a madman (including the line "I would not mind you in my head, if you were not so clearly mad") add an absolutely fascinating aspect to the series, and I'm excited to see what happens next.

5 - Birgette: She's a badass, despite being bonded to the most cringe character in the franchise. She also acts as said character's moral compass.

4 - Nynaeve: Of the Emond's Field Folk who left in the first book, she's the only one who has kept her eyes on the prize. Her original goals were to 1) protect Rand, Perrin, Mat, and Egwene, and she has continued to do so in one way or another for most of the series (being forcibly separated from Mat after being the only person to treat him with empathy at the climax of A Crown of Swords doesn't count against her). Of all the Aes Sedai in the world, Rand trusts only her to link with him to cleanse said saidin, a moment of extreme vulnerability. Her other goal, to learn to Heal with saidar, has been accomplished, along with her secondary goal of marrying Lan.

3 - Rand: Rand being willing to sacrifice his own life to cleanse saidin, and pulling it off, was pretty based. While his descent into madness isn't great, he's also an absolute badass who takes so much punishment throught the series that when he's bonded to Min, Aviendha, and Elayne they all gasp in astonishment at the pain he constantly carries with him. Also, him telling Alanna to fuck off was enormously rewarding, especially when he tells her what everyone else has been thinking about her forcibly bonding him.

2 - Moiraine: Has she been dead for thousands of pages? Yes. Did she teach Rand most of what he knows about politics? Yes. Did she Gandalf one of the Foresaken? Yes. Is she the first person on Rand's list of women who's deaths are on him, one he chants like a litany, showing that her mourns her death? Yes. The first three make her based and the last shows her impact on Rand.

1 - Matrim fucking Cauthon: He's got the loyalty of his men, even when he's away from them. He almost died saving his adopted son. He engineers a plan to escape an occupied city in a way that prioritizes said son's safety. He escapes his relationship with his abuser. All cement his place at the top of his list, making him tbe reigning champion and most based character.

#wot spoilers #wheel of time #mat cauthon #nynaeve al'meara #lanfear #moiraine damodred #rand al'thor #lews therin #robert jordan #perrin aybara

[markantonys]

wotseries did a little article about the south africa filming which apparently officially started today, and there's nothing crazy in it but i'm so desperate for crumbs that i'm bringing the little tidbits i found interesting to you all!

they speculate filming will last about 2 months

they speculate some tanchico scenes may be filmed here as well as aiel waste scenes

crew members spotted include people associated with all of the season's directors (block 1&4, block 2, and block 3). which might mean the waste scenes (and/or possibly tanchico scenes) start as early as 3x01/2 and/or span as late as 3x07/8 (the director for blocks 1&4 is the same, so we can't say for sure whether they're there for both blocks or just one of them). wotseries does specifically say they believe they may be filming for material as early as 3x02.

they are confident that rosamund pike, daniel henney, madeleine madden, ayoola smart, and josha stradowski are involved in the filming. (actually, they said they were confident about the first 4 and assumed josha was also there since rand yknow has to be there, but i'm 99.9999% sure josha mentioned being part of this filming in the december interviews, so i'm confident.) so it does sound like exclusively the waste crew right now, and thus i'll take the tanchico speculation with a grain of salt, although of course it could be that there are tanchico scenes that are scheduled for later in the shoot and those actors may arrive at a later date.

now for some of my mini musings! first, season filming length. this would put s3 filming at april 2023-april 2024. s2 filmed july 2021-may 2022 and started airing in september 2023. the s2 film end date-air date gap would put s3 at august 2025, while the s1-s2 air gap (1 year 10 months) would put s3 at july 2025. could be we're looking at summer 2025, or could be that amazon wants to alternate septembers with ROP and will put WOT s3 at september 2025, or could be they want and are able to start getting seasons out a bit more quickly and are hoping for spring 2025. who knows! i'll be very curious to learn ROP s2's release date and potentially get a sense whether alternating septembers is their plan or whether they're aiming to start having a fantasy season out every 8-10 months instead of every 12.

