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lai-mar · 8 days

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Re: Winged Lion fulfilling Laios' desires + "Marcille will no longer have to be alone"

Throughout the lion's persuasion, Laios has been acting reluctant / defensive / angry / embarrassed. He tells the lion that his desires of having monsters attack a village was a foolish childhood fantasy. Concerning Falin, the lion tells him he's being a hypocrite because he's wishing for a peaceful world and they can't revive Falin without magic, then the lion says they'll move onto more cheerful topics and digs into Laios' "true" subconscious desire to become a monster (reflected in the succubus chapter).

Laios is clearly uncomfortable but the lion continues digging in. The lion mentions Laios' own desires of becoming a monster, loving monsters, desires that define Laios as a person, and almost glosses over his will to revive Falin? Because we all know he loves his sister and wants to save her. It's a noble and sympathetic act. But turning in a monster and potentially terrorizing or at least scaring people? Just because he wants to? To make up for his lack of social tact and his seeming distaste for humankind? That's not noble. So naturally Laios clings onto his goal of saving Falin (evident in the scene when the lion curses him and Laios immediately thinks of Falin), and just as naturally, the lion wants to uncover that and make him confront his "true" desire.

Laios loves his friends and his party, but I think the lion isn't granting them full livelihoods out of pure selflessness on Laios' behalf. Because his party, despite everything, accepts him. They cook with him, they journey with him to save Falin, they trust him, they support him. In the dungeon, Laios' monster knowledge is respected and valued by his friends. Right before the confrontation with the lion, Laios gives each of his party members something to do, in particular telling Izutsumi to kill him. This is probably because of her skills and the fact that he's known Izutsumi the least (and they're less close compared to, let's say, Izutsumi and Marcille). But regardless of how long he's known them, he trusts them. He feels comfortable and confident around them. He feels supported. He knows his friends will do what he told them to do. And in a world in which Laios struggles to navigate due to his social skills, his companions are very precious to him. The party is aware of Laios' shortcomings but they follow and love him anyway. Keeping them unharmed is a noble act, but also selfish, because Laios likes being accepted and cared for.

Keeping the party safe is a vague concept, but then the lion goes for the kill— Marcille's lifespan.

And you can see Laios' expression instantly changes. There's a whole panel of his face. Previously, he's been uncomfortable and defensive. Even when the lion points out his "embarrassing" and "selfish" desire to be a monster, he's not as affected as he is. Now, he's shaken. He twitches. He knows something inside him just wavered. And the lion pounces on it.

Regarding why Laios wants Marcille to not be lonely, I have some thoughts:

Sympathy

Laios is the one who saw Marcille's nightmare and knows acutely what she fears. She lost Falin and was traumatised because of it. The whole party got killed and she was also traumatised. And Laios probably thinks it's his duty as a friend, party leader, and someone who saw into her nightmare to protect her and make her happy. Falin might never come back and maybe Marcille's already lost a loved one, and Laios doesn't want that to happen again even though it inevitably will.

2. Marcille's time as a dungeon lord

Laios' argument against lord Marcille is that she can't force everyone to eat from the same menu and not everyone wants to live that long. This might be a translation issue, but the lion doesn't say it's going to extend everyone's lifespans. No, it focuses on Marcille herself and says "Marcille will no longer have to be alone". Not "everyone will live as long as Marcille" or "Marcille will live as long as everyone else". It's not about ages, it's how Marcille feels. Which is something Laios obviously cares about.

Lord Marcille was unable to fulfill her desires. What if Laios does it for her, in a kind of "two in one" demon deal? Logistically, in order for the party to keep Marcille company, they'll have to live as long as she does (note the 999 years), or as the lion says, make up a fake version of themselves to keep her company. It might not be real, and with a bit of thinking, this dream crumbles, but the lion deviously targets the emotions and it overshadows rational thought. What if it's impossible to keep Marcille company for as long as she lives? Maybe the lion will magically make it work. Just maybe. And Laios holds onto this shred of hope.

3. Solidarity of being alone

Marcille, Laios, and Falin all experienced loneliness / feeling outcasted growing up. During the nightmare sequence, Laios says Marcille is different from him because her dream takes place in a library to show how hardworking she is. But ultimately, they are people who don't like being alone. Marcille warms up to eating monsters and accepts Laios for who he is. Laios rescues Marcille from the nightmare and the lion. They are each other's comfort zones and they keep each other company.

Laios doesn't want to be alone, hence the lion offering to save his friends. And he doesn't want Marcille to be alone, because he cares for her, and she's just like him in that regard.

Mentioning Marcille's feelings is what tips Laios over the edge. He isn't embarrassed or angry, he's frozen to the ground, shaken and persuaded. Arguably, saving Marcille is also a "noble" goal in the way saving Falin is a noble goal, but I think L+M has developed so far that saving her will feel like saving him because they both just want someone to keep them company (especially with the context of having lost Falin, who keeps them company and loves them for who they are).

Before all of this, Laios trusts Marcille with his precious gourmet guide. It's his hint that he's turned into his ideal monster, but the fact that he's given the embodiment of his dreams and desires to her shows how much he trusts her and feels comfortable around her. And it's Marcille who passes the guide around their friends as they all realise the monster is Laios. Even as a monster, Laios is recognised, his friends cheer for him, they want to save him.

I don't think I've seen anyone talk about this before, but later, Marcille tries using her summoned serpent / monster to eat monster Laios. (Like how she used it to eat her friends when she was a lord.) And Marcille's monster actually swallows Laios. But then Laios claws open its stomach and breaks free. Consumption is a form of love and salvation. I liked seeing their different monsters: Marcille's being a sleek serpent with flower motifs, kind of resembling her sky fish familiar that she used to rescue Senshi and Laios' almost chaotic chimera full of bits and pieces he picked up and carefully selected (including the scylla head he picked from the succubus). Marcille tries to save Laios by using her monster to eat him. They all save Falin by eating her monster parts. Even though initially Marcille was the one most picky about eating monsters, in the end she summons her own familiars and monsters and engages in her own way of creation / consumption.

And after all of this, it's Marcille who finds human Laios first. She doesn't berate him or anything, just treats him normally, tells him everyone is waiting for him. Because they accept each other and keep each other company. That's one of their core desires. Their character arcs intertwine and in the end they live together. Neither of them will have to be alone.

#laios touden #marcille donato #dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi spoilers #mine #meta #hope this is coherent #laimar #<- not a shippy analysis but i want to fill up the tag with something that could be relevant and not ship bashy at least lol #long post

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noaltbruh · 1 year

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Saw requests open. May I request Giorno, Narancia and Fugo with a short petite girlfriend who’s self conscious about her height? So no short nicknames. I’d like to see how they’d like having a short gf 💗 Maybe their reactions to her standing on her tip toes to kiss them or asking them to reach something for her on the top shelf.

