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obsessive-valentine · 5 months

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Are your request open? Can I request a sequel to Barbarian?

I know he's kind and everything but I don't think I could give in to him 100%, like yes, probably return the kindness but never love him. Reader feels a lot of guilt about the attack and I think that after the event and realizing that they didn't have much to do in the situation, they just felt numb about everything, living on autopilot except when they are with their dog.

This is just my interpretation and basically a self insertion sorry haha.

I would love to know about their daily lives! Does the barbarian take reader to war with him? (If you delve deeper into my idea) Would he realize that reader doesn't talk to him much? Would he be jealous of the dog?

Requests are always open, I love to hear about people’s thoughts on my silly little characters lol.

I did focus more on the barbarians perspective on the relationship rather the actual complexity of the whole thing and psychological depth of it all, it was a rather shallow Drabble but I’d love to expand more on his character. I’ll see if I come up with any domestic short stories for him in the coming weeks, love that idea thanks :)

Yandere!Barbarian X GN!Reader Headcanons

The barbarian himself isn’t a good person, morally or in any other way, and he knows that. He understands what he’s done to you -pulled you away from everything you’ve ever known or loved leaving it all in tatters- he understands he’s killed innocent and guilty all the same and will continue to do so for the clan to thrive. And he doesn’t feel bad about any of it.

He definitely tries to sympathise with how his greed effects you, but, he doesn’t regret his actions but does understand to an extent how hard this is for you. This is why he tries to over compensate by gift giving and finding it within himself to be gentle and patient, so as not to damage you further (despite that being the polar opposite of how he was raised).

He’s not super emotionally intelligent so doesn’t really know what to do aside from the above. Anyone with common sense will learn fast that they can’t fight him off so it’s very possible to become numb and retreat into the mind. If you wont retreat into his arms he will try make it so you feel comfort in his tent that way you’re not always on autopilot but enjoying a craft or something in your quiet tent if even just for a hour.

Honestly though he doesn’t really mind if you’re on autopilot but does expect you to tolerate him, so if you are adamant on distance or fighting him you might trigger his temper. Like pulling and tugging you around, making you sleep in the same bed no exceptions, raising his voice to remind you who you’re trying to challenge etc.

A very tearful darling is a whole other situation, he cant stand seeing you cry, he’d be sobbing, crying, throwing up on the inside while trying to maintain a poker face and think up a solution.

Onto a lighter topic, the barbarians do move camp every few weeks and that includes reader (dont worry he never makes you walk) they don’t have a permanent home just their tents though our barbarian does intend to settle down at some point once the fighting becomes to much hassle for his ageing bones. But never once does he imagine bringing you into one of his raids, rebellions or battles.

He leaves you at camp with the members that aren’t participating that particular day (like the few women, elders or barbarians that just didn’t go-nobody’s forced to fight every battle, just to pull their weight). And of course your beloved wolf dog who he doesn’t regret, he doesn’t get jealous easily especially of the dog he got you for the soul purpose of cheering you up, if he can’t cheer you up at least the dog can and that’s a win in his books.

He’s really not high maintenance, as long as at the end of the day he load up your plate with his finest hunt and sit near you while you both eat, watching whatever fight breaks out in the clan from a safe distance before he has to eventually step in. There’s not much entertainment in the middle of the woods during the evening so you both take what you can get even if it’s drunken fight.

Maybe he takes you and the dog out for walks or fetch if it gets really boring at camp. Will bring you the best stick he finds for you to play fetch with the dog, he sees how much the dog means to you so he treats it with utmost respect. He’ll let you have control over this one little thing in your life for your own sakes.

Therefore while he would prefer you to love him truly, he doesn’t expect it (mostly because half the time he can’t tell the difference between your compliance and you showing affection), doesn’t stop him from trying though. He’s a saint compared to the barbarians before him... only for you though.

#Yandere barbarian #x reader #yandere #yandere oc

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wishingicouldfly · 4 months

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Why I Believe Larry Is Real

It’s been a long time since I’ve done one of my opinion essays. This week I was asked to justify my belief that Larry is real, and that Harry and Louis are together. It feels like it’s time.

::cracks knuckles::

I’ve thought about how to reply to the demand, which came from someone on X (formerly Twitter). I cannot compel someone who isn’t inclined to believe in Larry to suddenly change their mind. If someone doesn’t want to interpret the signs the same way I do, that’s their prerogative. But that said, I decided to give some thought about how to answer the question.

I’ve been inspired by IndiaAlphaWhiskey and her recent reply to a similar question. I loved the way she answered by talking about long term love and how it’s steady and doesn't need to have a lot of fireworks visible from the outside. It’s hard to put that into words that make sense to someone who hasn’t witnessed it. Here’s her original reply:

The reality is we do not have solid proof that they were or - as I believe - still are in a relationship. Nor should we. H&L are closeted celebrities who keep their private life private. They are closeted, so you won’t see them admitting to being in a relationship in interviews; that would defeat the point of being closeted. In fact, you may think you’ve heard them outright deny being together. Again, if you’re not looking at the clues, and you only want to take this at face value, you’re not going to see any other possible narrative. Full stop. If that’s the case, you’re not going to agree with me, and that’s fine.

If you really want to go down a rabbit hole, my friend @bkatie617 keeps a running spreadsheet on perceived coincidences in the current era.

https://x.com/BKatie617/status/1739715223244742755?s=20

I can list out a hundred things that, to me, are coded messages H&L have signaled to either us or to each other. You can debunk/deny/laugh-out-loud at all of them, if you want. You might call something coincidence or debunk one or more of these pieces. And yes, there are things out there that aren’t true, that are completely coincidence or debatable – or wildly unbelievable.

I get that. In fact, I have a whole thread of debunks on my Twitter bio. My debunk thread focuses on factual, hard-proof debunks to help veterans and newcomers keep the story straight.

https://x.com/Rosann_1986/status/1670101749267406848?s=20

But there are a hundred more things that are real. Or at least open to interpretation. At some point, it becomes really, really unlikely that everything is a coincidence over the last decade, and you have to admit that H&L are in collaboration with their messaging. For me, once you admit they are in collaboration in their messaging, it doesn’t take a huge leap to believe they are together romantically. Why else would their teams coordinate messaging to the media and the masses?

Harry even said, in 2022, “There’s not many [clues and tidbits] that get left behind. Most of the time, they usually pick up on pretty much everything, along with a couple of hilarious coincidences that were never meant to be, never meant to be kind of clues in the first place that happen… end up being clues.”

Source: Harry Styles talks to the Morning Mash Up about his new single, 'As It Was', Coachella, and more (siriusxm.ca)

You don’t have to believe any of it. I’m fine with that. But because you don’t believe it, doesn’t mean I’m not completely, unwavering, solidly adamant in my own belief that it’s real. Especially if you’re not providing any evidence to sway my beliefs.

Here’s what I think: I think Harry and Louis met and fell in love during X-Factor in 2010, began dating, and continued to fall while on the X-Factor tour and the recording of the first single and album. I believe they made it official in 2011. Over the years, they went through hard times through career changes, loss of family members, solo career ups and downs, differences in career trajectory, doubts and fears, and then the pandemic. I believe they weathered all that and are together and committed to this day.

I think they live a private life and have no intention of coming out or going public any time soon. Harry said to Rolling Stone last year that he hasn’t publicly “been with anyone.” I also think, even though they are determined to stay private, they like the idea of some fans knowing and supporting them. Seeing their true, authentic selves. So, they’ve gotten good at messaging their truth to fans who want to see it and support it.

Due to industry pressure and 'image' clauses in their contract, I think they were encouraged by record execs and management to keep their relationship quiet, but rebelled (as teenagers, young adults, and fools in love will do) by insinuating double meanings in interviews and signaling to those in the know ever since.

I think the signaling started in One Direction days when fans began to pick up on the signs they gave each other - the secret looks, the thumbs up, their complementary tattoos.

When they saw fans remaining loyal, despite the idea they might be gay/queer and together, the signals turned more outward and louder, with Harry’s blue bandana, lyrics, the rainbow bears, and more. I think it continues today with graphic t-shirts, even more lyrics, matching merch, intentional mirroring in stage lighting and costumes, and more.

Evidence Larry are together Now

Understand that there’s no solid “proof” that H&L are together now. So, if that’s what you’re here looking for, you won’t find it. They are closeted still, both portraying a heterosexual narrative in the media.

My lens (admittedly biased) is that they are together and hint to us, but that most of what they do these days is for each other. Little inside jokes from across the world or across the room to show they are together. Despite them being separated for work a lot, I believe these little nods to each other helps keep their connection healthy and strong across the time apart.

What follows is a small sampling of what I think is intentional messaging from H&L, meant to suggest to those following that they are still together. Nothing is a proof. Nothing by itself is anything more than coincidence. But taken together, these along with other examples, show two men who are speaking through their actions, in my humble opinion.

They have strikingly similar patterns in their merch for FITF and HSLOT.

Harry’s merch looks like it would be comfortable at Louis’ show.

Harry drew H and L on his trainers on May 10, 2022 on a pap walk in Italy.

Both Harry and Louis used some of the same songs for their pre- and post-show playlists. https://www.tumblr.com/bluewinnerangel/702446259292831744/do-you-see-any-commonalities-between-harry-and

They both had really intentional blue/green stage lights at their shows. For anyone who doesn’t know, blue and green were their respective assigned colors when they were in One Direction. Certainly not a proof on its own but coupled with other things adds to the intentionality.

Complementary stage outfits. See this whole thread by @grete418 on X. It’s tongue in cheek, but it demonstrates what I mean about outfits matching/complementing each other. https://twitter.com/Grete418/status/1536453046611369989

Harry dressed as Danny Zuko at Harryween 2022 (coincidentally, Louis’ one and only lead role in a high school musical). https://twitter.com/UpdateHLD/status/1587297649572585473

Louis namechecked his unreleased song “All Along” in September 2022 (here at about 5:20), which strongly references Harry and a concert they attended together.. https://youtu.be/D9NjoMuz5-s?si=eRB-FwLI9JveMK3N

Louis wearing his 'dancing man' top when the 'dancing Harry' figure is so well known.

Similar visual themes like this. Same assignment, different execution. (Harry’s House/Silver Tongues):

Louis’ new tattoos (2023) appear to be images already seen on Harry’s journal cover and eye motif from HSLOT, plus they add to the existing traditional nautical motif they share.

T-shirt in Music Video for Music for a Sushi Restaurant reading LT Seniors.

Louis used fan images of Harry’s tattoos as Spotify cover art in February 2021.

Lyrics that seem to respond to each other, and/or have similar themes

Louis wears a rose (like Harry’s tattoo) on his shirt on 6/26/23…next night Harry wears a very phallic shaped rocket ship that looks a lot like Louis’ dagger tattoo. Seems like a call and response.

