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mcdonaldsnumberone · 1 year

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WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME?

kaiser as your shitty university roommate

gender neutral reader

Kaiser’s reputation precedes him quite a bit. It was entirely Noa’s idea to force him to enroll into university, so that he could learn to “properly interact with other kids his age” rather than ripping into them whenever Kaiser felt like it. And with him already being a world-renowned soccer star, he instantly catapults himself as a school celebrity of sorts the very moment he’s enrolled. Everybody fawns over the New Generation World Eleven striker that had crash landed on your university campus, eager to get to know him and claim their stake at short-lived popularity and fame through him. Of course, it’s your luck that you’d somehow end up being assigned to him as your roommate through the school’s random roommate assignment.

Kaiser genuinely thought it would be a piece of cake to win you over—practically everybody at school is head-over-heels for him! But he’s such a shitty roommate, you can’t see him as anything except a conceited, spoiled brat that can’t even wipe his own ass. You’re sick of being greeted with a sink filled with dirty classes, filthy cleats dumped on your common area floor, the toilet seat being left up, and his sweaty jerseys draped over the couch. As if to add insult to injury, Kaiser insists that you be grateful to room with him—as if you’re not the one that has to put up with his godforsaken living habits.

Your hatred quickly morphs into apathy as you give up dealing with him and pretends as if he doesn’t exist. It throws Kaiser for the biggest loop ever. He pretends it doesn’t bother him. Why should your attention matter when he could easily bag the hottest person in school or get invited to the most exclusive parties? But something about you giving him the cold shoulder or even refusing to greet him “good morning” as you storm to class has him squirming and antsy, and he becomes increasingly more desperate to get you to let go of your nonchalance. He tries being more obnoxious at first, shooting you a cheeky smirk as he drags his latest hook-up into your shared dorm, only for it to backfire when you pack up your things and leave a note telling him that you’re going to crash at a friend’s place instead if he doesn’t get his shit together.

It’s a horrendous wake up call for the prodigy. At first he shrugs it off. You’re his roommate that nobody knows about; isn’t it better to have the dorm all to himself? But Kaiser instantly grows lonely. He can’t annoy you in the mornings before your lectures, and he can’t steal the snacks out of your fridge if you’re not there. Even the fact that your toothbrush isn’t propped up against his in the shared bathroom makes the boy’s heart pang with need, and the once crowded dorm seems so terribly big now that it’s just him in it. The breaking point comes for him when you ignore him outside in public too: he eagerly bounds up to you after class one day to smooth things over, only to have you completely brush him aside.

He wants to win your trust over so badly that everyone else notices his strange behavior too. The arrogant emperor of the school starts getting on his knees to help clean up around the dorm and carries his weight, and as if to apologize, Kaiser brings home pretty gifts and offers to cook you your meals. He doesn’t know where along the line he’s fallen so badly, but it drives him insane to know that the one person who isn’t flattered by his ridiculous titles or even his wealth is the one person he wants so badly. He slowly ignores the catcalls and invitations from his groupies to spend more time with you: proposing movie nights as a sign of goodwill, walking you to class, and even volunteering to clean the bathroom unprompted.

Once the threat of you moving out is removed though, Kaiser still keeps his cheeky behavior. You could be cooking your dinner, and he’ll sneak up from behind to wrap his arms around your waist and rest his head wherever he can. And when you yelp and scold him, he’ll smirk and comment about how he loves the domesticity! It’s like the two of you are a married couple, except instead of you blushing and giving in, you’ll simply smack him with a wooden spoon and tell him to do the homework he’s been putting off for months. Not that it matters to him—Kaiser will just stick his tongue out and giggle about how you’ll “come around” soon enough.

Kaiser’s painfully aware that he’s been lacking severely in the “good roommate” department, but he’ll do his very best to make up for it by being the world’s best boyfriend! He’s determined to have you in his life in some way, and even though his time at the university’s limited, he’ll follow after you like he’s attached to your hip. It’s such a power rush, knowing that THE Michael Kaiser would do anything at your beck-and-call, and with every passing day that you start trusting him again, Kaiser can’t wait for the day when you progress from being his thorny roommate to his one and only darling. He firmly believes your place isn’t at an arm’s length, confined to the awkward acquaintance of sharing a dorm, as much as it is as his significant other, held close to his heart.

“Awwww, is the dorm too cramped for the two of us? You know, if you married me, that wouldn’t be a problem! C’mon, I have the paycheck for it. We’ll get hitched, and I’ll buy the biggest house on the block for us to share! Ah, but we have to share a bedroom if we do that though! A little give-and-take is only fair, don’t you think?”

#blue lock #bllk #blue lock x reader #bllk x reader #michael kaiser #x reader #my writing #psa this is not inspired by any of my suitemates the girls i live with are all very lovely people

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autisticsupervillain · 1 year

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My last post about Agent 47 being a Tumblr Icon proved popular, so here's more Tumblr approved 47 facts.

47's wife has technically killed him twice. Both times it was so he could come back to life later and kill his actual target. Diana could walk right into his living room, stab him with a butcher's knife, and he'd just go "well, who are we killing today honey?"

47 once had to get close to his target by disguising himself as a giant flammingo mascot. One of his target's bodyguards, a furry, tries to start a conversation about it. 47 could not end that conversation quick enough.

One time, 47 tried to disguise himself as a realtor to get close to his target. All of his attempts to sell the house to his target involve advice on how to kill someone in those rooms. The target never questions this. Later, both the target and 47 stumble across a month's old crime scene. 47 goes full detective mode and delivers a full paragraph detailing what happened and how the victim died, before remembering he's supposed to be a realtor right now and brushing it off.

One time, in order to get close to a target, 47 got a job interview at a bank. His response to every question involves more or less just flat out admitting that he kills people for a living. They hire him on the spot.

47 has read his universe's version of the Twilight novels. He also killed the author of said Twilight knockoffs, but not before criticizing his writing and complaining about a plot point he didn't like.

47 once infiltrated a secret meeting of international spies, billionaires, and supervillains by walking right past the guards in his regular iconic suit, as everyone took one look at him and assumed he was supposed to be there.

Agent 47 canonically has an aura of death that hangs over him that only psychics can see. When an actually psychic meets him for the first time, he panics and all but pushes 47 out of his establishment.

47's most used alias, Tobias Rieper, as an instagram account. It's filled entirely with travel pictures from places he's visited while killing people.

Agent 47 inexplicably looks identical to one of the most popular fashion models in the world, Helmut Krueger. This doesn't hinder his ability to disguise himself as literally anyone in the world though.

One time, a bunch of nuns in stripper outfits showed up at 47's hotel to blow him the fuck up with a rocket launcher. He was inexplicably completely unharmed by the explosion.

One time, a mad scientist tried to test his mind control device on 47. 47 resisted it so hard that the scientist dropped dead from the psychic backlash.

One of his regular outfits for missions is a clown suit.

47 has a reputation at his agency for killing people in the most ridiculous and over the top ways possible. It got to the point that another assassin tried to imitate 47's style, which backfired so badly that the assassin accidentally killed everyone in the building, including himself, and let the target get away completely unharmed.

47 once manipulated another assassin into killing his targets for him. Unfortunately, said assassin was so bad at his job that 47 had to do everything for him, from adjusting his sniper rifle so he could actually fire it, to getting the targets into his line of sight so the assassin would actually see them.

47 once stopped a depressed person fresh off a bad break up from an abusive relationship from committing suicide by following him around the globe and beating him unconscious every time he tried to kill himself, all without the guy ever actually noticing him. 47 only stopped when the guy decided he must have a guardian angel looking out for him because he keeps falling asleep whenever he considers going through with the deed, deciding he owes that angel an honest attempt to getting his life back on track again.

Agent 47 has a friend in the CIA named Agent Smith, who keeps getting kidnapped and held prisoner at all the locations 47 is doing missions in. 47 keeps having to rescue him because Smith usually has good intel on his targets. Smith considers 47 his best friend, while 47 holds Smith in open contempt.

47 is a millionaire, but he cannot spend any of his money on luxary items due to his life style. His profession means he's constantly moving to new homes and can only live safely in sparce homes with nothing but fast food to tide him over. His suits are his only affordable luxary, as anything more lavish could expose his location and get him arrested or killed. He's a millionaire who has to live like a broke king thanks to his triple digit body count. It's only when Freelancer happens that he finally gets his own home.

47 is a pro at Dance Dance Revolution, but only when he is dressed like a ninja.

And finally, 47 has canonically killed countless fascists, pedophiles, billionaires, and even anti-vaxers who run MLM pyramid schemes. Up to 365 of them and counting, in fact.

#hitman #agent 47 #diana burnwood #tumblr icon

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inbarfink · 7 months

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So, do you think all the universes we see come fr a wish, or some just happen to exist? Farmworld and Lichworld are wishes we've already seen, but it's hard to imagine who's wish could have caused Vampworld.

Maybe Winter King's nice about "manifesting your own reality" implies that world was born out of an Ice King's wish, who maybe just wanted to stop being so sad all the time.

Well, we know some universes aren't born from Wishes because Prismo explicitly said that about Flapjackworld!

