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dexysmr · 8 months

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dissonance [bakugou katsuki x reader]

ch. 2: verse

summary: “Katsuki's a nice guy,” Kaminari says abruptly. He gives you a sidelong glance, chewing on the inside of his cheek, and it feels like he’s trying to convince himself as much as he is you. “It’s just that he’s also… an asshole.” “I think those are mutually exclusive.” or, the one where you and bakugou almost get into fisticuffs, and kaminari tries to play the middle man

tags: enemies to lovers, college band au, drummer! bakugou, afab reader but no fem pronouns

ch. 1 | ch. 2 | more to come!

All the greatest bands have had the messiest breakups. The Beatles imploded after ten years of brilliance; Oasis ended with one member assaulting another; and Fleetwood Mac saw one string of affairs after another. In the end, their fame almost seemed to be made from equal parts musical genius and explosive drama.

As for your band… well, it’s about to blow up before it can even take off from the ground.

Jirou is the strongest out of the four of you, both in terms of talent and mentality. Not only has she been playing the longest, but she has perfect pitch to bat. It also doesn’t hurt that Jirou knows how to play every instrument in the band. The problem comes from the fact that, despite being the de facto leader, Jirou can’t lead for the life of her. She’s your typical bassist—morose, pensive, introverted—none of which particularly lend themselves to reigning in a shit-show of a band. Admittedly, this issue is chiefly being caused by the rest of you.

Kaminari is good, he really is, but his biggest obstacle is self-consciousness. Flubbing one chord is enough to turn his face beet red, and from there the fingering mistakes multiply until he’s too embarrassed to keep going. Oh, and his stage fright renders him completely useless. Which is hard because, well, performing on stage is only the most important part of being in a band.

In terms of playing ability, though, you’re probably the weakest link. You’ve always been a pretty good guitarist, but after years of setting your hobby aside it’s grown rusty, like something forgotten in the attic. Jirou has been helping you relearn everything, but the labored pace with which you’re improving frustrates you to no end.

Let’s be real, though. The real problem child is Bakugou. Specifically, it’s his bad fucking attitude and inflammatory way of speaking. You’ve never been a particularly level-headed person to begin with, but something about the prickly blond draws a bewilderingly strong reaction out of you. It’s something to do with the constant holier-than-thou sneer on Bakugou’s face, or his inability to take any criticism, or the fact that he keeps. On. Rushing.

“Stop, just stop!” Your outburst incites a high-pitched whine from the speakers, and the music comes to a fumbling halt. Turning to Jirou, you feel a stab of guilt when she flinches at the sudden feedback, a hand coming up to touch a hearing aid. “Sorry, Jirou. I just- he is literally two bars ahead of us!”

You’re too frustrated to even look at Bakugou, instead choosing to gesture a hand in his vague direction.

“Don’t talk about me like’m not fucking right here,” he says, tone already rising with anger. A kettle, seconds away from screaming.

Kettle, meet pot. You whirl around, guitar smacking into the mic with a discordant clang, and jab a finger at Bakugou. “You shouldn’t play like we’re not fucking right here! If you want to rush like all hell’s loose then start a one-man band!”

Bakugou slams his drumsticks against the rim of a drum and stands up abruptly, face already contorting with anger. You’ve never used the phrase ‘resting bitch face’ lightly, given its more than misogynistic connotation, but that’s exactly what Bakugou has. At least, that’s the only face you’ve seen him with around you. So when he gets actually angry, the effect is almost monstrous.

Right now, Bakugou’s brow is knit together, forming a frighteningly accurate ‘V’ that you’re sure will be permanent by the time he’s seventy. His feline-like eyes are narrowed, mouth twisted into a snarl. He’s a snake poised to spring, all taut muscle and prominent veins, arms braced against the drum kit, and you realize with no small annoyance that Bakugou is kind of fit.

The somewhat flattering illusion is broken immediately with his next words, snarled through grit teeth. “Am I rushing or are y’all just slow as shit?”

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Jirou make an aborted motion, like she wants to intervene but her feet are glued to the spot. She chews her bottom lip and looks to Kaminari helplessly, who grimaces and steps in.

“Come on, guys, we don’t have to yell about this… Bakugou, why don’t you try practicing with a metronome for a bit? Until you get the tempo down.”

Bad move. Bakugou couldn’t take any criticism, let alone suggestions. The effect is instantaneous. Like one big exothermic reaction, the drummer’s irritation veers into fury and you can almost feel the room get hotter. Anticipating the coming storm, Jirou sighs and takes out her hearing aids.

“I don’t fuckin’ need to practice with a crutch, idiot. And you’re one to talk when y’can’t even stand in front of a crowd without wettin’ yourself. Maybe we should just ask everyone at the festival to turn ‘round and cover their ears, and then y’could finally play a song all the way through for once!”