Louis singing 7 by Catfish and the Bottlemen, on both his tours. The song begins, “Larry call a load of smoke in…”

So there you have it. I could obviously go on for quite a bit, with many more examples, but I think this is a pretty good sampling. If you’d like to know more, or talk about it, feel free to DM me here or on X (@Rosann_1986). I don’t do this to try to change anyone’s mind. If you don’t believe they are doing these things intentionally, and aren’t curious or approaching this with an open mind, nothing I say will change that for you.

If you’re new here and you’d like to learn more, there are a lot of places to find master posts. Understand that you have to take everything with a grain of salt and come to your own conclusions. Here are a few places to start:

(2) Be a lover. Give love. Choose love. on Tumblr

It’s a beautiful war 🌈 (tumblr.com)

Great lyric analysis here: it's subjective - My song analyses Last edited December 22nd 2022,... (tumblr.com)

#larries #harry styles #louis tomlinson #why I think they are together #they are married #they love each other #closeted #they never broke up

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cafecourage · 2 months

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Can I have King! Time trying to find Reader who's hiding from him during a gala?

Any interpretation of this is fine! 🥰🥰

Yes ma’am!! And I’m making this targeted. Love you <3

Author smirks at him, “why not? I’ll be at Prince Sky’s birthday party. Find me and maybe I’ll consider your courtship.” It’s a dare Time couldn’t find himself refusing, with all his life he has never met anyone like the benevolent Author.

The day she came into his life the wheels of his fate started to turn once again. Slowly the day to day grind of his immortal life brightens as he had her to look forward to. Time was quick originally to have the Author as an ally, as he was getting too caught up in government work to help his citizens. He trusts her with his kingdom wholeheartedly.

Which is what led him to this problem to begin with. As a dragon by nature Time was greedy, he wanted to claim Author as a part of his horde and court her offically. Techically he has already put a claim on her, but it was more like a way for the castle's staff to know she had his permission to be in the castle.

But now…. now it's different. Time wants to properly court the human, and while he wasn’t regected outright, he wasn’t given a yes. “Fine.” He finally says after a bit, it wouldn’t be fun now to instantly track you down. After all, he has the whole timeline in his hands to watch. “But as to not make this boring for either of us. I won't use my magic, and limit my dragon sense.”

The Author's face went from confident to confusion, but in the end she went with it. What’s the point of a hunt if it's over in 5 seconds after all?

Honestly he wasn’t going to join the ball for all that long originally. His normal routine would have been to say hello to those he knows and leave to more quieter areas. Then when the party dies down reappears like he has been there the whole time and leaves officially.

This party was also going to be the most chaotic one he has seen so far. With not only Author coming in her civilian form. Time was pretty sure he noticed a familiar witch pass by him.

That wasn’t his problem tonight. He silently just wishes Sky luck as the prince was dragged off. Time turns to scan the crowd now that most if not all guests have arrived. Time couldn’t help but wonder if Author was watching him, waiting to see if he would figure it out.

For once Time didn’t know how to start with this, his sense of smell is limited since the room is full of people and dragons. So it was by vibes and vibes alone. Which he assumed it was the point of all of this game. Moving to the buffet table as he wanted a drink hopeful he can get rid of the small migraine he was suffering from.

He was looking through the crowd only half looking for the Author. The night was still young and he still had time to look for her, he watched as Twilight socializes more with people his age. While even though his Nephew was being tormented by his friends in a slightly polite way but Time was proud of. His gaze shifts to the other people on the sidelines.

Someone catches his attention.

A royal blue he was familiar with flutters and weaves through the crowd almost making a bee line to the balcony. Time’s curiosity peaks as most of the time if someone did that something happened. He put down his wine and head out to follow the lady. Mainly just incase something did happen he could let Sky know. The prince is a no nonsense person so he wouldn’t want anyone to be harassed at his own party.

The cool air was a relief to his small headache, it was nice to have peace and quiet. Time reminded himself he wasn’t here for peace though. He looks around for a second before noticing a small figure in the corner resting on a bench. He wanders over causally as he tries to assess the situation. The Lady doesn’t look hurt, or sad, or angry. She just looked tired. Her dress while Time couldn’t confirm due to poor lighting also looked fine so he could check harassment off for now.

“Mind some company?” He asks gaining the attention of the other guest.

She looks up at him wide eyed before straighten up. “Of course your highness.” She said softly as she moves to the side for him to sit.

“Please don’t worry about formalities.” Time saids as he sits downs “is everything ok?” He asks as that was the reason why he was here.

“No!” She looked panicked a bit “I mean… I’m just tired. I haven’t been to one of these in a while.”

Time hums and looks at the windows into the ballroom. “Understandable. I don’t particularly like these types of events either.” He shrugs “but I am here for my boy and friends. Unfortunately I can’t leave.”

This earns a small laugh from her that made his heart flutter a bit. “I guess even the King needs to let his hair down.” She said looking up at him with a small sparkle in her eyes.

Time’s brain had to reboot itself as he knew this person. He didn’t realize his scent is on her because he was so overloaded from being inside. “May I ask why are you here?” He said not giving away much but his suspicions were growing.

“I was going to meet someone here.” She whispered as if she was worried about something. “But I couldn’t find him.”

“Ah…” That made him feel a bit guilty “I am sorry… for making you wait then.”

“Huh?” They locked eyes, she was in shock while Time couldn’t figure out why. He had already claimed her as apart of his treasure. Courting or not Author was special to Time. He loved her and she helped his kingdom. That realization must of dawned on her. “YOU CHEATED!” She accused him, which made Time burst out into laughter.

#twilight (not lu) speaks #linked universe x reader #luxreader #linkeduniverse x reader #coffee #whats a royal tag?#Royal Jelly #dragon fruit sorbet

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inkykeiji · 1 year

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Ehmm hello! I don't know if I can ask this but how do you see akutagawa in a romantic relationship? What kind of boyfriend would he be hehe. I'd just like to hear your thoughts and headcanons on him , I guess. Thanks in advance and sorry for my English, it's not my mother tongue

hi hi!! you’re totally allowed to ask that! i don’t take requests, but i do welcome suggestions/prompts, and while i don’t answer all of them, any of the ones that make my brain n heart go !!!!!!!!!! get stashed and stored safely in my drafts hehe c:

AH okay i am in love with this question!!! i have many, many thoughts on this topic hehe <33

warnings: toxic traits/relationship, mention of rough sex and kinks at the end (marking, dom/sub dynamic, dacryphilia, degradation + dumbification, etc).

words: 1.9k of me literally rambling about aku

akutagawa in a relationship is very interesting because i think there’d be multiple layers to the whole thing; it would be quite complex! i also don’t think a 100% healthy relationship is possible with him, for reasons i’ll get into below!

and of course, keep in mind, these are just my personal opinions and interpretations of him!

𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥:

- at the beginning, he is awkward, clumsy, and standoffish. these are all very new, very intense feelings for him, and while he likes them—likes the way warmth seethes pleasantly in his chest whenever you smile at him or call him baby, likes the way his ribs expand with bubbles of sunshine whenever you gaze at him with such pure, potent adoration—they do still frighten/unnerve him to an extent, and he does not know how to properly express + process these emotions of lust and love and compassion. as such, he truly doesn’t know how to act in a romantic relationship, and will most likely end up unintentionally stepping on your toes or hurting you with his actions and his words, purely out of ignorance. he’d feel horribly guilty for these mess-ups, and would learn from them extraordinarily quickly (could also see him researching relationship things on like, google or something lmao).

*a side note here: i believe when akutagawa feels, he feels very intensely; he is apathetic towards a lot of things, but when his emotions sprout, they fucking surge, they take over his body and invade his mind, they are extremely powerful and he cannot ignore them, though he can sometimes reign them in enough to get shit done and momentarily dull them to a constant tugging at the back of his mind

- the possibility of him unintentionally hurting you with his words is particularly large, considering he is incredibly blunt and says exactly what he thinks and means without any regard for the feelings of others. he is extremely honest, and he doesn’t ever sugarcoat his words. the fact that he is quite logical and technical in his thinking patterns only adds to this and his emotional ineptness.

- he is selfish! he feels very possessive and protective over you, well past the point of normal or healthy. it almost bleeds into yandere territory; he’s greedy with you and will get jealous extremely easily, extremely quickly. he likes to know where you are at all times, whom you are with, and when you’ll be back, and you can expect constant texts from him while you’re out.

- on that note, once he finally comes to terms with his feelings for you and fully accepts them, he will be incredibly clingy in both the literal and metaphorical sense of the word.

- he doesn’t like your friends. in fact, he doesn’t like anyone who gets to spend time with you and takes you away from him for even a few moments. he is generally cold towards the friends he plainly dislikes and downright hostile towards the ones he hates, the ones who cause his envy to flare and sprout talons and claw at his ribs, the ones he disapproves of, as well as previous exes, if you have any. he genuinely does not see anything wrong with this behaviour and truly believes himself to be doing the ‘right’ thing and what’s best for you (and he knows what’s best for you better than you do, duh).

- he’s touch-starved, and at the beginning any sort of skinship makes him flinch—not because he doesn’t like it (he very much does), but because it’s quite new and unfamiliar to him. he wouldn’t be incredibly interested in PDA, partially because he’s shy and partially because he thinks that’s special and private and just for the two of you to experience, but you can expect his hands on you, or his body touching you, somewhere, someway, all the time when you’re out and about. this could manifest as a hand resting on your lower back, just above the swell of your ass; or an arm twined tightly around your waist, large palm resting on your hip, wrist curled around you; or his thigh slotted up against yours at any event; or his ankle linked with yours beneath the table at a dinner; or your pinkies intertwined; etc.. he just likes to be touching you in these small, soft, subtle ways; it makes him feel calm, it makes him feel grounded, and it makes him feel like he’s visually staking his claim on what’s his for everyone in the immediate vicinity to see without drawing too much attention to himself.

- his starkly defined black-and-white philosophies are immovable and unbreakable, and he holds steadfast to his world views. to me, this steadfast devotion would bleed into other important areas of his life, such as a romantic relationship, which means that he would be incredibly loyal and faithful to you. he’s with you for life, through thick and thin, no matter how angry you make him or how many fights you have, he will not let go of you, and he will always, always defend you against others (aka he’s the only one allowed to criticize you lmao). he may be the mafia’s dog, but he’s your fucking dragon (ew cheesy as heck i know!!! but it’s true!!!).

- he definitely gets in Moods. sometimes you’ll be able to offset these Moods or dispel them (ie. the way gin did with tea n figs), but there will be times where you just have to accept that he’s in a Mood and leave him be.

- on that note, he genuinely does value his space and his alone time. this is of utmost importance to him and he needs you to understand that, as well as understand that it’s nothing personal. he is an introvert in all respects and doesn’t really enjoy being in big crowds or conversations, or loud and hyper spaces. this is just another inherent trait to who he is; he needs his own space to recharge, even from just you.

- his moral compass exists in some vague form, but it is extremely weak. he will take disproportionate revenge on anyone he believes has wronged you.