Hii Abella! 😊 Always happy to write for you :)

~~~~

Giorno, Fugo and Narancia with a petite S/O

Giorno 🐞

I think that Giorno knows he was supposed to be taller/more muscular, but being malnourished by his mother as a child, he failed to properly develop.

Which means that the idea of making fun of you for your height doesn't even cross his mind from afar. It's not like it's something you can control anyway.

I feel like he'd understand your self-consciousness about your body without you really needing to tell him. The way you look at yourself in the mirror or the comments you make about yourself already clarify everything for him.

Just know that if you ever felt insecure, this boy is ready to fill you with compliments and sweet words until those thoughts go away. He hates to see you criticise yourself, especially for something as insignificant as your height.

He actually thinks that your appearance makes you look cuter than you already are, and it reflects your sweet nature very well. He couldn't imagine you with any other way, he just thinks you're perfect as you are.

He makes you to constantly remind you this, he knows you may still doubt his words from time to time.

Buddy, you won't even have to ask him to get something for you. It's almost as if he has a sixth sense for this sort of thing. Once he thinks you're going to need a book or such, he'll take it down from the shelf and leave it on a table for you.

He doesn't want to see you struggle and figured you might get a bit embarrassed from always asking for help, he prefers to quietly help you as subtly as he can.

Also, I can see him avoiding putting stuff on high shelves in general unless it's absolutely necessary, he knows it must be a pain for you not to be able to do this sort of thing alone.

Definitely likes to take advantage of your figure when it comes to cuddles. Expect a lot of head pats from him, it's one of his favorite ways to show appreciation for you :)

This is a bit extra, but I can totally see him getting down on his knees to kiss your hand or flirt with you, just to make you feel above him, in a sense, and show that he's always at you full service.

He already knew you were going to get on tip toes to kiss him, but he didn't expect you to look so adorable. He'll smile at you softly before gently lowering his head in order to assist you.

He'll definitely pick you up bridal style quite often, so you don't have to struggle every time you try to reach his lips.

Fugo 🍓

Okay, to be frank with you, I don't think Fugo had thought about you possibly being insecure about your height until you hypothetically brought it up yourself.

Not because he doesn't care or he's neglectful to the point of not noticing. It's simply due to the fact that he's never been someone who focused a lot on physical appearance and considers it completely unimportant.

You can basically see hearts in his eyes everytime he looks at you, he could never criticise or believe there was anything wrong with your appearance. He thinks that would be incredibly superficial and hypocritical, considering his own...Fashion sense.

So, when you tell him about this, Fugo is just...Confused. He doesn't get it at first glance, but he's not stupid and can tell it makes you uncomfortable. He'd probably even ask you if anyone ever made you feel bad about your appearance, since it's the only logical explanation to him as to why you'd dislike this aspect of yourself.

Either way, although he doesn't fully grasp this idea, he'll still try his best to make you appreciate yourself like he does.

He's not as good with compliments as Giorno though, so he may sound a bit awkward lol. But I promise he does mean what he's saying and genuinely believes you have no reason to doubt your beauty.

I can even see him writing down what he thinks on paper so that he doesn't come off as extremely embarrassing like he does through words lol.

Whenever he's feeling stressed, Fugo will actually use your appearance for his advantage. In fact, he loves the feeling of leaning on you, specifically your shoulder, when he wants to relax. Your height difference makes it easier for him to do so.

Something similar would happen if the two of your were to read together. He'd shyly ask you if you want to sit on his legs, as he'd let his chin comfortably fall between your shoulder and your neck while you hold the book.

If you ask him to get something for you on a high shelf, he'll just do so without making a big deal out of it. He secretly thinks it's kind of cute and loves to do so, he feels like he's doing something useful.

Do not try to get on a chair to reach it yourself, however, because he WILL get mad. Don't take this the wrong way, he gets that you don't want to bother him, he's just worried you're going to fall off and get hurt.

He's a bit surprised when you get on tip toes, he hadn't realized you had no other choice if you wanted to kiss him. I can see him being conflicted on whether he should lean down on your level or not.

On one hand, he can see that you're struggling a bit and doesn't want to see you like that. On the other, he's afraid he's going to come off as condescending or male even more self conscious.

So he just stands there for a moment contemplating his next move, but you kiss him by the time he actually chooses what to do.

Moreover, your petite body only makes him want to kiss your forehead and the top of your head more than he already would.

Narancia 🍊

Buddy, I don't think you realize how happy Narancia is to have you.

Personally, I think that he was never supposed to be supet tall, but living on the streets only worsened the situation, as he either had very little or no food at all, which caused him to remain...Well, shorter than average, let's say.

Because of this, he's just as self-conscious, if not even more than you are about this. I wouldn't be surprised if someone had made fun of him in the past too.

Which means that, even though he's not usually the brightest, you won't have to say anything to him either before he realizes you struggle with this insecurity too.

Needles to say, it really pains him to see you doubt yourself like this. He's very emphatic and will tell you that he knows what's it like to look at yourself in the mirror and not like what you see.

Nonetheless, he has begun to feel more confident in his appearance ever since you got together, and he wants you to feel the same way.

He would never dare to call you shortie or anything alongside those lines, since he'd be very uncomfortable with it himself.

Instead, he'll always be ready to fill you with praises, compliments and hype you up anytime he gets the chance to. Like- maybe you weren't even feeling bad in that moment, he just thinks you're beautiful either way and wants to let you know.

And he doesn't say this just to make you feel better. He genuinely means every word he speaks, and there's nothing that matters more to him than to make you feel validated no matter what. He wants you to love yourself and your body as it is in its natural beauty, and if you can't do that, he's got enough love himself to make up for it.

Your height is one more reason for him to hug and snuggle you in literally any moment. He loves the feeling of holding you in your entirety, without leaving a single part of your body out.

He loves to piggy back ride you on his shoulders, that way you can feel tall together! And the others can't make fun of the two of you anymore.

Is it partially an excuse just to carry you around? Yes, yes it is, but does it really matter anyway? You're both having a good time and can even triumph over Abbacchio and his bad bitch high heels.

Similarly, the two of you would also use this technique to get something from a high shelf if both of you were too short to reach it...Although you have fallen off a couple of times because of this-

If he's tall enough, however, he'll help you out without a single moment of hesitation, you can tell something as simple as this makes him happy. He has the hugest grin on his face, and he hands it to you like he had just delivered some legendary object after a dangerous quest.

He's just glad his height can actually be useful for once and you don't consider it a flaw, it makes him very grateful to have you by his side.

When he sees you get on tip toes to kiss him, Narancia literally can't contain his excitement nor can wait for you to actually reach his lips. He'll just pick you up, hug you and swirl you around before kissing you himself.

No, he will not let you go after this either.

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hand-of-devotion · 7 months

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I keep rotating certain aspects of the Evontra'vir-Ashton conversation and there's one specific thing I see other people taking away from it that is lacking a certain amount of nuance that stuck with me.

Specifically in regards to Ashton's views and how they parallel his fathers.

It should be obvious to everyone at this point that Ashton's stubborn hypocritical "refusal to the call" rooted in his anti divine/fate beliefs need some genuine reflection. They are important and they are aware of it but they don't want any of the hard to grapple with things associated. He needs to think about what it is he can actually do moving forward rather than getting caught up in what he feels he's owed.

However! One very important thing that I keep seeing others ignore or maybe just not even pick up on is THIS.

Efterin's entitlement came from his own zealots ego. The powers he believed he was promised an understanding and control over were NEVER his.

Ashton's entitlement towards the situation is rooted in what was done TO him. Those powers are in fact his. They have been there since he was a child due to a ritual he had no say in. That ritual physically altered his body and killed off nearly everyone in his entire village.

Which. Again. Just because they HAVE those powers doesn't mean they were ever guaranteed mastery over them. Certainly not without putting in effort. It has never been a "gift", even if part of them wishes it was. There is likely never going to be a reality in which the full-blown titan level abilities just ACTIVATE for him with full ease. Moving forward. He has a base level of info. Which he likely didn't find satisfying (but given the situation, there was never really a "satisfying" answer). Now they need to just. Look forward and inward. Make some changes if they want some changes.

