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kamilah-the-bloodqueen · 3 years

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Remember Me (4/???)

I AM SO FUCKING SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG TO FINISH. Honestly I lost a lot of motivation to write after Bloodbound because PB has greatly decreased in the quality of their books. I am still trying to find the time and motivation to write and am forcing myself to finish my series at the very least but if I am being completely honest I feel like the Kamilah fandom has died, PB’s books mostly suck and I don’t even really play choices anymore. Who knows, I’m trying to learn to write the code for episode so maybe I’ll start posting my own stories and choices on that platform with better plot, smut and less diamond focus since it would be a hobby. This chapter is ASS and mostly just moves the plot along - so if you want action I would wait for a different series or later chapter - okay bye!

Pairing: Adrian x MC x Kamilah (Amy)

Tags: I paused the tag list since it’s been so fucking long but if you want a tag please let me know because I’m pretty sure most people think this series died with me :)

Words: ~1500 (Short because I needed to finish a chapter to motivate me to finish the next)

Kamilah took a deep breath as she knelt on the floor beside Adrian, carefully wrapping her arms around her brother, her heart sinking with every sob that left his lips. She didn’t speak, she knew her words would come off too harshly and she couldn’t blame Adrian for feeling that way, after all she knew how much he loved Amy.

“Adrian, I’m sorry. I...I truly don’t know what to say.” As their eyes met Kamilah saw exactly how devastated he was, and even in her two thousand years of life, she had never been in his situation.

“Kamilah, do you think she’ll...well she says we’re just friends but do you think she’ll fall in love with me again?” His lips trembled, his hands shaking and his eyes glistened with tears.

“I don’t know. As much as I believe love is a silly mortal affair, and a simple chemical reaction, it can’t be forced but I’m sure if you just be yourself and do your best to be her friend that any romantic feelings will follow.” Kamilah moved away as Adrian calmed himself, both of them passing a nod of agreement as he wiped his face clean with tissues.

“Your wisdom has always guided me well Kamilah.”

“I suppose that is two thousand sixty three years of experience speaking.”

“Heh, I guess my two hundred years don’t nearly compare...”

“You’re still a simple child in my eyes, I just took a liking to you.”

“Well, thank you Kamilah. It seems I owe you quite a bit.”

They both stood from the floor and took seats on Adrian’s office couch, Kamilah folding her legs and crossing her arms and Adrian crossing his ankles and folding his arms.

“We’re practically siblings - you don’t owe me anything. Just try to take care of yourself and well...don’t expect anything from Amy. I’m sure this is difficult for her, difficult is an understatement. I can’t imagine what she’s experiencing.”

“Maybe I’ve been too selfish Kamilah...I’ve been thinking more about what I want from her instead of focusing on if she’s okay or what she wants.”

“Sometimes it’s alright to be selfish, and I can understand why you felt that way but you are correct, we need to focus on what Amy wants now, not what she wanted before the accident.”

“You’re absolutely right. I can only hope for the best...I just really...I really wanted...I believed she was the one.”

“I know you did. I wanted her to be the one for you as well, I still hope she comes back to you Adrian.”

“Me too.”

Adrian’s phone buzzed at the same time Kamilah’s did, Lily having texted both of them to rendezvous with her and Jax at Amy’s old apartment to talk about the recent events.

“We should go, but do you feel okay?” Kamilah patted Adrian’s shoulder as they both stood from the couch.

“Yes I think so.” They hurried to the elevator and got into Adrian’s black Mercedes as they navigated towards Lily’s apartment. Once they arrived Lily greeted them before guiding them up to the apartment where Jax waited on the couch with a beer in hand.

“Hey guys...how ya doin?” His words were slurred and he was obviously under the influence to a decent extent.

“Tell me you have something other than beer Lily.” Kamilah grimaced as Jax took another swig of the beer. She had no problem with beer but she hated that brand and would rather remain sober than allow herself to drink that brand.

“Yeah, vodka or wine?”

“Vodka.” Kamilah spoke without hesitation while Adrian grabbed a beer from the fridge and took a seat next to Jax on the couch. Lily began to pour Kamilah a shot, and once the glass was full Kamilah took the bottle from her and took two large gulps before sitting on the leather chair and holding the bottle with one hand.

“So we’re here to get drunk? I thought we were supposed to talk about Amy?” Kamilah’s voice broke the deathly silence that filled the room. Adrian leaned in the door before removing his tie, unbuttoning his shirt and, grabbing three bottles of the cheap beer and sinking into the recliner opposite of Lily and Jax.

“I didn’t want to drink...well grieve...alone. I mean I can’t do this with Amy anymore...well I could but it wouldn’t be the same... and I have my friend back but it’s really just...it’s not the same. I don’t know I just didn’t...you can leave if you want but I didn’t want to grieve alone…” Lily began to sob, her tears falling into her glass of wine as Jax and Adrian frowned. Kamilah held her stoic expression, but even the alcohol could not erase the ache she felt in her chest.

“I see, well I guess we all process grief differently…” Kamilah spoke calmly, but deep down she felt her own sense of grief. As she gazed around she realized how messy Jax’s hair and clothes were, and how exhausted and drained Lily was. “You guys look a mess…”

“Thanks Kamilah.” Jax drunkenly snickered and Lily sniffled. Adrian remained quiet, taking a long drink from the bottle in his hand before switching to the other glass and downing it just as quickly.

“Does this not fucking hurt you?” Lily drunkenly scolded as Kamilah flinched ever so slightly. None of them had ever heard Lily so fragile, so devastated. She had every reason to be - she had lost her best friend - even though Amy had survived the accident, the memories were all gone and everything they had once shared was gone.

“It...does...I was just remarking on-”

“I don’t care about your remarks, at least not now. Don’t you fucking get it? I lost my fucking best friend and I have to watch her find everything again! Do you know how that fucking feels Kamilah? I’m sure you do from all your time as a vampire, but please, for the love of god and for the sake of our friendship just shut the fuck up. I can’t handle this.” Lily’s hand gripped on her bottle as it shattered against her palm, the beer pouring onto the tile floor and seeping into the edges of the carpet.

“I...apologize Lily…”

“It’s fine! It’s fine! Everything is fine I guess. I don’t know I just...I’m not coping well...and I feel guilty for saying that because Amy has it the hardest of us all and yet here I am getting wasted to be in her position - to forget everything while also being the person who put her in this position in the first fucking place. I don’t think it’ll ever be the same as it was before…”

“Maybe that’s for the best…” Adrian finally joined the conversation. Kamilah, Lily and Jax turned to face him as he swirled the bottle around in his hand - his brown eyes shiny from the tears that had built up. “...we all lost someone...Amy was a different person to each of us...but maybe we have to lose that person for some reason…”

“Adrian, do not try to give me that ‘it’s for the best’ bullshit.” Lily took a deep breath as Adrian shrugged.

“I’m not. I guess it’s just the alcohol talking, but I was going to propose to Amy that night and maybe it was a sign I shouldn’t have, or maybe the world is punishing me for my sins...but fuck all of that...it’s...it’s a forgotten memory and we need to forget just like Amy...”

---------------- Amy’s POV ------------------

It was a weird feeling that I couldn’t describe. Having people who seemed like strangers tell me all about the things we’ve done together gave me such comfort and anxiety at the same time. I wanted to believe and trust each of them but at the same time, it would be so easy to lie about it. Maybe I’m just being paranoid about the situation - nobody would really benefit from creating an elaborate story just to mess with my mind.

God this IV really stings...and now that I’m thinking about it, my ribs really hurt too. I should call the doctor or nurse but it’s nearly midnight. I mean it’s their job but they’re humans and I don’t want to be that super needy patient…

At least that Lily girl seems genuine, I can see why I was her best friend. I appreciate her sincerity more than I can verbalize to her. I’m still wary of Jax though - that man looks like he could kill in an instant and I don’t want to get on his bad side. I’m glad they’re friends with each other though - they seem to get along really well and...Adrian. Poor bastard. I broke his heart. I broke his heart and I can’t even help it. How am I supposed to even really process that whole fucking mess. He’s so sweet and gentle and genuine and I can’t even reciprocate it back to him...but maybe with time I could…? But Kamilah...she makes my heart skip a beat too...but she’s so unlike anyone I’ve even taken interest in - callous and stoic most of the time with very few soft spots. It wouldn’t be any type of understatement to claim my heart is as confused as my head.

#kamilah x mc #kamilah sayeed #kamilah the bloodqueen post

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i-prefer-the-term-antihero · 3 years

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Additionally, your thoughts on Dracula and Adrian from the Netflix adaptation of Castlevania? I find Dracula really tragic, and the ending scene of Season 2 crushed me because I was not expecting Adrian to cry. He’s usually so stoic and calm that I didn’t think he would weep, I expected him to just shrug it off like heroes usually do, but no, when given time to process everything, the first thing he does is break down into tears. Sypha was right in calling him a brooding teen in an adult body.

Ohh man. If you just take a look at my writing blog (or anywhere I post my fanfiction) it’ll become pretty clear pretty quickly how I feel about them XD So far all my Castlevania fics have been about the Tepes Family. Adrian and Drac are my favorite characters in the series!! (Though I do love pretty much all the characters in it.)

YES YES YES!!

They did an incredible job making Drac sympathetic and tragic. I don’t know if you know anything about the games, and granted, they couldn’t put a lot of story stuff in the games, but (at least as far as I’m aware) in most of them it’s like “ya, he was an evil dude who did evil things because he was evil.” So it actually would have been pretty accurate to the source to make him just an unsympathetic, irredeemable villain, but they didn’t and I LOVE them for it. Playing Symphony of the Night (Alucards game) after watching the series l was almost longing for that Drac I know and love from the series, (though it’s fun to see evil Drac too).

As I’ve said, I adore redeemable villains, and they did an amazing job with him, to the point where pretty much everyone in the fandom adores him, which is extremely tough to accomplish—even if you write a redeemable villain well, often large parts of the fandom don’t see it and hate the character. I knew that the point was that they were going to defeat Drac but I have to say, especially since I originally knew nothing of the games, I was hoping they’d save him by the end.

I think the fact that he liked and was kind to Hector and Isaac was evidence that he wasn’t too far gone. I mean, the only two people he genuinely trusted and liked in his court were human…that’s so interesting, I wish it was at least talked about, either in the show or in the fandom. I think he actually liked humans, partially or especially because of Lisa, he just...was so angry, and needed someone to blame. He probably ultimately blamed himself for not being there to save her, and it was just easier to blame the humans he once hated/didn’t understand, even if in reality he didn’t hate them as much as he thought he did...

Doing more thinking and research into the show for my “If These Walls Could Talk” fic I recognize now that symbolically it made sense even within the show that he died when Lisa died (which I can explain more about if you want but id probably end up going off on a long tangent so I’ll save it)...but I still thought practically, in the show, he could have still been redeemed.

Omg I LOVED that. The longer I take to sit with it, the more I realize just how much I loved that they put him crying instead of shaking it off.

It’s very interesting that Drac and Alucard are more openly emotional characters. I might be totally wrong, but as far as I remember, they (...and Lisa when she dies, and probably Isaac in a flashback), are the only main characters we see openly cry. It’s a pretty bold move to make any of your characters emotional like that, but especially your villain, and your bold handsome hero. It’s sooo easy to get emotional characters and emotions wrong…or just offputting to some people...but more on that later.

I think Adrian and Drac are both rather sentimental, in an odd way. Much of Drac’s motivations in the show and even in the games (the times his motivations are explained) had to do with his wives (yes he was married before Lisa in the games...unless Lament of Innocence was retconned...) which is interesting. So many of his decisions are based on emotion. He lets Lisa in just because he likes her, he goes to war with the world because of Lisa, he sits in his study mourning her loss, he let’s Alucard kill him… I also notice very often he digs his nails into his palms until they bleed, presumably because if he didn’t he’d hurt someone else (in the scene where he hurts Alucard, he does this). His sentimentality doesn’t diminish is power as a villain, which is SO difficult to accomplish.

I am emotional myself so I absolutely love to see emotional characters, but for most people, seeing even a normal character be emotional diminishes them in their eyes, or makes them whiny, so making your villain even a little emotional, and having that not take away from the audiences perception of their power as a villain is sooooooo hard to do, and I applaud them for making a so well-beloved, and still villainous and intimidating, but also emotional (at times) villain.

For Alucard. I don’t see any problem with him being emotional, but it makes even more sense if he’s a teen in an adult’s body—which was indeed portrayed quite well.

Yes that was interesting when he cried when drawing his parents!! I wasn’t expecting that when I saw him drawing them. I was enjoying and intrigued by his story so much, then when he started crying I was caught off guard—but in a good way. It really made me feel for him, and understand that he was still grieving his mother, and that knew the gravity of what he was currently doing.

I think it’s kind of important to show that kind of thing in a situation like this. It’s easy to think Alucard hates his dad, and they need to show the emotion of the situation to make it clear “no he doesn’t hate his dad, this actually breaks his heart, he just knows he has to do this.”

I loved when he was telling Trevor and Sypha about how much the world would lose by killing Dracula. It’s really interesting that he hides his emotion with them, and that Trevor and Sypha are so stoic. The son of Dracula isn’t the guy you expect to be the only hero who cries.

In “For Love” when Trevor’s like “Don’t get weepy about it” I was sitting there, sobbing, like “No, please get weepy about it! Let the boy cry for goodness sake!! Give me some emotion!!” But I too was not expecting him to cry like he did, and in grieving the death of his parents...

I knew the crying scene was coming because I’d seen pictures of it on here and pinterest, but I had no context for it. In the end it wasn’t just the weeping itself that made the scene so impactful, it was everything surrounding it. I didn’t know it would happen when he was completely alone (and would be for the foreseeable future), and in grieving his parents, or about the ghosts/flashbacks before it (cementing his grief), or that it was literally the last scene of the season, or that there would be no music for both the scene and the credits thereafter.

And that was what really got me.

Because, firstly, we never got to see any flashbacks to his childhood, and that was what I was begging for the entire series (and hence why its what I write about). To finally get it, and it not to just be something the audience gets to see, but something Alucard himself is seeing... a happy memory he’s seeing when he knows that is completely gone, he cannot hope to have it again, and for him to now be in his father’s place…that’s heartbreaking. Like just having your character cry—let alone those kinds of full-on sobs—is painful enough, showing a son grieving his parents is a particularly heart wrenching kind of sadness, but showing that he is haunted by memories of those parents he lost—not only lost but one of which he killed, and, if SOTN is canon for the show, the other of which he could have saved—of a happy childhood, and he is alone with these memories for the foreseeable future...that is truly heart wrenching.

Also the scene with Trevor and Sypha in the wagon earlier in the episode was super sweet, they could have easily put the Adrian crying scene earlier, and had the Trevor and Sypha scene be the last scene of the season (and Trevor’s game actually does end with them looking into the sunset, so ending with the last scene of “For Love” would be accurate as well), and left it on a positive note, and the audience would have been left with a completeness. But they made a conscious choice put his crying scene last, and it was so powerful, because it made you remember that at the end of the day, he isn’t just our bold handsome hero, he was a son who lost both his parents, and that, to him, this isn’t really a triumph, but a loss. It also kinda confirmed that Drac wasn’t an "evil guy, end of story". That there was reason to grieve him, and to show his son grieving, and to leave it there because of it. It was a personal gravity too

In the end, it was the lack of music in the scene, and even more so during the credits, so theres only his tears, and all you are left with in the end is this amplified emptiness that really did me in. I think I literally sat there, tear tracks on my face, my mouth open when I hit the credits.

Playing Symphony of the Night after watching the show is really interesting in exploring his character. I knew there was very little story, so I wasn’t expecting much from the story, but I actually found that I was beyond excited whenever there actually was some story, and the few lines they did say are stuck with me.

Maria comments early on that Alucard’s not very good at talking. At first I just chalked it up to...weird translations or whatever. But the more I played the game and the more I thought about him in the show...I think she’s right. He’s not very good at talking, yet if and when he does talk he’s quite eloquent, and precise with his words. (This actually makes him a somewhat difficult character to write). I wonder if perhaps this has some connection to his emotionalness. He’s very careful with what he says, and this may spread to what he does—such as being careful when he shows emotion. I’m curious why he’s like this. It could just be his nature, but I wonder if as a kid he was ever hated because he was a vampire—maybe people made fun of him, and he cried, and they made more fun of him because of it—and he learned both to hide his emotions, and that he had to be very deliberate and show people he didn’t mean any ill will with his words. (And he looks older than he is so people might call him immature for acting his mental age). All very speculative, of course. But it’d be fun to write about!

Also, another thing from SOTN that is related to this topic, there was a fight that really struck me (enough I actually wrote a fic about it (inverted recurrence)). SOTN takes plays 300 years after the events of The Netflix Series (aka Dracula’s Curse). Most of the bosses don’t seem to have a lot of meaning story-wise, they’re just there for you to fight. The other day I (Alucard) walked into a boss room...and there were Trevor, Sypha, and Grant (who was omitted from the Netflix series). They were fake versions of them, of course. And there’s no dialogue in the fight so maybe I’m just speculating, but what struck me was that the fact that Dracula could use them against him probably means he still cares about them, even after 300 years. It probably also means that they’re some of the only friends he’s ever had. Granted, he was asleep for a good chunk of those 300 years, still. It goes back to that sentimental-ness I was talking about earlier.