- he most definitely holds heavy respect for you and holds you in high esteem, but i don’t think he’d think of you as his equal, necessarily. he’d probably consider you to be ever-so-slightly below him; someone who is strong, but needs his guidance and control. someone who would do satisfactorily on their own, but does even better with him. it is because of this that he doesn’t feel inferior to you, irregardless of the fact that he feels inferior to those above him (and, deep inside, himself).

- he’d hate you trying to take care of him when he’s sick or when he’s experiencing a particularly acute flare-up of symptoms, because it makes him feel weak. as far as he’s concerned, it should be him taking care of you, always.

𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬’ 𝐟𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬:

- he has a hair-trigger temper, and you will have to learn how to expertly avoid not tripping it up at any given moment, not accidentally snapping that thin thread. this will take some practice and trial and error, but the thing about akutagawa is that while he is quick to anger and give into the sharp flashes of fury in his chest, he is also fairly easy to calm, as long as the offense wasn’t a serious one. this may just be me thinking wishfully HEHE but i do think that his temper would be subdued by and dulled down in your presence because he truly doesn’t want to get angry at you, hates hurting you over inconsequential things, but has severe difficulty controlling his wrath. this is something i think he’d attempt to work on for you.

- he is extremely stubborn and resilient, especially when it comes to his own personal views, beliefs, ideals, and opinions, and this makes me think he would be absolute hell to be in a fight with because of his sheer willpower; he just absolutely will NOT give up. if he genuinely and wholeheartedly believes he’s right about something, his belief will be unshakable. he’s right, you’re wrong, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. as such, he won’t let things go, especially if you haven’t given into him yet and agreed with him, meaning he will continue to pick at and pull at and press the issue until you really snap, break into pieces and allow him to put you back together his way, the right way.

- he holds grudges. he will, without a doubt, bring up your past mistakes committed against him—things he knows you feel awful about—and wield them as emotional and psychological weapons in a fight, irregardless of how long ago those mistakes were made, irregardless of if you thought the two of you had forgiven and moved past the issue. he plays dirty, and he doesn’t care; it’s all about him winning, him coming out on top, him proving that he was correct all along. he’ll use anything at his disposal to do so.

- he won’t compromise, either. i genuinely think this is just one of his toxic traits, a flaw inherent to who he is as a person, and it’s pretty much non-negotiable. it’s a harsh truth you’d have to accept if you were to date him.

- on the contrary, very rarely, he may back down if his views on the topic or issue at hand have not yet been fully solidified. but once they are, there’s no changing them.

𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐦:

- he fucks viciously, hips pounding hard and rough and fast, with such force that they shove your body up the mattress with each snap, his hipbones slapping your skin so hard it causes your flesh to ripple. he’s always leaving marks across your body, too; with the harsh drag of his teeth over your neck and collarbone and shoulder, or the sharp sinking of his nails and fingertips into your hips and thighs, marring your skin with crops of red streaks and rapidly developing smudges of navy and violet. there’s definitely an element of sadism here but it isn’t nearly on the level of, say, dazai’s sadism.

- i think akutagawa is a dom-leaning switch. he doesn’t like to be told what to do unless it is from a VERY specific person. otherwise, he likes to be in charge, not because he necessarily has those dom caretaker urges but simply because he likes to be The Boss; he likes to have all of the power and the control over you and your body.

- we know he isn’t fond of meaningless torture (which is why i don’t think he’s as sadistic as dazai), however i think his sexual punishments would be absolutely fucking brutal (because these are not meaningless; these have a very important, very specific purpose, in his mind).

- he really enjoys praise and admiration; he wants to hear how good he’s doing, how good his cock feels, how pretty it is, how much you love it, etc.. such compliments tug the most gorgeous little whines from the back of his throat, and are often followed by a jagged growl of more or again.

- his favourite kinks include: marking, bondage, breathplay, cumplay, impact play, dacryphilia, degradation + dumbification (HEAVY), discipline/punishment, cock worship, praise, dry humping, power play (bdsm dom/sub dynamics), orgasm control, and humiliation!

#akutagawa x reader #akutagawa x you #akutagawa headcanons #akutagawa smut #akutagawa ryunosuke x reader #whew that is a lot huh HAHA #i just have so much to say about him!!! he is so interesting!!#anyway anon thank u very much for ur question!#please have a wonderful day and stay hydrated!#inky.bb #clari gets mail #inky.bsd #inky.akutagawa

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aroaceleovaldez · 1 year

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another thing with the first series Great Prophecy I think about a lot - “A half-blood of the eldest gods” could be interpreted so many different ways, and actually “A child of the Big 3″ doesn’t make any sense even in the contexts of the series.

To begin with, “A half-blood of” could mean a direct child, a legacy, or even just a chosen hero. As long as they’re presumably a demigod. We’re presuming half-blood means demigod here but honestly even that could be a vague point. “A half-blood of” does not specify direct descendant.

Then, if we’re saying “the eldest gods,” presuming “Gods” meaning the Olympians specifically, is the children of Kronos, then that means any demigod of any of the children of Kronos should count. Which means that Demeter should have been part of the oath too! But she wasn’t and her children weren’t even considered for the prophecy! And neither was there any consideration for adopted children or chosen heroes of Hera or Hestia! Heck, by that logic, Jason is like, potential prophecy kid squared (son of Jupiter and adopted by Hera/Juno - half-blood of two eldest gods! Plus he was turning 15 the year the Second Titanomachy ended. If Percy ended up not being the one to turn 16 then Jason would have been next. (Or well if we want to get technical Frank would have been next, as a descendant of Poseidon, but then Jason.)

But the thing is, even among the Olympians, the children of Kronos aren’t necessarily the oldest gods. Aphrodite is potentially older, depending on how you frame the timeline and her origin story (which in this case is relatively vague in the PJO universe - we don’t know if PJO Aphrodite is older or younger than Kronos’ children). So if Aphrodite is older than Kronos’ children, her children/descendants/chosen heroes could also potentially be children of the prophecy.

And it doesn’t stop there. Because it’s not specified that “gods” here is specifically restricted to the Olympians. “the eldest gods” could mean gods older than the Olympians, of which there are plenty. I mean, primordial gods? Gods of specific concepts? and that’s just the tip of the iceberg and isn’t even getting into defining “god” and if we’re counting like, the Titans or not (because sometimes they are counted! And sometimes they do have demigod children! Hello Dryas of Calydon, occasional son of Iapetus [aka Bob The Titan]).

And that’s all specifically mythological. If we’re talking historically eldest gods, then that’s a whole different ballpark. To begin with, A CHILD OF HADES THEORETICALLY DOES NOT EVEN QUALIFY TO BE THE CHILD OF THE PROPHECY! That’s right! If we’re going strictly historically eldest gods, then Hades even being part of the oath was completely moot because his children could not be the children of the prophecy! Because as far as we know, Hades does not predate the Greek dark ages! So Percy claiming the prophecy to prevent it from falling to Nico was potentially pointless! Percy on the other hand is then a very strong candidate for the prophecy, because it’s heavily implied his dad is specifically Mycenean Poseidon (”Earthshaker”), who does predate the Greek dark ages. But you know who’s potentially even older? HERMES. Which means Luke could be doubly the child of the prophecy for all we know! Cause the prophecy also does not specify that the child of the prophecy turning 16 is when the prophecy ends, just that they’ll reach 16 against all odds. Heck, if Luke’s first quest was when he was 16, then we can interpret that as when the prophecy begins and that it’s all his prophecy.

#pjo #percy jackson #luke castellan #riordanverse #analysis #long post //

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stoportotouch · 1 year

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we’re doing pathologic musicology again. everybody shut up. i’m sick of writing about bel canto musical traditions and my jstor subscription dies tomorrow i think. so i’m pre-emptively saving pdfs about ethnomusicology.

interesting side effect of the town’s culture being mostly built around cattle rather than horses is that the soundtrack of p2 in particular has essentially ended up creating an entire musical history and lexicon that is identifiably SIMILAR to that of The Area Near The Baikal Rift Valley while being obviously different.

classic’s soundtrack interestingly arrives at a similar point to this with completely different means in that the classic soundtrack is basically just. ‘is it bleeping and blooping? ok sick ship it’, while also borrowing at points quite clearly from the actual musical traditions of the region. which produces the effect in the listener of, basically ‘this should sound... other than how it does? but it makes sense?’

p2′s soundtrack is trying more obviously to do Authenticity in a way that. has historical precedent, certainly (hi borodin). but it is also trying to do that by borrowing from musical traditions that don’t completely mesh with the way that the town’s musical traditions would have developed. because the town-on-gorkhon is very fond of bulls, culturally speaking, and not horses.

a lot of the extant classical music from the area where pathologic is (presumably) set is not only literally About Horses, which are culturally important, but musically refer to the various gaits of The Horse. (this example is in tuvan but it is not only about horses but the 2/4 rhythm is Trotting-Like. buryat music uses similar music and the same scale, and many of the same instruments, as tuvan music.)

this is not something that bulls particularly have, and so while bulls occupy an equivalent cultural position in the town-on-gorkhon this obviously necessitates a completely different musical tradition. which is also one that doesn’t really exist in the real world, but for which vasily kashnikov and theodor bastard have pulled from existing traditions. they have, however, also created an entire musical language that feels like a place’s musical language essentially out of whole-cloth.

the way that they have done this is essentially to take something about the culturally important animal (lowing, for the bulls -- similarly to how actual tuvan, mongolian, baikal, and yakut music refers to horses’ gaits). and then to use that as a basis for the musical ‘world’ of the game, in a similar way to how extant music uses horses. it’s most obviously used in ‘song to boddho’ but a lot of the music in p2 makes a lot of use of drone which could quite easily be interpreted as The Sound That The Local Culturally Important Beast Makes.

(also the p2 soundtrack has a passacaglia in it. this isn’t relevant to this conversation in any way but it’s neat.)

#ollie considers #pathologic #anyway.