But yeah. At the end of the day. Regardless of parallels and a real need for character reflection and growth. Saying that Ashton is "the same" as Efterin seems. Fairly reductive, all things considered.

#critical role spoilers #c3e74 #ashton greymoore #sorry if this seems so long winded. i am incapable of wording this any shorter. i have tried lmao #tldr: this isnt me saying ashton was in the right AT ALL bc theyre NOT but also this is NOT the same situation as efterin?? hello???#tbf the jokes abt it are funny tho. like hes definitely a BIT like his father. at least in their tone. and also theres nothing funnier to m #-than the idea of characters having full emotional spiritual reflections in response to being told they sound like their shitty parent(s)#bc relatable. be fueled by the desire to be better than the fuck-ups before you <3 #edit: this is also! not directed to anyone on HERE. i've had variations of this in my drafts for like 2 days now #specifically bc of a weirdly hostile take i saw on twt lmao

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but-a-humble-goon · 9 months

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I don’t know how the hell we allowed “the ethics of liking the villain” to become a serious media discourse as of late but I wanna talk about it. Let me respond to some frequent points using the most extreme possible example that comes to mind.

This is friendly looking fella is Darth Vader. You might have heard of him. Despite his positively cuddly exterior he’s actually not a very nice man at all.

I love him. And I don’t mean in the disaffected way where I just acknowledge he’s a complex well written character. I mean I feel for him deeply. I sympathise with his suffering and I always root for him to pull through in the end.

“But he’s evil!”

I know.

“He deserves every bad thing that happens to him. It was all his own damn fault!”

Yup.

“He’s a fascist!”

I’m aware. I’m also aware real fascists are not at all cool, tragic or interesting. Darth Vader is not a real fascist. He is a cyborg space wizard with a laser sword and more regrets than he has breathing problems.

“but he’s hateful, cruel, vindictive, petty, and hypocritical!”

And so am I. And so are you. And so is everyone else. These things come with being human. I may not have (as Vader has) personally killed almost as many kids as the faith healing crowd but I do understand intimately what it is like to hate, to want to blame everyone but myself for my failings and to take all my hurt out on others and if you think that you don’t you are lying to yourself. Fiction can be the best way there is to safely explore these feelings and if you reject the bad because you fear what you might see reflected back at you then maybe you should consider what that says about you.

#villains #media literacy #fandom critical #fandom problems #darth vader

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dr3amofagame · 5 months

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speaking of how Weird c!sam is about c!dream, one of my fav things abt c!awesamdream in canon is definitely how they. don't see eye to eye on this? like c!dream doesn't get it and a point is made of how he doesn't get it again and again--the most glaring example, of course, being how sure c!dream is that he'll die if he gives up the book versus c!sam being just as sure when he tells him that he won't die (but, somewhat paradoxically, sounding just as sure when he says that he was looking forward to getting the book so he could kill dream and be done with it)

because in strictly pragmatic terms, once c!dream gives up the book, it's game over for him. there's no reason for c!sam to want him alive, in his mind, from any rational perspective--that was literally the whole reason why he was put in the prison, for god's sake. c!dream makes sense of what c!sam does in terms of practicality--the torture was to get the book, he can understand that, whatever. he takes issues with c!sam's being a hypocrite, but can understand c!sam in terms of himself as something with literal value (the book, 'financial benefit', the works.)

but as much as c!sam dresses up his actions in terms of practicality, he's. very much tied his identity to c!dream-as-prisoner in a way that is so far removed from purely his duty as the prison warden. his complicated feelings on dream's life in his hands are a testament to this--he has to keep dream alive, he hates this, he doesn't let dream die, he promises to keep dream alive if he gives up the book and he believes it, he looks forward to getting the book so they can finally kill dream and be done with it, the first time he brings quackity into the prison is on the heels of a fantasy of pinning dream to the ground and killing him, the last time he escorts him out is because he can't let quackity in with the knowledge that doing so will be dream's death sentence, he reacts to knowledge of dream's death by calling it freedom, he would let his dog and his significant other and damn near the whole fucking server burn for dream's life. dream speaks of his value in sam's life in terms of rare magical items and monetary profit and sam grapples not with how much dream is worth, over and over again, but what he can and will admit to himself

and. god. i keep thinking about scrapped lore, and the two different descriptions of it we got from cc!dream and cc!sam because god i feel like it. really does reflect this. like dream describes his character as "manipulating" sam and specifically mentions doing so by telling sam to "prove that you're not like [dream + quackity]", echoing daedalus, as well as promising not to attack sam or quackity etc etc etc. and it's so interesting to me because...as far as this goes in terms of a method of convincing sam. it doesn't. like sam doesn't need to prove to dream that he's different. even if we look at daedalus in specifics, the most sam really goes is grouping dream with himself (which is. crazy to be clear tho) by asking about dream using the prison for Someone Truly Evil, as in, someone not "like us." the furthest sam goes in daedalus is the consideration of dream as...someone with reasons, and therefore maybe less True Evil. he never actually admits he's a "bad person". and hell, in scrapped lore, quackity is specifically invoking daedalus by telling sam that this is revenge For The Death Dream Gave Him down to finding the exact murder weapon in order to return the favor. sam has every reason to want revenge, and dream's attempt at manipulation doesn't look particularly favorable when we consider sam's motivations.

but when we look at sam's same description of events, it goes as follows: "Dream would like, plead for me to like, save him. And I would." and it's so crazy to me because sam makes zero mention of dream's "reasons", his list of all the specific things he has to offer sam to make his life worth it, not the book not justifications of morality not dream's promises to leave him alone. all of it gets boiled down to what dream is asking for--to be saved, and to be saved by sam. at the heart of the matter, dream is asking for his life. and when it comes down to it? that's enough. that in itself is enough. sam doesn't bend himself in half describing all the moral reasons why he makes the choice he does, doesn't weigh it all on a scale of what is deserving and what is justice and what is "good" and "evil"--dream asks for him to save him. and he would.

like. and it's like, c!dream's side of c!awesamdream is also pretty damn significant--c!dream chose c!sam as his warden, literally put his life in his hands, like. their relationship predates the prison and c!dream's feelings about c!sam are evidently complicated. i'd go as far as saying that c!dream, post-prison, shows a certain degree of familiarity and even comfort with c!sam's presence in ways that aren't really true of just about anyone else--daedalus in itself includes more 1 on 1 c!dream + c!sam time than his interactions with just about any other character post-prison. even when we see c!dream with c!punz, the first interaction we see of the two of them together immediately post-prison is very short, and the streams in the finale involve quite a lot of posturing in front of c!clingy (the saw trap still makes me laugh.) daedalus isn't entirely honest, obviously, but between c!dream going "yes i'm an evil guy but i have reasons" and telling tommy that he's (checks notes) tortured vikkstar + lazar for months and decided to kill everyone to become immortal with punz and is going to kill one of c!clingy as an experiment to see how "dying a hero" influences limbo (?????) i'm kinda willing to bet that the former is a little bit more truthful to what we know about c!dream's character. but all of this makes sense,,, obviously. trauma bonding is a hell of a drug and c!dream spent a whole ass year together in the prison--his messy relationship with c!sam (and Insistence on calling them friends, which, although obviously used ironically is still kinda crazy considering) gives me brainworms, but is far from unreasonable considering the circumstances.

c!sam, on the other hand, has built his entire fucking identity around dream at this point . and the kicker is that dream doesn't even recognize to what extent this is true. they are so

#c!awesamdream #not even talking abt them as a ship rn LMAO but ill tag it anyway #c!awesamdream /p <- i jest i jest #thinking about them ...

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liquidstar · 1 year

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I've seen a lot of people in the Re:zero community hate puck with a passion and call him a hypocritical toxic father, and a good portion of them accuse him of deliberately mentally abusing Emilia so that she can be a naive pretty doll with no sense of independence and always obey him unconditionally.

How do you feel about that?

i dont think theyre wrong per say but i also do think puck genuinely loved emilia a lot- i dont think this is something up for debate. he will literally end the world if she dies. but is that what she would want??? i highly doubt it. emilia is a girl who would die for a world that has been nothing but cruel to her.