I few years ago I watched the Gravity Falls commentaries, and from them I got a lot of the writing advice I still think about and use today. Alex Hirsch said something on this subject which I really liked which is “Hold your tears.” When a character cries they’ve broken, that’s as far as they can go. So if you make a character cry when the audience themselves doesn’t feel the weight of the scene, or it doesn’t feel like the character has broken yet, it can feel like too...much/cheesy, and distance the audience. especially with cartoons where the way it’s drawn can actually affect your sympathy for the character (it can look weird or accentuated).

They did such an awesome job with this by literally holding his tears until the very end. I don’t know how other, non-emotional people felt about it, but Ive don’t know if I’ve ever seen tears used so well in a show, pack such a punch. To have it not just be a part of the scene but literally the focus, and at the end...it was powerful.

Sorry for the long response, and more importantly, I’m beyond sorry for taking so so SOOO long to respond. I hope you enjoy my response, if you see it <3

P.S. For anyone else who made it all the way to the end, I actually have a Castlevania sideblog now: @symphonyofthewrite !! I’d be beyond happy to recieve asks like this over there, if you’d like to hear more of my thoughts!!

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kkeidawrites · 3 years

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Betrayed

Here’s Part 9!

A/N: Please read! The chapter you are about to read is a recount of how episodes 1-10 of season 3 went down but, in Esmé’s point of view. If you are uncomfortable reading this chapter, then feel free to leave the chapter.

The feeling of being sucked into a different world rushed over both Alucard and Esmé. Her body was floating towards the blinding white light that was at the end of the tunnel she was in. She looked around her until her eyes landed on a particular memory where she and Alucard were making breakfast together. She remembered that, she still had the burn scar on her wrist when the pan she was using became real hot.

More memories floated by her as she continued to float even the events of their travels up to the point where she was dropped off in her village and they had all parted.

The memories faded behind her until she reached the white light which engulfed her entire body. The sound of silence surrounded Esmé, her eyes were closed tight when the light blinded her. Her eyes slowly opened and she found herself standing by a river. She looked down at her hands and noticed they were transparent, okay, this is new. Esmé has done this before but, for her to be see through was new to her.

Whenever she would enter someone’s memories they would be right beside her and together they would go through the memory together but, it seems this time it wasn’t the case.

Alucard wasn’t beside her and she was in a memory without any information on what she was doing here. What was going on? Did she do the spell wrong?

The sound of the bushes shifting made Esmé turn her head to see a familiar face. Alucard walked towards Esmé with a basket in hand and Esmé could tell that he wasn’t angry. Esmé smiled and rushed to greet him.

“Adrian, there you are! I thought I had lost you-” she reached out to touch his should but her hand phased through it instead. Esmé jumped back in shock then she remembered where she was.

Of course he couldn’t see her, this was a memory after all. Instead she followed him to the river and watched as he set the basket to the side, kneeling down on a few rocks and grabbed a swimming fish, using his knuckles to kill it. He grabbed a few more fish and then he stood up, smelling fresh air.

Esmé followed him back to the castle and watched as he cooked himself dinner and even talk to the two makeshift Sypha and Trevor dolls.

The memory then slowly fades away and Esmé looks around in a bit of a panic. Was this the only memory he was going to allow her to see?

She was left in a dark abyss for a moment before another light engulfed her and Esmé put a hand over her eyes to block the glare and she found herself in another memory where two people were talking to him in the forest.

Esmé frowned at this, people rarely ventured out this far into the forest, only to perhaps to get the next town but, the fact these two were able to find the castle and be bold enough to approach it puzzled Esmé.

Esmé listened to their story as slaves to the vampire Chō, one of the generals in Dracula’s Army, and asked him to teach them how to fight vampires.

Esmé could see the hesitance in Alucard and prayed that he would think rationally about his decision. While she was staying with him, she helped him try and be more open with the people in the area. Alucard needed to be more comfortable around humans again. He didn’t have to be best friends with them but, give them a chance to explain themselves and then if he sees them as threat then he handles them quickly.

She watches as her lover makes the final decision to teach the two strangers, whose names she learned were Sumi and Taka, and take them into his castle. Esmé moved to follow them but, once again the memory disappeared and she was left in a pit of darkness.

Small memories of the three of them played by her head and Esmé watched them with quick eyes, they were rushing past her that she didn’t have enough time to see what was happening in each one.

She saw one memory where the three of them were sparing and ended up playing instead. Another shows them reading about the history of vampires and some of the Belmont family’s journals of their tales against fighting night creatures and vampires.

“This could be it.” she muses as the white light took over her body once more.

Esmé opened her eyes and found herself in Alucard’s bedroom, she saw the dhampir lying in the bed tossing and turning and Esmé frowned.

Why did his memory place her here? Alucard looked distressed, she always had this feeling that sleeping in a bed was still foreign to him and Esmé had suggested that he should make himself a coffin where he could be more comfortable and be able to sleep peacefully. Alucard would always refuse, claiming that he should get used to sleeping in a bed instead of a coffin. He said it...made him feel more human.

Then the door to his bedroom opened, and Esmé turned to see both Taka and Sumi standing there. Esmé frowned in confusion and watched as they approached him and sat on his bedside.

Outside World~~~~~~~~

Trevor and Sypha had been sitting and waiting for an hour for their companions to come out of their comatose state. Esmé’s eyes were glowing a white color while Alucard’s were gold. Sypha prayed for their safety back to the real world or wherever they were and Trevor sighed heavily beside her just as anxious for them to come back.

“Trevor, what can we do? They have been in this state for a long time. Do you think they are...?” Trevor shook his head and watched Esmé‘s face closely as tears began roll down her cheeks.

“No, they aren’t dead but, it looks like they are not alive either,” his eyes glanced at Alucard as tears rolled down his cheeks as well then turned back to Sypha to her address her.

“Whatever Esmé is doing, she obviously got through to why this bastard was going crazy earlier, and if she’s crying...then it must be bad. Very bad.” Trevor said his brows furrowing.

Suddenly, a scream erupted from Alucard and he began to thrash around in his chair. Trevor and Sypha jumped to their feet and rushed over to see what was going on. They watched as Alucard’s nails lengthen to claws and his mouth pulled back to make it look like he was snarling.

“We have to remove Esmé!” Trevor moved to grab Esmé‘s hands but, Sypha saw something glowing in Esmé‘s eyes.

“Wait!” Trevor halted movements and turned a questioning look to Sypha.

“What do you mean wait?! This bastard is about to jump from his seat any second to rip her to shreds and you’re stopping me?!” Sypha held up a hand to halt his rant and she watched as Esmé‘s brown irises returned to her eyes.

She took a deep breath and removed her hands from Alucard’s head as the dhampir slumped back in the chair, falling unconscious.

Esmé began to fall back but, Trevor was quick to catch her, helping her stand on her feet.

“Esmé, are you alright?” Sypha asked the panting woman. Esmé couldn’t speak. After what she saw happen to Alucard, she felt anything but alright and she raised her head to look at Sypha tears rushing down her cheeks as a choked sob left her lips.

“Oh my God...Sypha it was...and they...oh my God.” Esmé was hyperventilating now and Sypha was there to pull her into her arms in a hug. Esmé’s tears soaked the speaker’s cloak and she fisted the back of it. Her cries were yelled into Sypha’s shoulder and her two companions made the decision to not find out what was wrong with Alucard, if they knew that Esmé would come back so distraught.

Esmé could now understand why he was in so much pain, the betrayal that those two committed made Esmé lose some faith in humanity.

Who could hurt a sweet, caring and understanding person like Alucard? He did not wrong to them and yet they betrayed him in that way....where he was most vulnerable and trusted them.

Esmé felt just as betrayed as Alucard was.

End of Part 9

1// 2// 3// 4// 5// 6// 7// 8// 9// 10//

#adrian tepes x reader #adrian tepes #alucard x reader #Alucard #castlevania!alucard x reader #castlevania x reader #castlevania oc #Castlevania #castlevania netflix #black oc #black reader #fanfiction #my writing #betrayed pt. 9 #black!reader

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jacearthereal · 3 years

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Written panel of Guillermo Rojas (Dean Winchester’s voice actor):

Note: I’m not fluent in spanish, but my native language is portuguese and I could understand a lot from what he said. I hope this clarifies more things in this fandom, because everyday a new thing comes up and we try not to panic.

What it’s not here, it’s because I didn’t understand enough to write something coherent, but I tried my best. I hope y’all like it.

Ada: He's been a voice actor from season 12 to episode 15x18. He tells us that unfortunately he got covid in the last 2 episodes and he understands that he will have to record the [last] episodes again. Let's start with the easier questions, because I don't know if you guys know, but the Mexican dubbing ‘broke the internet.’

Guillermo: Yes, I’m sorry I couldn’t answer all your questions, but I was in the middle phase of covid, with a tracheal symptom that didn’t allow me to speak. Now I’m working with therapy. Apparently, I have two sequels. One is bad and the second is not. So I couldn't answer everyone I was looking on the internet. On insta, facebook, youtube — A channel that I never updated — on the situation that happened with Dean and this other companion, right.

Ada: but let's start with other questions. Because you've worked on a lot of series, live-actions and animations. And the first question is “how different is the process of directing live-action and directing animation and which one do you prefer?

Guillermo: The process for each other is somewhat similar. Because we have a quality that we have to respect and give in this case.

Ada (translating what Guillermo said): The dialogues are given by the production house or as we call “the client”.

Guillermo: And in this case we have to pay attention to the alignments that they ask us, which depend a lot on the production we are working with.

(Ada repeats in English)

Guillermo: Yes, none of them are the same. It would be lying because we could have two live-actions and they’re not the same alignments. These are basic points that we need to follow.

Ada: (speaks very similarly and says): When you're acting, that's when the change comes.

Guillermo: The big difference that I can tell you would be the technical points to follow in each one of them. The question would be authorial, in this case. And what gives 100% of each one of us.

Ada: Ok, next question. What is your favorite role you've played and why?

Guillermo: I believe that the first one I can tell you — today it’s not the most and I will say why — It remains Kiefer Sutherland / Jack Bauer 24h. First, because it has a very beautiful story of how I stayed with (Jack Bauer?). Basically, I was directing the dubbing in the country and the idea was that I shouldn’t do it because I had many directions, but in the end we continued to record through the years because the people listened to me. And then I worked extra hours.

(Ada says in english that they managed to organize themselves).

Ada: So they paid you more?

Guillermo: No.

Ada (About Guillermo): They pay me more because I work more, but not for extra hours. It was my first leading role. It was not worth losing it.

Guillermo: I have worked for 25 years with voice acting in all areas. I'm an audio engineer. I work as an audio engineer, as a post-audio producer, as a talent director and as a talent.

(Ada repeats in English)

Guillermo: [...] very complicated content because it was a lot. Record, edit, direct and be there.

(Ada repeats in english and congratulates him)

Guillermo: Yes, it will be many years for me. I do audio production and post production of audio and video. And a friend one day; and it was because one day we went to eat. I don't remember the day, and he said “You don't work, you play(?)—” and it's true, I like what I do. But if you ask me which character I liked the most, today, it would be the 911, the Fox series that is just being produced if I'm not mistaken for the fourth or fifth season. A team of firefighters, and just from recording, my tears fall with the empathy that the production brings, but the acting has an impressive ending.

He says something about authorial issues to feel empathy with Peter Krause.

And he talks about the director having an impressive drive not only to direct, but to adapt dialogues and there’s a synergy working on this TV show.

He says something about the director supporting him and giving him characters and that he really enjoy doing because the director gives him a certain freedom to act and that allows him to feel the character and that he loves to work with him.

Ada: In the dubbing process, do you try to get clues or directions of performance from the original script and if you do it do you feel limiting or try to get your own inspiration from the dialogues?

Guillermo: I think there is a bit of both in that last question. Original alignment would be to follow what we are seeing as performance. Remember that dubbing has been a part of it— we must make a parallel alignment with the language.

Ada (repeats): A parallel work with the original.

Guilhermo: So the initial alignments we try to expand all the possibilities and all the alignments that authorially they allow us to practically give 100% of us. So the limit wouldn't always exist, I mean here in Mexico, at least.

Ada (referring to what Guilhermo said): We follow the instructions, we follow the original voice, there are no limits, as long as we don't — as we say here in Mexico — don't pee outside the toilet. The instructions are very clear.

Ada: Since you mentioned the paths and as I mentioned at the beginning, I have a question. What was the guide in this latest supernatural dialogue that broke the internet?

Guillermo: It’s a curious thing, because no director or server had so much idea of the trend that was there because in the information they said previously, we didn't know that something like this could happen.

Ada says something about his birthday being last week because Guilhermo is eating a cake (?) and she asks us to say congratulations to him and he thanks her.

Guillermo: So it was sincere when we recorded. So we were like, "What happened?" We did that, but we saw nothing of the others in the production. (I think he's referring to nobody saying anything) and not even after the recording that this could happen.

Ada: And here I have to make a change because it’s obvious that we are referring to Castiel declaring himself to Dean after twelve intense years, but the question is Dean's answer, because everyone heard very clearly “Y yo a ti”.

Guillermo: Y yo a ti. Yes.

Ada: Where did that “Y yo a ti” come from?

Guillermo: The adaptation was entirely from my director. The adaptation lineup was his and I said what he asked me.

Ada (about Guillermo): I asked him about the “i love you”, I know that Tumblr was waiting for this moment. It was the director's adaptation, he gave me the instructions, it was his fault.

Guillermo: But we all love it. Everything enchanted us. We have never heard it come so directly. If we remember well, throughout all the seasons, we hardly see a story in which Dean finds himself really in love with a woman. It didn’t happen. Unlike his brother.

Ada: I will say more. A little bit ahead of his time.

Guillermo: Yes, but never able to separate from empathy in general. It never conflicted.

Ada (About Guillermo): It wasn't his [...]. We can compare Dean with his brother. We remember the relationship he had (Sam) the past two seasons. Eileen.

Guillermo: And it was quite intense and painful in the end. Dean basically didn't suffer that. (and he says something like the closest thing to Dean was when he lost his mother).

Ada: More than once. We have a question. So it’s not a rogue translator, but a rogue director?

Guillermo: [Adrian] Fogarty has a tendency, he has very intense skills. And one of them is to adapt dialogues. You see Fogarty's work when they translate it and you have time to do it. Even if you’re not directing [...] in spanish. And in the script, if I don't forget, it said “también yo” or something like that and then we changed to "Y yo a ti".

Ada (about what he said): Because of the movement of the lips and other things. I can explain as a translator, my absolute hatred for lip sync.

Guillermo: This part is an important topic, but nowadays with the speed of production we have, it’s difficult to pay attention to this part, but we should. And in that sense, specifically, we don't have this ability to adapt like that. When we put our skills together [...] Fogarty does his job. There’s a Fogarty in every company.

(Ada talks about her cat that showed up).

Ada: This is my cat. He's a huge Dean Winchester’s fan. But he gets irritated with Sam.

(Guillermo asks why).

Ada: I don't know.

She talks about muting (?) the episodes (in spanish and english) in Sam's parts or the cat gets irritated and that he already stole Sam's Funko arm. She talks about getting funkos for Guillermo. He didn't know about them.

Ada: They are asking a lot if you know what Dean said in the original script before Fogarty changed it?

Guillermo: It was something like that. It was totally correct, clearly. It was something “Yo también, también yo” something like that.

(My note: I have to say that I think Guillermo thought it was about the spanish script here).

Ada: Did you hear the original when you were dubbing?

Guillermo: Yes, of course.

Ada: And do you remember hearing in English "I love you too"?

Guillermo: No.

(Ada says that supernatural has a very intense and real fandom, as he can see).

Ada: What was your favorite dubbing episode?

Guillermo: With my short-term memory, the latter.

(Ada repeats in english)

Guillermo: It's because it says a lot. In one scene it said it all. So it’s impressively very beautiful. I will never forget.

Ada tells him that in the episode after Castiel, Dean finally has a dog. Guillermo is surprised and says "He finally has one" and Ada says that the dog is called Miracle.

Ada: We have a question. Before you started working with supernatural, had you seen the TV show?

Guillermo: Yes. Before I started working with supernatural, I was watching between season 5 to 7. I watched at midnight and I was scared. I lived in a house that was kind of an abandoned house so there were some strange noises.

(Guillermo says he heard the original Dean's voice actor from that time).

Ada: They’re asking if the original script said anything about Dean's feelings for Cas or was it all put up by Fogarty?

Guillermo: In the original we received there was no indication that Dean was in love, or that he corresponded, that I know of. That line was what launched the whole series. We didn't see it coming.

Ada (adding): It was the director because that was what made sense.

Guillermo: I looked on the internet so many questions about what happened. And yes, both the director and the writer decided to take a very hidden trend between the two of them in various takes and very sensitive dialogues, to satiate that ‘we’ have feelings for each other’, but it was so tenuous that they hardly noticed anything.