Kaminary flushes red, mouth thinning into a wobbly scowl, and abruptly throws his guitar onto a stand before bolting out of the room. It’s too far, and maybe you’re projecting but you think you see regret flash through Bakugou’s eyes. There and gone, a brief streak of lightning through heavy clouds. Then he turns to you.

“And you,” Bakugou starts, enough heat in the word to make your hackles rise. You don’t stay to hear what he says next. Unplugging your guitar from the amp, you stalk out of the door after Kaminari, letting it slam shut behind you.

The silence of the hallway is such a stark contrast that your ears ring. You take a deep, steadying breath and imagine how whales must feel breaching the surface of the ocean for air. This has been a weekly thing, now. Someone messing up, you and Bakugou screaming about it, and then you storming out. At least you have the maturity to be the bigger person and end the fight before it truly gets ugly. Otherwise, you have no doubt that Bakugou would escalate, and you didn’t want to stick around to see what happened then.

Down the corridor, Kaminari disappears through an open window onto the fire escape. Earlier, he had had that look on his face you were all too familiar with, having watched yourself make it in several bathroom mirrors in your lifetime—mouth pressed into a thin line, breathing through your nose, like you could keep yourself from crying if you just didn’t let any sounds past your lips. After a moment’s hesitation, you follow Kaminari and clamber through the window, making sure not to clip your guitar on its frame.

“Are you vaping?” You find yourself blurting, only realizing belatedly when Kaminari turns that he’s actually holding an inhaler. His incredulous laugh devolves into coughing, so he takes another hit.

“It’s gotta take some crazy level of self-loathing to smoke with asthma,” Kaminari says after taking a measured breath, and tucks the inhaler back into his pocket. You chuckle at that and join him in leaning against the railing. “It’s for my- anxiety,” he admits, in that faltering way like tripping over cracks in the sidewalk. “Sometimes… like if I get too worked up, my throat starts to close up.”

Your memory comes back to you, now, that at last semester’s Victorian Lit presentation he’d quietly slipped out into the hall afterwards. A wave of guilt washes over you for how many times you’d laughed whenever Jirou poked fun at Kaminari’s stage fright. You want to apologize, but instead choose to scoot closer and press your side gently into his and give him a small smile. He grins back and gives a thumbs-up, and the two of you lapse into an easier silence.

The sky is a cloudless, blistering blue, the kind that hurts to look at. Late September is always that liminal time where summer heat lingers heavy in the air, but the trees have already begun their autumnal shed. UA’s usual lush sprawl of green has started losing the battle to yellows and oranges. Across the commons, one of the university’s controversial newer additions pierces through this foliage, a sleek thing of metal and glass in the shape of an H. It was just typical of the Board to splurge on a pretty building for the more lucrative departments, like Business Administration, when its English and Fine Arts buildings were in desperate need of maintenance. Still, you have to admit that it looks great, and it’ll look even better on UA’s application brochures.

“Katsuki's a nice guy,” Kaminari says abruptly, startling you from your panoramic assessment. He gives you a sidelong glance, chewing on the inside of his cheek, and it feels like he’s trying to convince himself as much as he is you. “It’s just that he’s also… an asshole.”

“I think those are mutually exclusive.” You mean it as a lighthearted jab, but a sour edge creeps back into your voice. Kaminari chuckles but doesn’t say anything, which you take as the go-ahead.

“Today… well, like, every day, but specifically today- he couldn’t take a single ounce of constructive criticism. Not even when he was clearly wrong. I mean, we for sure weren’t dragging. I swear, arguing him is like- fuckin’- trying to drag an ox through mud. How are we supposed to even make music like this?” You sigh and thunk your forehead against his shoulder, grateful that it meets a soft sweatshirt instead of the bathroom stall for once.

Kaminari really laughs this time, and you can feel it rumble through his chest. “Have a lot of experience as a farm hand, do you? You should switch majors to animal husbandry like Koda.” A pause, and then, more seriously, “Katsuki can be a lot to handle, I know. But it’s not as easy as saying, like, he’s just an asshole or whatever. It’s more than that. It’s like- you know how there’s a saying that bullies were victims first, in some way?”

“That doesn't justify being a bully, though.”

“It doesn’t,” he agrees, “but it explains it, at least. It’s not really my place to say anything else about Katsuki, but he’s got crazy layers of defense mechanisms. Like the princess and the pea, except the pea is… not a pea. So when someone gives him a suggestion or some kind of advice, it gets twisted up in his head that you’re looking down on him.”

You imagine Bakugou as a princess, trying to sleep on forty mattresses, and snort. “That sounds like a real exhausting mental gymnastics routine. Simone Biles better watch out.”

“Yeah…” Kaminari turns his head to give you another sideways glance. “Y’know, actually-”

“Cuddle time is over, lovebirds.” You jump, banging your guitar against the railing, and Kaminari reflexively reaches a hand out to steady you. (That poor guitar is really getting roughed up today.) It’s Bakugou, of course, standing inside at the window, a scowl permanently fixed to his face. “Jirou wants another run before we go, so hurry the fuck up.”