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papercute · 2 months

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i am very insane about dead plate and want to rant about the fourth ending. idk if i need to put this here but just in case: spoiler alert for probably all the endings and secrets of dead plate, as well as warnings for violence, murder, and cannibalism.

it really surprises me how vince in the fourth ending doesn’t savour rody, like at all, instead just taking him to the freezer and the eerie sound of sawing playing over the credits. especially since at the beginning of the confrontation in “best served hot”, vince bites off rody’s ear, and then you can see him licking rody’s blood off his hands during their conversation. it’s like he is savouring rody and what he can get of him now that rody is fighting back against him. vince wants to eat rody as part of a dish in order to be able to taste again and feel whole. and yet, when he sees rody is slipping out of his grasp, he immediately resorts to just eating him live, portraying desperation and a willingness to just forgo his plans and start eating.

so when the player is too slow to fight off vince and he finally gets the opportunity to stab rody as he’d wanted to, it surprises me that he is still composed enough to just take him to the freezer and prepare him like any other slab of meat. rody is very obviously special to vince in some way, so it feels off to me that he treats rody in the same way he treated manon, who vince admits to not caring about. i honestly expected him to just start eating then and there. to pin rody down as he inevitably struggles and screams and just start ripping into him with his teeth.

though, with how special rody clearly is to vince, it could also make sense that he takes him back to the freezer to cut him up; preparing him properly as a meal instead of just eating him with no preparation or anything could be interpreted as a compliment or special treatment. but i still think this is too logical of a decision for vince in his current, desperate state. as in this ending, we (both rody and the player) are seeing vince in his truest form: his most monstrous and uncontrolled, so i don’t think at this point he would have had the sense to go prepare rody like an actual dish. i think he would have been to focused on the eating part and would just skip right to it.

i also think that this would be fitting because of how it continues vince’s harsh but intimate behaviour towards rody. vince is always rude but when rody comes to work soaking from the rain on day 2, vince dries rody personally, even though rody is very capable of scrubbing himself with a towel. and when rody drops the rubbish, vince slaps him, before immediately wrapping up rody’s (really quite minor) cut himself. again, rody would have been capable of caring for himself, but vince insists on taking care of him. and then there’s the intimacy of vince inviting rody to his home after work hours, but then making him work unpaid. pinning rody down after fatally injuring him and then consuming him felt fitting because of this; the physical closeness and the sexual connotations of vince putting his mouth to rody’s skin contrasted against the violence and danger of it all feels like a suitable escalation of their previous interactions.

but i do understand this ending in it’s original form from a gameplay perspective — a player who hasn’t gotten the hang of fending off vince in order to get their desired ending doesn’t want to watch another super long cutscene with more live cannibalism if they’re disturbed by that sort of thing, they just want to get back to their save point and try again. or maybe the creator couldn’t or didn’t want to make a scene like that. so i understand it, i just don’t really like it lmao

#dead plate #dead plate vincent #dead plate rody #tw cannibalism #tw violence #dead plate spoilers #rody dead plate #vincent dead plate #vincent charbonneau #rody lamoree

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 1 year

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Do you think is possible if Yuu develop magic?

I don’t think so?? 🤔 In the TWST world, magic is something you have to be born with the capacity for (like, in their DNA?) and it’s clear that Yuu comes from a world where magic doesn’t even exist. I guess maybe it could be a case where their magic doesn’t manifest until triggered or when they’re put in an environment which encourages magic, but… I still don’t buy it because I don’t get what that would really add to the story? I guess it’s “cool” to have a POV character that has magic powers, but what purpose does that serve in the narrative and the themes?

Canonically giving Yuu magic somewhat takes away from what makes them “special” in Twisted Wonderland; the point is that they are not meant to have any magic, but that they are still able to be helpful by being the one that gets everyone to work together. Their “power” is not having real powers at all, but rather the ability to lead and get others to cooperate (something Crowley points out in the prologue). This makes Yuu a direct contrast to the TWST boys, who have magic but act haughtily towards others and sometimes use their magic to demonstrate superiority over their peers (think of how many fights break out and how NRC operates on a “the weak obey the strong” mentality). In this way, the characters reflects major motifs of TWST: the importance of bonds over power, right down the the “mirroring”/opposites of Yuu and the rest of the cast. The final battle most likely won’t have Yuu suddenly gaining magic and then pitching in with everyone else to defeat the Big Bad, it’s everyone else coming together due to their shared experiences to defeat a common enemy, united under friendship.

On a more meta (real world) level, Yuu also isn’t meant to have magic because they’re supposed to be an easy blank slate character to self insert as. If Yuu developed the ability to use magic, then that means they also must have a unique magic/signature spell… which creates an issue with the self-insert appeal of Yuu. UM is closely tied to an individual’s identity, and well… the whole point of Yuu is for them to be generic and NOT have a clear identity so the players can each make their own “Yuu”. Even seemingly little details like how good or how bad Yuu canonically is at certain magic-related tasks could interfere with the player’s immersion or “relatability” with a self insert, especially if it doesn’t align with their own interpretation.

Some players may have their own Yuus that do develop magic or could use magic to begin with. However, these are, again, personal interpretations for Yuu made for fun and are not meant to be the exact same as the standard Yuu introduced to us. (For example, some fandom Yuus often make decisions which wildly change the direction of the main story, or interact very differently with the characters.) It makes sense for fans to give their own Yuus magic because those Yuus have more personality and background than the blank slate Yuu in the actual game.

#twst #twisted wonderland #twst theory #twst theories #twisted wonderland theory #twisted wonderland theories #disney twisted wonderland #Yuu #notes from the writing raven #question #Dire Crowley

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tallerthantale · 3 months

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What Does Aziraphale Actually Believe, Part 7: Armageddidn’t Begins

This is a series of my takes on what Aziraphale believes through the timeline of the show. It is all my personal interpretation, and I am happy to hear others. You don’t need to read them all in order, but know that I am coming from a perspective on Aziraphale’s machinations that can be difficult for people without a psychology background to follow without the first two as a primer. The quick version is that Aziraphale has a set of beliefs that exist in some form or another within his mind. However, at any given moment, only some of them exist ‘with awareness’ or as I am putting it here, conscious!Aziraphale only has access to the beliefs that the rest of his mind, veil!Aziraphale, allows him to know about. The context of the moment will determine what lives on the surface and what stays buried behind the veil, whatever arrangement best prevents a threat to Aziraphale’s sense of self and makes whatever he is inclined to do feel right.

This post covers modern Season 1 up to the end of the Bandstand, with the bulk of it on that fight. Its too long. I can't stop myself. I apologise profusely. About 3.3k words.

The Modern Era

We come into the modern era with an Aziraphale who knows he is in love with a demon, knows heaven is run by morally bankrupt stooges, is willing to accept he is represented by shades of light grey, but will still say with a straight face that Armageddon will be heaven’s glorious triumph over evil and it will all be rather lovely.

Crowley doesn’t believe Azriraphale really believes that, and after getting drunk Aziraphale admits he doesn’t like it either. He was trying to convince himself, and it worked for a short time, like some of his temporary beliefs at Uz. Just like he can’t maintain the idea that he is suited to a life in hell, he can’t maintain the idea that Armageddon is good. He still has conflicting feelings about working with Crowley. “Get thee behind me foul fiend” is a joke. “We’re hereditary enemies” isn’t.

Aziraphale agrees to go along with raising the antichrist towards good as long as he can frame it as thwarting evil, and present it to his supervisors as part of his official duties. Once that rationalisation is in place he is practically beaming about the idea of stopping Armageddon by getting to be a positive influence godfather. I think at this point he has convinced himself that the ineffable plan is to prevent the great plan. He is so invested that he is surprised and frustrated that the other angels consider his work doomed to failure.

Doomsweek

The kid's grown up, and Aziraphale and Crowley are workshopping a backup plan. Crowley wants Aziraphale to kill the antichrist. He makes a greater good argument because he knows Aziraphale responds to those sometimes. Aziraphale still insists that he has never killed anything before. The executioner doesn't count. The meat doesn't count. There's no blood on his hands literally, there's no blood on his hands figuratively. Aziraphale doesn't disagree that it would be for the greater good, but he still isn't willing to do it. Neither is Crowley.

On the way to the ex-nunnery Aziraphale gives a whole ass speech about evil containing the seeds of its own destruction. It is very self righteous, and the speech does ingroup Crowley into that evil. He is the one who botched the baby switch over. It's a way for Aziraphale to not worry about the prospect of hell winning the war, as he is trying to accept the inevitability of the great plan. At the same time, I think it was an attempt from Aziraphale to argue that to the extent Crowley was involved in things going wrong, the blame was with the role he was playing as an employee of hell, for which he is not responsible. As in, it wasn't that you were a low quality employee of hell, hell's plans are inherently doomed to failure. I think from Crowley’s perspective it reads as ‘demons will inevitably fuck everything up, it’s what you do.’ Not that different to Aziraphale’s ”you’re a demon, that's [lying] what you do,” from the previous night.

Paintball

I could pretend like we are going to talk about guns giving weight to a moral argument, but honestly their positions here are more for exposition of the way Aziraphale and Crowley’s paired traits often subvert expectations. Aziraphale the angel is more willing to consider violence or the threat of violence worthwhile than Crowley the demon is. The actual merits and disadvantages of absolutist pacifism aren't really something they are hashing out. We’re here for the saucy bits.

While I did enjoy reading the theory that Aziraphale had Crowley time miracle the coat so that it never had the paint in it in the first place, whilst also eliminating Aziraphale’s memory of the paint, I don’t buy it. There was no reason Aziraphale couldn’t just miracle the paint away himself. He still remembers that the paint was there and that Crowley miracled it away. When he rambles about “but I would always know it was there… “ He is spouting nonsense. The pivotal part of the communication is not his flimsy words, it’s him slowly hopping his shoulder towards Crowley’s face while making puppy eyes. ‘But would Aziraphale really just make up obvious lies to Crowley like that?’ you ask. “Is that a travel sweet?” I retort. See this gif breakdown of the paint miracle scene.

Why the act? Because as much as Aziraphale knows he is in love with a demon, he wants Crowley to do all the romancing bits. It’s mirroring the Bastille nonsense, baiting Crowley to come to the rescue. Before he was still lying to himself about his motivations, now he knows them, but can’t speak them. Here there are enough clues for Crowley to figure out what Aziraphale wants him to do, but not necessarily why he wants it, and Aziraphale isn’t ready to have that conversation. See the spicy meta.

Aziraphale continues to regard Crowley to be a nice and good person, who is living in the transient condition of being existentially evil due to his current demonic status. This is pretty out of step with how Crowley views himself, which is its own complicated mess, and it’s something he is touchy about. Enough to make him angry and 'slam' Aziraphale into a wall. Not that Aziraphale regrets any of it for a second. Maybe he regrets getting interrupted.

We get another glimpse at Aziraphale’s conceptualisation of angels and demons. Crowley refers to them both together as occult forces. Entities that are basically the same thing. Aziraphale takes offence to being described as occult, and insists that as an angel he is ethereal. I think these descriptions follow their metaphysical properties, not their professional role. Crowley might call himself a former demon after getting fired, Michael might call Aziraphale a former angel after Aziraphale is sacked, but Crowley is still occult, and Aziraphale is still ethereal. Aziraphale’s concept of abstract existential alignment with good and evil goes to the occult / ethereal distinction, not the professional one.

Aziraphale doesn't tell Crowley he has found the antichrist. In my opinion, this is 100% because he knows Crowley will respond by telling him to kill the antichrist, and Aziraphale already knows he isn't willing to do that. He wants to have his own alternative plan before he tells Crowley. Unfortunately, he's often not very good at the coming up with his own plan part, so the strategy doesn't really work out for him.

Crowley Gives Mixed Messages Too

I think it has been and continues to be Aziraphale’s hope to bring Crowley back to angelic status. And I think there are reasons why he believes Crowley wants that too.

Crowley and Aziraphale are often speaking not quite the same language. They’ve got different exactlys. The Bandstand scene starts right off the bat with a small example.

“Have you found the missing antichrist’s name, address, and shoe size yet?”

“His shoe size, why would I have his shoe size?”