Ada says that it was the director in English, who took this sensitive and subtle path. And he says that this brings to the fact that he’s a heller.

(My note: Who didn’t notice? Warner? All of them? And I also think Ada said “in english” by mistake).

(Guillermo goes back to saying that he was taken by surprise).

Guillermo: Because all we saw was that to be a real man you have to be like Dean Winchester.

Ada: You’re going to break the internet again with this. (she repeats what he said and adds) And Dean Winchester is in love with Castiel.

Guillermo: And to me, it was beautiful. Because it's not about gender, it's about feelings. So it was a wonderful move by the writers. I didn't see it coming and still liked it.

Ada: I believe it was very beautiful. It was a play by the original american writers. That you didn't see it coming, but when you saw it, you liked it.

(My note: She said american writers, but why? Guillermo was talking about Fogarty’s script, wasn’t him?)

Ada: We have two questions. Was anything left out of the translation? (And Ada herself answers with) No. Nothing was left out of the translation.

Ada: Have you ever been called back to re-record the “Y yo a ti”?

Guillermo: No.

Ada: He was not asked to redo the dubbing.

Guillermo: It was clear to me that the director understood the perfect texture of this text.

Ada: I have a question. From experience, because at some point I wanted to dub, but also to translate dubbing, and I noticed a couple of very complicated dialogues [...]

Ada talks about how they had to change a line (the original was in Japanese) but they said it was for children so even if it was what the character said in the original, the company didn’t accept it.

Ada: So my question is, do you know if supernatural has quality control by Warner?

Guillermo: I would lie if I said yes. But I have worked for many years as a director and actor. Some materials like superheroes and things like that would fit in a title like this, but not supernatural. So the decisions and directions are all up to the director.

Ada: Did you act Dean like he was in love with Castiel all this time?

Guillermo: No. It was a surprise. I will be very sincere. For me to say to a very dear friend, to a very dear person, I’ll say "I love you."

Ada (adding): I have no problem.

Guillermo: So I didn't feel that way, I'm sincere.

Ada: You went that way, then said no.

(My note: Strange, uh?)

Guillermo (laughing): Yes, what happened?

Ada: Are you going to voice Jensen on The Boys?

Guillermo says nobody told him anything. That he’s practically being a month just virtually. So they don't have all the invitations.

(My note: I don’t know if this part is entirely correct, but that’s what I got).

Ada: He didn't receive the invitation because he had to spend a month away because of the covid. So he cannot speak to you.

Ada asks fans to write that they want Guillermo Rojas to dub Jensen Ackles on The boys.

Ada: You can do it. Start writing now.

Harlequin: Is Dean Winchester your favorite character to voice or is it another one?

Guillermo: No, no. [but] he's one of my favorites, of course.

(He talks about it being a spectacular job).

Ada: Are you on twitter?

Guillermo: Yes, but I don't use it very much. I like facebook more.

(My note: He scaped from us).

Ada: What is your opinion, now with everything you know, about Dean's declaration to Cas?

Guillermo: I love how they did it, because none of us saw it coming. And we recorded it. And I believe that of all the personality from what we have of the character, we can know that if there’s someone who keeps his feelings reclusive it’s Dean Winchester.

Ada asks about his coworker, Castiel's voice actor, if he knows his opinion.

Guillermo: I didn't see him. We don't see each other very much because the companies we work for don’t coincide much. He has already recorded with me in productions that I directed, but I haven't seen him in four months or more.

Ada says someone asked if he can do a “Hello, Cas” like Dean Winchester, to ease the pain of the finale.

Guillermo: Sure, why not. (he says “Hello, Cas”)

Ada: There you are, girls.

Guillermo says he has a friend who loves Dean, and she said he killed the character she loves most, because Dean has a thicker voice [in the original].

Guillermo says that if she doesn't like it, she should watch the original.

Carolina, friend of Guillermo, appears and Ada repeats the question.

Carolina says Dean Winchester is her boyfriend. And she says that after hearing the dubbing, she will never be able to see or hear Dean as her boyfriend anymore.

Guillermo playfully pushes Carolina off the screen.

Ada: Have you seen the end of the last episode?

Guillermo: No, I want to see it when I record it.

(My note: #PrayforGuillermo)

Ada starts talking about him recording a “Hola, Cas” and Guillermo asks “In what sense” and Ada says “When they meet after the declaration” Guillermo thinks it’s a spoiler and goes “They meet again?” and Ada says she will not give spoilers. Guillermo thought that Dean said "I love you" to Cas and Cas didn't come back from the empty and if Cas comes back, that's how he would say "Hola, Cas".

And Ada reminds him that in the first few seasons, Dean said to Cas “It's not for nothing, but the last person who looked at me like that, I got laid.”

Then she said that someone asked him to tell Cas the whole declaration of love, but Ada reiterated that they wouldn’t break the internet anymore.

Ada: They are asking you to be godfather of the fandom.

Guillermo: Of course.

Ada tells him that he’s the godfather now and asks him to leave a message for fans who are now discovering the mexican dubbing. He thanks us for being part of this. He says that they do this work with passion. And he thanked all the people from all countries who are watching this project.

Ada: With that in mind, as you didn't see the ending of supernatural, What’s your ideal ending for Dean Winchester?

Guillermo: I believe that for everyone, since they sacrificed their lives for their families once again, for the well-being and happiness of everyone, I believe that if someone deserves to be well, peaceful and happy, [it has to be] at least one of the three.

(Ada talks about Jack)

Guillermo: Jack has joined, but he can achieve his happiness at another nest.

They say goodbye. Guillermo wishes ‘Merry Christmas’.

The end.

#supernatural #guillermo rojas #panel guillermo #dean winchester #voice actor #destiel #deancas #spn 15x18 #Sam Winchester #castiel #jack #spn #spn 15x19 #spn season 16 #spanish dub

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theweekinarrowfic · 3 years

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Completed Arrow Multichapters on AO3, January 17-23, 2021

NOTE: I’m now crossposting to https://theweekinarrowfic.dreamwidth.org. Also, I'm looking for volunteers to test out my fic recommender! Need more Arrow in your life? Why not try one of the multchapter fanfics recently completed by our talented fic writers?

Olicity

Come back to me by flipflops (14/14, 22 Jan 2021) - Oliver Queen was shipwrecked for five years. He comes home to find his wife, the love of his life is about to marry another man. Oliver needs to rebuild his relationship with his wife, come to terms with his new life and try not to get anyone killed in the process...well, Adrian Chase can die as far as Oliver Queen is concerned...that dick wanted to marry MY WIFE!

Last Wish by smkkbert (15/15, 18 Jan 2021) - Oliver feels like his life is crumbling when his best friend reveals that she is sick. Desperate to help her through the toughest time of her life, Oliver puts all his energy in fulfilling the wishes on Felicity's bucket list. His hardest challenge - Felicity's last wish on the list is getting married.

Artemis by IWantColouredRain (35/35, 17 Jan 2021) - My name is Felicity Queen, née Smoak. For five years, I was stranded on a hellish island. I did terrible things, all to survive to come back to my husband and son. Now, I have returned. But to fulfil my father-in-law's dying request, I must become someone else. I must become something else.; S2 begins July 24th!

Other Ships/Characters

We will sink into a final coma and end it all by Dorthea (Iris West-centric, Felicity listed as character, 2/2, 20 Jan 2021) - Before she hides the plastic bag deep inside her closet. Throwing some old hoodie over it, hiding a part of her life away inside a box. Because right now, Barry can be nothing more than a memory.; A memory, just like her mother. Pushed to the back of her mind.; In the distance she hears Joe’s car pull up into the driveway. The old engine singing it’s last verse, and soon needs replacement. Replacement they might not be able to afford of Barry needs medical treatment for a longer period of time. Or if Barry never walks again, and they need to find a handicap friendly place to live. Or if Barry wakes up, but never really recovers. A constant, permanent, vegetative state. Leaving Iris and Joe to care for him for the rest of his life.; Iris wonders if Barry would want that. Being unable to do anything for himself ever again.; ***; Iris lays awake, thinking about Barry. And hoping he'll one day wake up. Insomnia's a bitch, btw.

Plane Crash. by Batwoman2019 (Kate Kane/Sophie Moore, Oliver/Felicity among side pairings, 5/5, 24 Jan 2021) - What would of happened if Julia had been the one to find the crash site first in the season two opener instead of Ryan and found the suit first. Can they find Kate and if they do will she be alive or will the city of Gotham lose their hero forever.

The City of Fallen Angels by Bl4ckHunter (Oliver/Faith Lehane, 5/5, 17 Jan 2021) - When Faith comes to investigate mysterious disappearances in Star City, she crosses paths with a certain Emerald Archer as they unveil a secret that shakes their beliefs.

all over me like a wine-stained dress by screaminghalfpastmidnight (Mia/Nora West-Allen, 10/10, 18 Jan 2021) - in the original Earth-1 timeline, Nora West-Allen helps her father punch the satellite with a plan in mind. Reeling off of the death of her best friend, Lia and then betrayal of her mother, her best friends, and her fianc��, Mia, Nora pays Eobard Thawne a visit and enlists his help in moving Crisis up a few years, therefore saving both her own father, and Oliver Queen. She knew it was a one-way trip. What she didn't know was that it would end up being so hard to follow through on her suicide mission, because she got a taste of what it was like to have a father, and to have her mother actually turn out to be pretty damn great.; OR; a short, season five rewrite where Nora is the all-knowing hero who is the reason Oliver could create Earth-Prime in the first place. Plus, some family fluff (no episode 17-20 barry-taking-nora-back-to-the-future BS), Iris West-Allen Love, and a little xstar because i wanted to.

#arrow #Olicity

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weheart-dianelockhart · 4 years

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The Good Fight Reaction: 4x01

My incomplete (and slightly emotional) thoughts are under the cut. Whew. What an episode. All screenshots are mine. Happy reading.

First of all, what the hell did I just witness? And is it weird that I liked TGF’s version of The Wizard of Oz better than the original? (Not really, I love Wizard of Oz, but you get my drift)

Can I just start out by saying how proud of Diane I am? Talk about character development, and I’ll get into this as we go along, but she has come so far.

The episode overall was just thrilling. I LOVED that Diane remembered everything from Trump’s presidency. I was wondering what headspace they were going to put her in and this was perfect. She could recall certain events and important social and political issues, but she couldn’t seem to put them in order. And for the majority of the episode, I don’t think this bothered her. She was just overjoyed at the thought of Hillary being president. She was feeling her way through this dream as if she were walking through a house of mirrors. Never knowing what was coming next. I laughed out loud so many times and found myself cheering her on as if I were wondering around this new reality with Diane. Marissa accepting her craziness was also a pleasant surprise. She knew something was up with Diane but helped her out and fed her information, nonetheless. The comradery between those two was so refreshing, especially when everyone else seemed to be against Diane. The hilarity of this episode came not only from the absurdity of the circumstances but CB’s insane acting chops. This woman can play anything.

As the episode continued, Diane’s frustration with her situation was building. She’d attempted to implement her knowledge of social and political events into this new reality when she can’t even vouch for how or why she knows all this information. I just wanted to hug her and say “That’s not how this works!” The final straw seemed to come once Zoe began to reprimand her for starting a movement that would supposedly hurt Hillary’s chances for re-election. I almost wish that Lucca had said something about her experience with Weinstein during this part, but I suppose her keeping silent added to the drama.

It took me a while to pinpoint what made Diane suddenly realize she had yet to speak to Kurt since she’d “woken up.” (Thoughts on this??). My creativity has settled on the way Zoe was addressing the MeToo situation. Bare with me, this might be a stretch.

This scene felt extremely reminiscent of the Assholes to Avoid episode in season two where Diane explains “Women aren’t just one thing and you don’t get to determine what we are.” In that reality, she was in control and knew what she wanted. While in this dream, she was not giving the lecture, but was on the receiving end. Her glancing to see what Liz and Adrian were dealing with lined up with the look to the side to see what the two financial advisors were up to in season two. Although, this time, Diane felt powerless and confused, not confident and sure of herself. I adored watching her start to question how all of this got out of hand and trying to piece everything together. Running through her memories and possibly thinking about how everything was different in her dream, she remembered the most crucial part of all of it. Kurt. When the MeToo movement was in question during that episode in season two, he was about to tell her that he wanted them to always be together. He brought clarity back into her life after she had been emotionally drifting for so long. And in this first episode, she is in desperate need of clarity. (Please remember all of this is total speculation and just a little thought I had after watching these scenes for the hundredth time). Here are the scenes for reference.

As her dream begins to unravel, it dawns in her that she doesn’t have that clear perspective. Hence her wondering what happened to Kurt. Little by little, things start adding up in her head (i.e. how did she change clothes, why had she spent the last three days at work, where the heck was Kurt). Everything else that was important 30 seconds ago dissolved into her confusion for why she hasn’t spoken to her husband.

Now this is what really got me. LOOK AT THOSE EYES.

Up until that moment, she was just kind of going along with all the quirkinesses of the new reality, but this is the first time she starts to feel that something isn’t right.

Enter: The Wizard of Oz. Referencing “home” seemed like she was talking about more of a sensation than an actual place. Diane needs to feel understood and safe again, qualities that Kurt provided, but she had yet to feel that durning this dream. I definitely think anxious and confused Diane is my favorite because we are so used to seeing her as the rational one. Also, her anxiety only ever surfaces when she is concerned about someone she loves.

After arguing for a while, it’s sort of heartbreaking to see Diane just give in and say she’ll do whatever Zoe wants. But at the same time, it made me tear up because she was so flustered at the thought of not knowing where Kurt was. She barely even cared about losing her spot at the firm. Even though she couldn’t (or didn’t seem to, at least) remember what happened right before the inauguration, she knew that they had reconciled and that she should have heard from him. Don’t get me wrong, I adored the final McHart scenes, but this is what made me cry. The fact that NOTHING else mattered more to her at that moment than finding Kurt.

Now that is character development. She has chosen work so many times over him and this is the complete opposite of what she would’ve done just a couple seasons ago. She’s all grown up!!!!

Onto the scene in the woods. I could talk about the parallels from the argument scene for DAYS, but I’ll spare you all for now.

I just need a second to dwell on the fact that this is such a beautiful shot...Ok, moving on. A while back I shared my feelings about Chaos in season one and I said how Diane had never looked so frightened than the moment she found Kurt in the hospital. Well, now we have this scene.

To continue with the theme of character development, I nearly screamed when she said that nothing else mattered but the two of them. The fact that she was willing to do whatever it took to keep them together was literally the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.

Sidenote: her voice crack when she called to him in the forest and said she needed his help was pure gold. She had no doubt that he would be able to help her make sense of all of this. She had to get home and he was just the person to help.

I really liked how this whole scene you couldn’t really tell if she knew this was a dream or if she still thought it was reality. But honestly, I don’t think she cared anymore. (Here come the waterworks). I think the most touching part of this whole situation was that she could only remember what happened immediately before Hillary‘s inauguration when she held his hand.

Another side note: her nails aren’t painted!! I just loved this shot of their hands. She has no jewelry on, her nails are bare, and she finally gets to hold his hand. All her armor has been left behind and she is so vulnerable.

The rest of the scene is so beautiful. She doesn’t even question it when he tells her to come back. She’s known that this reality is not where she needs or wants to be and she just wants to go home, where everything made sense even if it wasn’t perfect.

The fact that Kurt is the one that helps her recall what happened before the dream makes her fear of losing him that much more powerful. Yep, this is by far the most terrified we’ve seen Diane. As the memory comes back piece by piece, she tries to pull away from him because she knows where it ends: with him lying on the floor next to her, presumably dead. He wants her back so terribly that he won’t let her go, but she can’t fathom living in a world where he isn’t alive. Everything hits her all at once. The fear, the grief, the regret, and the remorse for putting him in danger in the first place.

You bet I was crying right along with her. And her little “oh my God” broke my heart in half. She knew what was coming next. I mean, what else would you expect to happen if you pulled a gun on a swat team.

And then he is the one that lets go. While she thinks he’s dead, I think it is symbolic of him letting her drift back into reality. He has to release her from this dream and she has to release herself, as well. I know that there are not often clear morals in the episodes because the morals are always in question, but this idea of needing to be home is a continuation from the last episode in season three were Diane tells Adrian that love is the only thing they can hold onto. It will always be there, like it or not, ready to help in anyway it can. Even when times are rough, Diane can always look to her husband for grounding. She can always go home.

Well, for those of you still reading, that was a lot longer than I intended it to be. Let me know what you think and if you have any other ideas on any of this. And I can’t be the only one that thinks Kurt was holding her hand in the final shot...

#McHart #diane lockhart #the good fight #musings #im still crying

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florrickandassociates · 4 years

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TGF Thoughts: 4x04-- The Gang is Satirized and Doesn’t Like It

The gang doesn’t like being satirized and I don’t like this episode.

No episode needs to be 57 minutes long. Is it possible that seeing the runtime put me in a bad mood before watching this episode? Absolutely.

Bianca is still trying to get Lucca to take a week off and come play on the beach. This is weird, right?