But I also think, with the thematic focus being given to Wishes in this series, it's very likely that all of the universes we've seen were probably born from Wishes... or at least it's fun to speculate about lol

However, I personally find it unlikely that Winterworld was born from a Wish made by the Ice King/Simon, and it's actually for the same reason I don't think it's 'unlikely' that someone wished for Vampireworld - a Wish granted by Prismo always backfires on the wisher.

The only way Jake got around it is by changing the Lich's Wish, so "I wish for Finn and Jake to go back home to Ooo" would turn out badly for the Lich, which would mean it would go right for... basically everyone else.

We've seen it with Farmworld, which went very very badly for Finn, AND ALSO hit him with the pedantic ironic twist of the difference between asking that the Lich never existed and asking that he won't exist in the future

And like, the only reason Farmworld Lich was stopped was because he and Ice Finn/the Snowman were threatening every reality and that forced Prismo to initiate that Crossover. And the only reason why Finn was freed from the Magic Crown's curse was because Mainworld Finn begged for it. If the Farmworld Lich hadn't started poking around the Multiverse, Farmworld Finn's fate would've been to be the Lich's Mad and Sad right-hand goon... forever.

And even now, that world is a pretty lousy place in general, and not exactly super-great for Finn in specific

Extinctworld went badly for the Lich by just... giving him what he wants but showing him the futility and lack of satisfaction in his ultimate goal. Leaving him basically extremely depressed.

According to Word of God, Babyworld was a Wish made by BMO and it backfired by making them into an inanimate (...or at least seemingly inanimate) Baby Monitor.

So when I'm thinking who is likely to have Wished up a World, I'm thinking what sort of Wish could've lead to that timeline... but also who got fucked over the most by the changes. As such I have a hard time believing Ice King/Simon created Winterworld, since, like, the Winter King is basically the only actually happy person in that whole world?

I mean, I guess turning into a huge asshole that your former self would find morally repugnant would be a kind of Ironic Twists. Or the fact the Candy Queen might've killed him eventually, but I dunno... compared to the other Worlds we've seen, it doesn't feel Ironic enough to me.

Ever since that episode aired, my personal bet has always been that this world was Wished up by Marceline. She has all the Motivation to Wish, like, "I wish Simon could remember who he is". And look how terribly all of this went from her perspective! Simon is 'himself' again but is utterly unrecognizable as the loving surrogate father she remembers. The love of her life is now tormented by that same Curse she tried to free Simon from. And, well, while it's unclear what exactly happened when she and Simon had their falling out...

But doesn't look good for her.

For Vampireworld... I know some people would say that's the Marceline Wish Timeline since there's so much focus on her - but I kinda doubt it for the same reason I doubt the Ice King Winterworld thing. The Star is one of the only two people having an Actual Good Time in that universe and, even if things would've gotten bad eventually, with the dwindling food supply and all, that still feels like kind of a serious slow burn of an Ironic Twist compared to others we've seen.

I think it's most likely that Vampireworld is a Wish from one of the Vampire King's Court we saw back in 'Stakes'.

Between the Star being said to have 'outlived' the rest of the Court, her having seemingly the same powerset as Mainworld Marceline (which she gained by sucking the souls of these Vampires as she slayed them) and her clearly having no qualms about killing her fellow Vampires

I think the implication here is that the Star still killed the Fool, the Empress, the Hierophant, the Moon - but exclusively to become more powerful and gain more approval from her 'dad' in the process.

So I think the Ironic Twist narrative is, like, the Hierophant or someone Wishes for a world where Vampires rule... and that's exactly what they got, but their most hated enemy is still around. And now they get to watch her upstage them, take their rightful spot by the Vampire King's side and then kill and consume them alongside their closest brethren. Then their civilization collapses in on itself due to the lack of food, I think that's plenty Ironic to me.

I've also heard a suggestion that it could've been Peebles' Wish. Like, she tried to Wish Simon never put the Crown on just for Marceline's sake (and to try rid herself of her annoying stalker but still mostly for Marceline's sake)... and she ended up in a grim and dying world without her beloved kingdom, and also without the love that made her give her one Wish for Marcy's happiness instead.

I still think I prefer the Vampire Wish theory, but that one also has pretty solid foundation.

#adventure time #atimers #fionna and cake #fionna & cake #at #at fionna and cake #fac #f&c #adventure time fionna and cake

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thefirstknife · 10 months

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Final page of the seasonal lore book, Purpose!

This is some exceptionally important shit. Finally, we're seeing what Xivu is doing personally, instead of just hearing her and seeing her armies. She is also in the Dreadnaught. Not beating the allegations of still loving and mourning for her brother any time soon. Also, finally, we are seeing her interacting with the Witness. This is conclusive proof that she is consciously still working for the Witness and enacting its plans.

And furthermore, this is huge for the Witness itself. The Witness may be gone through a portal, but it knows what's going on outside of it, it's actively following it, it's actively invested and its plans for the Final Shape are still ongoing despite it being inside of the portal. This also answers some questions we had in Defiance, namely the one about whether the Witness is commanding the Shadow Legion to kidnap people. While we still don't know if it did that, now we know that it COULD have done that. The biggest question was whether or not the Witness can still interact with the universe and whether it's paying attention at all. And the answer is yes to both!

Some of the descriptions here are interesting as well. Xivu communes with the Witness by transporting "her will" through the ascendant plane and "crosses the barrier between this world and the next." Then they converge "within a distant hollow." There is no mention of anything about the environment within the portal itself that we've seen in the teaser. Curious. It almost makes me question the timeline of this conversation that Xivu had with the Witness, but we know from the other lines that this is current time. Namely, from the Witness saying "they hold the worm; they will pursue her knowledge" which refers to us having Ahsa.

The Witness is so obviously manipulating Xivu Arath as well. I am hoping, so badly, that once we return Savathun, she can explain just how bad the Witness is to her sister and that the Witness' final words will backfire dramatically: "Show her your love, Xi Ro." I hope the Witness will be the first to experience the consequences of Xivu Arath's love.

#destiny 2 #destiny 2 spoilers #season of the deep #season of the deep spoilers #xivu arath #witness #long post #this took me out. xivu please #also wild stuff with the witness still commanding its forces from the portal

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bougiebutchbitch · 9 months

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truly I'm just along for the starscream ride. I know nothing abt him or the other giant robots. all I know is that starscream and orochimaru share a voice actor and honestly that's so real.

you are so valid and so correct for this

How do I even explain Starscream? He is... so spiky. Pincushion of a man. Yet he is also somehow very soggy, crumpled, and pathetic. He even tries puppy-dog eyes on... Optimus Prime, I believe, at one point in tfp? And they're kinda effective???

He is also a giant alien robot who wants so badly to be an evil dictator and wipe humanity off the face of the world. He just really, really sucks at it. To the point where it's kinda endearing.

A cowardly, power-hungry suck-up, always with a knife at the ready to stab people in the back, the person he winds up fucking over most is inevitably himself.

Seriously. The universe hates him. If Starscream has a clever scheme to endear himself to the people in power, or snatch that power for himself, it will backfire in his face in THEE most ridiculous way. It's just one of the laws of nature. But he'll still pull himself up and try again <3 we love a trooper

(more rambling under the cut because I love this goober)

Based on tfp, he has a VERY complicated and pretty blatantly abusive relationship with his incredibly violent and unpredictable boss, where he has to beg for his life on a daily basis. And gets regularly beaten up. And treated like shit in front of the army he's supposed to be helping to command.

He has an AMAZING arc where he FINALLY realises it's not going to get better, strikes out alone, deserts the Decepticons, and becomes a neutral party - even helping the Autobots occasionally, although mostly for his own gain. The plot teases him having a redemption arc! He has so much promise for becoming an anti-villain (although... I wouldn't go so far as to say anti-hero) if he could only keep his big mouth shut and stop being a supremely punchable twat!

But. BUT.

He sees an opportunity to scupper the Autobots and run back to the Decepticons with enough powerful artifacts to make Megatron respect him. So rather than putting in the hard work to try and become a better person, or allowing himself to form friendships with other living creatures, or anything else ridiculous like that... HE DOES JUST THAT.

And it's so. fucking. awesome. I mean, we all know he's fucking himself over in the long-run because........ Megatron is honestly incapable of respecting Starscream. But he chooses that possibility over the chance of having people actually care about him, and it's honestly such a GREAT character moment. Peak Starscream, shooting himself in the foot in the most dramatic and badass way possible.

Theeeeen in the next season, Megatron proceeds to kinda... continue to treat him like shit, and Starscream basically becomes a comic relief character and his whole arc is forgotten (he has some cool moments. but. mm.) And he seems to genuinely and deeply care for Megatron, even though he's still not getting any of the respect and attention from him that he craves. It's.... yeah! It's a bit fucked up!

Still compelling though. I mean, Starscream desperately trying to save the guy who's been abusing him for like, four million years, and having to be carried off by an ally while he claws at the air and screams, is.... yeah. It's a moment.