He glances between the two of you, at the hand Kaminari has bracing your forearm. Spins around and, muttering under his breath, stalks away.

You and Kaminari glance at each other, and this time he’s the one looking apologetic. Sighing, you climb through the window and start after the drummer.

“Some kind of princess he is...”

notes: i didn't expect so many ppl to read ch 1 so thank u all!! the funny thing is, i'm new to bnha so when i wrote it i hadn't watched the UA school festival episodes yet, and when i saw they had jirou and kaminari in a band w/ bakugou on drums i freaked out.

i based jirou's scene off of my HoH friend, who will take off her hearing aids when she's annoyed. as for kaminari getting asthma attacks when he's anxious, that's literally me lol i carry my 'vape' everywhere with me.

anyway, i'm expecting this series to be ab 4-5 chapters!

masterlist

#bakugou x reader #bakugou katuski x reader #my hero academia #mha fanfiction #bnha #bnha fanfiction #kyouka jirou #kaminari denki

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cidthesquid · 1 month

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A Quick Update! - Style Savvy Trendsetter #09

Hello all! I know many of you may have followed primarily for Style Savvy content, And that's 100% okay! I want everyone to be able to enjoy whatever part of my content they want, however they want!

I would actually start to feel bad if people felt obligated to read my extra ramblings, or check out posts that don't interest them. I make these post for my own enjoyment and journaling my digital fashion journey, across multiple games! So as Iong as I find new experiences I'll keep posting! (Questions/Comments are always welcome!) ----- Style Savvy tendsetter has slowed down quite a bit, so I have not had much to post about, But I feel like it's been long enough to share at least a quick update! First, Chad is getting a little worried about the massive amount of clothes getting sent to my apartment:

He's not very confrontational about it, and it seems like genuine curiosity, and he's a really nice guy, so I won't hold it against him. :) I also ended up entering another fashion contest! I'm still stuck in beginner rank, until the story progresses further. But I think I was able to come up with a cute outfit to match the girly theme:

There's not much challenge at this level, but it's a fun little distraction.

While I'm at least playing a few days a week now, I actually took a break for a while, my adhd just had trouble staying engaged with a game that was this laser focused on one specific activity. It actually being stuck in a waiting room for a doctors appointment, for me to boot it up on my phone again. (don't worry, it was just routine)

Contests don't really give you any money, and only give you a single clothing item for willing, so while replaying them is fun, it's not a great use of your time. I also changed up my outfit for the first time in over a month, I really liked the green kimono, but the pattern was a bit much for wearing around town. So I decided to mix it up a bit:

I found a really nice combination of items that offers a shoulder-less look that I did not think was possible in this game.

Yeah, it's fairly monochromatic, that's pretty much my 'panic play', when trying something new, even if it's not boring, at least it's not messy. haha!

The furniture shop also just opened, so I can now start decorating my character's room!

They seem very excited about it! haha

I decided to go with a mint/pastel purple color scheme, mostly because it's one of the few 3 color matches I could remember at the time for brown/tan, so I figured it would match the flooring well. I'd never want to live here IRL, but I think it looks pretty nice for the game.

Also, fun fact, your apartment's wallpaper will also be applied as your background for the apartment menu. And yeah, that's really it for this update, I'll leave you with one extra screenshot, and those who are interested/comfortable can stick around for the bonus existential stuff! :P

---- /!\ Caution: End of Cute screenshots, Mostly unedited Ramblings beyond this point /!\ Alright, so again, keeping this confined to thoughts I had when playing the game. I've already changed my character's name once, to make them better fit their new identity, and to match the name of the blog. But whenever I see the name 'Cid' printed out in game, It still feels a little weird, Maybe I had just gotten used to the other name as I used it in monster hunter, and other games? It may also because of the masculine connotations from that name, especially since I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV recently. Because of that and other FF games whenever I see that name, I think of a gruff older man who's also an airship engineer! XD So my initial thoughts would simply be to change it to something similar, like 'Sid', as that could have a more feminine feel that could feel less out of place. And I know most won't relate to this, but this line of thinking often gets me into meta thoughts like: "Why do you feel you NEED to change the name? It's all in your head!", "Is this what YOU really want, or what you think is expected based on others possible perspectives?", "Is this just your way of ignoring your feeling about being a guy playing these games?" So what seems as simple as changing one letter, brings up a whole lot of stuff I'm not currently equipped to unpack. It can be hard to keep track of how you actually feel outside of external pressure. Trying to find my own answers currently, feels like it's starting to unravel some of the stuff I already thought I'd worked through and processed. But it's not a huge deal for now, so I figure I can just focus less on finding a solution, it can take things one at a time, and come back to this idea when I'm better ready to deal with it!