If Crowley spoke Aziraphale’s language a bit better he might have noticed Aziraphale just admitted to knowing the antichrist’s name and address. If he hadn't found any of the facts, he would have just said no. Crowley takes it as sass because that's what it would have been if he had said it himself. This will be the theme of the Bandstand, they each interpret what has been said to them as if it meant what they would have meant if they had personally said it.

Crowley gets shouty about the Great blasted Plan. When Aziraphale responds, “May you be forgiven,” it isn’t just about shaming Crowley for lashing out, Aziraphale is starting to be resigned to the idea that Armageddon will happen, he believes heaven will win, and he doesn’t want Crowley destroyed. Aziraphale is saying 'may you be spared from the destruction of the great plan.'

Crowley responds, “I won’t be forgiven. Not ever. Part of a demon’s job description. Unforgivable, that’s what I am.” Crowley is making a philosophical incision. Aziraphale’s phrasing called to mind forgiveness from an authority outside himself, presumably God. Crowley is commenting that were God to grant that forgiveness, it would create a paradox. When God made Crowley a demon, She declared him unforgivable. God is infallible, so She can’t forgive him without being wrong, and She can’t be wrong. It isn’t meant as a representation of Crowley’s actual opinion, he isn't being self deprecating, it's a statement presented for the sake of argument, to make a dig at something Aziraphale said.

The dig doesn’t land though, because Aziraphale doesn’t parse God with formal logic, She’s motherfucking ineffable. Who said demons are unforgivable? Did they say it with words? Even if it was God Herself, Aziraphale has long understood that God plays messed up games, he just believes there is a greater good at the end. He could believe that God chose to cast Crowley out, proclaim that means he is forever unforgivable, and then later go, 'just kidding, welcome back lol.' It could be a lesson for the other angels, a lesson for the other demons, it could be about putting Crowley in the right place at the right time, it doesn't matter. God is ineffable, and that means Aziraphale can't be told what God thinks by anyone, including God. "That's ridiculous, you're ridiculous, I don't even know why I'm still talking to you."

As he is wont to do, Aziraphale is very quick to take Crowley’s facetious statements at face value if it gets him somewhere he wants to go. Recall, “Oh, you’re an angel, I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.” Now we have Crowley bitterly, resentfully, describing himself as unforgivable specifically because he is a demon. If taken at face value out of context it isn’t that much of a stretch to read it as Crowley essentialising himself as evil, resenting being unforgiven, and thinking being a demon is the evidence that he is unforgivable. Right after Crowley states “unforgivable, that’s what I am,” Aziraphale brings up that he used to be an angel. Crowley brushes it off as having been a long time ago, but never specifies that he wouldn’t want to be one again.

Aziraphale can see as much as the audience can that Crowley likes being able to have the opportunity to do kind things for people but is curtailed by the expectations of his position as a demon. What Aziraphale doesn't see is that the good deeds Aziraphale does for heaven are probably not what Crowley likes doing either.

One of the points that comes up in The Bastille is that Aziraphale gets in trouble for doing too many frivolous miracles. While I don't think that's the real reason he won't miracle himself free, I do believe that the strongly worded note happened. We see modern Aziraphale doing miracles as favours for humans pretty often, fairly recklessly, and I wouldn't be surprised if Aziraphale regularly got in trouble for doing unsanctioned good deeds. We also don’t see him have the same enthusiasm for his tedious assignments that he is given from heaven that he has for spontaneous favours.

If they actually talked it through I think Aziraphale could understand that what Crowley wants is more about the freedom to do specifically the good and mischievous deeds that he wants to do, rather than being forced to follow management's checklists. If they talked through it, Aziraphale might be able to realise that's also what he wants for himself.

Holierly Than Thou

At the Bandstand fight Crowley again raises the option to kill the antichrist. Aziraphale argues Crowley is the more appropriate choice for executioner, that way "heaven won’t have blood on its hands." He means his own angelic hands, that he still believes are mostly aligned with his intuition of God’s will. While he knows it is often God’s will for things to die, he doesn’t tend to believe it’s God’s will for him to kill someone or something directly. Aziraphale knows God and heaven have the blood of billions on their hands, though he is very good at avoiding paying attention to that fact. He also is still trying to maintain the appearance of being on team heaven, and by starting to think that the great plan is going to happen, he's feeling the need to lean into that more.

Crowley responds, “That's a bit holier than thou, isn't it?”

Aziraphale answers, “I am. A good deal holier than thou, that's the whole point.”

He means that when he says it. This is not a joke, it is not said flippantly. Aziraphale is ethereal and Crowley is occult. He cannot let go of the idea that angels are inherently 'good' in comparison to demons even if it's mostly reduced to an abstract quality that is unrelated to an entity's character or actions. It is still what he believes, it’s still connected to his sense of his role in the universe. It’s not what he sees himself believing when he’s staring at Crowley’s lips, but just because the belief isn’t always visible to conscious!Aziraphale doesn’t mean it’s gone.

When Crowley says 'holier than thou' he means it figuratively. He is accusing Aziraphale of being pretentious. It is a fair accusation, but not quite what Aziraphale is trying to mean. When Aziraphale responds that he is 'holier' he is referring to his ethereal status, not his personality. He can view Crowley as being the better person, and still consider himself more holy. Aziraphale reads the accusation from Crowley literally. To him Crowley might as well have said, 'what, do you think you're some kind of angel?' What can he say to that but '...Yes?'

Crowley’s response is my inner philosopher’s favourite line in the whole show, “You should kill the boy yourself, holierly.” If Aziraphale is good and holy by definition, and everything he does is a good and holy thing by definition because he is an angel, wouldn’t him murdering an 11 year old boy whilst being an angel be definitionally good and holy?

Aziraphale can’t go that far and Crowley knows it. That’s why Aziraphale is refusing to do the killing in such a pretentious way. Which ought to mean that Aziraphale understands the moral goodness or badness of his actions are not defined by his angelic status. Crowley is trying to get Aziraphale to put that together and admit it. However, Aziraphale did not reason himself into his position, and that means Crowley can’t reason him out of it.

The main driving force for Aziraphale here is he knows it would feel wrong to kill the child, and therefore he won't do it. It gets him defensive because there is a clear and obvious moral greater good argument for killing the kid, and he's been rationalising various atrocities of God with greater good arguments for a long time. He ought to be persuaded by the greater good, but he can feel that he isn't. That friction is making him get bitchy. Aziraphale is the one more ok with guns. Aziraphale is the one who disparages himself for being soft. Aziraphale is ok with the ends justifying the means. I don't think he sees his personal unwillingness to kill the kid as moral superiority, he might even see it as a moral failing. His comments on holiness are about angel esthetics, not morals.

Killing the antichrist wouldn’t feel right to Aziraphale, therefore it isn’t God’s will for him to do that, and there must be another solution. Through no fault of his own, Aziraphale is correct. Unfortunately for Crowley, this exchange comes across as Aziraphale insisting he is too morally superior to Crowley to be expected to be personally involved in preventing Armageddon. Aziraphale doesn’t actually want Crowley to kill the antichrist instead, he is mostly pointing out that there is some hypocrisy to Crowley being deeply invested in the kill the antichrist plan whilst being unwilling to personally do it. Aziraphale isn’t willing to do it either, but he isn’t the one pushing the plan. It’s been Crowley’s plan every time.

The Bandstand argument is also where Aziraphale says “We’re not friends, we’re an angel and a demon. We have nothing whatsoever in common. I don’t even like you.” This is tonally distinct from his other problematic statements, and mostly rubbish. Crowley responds to Aziraphale’s assertions with the level of dignity they deserve: “You dooooooo.” But there are traces of authenticity to Aziraphale still struggling to conceptualise them as being properly friends as long as they are designated an angel and a demon. It’s been an issue this whole time. However, there is one major sign of the issue finally lifting, in the least expected place.

“Even if I did know something I wouldn’t tell you, we’re on opposite sides!”

“We’re on our own side.”

“Not anymore. It’s over.”

Not anymore.

We have never seen Aziraphale acknowledge that he and Crowley are on each other’s side. He once asked if Crowley saw it that way, but he didn’t agree to seeing it that way himself. He never lets himself say it as a statement, I don’t think he has let himself believe it or think it. Veil!Aziraphale cannot allow conscious!Aziraphale to perceive himself as being currently on the same side as a demon, working together against God, that is too terrifying to consider. But when he convinces himself that they aren’t working together anymore, he can let himself see that they were on the same side together in the past. It’s less threatening that way. I think in Aziraphale’s mind, they were on the same side insofar as Crowley was helping him bring the universe towards his idea of God’s ineffable plan, and not that he was deviating from God’s ineffable plan. He didn’t see himself as leaving God for Crowley, he imagined Crowley had joined him in being aligned with God intuitively, even if Crowley would disagree with that description.

This exchange is remarkably honest from Aziraphale, but spoken in a language Crowley doesn’t quite understand. Aziraphale has effectively said he does know where the antichrist is, but is unwilling to tell Crowley, because while he had started to consider himself and Crowley on their own side together, he doesn’t any more, because Aziraphale won’t accept either running away or child murder as solutions.

I think Crowley mostly just hears “Fuck you.” And to be honest, that's valid.

Post 7/10

#good omens #good omens meta #go meta #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #anthony j crowley #what does aziraphale actually believe

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youngmasterwisdomperson · 8 months

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I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes for a legitimately helpful superhero who isn’t just a cop with superpowers and even less accountability for their violent actions, and I think it largely comes down to whether I would consider their approach to hero work as more like that of a firefighter or, well, a cop. Because the stereotypical thing for a superhero to do is like, fight criminals, stop muggers, foil bank robberies, that sort of thing, but not a lot of superhero media acknowledges that crimes are largely just symptoms of large-scale socioeconomic and political issues.

I mean, sure, if you’re bullet proof or whatever and there’s someone who’s about to get shot, then by all means stop the guy with the gun. But crime fighting in my opinion shouldn’t be the main focus of any superhero. A great superhero only fights crime in the sense that a fireman might “fight” things like arson and building code violations. The primary goal of a superhero should always be to protect people from danger and take steps to ensure any given disaster doesn’t happen again, or if it does happen again, to ensure that they’ll be more prepared for it the next time around. A great superhero should be fighting to create a world that doesn’t need them anymore.

Well-written interpretations of Superman are especially good at this actually, with a very recent example in the form of the show My Adventures With Superman. This Superman’s goal is never once to fight the bad guys just for the sake of it or because they’re committing crimes and he thinks they ought to be put in jail or anything. In fact, I’m struggling to think of any example in that show where Clark’s motivation in a fight against the villain of the week was anything other than to get civilians out of harm’s way and then save the human bad guys from themselves. This Clark doesn’t want to hurt or imprison anyone! He’s extremely aware of his overwhelming strength and power and capacity to break things by accident, having grown up in a world that may as well have been made of cardboard, and when we see Supes out and about doing casual Superman things, the help he provides is almost never about catching criminals. Most of the time, he’s rescuing cats from trees, helping lost children find their parents, saving people from getting hit by cars, stopping bridges from collapsing, catching people who fall from high places, rescuing people from burning buildings, that sort of thing. This superman is a firefighter type to his very core.