second, The Mat Question, given the recent rumor that mat will be part of the tanchico plotline. donal is starring in hadestown which is happening right now, so he's obviously not involved in this filming - at least yet. possibilities are:

a) most/all of the filming is for the waste, and mat is not part of that plotline at all

b) mat is part of the waste plotline in some capacity, but all his scenes were already filmed in the studio and donal doesn't need to participate in the south africa shoot

c) donal does need to participate in a portion of the south africa shoot and an understudy will take over his part in hadestown for a bit while he's doing that (i know nothing about how long-running theater productions work, so i have no idea whether or not it's likely that he would take a theater job or be hired for a theater job if he already knew he wouldn't be available for a chunk of its run)

i don't really have any guesses at all here. mat is destined to be the most mysterious and hard-to-predict character of every season!

third, i'm thrilled to have unofficial confirmation that madeleine is part of this filming and i hope to soon see an end to the "egwene will go back to the tower instead of accompanying rand & co straight to the waste from falme" nonsense haha

fourth, the potential timeframe of the waste plotline. that it spans episodes 3-6 is totally unsurprising, so it's the bookend blocks i'm most curious about. arriving at the waste in 3x02 makes sense to me - this would give them a whole episode with the gang together in falme, and then everyone can split up to head off on their trips. there's also a bit of a possibility that the suspected 3x02 material could be just the end of the episode, and rand's group spends most of the episode in a different place such as caemlyn (a theory i love very much and will hold onto as long as i possibly can!). i thiiiiiink previous leaks placed rand's rhuidean visions in block 2, and in the books the rhuidean trip is just about the first thing they do upon arriving in the waste, so it could be that their arrival is sorta like the 3x02 cliffhanger and then we dive into rhuidean and such in 3x03.

then for block 4. again, we don't know for sure whether this director is here for anything to do with block 4 or only for block 1, so this might be a moot point. but the potential block 4 i can think of for rand's plotline is either a) they're still in the waste all the way through 3x08 as in TSR, or b) they leave the waste sometime in 3x07/8 and go to either cairhien or tear for a big battle. option B would probably still involve some waste scenes in this block even if they ultimately end in a different location, so i don't even know why i'm bringing up anything to do with block 4 because we're no closer to guessing the location of rand's crew by the end of 3x08 than we were before!

#me: there's nothing new here [somehow manages to ramble for paragraphs] #i'm just too excited! wotshow speculation is my favorite pastime!! #wot #wot on prime #the wheel of time #wot show spoilers #wot book spoilers

[caracarnn]

Listening to everything that happened, Rand can't help but feel himself go somewhat numb. Every single part of his body wouldn't let him forget it. Any of it. There were scars all over him and under the skin too. He wouldn't be able to get out of this unscathed, he knew that already. He was all minced hopes and brokenness and yet the yoke of the world still hung rather heavy there on his neck. He could feel it because it didn't belong there. He had failed and now what right did he have to being a hero? He had lost everything, the world had been given over to darkness. He was almost sure that he had no right to save it anymore.

But Mat was talking to him now and he let out a slow breath. Of course going to Seanchan would be a gamble. Going to Seanchan was their only hope and yet it was the biggest problem that they would face. It was far. They would have to go all the way across the Aryth Ocean and Rand knew that he would have to either sail there or - he had been there only once. That long ago snow buried day when Aviendha had run from him. If he tried to make a Gateway there where would it take them? But sailing could take months. The amount of time it would take to get there would only plunge the world further into darkness. Could it survive anymore?

Those words that came from Mat had him slumping his shoulders. Start Channeling. The idea was one that he wanted. He could feel the Source, waving about like skin of water in the middle of The Waste. He could feel it but the ache of even attempting to reach for it was something that he couldn't give himself. He was too weak. The sickness and pain that had come from Channeling with the Domination band on was still at the forefront of his mind. It was a tortured feeling that wouldn't shake him loose.

Still, however, he nodded his head in response. He knew that Mat was right and he had to push past the sickness, the turmoil, the torrent of feelings and pain. Channeling was a good start and then they could move onward to finding a way to defeat the Shadow. Whether it was with the help of Seanchan or not, they had to do something now while their blind spot of his own escape had the armies of The Shadow preoccupied.

"It is cold." He said with another short nod and then he lowered his head, closing his eyes on the racing of his own heart there in his chest. The Power was like a glimmer on the horizon and all he had to do was reach. What did it matter that he felt a sickness rolling around in his stomach? What did it matter that he was almost scared to reach Saidin without permission. Light, what had they done to him? He was the Dragon and this was how far that he had fallen.