She’s using a drone to take a selfie which… yikes. Bianca asks what Lucca has in Chicago to match the beach. Lucca takes a look out the window and instead of seeing FakeChicago, she sees a window washer’s ass crack. Lucca protests that she has work in Chicago and can’t leave (are we going to mention her baby?). Before Bianca can ask more questions, David Lee calls Lucca into a meeting.

A former client who says he’s been “bouncing from one [firm] to the other” (which sort of explains why David Lee and Lucca would both have experience with this client who was at RBL a year ago?) is angry because he’s being defamed by a new play. He says his divorce is in the play and wants to sue.

Lucca ChumHums the playwright and recognizes him as a former associate. She brings the case to Adrian’s attention. Before Adrian understands that confidential info made it into the play, he talks about how you shouldn’t give satire oxygen because it will just go away. Easier said than done, huh, Adrian?

They DID actually fire Alan North for drug use last year. We never saw the actor but his firing was referenced as precedent for firing Maia. Thanks Alan, I guess?

(Right, I used to spend most of these recaps complaining about Maia! It is very nice not to be doing that anymore.)

Adrian jumps into the case to prevent the client from suing RBL.

We have to see the scene that ended the last episode again. That’s a little clumsy. Maybe trim the stuff we’ve already seen in an episode that’s this long?

How does Jay POSSIBLY know that one specific dude up at STRL is blocking Diane from searching “What is Memo 618” on Bar-Swarm? I have questions.

Diane immediately heads upstairs to ask this dude about Memo 618. Jay wonders if that’s smart and Diane doesn’t care. As I said to an anon earlier, I feel like now is the time to get a journalist on the case.

Even though Diane storms upstairs uninvited, she’s told “they’re waiting for you.” Creepy.

Diane meets a lot of people, including Bryan Kneef (of internet blocking fame) and a dude who won’t stop hiccuping.

Oh GOD are we going to have to hear one of these stupid stories from Mr. Firth in every single episode? No fucking wonder this episode is so long.

Bryan is mad at Diane for poaching his clients. Diane has no idea what he’s talking about. Diane seems to know that her investigator is checking his clients to figure out why he’s blocking her internet. Does Diane actually know Jay is investigating his clients? Or is she just assuming that’s how he found out who was doing the blocking? Because literally as soon as Diane heard Kneef’s name she ran upstairs; there would be no time for her or Jay to begin looking into his clients.

Mr. Firth asks for Diane not to steal Kneef’s clients and Kneef not to block Diane’s internet access. They agree, but it’s clear neither of them are going to stop doing what they were doing.

Jay discovers that one of Kneef’s cases disappeared… when he was losing.

Oh, Caleb’s last name is Garlin, not Garland. Noted. Also, I think I mistakenly said STRL was British a few weeks ago. It doesn’t appear to be.

Marissa bothers Caleb again and asks him to tell her a joke. He does, but she’s unimpressed.

Caleb has a photographic memory. I like Caleb so far. I feel like he’s kind of what they wanted Finn to be-- a charming good guy. But we’ll see; it’s early yet.

Caleb gives Diane the number of a legal code the judge needed to review. In a sequence that goes on 30 seconds too long, Diane discovers this code redirects to another code, which redirects right back endlessly. Fun!

When Diane goes to check a physical book, she discovers all the legal books are fake. Sounds about right.

Ah, this terrible attorney who hits on young women is back because of reasons related to the other case that disappeared. Marissa is now helping Diane with her 618 quest, maybe because she’s met this creep before?

Diane offers to represent him (he’s being sued for doing a shitty job on disappearing case).

Meanwhile, Adrian and Charlotte go to see “Cocksucker in Chains”, which turns out to be about an African American firm populated by characters who are clearly supposed to be the RBL partners. Julius narrates the play, Adrian likes to be dominated by the Diane character while roleplaying a slave to Diane’s dominatrix (yikes), etc. Adrian is named “Aiden” and Diane is “Dana”. This seems like a good time to remind you all of the original TGW character names from the Pilot outline: Alicia Follick, David Follick (and David Follick Jr.!!!), Dawna Lockhart, and Will Garvin.

The first time through, I was appreciative (and shocked) we got so few scenes from the play. Usually if the Kings have a device like this, we tend to get… more of the device than is necessary. Y’all know how this one turns out.

This play, from what we see of it, looks kind of terrible. That said, I think it’s SUPER realistic, and interesting, that a low-level black associate would see all the white people coming into the firm as “dominating” a black man who gets off on being submissive. I don’t think that’s an accurate characterization of Adrian’s actions but if you don’t know his reasoning or how things played out, it absolutely could seem like Diane has all the power. And I imagine that young, idealistic lawyers who signed on to work at a firm that was proudly all-black would not have been thrilled by Diane’s sudden appearance and all of the changes that followed. Remember how in season one RBL had things it stood for and then Barbara left and then all it stood for was money?

Relatedly, remember that little throwaway line about how Barbara donated MORE money to HRC than Diane Lockhart did? Heh.

Adrian, as the episode title indicates, DOES NOT LIKE BEING SATIRIZED and tells Lucca they need to shut the play down. That escalated quickly.

Please explain to me how I accidentally memorized the name of the actor playing Kovac but didn’t memorize the character’s name.

Diane tells Liz and Adrian about her latest Memo 618 adventure and Adrian keeps asking why this matters. “I’m not asking for your permission; I’m just filling you in,” Diane notes. “Maybe you should be asking for our permission,” Adrian counters because he does not want to be dominated by Diane. “Maybe. But I’m not,” she responds.

Liz thinks that Adrian acted weirdly. Adrian explains he doesn’t like how Diane insinuates she can overrule them. Liz has no idea what Adrian is talking about. So he explains the play. Liz still doesn’t think it’s a big deal and asks to take it over.

She then gets Caleb involved-- I guess Lucca is just done working now? Okay? It was nice to have Lucca scenes in this episode while it lasted!!!

Liz and Caleb go to see the play and now we get to see the scenes where Liz is satirized. Fake Liz sings, because of COURSE they are going to have the FAKE version of her sing. Her song is about how her daddy is a sexual predator. It’s quite upsetting.

Liz and Caleb stay for a Q&A in which the playwright says the client in the play was “based on” (not “inspired by”). (Actually this happens after my second bullet but meh)

Then there’s a white woman who goes on a rant that feels too ridiculous to be true but apparently it’s lifted almost verbatim from an actual incident that happened at a Slave Play Q&A (I am not New York enough to have gotten the reference without the internet’s help).

Monica is back! Yay Monica! Nikki just needs to show up on Evil next season and she’ll have been on every Kings show.

Blah blah 618 blah blah. I don’t dislike this arc but I don’t have much to say about it. Like, I get it, corporations are powerful and the law is fake and this is a way of commenting on the insanity of the world while backing away from the politics. But other than saying that and enjoying the twists and turns… I don’t have anything to add.

Man, I miss character based drama. That’s not a criticism of the show, but this recap format is way less interesting (to write, and probably to read) when I don’t have anything to sink my teeth into.

Adrian doesn’t want to settle because now Adrian is mad. The client gets what he wants and Adrian insists they keep going. I mean, if the episode stopped now it would be a reasonable, even short, episode, and we’ve got fifty seven whole minutes to fill..

Liz is also on board to prolong the case. Lucca, who actually has perspective, tells Adrian he’s not acting in the client’s best interest. Adrian denies it. LOL, sure.

At this exact moment Lucca receives (and looks at) a text from Bianca, who is still pursuing her. Tempting.

Liz asks Marissa if she’s heard of Cocksucker in Chains. She has, and she is getting a “gang” together to go see it, because of course she is.

David Lee enjoys the play. Diane and Kurt, less so. Julius and his wife do not like it at all. Also apparently we HAD seen Julius’s wife before and I somehow FORGOT?????

Play!Julius monologuing about justice makes Real!Julius reevaluate his decisions.

Then we get into this weird Diane and Kurt sex plot that is kind of about the idea of problematic kinks (like getting off on watching a fake version of your white wife whip a black man) but is mostly just an excuse for fanservice in the form of Christine Baranski in sexy get-ups. She’s got an amazing figure, but does that alone justify this subplot? (I say no.)

(Also I’d be way more invested in a plotline about McHart’s sex life if it didn’t begin and conclude in the back half of a single episode. It’s sparked by the play-- not any ongoing issues-- and concludes in a cute way so to me it is… nothing.)

Marissa goes undercover as a playwright. Everyone in the group dislikes the writer of Cocksucker in Chains… a lot. They hand over the drafts easily.

Liz and Caleb spend a late night reading smut said by fake Liz in an early draft script to each other. Over it already. I was never a fan of boss/employee plots, and in this era, with this character who has SO MUCH potential but never really gets plotlines of her own, I have zero patience for this bullshit. Liz deserves better.

What really confuses me is that somehow Liz/Caleb is supposed to be about… investigating what interracial relationships are like???? If they’re so insistent on showing this can’t they… do something other than this? Random stranger at a bar?

I do not like this thing that is happening to Liz where whenever she gets a plot of her own it’s about fucking someone she shouldn’t be fucking. I haven’t forgotten what the writers did to Geneva Pine in late season seven for LITERALLY NO REASON.

Liz would not flirt with an employee. Like, just stop. Liz has spent the last year coming to terms with her father being a serial assailant and we are going to deal with that by… having her make eyes at Caleb? That is not interesting or complicated.

And, tbh, it’s especially insulting to Liz when none of this feels motivated in character and ALL of it feels motivated in “we need a sexy forbidden romance so we can explore themes.” Get this plot away from Liz.

This episode is too long, in case I haven’t already said that enough times.

And now the scene in which Bryan Kneef, the latest Rebel Dude Lawyer, says the word “ass” many times. I repeat: this episode is too long.

Mr. Firth talks to Diane about pursuing 618. I don’t understand Mr. Firth’s deal. Why does he let Diane continue? Is he just a person who happens to be powerful who is actually trying to do a fair job and be understanding? This show just doesn’t have characters like that so you see why I am skeptical.

Again with the window washers. Of all the symbols of the problems with office life, this one?! (It plays especially poorly right now-- I wish that my biggest problem with my workspace was that there are people cleaning the windows to make my view nicer and not, you know, that my current workspace is my bedroom.)

Firth goes to see Lucca next. Lucca says she doesn’t like her new standing desk. Wait. They got desks that are standing ONLY without consulting the employees?

This scene is succeeding in making me miss the standing desk that I’ve only ever used as a standing desk, like, twice.

No one on this show has a monitor at their desk. I wonder if that’s true to life for law firms.

Now Bianca has found a way to make it part of Lucca’s JOB to come hang out at the beach and this is making me uncomfortable. Firth tells Lucca to go, even though Lucca shares her concern that Bianca just wants a friend. Firth somehow has a similar story to share and tells Lucca “the rich are not like us.” K. Sure. Maybe we can get away with calling Lucca well-off instead of rich but Firth? Rich. Maybe not ultra wealthy but dude is rich.

SERIOUSLY what is with the window washers?

Enjoy this scene of Diane the dominatrix, fans. It’s here for you.

(I don’t mean that snarkily against fans. I mean that snarkily against the show.)

The stock footage clip with the moon over Chicago is one of the more interesting stock footage clips I’ve seen the show use (plus it actually looks like the neighborhood Diane would live in!)

Oh I am just so thrilled that at the 44 minute mark, we are starting to do a series of unnecessary scenes in which the characters converse with their actor counterparts. What a good use of time.

And the sad thing is that I should like this device… but I don’t. None of this is actually building up the characters for me? How invested can I be in Diane and Kurt’s sex life problems when I’ve known about them for less than half of the episode? How interested can I be in deconstructing

And I don’t need a scene of Julius debating if he should be honest or not, because the scene of him watching the play was enough to make me understand he’s having doubts about complying with 618.

And you know what I REALLY, TRULY, DO NOT NEED? ALL OF THIS ATROCIOUS LIZ/CALEB PLOT.

Why is Play Liz so horny? What about Real Liz made the playwright write Liz to be like this? And if it’s not accurate, why is it getting under Liz’s skin like this? I get the Diane one because it was a turn-on and it makes Diane wonder about dominating (outside of the bedroom, too). I get the Adrian one because I mean holy shit that’s a big claim to make. And I get the Julius one because Julius loves to be the voice of reason/hear his own voice and feels like a hypocrite. But Liz? What the fuck is this nonsense?

Liz saying “I’m his boss” and talking about HR does not excuse the fact that we are pretending a boss/employee romance is a good plotline in 2020. And I’m so confused about why THIS is the way they are choosing to explore an interracial relationship.

I have watched TV shows before so obviously as soon as I saw Liz get on the elevator, I knew from the fact that we were watching her leave… she wasn’t going to leave. She was going to go and fuck her employee. Great writing guys.

This also managed to remind me of all my anger at the Red Team Blue Team Willicia kiss (they previewed it as a sneak peak and I was excited that it it didn’t end with them kissing because that’s so cliche… then I watched the episode and I’m still furious about it in season four of the spinoff.) so thanks for that too, writers.

Why is Fake Liz’s stupid song so goddamn long?

“Oh God help me,” Liz says as she knowingly goes to make an incredibly stupid decision I have NOT A SINGLE REASON to believe she would make. But this is The Good Fight, and on The Good Fight we care about plot more than characters.

(Oh. I am in a bad mood.)

The client wants out of the suit because… I mean, duh? He got what he wanted and this should have stopped at like the 20 minute mark?

If I never had to see another one of these “boss and employee awkwardly talk in the office about how it’s nbd they fucked last night” scenes again I would be OVER THE MOON. I watched all of Willicia and I will rewatch all of Willicia, is that not enough?!

I do like Caleb so far, but man, that just makes this worse! I like Caleb and I like Liz and maybe I could even like them together but I am so furious they’re doing the boss/employee thing it just makes me sad to see this happen to characters I like.

Diane is now circling the word “ass” in transcripts of the deposition, but the suit’s been dropped because the suit was settled for 1.8 million. (I am sure that’s a lot to the victim and absolutely nothing to the corporation.)

Also Kovac brings Diane a bird because WE LOVE WACKINESS ON THE GOOD FIGHT.

And now for a scene in which a mysterious visitor gives Kurt a warning to stop Diane from pursuing something dangerous. I thought we were done with this. This shit is what I hated about the Book Club arc in season three: the stakes got too high for me to take it seriously. They run the risk of doing the same with Memo 618. Keep it small scale.

Kurt tells Diane about his visitor, and Kurt and Diane both recognize that this is similar to what happened last year, so at least there’s continuity.

Diane says this isn’t about politics. I mean. Not overtly. But that’s the point. This whole arc is a thinly veiled way of exploring how the legal system breaks down when there’s no enforcement, and lack of enforcement is tied to politics, so… is this really as apolitical as Diane wants it to seem? Certainly it’s less political than Book Club but I don’t think a radical group should be the benchmark.

Diane promises she’ll drop 618, then gets an idea to spice up her sex life by modifying her dominatrix costume into a sexy cowgirl costume. (Diane is not going to drop 618. This is episode 4.)

Did Diane just grab a gun from the bathroom? Why are there guns in the bathroom? I guess it makes sense if she was planning this.

Oh and that’s the end of the episode!!! I DID IT!!!! I MADE IT THROUGH HIS EPISODE A SECOND TIME!

#the good fight #tgfthoughts

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heatherofthenight · 5 years

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Reaction to SHTF

I don’t want to admit how long it took me to figure out SHTF stands for Shit Hits The Fan. At least I think that’s what it means? I work in an acronym happy field but this isn’t one we use although I totally see how it could be employed to advantage (right up there with PJDS which is shorthand for People Just Do Shit). I’m considering bringing it up at a unit meeting next week—how do you think that will go over?!

Please keep in mind that I major in the good ship D&A (minor in shallow thoughts) when I’m rambling about episodes although I will say this episode gave me a lot to chew on overall.

One Scene with D&A Together and It was a Doozy

We’re back to estranged body language—could Adrian move any farther away from Deran without falling off of the bed? But hey, at least they’re talking. I like that Adrian is owning his mistake although Deran doesn’t want him going to prison. Neither does Adrian for that matter; he positively looks green every time it comes up. And Adrian, darling, I’m not sure you’re going to wrap your head around what’s to come while wrapping (yes, yes, rolling but that doesn’t sound as good) your blunt. He seems open to accepting some help from Deran to avoid a long sentence but messing with kids seem to be Adrian’s hard line. I’m worried Deran will roll through that stop sign and it will be that act which splits our domestic lovebirds apart but I’m really hoping I’m wrong. How’s the panic meter @meghangrove83? Where are our tears @adrianintown? I could go for an infusion of heart eyes @allthehearteyes!

Pearce Visits Deran

Adrian is not only preoccupying Deran’s thoughts but he’s driving lots of storyline. Would you have ever guessed this back in Season One? I certainly didn’t but I’m beyond happy at this development although I feel spoiled and worry that next season we won’t be so lucky. Please prove me wrong, Show! Anyway, Pearce is quite the smug bastard in this scene but I can’t help but like him. Ox. Colby. Smurf and Pope. Adrian! He’s busy dropping names and Deran keeps up a tough guy front but Baby Cody is having a shitty day coming on the heels of news of Smurf’s (love her or hate her she’s a huge presence in her sons’ lives) cancer. To add insult to injury there’s the aborted baseball bat meet-and-greet with Livengood which if Deran had his way, would not be living good. There, I said it. I’m sure others have before me but it was begging to be said again.