#syn sophia #fashion game #style savvy #style boutique #3ds #new style boutique #trend setter #trendsetters #stylesavvy

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starbornsinger · 3 years

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Elriel/Gwynriel/Elucien Theory Time :)

Ok so in regards to the Az POV chapter, I have some thoughts. This is super long and detailed and also tearing down ships, so uh, beware.

⚠️ACOSF spoilers (duh)⚠️

So I was re-reading the thing and as I was reading the conversation between Az and Rhys, it kind of hit me. I used to be an Elriel shipper until ACOSF, and I was really all for it.

But I don't think they're in love.

See, earlier in the chapter, Az is thinking about how jealous he is of the other couples. We know he isn't very lucky in love, and seeing Elain and her mate and their mating bond upsets him. I think he fancies Elain because she's beautiful and sweet, but I don't think he's in love with her. I think she's another thing he can't have, and he feels frustrated and it only makes him want her more. Because he thinks, why shouldn't he have her? Why is the Mother so cruel as to deny him love? And he thinks, "well all my other brothers have Archeron mates, why don't I? It must be a mistake!"

I think what Azriel's biggest issue is though, is that he wants love so bad, he's willing to risk it all for the first girl he feels attraction too. It also feels relevant that the primary thing we see in his POV is his physical attraction to her, his sexual attraction. We don't see much of how he thinks she's so sweet or so clever or so gentle, but instead how nice her tits are and how badly he wants to kiss and fuck her. I think he doesn't particularly want Elain, and while he likes her, I think what he really wants is love. True love, just like his brothers and friends. He thinks the Mother must be wrong because they both got Archeron sisters while he didn't, and his attraction to Elain makes him wish they were Mates so he could finally have that true love that's entirely his own.

But she's not. And he can't. I think what Azriel wants most isn't Elain. He wants her sexually, and he admires her and has a crush on her, but the thing he focuses on and gives him the most emotion is that she has a Mate and he doesn't, and that everyone does but him. I think he wants someone like Elain and wants to feel happy, but I think he doesn't exactly want Elain. When he thinks of her, he doesn't seem to be truly in love as we've seen other SJM couples are. And sure, it's early, but it's also been like— 2 years. I don't think they're in love sadly, I think Azriel just wants to move on from Mor and finally find love. He has a type, and when he found someone who loosely fit into the mold of his ideal partner, he jumped at it because he's desperate to have someone love him. All his life, he's struggled with self-love and love from others, and I think that it's deeply affected his relationship with love itself.

Physical attraction and desire and interest isn't love. And the idea of her being mated already only makes him mad— that of course the first girl he likes for the first time in 500 years, of course the girl that could help him move on from Mor, is mated. I think that only makes him feel more passionate towards her; and Rhys notes how he seems to think he has a claim to her, when he doesn't. It makes Az angry, not because Rhysand thinks he's being possessive and reckless, but because it's true. He genuinely can't have her.

As for Elain, I think she's far too hesitant to be with him. She reminds me of Daisy in The Great Gatsby, and how she claims to love Jay but she won't leave Tom, or jilt him. Now this is a different situation, because Daisy was selfish and didn't want to give up her comforts and stability and fame. Elain, on the other hand, doesn't seem ready to have a serious relationship with Az. I think she is still severely affected by Graysen's rejection, and is still clearly not over him. I don't think she's ready to accept Az fully and be with him, and I also don't think she's ready to reject her mating bond with Lucien.

I don't know 100% what's going on with Elain, but what I do know is that clearly she is intrigued by Lucien in some capacity. Ok Elriel shippers, don't come for me, but there are several scenes in which Elain seems to want to talk to Lucien, or whatever the heck. But also seems disinterested, like when she dismisses his Solstice gifts and doesn't speak to him.

However, I don't think she's resentful towards him exactly, or at least that isn't the main reason she's like this. While we know he was helping Tamlin lowkey, Feyre and the IC all understood he was on their side, and was their friend. So it seems kind of odd to still bear a grudge against him, but who knows.

But funnily enough, she has yet to reject their mating bond. If she's so disinterested, or hates him so much, why hasn't she turned him down? Mother, she's barely spoken to him at all. I think the obvious reason behind her disdain or distancing from Lucien is her connection to Graysen and her human life. Of all the sisters, Elain has not yet adapted to or accepted that she is Fae— or if she has, she's sure as hell not happy about it. Even Nesta in ACOSF mentioned how she actually likes her ears now, and we know Feyre has totally accepted being Fae. But with Elain, she had the most human connected life of them all, and to have it taken away from her is shitty.