But Megatron does kill one of the only decent Decepticons for Starscream, which is pretty hot, so yay <3

#anyway #my thots #starscream #tfp

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svturn-exe · 6 months

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more re hc stuff ^_^ under cut bc i am just pasting in stuff i've already said on disc to a friend and some of this shit gets Long

👍wesker. has been conditioned to be impatient. if he wants something, he has to get it himself and can't wait for someone else to do it for him

william is way too anxious of a guy to make the first move, so wesker is the one who interrupts him mid sentence and goes I Want You apropos of nothing but hey, it works

if wesker wants someone to stop touching him, he has to Make them. and in the process that stops most people from Trying Him for a while. until the next idiot comes along

if wesker wants the experiments and mutilation to stop, he has to Kill the bastards responsible (perfectly reasonable, ngl. like actually)

and i imagine. killing marcus probably has wesker feeling good. great. amazing, even. like finally things are starting to maybe go well for him

and then having that blow up in his face when, for the first time, his award winning Go Getter attitude backfires badly, and he loses Everything in less than a month.

the remainer of stars want nothing to do with him - understandable, he did have to kill quite a few of them to make the (messy, rushed, impatient) plan work. but still failed in the end (so they sorta died for nothing)

chris wouldn't join him either, for reasons wesker doesn't understand (and won't for some time. his world view is a little skewed and his frame of reference is non existent)

and william is dead. because wesker couldn't wait to carry out the plan like they had discussed umbrella found out about their betrayal and now wesker is Alone

👍claire joined the girl scouts bc she wanted to do wilderness shit, but got disappointed bc its mostly selling cookies. so she dressed up as a boy and used her brother's name to get into boyscouts and got every badge girlie is a survivalist and she goes hiking and camping frequently !!!

👍thinking about ada and in-universe applications of the leon effect. spies, as in Real Life Spies, don't tend to have legal identities, and if they give you a name, chances are it's a fake one. so. headcanon time ada wong is not ada wong's birth name like, even without the trans headcanon. it's a name she came up with for the job wesker assigned her to do in raccoon city, in the event that she needs to give someone a name for whatever reason. and maybe she only really tells it to leon in the first place to get him to stop asking so many questions. give him the bare minimum to distract him from the more . Relevant. issues but then as this bright-eyed, stupidly trusting rookie tails her, even tells her off to being too calloused with kendo, and going as far as taking a Bullet for her. the way leon says that fake name starts to mean More . and it's as she's falling to her death that she realizes maybe ada isn't so fake of a name anymore. maybe she is ada wong and then some time after wesker plucks her from midair and they get out of the city she decides to say hey. i'm going by ada now

and ofc he pretends not to care, but he is curious about what happened to spark the change.

👍the wallflowers - one headlight is a claida song specifically about like . leon made ada want a name. but claire makes her want to be a Person, instead of a half-real shadow of a human being that sheds everything about herself for every new job

ada goes into raccoon city that day as a half-real nobody with a mission, and emerges from its ashes as Someone

👍thinkign abt aeon . their dynamic has a lot of potential either as a romantic ship or a burgeoning friendship

the delicate balance of tentative trust between them

ada, who was taught how to tell a near-perfect lie before she could do long division & has never wanted to - or had the opportunity to - hold onto something for very long. Permanent just hasn't been a Thing in her life since… ever

leon, who has been fucked over and betrayed more times than he can count. distrustful and wary but despite it all still tender-hearted. gets attached too quickly and too easily and all too desperate to see the best in people

smth abt. ada doing her best to try and regain leon's trust, and how to navigate life outside of being a spy. and leon having to relearn how to trust ada again, and not jump to the worst conclusion immediately and also they're t4t

#ressieposting #ressie hcs

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cienie-isengardu · 2 years

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MK Legends: Snow blind

Watching Mortal Kombat Legends animated films is such a wild ride and the Snow Blind is truly something different than the rest, like yeah, bloodshed and gore is MK tradition but it is much more character driven than before, I think? I probably will need to rewatch it a few times to figure out my feelings about it (and I’m not saying it as a bad thing) so for now here some thoughts about Sub-Zero

Spoilers under cut

Okay, this is not really spoiler as old Sub-Zero as a mentor for young Kenshi was a vital part of trailer, but honestly? Kuai Liang’s parts were both funny and killing me. I genuinely smiled seeing his training methods and it was overall nice to see how the blind Kenshi slowly progressed and learned not only how to live with his blindless but also regained self-control and self-esteem as a warrior while bonding with the... hm, disillusioned? with honor/warrior’s pride Sub-Zero. Yet it seems that no matter which universe Kuai Liang lives, he is always deeply depressed man. This time he didn’t lost his clan due to Sektor or Frost but due to his own pride which is... pretty interesting. He thought Lin Kuei could destroy the spreading Revenants:

I had become one of the most feared and honored warriors in our clan. And then, the revenants came. It swept across cities, countries. There were those that thought it was a lost cause. But I was full of pride. I did not think the Lin Kuei could be beat. We went into a city to try and purge it of the revenants. But they were everywhere. Like a hive of bees. I knew we were going to die [...] And in that moment, fearing for my life, I summoned a storm of ice. But I lost control. The storm cut through the city, kill revenants. kill innocents. kill my clan. When it was all over, I was the only one to survive. And I realized that death begets death.

but it backfired so badly he is having nightmares about that incident night after night for decades, fearing what will happen if he once again uses and loses control over his powers. Which makes him abbadon Lin Kuei (warrior) tradition and refuse to fight to the point he is willing to let Black Dragons thugs beat him and yet there is always a feeling he is really close to beat them back but force himself to keep head down and go like nothing bad happened? Like this is not even pacifism in the sense he is respecting life per se but because he is so afraid of his own power.

Kuai Liang: I swore an oath never to use my power again. Never to lose control.

Kenshi: Even if it's a worthy cause?

Kuai Liang: What's "worthy"? If I start fighting, I won't stop. And then the storm will return. So, to answer your question, if kneeling spares those around me, I'd live on my knees.

This take on Sub-Zero is unique yet still feels authentic? But the only thing I think should be more explained is his fear of becoming like his brother (fear of Bi-Han was a repeatedly seen theme in his nightmares) when there is almost no details what happened to elder Sub-Zero or what he did in the past? At the same time, this line:

The dreams. For a long time, I thought the worst thing that I could become was my brother. I was wrong.

is really gut wrecking that becoming like Bi-Han was the worst fear yet (in Kuai Liang’s mind) he became something worse. Though if I remember right, the previous parts of Mortal Kombat Legends didn’t show Bi-Han as a horrible person? Which makes me wonder what happened in this reality?

Trauma people, this man is full of trauma, except this seems even deeper self-loathing than what we usually get? Like game!Kuai Liang still has the faith in honor, while this one version is disillusioned even with the one thing that was written into his core for decades and yet... is less suicidal? As he will keep surviving, even if in disgrace.

“There is more to life than honor. Like living. Like survival.”

which of course, at the end of story, thanks to Kenshi, he got “some sense of honor again“ yet went with Scorpion to Netherrealm, as was promised, it seems, if he even again uses/loses control? Yes, it seems like he and Scorpion are still good buddies :3

Also, kudos to animators for making Kuai Liang’s body muscled yet stout, it is actually very nice to see male character with less typical (hollywood) body shape:

(I’m pretty sure I saw also a Black Dragons woman with heavy, stout shape??)

Also, Lin Kuei’s tatoo what reminds me of the old MK Conquest TV series in which ancient members of said clan alos had tattooed clan symbol.

(And generally the repeating scene of Kuai Liang’s life, how everything is so monotone adds a lot to the feeling of long-termed deppression, I guess)

Okay the biggest spoiler is that this universe is ruled by Kano who - like in his ending in latest MK game - get his hand on Kronika's Hourglass and simply rewrite history on whim, so as every one can imagine, this is a shitty world to everyone’s else. It was pretty awesome to see in hourglasses Kuai Liang’s desire (or memory?) of him and Bi-Han being together on the same side, like it was seen in Sub-Zero’s ending from the same game. But I’m not sure why he and the rest of heroes didn’t restart history instead of destroying the hourglass and then leaving the whole shitty alternative to Kenshi to deal with? Like yeah, the ending was surprising in that regard but c’mon we could came back to better times (I for one would not complain if he get Kuai LIang and Bi-Han’s good alternative reality.)

This movie has a lot dead characters (no surprising as this is alternative realitythat Kano rewritten forth and back for who knows how long) and it was fun to spotting all the cameos here and there, but I think there is something interesting that Kano keeps Erron (who in current universe hates him and Black Dragons more ofthen than not) and Kabal and Tremor around himself and even they seemed to be in high place in Black Dragon hierarchy? And all of them at some point in various medias hated his guts? Should that means Kano likes these bastards so much despite his horrible lack of loyalty sense to people???

(Though I’m still happy that Kano was brutally killed by Kuai LIang. Good for our old cryomancer)

Generally the movie follows the typical schemes that are easy to predict but for sure it has some interesting stuff about Kuai Liang that I’m gonna slowly analyzing in my free time, but I was positively surprised how much of focus Sub-Zero’s get.

As the final though, Kuai Liang has some pretty inspiring advice:

Do not dwell on what you are, but what you can be. There is nothing more poisonous than "I can't." You can, if you believe. Even if all of heaven and hell are allied against you. You can.