Other Items of Note...

Kids

So, kids we’re a huge factor in this episode. Craig and Renn’s 11 lb. bouncing baby; next I’m checking to see what goodies @stilinski-ortiz-dolan and @ires-posts bestowed upon us to commemorate this happy occasion. Jed’s kids in the flashback which seem to hold Smurf’s interest. J and his first beer story. Lena; what a heartbreakingly awkward scene for uncle and niece. Adrian’s insistence that Deran leave Livengood’s kids alone--I’m getting twitchy that this means bad things for D&A.

Flashbacks Aren’t Just for Friday

Baby Smurf: Brother Jed is collecting gold for the coming apocalypse. Me: Finally! Revenge rolled in with a job totally make sense. I think the flashbacks have dragged in pace a bit (shout out to @iammine-notyours for sure on this point) it’s nice to have confirmation that Smurf’s walk down memory lane means more than just happy/violent/sad times.

Hardcore J

J is definitely a chip off Smurf’s block. His cool manipulation of Angela was a thing of beauty. Of course, J knew Angela used to score at this place and set her up perfectly. I almost felt sorry for her losing her sobriety in that manner as she seemed genuinely contrite about some of the things she’d done to J when high. Then I weigh that against all the shit she contributed to in terms of J’s lost childhood, and what I perceive is to be her involvement in taking down the Codys, and I’m not so sorry. What does this say about my own morality? I’m not sure but apparently I’m all in with this family’s shenanigans. Viva los Codys!

Final Shallow Thought

I was sad Adrian wore shorts to bed. I know Deran is in lots of pain from his accident but I’m jonesing (not like Angela, but hey, I’m ready for my fix) to see these two have their make-up sex on screen. Mr. Demille, they’re ready for their close-up!

#deran x adrian #Adrian Dolan #deran cody #(shallow) review

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insectlover49 · 5 years

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Miraculous Ladybug Oblivion Review/Analysis: Is it more than just a tease?

***Spoiler Warning for episode season 3 episode 7 and past episodes of Miraculous Ladybug.***

Most of the MLB fans thought Oblivion was great. I was pissed. Initially. I felt played. I thought, what was the point of the episode if the reveal didn’t actually happen? How did this episode add anything valuable to the plot or at least provide a positive message to the little kiddies. Oblivion played with my emotions all for nothing. I couldn’t help but think, this episode is nothing but a giant tease! This was as my initial thought. But, certain moments in the episode didn’t make sense. For example, why was Marinette less clumsy? And did anyone else notice that Adrian seemed less punny? These questions made me think that Oblivion has more to offer than being just a tease.

Before going more into the analysis, I wanted to touch on the obvious points that made this episode great – Adrian and Marinette’s chemistry. O my god! Adrian and Marinette were so cute! It’s so refreshing seeing Adrian taking a more active role in the fights. Prior episodes made him look more like a sidekick, but this episode made him look just as important as Ladybug. Ladybug can no longer say, “I’m better than both of you!” like she did in Copycat. Even after losing their memories, they knew that they still loved each other?! That’s super cute! And it’s refreshing not hearing Adrian call Marinette “just a friend.” Too bad that will probably come back in later episodes. *sigh*

If I critiqued the episode only on those moments, it’d easily get a 5/5; however, I am the type of viewer that if the episode doesn’t add something to the story (ie: plot, character development, world building, etc.) then why have the episode at all? So, I need to analyze this further. Does Oblivion actually add anything to the MLB?

At first glance, it doesn’t, but, as I mentioned earlier, there were moments in the episode that didn’t add up. With their memories erased, the characters should revert to their true behavior. If Marinette’s true identity was when she’s Marinette and not Ladybug, then the Marinette with her memory erased should be equally as clumsy than the Marinette without her memory erased. Similarly, if Adrian the civilian is a mask and Chat Noir is his true self freed from his father’s overbearing yet distant personality, then the Adrian with his memory erased should crack an equal amount of jokes as the Chat Noir without his memories erased. In previous episodes, Chat Noir tries to throw as many puns as possible even under pressure of super villains. That didn’t happen in this episode.

Not only was Marinette less clumsy, but Ladybug, her supposedly perfect superhero alter ego, became clumsier. Ladybug’s trip was heavily emphasized from the change in art style to Oblivion commenting “you’ve forgotten your reflexes.” This meant that Ladybug’s superpowers did not overcome her clumsiness and suggested that Marinette’s clumsiness was all in her mind.

From prior episodes, Marinette was not the only superhero who showed stark differences from her superhero alter ego. Both Marinette and Adrian had such different personalities from their superhero personas, that I think their voice actors incorporated it into their acting. People can easily tell when Marinette was Marinette or Ladybug and when Adrian was Adrian or Chat Noir. Marinette as Marinette had a slighter higher pitch and sounds more timid, while Ladybug had a deeper voice and sounded more confident. Similarly, Adrian as Adrian had a softer and caring tone, but Chat Noir sounded cockier and more expressive. However, in this episode there’s barely a difference either’s civilian and super hero voice. The vocal change was only noticeable after Chat Noir and Ladybug got their memories back.

Contrast these two with the two characters whose personalities doesn’t change that much from memory wipe – the kwamis! Even with their memories gone, Tikki’s still cute and caring, and Plagg still tried to act selfish when deep down he cares just as much as Tikki. There were some people who were shocked by Plagg’s selfishness, but to me, he acted the same as he did in the Sandman where Plagg tried to act all that and a bag of camembert for sneaking out without telling Adrian. If the kwamis not getting a personality change showed that the memory wipe does bring out an individual’s true personality, then why did Marinette and Adrian’s personalities change? The answer: Marinette’s civilian identity was not her true persona, and Chat Noir was not Adrian’s opportunity to be his true self.

In every episode before Oblivion, Marinette and Adrian’s civilian identities underplay their true nature, while their super hero identities over compensate. Oblivion is the first episode that we see Marinette and Adrian’s true identity. It’s a combination of their superhero and civilian personas. Not one identity is better than the other. Marinette’s clumsiness is probably a hyper-awareness of someone pointing it out in childhood (I bet it was Chloe.), while Adrian is probably overcompensating for the lack of freedom around his father. Regardless of the reason, neither their civilian identities nor their superhero identities are Adrian’s nor Marinette’s true selves, and it took three freak’n seasons to see their real selves! (Very well played on the MLB production team.)

This actually made me more interested in the episode because it suggested what can happen after the reveal. If this episode confirmed anything, it’s that Adrian and Marinette work well together, or as Tikki puts it, “make a very effective couple.” They bring out the best in each other, which was only possible when they know everything about each other. Including their identities.

If this episode adds anything to the MLB story, it’s a foreshadow of what Marinette and Adrian’s relationship will become once their identities are revealed. So, basically, the episode is one big tease. A teaser for what can happen after the reveal.

I have never been so curious about an MLB episode, hence the review/analysis. Oblivion’s not my favorite episode (that title goes to Gorizilla), but the fact that it made me so curious that I wrote this puts it very high on my list of favorite episodes. I had a lot of fun writing this, so I’ll probably write more in the future and out early enough where the episode is still relevant. Oblivion definitely gets a 5/5.

#MLB #mlb spoilers #marinette dupain cheng #adrian agreste #oblivion #mlb season 3 #mlb review #mlb analysis #ladybug #chat noir #romance #mlb reveal #miraculous ladybug

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angstymarshmallow · 6 years

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Kiss Me After Midnight (Jax x MC)

[A little note: I want to write more Jax fics since I’m in a jax x mc mood right now. I’m working on other stuff...but this was a nice break from the things I know I should be finishing...Hope you enjoy it!]

Tagging: @flynnomalleys :’)

[Word Count: 3680]

It was nearly midnight when Harlow heard her phone, blaring from beside her. She paused her show on Netflix long enough to lean forward and caught the sight of a familiar number flashing on her screen.

She smiled.

Just the sight of his number could do that to her. It could make her smile, make her giddy as a strange flutter resonated somewhere deep inside her chest. She couldn’t explain exactly what he did to her, she only knew she couldn’t stop herself from reaching for it and pressing the phone eagerly to her ear. And she really should have stopped herself – making it this easy for Jax would give him the impression that she was wrapped around his little finger.

“Harlow,” he greeted warmly from the other line. “I’m glad I caught you.”

“Hey,” she stretched, “another late night at the office. Adrian had me compiling lists for him – it felt pretty endless. Even now I swear I can still see numbers floating around in my head.”

He lightly chuckled.

“I’ve only been home for the past hour,” she squinted at the time. “And I think I’m still too keyed up to go to bed.” She twirled a lock of her dark hair. “How’s Shadow Den?”

“Same old, same old.” His voice was surprisingly brusque when she asked him. As though catching it himself, he sighed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to brush off your question like that.”

“I know,” she said quietly. “You’re just very protective of your people.”

“But they’ve got nothing to fear from you.” He muttered. “I’m just…used to keeping so much of it a secret from pretty much everyone –” he sighed ruefully a second time. “But it’s good to know I can share it with you, in fact they keep asking me when’s the next time I’m going to bring you around.” He scoffed, “they think I’ve been surly lately because I haven’t seen you.”

She laughed. “That definitely sounds like you, always worrying about other people instead of yourself.” Although he couldn’t see her, she shook her head.

“I don’t remember you complaining the last time I rescued you.”

“Hey!” She exclaimed indignantly, “walking me home after someone tried mugging me does not count. I had it covered.” She waited a beat, “but I was pretty grateful you were around the corner to get my purse back for me.”

“You know I’m always here when you need me.”

And he had proven that to be true, at least a dozen times over since they met.

Her fingers clenched around her phone at the thought.

Every night she spent with Jax was another night she thought it would be easy to fall for him. Easy for her to lose herself in his smile and his intimate embrace without even trying. And she was fighting a losing battle convincing herself that she was only in it for the thrill. With Jax, she found herself wanting more.

“So, why did you call?” She switched the subject, “It must be something good for interrupting my Netflix session. You know it’s Game of Thrones night, right?”

“How many times have you marathoned that show, Harlow?” He hummed.

“That’s – that’s –” she frowned at his teasing, “that’s besides the point. This show deserves more than one go around and I don’t remember you complaining the last time you were here with me.”

“We might be remembering the same night differently,” his voice dropped an octave, “because I distinctly remember you pouncing on me the moment we settled in to watch it.”

“It’s not my fault!” She objected without thinking, “you’re just so irresistible!” Oh. The moment she uttered those words, she regretted them. Instead of the pause she feared, much to her surprise he chuckled good-naturedly on the other line.

“If I’m so irresistible then you wouldn’t mind going out with me tonight.”

“Gee, I don’t know.” She pretended to think about, but already her stomach quivered in anticipation at the prospect of seeing him. He was just so damned smooth. Was there anything he wasn’t good at?

Harlow was already off the couch, digging into her slippers before she ventured towards her bedroom as soon as she spoke. “I did have a serious date with eyeballing Jon Snow for at least another two episodes.”

Jax laughed.

“But I think he’ll manage without me tonight.” She added brightly.

“I’ll let him know you’re in good hands tonight.”

Placing her phone in-between her shoulders, she started fishing through her walk-in closest. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.” He replied, without missing a beat.

She rolled her eyes, almost freezing as she passed a pair of dark jeans. “You know I’m not a big fan of surprises.” Her last surprise had nearly driven her off the wagon. Crazy hadn’t been enough to define what she had recently gone through – finding out your new boss was a vampire was no easy feat for anyone in their right mind. Good thing she always had trouble with that.

“A good kind,” Jax paused, interrupting her thoughts. “I promise.”

“You’ve always been good at keeping your promises,” she mused, spying a little black dress. “So I guess I can let you off the hook this time.”

She could almost see his grin in her mind – and his canines poking out as clear as day. “Good, pack light. Dress light. I’ll be down by your place in ten.”

Pack light? Dress light? She thought with a frown. What exactly could he have meant. “Where are we -” before she could ask him what he meant he hung up. Shaking her head, she placed her hands on her hips and eyed her wardrobe. Just what exactly did Jax Matsuo have in mind?

Jax was as Harlow expected on time. He was never one to be late when it came to their impromptu meetings. He never left home without his sword and it was still strapped against his back, as if he thought at any time something could go wrong. But knowing him and her trademark for finding herself in trouble – he was probably right to.

He looked as handsome as the last time she saw him. And not a day too soon, as she drank in the sight of familiar leather. She nearly shivered in delight.

His dark eyes were gleaming at her with a mixture of happiness and something else. Something she could only describe as desire under its growing intensity. She greeted him with a quick kiss that he quickly tried to pull her back to.

His lips were thorough in their inspection, kissing her as though he was trying to commit the softness of her lips to memory and incited a small moan from her, when he finally tore himself away. “Hey,”

“Hi,” she breathlessly said back. She gave him a smile as he reached for her hand. She could still feel the warmth from his lips lingering as they slipped into an easy walking pace across the sidewalk. “No ride today?” She kept hoping she’d have a chance to see his motorbike in action but was sorely disappointed when he shook his head.

“Not today, I figured we could enjoy a walk.” He jerked his chin at the path in front of them; a long winding road that Harlow had covered jogging last week. “The moon is out, and the sky looks beautiful tonight.”

“Feeling sentimental, aren’t we?” Even as the words left her throat, she couldn’t help but agree. There was something special about seeing the moon out; shining brightly down at them as they gazed at it.

“Am I?” He laughed, “I can’t help it. The moon is the closest I’ll ever to be the sun.” He mused darkly.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s the only thing that lights the dark,” Jax continued quietly, tightening his grip around her wrist. “The only thing that keeps it from completely taking over.” He looked down at her then, his eyes suddenly solemn. “I guess in a way, it reminds me of what I can’t have.”

Harlow swallowed, finding it suddenly difficult to breathe. She couldn’t understand the sudden faraway look in his eyes and yet she was under the impression that they were no longer talking about the same thing. She squeezes his hand, drawing the light back into his eyes. “Hey, you said you had something to show me?” She prompted, hoping to distract him. She didn’t know what demons lurked underneath where he wouldn’t share with her; but she knew she had to always try to bring him back.

“Oh,” Jax blinked at her for a moment. “Oh, yes.” A sly smile erased the trepidation she had felt building between them. “Follow me.” He said eagerly, gripping her hand tighter.

“Ow!” She winced a little and automatically he loosened his hold fraction. “Wait! Slow down.”

Jax was infinitely faster than her and it took a lot of patience for him to slow his pacing. He wasn’t used to holding onto someone that could have difficulty catching up, but he wanted to share something with her – a piece of himself that no one else knew.

Not even his second in command at Shadow Den.

He ignored the sudden anxiety he felt in his stomach. He wouldn’t fill his head with second thoughts – he had known Harlow long enough to trust her and his instincts. And his instincts were telling him she was special – important. She was unlike anyone else her had ever met.

His hand entwinned with hers flexed as they flitted through a crowd. He kept a good watch on her from the corner of her eyes, because despite her protests about being independent – Harlow’s luck had often made her a damsel in unfortunate circumstances.

When he found the building he was looking for, he pulled her into the alleyway and only stopped to gaze worriedly back at her. She was still there, hugging her shoulders in her dark and clad leather jacket.

One singular eyebrow was raised as she pulled back her bangs from her face. Her lips formed a faint frown. “Jax,” she begun.

“Hmm?” His lips were itching to smile at her apparent confusion.

“Public sex isn’t really my thing,” she skimmed the overgrown trashcans and wrinkled her nose and the dingy graffiti covering the sight of the building. “Like at all.”

He laughed. “That isn’t why I brought you here, although we should definitely re-visit this conversation later.”

She narrowed her eyes and flipped her hair over her shoulder. “No, I think that’s always going to be a hard pass for me.”

“Hmmm,” he pulled her to him, cutting off the rest of her retort. He couldn’t stop himself from tilting her chin up to kiss her.

She returned it just as quickly, looping her arms around his neck; pressing herself possessively into him.

She could make him forget the rest of the world around them if he wasn’t careful. And Jax had always taught himself to be careful. Cupping her cheeks, he deepened the kiss before pulling back enough to stare into her eyes. His dark crimsons reflected back at him.

“Do you trust me, Harlow?”

Jax’s voice was remarkably soft when he spoke. It was always soft whenever they spoke of serious things, and their feelings that had never been fleeting – but his question had taken her off guard. She admitted to herself that it quelled the little weeds of self-doubt that had been rearing its ugly head, but she was still surprised at the intensity of his eyes boring into hers. Staring up at him, all Harlow could think was of an answer that should have scared her. But it didn’t. “Yes, I think I do.”

“With your life?” He pressed with a sudden urgency entering his voice. He stroked her cheek.

And Harlow relished his touch. Despite the flush that crept upon her neck, she loved the feeling of his cool fingers until they tucked underneath her chin.

Jax angled her forward, still waiting for her answer.