For Elain, her happiness seems to come from a love of gardening, of family, of people. She has very little human things to hold onto, and adding a Mating bond to the mix right as she's made Fae is like she's had all her humanity stripped. She doesn't hate Lucien, she hates the bond. She dislikes that it's chained her to someone and taken away her choices, which we know is a big deal for the sisters after being imprisoned, kidnapped, and Made. I think Elriel is an infatuation, because even though she doesn't love Az, he's helping her rebound from Graysen (and giving her control and power over her love life). He's a choice she (can't really) make, but a choice nonetheless. With Lucien, she feels she has no choice with him, and no control over her obvious attraction I say obvious because mates have a primal attraction of some level to each other , and is probably afraid that accepting the Mating bond will remove any last connections she has to who she used to be, and the human she feels she really is.

But she also hasn't rejected it, because I think she realizes that Lucien is a genuine and kind and hot guy, and that rejecting him would be a stupid idea. He's been very patient and very kind and accepting, and has always given her the freedom of choice when it comes to the bond. I think Lucien is the kind of guy that would be very easy to fall in love with, and I think Elain sees that and knows it.

Also, I think with ACOSF, it feels relevant that Cassian pointed out specifically how Elain looked beautiful in black at the ball, but it looked horribly wrong on her. With SJM the devil is always in the details, and I think it was a clearly accentuated bit of symbolism. Although Elain looks beautiful, the black dress wasn't for her. And although Elriel is very sweet, it won't work out. She won't thrive in the Night Court, or with Azriel. Az doesn't challenge her or meet her as an equal (like all other SJM ships), and they don't push each other to be better or to accept themselves or whatever etc etc.

And I really used to like Elriel, but I think that surprisingly, Elain will be the one who says "stop, I can't do this" to Az. I think she knows she isn't ready, and I think she knows they aren't meant to be. Even if a Mating bond was put in place between her and Lucien, I still think their relationship wouldn't work because they're both too insecure, too closed off, too non-communicative, and too stagnant together to be a healthy or good match. I think with Elain they would struggle to understand each other even if they were fond of each other and can relate on some level, but at its rawest form I think they won't truly be able to be themselves with each other.

With Elain, Azriel's shadows— a key part of him— disappear. While I initially thought, awww that's so cute, she's a light in his life, I soon realized I was wrong. Az's shadows are not just a part of him, they're an extension of him, of his will and subconscious and emotions. So Elain chasing them away, while chasing away the shadows and darkness seems cute, isn't a good thing. Most of the time with shadows, we think "ew bad!" Because they have an inherent connotation of negativity or sorrow or depression or darkness etc etc. And while this is partially true, Azriel's shadows and darkness are a part of him. His sadness and struggles are a part of him. And his shadows aren't just representative of that, they're also a representation of how he overcame his abuse and turned that fire (pun unintended) and anger and trauma into something beautiful and powerful and a weapon. I think they can serve as an armor and a shield, and while that's not good, I also don't think they should fully disappear.

More on that: with Azriel's shadows, we know they're a part of him, right? So I think an important part of self is self-regulation. Rather than be consumed entirely by shadow, or totally exposed to the light, I think he just needs his shadows to be calm and present, but not controlling or hiding. I think the whole "Elain bringing him out of the shadows" bit sounds cute at first, but then you have to think of it like this. In order to be with Elain, he would have to change. He couldn't be a spy or a shadowsinger or a torturer, and he couldn't be dark and introverted. With her, he has to push that aside. Those are key parts of him, key parts that would have a big impact on their relationship. Elain can't be with someone with so much blood on their hands or a history of violence or darkness. We know that, because we know that sort of thing upsets her and she doesn't like it.

Azriel can't just be himself with her, he has to become someone else. And while he's attracted enough to not care, after awhile, that grows exhausting. Being in love and not being your true self, all of it, is exhausting. And while some might argue "why can't he be his true self?!" well my slime, I think we both know that even if we wanted him to, Elain would be silently resigned about it. I don't think— no, I know— Elain can't be with someone like Azriel. Even if they have feelings, even if they have lust or affection, it isn't love. They aren't in love, and they won't work out no matter how much we want it to.

Onto Elain: with Elain, this all ties back to what Cassian said in Hewn City. She looks beautiful in black, but it's wholly wrong for her. The Night Court is wrong for her, and darkness is wrong for her. While some yin-yang relationship tropes can work very well, I don't think this will. She doesn't like the darkness or accept it, and she doesn't want to be a part of it. I think the Night Court is good and happy for her when she makes her own little garden world, and only then, really. It's like living in the middle of the desert and only thinking of the beach: it's not the right place for her.

I think the Spring Court needs her, and I think she needs it. Here's more on that.

So we've seen the set up and execution of the fall of the Spring Court. We know that it's in shambles and is weak and needs a new/better leader than Tampon. I feel like SJM is setting things up for a new book focused in the Spring Court, because in a lot of ways, it's becoming the centerpiece for action in Prythian (aside from the Night Court). I genuinely believe that as Tamlin's second, Lucien will take over the Spring Court as High Lord. He doesn't fit in with Autumn, didn't fit in with Night, and wasn't really a part of Spring. But with Spring, it was where he was happy, where he felt safe, and the home he chose. Chosen homes and chosen families are a big deal for SJM, and I think that Lucien will return to the Spring Court to try and help it, because Mother knows it needs it. I think Elain belongs there, not only because she needs to be in an environment suited to her, but because she needs to heal.