Finally he pressed himself further into The Void, letting himself flounder there within its confines and then he reached for Saidin. The numbness allowed him to ignore the sickness for now. That and the weakness. He felt the Power surge through his veins, wrap around him until all that was left was the blistering heat and engulfing tempest. He was at the center of the storm and he was wrestling with its waves. Finally Saidin was his and it was like life exploded inside of him. His eyes snapped open and he stared across at Mat eagerly as he created a Weave.

It wasn't so complex a Weave but it still allowed for warmth to descend over them. The cold was at bay and he was able to look into Mat's eyes with the smallest glimmer of hope. Maybe him Channeling was the first step in a bigger direction.

"Give me time. Then I can make us a Gateway there." Did he dare to do that? Get them there blind? He could manage it. He was certain. "But once we're there...it's in your hands, Mat. And, by the Light, it's our last chance."

@luckhissoul - cont'd from here

#.thread #luckhissoul #v. under the shadow

[fancoloredglasses]

The saga of the Huntress and the Question (so what do you think their ship-name should be? Let me know in the comments!)

[All images are owned by DC Comics and Warner Bros Discovery. I hope I’m too small-fry to sue...]

In Justice League (Unlimited), and in fact the entire Dini-verse, despite the fact that it was written for a younger audience, there are a large number of themes that surprisingly mature. One theme is romance.

Obviously Batman has Catwoman and Talia Al-Guhl and Superman has Lois Lane. However, the two Justice League series has four (including a love triangle)!

Green Arrow and Black Carnary

John Stewart and Hawkgirl…

…as well as Vixen

Batman and Wonder Woman (they never go anywhere with this, but it’s obvious they have feelings for one another. I’ll have to do a deep dive on this one of these days)

And finally, the subject of this week’s review. First, let’s discuss the participants, as most people aren’t comic geeks who love the minor heroes more than the marquee ones…

The Huntress debuted on Earth-2 (where DC stashed their Golden Age heroes until they were needed) prior to Crisis as Helena Wayne, the daughter of Bruce and Selina Wayne. Following Crisis, she was reimagined as Helena Bertinelli, the last surviving family member of a slain Mob Boss, who became a ruthless vigilante in an attempt to avenge her dead family.

Huntress makes her debut in a brief appearance fighting a bunch of robot spiders (but that’s not important for this review)

The Question was created by Steve Ditko as part of Charleton Comics’ “Action Line” (which was ended a year later). When Ditko joined DC Comics, the company (as a “gift”) bought the rights to the Action Line, dumping them on Earth-4 in the DC Multiverse and forgetting about them until Crisis (though they were re-imagined in Watchmen, with the Question being the inspiration for Rorschach)

In the comics, the Question was a very philosophical hero (starting out following the teachings of Ayn Rand in Charlton, and Zen Buddhism following Crisis). However, in JLU the Question is a cynical conspiracy theorist looking for everyone’s “angle”.

Question made his debut working with Supergirl and Green Arrow trying to find out why Supergirl was having disturbing dreams (while I won’t cover that for this review, it is kinda important as you’ll soon discover)

And now that we’ve established the players, on to the story!

NOTE: I will mainly be focusing the scenes involving Huntress and the Question. Any elements beyond their involvement I will likely ignore (unless it’s important later) If you would like to view the episodes in their entirety, they’re available on Max or behind your favorite paywall.

PREVIOUSLY ON…

Following the events of A Better World, an organization known as Cadmus (a government shadow ops group with off-the-books funding from Luthor) emerges of the League’s radar, performing such acts as illegal cloning (including a clone of Supergirl, which was the source of her bad dreams (told you it would be important)) The Question begins poking into Cadmus’s business after helping Supergirl and Green Arrow, trying to find the bottom of that rabbit hole.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor has announced his candidacy for President (and is apparently doing well despite his criminal past. A criminal billionaire with no prior political career running for President? Like that could ever happen!)

Now, on with the show!

We open at the estate of Mafia Boss Steven Mandragora where a couple of his bodyguards are arguing about their secret scone recipe (sure, why not?) when they hear a noise in the bushes. Suddenly a figure from the bushes makes short work of them (but, this being for kids, doesn’t kill them despite using a crossbow) The figure then scales the building and enters the study.