Even when he defeats Dr. Ivo, a man who Clark has been shown to despise for the ways he’s been using his wealth to uproot people from their homes (and for the way he treats women), he doesn’t turn him in to the police. Instead, he notes his state of critical health as a result of the side affects of the Parasite suit, and brings him to the nearest ambulance. Even objectively horrible people who have done terrible things aren’t exempt from Clark’s desire to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Fighting supervillains was never about fighting evil for him. The goal was always to bring people to safety first and foremost, then to de-escalate the situation, neutralizing the source of the threat without causing anyone unnecessary harm. That is what Superman is all about.

Moving away from MAwS for the moment and into the characterization of Superman as a whole, I think that all too often Superman writers who don’t understand the point of the character undersell the importance of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter in the ways Supes goes about helping make the world a better place. Far too often in media, superheroes serve only as defenders of an imperfect status quo. They prevent the villains from bringing about whatever change they have in mind that would make the world worse, but more and more often as of late supervillains have been written with pseudo-sympathetic goals and motivations. They’ll pay lip-service to real-world systematic problems and social issues, then proceed to immediately undermine the validity of their stated mission by attempting to fulfill their alleged motives through needlessly ruthless, violent and authoritarian means, which only serves to imply to the audience that any sort of societal change will only make things worse, and that the status quo is the best we can possibly hope for. A bad superman writer will have Superman help the world by punching bad guys really hard. A good superman writer will have him focus on protecting people and saving those in peril instead. But a great superman writer knows that Superman alone is not enough.

Saving people, while noble and righteous and something Supes alone could do to such an effective degree, is ultimately just a patch job. A great Superman fights for a world that no longer needs his help, and Clark Kent is a big part about how he does that. Systematic problems can’t be punched, and bulletproof skin can’t save people from it. Superman can’t encase police brutality in a block of ice, or cut systemic racism to bits with his laser eyes. The tools Superman uses to protect people in a direct, physical sense are therefore not the powers he needs to create real positive change. No, the only thing that can overcome that sort of monster is the spread of information. More specifically, the truth. That’s why out of all of Superman’s abilities, it’s his super hearing and X-Ray vision that offer him the greatest amount of power to enact positive change, because while both of those have their uses as the Man of Steel, they’re actually infinitely more useful to mild-mannered newspaper reporter Clark Kent.

Superman can take on pretty much any physical threat, which is why his greatest foes are always those who threaten the world with problems he can’t punch. Picture in your mind, if you will, Superman’s arch-nemesis. I don’t even have to say his name, do I? Sure, you might debate for a split second the importance of the more direct threats like Braniac, Doomsday, and Zod, but everyone knows who Superman’s true nemesis is, and it isn’t any of them. It isn’t anyone with special powers or the innate capacity to level entire cities, but instead Lex. Fucking. Luther. A human man. A rich CEO, a politician. The living personification of the problems Superman can’t punch. That’s why Clark Kent is so important. Because he’s a reporter for the daily planet. It’s his job to chase leads, seek out the truth and expose it to the world. And Clark hears everything. He knows how severely corrupt the police are, because he can hear them from his office. He knows how awful the prison system is, because he can see what goes on in there through multiple layers of concrete walls.

True, he has to hide his identity as Superman and thus can’t just tell his coworkers everything he sees and hears. And even if he could tell them, it would all amount to little more than hearsay. But Clark Kent can also just follow up on “anonymous tips,” or leave hints of a big story for his coworkers to find and sniff out for themselves. Honestly, being Clark Kent must take infinitely more restraint for Supes than being the Man of Steel, because if he follows up on too many tips or knows too well where to look for leads on too many scandals, he’ll draw too much attention to himself and lose his edge against the bad guys. Hell, even with ample amount of subtlety and restraint I wouldn’t be surprised if Clark came to earn something of a reputation around the office as the “spiders georg” of police corruption and political scandals. And all that on top of that one really good tumblr post about Clark cracking down on lead pipes in Metropolis. Like this man must be a journalism machine, the whistleblower to end all whistleblowers! Superman may be able to save the world, but Clark Kent is the one who can actually change it for the better.

Not to say Superman wouldn’t publicly speak out about these things as well of course. Save enough families from burning buildings and people are bound to start caring about what you have to say sooner or later. And what are the police going to do about it if fucking Superman calls them out? Shoot the man of steel? Arrest a guy who can melt through concrete just by looking at it? Call the fucking military to deal with a man who spends his time rescuing cats from trees and helping old ladies across the street? Superman represents everything that cops want us to think they are, and logically speaking he would fucking despise them. Because Superman stands for Truth and Justice. And all cops are bastards. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

#superman #my adventures with superman #my writing #superheroes #acab

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lukecastellanshandholder · 3 months

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Ok, I’ve been seeing a lot of opinions on the last episode and especially about the betrayal scene, so I just wanna share how I interpreted it. (And this is not me trying to be disrespectful of people’s opinions at all, I’m just sharing how I feel about the whole scene).

⚠️Obviously spoiler warning for episode 8⚠️

I really think that the changes made to this scene alone were perfect and actually builds upon what will happen in the books. Luke not immediately wanting to kill Percy makes much more sense considering that first and foremost, the entire base of Luke’s reason for wanting to dismantle Olympus, and take the gods out of power, is because he is tired of seeing demigods being treated poorly by their parents. He’s tired of seeing demigods dying left and right just because their parents are too selfish to think about anything other than what they want. He’s tired of the gods (to use the words of Medusa in ep.3) being bullies who believe that they can do no wrong, and who will punish even their own children when they feel threatened or they feel like their pride has been wounded.

Remember Hal? In The Diary of Luke? The first demigod that Luke had to see die because of the way his father punished him unfairly, simply for using his powers to save a friend? The first demigod of whom soon would be many that Luke is unable to save?

If Luke’s whole original meaning behind wanting to bring down the gods was to save demigods like himself, Hal and Thalia; then why would he automatically be trying to kill Percy? It makes much more sense that he originally just wanted to recruit Percy to his side! Besides, why kill Percy when he could potentially have the most powerful demigod alive (that anyone knows of) on his side? He would be absolutely stupid to not take that opportunity and Luke isn’t stupid, he’s actually pretty smart.

So yeah, I’m pretty ok with them leaving out the whole scorpion thing (no matter how much I liked it for joke purposes).

Then we have the fact that this Percy who obviously thinks and feels the same as Luke, still didn’t join Luke in the end.

Yes, Percy feels the same way about the gods. He still doesn’t care for them even after what Poseidon did. However, the main reason that Percy in the show doesn’t join Luke, even when he’s not actively trying to kill him, is because of his up bringing. Because of Sally. They make it a big point in episode 5 and 7 to point out that Sally had been keeping Percy from the world of the gods because she didn’t want them to make him into someone he’s not. She didn’t want to expose him to that world without him first knowing who he truly is and showing him unconditional love. How a family is really supposed to treat each other.

Then, we have Luke. Luke didn’t have any of that. He was only 9 months old before being thrust into the mythical world. All his life he had been exposed to the world of the gods. He never had a mother who was all the way there to show him how family is supposed to behave. He didn’t have any sort of strong pillar there for him. He didn’t have any chance to just take the time to find who he truly was without any influence from the gods. So, Luke fell into the trap of repeating history again.

Percy is able to see this. He’s able to see what Luke is talking about and he’s able to sympathize with him.

But, there is one main difference between them both. Luke knows exactly how the gods are. Having been exposed to their world for so long, he knows how things truly go and the lengths that they would have to go to for any real change to be made. Percy on the other hand, may have been taught a lot by Sally, but he is still naïve when it comes to the gods and how they really work.

Percy still thinks that change can be made without going to such lengths. He still has hope. He’s stubborn and willful to a fault. But most importantly, he’s still a young kid who has just began his journey and who unfortunately hasn’t even seen or felt a fraction of the horrors that this new world has to offer. He still feels like he can be this hero who saves everyone and make everything ok. He still thinks that he can save Luke.

However, as the prophecy says, "you will fail to save what matters most in the end". And if that thing that "matters most" is Luke, then he is technically the first person that Percy can not save. It is the start of Percy’s journey as a hero.

So, yes. Percy still deciding not to join Luke makes sense. Besides, Percy now has Sally back and he has his friends. He still has so much to lose and he knows that he would lose them if he joined Luke. With Percy’s fatal flaw being loyalty, even if it meant that the world would be 100 times better, he would still choose the people he cares about over anything. This is something that we see become more apparent about Percy as the series goes on so it’s cool to see that already being a factor more early on in the story.

And lastly, we have the inclusion of Annabeth being there to hear everything.

I personally don’t know why people are saying that it throws off how she’s supposed to feel about Luke as we go further into the story?

I mean, in the book Annabeth hears about what happened from Percy. When she first hears about it she’s in shock obviously, but when she takes a minute to think about it and get over that initial shock, she still believes Percy. After their first quest, Annabeth has grown to trust Percy so there’s no reason why she would doubt what he says. Yet, throughout the series she still knows deep down that there is a legitimate reason why Luke is doing what he’s doing. She also knows that most of this is caused by Kronos and that Luke is just being used as a puppet.

So, just because she heard everything that was said, doesn’t mean that she can’t still have the same kind of feelings. It doesn’t mean that she can’t feel sympathy for the person who she looked at as a big brother. It doesn’t mean that she can’t understand Luke and what he’s doing. I’d even argue that her hearing what he said would cause her to understand even more. And since they removed the whole thing about Annabeth having a crush on Luke, I feel like her being able to understand what’s truly going on is even more important since we won’t have her blindly following him because of her crush on him.

So my overall verdict? I personally feel that every change made in this specific scene actually makes more sense and flows into what will happen throughout the rest of the story even more.