puck was never really meant to be a father, like, thats not what he was made for. hes the beast of the end not the beast of paternal love. but thats also something about him i find compelling, because he changed so much of himself because he loved this girl so much. his mentality is literally "if anything happens to her ill kill everyone in the world and then myself"

but he does baby her. extremely so. and he does treat her like a doll. remember part of their contract is literally that he does her hair, and thats why she chops off in greed:if as an act of rebellion (normal teen girl behavior honestly). he also literally never told her what sex is- shes 17 and she had no clue, and its played off as a joke at first, but subaru's "damn you puck" rings so true.

remember in wrath:if it was puck who pitched a deal with suabru to keep emilia trapped in the "princess room" away from all the danger. the whole princess room thing (in wrath:if and also in her childhood) is symbolic of her loss of autonomy in a lot of ways, especially when you remember she's NOT a princess. she's a candidate to be a KING!

and there are more damning things within their contract too, like how she literally wasnt allowed to SEE HER OWN FACE! its not made super clear in the anime, but whenever she looks at reflections she actually doesnt see anything back (not because she doesnt have one, but that she herself isnt perceiving it. and i think a lot of this also comes back to the self-recognition theme of the story, the whole reflections though eyes motif and all. remember how much of her we saw reflected only through subaru's eyes? she doesnt actually see her own reflection until she jumps inside the lake in the trial)

but i think thats also a big part of why he broke her contract with her to begin with. i think he knows she hasnt been allowed to grow up, that shes been overly babied, isolated, and kept away from things that might potentially make her feel bad. including her past, and even her present and future... breaking the contract off all at once isnt a good way to do this, i mean, her mental breakdown was so emblematic of that. but i think its important to look at what it all means for the meta narrative.

the latter half of arc 4 was absolutely emilia's arc, and a lot of it was her sort of growing up. i dont think cold turkey is a great way for a parental figure to do this to their child, but emilia was so incredibly dependent. and a lot of that was because puck MADE her dependent to begin with. for so much of her life she literally only had him... like. she was all alone in complete isolation in a frozen forest for as far back as she can remember, and everyone in the world hated her for reasons she didnt understand, and all she had was this little cat thing to be her friend. OF COURSE shes dependent on him, and of course she thinks she cant do stuff on her own (shes so fucking scared of being alone), and i think puck sort of depended on this mindset to keep her a "child" for as long as possible

but she had to grow up eventually. she's 18, maybe almost 19 by this point of the story (still unclear exactly which month we're in) and this is just as much her coming of age story as it is subaru's. (but speaking of subaru puck also guilt trips him quite a bit about emilia's deaths, even when he himself is "gone at the most important times" in emilia's words, which is not only hypocritical but also manipulative!)

all this being said i seriously love puck as a character because when he was first introduced i was like "oh god. annoying mascot character. boring" and then the beast of the end reveal happened and i was like "oh so this is going in the kyubey ripoff direction. i guess that makes sense for a dark fantasy but idrc" BUT THEN he actually ends up being like. an actual character w a lot of depth and nuance to him, a lot of it being how incredibly fucking sketchy he actually is but in a completely different way than just "evil twist mascot." between him and matsumoto from vivy, i love how tappei handles mascot characters- theyre a really hard thing to get right w/o being annoying LOL.

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sheekmartin · 1 month

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Hypocrite, he thought again. Even if he didn’t know every questionable thing she’d done before, during and after the war, he still knew enough to know she had no fucking right to belittle him like that. To point out his damnation; his mistakes.

“Perhaps you can lace a muffin with sleeping draught,” his voice was smooth - giving not a single ounce of how deep her words had cut him away. “Hmm? Trick me into eating it, then leave me to rot in a broom closet somewhere.” He savored the widening of her eyes as his words did exactly what he’d intended them to.

“Maybe steal my clothes while you’re at it?” He was somewhat confused by how good it felt, being the one to wipe that arrogant little smirk from her freckled face. “Perhaps you can polyjuice me into a cat… that would keep me sufficiently occupied wouldn’t you agree, Granger?”

The whites of her eyes were mesmerizing - Draco could see his reflection.

She wanted to act untouchable and above him? She wanted to put him in his place? That was perfectly fine.

There was no question that Draco was tarnished by his past - but it would be a cold fucking day in hell before he let her forget that she hadn’t always been golden herself.

#ao3 #fanfic #dramione #draco malfoy #hermione granger #just draco

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mohabbaat · 6 days

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i never denied she isn't one of the wrong thing she does and I'm not a swiftie and im not your beloved redacted either but I've been on your blog long enough to follow as an enthusiast and turn around bitter how pathetic you are with your instances and earning the ever loving didi badge. your asian kids write albums and are edited and probably cut down to their throat multiple times by their label and are just as commercial as you call taylor put up by a label and thrown on the face of the world to choreograph and dance because their life depends on it. I wonder your kids ever expressed themselves truly without taking every step panting because it might just ruin their professional image. Im not hating on bts but it's just hypocrite of you to support one artist because they're so uninvolved with their personal life upfront and hate on other because she choses to be transparent and write off each of her wrongdoings on paper. AND NO honey i do not want to fuck an elder woman than me who has no better job but to be pathetic about a celebrity on the other corner of internet but maybe you just seem eager to hate fuck anyone who comes to your ask box youre so down bad. maybe reflect how much hate filled you are by your own shortcomings because a person isn't falling into your oh so perfect artist category and btw not everyone who sends you anon is obsessed with your narcissist self it's also called putting an opinion that's why tumblr put the anonymous feature here

i have a few points:

your punctuation and grammar are a little off. i appreciate the long, entertaining ask but it's quite difficult to read properly. so work on that.

you are literally indian, why are you using asian as a derogatory term? 😭

i never did say bts are perfect. i barely talk about them on here. infact, i have repeatedly said that i am unhappy with their current behavior and their silence on palestine. you just weren't around to see those posts i guess?

i, somehwat, agree with your personal comment honestly. see, i don't know shit about bts' personal life so i can't comment on whether their music is about their own experiences or not (some of the songs clearly are. pls check out indigo by rm). but everyone knows about taylor's personal life. and when you listen to the songs knowing the context they just leave a bad taste in your mouth (for example, guilty as sin is an okayish song. but it's also about her cheating???? so ew). so, knowing about her personal life makes it worse not better.

#hope that helps <3 #asks #(also you sound like a swiftie little one don't lie to me)#anti taylor swift

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servantserah · 1 year

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Tbf and this is an unpopular opinion in the fandom and I get why, I've thought since my second watch (I always focus more on the main plot or characters the first go, then do a second watch for the details, side characters, etc) that if anyone was decently set up for a redemption arc it was Gabriel.

Okay let me explain that lol.

Gabriel is kinda different from the other archangels. Sure, he's still distanced, still mocks Aziraphale's hobbies... But he's also the only one who also has not one but two earthly hobbies. I think he doesn't eat because he's kinda scared it's Gluttony since he doesn't need it. But he also doesn't need jogging or clothes, and to me that looks like the Well Actually excuses of a very very early Aziraphale. He's not a hypocrite and a liar like Michael, who wants to kill Aziraphale for a crime she's guilty of. Not sadistic like Sandalphon. And he can be cruel, but more in an oblivious way than deliberately like Uriel does. Beelzebub did way more harm than him -both were pissed at the airbase but Bee told Satan about it while Gabriel just huffed and puffed.

During the execution he just wants to get it over with and more importantly, I think, when Crowley spits hellfire at them, Gabriel yanks Uriel and Sandalphon behind him and shields them with his body even though it's just as lethal to him. His first instinct is to protect his siblings.

Besides the fact that he can be obnoxious and rude, I think the real problem is that he's way too convinced that he's doing the right thing. He's genuinely flabbergasted when Crowley suggests that She may have different plans and I think the 'God doesn't play games with the universe' 'Where have you been??' exchange is very revealing. (God Herself admits She does lol). God hasn't talked to the angels for ages, and Gabriel is the Messenger. He's still operating on a very old plan because he thinks if it had changed he would be the first to know. But nobody is because God has fucked off the premises and only left the equivalent of a voicemail machine. Gabriel didn't have a Crowley to help him shake off Heaven's programming, and I think a lot of people forget Gabriel is programmed too. He's higher on the hierarchy but he's been taught the same rote and he believes it wholeheartedly (Michael doesn't, see back channels).