You were expecting someone else?

Huntress uses an aerosol to spot the alarm beams and evade them. She then enters Mandragora’s bedroom and shoots the figure under the blanket (OK, this got dark quick!) However…

…as you may have guessed, Mandragora isn’t there. She then gets contacted by J’onn in the Watchtower and teleported.

Guess who’s in trouble? J’onn expels Huntress from the Justice League. As she goes to her quarters to gather her things…

Huntress enters the Question’s quarters, makes fun of his looks (what she thinks he looks like under his faceless mask) and his obsession before offering to help him with Cadmus in exchange for helping her track down Mandragora. (Something tells me she knows two things about Cadmus: Jack and Squat)

And where is Mandragora?

In a safe house being guarded by the FBI, Green Arrow, and Black Canary. Turns out Mandragora has promised to turn State’s Evidence against his fellow Mob Bosses in exchange for Witness Protection.

Meanwhile, the Question has found out about Mandragora’s location, and offers to tag along with Huntress.

Later, Mandragora’s goons, dressed as cops, attack the FBI while Canary and Arrow are on lookout duty outside. Then…

(Thanks to Princess Darkseid)

A wee bit later, as Huntress and the Question head to the waterfront, the Question reveals he knows Huntress knows nothing about Cadmus. Further, he knows about her connection to Mandragora.

So, if the Question knows why Huntress wants Mandragora, and that she has nothing to offer in exchange for his help, why is he helping?

Meanwhile, Canary (with Arrow riding behind) has caught up with them and demands that they stop. Question drives his car into a rail tunnel. Just one problem…

Question manages to turn into the side tunnel before the train hits him, but Arrow has to call for J’onn to teleport him and Canary. J’onn does so…over the bay where they land safely in the water.

Meanwhile, Question reveals that there’s a freighter from Mandragora’s country arriving shortly.

(Thanks to Unlimited)

So now the Huntress and the Question are An Item, but it’s not their last appearance together. This episode focused primarily on the Huntress’s obsession, while the next is all about the Question.

We open on Metropolis, where a warlord from Apokolips named Mantis is tearing up the city.

Fortunately, Superman is on the scene with an assist by Captain Atom (another Charlton import: Captain Nathanial Adams (USAF) was condemned for a crime he didn’t commit. He exchanged his death sentence for being a guinea pig for an experiment that turned him into a living nuclear reactor (similar to Firestorm, but with energy conversion instead of matter manipulation)) After a brief battle, Superman manages to activate Mantis’s Boom Tube and Captain Atom blasts Mantis through.

Following the attack, Lois Lane shows up looking for alone time with Superman, so Captain Adam makes himself scarce. After leaving, Captain Atom is summoned by General Eiling (calling the good Captain by his actual name)…

…and drafts him into Cadmus.

Meanwhile, the Question and the Huntress have a “date night” where they break into LexCorp to dig up information about Cadmus.

Eventually, Question manages to download the files, but Huntress now wants an actual date in return. (Exactly how can they have a date night like regular people when Huntress hasn’t even seen Question’s face? It’s not like he can eat while wearing that mask!)

Later in Question’s apartment (wait, why does he have an apartment? He has free housing in the Watchtower!)

(Thanks to Blue Kryptonite)

The Question goes to the Watchtower to confront Superman about this. Question reveals he knows what the Justice Lords did…and that events are lining up to make those same events happen in our universe!

Despite Superman’s assurances, the Question storms out of the Watchtower and to…

(Thanks again to Unlimited)

Huntress guesses that Cadmus must have Question.

Superman agrees to help Huntress rescue Question.

Obviously, Cadmus was expecting this. Fortunately for Huntress, Cadmus’s weaponry doesn’t affect Superman so she can hide behind him. Then Superman spots something and flies off, leaving Huntress to deal with Cadmus’s goon squad.

I think she's fine, if a bit annoyed.

They eventually find Question and free him…

…though he’s still a bit loopy (even for him) As they prepare to leave…

(You thought I casually mentioned Eiling drafting Captain Atom?)