#mortal kombat #mortal kombat legends: snow blind #kuai liang #sub zero #mortal kombat spoilers #my thoughts #sorry for my rant #but the film took me by surprise how much focused it was on kuai liang #and how his character works with kenshi

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angryteapott · 11 months

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Okay further in my l&p rewatch and in my opinion the second half is really missing what made the first part so interesting, which was a) the grounded interpersonal drama that straddles kiddy spats and the looming structural injustice of the world, allowing for a realistic slip and slide between these two things b) the sense that our protagonists aren't always right.

A great example of this is the Blue Crown bid presentation. After Li Xun isn't obeyed by Gao on redoing a project (in part because his previous baiting of Gao makes Gao want to assert himself), Li Xun tries to teach Zhu Yun and Gao a lesson by deliberately letting them humiliate themselves in the presentation, figuring it would be a hot stove moment a la his childhood. All the while he's secretly maneuvering to stop Zhang Xiaopei, an institutionally exploitative threat, but he doesn't tell them since they might protest his methods.

It's a lovely, nested moment in understanding our protagonists- Zhu Yun tries to stop Gao and Li Xun's conflict over Li Xun's dictatorial behavior not by having Li Xun actually collaborate and explain his reasoning but rather by avoiding the issue by not deleting; afterwards when she sees his criticism was right even if his methods were wrong she tries to coax Gao for him, similar to how her father acts for her mother in later scenes. She sees that how he treats people is disrespectful, but she sticks by him even when he repeats his behavior. She does, however, talk to Li Xun about it; later he sort of listens to her by coaxing Gao, tacitly admitting she was right. As someone both privileged and used to being controlled she's used to ignoring the larger issues while speaking up just a little. In the end, she never needed to be alert to Zhang Xiaopei: as acknowledged in the show, she benefits even more from the things that let Zhang Xiaopei behave badly.

Li Xun in trying to justify his behavior to Zhu Yun instead reveals why he acts the way he does- in my opinion his neglected hot stove childhood made him feel like he could only rely on himself even though he intellectually knows he needs others, and he expects everyone to accept pain the way he has, leading him to be totalitarian and unwilling to truly include others. He knows he needs to be wary of Zhang Xiaopei, and that fear haunts his actions. But scared straight lessons don't work and even the extra's expressions give away that Li Xun needs to learn to collaborate. So the story has the harsh lesson backfire in a big way: not only does it drive another wedge between him and Gao, a programmer he admits he needs, it also prevents him from finding better solutions. Being quick on his feet doesn't change the fact that Zhang Xiaopei has institutional support because it benefits those in power for them to be exploited; even if he gets one over her she can swat him down any time using the university. The way he acts is understandable but it leads to bad outcomes and is unfair- to get ahead, he exploits those around him, but since he gives them some benefit he sees himself as different from Zhang Xiaopei even as he acts very similarly (making the team make a website even as he plans to make and sell an app).

Such a good little nut of conflict! We see the class difference of the two leads, we see Zhu Yun's attempts to do the right thing at odds with her enabling behavior, and we see the justification for and consequences of Li Xun's control issues. The villains and conflict have verisimilitude- it all feels properly motivated and genuinely difficult for our leads to handle.

Now compare this to the time when Li Xun throws Hou Ning off four stories into a net in retaliation for Hou Ning not obeying him while Zhu Yun tries but doesn't manage to stop him and Lao Gao acts as the background villain as who's ripped off their project. Instead of Hou Ning being mad at all he... immediately becomes obedient and friendly to Li Xun??? Instead of a genuinely difficult to deal with villain due to institutional power Gao can't get them as they thwart a major lawsuit from a wealthy company by... showing a code example at a police station???? Instead of acknowledging that Zhu Yun has a point Li Xun is framed as justified for dismissing her.

While the basic structure of the incident is similar (Li Xun retaliates against a team member disobeying him in a way Zhu Yun disagrees with but doesn't truly punish him for, all while there's an institutionally powerful villain in the background) it's like a satire of the previous incident. Li Xun's extreme behavior is now justified by his methods magically working. Institutions aren't really that much of a threat. Everybody clapped etc etc

Which is fun. But while I love their toxic dynamic, it was much more interesting in a rich and layered world.

#lighter and princess #lighter and princess meta #it's like a whole different show after fang zhijing rolls up #not that it matters THAT much but it is less deep #you know?

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lovevalley45 · 2 years

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#fictober22 day eighteen

"I don't think this is your problem."

original fiction (power payback)

word count: 1107

Emery quite liked the monotony of his day job.

Yes, there was the thrill of the fighting rings of the Blue Spade. But he liked having a dual life; dull in the daytime, Mercury by midnight. Rarely did those two lives collide.

Rarely, because sometimes they did.

It wasn’t completely out of the blue for Red to show up at his job. Generally, if he wasn’t around the Blue Spade enough or if Eld sent them to check up on her assignment for him. The latter was more frequent these days. Emery had no idea why she’d put Red on the job of being his handler. Unlike Kyle, it wasn’t as menacing to see them ambling up to his check out.

That day, though, Emery didn’t run into Red at his checkout. It was the end of his shift, and he’d been heading out to go home for the night. It was a Monday, when the Blue Spade was quiet, so he’d taken a later shift. But there was still people going in and out of the store.

He had nearly missed them as he walked out into the parking lot. It was only their “Yo! Emery!” that caught his attention.

When he turned around, Red was leaning against the wall, tucked partially into the nook for the carts. It was still strange to see them in casual clothes outside of the casino. However, even in the low light of where they’d hidden themselves, they looked more disheveled than usual.

As Emery doubled back to talk to them, it seemed like they weren’t just leaning, but using the wall to support themself. The sherpa-lined jacket they wore seemed much too warm for the desert evenings they got in Bright City. The most telling thing was their hair - the fiery red was shot with snow white, their roots more evident than they ever let it get.

“Hey,” he said cautiously. “What’s up?”

They stood up a little straighter, still hunched in on themself. “Eld wanted an update on that list.”

Emery nodded, shoving his hands in his pocket. “Oh. Well, I hit up Gale and started trying to convince her to come to the fight on Thursday, like Eld asked.” The reason Eld wanted him to conscript people to come to fights was still a mystery to him, but he knew one thing: he usually never saw them again. Part of the agreement was that he wasn’t allowed to ask questions like that, so Emery bit his tongue.

“Ah, good.” Red huffed, a puff of cold air escaping their lips. “Sorry for hitting you up like this.”

Now the picture was getting clearer. “You, apologizing?” Emery asked. “You alright there, Red?”

“I don’t think this is your problem,” they hissed, but their usual snark fell flat.

He straightened up. “You’re backfiring.”

Unlike Eld’s terms of being a Talent, “backfiring” was more universally understood. Sometimes, Talents backfired. It wasn’t as common for Talents like Emery, whose powers were more passive things like regeneration or super-strength. But for Talents like Red, who were more about control and manifestation, backfires could happen. It wasn’t lethal, but it tended to end badly.

Red locked their icy blue eyes with his, but they were burning. “No. I’m just… sick, that’s all.”

Emery pressed his hand to their forehead. It felt like touching a block of ice. “It feels like you have the opposite of a fever.”

This close, he could see the stark-white stubble on their face, how heavy they were breathing. When was the last time he’d seen them? How long had it been going on?

“My roommate is in medical school,” he said. “She’s specifically studying medicine for Talent-related conditions, including backfires. She could help you.”

But he knew they’d probably deny, deny, deny. Backfires were marks of an imperfect Talent too, especially when it came to things that were hard to hide. And when it came to working under Eld, those marks had to be buried far beneath the surface.

Red shut their eyes. “Can you just drive me back to my place?” they asked. “I drove here, but barely.”

Emery nodded. “Yeah, yeah, totally.” Well, it was a start. If need be, he could always call Haley. For now, he found himself gripping Red’s arm and helping them to his car.

It wasn’t until they were both in his car that he realized it was a breach of the professional air to his relationship with them. Unlike with his life, Red kept their personal life close to their chest. He didn’t even know if Red was their name or just a nickname.

“Are you good to give directions, or should I just look it up?” he asked, already taking out his phone.

“Yeah, gimme.” They took his phone and typed it in, albeit with some difficulties. It looked like the screen didn’t sense their cold fingers, but they managed it. It wasn’t too far of a drive, not too far out of his way.

As he drove, Red was unusually quiet. He didn’t know what backfiring felt like, he couldn’t, but by the way they curled in on themself, it didn’t seem like a walk in the park. When Emery glanced over, he could see them shivering. The temperature on the dashboard of his car read that it was 78 degrees out, but he cranked the heater anyways. It wasn’t pleasant for him. However, Red loosened the grip on their jacket, not shivering as much by the time he pulled up to their house.

He turned off the car and turned to them. “Okay, we’re here.”

“Thanks.” They opened the car door and started to get out, but they braced themself again. “Okay, fuck.”

“What?”

Red fell back into the car seat, putting their head in their hands. “If you really wanna play nurse, Emery, now’s the fucking time.” They took a deep breath. “Just help me in and call your fucking roommate.”