Slowly, she nodded.

She didn’t think it would have been possible – but then again, a couple months ago, she hadn’t thought vampires were possible either. There was no denying she trusted him, and even more surprising was how much she entrusted her life into his hands. She wasn’t a person that trusted easily, it was never something she gave to others no a whim – not even with Adrian who had been there for her too. He had never been this level of clarity.

And a thousand different reasons why she shouldn’t trust him flooded her thoughts. But the most important reason why she kept those thoughts back. Yet, no matter how different their circumstances and responsibilities were, no matter how much their lives were beginning to yank them in separate directions – she trusted him. She trusted him, because she was falling for him – falling harder than she had ever thought possible. “I do Jax.” She uttered so low that she thought she thought he hadn’t heard it until she saw his smile. ��I trust you.”

“Good,” his shoulders went a little slack. “Now, relax.”

“Wait what –” Before she could finish her sentence, Harlow was suddenly swept into Jax’s arms. Her eyes widened in bewilderment, before she felt the ground beneath them fall away.

Jax propelled himself with the weight of his feet, springing forward. The jump wasn’t something difficult to make by any means – he had done it countless of times over the past decades, and yet he could feel how different it was this time. This time he wasn’t going up there alone.

The air around them whizzed by as he launched himself and he grinned at the sound of Harlow’s cry of surprise and outrage until his feet landed them safely on-top of the roof.

“Oh my god, are you insane?!” Harlow nearly yelled as she slid down from him. She could barely hear his laugh over the sound of her heartbeat. She slapped his shoulder. “You could have killed us!”

He quirked an eyebrow.

“I mean you could have killed me.”

“You’re fine, aren’t you?” His eyes gave a swift once over just to be sure. “All in one piece. Weren’t you the one that said you trusted me with your life?”

“I’m beginning to reconsider that.” She grumbled.

Jax smiled so endearingly back at her that Harlow was having trouble staying upset with him. Her lips twitched to return his smile. “I wouldn’t have let anything happen to you.”

She looked away, cheeks burning even as she ignored his confident smirk. If he kept saying things like that….

She didn’t finish the thought, instead she turned her sights to glance meekly around them, to get a better idea of their surroundings. “This is…rather high.” She slid a little closer towards railing of the building. From here, it overlooked half the city.

She could see thousands of lights engulfing down below her. She couldn’t hear the traffic from up so high but she saw the telltale sign of moving lights from vehicles, and the bright lights that were blurring together from where she stood. She thought if anyone had ever done this, had ever taken the time to admire how everything down below shimmered. Then as her eyes traveled back up to watch the stars, she knew she never had before today.

She had seen stars before on the balcony of her own apartment, and yet staring up at them as Jax sidled beside her, she couldn’t help but think the stars above were brighter than anything she had ever seen. They were alive – living and breathing pieces that belonged to the universe.

“It’s beautiful out here.” She murmured. She was so used to putting her head down that seeing how much the city came alive made her realize she had been missing something. She wandered dimly, how people were down there – and how many of them would kill for a view like this.

Jax watched her from the corner of her eyes and thought differently. Seeing her hugging her shoulders, tucking her long dark hair behind her ear and watching the excitement flash inside her eyes made him think she was the most beautiful thing out here. Tearing his gaze away, he stared up at the sky with her and her fingers found his in the dark.

“I used to come up here a lot,” Jax muttered, breaking the comfortable silence that had settled between them. “Back when my grandparents were still around and this place wasn’t so developed. This used to be one of the highest places you could go to see the city.” He smiled fondly at the memory. “They took me here as a reward for doing good in school.”

“Couldn’t they get you candy like anyone else?” Harlow muttered.

He laughed.

“Though I suppose, I can understand why.” She sighed wistfully, “I can only imagine the view it had back then, what it looked like.”

“I wish I could show you.” He agreed, turning to her. “But the reason why I brought you up here was because it’s still a good place to see how pretty this city is – even with the darkness lingering and festering its center.”

“Jax.” Harlow saw the conflict in his eyes; the way they seemed to be holding something back. “I know you’re not used to sharing pieces of yourself with other people – I know you’ve been alone for a long time.” She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself despite how fast her heart was racing. “But you don’t have to do that with me. I love the pieces of your world that you show me,” she returned her gaze to the midnight sky, still glinting down at them with its stars. “Even the parts that should terrify me.”

“And why don’t they terrify you?” Jax hadn’t meant to sound so snappy but he had been introduced to this world without a choice. He had been turned without a choice and being Clanless – there was a part of him that would always envy her. She was introduced to their world with open arms and had stayed despite it. “Why do you accept everything so…so…rationally? Like everything’s still okay, still normal?” His jaw clenched. “Like this is all going to end well?” With a fight brewing, he knew better than to delude in such things. He had to keep his people safe. He had to make sure they were always ready. But her…Harlow never seemed worried about the impending doom she was now caught in the middle of.

Harlow kept quiet for a moment, mulling over his words. “All my life I’ve felt like something was missing.” She rolled her eyes, “I know how cliché that sounds but I’ve never really felt…normal.” She didn’t want to go into further details than that, knowing she had her own demons to fight outside of the ones this new world showed her. “But here, despite all the danger – despite the risks it puts me in, I’ve never felt more alive. More normal.” She turned back to him; her eyes meeting his, the same moment he moved closer. “And with you, I feel like I’m just another girl.” Her voice shook a little as spoke, but she compelled herself to fight the urge to look away. “Falling a little more each day in front of a guy – hoping he feels the same.”

His eyes widened a little in shock. He remained motionless, freezing in a way that made Harlow think he would run. He wouldn’t – she knew he wouldn’t, Jax simply wasn’t the type to run.

But this wasn’t about danger lurking in the corner for them. Suddenly, she was the danger. A danger to his heart and Jax couldn’t think of anything to say. He could only stand and stare at her in complete shock from her confession. He had never thought, he had never presumed to know how she felt about him.

Harlow gnawed at her bottom and slowly, so that he could stop her if she was wrong about his feelings for her - she took both his hands and noted that they were both shaking as hard as her voice. “Your world doesn’t scare me as long as you’re always in it.”

He kissed her then, cutting off the rest of what she was going to say. Not that it mattered. Nothing else matter when he kissed her like this, like she was suddenly the only thing that mattered to him. He kissed her with a fierceness that made her knees grow weak, made it hard for her to stand. He kissed her with a passion that swarmed her and her pulse jumped as his tongue coaxed her mouth open. He kissed her roughly and made it hard for her to stand.

All she could do was cling to him and kiss him back with every ounce of desire and want, and need she had for him. While her knees threatened to buckle, she showed him how much he meant to her.

His fingers dragged themselves through her hair, before sliding to her cheeks and then to her chin. He tilted her face forward to kiss her - over and over again. And as he tasted her, he found waiting back for him the kind of acceptance he had never known. Not in a long time.

There was so much she didn’t know, so much he wanted her to know and a lot he was afraid to tell her. Harlow wasn’t someone that should be here, and yet he had never known anyone any braver. Anyone that possessed the same strength she did to dive head-first into danger.

For so long, Jax was accustomed to not relying on anyone and he didn’t know where to begin - where to let her in, knowing she was falling as deeply as he fell for her. He could only hope the rest of the world wouldn’t destroy what they had.

When they pulled away from each other, they were grinning like two people entranced in their own little world and for now, Jax thought this could be enough.

#jax x mc #jax x harlow #jax matuso x harlow daniels #bb #bloodbound #bloodbound fanfic #jax x mc fanfiction #jax matsuo #playchoices fanfiction #bb: jax #playchoices #choices stories you play #jax x mc fanfic #hi hello I really like them together #and I MUST follow where my writing leads me #even with all the other stuff I still have waiting for me ahhh #long post #an angstymarshmallow writes #no summary because I was so fed up and I just wanted to finish writing this

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smoaking-greenarrow · 6 years

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“You have to remember that it is a show about a superhero, and people want that character to win.”

-Stephen Amell

I am on such a Stephen Amell loving high right now. Let’s talk about Oliver Queen’s winning moments, shall we?

Of course we have to start here:

We must count the first time Oliver met Felicity as a winning moment. He was hitting the jackpot and he didn’t even know it, yet.

“The first time I come around the corner, and Emily reacted the way that she did, the smile you saw from me was a total break of character. It was a total legitimate-heartfelt-this is really funny! And i think until that point in the show, I’m not sure that Oliver had smiled.”

Stephen Amell knew though. I’m telling you this guy just gets it so hard, it’s unbelievable. It was the first time he truly smiled after coming home, and now after six seasons, knowing the pain and torture he endured for the five years prior to this, this moment is even more gorgeous. Felicity babbling her way into Oliver’s heart was both a win for his life and for the show.

His friendship with Tommy will probably always be one of Oliver’s most significant joys. Tommy Merlyn was such a good, solid, pure part of Oliver’s life. All things he did not have a lot of. Tommy was Oliver’s childhood best friend and I’d argue that his death was one of Oliver’s biggest heartbreaks, as well. That doesn’t mean that having Tommy by his side wasn’t significant, though. And six years later, I think Oliver sees Tommy’s presence in his life in fond memories more than anything else.

Granted, many of Oliver’s wins came with plenty of problems and hardships. When it comes to Slade Wilson, if you look at season 2 by itself, it might be hard to view their arc as a win for Oliver. It did involve one of the best scenes on the show, that clock tower Olicity talk, when Felicity inspired the hero inside of him to keep fighting. And he did defeat Slade, but Slade also took a lot from him. Maybe a little too much. I’m not sure that Oliver felt like much of a hero by the end of the season. I think he was still very broken, and probably felt lucky just to have survived with the people he loved coming out unscathed. But Oliver and Slade’s arc as a whole is a clear victory.

Slade was Oliver’s first teacher. Oliver would not have survived if not for him. Also, Slade killed his mother, and Oliver was still strong enough not to kill him out of vengeance. Oliver grew a lot with that choice, and it paid off in Season 5 when he relied on Slade to stop Prometheus. He acted as a true hero and put aside avenging his mom in favor of mercy. With that humanity, he took a chance on Slade, letting him live to see if the cure would bring his old friend back, and it did. So I’d say that was a pretty big win for Oliver.

Anyone who thinks Oliver is a bad leader can look no further than Roy Harper. The Queen siblings both played a role in turning Roy’s life around, but letting Roy into theirs was just as beneficial for them.

For such a guarded, closed off man, Oliver had a very hard time letting Roy go. He couldn’t believe that his little buddy would sacrifice himself to protect him. Roy loves Oliver. Fight me! You don’t go to jail and get yourself stabbed for someone you don’t care about. And although it was not always shown explicitly, Oliver taking Roy on, mentoring him and helping him through his Mirakuru mess, made Oliver grow, too. He felt responsible for Roy. He protected him and he cared about him. Roy literally gave up his life for Oliver. He was thought dead and on the run, and his life was never going to be the same. Oliver has never believed he was worth saving. Can you imagine how profound that must have been for someone like him, to think that another person would do all of that for him?

I also count Roy’s presence in Oliver’s life as a win because Roy has always been the best thing for Thea that we’ve seen on the show, and Oliver needed someone that he could trust to look after his baby sister. I can’t wait to see more in season 7. Oliver has a very positive effect on Roy Harper’s life. So suck on that, Adrian Chase.

Oliver telling Thea he is The Green Arrow will always be one of my favorite triumphant moments for him. He had been afraid, for three years, that telling his sister his secret would make her hate him. For most of season 3, Thea was the one that held Oliver together. He couldn’t lose her, and the show easily could have used this for so much drama. Like, so much. Three years of lying? Thea Queen could have told him to never speak to her again, and it would have been in character. Because Thea Queen hates being lied to.

But there was a difference with this lie that Thea instantly recognized. It wasn’t to hurt her, it was because her brother loved her, wanted to keep her safe, and didn’t want to lose her. It surprised me (and Oliver^) in the best way possible when Thea hugged him.

It proved to him that his life is not always going to be a battle, sometimes the people he loves will stay. It showed him that he has people in his life who love him unconditionally. And god, did this man need that.

There’s a different vibe about Oliver training Barry than there is with Roy. Oh sure, he shot them both with arrows, but Roy is a character on Arrow. He is Oliver’s people. Barry has his own world and his own people. Which is why I loved the early crossovers. I love crossovers in general, but there were some especially good moments when it was just Team Arrow and Team Flash. It was an opportunity to show Oliver’s experience, his strength. He was the seasoned veteran and Barry was the wide-eyed rookie.

I also think the crossovers do a fine job of showing these different kinds of heroes. Barry has pretty much kept his lightness, and Oliver has kept his realness. Barry doesn’t kill. Oliver has tried to live that way, and it worked for a while until he realized that sometimes he would have to choose, if he wanted to be The Green Arrow. He does not have superpowers that allow him the luxury of finding another way every single time. Sometimes, if he doesn’t kill, he will be killed. And part of Oliver’s intelligence is knowing when he has a choice and when he doesn’t. Knowing when it is necessary, such as evil Nazi doppelgangers, and when he can find a better way.

Becoming mayor was a very, very big win for Oliver’s growth. Not just because it made things easier for him as The Green Arrow, but because I think the job gave Oliver some pieces of his soul back. He was allowed to be a hero in the light, as he said. He gets to look the people he helps in the eye, they get to see his face, and the city is allowed to know that Oliver Queen cares about them. Being mayor, having this job, helped Oliver to mature. People could see him as the reliable and smart man that he’d become. He didn’t have to hide behind playboy Ollie anymore.

Speaking of pieces of Oliver’s soul, Felicity Smoak and John Diggle are probably the best things we, as an audience, have ever seen happen to Oliver Queen. On a show where the happier moments seem to happen off camera, it is proven again and again that Oliver could not be the man or the hero he is without these two. Some of the best episodes are when the three of them take down baddies together.

They make each other better, they win when they’re together. They’re a team.

#arrow #thoughts #i fucking love stephen amell #OTA #thank you for coming to my tedtalk #heroes need to win #please stop hurting my honey

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austencello · 6 years

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Fundamentals - Arrow Music Notes 6x18

As the city moves towards impeaching Oliver as mayor and the team continues to disintegrate, Oliver finds himself confronted with hallucinations of himself and his past due to Vertigo. This resulted in a wonderful mix of new and old music throughout the episode. (Warning: this is a long review)

This episode begins with the Hood attacking the new police precinct to stop Diaz with darker elements in the music reflecting Season 1 with minor brass chords, various electronics, less melody, and a lot more dissonance.

10 hours earlier, Felicity parent-trapped John and Oliver together trying to get them to work together again. As John arrives, the brass chords play from “Trust and Verify”(1x11). This track was the main theme during their painful fight in the previous episode. After they throw jabs at each other, the strings from that theme return as Oliver tells John that he has earned a reprieve after listening to his advice for 6 years. A theme that emphasized growing trust now accompanies a tear in their relationship.

Quentin notices that Oliver is discouraged after meeting the councilman regarding impeachment. Oliver shares that John left the team over his leadership. Quentin gives a beautiful speech that he has seen Oliver grow tremendously since being the Hood. As he speaks, the French Horns play three notes from “Home of the Brave” (5x13). This theme was during Oliver’s speech as mayor for gun reform. Here it is a reminder of how far Oliver has changed from a Vigilante to mayor, the Green Arrow, and with a family.

Unfortunately, Oliver was drugged with Vertigo by the councilman. As he goes home, he loses it with Felicity and breaks William’s science project while strings, hammered dulcimer, and guitar harmonics play “Join Us” (1x14). This instrumentation was used much more frequently in Season 1 providing a little foreshadowing. That theme was first was used as Diggle explained why he was on Oliver’s team after his time in Afghanistan, asking himself the question: “am I still good?” After all that is going on and losing it, that question haunts Oliver as heads to the bunker.

Oliver hears a noise that resembles banging on a pipe (a repeating indication something is off) and turns around to see Felicity in front of him. This Felicity tells him that they need space as high electronics play. These are the same sounds used in the background of the piano melody in “Someone you Love” (3x12 - “I don’t want to be a woman you love”) and “Let Each Other Go” (4x16 - giving back the ring after the fake wedding) evoking those same memories and feelings when she walks away from Oliver as she declares that Oliver showed William the man he really is and leaves, Oliver’s worst nightmare coming true.

Quentin finds Oliver heart-broken and discouraged (and high). Strings, piano (Oliver’s instrument) and harp (Felicity’s instrument) play over those high electronics as Oliver tells him about Felicity leaving. The harp plays a theme based off “Sara Silenced” (3x01), taking part of the string theme and changing the rhythm. This repeats as Oliver asks why everyone leaves him and then why Quentin hasn’t quit yet. The harp and guitar harmonics then plays the underlying harmony often used with the slow Arrow theme especially in “Everyone Left” (5x02). Quentin assures Oliver that he is changing but the others are dealing with their own issues and putting it on Oliver. He add that Oliver should not worry about Felicity because she loves him as the harp turns to a new theme.