So even though I enjoy villain! Gabriel stories because there's a great setup for them, precisely because aside from a few details he's a blank sheet, I love redemption arc stories because that setup is there too. What if he gets to discover and enjoy more of Earth, rediscover himself outside of his role, rebuild his life now that the plan he followed blindly is moot? What if he feels lost, unmoored, and trying to recover he becomes better? Idk I just feel like out of all the others, he has the most potential for that kind of thing. So even though he did worse things in Myosotis than in canon, I'm like 👀 at his pain and where this goes.

Wow sorry for the rant haha

Interesting 👀 Did he really pull Sandalphon and Uriel behind him? Neat little detail.

It’s not impossible that Gabriel will receive his redemption arc in canon (or maybe an arc where he gets kinda redeemed but he’s still kind of an asshole and no one rly wants to spend much time with him lol), based on the stuff we know about him so far. I agree with some of your points!

But my opinion for canon may not necessarily reflect within this Myosotis: Falter, I keep these two separated!

(The Gabriel in my GoodGardenerAU actually does get sorta redeemed (in the way I mentioned above) but I've barely shown him so far so I won’t open that box for now,,,,)

#serahtalks #good omens gabriel #myosotis falter

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whinlatter · 11 months

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Hello! I just read the latest chapter of Beasts and I am, once again, blown away by your skill. I don’t usually read fics in the HP fandom (not sure why, to be honest- there are so many good ones!) but yours are far and away my favorite of the works I have read. (Re: Beasts, I would like to note that your portrayal of Hermione is dead-accurate and delightfully layered. I appreciate the kindness with which you write her, as neither a saint nor a monster— just a deeply traumatized teenage girl.)

I’m not sure if you dispense writing advice on here— if not, feel free to ignore the following— but if you are, I would love some pointers! I’m sure part of it is my anxiety talking, but I find whatever I write to be irritatingly juvenile. You do such a wonderful job of bringing nuance to your works, and I’d appreciate any guidance you have for amateur writers looking to take their fics to the “next level,” so to speak. Also, on a broader level, any tips you have about nailing characterization would be very welcome. I know the ultimate answer to my questions is simply “time and practice,” but I have a genuine desire to improve, and I figure there’s something I can do to hurry the process along.

In the interest of not wasting your time, I’ll wrap it up here. Many, many thanks!

Oh man, I’m blown away by this comment, are you kidding me? Thank you so so much. You really don’t know how much that means to hear (saving this to look back on on a rainy low self-esteem day).

On writing advice... I'm always a bit hesitant about offering writing advice, even though I have benefited so so much from other people’s advice over the years in lots of different ways (probably because I suspect few of us ever really see our own work very clearly). This is also sort of hypocritical of me because I literally teach (non-fiction) writing as part of my job, lol, but maybe this is my imposter syndrome syndroming.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about this question since you sent this, and wanted to say something that might be useful. I actually ended up going back to the (very bad) fanfiction I wrote about 15+ years ago for another fandom (I will not be linking this here lmao), to see what I do differently now and what I’d gotten better at. This was both a very unsettling but also very cathartic process, lol, because I think I’ve gotten a lot better since then (though, truthfully, it couldn’t have gotten much worse).

So, having done that, I’ve tried to put some writing advice and reflections and thoughts below that I think I’ve learnt since I first started writing and that I feel I’ve found out the hard way (by getting it wrong first time around). My points below are more ‘what I admire in other people’s work and ‘what I would like my writing to do’ rather than me thinking I do all these things well all the time, especially on the nuance and characterisation questions. Some are going to sound super obvious but I definitely did not know them once and have definitely had to work to learn all of them, so I really hope they’re useful to you all the same.

Having now sat down and read my truly truly dire past fanfiction (which has a lot of reviews on it telling me, in no uncertain terms, how and why the work sucked), I think these are the things I wish someone had told me or the things I've learnt after a long long time of getting it extremely wrong...

Writing should answer a question, or a series of questions. I think the big shift from the fanfiction I used to write is that I would start from the premise of ‘I want to write these two characters in X setting’ or ‘I want to fill in Y missing moment’. It’s not that these are bad premises - often, fic ideas start this way - but there needs to be a step after this idea before the writing happens, which is the ‘what question would this answer and what would the answer be’. To give an example, for Orchards I always wanted to write a Harry/Ginny summer teenage love story, but I never really thought of it as answering a question, and so every version I could imagine doing of it was unsatisfying. It was only when I realised the question I had was how does someone fall in love and not realise it (and, I guess, and what do they do when they’ve realised it too late?) that I was like ohhh ok, the fic needs to answer that question, and the conceit is how do we get from A (not being in love) to B (falling in love, but not knowing it) to C (knowing it, and being tormented by knowing it). The later layers the fic took on and that I now like so much - flashbacks, use of the future tense to switch to a period where Harry knows he’s in love but can’t do anything about it - all came after that realisation, and I think the fic is more satisfying for me as a writer because it answers a question I had always had in the back of my mind but hadn’t made conscious.

Show, don’t tell - so, signpost, but give the reader credit. Work that I really admire and take the most from is work that doesn’t beat the reader around the head with the point of each scene. You don’t need to tell the reader how x character is feeling. ‘Ginny felt angry because she thought Hermione was being dismissive of other people’s feelings’ - that’s a note to yourself as a writer more than it needs to be expressed so obviously written to the reader. On a first draft, maybe you need that line to be written out as you figure out how characters are feeling in that scene - that’s completely fine. But as you edit, think of ways you can show that kind of emotional response without coming out and straight up saying it. Try to cut lines that state emotional responses so starkly and jarringly, because they take the reader out of the flow of the scene. How might Ginny as a character show she’s pissed off in ways that are legible to the reader (especially a reader of fanfiction, who is familiar with her)? How can we show Hermione being dismissive (not making eye contact, for instance, or saying curt, dismissive statements that shut down the conversation). This relates to the next point which is…

Make the setting work for you - or even let it be a character in its own right. It’s rare in any form of fiction writing that the setting or the activities around characters are incidental. This is especially true for HP, where the author uses the setting throughout to both build a sense of atmosphere but also parallel/symbolise the dynamics of the scene at hand, like little winks to the reader. The weather is often the most obvious way of doing this. As the author, you play god - the weather is exactly what you want or need it to be to best serve the scene. That doesn’t mean necessarily happy scene has to = sunny, or sad scene = rain,, but it could mean torrential rain = huge release of something pent up that’s been building for hours (think of the rain pounding on the tent when Harry and Ron have their screaming match in DH - it’s like a fourth character in that scene), or too-hot sun = rising pressure, huge discomfort, feeling prickled and angry and trapped with no shade (think of Harry at the start of OotP, in the heatwave). It doesn’t have to be weather, either. If you want to show how a character is guarded, struggling to let another character in, why not have them have the conversation hovering in a doorway, with the door partly closed? If you want to write a scene where two characters are thinking about their future together and really getting somewhere emotionally, why not have them have the conversation in a moving car, heading towards a meaningful destination (you could even have the instigator of the conversation in the literal driving seat, if you want to suggest dynamics of control or maturity). These are just examples, obviously, but the writing I really admire does this so well (and rewards re-reads for that reason).

Find a motif or a hook. This is more a personal preference, but I love reading pieces of writing that have a clear framing. The post-war summer fic I’ve been working on for nine thousand years lol only really started coming quicker once I finally found a conceit - an image, really - that worked for me (the fic is called Rubble, and the conceit is: how do you literally build a house that is a family home, as a way of thinking about rebuilding after the war, told around the Weasleys as a family). For Orchards, there are a few motifs: ‘the truth’ as a character; ‘truth or dare’ as a game, but also as a metaphor for Harry and Ginny’s early love story, and Quidditch (love is a quaffle). In Beasts, I have motifs and hooks that I hope to stretch over the entirety of the fic, not least this idea about beasts and beings and the hubris and the monstrousness of the wizarding world - I wanted to write a postwar fic for a long time, but I didn’t have a conceit that allowed me to get at the type of story I wanted to tell for ages. Within each chapter, I also like to have a little motif: so chapter two it was ‘coming back’, chapter three it was sleep and dreams, chapter four it was the soul/what makes a person who they are, chapter five was the sea. Some of these were more successful than others lol, but it helps me to fashion and discipline a piece when writing and when editing/cutting to think: everything in this piece, in some loose way, needs to link back to this theme I’m trying to thread through.