Well, shit. He’d offered, but explaining all this to Haley was not something he was excited about. Talk about worlds colliding.

“Fine. But only if you tell me what you know about Eld’s project.”

“Fine, fine, whatever,” they nearly whined. “Are you really negotiating with a sick person?”

“Yes, I am.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and went around to their side of the car. “And I think calling you sick is an understatement.”

“Shut up before I puke on you.”

He stopped. “Oh shit, are you actually going to puke?”

“No, but I want to.”

“Okay, thanks.” With that, he pulled them to their feet and slammed their car door. There went his night of relaxing.

#alli writes shit #fictober22 #power payback #i meant to make this much shorter whoops

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volliate-a · 2 years

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a continuation of objectification;

You may be asking yourself ‘You kept talking about ‘fate’ in all of this, what the fuck are you on about king?’ It is at this point that I ask you to turn your brain off and hear me be a fuckin twisted cycle path for twenty more paragraphs. Thanks.

Golb is one of the centerpiece deities in the series, yet no real information is directly shared about it until the series finale - and even that information is sparse. All that’s really given is that Golb is a being made of [or representative of] pure chaos, that it stands higher than most of the other deities in terms of power [as Prismo was incapable of pulling Margles back “from its maw” despite a direct wish to do so - he also refers to some unknown deity as his ‘boss’, but that’s pure speculation on my part. I don’t personally see Golb as caring whether some backend order is kept at all]. Golb also has smaller but still just as terrifyingly powerful beings that have supposedly studied under it, with the Lich being the self-described ‘last remaining scholar’. Whether this was a direct pupil/master relationship or if it was something more akin to a cult is unknown.

Regardless, it’s hard to directly pinpoint just what Golb’s role is in the primary story [as the only other deity shown to have ties with him acts more akin to a ‘superman’ or comic book super hero character mashed with a christian-like god only in terms of mythos attributed. Of course a lot of the deities in the series fall under that “they’re one thing in mythos but another in reality” characterization, so that’s not a flaw or drawback at all. It’s funny if anything, and only goes to contrast the sheer threat Golb brings so suddenly from the background.

The best comparison I can draw is Golb plays a ‘blind idiot’ god akin to the lovecraftian ‘Azathoth’, a god embodying chaos that sits in the center of the universe as its unaware creator, potentially sleeping that whole time. Nothing Golb does seems to have any forethought placed into it nor an understanding of consequences that is understandable to those lower than it. As far as I can recall, Golb never interacts with weaker forces unless it’s called forth to do so [and considering the rarity of that happening, it tracks that information about that is sparse at best] - as only seen in the finale and referenced when Magic Man fucked around and found out with his wife.

Considering its power, if ‘the end of all life’ were its true aims, it would’ve managed that well before life was as widespread as it is [something that the Lich gets wrong, I’d say.] Hard to claim to be a scholar of something when you’re off-base at every point, my guy. Then again, the Lich has been shown to be calculating, careful, and capable of learning - it could just be using the mythos of Golb to prop up its own threats without having ever been a scholar [which again, means nothing when information of Golb is non-existent]. I’m personally working under the assumption it does believe Golb wants the extinction of all life however, since the implication that there were smaller gods that worshiped it is so fun to me.

Instead, its presence is only felt through smaller, less obvious things [curses, magic-borne madness, etc], alongside time’s cyclical nature with the comets and reincarnation. To be a bit more specific, The Lich’s own understanding of the wheel I’d say ties into the more destructive curses [especially any that impact Finn since they’re a destined ‘good vs evil’ thread in time]. With the grass sword’s curse in particular, The Lich weaponizing that curse and making sure it found its way into Finn’s life tracks, regardless of how badly that decision backfires later. Whether the Grass Wizard was directly manipulated and brainwashed only to forget about it later is irrelevant; all that would be important is making sure the need was met at the right time and place.

Because of this, it was [and is] incredibly easy for the curse to wreak absolute havoc on what would otherwise be an average incarnation of Finn. Both with a combination of severance from the outside world and the rest of decent humanity while in the Finn Sword, to manifesting in every possible nook and cranny once outside of the sword to cement the belief Fern is not and cannot ever be anything more than an unknowably angry and violent force - it works enough to drag Fern’s own self-image down through the mud and succeed where the Lich would’ve otherwise failed. Attempts to become his own person, to find reasoning behind his existence, to make friends and find trust in others all fail, terrible luck following him no matter wherever he went. The curse was able to paint reality around him as this constant uncaring and unkind place that would only be welcoming if he dropped the hero schtick and went with what he really was.

It’s there that the curse - and The Lich - win. The temporary rebound of whatever remained of Finn is pointless as well, the desire to ‘escape’ the cocoon unknowingly playing right into the curse’s wishes. It’s also this rebound that shapes Fern’s eventual plans of trapping Finn in the dungeon; guilt and that remaining shred of humanity that keep him from outright killing Finn [because LORD KNOWS he could easily - deadly accuracy is the curse]. This restraint does start to drastically fade after Fern’s death, however, both alongside that sense of betrayal, rage, and unknown degrees of manipulation on Gumbald’s part.

Additionally, the mirror could be caused by Finn Sword himself - an attempt to have Finn realize how it felt to be used, trapped, and left to watch the world as a mute observer. Both him and the curse have that clear desire to see Finn suffer, but I’d say the addition of slow starvation was a miscommunication between the two, if not just downright purposeful rather than an exercise in stupidity.

So to TLDR; Fern is a product of the Lich’s opportunistic schemes with a curse that’s manifesting from Golb’s domain. No he is not completely aware of this, yes I am using this concept to be evil.

#› hc ⁞#// hieeee :) i wrote this in a haze i hope it makes any bit of sense to yall #if not i guess ill just explode here #realized i gotta rotate the obelisk part more in my head + the inhumanity post is gonna need diagrams SO. art.#but yes this is important to my characterization here and is a big factor of the aforementioned canon divergence #just because i DOUBT the writers wanted this much thought put into some of these characters fjgkhdfkjg #[ insert my hours long rant about prismo's paradox here]

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milfzatannaz · 1 year

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Hey it's me! The one that said about how zatanna can be more ''wrong'' in her relationship with john and how fans forget about it and just blame our british man. I will communicate with this ''🐇'' emoji, so you know it's me.

well my question is this: As I think Zatara is not the best father in the world

starting with the fact that he is highly overprotective and that ends up being something controlling. He always wanted to control Zee's life. I recently found out that after the ''death'' of his wife and the deaths of his Wayne's friends, Zatara became an alcoholic and please, I'm pretty sure he silently blamed Zatanna for it all. He had no one else and she was the only one he could take his anger out on.

second point: the way with in JLD 2018 he did the worst with Constantine. The guy literally pulled john out of the asylum, a broken and mentally stable john who had just been through trauma. zatara decided it would be a great idea to take this kid and put him through some of his magical shit he didn't want to get his hands dirty. He lied and manipulated his daughter and still made john never able to tell anything

third point: Zatara has already erased zee's memories and his trauma with puppets, which I think is wrong since she grew up with this fear and didn't know the reason for it, and I'm pretty sure he has erased her memory other times . In addition to him manipulating zee, because she ALWAYS defends her father, even when he is a fuck and is highly wrong. she was a dumb brat when she cursed at john and said horrible things to him in JLD #13 2018. All this to defend her goddamn dad.

maybe that's why Nick Necro wanted to kill Zatara so badly in the new 52

I don't agree with a lot of Zatara's actions, but I understand that he was protecting his daughter in a horrible way, it's difficult. I like their relationship, but I hate how Zatanna is dependent on her father and can't get over his death. All screenwriters always press on this same topic and it has already become something boring.

good, that's it! sorry to talk so much and my english is terrible, most of it is from the translator, the dangers of being brazilian. Anyway, I really admire everything you do and talk about johnzee and the vertigo universe in general, I'm with you in this fandom of 5 people!

hiya it's nice to hear from u again! I love receiving meta in my inbox!

and yeah you raise a lot of good points about Zatara, esp the 2018 reboot. I suspect that sideplot was written to heighten conflict between John and Zee- writers never make them overtly romantic, and for the JLD plot to move forward I feel like they need to have something keeping them at odds. Otherwise there's less of a justification of why DC hasn't fully developed them in 30 years.

also, aside from team comics, I think Zatara is often written this way to add some life to a rather flat character. He hasn't been anything but Zee's dead dad since 1986. The mourning daughter schtick is a tad tired, so this effort to make him posthumously more morally grey is probably just to add some spice. but it often backfires, bc Zee still glorifies him and has never done anything but miss him on panel, despite the mind-wiping and manipulation. So they keep introducing these plot points that should have a lot of emotional weight, but aren't developed.

that's honestly my problem with JLD '18 as a whole. visually cohesive with enough vertigo lore to make it go somewhere, its main problem is its own lack of commitment. All these things happened to both john and zee, and their individual characters and their relationship has not progressed at all. Zatara died for John, who himself had just been cradled in zee's arms, and it's never mentioned again. Zee kept secrets from him and there was no payoff. idk you can try and make a ~spooky~ comic but if there's no emotional development it all falls a tad flat.