The banging increases (this pipe sound matches the Vertigo music in 3x01 “Greatest Fear” and several fighting tracks from Season 1 like “Damaged”) as does the dissonant high strings to reveal Adrian Chase, supposedly alive and well to the shock of Oliver. As Chase shoots Oliver, his glissando strings “Prometheus” (5x01) begin. These come back against the Arrow horn as they fight. Chase continues to taunt Oliver that he will come back for Felicity and William and Oliver is left in the same dilemma as 5x23 whether to kill Chase. This time he does and when he breaks Chase’s neck, the music from 1x01 plays “City in Ruins.” This is the electronic motif when he says “no-one can know my secret” and kills his kidnappers in the exact same neck hold (the same happened in 5x01.)

Chase’s tick-tock theme returns as he reappears: “I might not be killable.” Oliver, however, realizes that he is hallucinating as the violins and horn play his hero theme. As Chase monologues echoing Oliver’s doubts and fears regarding alienating everyone around him and being his own worst enemy, snippets of melody fragments and instruments emerge amidst the high, fluid, sliding electronics emphasizing how this is no longer reality. As the scene progresses, lower notes under-pin the gravity of the situation once he realizes he has been drugged with Vertigo. Echoes of the Arrow hero theme plays in electronics as Chase repeats John’s sentiments that Oliver is stretched too thin and a worse leader despite being happier.

Oliver gets into the elevator on the way to meet the council only to enter the Queen mansion. The strings, hints of hammered dulcimer and flute play the music from the pilot when he entered the Queen mansion and sees Thea. Now he sees a room full of memory for his family before he turns and sees pre-Gambit Laurel. As he interacts with this version of Laurel asking about his upcoming trip, “Loss and Regrets” (1x01) plays. This is the theme for Oliver and Laurel since their first encounter when he gets back from the Island, with Laurel declaring she wished he would rot in hell longer than 5 years for what he had done. Oliver will always have a deep regret for how he destroyed the Lance family in choosing Sara to leave with him and cheating on Laurel. Throughout the whole scene, a high pitched dissonance note plays to remind that this is not reality but another hallucination.

The music grows more intense as the scene changes to Laurel dying in the hospital and then to Rene. As his emotions heighten against the newbies, percussion, brass, and string patterns adds to the fighting intensity. The music changes to a sinister nature as he sees Raisa stabbed and Diaz enters the picture. A low note accompanies the scene right before Diaz stabs Oliver and then switches to a low electronic beat and electronic chords. That low electronic repeated note has been with Ricardo Diaz since he was introduced in 6x06 and again at the end of the episode as he says the same words: that he wants to break Oliver piece by piece.

The high electronics continue as he wakes up and then sees the Hood. As the Hood yells that he has failed the city, a repeated low note underpins the visceral darkness of the Hood. Oliver finally gets to the meeting with the City Council, and the music is unsettled with distorted high electronics as he continues to see Chase, a visual reminder that he is still on Vertigo and a little unstable. String patterns, timpani, and low brass fill in as the council starts to interrogate him about the Green Arrow and where he got his proof. Quentin takes him aside to regroup and then tells him to go the bunker to get well. Chase reminds Oliver that he is in his head as hammered dulcimer (often in S1) is added to the Arrow style music. The Arrow hero theme plays in the horn with the Arrow string theme as Chase tells Oliver that a hero would make the risk to stop Diaz once for all.

Several different Arrow string patterns play as Felicity discovers that Oliver has gone to the precinct and runs to stop him. Meanwhile guitar harmonics play as Quentin tries to stop Oliver dressed in his old Hood costume. Felicity enters the precinct to see the aftermath of the fight shown at the beginning of the episode. High distorted electronics with a few interspersed low bass notes and percussion emphasize the danger that both Felicity and Oliver are in. As Oliver believes that Felicity is still a hallucination, brass and higher electronics alternate as Felicity in the reality conflicts with what he has been seeing. Chase tries to convince him not to listen and give up his fight with a percussive repeating note and the crazy distorted notes continue as Oliver admits he does not know if she is real. Felicity touches him and asks him to listen to his heart, as the Olicity theme “The One I Love” (2x23) plays in the strings, bringing him back to reality in time for them to escape to the Arrow strings.

The same harp theme from earlier (when Oliver was taking to Quentin) returns as he tells Felicity that he got clarity from his time on Vertigo to bring the mission back to basics and alone. (Sorry Oliver, no-one makes good decisions based on a drug trip). The guitar harmonics continue as Oliver is impeached as mayor. Later on, Felicity and Oliver discuss this in the loft, harp and strings play while a horn plays a new theme as Oliver feels certain he needs to separate his two worlds. Then he goes to talk to William to make sure they were alright. The Arrow hero horn plays as he tells William that he thinks he has found a way to stop Diaz.

Extra Notes

- This review may have been a few more details than anyone wanted but I really enjoyed the music for this episode and wanted to share why!

@smoakmonster @ah-maa-zing @academyofshipping @mel-loves-all @herskirtsarentthatshort @pulpklatura @thegeriatricfangirl @jorahandal @almondblossomme @lovejesusarrowavengersblog

#arrow 6x18 #arrow music notes #oliver queen #felicity smoak #adrian chase #quentin lance #ricardo diaz

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dreameater1988 · 7 years

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The Doctor’s & Clara’s romance

I’ve made a little compilation of all the notable Whouffle and Whouffaldi moments over the seasons, along with my thoughts and theories:

Their relationship was set up as romance right from the very beginning with these words, because it becomes obvious right away that Clara might be romantically interested in the Doctor by hinting at future snogging. I don’t believe that she immediately jumped him, but she let him know from the beginning that she wasn’t uninterested.

Let’s jump to “The Crimson Horror” where Eleven and Clara pose as husband and wife and they both convinced Mrs Gilliflower, a woman who is anything but stupid. In fact, they both seem to enjoy it, too.

I always like to believe that the end of “Nightmare in Silver” is the moment Eleven realizes that he fancies Clara because he notices her on a physical level. Besides, the conversation Mr Clever had with Clara in which “the Doctor” confesses his love to Clara is probably based on the Doctor’s own thoughts to which Mr Clever had access at that moment, but Clara saw through it and knew that the Doctor would never admit it.

When Clara suggests that she needs a boyfriend for Christmas dinner Eleven was excited. He actually believed that she was serious for a moment and he was more than happy to be her boyfriend, yet at the same time he was a bit worried that he might disappoint Clara. It was Eleven who was disappointed when he realized that Clara wasn’t actually serious.

Unfortunately they never really got to explore that part of their relationship because he got stranded on Trenzalore and later regenerated.

Matt Smith has confirmed that Clara was sort of his girlfriend while Jenna said in an interview or during a panel that Clara realized she was in love with him during the regeneration.

The rest is under a cut because it’s long:

After his regeneration the Doctor picks up where they left of, with the boyfriend argument. He assumes Clara never actually wanted him to be her boyfriend and admits that it was his mistake for assuming so for a brief moment.

I never actually paid a lot of attention to this dialogue before watching the German dub for the first time and afterwards I realized that it could be read in various ways. In the German dub “Am I home?” was translated to “Do you want me to live here?” and the Doctor reply is “If that is what you want” and I now realize that the English original can be read as exactly that. The Doctor was more than happy to let Clara live with him.

The Doctor is heartbroken when he realizes that Clara doesn’t understand that he and Eleven are the same person and that his feelings for her haven’t changed and he begs her to give him a chance, which she does.

We all know that Clara started dating Danny in S8 because for her a romance with the Doctor was off the table now that he had made it clear he wasn’t her boyfriend, yet the Doctor is anything but fine with the competition. One of my favourite scenes and clear indication that the Doctor was jealous and actively trying to sabotage Clara’s relationship was the moment he hid in her bedroom during her date. He didn’t want her to be with anyone else.

Nevertheless, he is curious and wants to know just how serious Clara is about the other man and when he realizes that she is in fact serious, he can’t just let it happen.

He is jealous, but he can’t openly show it, so he decides to just do better than the competition.

The brief moment during “The Caretaker” when Twelve assumes she is dating Adrian breaks my heart every time I watch it. He thinks that Clara has chosen the young, dorky looking man with a bowtie who reminds him so much of his former self and he feels reassured that Clara is only using Adrian as substitute because Eleven is gone and that she still loves him. In his head the Doctor thinks that if she still loves Eleven, she can love the current him as well.

The Doctor is devastated when he realizes that Clara isn’t dating Adrian, but Danny, a soldier who couldn’t be more unlike the Doctor.

Again he is competitive and starts showing off while Danny is in the room, trying to prove that he is better for Clara, that he can take her to places Danny couldn’t even imagine, trying to show him that Clara is his by proving she wouldn’t hesitate to run away with him even in the middle of her date with Danny.

MOTOE is meant as their break-up, their “last hurrah”, because Clara thinks she has chosen Danny and can no longer travel with the Doctor because he has changed. However, she is shocked to learn that their goodbye might be a bit more final than she had in mind and tries to cling to him despite her decision of not wanting to continue wit their travels. She is nervous and frightened. She doesn’t actually want to stop seeing him.

I think the “last hurrah” ist more like a “first hurrah” to them because I genuinely believe that they slept together on the Orient Express, probably for the very first time. That is based on a theory by @anotheruserwithnoname (if you would be so kind to reblog this with a link to your theory added, I couldn’t find it on your blog). The entire corridor scene is sizzling with sexual tension, as several articles have pointed out. Also the fact that both the Doctor and Clara were utterly nervous suggests that they knew what they were about to do (for the first time).

Clara specifically uses the word “dump” and unlike Danny she knows that the Doctor is sort of like a boyfriend or at least has the potential to be because S8 is basically a love triangle story.

After their adventure on the Orient Express Clara understands the Doctor a little better and she knows that she can’t leave him, so she decides to lie to Danny, her boyfriend, about running away with another man. If the Doctor had been just a friend Clara could have told him, she could have told Danny that she had decided to keep travelling with him and their previous phone call tells me that Danny would have understood and Clara knows this. Yet she still decided to keep the Doctor a secret - because he is more than a friend.

This is one of the strongest lines the Doctor has ever said to Clara and Steven Moffat himself confirms that it was meant as an “I love you”, but in this case “I love you” wasn’t enough. The Doctor’s feelings for her are so strong that they cannot be expressed simply by those three words.

This is a very interesting bit of dialogue because it raises the question why the Doctor is angry. Because he is travelling to the afterlife to get Clara’s boyfriend back, the boyfriend of the woman he loves. He doesn’t actually want to do it, but he has to because he loves her so much and he would tear the world apart to make her happy, even if it means that she is going to be with another man.

Towards the end of the episode Clara says something to Danny that makes him realize he never stood a chance against the Doctor. She tells him “He is the closest person to me in this whole world. He’s the man I will always forgive, always trust, the one man I would never, ever lie to.” It hits Danny that he can never compete with that, that even though Clara may have loved him, she will never love Danny as much as she loves the Doctor.

Yet Clara does lie to the Doctor at the end of “Death in Heaven”, just like the Doctor lies to Clara because they want the best for the other (and because they’re idiots). It is only later that they realize just how miserable the other has been and decide to elope together at the end of “Last Christmas”.

Playing “Pretty Woman” is an undeniably romantic gesture, one even Missy recognizes because she gives Clara a look. After telling her all about how Time Lords are above love and romance the Doctor goes and proves her wrong and you can read from Missy’s face that she thinks “oh what an idiot”.

When the Doctor tells Clara that she needs another relationship, what he actually tells her is that she needs a relationship with a human, someone mortal, someone to keep her grounded. He wasn’t okay sharing Clara with Danny, but I think Clara’s relationship with Jane Austen is proof enough that he isn’t generally against sharing her with a person who would be good for her. He repeats that later in TGWD. However, Clara reassures him that he is enough for her both times.

Funnily enough the bit of dialogue in between where he tells her that humans are always writing songs about relationships or go to war is exactly what the Doctor will do for Clara at a later point.

I’m still in shock over the fact that this line was actually on the show. Obviously, they never say “I love you” to each other. Clara doesn’t because she promised Danny that she wouldn’t say it to someone else. The Doctor doesn’t because his feelings for her are a lot deeper than a simple “I love you”. Yet here is the confirmation that they loved each other. Clara assumes it and the Doctor proves it by coming back for her.

This is the scene where Clara understands for the first time just how their relationship is going to end, I believe. He said it to her before during that episode, he said that one day the memory of her will hurt so much that he won’t be able to breathe, but I don’t think Clara understood it at that point because they were still in the middle of trying to save Ashildr. Here she realizes that she is the person the Doctor truly can’t bear to lose.

Again, they never said those three words to each other for reasons I’ve already mentions and right before her death Clara is afraid that he is going to say them at last because it would rob her of her courage to go through with it. She knows that he loves her, but if she hears those words she knows she will want to stay. For his and for her own sake.

The parallel with the old couple was wonderful and subtle, but that is exactly what the Doctor and Clara are at this point. They are in a romantic relationship, if not married. And there is a wonderful theory out there that I’ve seen her here, but I don’t remember who posted it that said the sudden shift in their S9 relationship makes much more sense if you assume they got married after “Last Christmas”.

In his quiet moments during his 4.5 billion years in the confession dial that is what the Doctor does. He imagines that Clara is by his side. Steven Moffat also said in an interview that the Doctor painted the portrait of Clara from memory.

Again I’d like to point out that the Doctor spent 4.5 billion years trapped in his own person torture chamber and there are moments he thinks about giving up, he thinks about confessing everything, but he doesn’t because that is his last chance of saving Clara. It’s a small chance, but he clings to it because he is determined to get her back.

Even Clara is surprised when she learns just how far he would go for her, what he would go through just to have a tiny chance of saving her and she is shocked that he would do that.

Finally, in the cloisters, Clara decides to come clean and I believe she told him a lot of things during the scene we never saw, including that she loves him, even though she might not have used those exact words.

Ashildr is older than the Doctor in this scene and she has seen everything there is to see. She knows the Doctor and Clara are more than just friends, she tells him her theory that together they are the hybrid. That is how strong their love is - it can destroy the universe.

In the end they both realize that they have to part ways because if they don’t do it now, they will never have the courage to, but even this last scene shows how bonded they truly are. “Let’s do it like we’ve done everything else. Together.” And by everything I believe they truly mean everything.

#whouffaldi #whouffle #twelve x clara #doctor who #feel free to add stuff

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luriashrine · 6 years

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kabsks you’re gonna hate me bUT I KINDA WANNA KNOW THE ANSWERS TO ALL QUESTIONS FOR CELIA (and maybe Fai if u want!) except maybe number 5 bc i dunno if it fits, you decide!! INFO DUMP ME!!!!

NOW HOW CAN I HATE YOU FOR ALLOWING ME TO INFO DUMP AS MUCH AS I COULD?! Be prepared for some weird errors, I’m heading back out and I tried to finish this in the little time I have at the moment ;0;

1. What would completely break your character.

Here’s the sad thing, Celia is already broken. For a large part of her childhood to adolescent to late teenage years, she had to endure so much shit. It doesn’t help one bit that The Lich makes damn sure to live through her trauma each and every day during her training. For three long years, she had to witness her family dying over and over again just so that she can learn to desensitize herself (it’s best to think of her training in The Box as though she was trapped in a time loop with different outcomes depending on her choices or what The Lich wants to throw at her).

Aside from total failure in completing her end of the contract, nothing can break Celia but even that is debatable since some of her actions throughout ATEW suggests otherwise (there are times in the story where Celia tries to goad Adrian into killing her in order to stop but he seriously couldn’t in the beginning).

2. What was the best thing in your character��s life?

Her family, more importantly, Marcel and Remei. But they’re gone now and for a long while she had nothing she considered important. Until she finally opens up to Fai and later on Nessie. Seeing Phoebe’s kingdom come crumbling down would be another great thing in her life…

3. What was the worst thing in your character’s life?

Fai and Celia did not get off on the right foot. At first Fai thought that protecting a sociopathic brat like Celia was the worst thing ever, especially since she’s someone who is fine with getting her hands dirty which consequently means that she always jumps headfirst into danger(hRM DOESN’T THAT SOUND FAMILIAR YOU BUTT ADJNAKS seriously though, he does the same at times but to him when Celia did it was annoying). Eventually, through time they do bond and now the worst thing in Fai’s life is how much he’s in love with her despite knowing what will happen once she completes her contract.

Still… Celia’s recklessness and overconfidence in herself scare him nowadays…

4. What seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character.

The first time she ever had paella after a kindly couple (Kyrie and Santiago) took her in for a couple of weeks… it’s extremely insignificant but the impact of the event meant so much to her and there are times where she could still taste the fluffy, sunny-colored rice and the multitude of spices after spending a couple of years in shitty orphanages eating moldy bread (bread that she would have to steal from other children due to food rations), watery soup and this bland grey mush that had the proper nutrients in it but very little substance to it. Kyrie had prepared that dish out on a whim one day, after he had fed her so many other wonderful dishes ever since he took her in but all of the flavoring in the paella stuck out the most to her. Much to her embarrassment, she cried after eating the dish. She wasn’t crying just because she was having good food but because for the first time in a long time she was eating dinner with a family once more and that revelation struck Celia so hard she was overwhelmed with emotion.