Make sure people sound/think/behave like people. I’ve put points specifically about characterisation below, but this is a more general point: characters shouldn’t sound like generic talking points, they should sound like real people putting together sentences. I think in fanfiction writing, because we often want to resolve flaws in characters, write about characters we love and admire, or want them to have the difficult conversations or hard confessions that they don’t do in canon, we sometimes can both idealise them and make them sound like very self-aware consistently compassionate angels who are experts at expressing exactly how they’re feeling in extremely emotionally healthy and communicative ways. It would be nice if our characters all did that, sure! But what makes for immersive, compelling writing is when characters try and struggle and fuck up and live their flaws, and sound like real living breathing failing growing people.

You probably need to lose the last line. The last line of a fic is important, but sometimes you can lose a reader who’s been with you the whole time with a clumsy last line or one that’s excessively cheesy or overly summarising or just seems like an afterthought because you wrap up. I say this as a real mea culpa because I still suck at last lines, but the best advice I have gotten on this is, if in doubt, cut the last line you were going to go with, lol. Let the scene end without the line you think is a great summative profound line or something reassuring or overly comforting for the reader. I am definitely still learning this (the end line of chapter four of Beasts I’m still considering cutting or editing severely lol - it’s too on the nose for my taste, and I don’t love it), but the last lines I do like most are always the most minimalist, sparse, simple, or even abstract. basically - if it sounds like chat gpt could write your last line (chat gpt loves an on-the-nose happy ending - eg. ‘Hermione knew it was all going to be ok after all’) then go back to the drawing board.

Embrace critique. This is a very subjective one, especially for writing fanfic. Writing fanfic is a rich and rewarding hobby but I recognise that it is a hobby and a source of pleasure, so lots of people prefer not to get constructive critique. I’m actually being a bit hypocritical here as I don’t currently have a beta for fic writing, but I do have a brutal self-editing process (oh, the scenes and sentences I’ve cut!) and I have spent the last decade of my life in academic writing and sharing my work-in-progress written work over and over and over again, often for a couple of hours every few weeks in front of a room of people more senior and much smarter than me all with my written work printed out in front of them ready to tell me what I got wrong and what I need to change or get better at, lol. This has been bruising to say the least, but it 100% has made me a better writer and disabused me of a lot of the bad habits I picked up when starting out, and kicked the ego out of me thinking I didn’t need to edit and draft and re-draft everything several times. I’ve also spent a long time reading and editing and responding to other people’s work, in the same way, and that’s also been super productive to help me think about how to better communicate written ideas, fiction or non-fiction. So I think real improvement and growth in your writing has to come from getting a thick skin and being able to take critique from people you respect, who are constructive not destructive, and who believe in your talents, your right to show them, and want to see your work presented in the best possible way.

On characterisation specifically...

Look for similar scenarios in the books and see how the character reacts to those. I go back to canon a lot to find plots that are analogous to the plots I’m writing to see how characters physically and verbally respond to them. My thought processes are like, Hermione and Ginny in conflict? Head to HBP when they clash over Harry and Sectumsempra to see how they fight lol. Need to write a Weasley ensemble scene? Head to Goblet of Fire Burrow chapters pre-world cup to see the family dynamics in full swing, and see how the text conveys warmth and love between the characters, while also attending to power dynamics and changing/fractious relationships, down to the adverbs used to describe how people speak, how they physically occupy the space. (I used this chapter a lot when writing the beach day scene for the latest chapter of Beasts, because I knew I was going to have a scene that in part shows how Bill operates an older brother, especially how he deals with his parents and Percy, but also how to distinguish Bill from Charlie when they’re often characters that can get blurred together a bit as ‘the older ones’.) I’m doing this a ton with Hermione atm, because I think she sometimes exists in fanon differently to how she appears in canon and I didn’t want to just assume I knew her speech patterns based on reading a lot of fanfiction about her, but also because Hermione, unlike Ron, doesn’t have her existential crisis within canon but probably (I suspect) has a post-war reckoning that speaks on insecurities and traumas that do occur within the canon text. So if I’m looking at Hermione struggling to relate to the student body, I need to go back to the canon text and find moments where some of those dynamics were already starting to come into play (eg. Hermione not getting Quidditch, Hermione’s responses to Neville telling them what life was like under the Carrows, Hermione’s relationship with other girls in her year eg. Lavender and Parvati).

Relatedly: look at how characters that are similar to each other react to certain scenarios if you don't have enough evidence of how one character might behave. I decided with Beasts that, while Harry and Ginny are not the same person, they are characters that often react in certain situations similarly, so if I don’t have an example of how Ginny herself would respond to a certain situation (eg. injury in Quidditch), I can use Harry’s response as a bit of a guide for what Ginny would be like. That scene in chapter two where Harry and Ginny discuss her going back to Hogwarts actually borrows lines from Dumbledore and Harry’s conversation in the purgatory King’s Cross after Harry’s ‘death’ - ‘I have to go back, don’t I?’ ‘That’s up to you’ - because although Ginny deciding to go back to Hogwarts is not exactly the same as the decision Harry makes not to ‘go on’, it seemed there were enough analogies with it that I could borrow little lines and colour from that scene. (I have a bit of a cop-out dumb joke to myself in this scene - Harry saying to Ginny ‘we’re the same’ is me nodding to swapping out two very similar protagonists).

Play the ‘there’s a pigeon in the living room’ game. There’s lots of different versions of this exercise for improving characterisation, but I like this one: if this character woke up tomorrow, went into their living room and found a pigeon in it, what would they do? How would they respond? Would they scream/swear/laugh/calmly acknowledge the situation? How would they physically respond - would they try to get the pigeon out, if so how would they physically try to do that? What words could you use for how their body would move in the space while they tried to, say, open a window, or shoo it out the door? Would they call someone to help, if so, who, and why? What would they say, and how would they say it? It's such a stupid game but I do really find it helpful to better inhabit the character, especially if the character is very different from you as the author.

Good characterisation means trying to get everyone right. The trouble sometimes with fanfiction writing is that we have our main character as someone that we love and want to write about, and then harness all other characters in the service of our main character’s personal development. But that’s not really how real people behave - people rarely walk around thinking all day every day about one specific main-character person they know, lol (I always think of the bits in Inception where everyone starts looking at the person in the dream…) Strong characterisation means having at least a working understanding of what motivates every character that interacts with the main character in the fic, that thinks about how both characters perceive their relationship, and how their behaviours and the things they say might change based on who they’re talking to. Characterisation is deeply relational, and very much about how characters react or respond in a way that’s highly specific and contextual. It just takes a lot of really boring slog work of figuring how characters’ typical sentence structures, their body language, their thought-processes, who they gravitate towards, the kind of arc or change they are capable of. It’s important not to come in with judgement, and from a place of wanting to understand and empathise with a character. (It's why I don't really write characters I don't fully understand or 'get' - I'd do a horrible job!)

The last thing I want to say is that the best advice I ever received is pretentious and cloying but true: it's to know your gift. You say you find your own writing ‘irritatingly juvenile’. But in even asking a question like the one you’ve asked, you’ve shown you’re clearly a thoughtful, curious and creative person - and thoughtful, curious and creative people will always produce writing that other people will get something out of. I’ll bet your writing has real strengths, some that you don’t even see and others that actually (at least I hope!) you recognise and that you’re really proud of. This doesn’t mean you can’t develop new skills or improve or challenge yourself. But starting any process of improvement by clearly identifying what you’re good at (knowing your gift), figuring out why you’re good at it, thinking about how best to showcase it and believing you have a right to show this talent or skill is really important. I know this is excruciating to do but I really recommend making a little list of things and starting from this point of acknowledging you have stories to tell and ways of telling them that other people will admire and benefit from you sharing with them. You'll never actually want to improve if you come from a place of being horrible to yourself as a writer. What you do has worth, and wanting to improve is a journey we're all on, just trying to find ways to better share what we have and have it mean something to someone else who comes across it.