#answered

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figureofdismay · 6 months

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i think they shouldn't have gotten rid of the Tollans so completely. have their collusion with the Goa'uld backfire badly, yes, but have them fall back and relocate again, with their 'deus ex machina' capacity diminished and a greater need to actually make deals with Earth... it would have been a potential occasional plot thread that could have added some complexity and some options for the SGC. I just felt like the SGC became too isolated in the later section of the show, which was to raise the stakes I know but it did feel pared down and less like a 'complete' universe setting.

#brought to you by reaching the end of the line for the tollans episode again #i mean i actually really like this episode #but i feel like losing so many of their frenemies was the wrong direction for the story #most narratives work on making their universes bigger and more varied with time not smaller idk idk

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robininthelabyrinth · 2 years

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In which everything Meng Yao (not yet Jin) does to try to please his father misteriously backfires and somehow benefits the Nie, to the point that everyone praises his loyalty and devotion (NHS fault or pure chance you decide) 😉😀😎

Hotel California - ao3

The worst of it, naturally, was Nie Mingjue himself.

Now, Meng Yao didn’t mean to understate the issue: the whole thing was pretty damn bad. It was only that out of a whole lot of bad, Nie Mingjue was the worst.

But really, it was all bad.

See, Meng Yao? He was good at things. Or rather, he usually was good at things, very good, and by that he meant that when he set out to do something, he usually accomplished it, one way or the other. Except ever since he’d arrived at the Nie sect –

No, that wasn’t right. The thing was, Meng Yao had arrived at the Nie sect just fine. He’d made it and been accepted on the basis of his willingness to put in the hard work to learn cultivation during wartime, he had maneuvered the situation such that he could contribute to the war in a way that would catch notice in a way his martial skills couldn’t, he had even managed to snag a position of influence the way he’d intended…perhaps slightly faster than intended, but knowing how to take advantage of opportunities was also a skill. At any rate, that had all worked just right and according to plan.

He just couldn’t get out.

Every single thing he did just seemed to go – wrong. Backwards. Sideways.

And always in a way that seemed to accrue to the benefit of the Nie sect, one way or another, instead of serving as the subtle signals of support for his father back in Jinlin Tower that he intended them to be.

He saved some disciples from small sects subsidiary to the Jin?

Their sect leaders were so grateful that they swore loyalty to the Nie instead.

He used his position as Nie Mingjue’s aide to put more Nie sect forces on the border that the Jin were having trouble shoring up?

The Wen sect picked that place as their next target, and the Nie were universally applauded for their foresight in figuring out where the enemy next intended to go.

He ‘accidentally’ mentioned some useful tidbits about where and how to win an easy victory where one of the young masters of the Jin sect could overhear and take for themselves?

The moron in question ended up screwing the opportunity so badly that Nie Mingjue had had to go running in personally to save him, and it had turned into yet another tale to shore up the great and mighty reputation of Chifeng-zun.

Even his attempt to redirect Nie Mingjue’s fiery temper away from the Jin sect during a particularly fierce clash turned out to have been the only thing that kept the Nie sect from being entrapped into rashly agreeing to something the Jin sect wanted!

Meng Yao had intended to use his position in the Nie sect to build up a reputation capable of getting his father’s attention and interest, using it as a stepping-stone in order to win his rightful place in the Jin sect. And, well…

Well, he certainly had a reputation, all right. A reputation for overwhelming loyalty to the Nie sect!

And yet the worst of it, the very worst of it, was Nie Mingjue.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate everything you’re doing,” the other man said gingerly, clearly aware that all of his adroitness in physical combat didn’t make one iota of different for how much of a lumbering beast he was when emotions were in play. “I really do. Your talent and enthusiasm are incredible assets to us, and you have proven yourself time and time again. There’s just no need – that is, if it’s not convenient for you, I don’t want to you to feel like you have to exert yourself so much on our behalf. Especially given that it’s your father on the other side…”

Meng Yao felt as though his sore spot were being prodded directly. He gritted his teeth.

“You were the one who gave me a chance, when he didn’t,” he said, and it sounded believable even to him. “Why shouldn’t I exert myself fully on your behalf?”

“No reason at all,” Nie Mingjue said hastily. “Ah, really, Meng Yao, don’t mind me. It’s only that I had thought…assumed…that is, it occurred to me that you might want to one day return to the Jin sect.”

He did.

“And it’s just…well…”

The way everyone interpreted his actions would make that more difficult. Yes. Meng Yao was aware.

“But naturally if that is not your wish, we will certainly not cast you out. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you like.”

At this rate, it was looking like Meng Yao wouldn’t have much of a choice. Even if he went to the Jin sect now, who would believe he was there whole-heartedly? After everything he’d ‘gone out of his way’ to do, wouldn’t they just suspect him of being a spy for the Nie sect?

“Thank you for your kindness, sect leader,” he said, hating everything. “I’ll take what you said under consideration.”

“You do that,” Nie Mingjue said, in what was probably meant to be an encouraging tone of voice. “You know, I’ve been speaking with Xichen recently. He suggested that you might enjoy travelling between the sects as a courier, like him, so as to more effectively see all your options before making a final decision as to which sect you would like to settle down in. We’d miss you here, of course, but if that was something you might think interesting…”

Meng Yao made some agreeable noises. Lan Xichen was a bit of a busybody, if an exceptionally handsome, accomplished and powerful one, but if his interference got Meng Yao out of this endless spiral of acts building on acts making his future path into the Jin sect more difficult, he’d take it.

He set out the next day, a letter of recommendation in his pocket from Nie Mingjue – just in case, the sect leader had said. If he wanted. No one would be offended if he made that sort of choice, picking another sect to go to and claim as his home, even if their preference would naturally be for him to return and swear into the Nie sect as a full disciple rather than a mere guest disciple.

“I just don’t want you to feel trapped,” that dreadful earnest man had said, giving him a far-too-hearty slap on the back in what was undoubtedly a sincere effort at companionship. “If you understand. I want you here by your own free will, your own voluntarily given word, or not at all. All right?”

If Meng Yao had been anyone else, he would have been delighted by such an offer. But he was himself, and he had other plans, and he wasn’t. This whole mess wasn’t in his plans at all!

A letter of recommendation from Nie Mingjue, no matter how earnestly worded, wouldn’t help him get in good with the Jin sect now. Jin Guangshan was paranoid by nature, and suspicious in particular of those unrecognized children who shared his bloodline; with Meng Yao’s list of ‘accomplishments’ behind him, he would definitely assume that he was up to something.

No, the Jin sect was beyond his capabilities right now.

Right now, his only priority was to figure out what in the world was wrong with him. How had all his plans gone so wrong? Why was it always to the Nie sect’s benefit?

…was there something they weren’t telling him?

No, that seemed impossible.

Meng Yao carried letters for two months, helping the Sunshot Campaign progress chi by sorry chi. His reputation for undying loyalty to the Nie sect did not improve but rather continued to grow, getting to the point that he wasn’t even approached by Jin sect agents with a bribe the way just about every other Nie sect scout was, frustratingly enough. The one time he approached one of them with an offer to sell information, he’d had to do so in disguise, and then of course it’d turned out that the information was stale and Nie Mingjue had changed up the whole plan so it was all completely useless.

Meng Yao had almost predicted that that would happen.

In fact, he had started becoming convinced that there was, in fact, something more to this whole disaster than he had initially thought. It wasn’t just his own plans that kept messing up – it was everything he did, no matter of his own volition or otherwise.

When he carried letters that contained information helpful to the Nie, he practically flew to his destination, clear roads in his wake and fine weather to accompany him, helpful strangers and no ambushes whatsoever, but carrying letters that were unhelpful or would only burden them meant he would be met with rains and mud and misery, inns with no rooms left and holes that appeared in his clothing just in time for a cold wind to get in through. There was one letter that landed him with so many disasters that he’d ended up burning it in a fit of pique, and later on it turned out that the source in question had turned his coat and started feeding them wrong information; his failure to deliver the letter had been the only thing keeping them from making the wrong move in a fairly critical battle. Meng Yao had been the one to later uncover that betrayal, in fact, since he’d gone looking for a reason for all that ridiculously bad luck, so now that was part of his merits, too.

(And of course the turncoat had been someone who belonged to one of the Jin sect’s subsidiary sects.)

Now, Meng Yao was a cultivator, and cultivators didn’t flinch that the unnatural – look at that Wei Wuxian fellow, who was raising corpses left and right – but this whole business was quite frankly starting to give him the creeps.

No more, he decided one day, not long after the turncoat incident. He was somewhere in the south, a desert clime, the weather hot yet without enough water to call it balmy as his home had been; with his help, the local sects had just repelled a major incursion by the Wen sect and send them fleeing back up north into the jaws of Nie Mingjue’s relentless army at Hejian. No more of this. Even if I have to start from the bottom, so be it! I’m going to the Jin sect tomorrow.

He set out in the morning, heading east towards Langya, where his father’s forces were stationed.

The roads were closed.