I wrote a drabble but for Fai, Celia showing Fai that sweet fairy poo. Her laugh was the most magical thing on the planet. SHE ALSO HAS THE CUTEST DIMPLES WHEN SHE LEGIT SMILES AND THAT DESTROYS HIM YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!!

5. I’M SORRY, I REALLY TRIED BUT I CAN’T ANSWER!! CELIA’S JOB IS TO KILL AND SHE DOESN’T REALLY ENJOY KILLING ALL THAT MUCH, SURE SHE’S GROWN DEATTACHED AND HAS NO PROBLEM WITH IT BUT… YEAH!

6. what is your character reluctant to tell people.

Celia has a lot to hide which is understandable given her circumstances meanwhile Fai is too reluctant with telling anyone else that he’s in love with Celia this is mostly because Shadows aren’t really supposed to have any feelings and falling in love with a human is considered… strange to say the least.

7. How does your character feel about sex?

I’LL TRY TO BE A MATURE ADULT WITH TALKING ABOUT THIS BUT IDK I STILL FEEL WEIRD TALKING NSFW WITH MY OCS, not uncomfortable just jadksbldns. But anyway!!!

Celia and her very unabashed view, as well as the immense pleasure she takes in it, ties into a lot of things such as her self-worth as well as her nasty habit of smothering herself in more risky behaviors whenever she’s going through a mania episode since sex is just one of many self-destructive behaviors. On top of all those things, for a short time she had a slight fear of emotional attachment before meeting with Fai, having sex with no strings attached was ideal for Celia. This doesn’t mean that she’s thirsty.txt 24/7 just because she’s shameless and has sexual confidence, sex is not always on her mind… but she’s not one to say no to whoever offers to have sex with her either.

Fai on the other hand… he is very much a thot when it comes to his lovers. SO UH!!!

8. how many friends does your character have?

WEEPS!!!! I’ve said time and time again that Celia is a true neutral, she has a grey moral outlook with little to no regard for a lot of things since as rules and the like… however, so many people will regard her as cruel or even evil due to her many actions in both a meta sense and in the story sense as well. So, yeah… she doesn’t really have many friends because of this aspect of her and has tons of enemies. After she opens up to Fai she later does befriend Nessie and makes an attempt to at the very least try to bond with her resistance members since they are doing all of the heavy hard work and she appreciates their loyalty to her.

9. how many friends does your character want?

This is the question that upsets me the most. It’s a bit of a mixed bag here since there is a large part of Celia that years for companionship but because of all of the events she had to go through during ATEW (most of which she almost died in) she has a natural distrust of everyone and her paranoia convinces Celia that everyone is out to get her. She honest to god hates being alone with her thoughts since she has to relive her trauma. She prefers the company of others not only to satisfy her needs for social interaction and attention too but to distract from her mind.

10. What would your character make a scene in public about?

She doesn’t really like making scenes in public, Celia is someone who works in from the shadows of the slums first and foremost due to the many people who are out to get her whether they be human, spirits she’s upset or the gods there is a price for her head for all of the crime she’s committed. As such, she doesn’t really like making any scenes of any sorts but there is an extremely rare expectation to that face and that expectation is that if she’s feeling highly emotionally. Once again, this plays into her mania episodes of her manic depression and on top of that, years of just bottling away her trauma, anger and a plethora of many other emotions she tries to shut down through dissociation. After having an emotional breakdown she will feel pretty shitty with some sense of catharsis.

11. For what would your character give their life?

If losing her life has some value in completing whatever goals she has, then she would gladly give up her life for that sake with no hesitance. Later on, where Celia actually develops and makes a legit human connection with other people she would find that she has no problem with giving up her life for them if it’s worth it in the end. Fai is well aware of both facts and he always cries silently to himself.

Fai risks his life mostly for glory and being an actual adrenaline junkie. Nothing noble behind his actions.

12. what are your character’s major flaws.

I’ve already talked about it with Celia but her major, major flaw would have to be her envy and how much it blinds her, the fact that she has little empathy, is prideful/arrogant, suffers from a superiority/inferiority complex etc. etc.

I’d like to talk about Fai though! He’s apparent frivolous nature is a huge, huge flaw of his as he sometimes underestimates his opponents in battle and constantly undermines himself as well because he doesn’t really use all of his powers when fighting. He’s too carefree/playful and that’s his greatest trait about him but also his worst. I don’t really need to go too much in depth about how much his recklessness gets him in trouble or all of the weird mess he would get himself into lol… the dragon fighting is suffice enough.

13. what does your character pretend or try to care about?

Omg… I can’t help but think of this with Celia whenever someone finds out about her lies, she would act so deadpan once she’s caught in the act because chances are you already have a bullet through your head lol!!!! Her paranoia and overall perfectionist attitude won’t allow for her to let a silly mistake like that live for long.

Fai tries to pretend that he cares about The Lich and to his credit he almost follows their orders. Make what you will out of that.

14. how does the image your character tries to project differ from the image they actually project.

Celia has well over 3439203023 different personas since she’s very meticulous in how she wants to present herself to others in order to seem all the more appealing to them. As we all know, her acting is a crock of shit!! I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the real Celia is a terrible person and leave it at that, it takes away so much of her character because there’s so much more to her than her terrible life choices and actions.

With Fai, aside from his poker face that he wears when on duty, what you see is what you get because of how much of a shit he doesn’t give when it comes to presentation.

15. what is your character afraid of?

Blood. Ironic, isn’t it? For all of the lives that Celia takes and all of the blood she’s shed for the sake of her goal, just a mere glance at it and she relives through the night of her trauma all over again. She hates the sight, the smell and overall feel of it hence why she prefers to use long ranged weapons combined with her magic in order to not see blood spill from her victims. I think I’ve mentioned this before but Celia hates bleeding out not just because of her fear towards blood but because of how shitty her body is, it tends to take a while for a wound to clot and close up so she can bleed for hours on end with no signs of stopping (I’m not even touching on the fact how she suffers from minor internal bleeding either hence the high number of bruises she sometimes sports). I suppose getting caught by the military or Phoebe’s powers would be legitimate fears as well.

#layzeal #celia ;#fai ;#vERY BRIEFLY I'VE TALKED ABOUT FAI #ANYWAY!!!!

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cwdcshows · 4 years

Text

Arrow - S8 E10 - Fadeout

Normally I try to do these in order, but haven't caught the first couple of seconds of last week's Legends, I haven't been able to bring myself to watch that episode and honestly haven't decided yet if I even want to; and figured if I was going to bother with an episode tonight yet, it might as well be the Arrow finale.... So here we go. Yeah, okay, if I became some sort of demi-god type being, I might be tempted to somehow tinker with a few things; especially rectifying the loss of certain loved ones, if it can be avoided in the short term. Undoing Moira's death seems like a big deal though, because that kind of radically alters the last 6 years where she wasn't present. I mean, just off the top of my head, would Thea have still gone off with Malcolm to train that summer? Did they still have the same confrontation with Slade and his small army invading the city after this new scenario where Oliver managed to free himself and get the upper hand on Slade? It also raises some questions of some of the other changes and to what degree Oliver was involved (and how) and what are either aberrant differences that just randomly occurred and what were indirectly caused by some of these other changes, by way of the butterfly effect? I mean, this is evidently a world in which Dinah Drake never existed, are we supposed to infer that Oliver didn't particular care for her and snapped her out of existence? Did Dinah steal the last bagel in the bunker break room right before Crisis and Oliver's carrying a petty grudge? Or maybe he really liked and her decided to save her when the arbitrary path of the new timeline decided to delete her - which I imagine is what we're probably supposed to believe, but I'm going to assume it's the bagel thing.

Here's another thing, why did anyone tell Moira she died in some alternate timeline? I don't think I'd want to know that; especially since that whole encounter was probably pretty terrifying and for everything Moira did and gone through up to that point, it's still conceivable that just the experience of almost dying at Slade's hands might have been cause for her to develop PTSD. If finding out that she actually did die during that encounter and then six years later her son died and became the fucking Spirit of Vengeance and helped reboot the universe and somehow manipulated this timeline where you lived isn't a trigger, I don't know what would be. Oh, come on, make up your mind people; was Dinah there or was she erased from existence? I get that she said last week that it wasn't until after Oliver's funeral that she woke up in the future and discovered she'd been erased, but seriously, how long did they wait to put Oliver's funeral together that she had time to still be part of whatever Saint Oliver retrospective documentary they're doing? And are we now going to spend the entire episode pretending that we didn't see any of the events from the last episode? Because that makes the less episode less of a "backdoor pilot" and more of just a pilot that they randomly inserted into another series just for the sake of tying it in. Thank fucking God the entire fucking episode isn't going to be done in the documentary format. I hated whichever the last time they did that; whether it was last year or the year before. I think it was last year and it was dumb and boring and definitely not the format the last fucking episode of the series should be. Crime in Star City disappeared overnight. Literally. Fucking how? They tried to play this bullshit in the last episode and makes no sense; how does a city of....what? At least 10s of thousands if not probably hundreds of thousands or a million people.... how does a city the size of Star City suddenly have no crime, just because....Oliver willed it or something? Doesn't that sort of negate the free will of the people in Star City? And why just Star City, not the entire world and allow Barry, Kara and the others to kick back and relax? Why does this magic spell suddenly get lifted in 20 years? So the scene of them all toasting Oliver's memory answers one question I raised previously, which is, did Roy still lose his arm; and the answer is, yes; and Cisco or whomever built him the most Robo-Cop type arm they could come up with. And I'm guessing that might be the answer to how Caitlin or Cisco support themselves in spite of Star Labs otherwise being defunct by all account; because if either of them developed that prosthetic, and I'd bet dollars to donuts one of them, probably Cisco did, they must be a fucking billionaire as a result of all the limbs of everyday people I'm sure they've helped replace with this technology. Though my follow-up question is, if in this new reality Crisis never technically happened, how and when did Roy actually lose his arm? Second follow-up, noticing that it is in fact his right arm and assuming that since he's drinking right handed..... does the arm vibrate and what level of precision can he control his grip strength? I'm fairly confident these were questions at the forefront of Roy's mind when he got his new arm. (Sigh)....So he saved Quentin too it seems..........cool........ So what was the fucking point of that fantasy episode the Monitor put Oliver and Laurel through right before Crisis, where Oliver tried over and over to save Quentin and had to come to grips with not saving the day or some bullshit? Well congratulations on the promotion to Chief of Police, Dinah; I'm sure you're going to be in that job for many years to come and not going to be whisked away to 20 years in the future, while be simultaneously erased from history. Also, all through the last episode I was trying to figure out what Dinah looked different; and I still can't quite my finger on it, especially since in this episode she looks how she normally looks. I also can't describe the way in which she looked different last week; like she looked....hotter.....and also slightly younger. Am I nuts? Does any of that make sense? Augh, what the fuck. Why would Mia be given the memories of Oliver watching his father killing himself? That is what they're suggesting happened, right? So we have Dinah and Laurel in the present day prior to their quantum leap to 2040 that took place in the last episode, which I guess technically makes all of those scenes the past even from our perspective. And now we're jumping forward again to 2040 to presumably some point after last week's episode, to a time when Mia has her Pre-Crisis memories; just in time for a visit from Sara. Have I got that all straight? Is Mia coming to the present day after all? Are they going to make that any more of a cluster fuck? It seems unlikely, since they bothered transporting some later version of Laurel and Dinah there and setup the whole thing with JJ getting his Pre-Crisis memories. Maybe Sara's there to do her fucking job protecting the timeline and has some issues with them stopping Bianca's murder last week? Nah, probably not. I'll tell you what, I may be able to make my piece with all the Olicity bullshit if it means it's all been leading up to this moment where Sara is actually there for a booty call with Mia. Augh.... of course she's there to take Mia to her father's funeral. Fuck you writers. Seriously, they're still getting those stupid fucking tattoos? You know what we definitely don't need in the fucking series finale? New, unnecessary flashbacks shoehorned into season 1. Why the fuck is this part of the show? Is this the result of them realizing they killed off the main character two fucking episodes before the end of the series and needed to find a way to inject him back into the last episode for more than just a cameo? Wait, did Mia just say "a few weeks before Sara showed up"? As in, Williams was kidnapped weeks ago? Did anyone else forget that William was kidnapped last week? Did anyone else just realized that they basically set something like that up and it won't be resolved for like, 9 months; assuming their spin-off does indeed get picked up? Also, did she actually tell Laurel that William was kidnapped or did she keep it ambiguous what happened "right in front of her" and it's just us that were reminded the details via flashback? Because if she actually told her what happened to William, Dinah she presumably remember this when she wakes up 20 years in the future in a couple of days and then run into Laurel whenever later.... God these writers suck at writing time travel stories. Why are they so fucking bad at telling time travel stories? Why do they keep writing something they're so fucking bad at? Wait......wait......wait.... Sigh..... Was the scene in the Bunker between Mia and Dinah....in the fucking past or the present? I'm pretty sure it was in the fucking present, right? And now a news report about William being kidnapped comes up on the computer; so.....William is being kidnapped in the present day too? Fucking William. And fuck you, writers. Holy shit, they brought Ragman back? Oh, for fuck sake, of course they're going to try and force this stupid flashback into relevancy by trying to give it repercussions in the present. It was bad enough when they pulled that shit with Adrian Chase. Fuck you. Oliver's getting pounded on by a small mob and he somehow manages to aim his bow to fire a grappling line to get him out of that? Seriously? And how much help was the smoke bomb in doing that? And what is he even grappling to, the sky?? I thought he was inside a building and then I see he's outside, soaring past a bunch of tower or silos or whatever; and there's literally nothing directly above him but the great beyond. Are they going to bother explaining how, in spite of whatever voo doo has miraculously wiped crime out of Star City and will do for the next 20 years, John Byrne is somehow the exception and manages to kidnap William of all people? Who the fuck took the footage of Mia rescuing William?? How did they even know where or when to shoot that? Oh man, I'm so glad that after 7 years they finally addressed that dangling plot thread of how Oliver decided to be less lethal during season 1. It's been a while since I watched season 1, but clearly the writing was sloppy and incomplete back then and they're finally making up for the low writing standards by filling in the blanks now before the series ends.... Of course they also brought back Tommy, because fuck the entire series and almost every important thing that's happened in the last 8 seasons. And how the fuck does it work that Laurel is other Laurel instead of Laurel-1? This Laurel wasn't at the dawn of time, she should have been overwritten by the new reality that was formed. I mean, from another perspective I was thinking about towards of the start of the episode, really, with the exception of anyone who was at the battle at the dawn of time, every other character ever shown on these shows, any other person who hypothetically lived on Earth 1, died. And while this New Earth sprung up in its place with virtually all of the same events, one might argue that it's a completely different universe, and all the people in it aren't technically the people who were alive before Crisis. They may look and behave like those people, they may even have the vast majority of their experiences, but even glossing over the crucial fact that there are differences, even if there were it could still be argued that these are entirely new and different beings from the ones who existed before. Copies, but wholly separate; especially factoring in the lack of Crisis or the ever growing list of divergent properties, like people who did not die in this new reality and the combination of people and histories of at least three or four other Earths. It's kind of a cluster fuck and the lack of proper answers behind other Laurel is really unsatisfying. Thea: Yes. Roy: Yes? Thea: Yes.

Why would Diggle now accept that they're not needed as a hero in Star City, on the premise that crime has become virtually non-existent, when they literally just stopped a kidnapping? So if Diggle is moving to Metropolis, is this there way of saying he's moving over to the Superman spin-off? Are JJ and Sara going to have play dates Clark and Lois' twins? Oh, it's a statue. Honest to God, when I saw it in the promos, I thought Oliver was going to appear as the Spectre, inexplicably wearing black make-up instead of the conventional white hue the Spectre is normally given. I thought it seemed like a questionable way to go.... What?? Oliver couldn't change the things that would have changed him? You mean things like Tommy dying or his mom dying or even fucking Quentin dying? You mean those things? But also, you know, not preventing Laurel-1 from dying....That was important. Oh for fuck sake, and fucking Emiko is alive too and out and about like it's no big fucking deal. Fuck this show, I'm glad this is the last episode. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??? So now Laurel-1 was Tommy's fucking wife. Because of course she fucking was. Because that is the sort of logical fucking thing that happens when you fucking mess around with the timeline. Crisis along with this whole fucking episode completely undermines the rest of the fucking series by essentially saying that most if really any of it never actually happened. When Sara told Felicity about bringing Mia back from the future, she decided not to tell her anything else; like the fact that Mia had been involved with Crisis or met Oliver or that Oliver gave her her Green Arrow suit? It's not like its a "protect the timeline" thing, everyone else knows this information; which is either all in the past or never happened, depending on how you look at it. You know what would have been great, Barry shows up and he's got like a handle bar mustache or an eye patch or bleach blonde hair like he's got in the comics; and then no one says anything, because this is just Post-Crisis Barry now. Yeah, of course they're going to make Diggle a Green Lantern the last few seconds of the series..... I fucking called the Monitor taking Felicity to some pocket dimension to spend eternity with Oliver..... fuck this show. So does that mean Mia (and William, I guess) just never see Felicity again?

Fuck this show.

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