We've seen a theme of helping others heal in order to heal ourselves, and I think a good book idea (and what I think an Elain book would be about), is healing the Spring Court and helping it. Elain is a gardener. She wants to see things grow and blossom, wants to get her hands dirty and dig in! But she can't do that in the NC. I think she needs something new and fresh and blossoming that she can help and tend to, and I think the person that can be at her side for that is Lucien. I think with Azriel, she can't see growth and life and flowers. He's a different kind of person, far too different, and the two wouldn't mesh well. Elain isn't like Persephone and Azriel isn't like Hades; although she's flowers and he's death and they're attracted to each other, they don't fully accept those roles and cross into each other's. Elain could never be a killer or someone who wears black or thrives in a darker place, and Azriel couldn't be someone who is in the full heat of the light and wear bright colors and be cheerful and flowery. In a dream world, yes, but I think in this one, no. SJM loves to create realistic relationships and realistic relationship conflict, and I think we'll see this here. Even though they want it to work, and in theory it should, it won't. I think they know it too. Azriel's shadows vanish when she's around, and Elain struggles to feel comfortable in the darkness and Night Court, and fit in with the others in the black dress that is wholly un-Elain.

I also think that this relationship doesn't bring development to the table. The forbidden love concept is adorable and a trope I love, but this love isn't one that will push them to grow. Azriel can feel loved and happy, but can he feel fully accepted? Can he stop being ashamed of his shadows, of his violence? Of who he is? Can Elain break out of her shelf and be more assertive, and truly grow and change? Can she be herself and be happy? The answer is a sad no. Their relationship is sweet and cute, but it won't truly work. I genuinely believe Lucien is a better match for Elain, and while the Cauldron isn't always right (like Rhysand's parents), it usually is. If he isn't, then I'm all for independent Elain.

Now onto the moment you've all been waiting for: who should Az be with?

Gwyn. :)

#acosf spoilers #gwynriel #a court of silver flames #elriel #elucien #gwyn berdara #gwyn x azriel #azriel #acotar #acotar theory #acotar thoughts #acosf

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young-dumb-and-vaccinated · 3 years

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Cult Girl: Doctorate (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 2

Oils

Cult girl socializes at the opera and receives an unexpected call.

Note: I tagged this as “anti mlm” as in multi-level marketing and not men-loving-men.

Trigger warnings: Discussions of cults and emotional manipulation

It wasn't until after the opera was over that people began to notice you may have had a little fun during intermission. Hannibal's hair wasn't in its usual perfect side part and his jacket was slightly wrinkled in places. You could cover most of his love bites with your stole, but nothing could hide that post-orgasm glow.

Most opera-goers stayed to socialize for hours after the show concluded, making an already long night even longer. It was like clubbing, but for rich old people.

"So you're the future Mrs. Hannibal Lecter?" A woman with silvery hair said. She dragged her husband into the conversation by the arm. "I've heard so much about you."

You were about to say something witty, but noticed the way she was looking at you. Scanning you up and down. Looking for anything out of place to grill you about.

"Only good things, I hope." Hannibal said in your silence. His voice was vaguely threatening. "She is a doctoral student, in her second year of her graduate studies in clinical psychology."

The husband, who, up to this point, hadn't spoken a word, perked up. "Is that right?"

You smiled, excited for the chance to talk about your passion. "Yes sir. I've still got quite a ways to go, but I love my work."

"You should be proud." The man praised, looking at Hannibal. "You've got yourself an ambitious wife."

"Oh, we're not married yet." You corrected.

"So when can we expect an invitation?" The woman asked.

"Six months from now, isn't it?" Hannibal answered. "Memorial day weekend. Then I'm taking her to Italy for a lengthy honeymoon."

The woman threw her head back and sighed. "That sounds heavenly."

"You young modern girls are always so intuitive." The man commented. "I'll bet you tricked him into marrying you."

You wanted to call this guy out for his sexist bullshit, but he wasn't far off. It was Hannibal who tricked you, though.

Technically, he proposed to you within the first six months. You just didn't know it. It took until shockingly recently to find out.

It was during a ballroom dancing lesson of all places. You were sweaty, but loved the feeling of your lover's hands gently guiding your movements. You stepped away from the lesson to get some water, and innocently asked when he would propose to you.

"I believe I already did." He said with enough conviction to blur the lines of seriousness and sarcasm.

"You pretended to." You corrected. "Remember? We were just pretending to be engaged for Anna's wedding."

"But it didn't end after the wedding, did it?" He observed. "You kept calling me your fiancé long after that weekend passed."