#writing #writing advice #beasts #thank you anon #i really hope this is helpful and i just know your writing will be wonderful #also i will be dining out on your praise for precisely one million years

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starglitterz · 2 years

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♡ MOONLIGHT SHADOW.

— scaramouche and late night kisses.

feat ; scaramouche x gn!reader

warning(s) ; highly suggestive, cat-and-mouse dynamic kinda, lmk if there's anything 2 tag, not proofread we die like signora

a/n ; basically im a slut for him end of story,,, also this is technically my comeback post hahaha hi <3

please reblog ! it helps a lot :)

silvery light filters through the windows, dappling the gently swaying curtains and illuminating the room just enough to illustrate two silhouettes. if you could think straight, you'd realise how the moonlight is artificial; a poor reflection of the sun's natural beams. and perhaps you'd even realise that in this way, the man in front of you is similar to the crescent hanging heavy in the sky – pitiful recreations of a glowing celestial body.

however, at this moment, your head is anything but clear, and this only worsens when scaramouche traces his hand up your thigh. leaning into his fleeting touch as your eyes slide shut, you try to ignore how mocking his physicality is, as if he's awarding you a great honour by being with you like this. yet a second later, you flinch and dart back, your whimper dying on the tip of your tongue thanks to the purposeful zap from his electro delusion still tingling on your skin. a maniacal laugh rips from his throat, and the harbinger smirks at your surprised reaction. what a freak he must be, you ponder absently, to gaze at you like a predator eyes prey.

a tear trickles down your face, an automatic reaction to the sting, though you hastily wipe it away before scaramouche sees. of course he does though, he always notices every little detail about you. "aw, did i make you cry, pretty?" he asks, mirth glimmering in his irises when you glance away, "i'm not crying." "sure looks like you are," he cups your cheek, tilting your face back to him and swiping over the tear streaks with a careful caress of his thumb. it's moments like this when his affection shines through where you can fool yourself that he really loves you, that you're something more than a toy that he loves to tease and push to breaking point.

scaramouche clicks his tongue at your lack of reply, head dipping to your neck to add yet another lovebite to the vast array decorating your skin like a twisted collage of his so-called love for you. a gasp escapes your throat when his teeth sink into you, and your hands tangle in his cropped hair, fingers gripping the strands so tightly your knuckles turn white. you remember when his hair was longer, before kunikuzushi lifted his katana and sliced it off with no hesitation, swearing to himself he would be nothing like what his creator wanted him to be. that was the day he shed his original name and gained another, one that would eventually strike paralysing fear into the hearts of whoever was unlucky enough to hear it.

he presses ever closer to you, just like he always does, trying to close the inevitable distance between you both until there is nothing left but skin against skin. you don't know what he's searching for during nights like these, and you can only hypothesise the morning after when the bed beside you is empty, with crumpled sheets the sole sign anyone else was there.

perhaps the reason he maps out every inch of you so frequently is to satisfy his craving for validation, to know that he isn't worthless, to know that he didn't deserve to be thrown away. and in the end it is hypocritical to deny that is all you want too, so you tumble into bed with him again and again, putting up with all his sick tendencies and never learning from your mistakes just to find hollow adoration in the curves of one another's bodies.

your nails dig into the bare skin of his back, trailing down to leave scars and scratches you know will lead to raised eyebrows and questions. maybe this is your way of getting back at him, to usurp the control he is so obsessed with having. it is almost as if scaramouche's utmost secret wish is to be the puppeteer for once instead of the puppet, dancing to someone else's strings for all of eternity.

but it is a pyrrhic victory, for scaramouche then steals your breath with a kiss, one of hunger and passion and desire and more emotions you cannot possibly begin to explain with words. he chuckles softly after biting your lower lip, pressing his forehead against yours. "you're crazy," you murmur, scanning his indigo eyes to look for any hint of remorse or sadness and finding none. your voice is toneless, reduced to the cold clinicality reserved for stating indisputable facts. though if you asked scaramouche, he'd probably say the timbre of your sentence was edged with awe. "isn't that why you love me?" he answers with a question, proving just how infuriating he can be. you laugh, a peculiar sound considering you're unable to refute him, before wrapping your arms around his neck to tug him closer.

when push comes to shove, you know you'll always choose to fall deeper into the swirling abyss of scaramouche, deeper into the black hole that is kunikuzushi, and deeper into the endless void that defines the balladeer. and when the night sky cracks open with a shock of lightning and a deafening boom of thunder you realise that you can't be bothered to care about the eventual consequences.

#scaramouche x reader #scaramouche #genshin scaramouche #scaramouche drabble #✏️ — quill writes !

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writella · 3 months

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Thoughts on Saltburn:

cc: E and Murda (@dustbunniess + @celtic-crossbow , who asked me to share once I did ♡)

Before I start, I want to say I’m only making guessing about what I think is being said so take my opinions with a grain of salt. Anyways, I already really enjoy the work on Emerald Fennell because I loved her film Promising Young Woman so I assumed I would like this one and I did! On one hand, I think I enjoyed pyw more from Fennell and from films that came out this/last year that are absurd and lust filled and make social commentary I feel like I enjoyed Poor Things more but at the same time I feel like these films are trying to do different things so you can’t compare. I was very interested in the commentary it was making about social class and capitalism, so I think that makes it intriguing on its own.

I think the most interesting part about it is that it seems that no matter how much you have, you always want more. And when that’s the case, you’re willing to give up so much of yourself or what you could be to get it. It’s sad and also shows you how vial us humans can be.

So many beautiful shots and of course I loved looking at the costumes and character designs! I was fascinated by the shots that showed multiple versions or reflected versions of Oliver. Light spoiler: there is that part near the beginning of the film when Oliver has his first breakfast at Saltburn or something where Venetia tells that story of a doppelgänger and I was wondering if that’s why Fennell decided to do shots like that because Oliver is the doppelgänger. Especially since even though he’s not like the Catton’s, in some ways he already is— greedy, prejudice, hypocritical— and he wants to be anyway and is willing to do absolutely anything to get there.

I could go on but I just have three more points for now; direct spoilers under the cut:

- Okay, now why was I more surprised about the ending then about the grave scene?? 😭 I did not except to see Barry Keoghan’s dick so many times lmao. It was creepily hilarious though and I’m happy I finally know why everyone has been dancing to this song.

- I knew he was going to do something bad and that we would be lying about something but I can’t believe he planned EVERYTHING. Like even the bike?? Omg. Also the scene at his parents house was so hard to watch plsss.

- And overall, basically everyone in this film is bad. I truly hated and felt disgusted by everyone. Maybe not Felix and Venetia… I feel so terrible that they died. They definitely deserved it the least but at the same time I also noticed that they didn’t mind their place society, knew they benefited from it, and weren’t trying to change anything. They just got lucky to be born into this kind of family where they could always fit in and not worry about wanting. I don’t know… I still feel bad for them though. Also for Farleigh. He was a fucking asshole and so terrible to Oliver even before the plot twist reveal, but ofc we cannot forget about how it’s awful the parents were so quick to throw him out. The stealing was bad but they do not understand what it’s like to not be white and rich and therefore they don’t understand the struggles Farleigh has to deal with when he’s not at Saltburn, how annoying it is to always ask for help, etc. Things like that and when Venetia said that Farleigh is more spoiled than she and Felix were was obviously dumb and crazy to say.

#film chats with writella ⋆⭒˚.⋆

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dearweirdme · 7 months

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Hi, Dear weird me. This is going to be a long ask, which is less of an ask and more of countering a point made on your blog. BUT I promise it has literally nothing to do with #straws but feel free to post a cute Taekook picture anyways 💜 Okay I wanted to talk about some of the narratives and questions I see swirling regarding the direction of Jungkook's music.