“Closed?” he echoed, blinking at the cultivator stationed at the next outpost. “We can fly on our swords. How can the road be closed?”

“There’s a terrible storm,” the cultivator – Nie-affiliated, of course – said. “Hailstones the size of your fist. Trust me, if there was any way you could make it through, I’d let you go and on your own head be the consequences, but not even Hanguang-jun could make it through something like this.”

Meng Yao nodded, still feeling blank inside with surprise.

“Why don’t you try a different direction?” the cultivator suggested kindly. “You can always turn east later.”

The way north – north, towards Hejian and Qinghe and Nie Mingjue – had, perhaps unsurprisingly, no problems at all.

Meng Yao tried several times more to turn east, each one without any success. The reasons varied, each of them understandable and reasonable when standing alone and wholly ridiculous when grouped together, and yet there was clearly no attempt at artifice, no possibility of conspiracy. No one was lying to him, everything they said was true – it was only that the universe itself was conspiring to ensure he wouldn’t get to Langya.

And anyway, even if he did, if his luck was this bad just getting there, then wouldn’t everything he tried to do once he was there just blow up in his face?

Well, whatever. There were other places that he could go. Even if the heavens had for whatever reason decreed that he couldn’t join the Jin sect directly, that didn’t mean he couldn’t find a way to win merit. There was always the Wen sect to the west, which was always recruiting; if he could win a position there and serve as a spy, he could win merit for himself, and that merit would accrue to any sect that he later joined. If he managed to be the one to kill Wen Ruohan, his father would take him in just to steal those merits for the Jin sect, and add to their glory by using his. And surely, if he were winning merit just for himself, it might appear that it would ultimately be for the Nie sect’s benefit, at least at first…

To the Wen sect, then.

Only…

It seemed the heavens knew what he was thinking.

The way to the west was as dire and gloomy as the way to the east was impassable; it was as if fate itself was telling him that this path was not the right one, that he was making a mistake, that it would bring him only doom in the end.

Meng Yao was determined, not insane: upon realizing that he was up against something far stronger than himself, something that could detect not only his actions but his intentions, he at once changed his direction and headed straight back towards the Nie sect – back towards Hejian, back towards the Nie sect, back towards Nie Mingjue.

Predictably, the moment he changed his destination, the sun came out, the clouds cleared…even the flowers seemed to be blooming more brightly.

Meng Yao glanced at the cheery flowers that he had not noticed earlier, despite his near-perfect memory, and shivered before hurrying on his way.

If nothing else, he reassured himself, Nie Mingjue would surely have some answer to his highly unusual predicament. After all, what were cultivators good for if not for dealing with the strange and unusual?

“The sect leader has returned to the Unclean Realm,” the commander tells him when Meng Yao arrived at the front line at Hejian, sneering and turning away in disdain. Before he left the tent, he tossed some words over his shoulder, resentful sneer twisting his face: “He left word that you could join him there, if you happen to be in the area.”

Meng Yao was pretty sure whatever bad luck beast lurked in his shadow was appeased by him being back amidst the Nie sect, such that he didn’t need to worry about tripping over misfortune any longer, but there were, he thought as he glanced at the arrogant Nie sect commander who thoroughly despised him, other things that one might need to worry about.

So he went to the Unclean Realm.

As he went, he wondered what it was that was so important that it drew Nie Mingjue away from his battlefield. There was no one who hated the Wen sect more, no one more committed to the Sunshot Campaign’s success – no one more dutiful or concerned for his sect disciples’ well-being. Nie Mingjue would never risk their lives for some selfish reason…though admittedly, now that Meng Yao thought about it, he couldn’t recall having seen the marks of any recent battle nearby. It was as if the Wen sect had temporarily put a pause there, and instead chose to focus their efforts in other places while waiting for Nie Mingjue to return.

That was surely impossible.

Wasn’t it?

When Meng Yao approached the Unclean Realm, he was temporarily concerned that he would encounter something strange there – some seemingly delicate mysterious lady hidden in the unseasonal fog with a smile that stretched too widely and nails that were sharp enough to pierce skin, a vicious undying beast seething with resentment and roaring with rage, a legion of fierce corpses like one of Wei Wuxian’s armies – but there was nothing like that.

There wasn’t anything unusual at all.

There wasn’t even an absence of anything to make it unusual. There were still the usual set of farmers and merchants, talking and going about their days; there was noise and bustle and all the things in the world that screamed normal – it was as if the only thing that was odd was Meng Yao himself, but that couldn’t be.

“Welcome,” the guard at the gate of the Unclean Realm, a tall and deep-voiced woman, said to him when he arrived. “You’ve come just in time.”

“Just in time?” Meng Yao asked, not really paying attention – he was still looking over his shoulder as if he could try to look at the completely normal town not far away, as if he could feel someone following him. “For what?”

“The sect leader is paying respects to his ancestors, along with the rest of the inner sect.”

Meng Yao wanted to curse – of course it would be something like that. Perfect Nie Mingjue, always the filial son; naturally he would come away from the battlefield meant to protect the living in order to honor the dead.

“Then it’s not for me,” he said, a little impatiently. What a waste of time it had been to come here; who knew how long they’d be busy praying? “I’m not surnamed Nie.”

“That isn’t,” the guard said mildly, “the criteria.”

Meng Yao stopped.

He turned to look at the guard: a woman, as he’d noticed earlier, tall and husky, with thick arms that looked as though they could rip you in two with barely any effort, and – and this was the key point, such a key point that he couldn’t believe he’d missed it earlier – no saber.

The woman smiled at him.

He took a step back on instinct. It wasn’t a nice smile, wasn’t meant to be a nice smile, and he was increasingly unsure that this woman or woman-like creature was even capable of something that was anything less than fierce and vicious.

“Who are you?” he asked.

Her heavy head swung slowly from side to side like a pendulum.

Meng Yao realized he could not see the features on her face clearly. They were obscured as if through a fog, like the ghost he had been afraid of earlier, only there was no fog in the way between them – it was his eyes themselves that would not focus, as if she were some ghostly shade or terrifying beast that he could not bear to bring himself to gaze upon directly.

“Are you the reason everything – the reason for everything happening as it has?” he asked, and wondered if asking what she was would be rude. “For why I’m trapped?”

“You trapped yourself,” she said. “You owe a debt. How can you leave before it is paid?”

A debt? How could he, who only just recently joined, owe the Nie sect a debt? How could the universe itself twist itself like fried dough, summoning the rain and the wind, and all for the Nie sect’s benefit?

“You asked the heavens themselves to witness your oath. Do you not remember?”

Meng Yao took a step back.

“I swore no oath to the Nie sect,” he protested, mind scrambling back through everything he did. Joining the Nie sect had been easy in this time of chaos and war, each sect desperately recruiting anyone with the potential for cultivation, and they had not demanded anything so serious. Even his promotion had been instigated by Nie Mingjue, and he himself, keeping his eventual goal in mind, had made no promises… “I didn’t!”

She smiled at him again.

She was taller now, Meng Yao suddenly thought. Or was it that he hadn’t noticed it before? Yet how could he not have noticed – surely no mortal woman could be so tall or so fearsome, with brow veiled with the wild haze of war and hem dipped with ever-refreshing blood?

“Remember,” she said, and it was a command, as irresistible as any that Nie Mingjue had shouted in a battlefield, that mighty voice somehow always able to pierce through the clamor. “Remember.”

Meng Yao remembered.

He had not sworn any oath to the Nie sect, that much was true.

But in another life – a life he had not yet lived – had he not sworn one to Nie Mingjue himself?

Had he not sworn to be true to his sworn brothers, then and in the future, and to be condemned by both heavens and man alike should he betray that truth? Had he not bowed before heavens and earth? Had he not petitioned that they bear witness to his oath, and serve to enforce it?

He had.

He just hadn’t thought it meant anything.

Just politics, he’d thought back then, disdainful as he was of all things that had failed to help him as much as he wanted them to. He had justified his betrayal to himself in a hundred ways and more, in that scant decade of peace he had won for himself before it had all come crashing down – every time he’d woken from nightmares, he had lied to himself that Nie Mingjue had betrayed him first by failing to support him; he had told himself that his actions were justified or justifiable, that they were understandable, that he could be forgiven for doing what he had done.

He had not been forgiven.

His reputation had been ruined, his achievements torn down, and he had been condemned by all the people, with Nie Huaisang standing at their head and pointing the finger at him, the first to denounce him, and there had been Nie Mingjue’s own undying anger there to seal his fate once and for all – that once-great man reconstituted once again, defying all odds, a raging beast that would not die no matter how he tried. In that frenzied time before his death, he had in fact thought more than once of that damnable oath he had sworn so long before, about how it seemed that all those threatened penalties had finally come true in the end…

All those penalties, but one.

After all, had he not sworn to face the anger not only of the people, but of the heavens, too?

“You will do better this time,” the goddess said, for that was what she must be. Meng Yao fell on his knees before her, pressing his forehead to the ground to avoid looking directly at her – his eyes had started to burn, as if he had tried to stare down the sun in the sky. It was the effect Wen Ruohan had tried so hard to achieve, and yet all of his overweening force was nothing in comparison with the real thing. “Everything you took for yourself, you will pay back. Everything you lost, you will earn once more, and hand over with your own two hands. You will pay your debt.”