You paused, then threw your head back in exasperation. "Oh my god, Hannibal."

Hannibal laughed. "I told you. Someday it won't be a lie."

"You're a piece of shit, you know that?" You pressed your fingers to your temples. "So we've been engaged this whole time?"

"What can I say?" He said, gently. "I knew you were my one and only even then. It was just a matter of circumventing your inhibitions."

"I'm not complaining." You folded your arms. "But a little notice would have been nice."

"Well, if you insist." He laced his fingers between his own. "[F/N] [L/N]. Will you be my wife?"

Even though the question was truly just a formality, you were still as giddy as a schoolgirl to hear those words.

"Yes, Hannibal Lecter." You said, cheeks stinging from smiling so hard. "I will marry you."

Then you just went back to the dance lesson like nothing happened. It was shockingly in-character for both of you.

"No." You shook your head. "We killed someone together and took a blood oath to never separate."

The couple laughed. Hannibal looked down at you with pride.

“So [F/N].” The man said. “Have you given any thought to your doctoral dissertation?”

“Oh, Charles.” The woman rolled her eyes. “I’m sure she didn’t come here to be grilled about her studies.”

“No, it’s okay.” You smiled. As long as you were talking about school, you weren’t being interrogated about the thirty-year age gap between you and Hannibal. “I have been thinking about my dissertation. There are plenty of fascinating topics to choose from, but I can’t not write it about, well, the reason I began to study psychology in the first place.”

“And that is?” The man raised an eyebrow.

“Cults.” You said, grinning ear to ear. “Understanding them, their leaders, their followers, why people join them. How they evolve and grow more insidious as time passes. What form they’re starting to take in the digital age.”

“That is interesting.” The woman’s voice rose, connoting genuine engagement. “And what form are they taking in the digital age?”

You looked up at Hannibal, as if to ask for permission. Permission to rip into her and burn that bridge for good. He answered in the affirmative.

“Ma’am, could I take a look at your bracelet?” You asked, already knowing exactly what she would say.

Her face lit up. “Oh, do you like it?”

She pulled it off her wrist and handed it to you. You brought it to your nose and took a whiff, confirming your theory. Then you handed it off to Hannibal, whose sense of smell was much more refined. He took one breath, then recoiled.

Hannibal covered his mouth and nose with his hand and coughed. “That is... quite strong, Mrs. DeMarco.”

“It’s Affirm, by doTERRA.” She revealed, her voice growing defensive. “It helps you ground yourself and remember your worth.”

You handed the bracelet back to her. “Do you sell doTERRA, Mrs. DeMarco?”

“Well, now that you mention it...” A small smile appeared on her lips. “Why? Would you like to buy some?”

“I hate to be the one to tell you this, ma’am, but...” You lied. “You’re actually in a cult.”

She had nothing to say to that. She just stared at you with her mouth agape, urging you to explain yourself.

“Multilevel marketing companies employ a host of cult manipulation tactics to con people out of their savings.” You explained. “Just because the promise is financial independence instead of a spot in paradise, doesn’t mean it’s not a lie. Research conducted by the Federal Trade Commission shows that the vast majority of participants actually lose money. The statistics are just a google search away, yet thousands of people still insist on the legitimacy of the companies they sell for.”

“Well, I-” She protested, but couldn’t find the words to defend herself. “I’m there for the community, really. For the first time in years, I have a sisterhood of like-minded women who love me!”

You smiled through a cringe. “That’s another pretty common cult manipulation tactic. They appropriate familial language to make people feel more connected to the group than they really should be.”

Although you didn’t expect her to, she looked to be genuinely considering it.

“Next time you see your ‘sisters’,” You began. “Pay attention to how they talk about people who are not in the group. Or, better yet, tell them that you’re considering leaving. You’ll see how conditional their love is.”

An awkward, deafening silence followed. The woman looked at her husband, as if willing him to do something. To stand up to the evil twenty-something grad student who had the audacity to cite her sources.

Instead, the husband just burst out in riotous laughter.

“Miriam!” He nearly shouted, heaving like he was about to collapse. “I told you that oil business was up to no good! No honest company makes their employees pay to work!”

The woman’s face turned red. You almost felt bad for her. The feeling vanished when the man put his hand on your shoulder.

“Seriously, Dr. Lecter, you’d better keep this one.” He said, wiping a tear from his eye. “She’s an absolute godsend.”

“No divine intervention was involved whatsoever, Dr. DeMarco.” Hannibal smiled to himself and brought a glass of champagne to his lips. “She is a woman of her own making."

"Oh, we all know that's not entirely true." The woman snapped, slipping into passive-aggression. She glanced at Hannibal. "How much are you spending on this mouthy little know-it-all? Isn't it about $80k a year?"

You, of course, brought this on yourself. You threw down the gauntlet by going after this girlboss's side hustle, so now nothing was off-limits.