Jung Kook said on Suchwita that he was searching for another song similar to Seven for his next single. Clearly listening to 3D, we see he was able to do so. This brings me to question why the narrative when Jung Kook chooses to sing about sex , that the songs must have been chosen by the company for him to make him "appear straight", and that furthermore he had limited or no autonomy in choosing the music to represent himself as an artist?

I don't believe this is the primary narrative that was tossed around when Taehyung was singing about romance on Layover. Which is interesting because those songs also mention women, and we know for a fact that Taehyung did not write any of the songs on layover and that every song was in fact chosen for him to sing. And this is not Tae shade, I think Layover is a phenomenal album. However, I find it a bit hypocritical that Jung Kook gets accused of being inauthentic in his artistry due to the more explicit and poppy nature of his music, which brings me to my next point.

Jung Kook has always been inspired by the likes of Justin Timberlake, Usher, Michael Jackson, Justin Bieber, Harry styles, the list goes on and on. Every single man I've listed has sung about sex. And furthermore these songs stick out in their discography as massive hits. See Sexy Back for Justin Timberlake, Watermelon Sugar for Harry Styles, Climax for Usher, Dirty Diana for Michael Jackson, etc etc.

We know for a fact Jung Kook wants to be recognized as a global pop star, outside of BTS. We know this because Jung Kook has said this multiple times via his lives, and also in interviews. How do you become a global pop star? Why not look at Jung Kook's early steps as a solo artist from left and right, to Seven, to now 3D. Look at these songs and then look at the songs and steps that all of the Massive male pop stars before him have taken, and you can quickly see the similarities. All of this is to say that however, you feel about his sexuality and who he is or isn't dating doesn't matter to me. What does matter to me is to dismiss Jung Kook's art as primarily a form of "bearding" And when I say his art I am discussing the music that he chooses to sing and the visual aesthetic that he either chooses (creative director of the Vogue shoot) or makes his own tweaks to (dazed Korea shoot). As I've stated above none of the songs, or visual aesthetics Jung Kook is choosing is super unique to him, they sound and look great because he's Jung Kook, but they're simply not unique. So either every single male pop star chose to sing about sex to conceal their sexuality or a much less sinister idea, they chose to sing about sex because that is what the general public wants to hear. And what artists choose to lend their voice to does not always have to reflect who they may or may not be off stage. Now we could get into why the GP makes perceived straight sex music popular, but I'd like to stay on topic. Which is why Jung Kook gets accused of using his music to conceal something as opposed to just making the music he wants to make, the music that sounds just like the people who have inspired him and the music that will make him a global superstar.

At the end of the day however you feel about Jung Kook's music,I would gently challenge you and people who automatically jump to relate Jung Kook's music to his sexuality whether it be positive, negative, as a form of dismissal or a form of confirmation, I would challenge you gently to just try not to do that? I think it's easier to realize that maybe Jung Kook is singing about fucking, because every single male pop star does. Maybe he has his shirt off because that body is rocking because every male pop star takes their shirt off, Maybe rappers are being featured because not only does Jung Kook like rap but because pop rap crossovers are super popular. In fact, they are so popular that they beat out BTS several times for Grammys. His music is perfectly aligned to what Jung Kook says he wants for his artistic career and it's healthier to say "He makes this music because it bops and it's going to help him reach his goals" than to say "He makes this music because he's trying to convince the world he's straight" I say all of this to say Jung Kook is going to continue to sing about love, relationships, and sex. And he's probably going to keep taking his shirt off, and looking sexy for the camera. It really shouldn't bother trekkers or anyone who believes he's not straight, because it's his art, and his art does not have to be connected to who he chooses to love. Sometimes art can just be art 💜

Hi anon!

You know what, I agree with you. It wasn’t my intention at all to dismiss his music as bearding, that’s absolutely not the case and I apologize for coming across that way.

I do feel they’re taking a certain route with him, but that’s to reach the goals you mention.. not to make people see him as straight. The main goal is absolutely to get as big as he can get, and he deserves that. Jk is an amazing artist.

Not coming across as queer is never the main goal.. people don’t put out songs for that reason specifically, it’s more something that exists in the sidelines. Like Taennie for Tae (imo ofcourse). Jk singing about sex isn’t that to me.. everyone has sex no matter what sexuality they have. I do feel Jk’s song is specifically about women, no room for queerness and with the exclusion of a queer possibility the general public (or just those who don’t think Jk can be queer) will most likely take him as straight. If Jk is actually queer like a lot of us think, that might be some sort of choice, depending on how many people actually know about him being queer. That does not have to be a reflection of his actual sexuality though.

Thanks for your ask 💜

#i should not blog when I’m low on sleep #jk solo

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teaveetamer · 9 months

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I'm sorry, Raxis has a history of sporking fic? He has a TVTROPES page about it?

Then literally, aside from defending his saintly waifu.png's delicate honour, grounds - moral or otherwise - does he have to stand on? He knows what the purpose of sporking is, in theory. He should know that sometimes it's just about discussing a fic, thematically, in depth, to see what it says or how it fails to say them, instead of just plain mockery.

Or maybe it's that he's only ever sporked a fic to insult or send harassment towards the 'cringe' author, so he's unable to comprehend that anyone else might do it for any other reason.

I'm sure Raxis thinks he's the main character and all, but even this is way more transparently hypocritical than usual.

YEEEEEEEEEEP. He even wrote his own little character profile on the Das Sporking TV tropes page. Which was a community primarily geared toward mocking Twilight and Fifty Shades originally, so you might not be off about the "sporked fic just to insult or send harassment towards the 'cringe author'".

Also like here's the thing. He's gonna claim it was a long time ago, and that's true, but he's 35. He was also editing the Das Sporking TV tropes page back in 2013, 2014, and 2015, which means he was at least 24 or 25 and active in these communities. The earliest he could have possibly joined up is 2009, when he was like 21, given this entry:

Where Raxis writes that his first spork/intended spork was the Sword Art Online light novel, which was released in 2009 in Japan and 2014 in America?

Also he's still editing the pages. He only marked himself down as "retired" last month when people started calling him out for being a hypocrite for trying to shit talk BWIIDT when he was an active sporker himself.

Also you're? Still doing it? You're LITERALLY sporking a fic right now. YOU CALL IT A SPORK. Like yes if this was just some dumbass shit he did as a teen or even a twenty-something then I wouldn't bother bringing it up, but he's still doing it. So uh yeah, it's still relevant? Especially when you spend most of your fucking Reyna sporks whining about what a big ol meaaaaaaaaaaaaanie BWIIDT is for... pointing out racism and sexism.

Like you, a cishet white man, spent your 20's when you were a grown ass man, in a community apparently known for shitting on teenage girls who like Twilight and you appear to have done no reflection or growth on that.

I did cringe and offensive and ignorant shit ten years ago too (granted I was an actual teenager ten years ago). Like, I definitely had some weird hangup about Demisexuality. Thank GOD I don't think I ever posted any of it publicly. And now ten years later I'm not such an ignorant fuckwad and I don't think or say those things anymore. You know what I don't do? Claim to have learned from and regret my mistakes, continue to post demi-phobic shit all over my social media accounts, and then get mad at people for calling out my hypocrisy because "you're bringing up stuff I did ten years ago!"

It was ten years ago but shit ain't changed, so why wouldn't your past behavior still be relevant? Especially since you were old enough to know better then, and you're sure as shit old enough to know better now.

Also I just want to point out the irony of Raxis breaking THE FIRST RULE of the Das Sporking wiki with his sporks

Sooo you had no idea linking to a fic directly could possibly cause harassment, huh? That was just a big oopsie on your part?

He doesn't give a shit about Reyna's fic. He just views it as a way to dunk on the "Edelcrits" and specifically BWIIDT, which is why he CONSTANTLY brings up BWIIDT in his posts about Reyna (I've seen a few more snippets). Like he genuinely thinks it hurts our feelings when he mocks a fic none of us had ever even fucking heard of before. It doesn't, it just makes him look like a massive fucking tool.

And like I pointed out in this post, BWIIDT started talking about Cap's fic because people were out here shoving it down fandoms' throat and insisting it was "essential" to understand canon. Like it was getting recc'd to Joe fucking Zieja, and it has SO MANY problematic elements. Racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. I won't rehash them all.

What even are Raxy's criticisms of Reyna's fic, other than "it's cringe", "I don't like how she writes Edelgard", and "BWIIDT hurt my feelings by talking about a fic I like"? And again, what the fuck does this random fic author have to do with anything BWIIDT has done? If your issue is with BWIIDT then why do you insist on dragging a random person in for no fucking reason?

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