The episode ends there and picks up on the next episode…

Fortunately, Superman manages to keep Captain Atom busy and gives Huntress his comlink so she can contact the Watchtower once she’s clear. One problem…

Huntress tell J’onn what he can do with his attitude and demands transport to save the Question (who, despite everything, is still a Member in Good Standing)

Later, in the infirmary, Question tells Huntress about the aerosol that seals/removes the mask from his face and changes his hair color, since he was having trouble breathing through it. After using the spray…

D’AWWWWWWW!

Now they can have a proper date night once he recovers!

Hope you enjoyed! Please let me know if there are any other JLU characters you would like to see a deep dive on (not that many got enough screen time to be able to)

#dc comics #dini verse #the question #the huntress #green arrow #black canary #superman #captain atom #lex luthor #Fan Colored Glasses

[july-19th-club]

cant believe they managed to distill eye of the world into eight episodes and it feels . pretty good. i *personally* like a much longer season than eight episodes and i’m over miniseasons. i like to marinate in it, which is part of the reason i like sprawling fantasy book series so much. but even for me, wheel as a book series is too sprawling, and jordan’s prose style doesn’t make me want to spend as much time with it as you have to if you want to read the books all the way through (much like i’m sure i’m in the minority of opinions here, but george rr martin’s prose style is also nothing special by a long shot. whenever i see posts talking about how much richer a scene is in the text than in the show, the text sampled to prove it is the most boring, cliched stuff and there’s no real distinction of voice. but that’s for another post). ultimately, it’s a testament to adaptational skills that the first wheel of time book, which is in a lot of ways just setup, can be condensed from five hundred-six-hundred pages to eight hours while still coming across as having a lot of flavor. it’s a good soup! though it seems like it’ll continue to be a challenge to adapt, especially given how often the books will do this thing where there get to be SO many close-third character viewpoints that only some of them can take up space in any one book, so you’ll get a perrin/mat/egwene book, for example, and then the next book is rand/nynaeve/whoever doing different things at the same spot on the timeline. almost impossible to avoid in such a sprawling series, but the sort of wheel-spinning (no pun intended) that the middle of the series suffers from (The Slog™) can, and should, be condensed on screen. that said, i would still like to see longer seasons in the future; i think that even with condensing some of the more filler-y plots, there’s so much going on at so many locations once that first setup novel is finished that you could easily make four more ten or fourteen-episode seasons and it wouldn’t be an issue to find stuff for the characters and plot to do. the only thing that worries me right now about wheel of time as a tv show is that, seeing how drawn-out the books were, they’ll err in the other direction and not give time enough.

#wheel of time #i am contradicting myself every time i talk about this but whatever #q

[bcofl0ve]

I did notice on the post with the extra photos it was dating them as the 12th, and it looks like justjared just updated their write up to say the 12th as well (vs earlier this month). So the release of the photos was delayed maybe? Also, about the food, i believe rande has an ownership interest in cafe habana. And i think it's one of the places where austin & kaia were previously spotted making out

(anons are off for a bit for my mental health- just cleaning out the box a bit/keeping the blog active here.)

yeah they 100% negotiated to push the release out. and the post-gym photos today might’ve been part of that negotiation, since just jared published a few of those and just two of the ‘move pics’ (and only one of austin at that.). it was also floated to me they might’ve jacked up the prices of the move pics and that’s why daily mail didn’t publish anything, they didn’t want to buy them.

but like- and this isn’t to knock kate because i think she’s FANTASTIC/austin is so lucky to have her. i’m just…a bit confused as to why his team seems to have gone so gungho on this when it wasn’t exactly top secret info that kaia lived with him. and if they were really really trying to keep it a secret i’m surprised kate didn’t have julian the photographer edit his post oscars caption that mentioned her/milo/the apology for not taking his shoes off in the house. but maybe since that was really only something fandom folks would pick up on it was different?

and i see why she’d be really wary if he’s not living in a gated community anymore, which is so valid. but he unfortunately won’t be able to avoid getting papped there forever now. hell, he’s more likely to get ‘surprise papped’ now than he ever has been. so i say just bite the bullet rip the bandaid off etc.

but i also acknowledge i am a 23 year old with a poli sci and theatre degree not a publicist LOL. i trust his team knows what they’re doing even if i personally am a bit befuddled by the decision making here.

#gossip time with mollie #austin butler #kaia gerber