Another terrible smile.

He wasn’t even looking at her, but he could feel it blazing above his head, burning into his mind.

“This time, you will not break faith.”

Meng Yao covered his head, terrified, abruptly convinced that it was all a lie and that he was about to be utterly destroyed, his soul torn to pieces and damned to never again enter the cycle of reincarnation.

He wasn’t.

A heartbeat. Then another, and another – he looked up.

There was no one there.

He was alone.

No woman, no ghost, no beast, no goddess – just him, him alone, kowtowing in sincerely meant apology towards the gate of the Unclean Realm.

“Meng Yao?”

Meng Yao nearly fell over sideways in his hurry to scramble to his feet and get away, only to realize that he recognized that voice.

“…Huai- ah, Nie-er-gongzi?” he asked as Nie Huaisang blinked owlishly at him. He’d nearly slipped up and called him by name, the way he had in that future that wasn’t. “I thought you were at the Cloud Recesses…?”

“I came back for a little bit. Family thing, you know how it is,” Nie Huaisang said carelessly. “But enough about me! What about you, what are you doing here? I thought da-ge said that you were off acting as a courier, down in the south..?”

“I came back,” Meng Yao said, and stuck his shaking hands behind his back. “I’ve reached a decision, you see. I want to join the Nie sect as a real disciple.”

Nie Huaisang blinked again. “Really?” he asked. “Are you sure? If you do that, you’d have to foreswear any alliance you have to the Jin sect once and for all. Da-ge said…”

“I know what your da-ge thinks,” Meng Yao said. Because he could see what I really wanted, from the very start. He was always the hardest to fool. “But it’s fine. I think…”

He trailed off, looking for words to say what he meant.

It wasn’t just the goddess’ implicit threat, the warning of the heavens themselves. With everything he remembered, everything he had done in his last life, the life he’d not-lived and yet recalled with perfect clarity…it was painfully clear now that the Jin sect would only ever be a dead end for him. He’d reached the pinnacle of power, arrayed himself in glory, acted humble and did all the right things, said all the right words, play-acted at righteousness and made everyone believe him, and in the end it had still brought him nothing.

In the end, Nie Huaisang had torn away all his illusions.

“I think this is where I’m meant to be,” he said, and for the first time maybe even really believed it. “I want to stay.”

“I’m so glad!” Nie Huaisang exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “Oh, da-ge will be so happy…come with me, I’ll lead you to him. You picked a good time for it, we’re all here – once da-ge is done worshipping his ancestors on the back mountain, he’ll come back to the sect and we can induct you in right away. And then we’ll be family for real, you and me and him…ah, Meng Yao, won’t that be wonderful?”

Meng Yao rolled the word ‘family’ inside his mouth, letting it sit on his tongue and savoring the taste like a sip of fine wine. Even to the end of his days at Lanling Jin, not one of his blood-related cousins had ever offered him that so-simple word that the Nie sect handed out as if it were nothing.

“Yes,” he said, and noted to his bemusement how Nie Huaisang’s look of satisfaction made him look, for just a moment, like a grinning fox. “Yes, I think it will be.”

#mdzs #meng yao #jin guangyao #nie mingjue #nie huaisang #first madame nie #maybe #my fic #my fics #hotel california #Nie sect - such a lovely place

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nostalgicatsea · 3 years

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The second episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier showed Bucky's white privilege, and I hope people acknowledge rather than ignore it just because it’s uncomfortable. I’ve already seen people do that or worse as mentioned in my previous post.

Bucky is a great example that it’s not only evil people or people we dislike but also good people—people we count as allies or even friends—who benefit from whiteness. I would rather have that instead of some sanitized “woke ally” Bucky who can never do wrong. Bucky is human and like everyone else, he has room to learn and grow. That's better than insisting he would be woke about everything.

Just by existing, both Sam and Bucky are affected by systemic racism. Sam is oppressed and Bucky benefits, however passively or actively. We see that play out in several ways with Bucky this episode because he:

doesn't understand the situation with the cops and even though you can talk about the way that Bucky is treated by the government and law enforcement, you can't ignore how the cops gently guide him into the car and treat him with respect, apologizing, calling him "Mr. Barnes," and showing how reluctant they are to take him in

berates Sam for Sam's decision to give up the shield when, as Sam says, he has no right to tell Sam what he should do and neither Bucky nor Steve would understand

doesn't, in fact, get Sam's decision and makes the situation about Steve and himself. Is it understandable that he does? Yes. Does it change the fact that he makes it about himself rather than think about Sam's position? No

totally misreads how Sam would feel about seeing Isaiah or how it would affect Isaiah to talk about his trauma

most likely didn't consider the possibility that Isaiah is a victim of the government, not just a man affected by war or his time as a supersoldier

got therapy and a nice enough apartment unlike Isaiah who didn't get any help or any apology or redress for the wrongs committed against him: being experimented on, imprisoned for three decades, and exploited and harmed by both the U.S. government and Hydra throughout those years

Bucky wasn't intentionally being ignorant or trying to hurt anyone, but it doesn't matter. It's because of his white privilege that he's afforded better treatment than Sam and Isaiah. It's because of his white privilege that he has never had to think about what it's like to be them. He doesn't read the situation with the cops properly, and if his and Sam's situations were reversed, Sam most likely would have been assaulted or shot and killed at worst or roughly manhandled at best. He wrongly assumed that it wouldn’t bother Sam to meet Isaiah or thought it would only make him uncomfortable, probably no more uncomfortable than Bucky was about Isaiah’s situation. (Why he thinks talking to Isaiah will help, I don’t understand. It's not like Isaiah would have information about supersoldiers that Bucky, a supersoldier himself, wouldn't or information about the Flag Smashers. That group appeared recently. The Korean War was 70–73 years ago, and most likely Isaiah got out of prison in the ‘80s or ‘90s, depending on how long he was active after the war, decades before 2023.)

It all backfires because Bucky didn't know what happened to Isaiah. He vaguely knew that Isaiah had a rough time but didn't know the details; you can tell he didn’t by how he reacts to Isaiah's story. He didn't think of asking Isaiah how he got his powers and what happened to him after the war before showing up at his house.

Bucky made huge assumptions that ended up hurting Isaiah and Sam, good intentions or not, and in my opinion, that naïveté and ignorance stem from white privilege. He probably assumed that Isaiah volunteered to get the serum and it worked out because Isaiah was a good person and the U.S. were the "good guys" in the war. They weren't Hydra, and Isaiah was a U.S. soldier who fought against him when he was the Winter Soldier. It never crossed his mind that Isaiah's situation could have been drastically different from Steve's situation and that the U.S. government could have abused and abandoned a hero like Isaiah so badly.

Although this is a big extrapolation on my part, I don't think it's that much of a stretch to say. Had Bucky thought this was the case, I find it extremely unlikely that he would have brought Sam there or wanted to bother Isaiah, at least without advance warning. If anything, as @fahbee mentioned in their reblog of the original, unedited version of this post, he might have looked at the gap in Isaiah’s life when he was in prison and assumed that Hydra or some other evil entity had captured and held Isaiah as a POW during that time. That is, if there was a gap; that’s plausible, but it’s also plausible that Isaiah was imprisoned under false charges and those charges appear on his record. The government has done that and still does that to many black people in real life. Either way, Bucky never would have thought that the U.S. government was responsible for Isaiah’s suffering.

Meanwhile, even though Sam is shaken to discover that a black supersoldier existed decades ago, I don't think he finds what happened to Isaiah surprising. Consider his reaction to Bucky’s when Isaiah tells them what happened and the fact that the U.S. has a history of experimenting on, exploiting, and abusing black men. Sam sees what the U.S. government did to a black man they experimented on and used, and he's broken over Isaiah...and for himself.

Isaiah is the living embodiment of Sam's conflicted feelings about the U.S. and the Captain America title. Who's to say that that won't be Sam too when they don't want or need him anymore? How can Sam be the symbol of a country who has harmed and continues to harm people like him? There's so much grief, pain, and anger there versus Bucky's cluelessness. Even after their meeting with Isaiah when he and Sam are in the therapy session together, Bucky doesn't connect the dots or understand Sam's feelings and inner turmoil at all.

As I said, I love how they included Bucky's white privilege because sometimes, it's not always as obvious as a white banker refusing to give a black family a loan or cops treating an innocent black man as a threat and escalating the situation (though sadly, some people have managed to miss even these overt examples of racism). Sometimes it's what I said above. I would rather see Bucky learn and grapple with racism and white privilege than see performative wokeness or an innate, intuitive understanding of racism in all its forms.

How Bucky moves in the world is different from how Sam does, and it serves as another way to demonstrate how Sam is very much black in this universe. That's why you can't ignore, minimize, or attempt to change (do NOT give me what-if scenarios about Bucky being a white ally) Bucky's actions and thoughts as well as how the world treats him because The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is very much a series about what it means to be black in America and what it means for Sam, a black man, to become Captain America.

#sam wilson #bucky barnes #meta #tfatws spoilers

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