#now I’m not saying that I liked every change in the series #I have changes that I really didn’t like #but as far as this scene?#it was perfect in my personal opinion #but this is just my opinion and this is not me trying to say that anyone’s thoughts and opinions are wrong!#I just wanted to share what I thought of it 💜#luke castellan #percy jackson #annabeth chase #percy jackon and the olympians #percy jackson tv show #pjo

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starrynightzie · 8 months

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I mostly wanted this acc to be specifically for art, not rly for anything else but i need to get this off my chest. Obviously if you’ve been on twitter, you’ve probably seen a lot (and i mean a LOT) of hate towards gay ships/shippers recently, (first w togachako, then w stsg) i wanna address all the weird shit thats been happening w jjk dudebros lately. Idk what it is but they’re rly upsetti spaghetti abt even the mere thought of stsg being more than platonic besties, going so far as to shoot down any hint of them being romantically inclined in the slightest - so i thought that i’d take it upon myself to provide poof that stsg has queer, romantic subtext since ppl are being extremely obtuse abt them, all for the sake of protecting their friendship from us evil gays. (other shippers do this too but im mostly focusing on dudebros bc they’re the ones primarily acting like assholes to us for no reason, like yeah, sure, some stsgs are extremely cringey & weird but that can be said for ANY shipper in ANY fandom. When you’re in a fandom as big as this, of course there’s gonna be some bad eggs, it’s inevitable.

ok so. !!DISCLAIMER!! i do not speak japanese, so if i say something incorrect then please correct me. i’ve done enough research to be sure that what im saying is right, but im only human, and sometimes, i might be wrong. so, take what im abt to say with a grain of salt. (just in case).

first off, it should be stated that gege akutami, the creator himself, is an avid bl fan (and ik what ur thinking, ‘oh, that doesn’t mean anything! just bc u read bl, it doesn’t mean you’re likely to write gay relationships into ur own manga!’ which is true, gege HAS said that he doesn’t want to write romance in jjk. HOWEVER, as much as i love stsg & see them in a romantic light, i do definitely think that the reason why their relationship feels so ambiguous is bc gege intentionally made it that way. i think he made their relationship up to the individual’s interpretation. And for ppl who’re thinking ‘why would he do that?’ well, he doesn’t like writing romance, right? so this is the next best thing he could do. and also i have to point out (in case ppl get defensive), gege literally does not and will never care if ppl ship stsg or not, again, he’s a bl fan and if anything - all of the evidence that im going to talk abt proves that he most likely ships stsg himself, so… 🤷‍♂️

2. i’d like to talk about s2’s op & ed which are HEAVILY romantically coded. If you don’t know, the op was written to be from gojo’s pov & vice versa with geto for the ed, the op in particular is a very special case. The song is explicitly abt reminiscing the past , wishing gojo had noticed geto’s sorrow sooner and it also mentions a ‘silent love’. the word ‘love’ being used here is ‘koi’ which EXCLUSIVELY means romantic love… now, since this song was specifically written with gojos pov in mind, doesnt it seem kind of weird to have the word for ‘romantic love’ in there?? (koi can be referred to as ‘young love’ or having a ‘crush’ on someone…. hm… ThAts WeIrD.) instead of using ‘ai’??? which would make more sense if stsg were just besties bc ai is more general and can be used towards friends & family.

and then ofc there’s the whole theme of ‘blue spring’. director park (who directed s1 & jjk 0) has stated in an interview that geto was gojo’s last warm spring of youth. now if you dont know, spring of youth/blue spring means a time in a young person’s life where they have hope and happiness… in animanga, it often means falling in love too… so judging by this, it seems very likely that gojo perhaps developed feelings for geto during their teen years together. Director park has also mentioned in an interview that gojo & geto’s relationship goes beyond ‘friendship’ & being ‘familial’. 👀

3. another clear indicator of gojo being in love w geto is the whole ‘love is the most twisted curse of all’ spiel he said to yuta. ‘but he could mean platonic love!!’ idk, considering yuta had romantic feelings for rika and hes discussing them with gojo & gojo knows this, dont u think it’d be a bit weird for him to mention geto here too? if they were just best friends?? (that’s not even mentioning the fact that gojo & geto’s relationship is supposed to parallel yuta & rika’s in jjk 0…)

4. and then ofc we have gojo saying his last words to geto, which were censored. now, correct me if im wrong but the ONLY times ive ever seen inaudible dialogue being mouthed to another character is when its a love confession mostly seen in romance anime. and like, there’s also no need at all for gojo’s last words to be censored in the first place. (although, i do suspect that his last words may play a major role in the future when he faces kenjaku.) what solidifies it for me being a love confession is that, 1. geto blushed after gojo said whatever it is that he said to him, (only in the manga tho, idk why they didnt make him blush in the movie but its whatever.) and geto replies with, depending on the translation, ‘at least curse me a little at the very end’ or ‘you should at least curse me at the end’. which heavily implies that gojo said something extremely sweet & heartfelt to him as his final words. and if thats not enough to convince u that gojo’s last words were indeed a love confession.. gojo’s eng VA HIMSELF, said that his last words when translated into english means three words… im not saying that gojo’s last words were specifically ‘i love you’ or anything like that, but i am definitely sure that whatever he said was a love confession/something very romantic in nature. bc why else would gege choose to draw geto blushing?? that wouldnt make any sense.

gojo also killed geto on the 24th of december, which in japan, is the most romantic day of the year & couples in japan treat christmas eve as kinda like a separate valentines day. even in the jjk manga recently, gojo offered to fight on dec 24th & kenjaku mocks him by saying how romantic it is… even gege himself acknowledges how romantic christmas eve is in japan, this enforces the idea that gege must’ve chosen dec 24th for a reason, bc why else would he have picked an extremely romantic date as not only the day where he fights kenjaku who is inhabiting geto’s body, but also making it the day geto died?? yall have to remember that all of this has been planned out by gege, none of it is a coincidence… he didn’t just come up with all of this on the spot, he’s been planning this stuff & thinking about it for literal years.

5. and finally, probably the BIGGEST piece of evidence there is, geto & gojo’s character songs. gege chose romantic break up songs for BOTH of them.. like im sorry but if stsg were rly truly only best friends, he would not have chosen those songs for them, it just doesnt make any sense.

conclusion: obviously, this probably isn’t every subtextually romantic thing about stsg’s relationship but these are all the things that i’ve noticed. again, if you see their relationship as purely platonic then that’s fine but don’t be assholes to people for seeing romantic subtext that’s quite clearly there. if i have missed anything out then please let me know and i’ll edit them into the post.

#jujutsu kaisen #sorcery fight #jujutsu gojo #gojo satoru #satoru gojo #geto suguru #suguru geto #stsg #satosugu #sugusato #jjk analysis

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pinkandpurple360 · 2 months

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… You know I always kind of assumed Ozzie was under a binding demonic contract by Mammon or something (remember, Oz is “the weakest sin”) to make the Fizzbots. But maybe not because Oz did fight back eventually? Was he doing it because of blackmail about his relationship until he reached the breaking point? And was he taking the blackmail because he genuinely cared about his imag, or was it because he thought “oh fuck if we go public everyone’s gonna try kidnapping/murdering over fizzy (which is what exactly happened in Oops) because they know it’s a weakness and I am in hell?” I think a lot of these factors influence how I interpret the morality of this situation. No idea if the show will ever go into it though. Probably not.

Fizz keeps going back and forth in regards to sexuality. Like I guess he likes the Lust Ring and being a sex symbol at Ozzie’s because he feels safe there and is being sexual for/with his boyfriend. But even then you have creepy people yelling that they have four of him and that makes him visibly uncomfortable. When it’s packaged as a production I guess that makes him uncomfortable? But isn’t his whole thing like “he’s a sellout?” Or maybe it’d like there’s a difference between being a “sex symbol” like Marilyn Monroe and being a porn star with sexbots built of you. Maybe that’s what Viv was going for?

But it feels so unclear because I don’t think Fizz has a consistent personality. Like who is the real Fizz. Have we met the real Fizz? Is the “sexy” Fizz a mask? Is “uwu” Fizz a mask? Is “gremlin” Fizz a mask? He uses all three to please other people. Hell even kid Fizz and teen Fizz are two EVEN DIFFERENT personalities (granted people change a lot from childhood/teenage hears). My guy has been performing his entire life that he doesn’t know how to turn it “off.” I’d say he needs a therapist but I don’t think they exist in hell.

I did not mean to go on a tangent, you don’t have to publish my psychoanalysis of Fizzarolli if you’re too burnt out. I actually don’t care about any of the five main characters that much, the side characters are more interesting to me

God Viv…if that’s what was happening it makes me completely doubt Asmodeus’ ability to protect Fizz. Not to mention something I hate in fiction when a story tries to make someone’s trauma a “shared” trauma, when there’s absolutely no way Ozzie is as traumatised as Fizz is by all of this. It’s so so easy to make it go away by having Asmodeus do this mistake on purpose, then regret it deeply, aspire to change, and not hurt someone like that again. That’s character growth and moral greyness and as a demonic sin of lust makes complete sense.

Yeah I need to know what people mean by sellout, because doing things out of character for you in order to make money

^^^^ makes complete sense!!! Fizz isn’t a cruel overly raunchy person who prizes lust and money and elitism above all else. Especially the elitism part, Asmodeus is nice (to fizz) but he’s an elitist like mammon is. Fizz? It’s not him. But putting the blame of the lustful persona on mammon exclusively is laughable?? Have a backbone, writers, character consistency is more important than keeping the demon ship vanilla, marketable, wholesome. It sacrifices its ability to explore problems in a relationship by prioritisation a romance for audiences to say “awww” at. So instead of working through issues that are making a relationship bad, they instead gloss over them which in turn, ironically makes them bad. And god Fizz’s communication with Asmodeus is so poor and so steeped in lies and codependency that the more it goes unaddressed the more uncomfortable the “cute” moments feel.

No you’re right. Fizz as a baby, teen, and adult, on stage, off stage, they feel deeply different to each other and I struggle to follow. Like if the three of them were somehow in a room, I don’t know how the conversation would go.

#helluva boss critical #fizzarolli #fizzarozzie crit

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rallamajoop · 3 months

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I recently found your blog while working on some things for a Heisenberg fic, and I love it! It made me think more about this HC that I have about Urias and Heisenberg. Since you have a lot of posts that talk about the game files and things like that, I wanted to ask your informed opinion on this if that's alright?

My HC is that Urias is actually Heisenberg's father--not just due to the fact that the concept art and character models look too similar to be a coincidence (in my opinion; I'd also like to add that I've never found anything that confirms or denies (or even refrences) this anywhere online, so if I'm missing something, feel free to let me know!).

I always imagined Heisenberg being close to his father, who likely was the one to teach him everything he knows in terms of engineering (I almost wonder if his name could be Karl Heisenberg Jr., his father being closer in reference to the physicist he's based on than Heisenberg himself. I hope that made sense-).

I imagine Miranda took his father first, whose experimentation results were close to what she was looking for, but no cigar (pun intended), so her next best bet was to hop down the family tree to his son--which yielded much more promising results--giving us the Heisenberg we know and love.

This would definitely explain why Heisenberg is much closer to the lycans than any other character, and why he's able to wrangle them so easily, because he's related to one--even if the consciousness of that relationship is long gone.

I'm so sorry if I came off as weird or anything, your blog just really kind of livened-up my HC and my fic ideas in general, and honestly makes me feelnreally confident about it and wanted to know your thoughts. Thank you! :)

Honestly, my initial kneejerk reaction to this one was “Jeebus, doesn’t the guy have enough dads already?” But on a second thought, heck, maybe there’s actually something to this idea…

The info we get on the possible Heisenberg family from the notes from the concept art is all over the place, and concepts for Heisenberg’s father are the worst offenders. Sturm was supposed to be his real father, Heisenberg’s monster form was supposed to be his father’s, the village leader was supposed to be his father... I assume these were different ideas from different phases (or one was a step-dad?) but sheesh, how many dads does one guy need?

Meanwhile, the one thing we do learn about Urias (apart from the fact he seems to part of some extended Urias family) is that he was supposed to be the village’s leader at some point… but that’s where this whole thing might just get interesting. Because if Heisenberg’s father was meant to be the village leader, and Urias was also supposed to be the village leader… could there have been a point in development where both were true at once, and Heisenberg’s father was going to be Urias? (I mean, as well as the village leader, presumably.)

I mean, they’re both beard-y, grey-haired dudes with a love for giant hammers and long coats. It’s not for nothing that so many fans came out of the early previews for this game assuming Urias was just Heisenberg in lycan form. Those concept pics of Heisenberg's father in a trenchcoat with a shock of grey hair aren't a million miles from Urias' design either.

There's some plausibility to the idea of Miranda experimenting on members of the same family too, especially if they've got cause to claim descent from one of the four founders. I speculated as much myself about what might have happened to the rest of the Beneviento family in my post on her background. Heisenberg specifically strikes me as more the sort of guy who probably wasn't born in the village, given he names his monsters in German, mocks the very idea of his lordship (more on that here), and is clearly the least brainwashed member of the family. But that's interpretation ‒ there's nothing truly definitive either way.

You'd have a harder time squaring 'an engineer who taught Karl all he knew' with Urias' role as the village leader, though ‒ I have trouble picturing anywhere as superstitious, isolated and backward as the village being led by someone with that much 'outsider' knowledge to pass onto his son. RE has certainly tried to sell us on wilder things, but it doesn't really click for me.

As for Heisenberg's affinity for lycans, that's more debatable. He certainly seems to be commanding them at the start of the game (just to really cement all those lycan!Heisenberg theories!) but past that point, any lycan associations dry up very quickly. There are no lycans to be found anywhere in the factory ‒ just soldats, and moroi wearing mind-control visors (called ‘haulers’, but they’re obviously just new versions of the creatures you meet in Donna’s domain). Why bother putting visors on skinny zombie creatures if he could command lycans without them? Doesn’t really seem like Heisenberg’s ability to control lycans goes far beyond ‘stop’ and ‘go’.

True, Heisenberg does leave his Rose-flask in a stronghold full of lycans. But he also sends Ethan to that stronghold, where he has to fight and kill Urias himself. The idea that Heisenberg was ever close to his lycan-dad is going to be hard to square with how casually he sends someone to kill Urias, or how pleased he seems that Ethan succeeded. In Heisenberg’s mind, lycans are nothing so much as they’re expendable – Urias included.

So as far as the finished game goes, I think it’s probably reaching to suggest that Urias (of the extended Urias clan) is related to Heisenberg, who so casually throws him in Ethan’s way as a test. But the possibility that maybe Urias was going to be a Heisenberg at some point in development is a better explanation for the fact the Urias-clan are so big into hammers and trenchcoats than any other explanation I’ve heard yet. It’s certainly no crazier than so many other headcanons I’ve heard around this game.

But speaking of the Urias-clan, let's cover the other Uriasi you can find around the game. Urias Strajer (the bigger version of Urias with the mace that Chris fights near the megamycete) is supposedly Urias' older brother ‒ something the concept art wants you to know so badly it's mentioned on pictures of both of them. So if you still want one of them to be Heisenberg's father, the other is presumably his uncle. Heck, maybe Strajer could be Heisenberg's father, and Urias could be the uncle he never liked very much (despite his excellent taste in hammers), if you want to explain Heisenberg's lacking reaction to Urias' death. Some of the game files for Strajer are labeled 'village elder', which also points some kind of connection. Chock up some more evidence of Miranda experimenting on members of the same family too!

The two axe-wielding optional bosses you can fight in the sawmill and over Claudia's grave are apparently Uriases too ‒ Urias Drac, specifically, though you'd only know that from RE.net, where you can see stats for how many of them you've killed in Mercenaries mode. Personally, I only realised they were supposed to be lycans at all because you can one-shot them with the magnum if you unlock the 'special customisation' that 'does extra damage against lycans' ("extra" apparently means "10x" in special-customisation land). But presumably they're based on the same unused design from the concept art of this one 'lycan' out walking his varcolacs too.

Are these Uriasi too part of the greater Urias-family? Who knows ‒ that one's up to you. Their bodies, with that swollen weak point on the back, do match the model for Urias Strajer (shown below). In fact, I'm pretty sure all the Uriases use the same base model, just with different clothes, armour and hair. So there's some shared DNA in there somewhere (even if only in the sense that recycling a good model saves so many hours of development time).

The name 'Urias' is apparently a term for giant in Romanian, which checks out. Strajer, meanwhile, apparently translates as 'guardian' or 'sentinel', which tracks with the fact Strajer's job is to guard the megamycete. 'Drac', meanwhile, seems to be the same word you might know from Dracul (dragon or devil) or Dracula (son of the above) ‒ though I am also amused that google translate tried to tell me 'urias drac' means 'huge fuck'. 'Giant demon' may be more on the money for that one. Either way, all this etymology does strongly suggest that 'Urias' is more a description than an actual family name. Which is somewhat reassuring, because nothing I've read about Romania suggests they put surnames first.

Probably just to annoy me, personally (because I absolutely will overthink this shit now you've got me started), one of the models used for regular-vanilla-Urias is randomly called 'Gregorio', a name that shows up nowhere else in the game. There is a Grigori ‒ he's that old guy who gave Ethan his first handgun before the lycans dragged him away.

I really do not think we're supposed to take it that Urias is a lycanised Grigori, though ‒ that's rather too big a transformation in not nearly enough time. Otherwise, 'Gregorio' is neither Romanian or German (like both 'Karl' and 'Heisenberg' are) ‒ it's Italian or Spanish, which is just confusing. One of the four founders (more on them here) did have a vaguely similar name ‒ Guglielmo ‒ but I don't think that's really close enough to mean much either. 'Gregorio' could be the name of a developer who worked on the file once, for all I know.

So where does that leave us? Honestly, nowhere very exciting. None of the evidence of this greater Urias family was actually in the playable game (notes on concept art and names you have to find on an unrelated website are very tenuous canon at best). Still, Urias and Urias Strajer are similar enough that it's reasonable to assume they must have some sort of relationship. So take all this as you will (or not at all).

#Karl Heisenberg #Resident Evil Village #Resident Evil #Urias #Urias Strajer #Urias Drac #meta #asks #RE lore

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jojotichakorn · 6 months

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What are your thoughts about the fandom believing that Ray doesn’t “deserve” Sand and that Ray thinks of Sand as someone he can purchase and then own. I don’t quite agree with that interpretation of things and would love to hear your thoughts.

listen, i could sit here all day talking about how most of sandray problems occured due to communication issues on both sides and the unique insecurities both sand and ray have all day. i could also talk about how sand is not the saint uwu baby that some people seem to think he is and - as someone whose favourite ofts character is sand - his woobification is truly the bane of my existence. however, i will not be talking about any of that in detail, because it kind of doesn't make sense to mention while answering your particular ask, considering the fact that i simply fundamentally do not believe that love is something you deserve.

there is no special formula that makes someone deserving of being loved by another person, nor is there any comparison list on just how many times each person can fuck up before one of them stops deserving the love of the other. that's just bullshit. two things are true: 1) sand loves ray and 2) that love is in no way intrinsically damaging or bad for sand (yes, there have been times when he was hurt, but that was, for example, due to lack of communication in episode 5 or ray jumping to conclusions in episode 10, which he apologised for - esentially, none of it is an inherent feature of their relationship).

see, i don't know whether it's people projecting their personal issues on the characters or - much worse - thinking ray being "difficult" (read: in most cases, just mentally ill and an addict) makes him fully unlovable or undeserving of love, but that's not the case not just in general, but specifically with sand. the simple truth of the matter is: sand does NOT find loving ray or being with ray or the person ray is difficult.

from the very beginning, even before sand falls in love, he is annoyed by ray but he also takes care of him - not just because sand is a helpful person and that's what he's used to doing but also because he does not find it burdensome. like, if someone would find it difficult to be in a relationship with a suicidal alcoholic - alright, they're not alone, they can go hang out with mew and chueam, who are in the exact same boat. and if someone would find it hard to be in a relationship with someone who is extremely emotional and "blows up" a lot - ok, then don't be friends with or date people like that. but sand just does not find it hard.

and that's kind of the whole point. there are always people in the world who will love someone with ALL their issues and flaws and idiosyncrasies and complexities. there are genuinely people who are going to be in a fight with someone who is deeply emotional and also deeply intoxicated and not internalise what they are saying. not because they don't care about themselves and are with someone undeserving of them or whatever, but because they understand that the person doesn't mean what they are saying in that moment and they can deal with it. if every time i was rude to someone because i was overstimulated (due to being autistic) that someone dropped me and called me undeserving of their love, i'd have no fucking friends, which is thankfully not the case.

when mew told ray "no one can put up with everything you do" he was wrong. plain and simple. just wrong. sand can. in fact, it's not even that he can "put up" with it - it's more like he can live with it just fine. let sand love the man he loves, seeing as he is very much not struggling with any part of their relationship or his partner's personality, especially after they resolved the issues they had (which is fine, by the way? just because someone is having issues in a relationship doesn't mean they gotta jump ship - if they want to and can deal with them, that's a good thing, actually).

as for the purchase part of your ask, i do always find it quite peculiar how simple people can make things. "rich + poor = automatic objectification" wow thanks for the analysis, boss! profound! like, i truly wish i knew where this could be coming from. i am also a dangerous romance watcher and if someone asked me about this in regards to kang and sailom, i would dive head-first and deep into those waters, because that's actually something that's relevant there. but with sand and ray... truly, i'm baffled by the suggestion.

the whole point of it to ray is that the relationship is genuine. that's deeply important to him, in fact - that is why he reacted the way he did about his father giving sand money. how in the world do you combine "(angrily and in disbelief) so this was all about money to you?" and "i literally bought you, i hope you remember that"?

idk, is this about ray buying sand gifts? 'cause gift giving is just an expression of love and ray just happens to be loaded so yeah, it's guitars and coachella trips or whatever - the guy lives in a mansion, i think it'd be weirder if he went "well, just to be sure i am not buying you, here is a pebble i found on the street for your birthday". is it about him being jealous or perhaps even possessive in the penultimate episode and likely the finale? 'cause that's just an emotion lots of people feel and while you could argue about 'ownership' in terms of the wider optics of how lots of monogamous relationships work, regardless of the financial situation of the partners, this is definitely just a fairly standard situation where two people are in an 'exclusive' relationship and suddenly a clear third party steps in.

ray has never expressed any disdain or even weirdness towards his poor friends in terms of their socioeconomic status, he has only brought up the wine selling issue when he fully blew up because he clearly understood that it was a source of income for sand, his initial suggestion to pay sand to hang out was in response to sand working at that time and literally needing the money he was meant to be earning that day to survive. like, where are we? how did we get here?

#i don't really go into the ofts tag - i only go to my dash for ofts content so if i didnt touch on common talking points or whatever #i apologise i genuinely dont know which ones exist lkgjdklgjfdlkgj #which is probably obvious by my confusion #gods bless #archer responds #anon #only friends the series #ofts

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