"I wouldn't worry about that, Mrs. DeMarco." Hannibal said, calmly. "My soon-to-be wife's education is a much better investment than that overpriced napalm you wear on your wrist."

You couldn't help but laugh at that. It was a laugh you shared with the man. Hannibal looked down at you, admiring how your face lit up.

"You'll forgive my wife's rudeness." The man requested. "Please, Ms. [F/N], tell me more about your dissertation."

"Well," you laced your fingers together. "I'm planning to write my dissertation on the cult of academic elitism."

"I would tread lightly, dear." The woman warned, eyes darting to Hannibal. "You wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds you."

You adjusted your stole, giving them a quick glance at the love bites along your neck.

"I assure you." You said. "He quite likes it when I bite."

Your clutch started to aggressively, audibly vibrate. You could have sworn you'd put your phone on silent, but it buzzed nonetheless.

"Probably just, y'know-" you stuttered, embarrassed. "An amber alert or something."

"We are expecting a snowstorm, I believe. I was warned of it a few minutes ago." Hannibal said, always ready to cover your ass whenever needed. The couple nodded along in understanding.

You pulled your phone from your clutch. Your eyes widened and your face turned sickly pale at the sight of a caller you thought you’d never hear from again. Without thinking, you slid the deny icon across the screen.

“Right.” You said, tucking your phone and your secrets back into the clutch. “Winter Storm... Theresa is headed this way.”

Hannibal cleared his throat. “In that case, [F/N] and I must take our leave before we get snowed in. It was very nice catching up with you. I will see to it that [F/N] and I have you for dinner very soon.”

#hannibal lecter #hannibal x you #hannibal x reader #hannibal nbc #cult girl #doterra #anti mlm

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battlinghurricanes · 3 years

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LITYERSES HEADCANONS!!!!!!!

I saw some other headcanon posts for him, so I felt inspired to throw my own ideas out there! I think some of my headcanons are pretty different from the ones a lot of people have of him, but I always like reading other people’s ideas so hopefully people will like this too!

(also theres a lot, this is long *cough* my bad)

- After the incident in The Lost Hero, after Midas dies, Lityerses is homeless. His father’s mansion is destroyed and it’s not like he has anyone to turn to.

- They mention in The Lost Hero that the Hunters of Artemis came across Midas and Lityerses earlier. When they did, Lityerses heard in passing about Camp Half-Blood. It’s the only place meant for demigods that he has even the slightest knowledge on, so he sets his sights on making it there.

- It takes eight grim months to reach New York. It’s half a miracle, slowly taking busses, hitchhiking, and sometimes just walking to the next city. Monsters attack him the entire way and he adds plenty of new scars to his collection.

- There’s no reliable way for him to get money. He gets much, much better at using his powers as a son of Demeter. He uses it to grow fruits, vegetables, and any sort of edible plant so he can at least have food of some kind.

- He goes to New York City because he doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t even know if the Hunters were talking about the city or the state but he figures he has to start somewhere. Unfortunately, the Triumvirate notices his presence before anyone from Camp Half-Blood does.

- He follows some demigods to Nero, who sent them to collect him. He offers a position working for the Triumvirate in exchange for food, lodging, and other basic support. Lityerses is tired and he wants to sleep in a bed and have proper meals he doesn’t have to worry about acquiring.

- He accepts, not caring if what the Triumvirate is doing is shitty or not. Nero sends him to Indianapolis to work for Commodus.

- Apollo’s decision to give him another chance was very affecting. Especially coming from ancient times when the stories of the gods on earth were far more real and immediate, he knows very well how the gods could treat mortals as simply disposable.

- He had never questioned his belief that any mortal who got wrapped up in business with a god suffered a horrible fate because of it, whether the god intended it or not.

- But then Apollo saved his life and defended him at the Waystation and told him he trusted him and Lityerses’s mind keeps drifting back to him over and over and over.

- His mind wants to reconcile what Apollo did for him with what he knows about the gods. He can’t, and that makes him feel a great many things that he can’t pin down. Apollo decided to care about him when he had no reason to, and he doesn’t know what that means for him.

- He feels a twinge of gratitude whenever he steps into the sunlight and pulse of anxiety whenever he wonders if he’s okay on his quest.

- He thinks about Meg, his little sister, and hopes they’re keeping each other safe.

- Lityerses can occasionally seem really dull, indifferent, or unresponsive because he gives super minimal reactions to things sometimes, but that’s really not the case.

- Being in the modern world for him is sort of like a slight, but near constant sensory overload. Sometimes, his brain is too busy processing other stuff to fully load up an emotional response. He’ll react to something in his mind but he won’t express it outwardly at all.

- Leo, running up: Wanna help me strap a firework to a crossbow bolt and try to shoot it into the office building across the street to see if it’ll blow up in there?!!!!! Lityerses, with a completely flat voice and blank expression: I think that’s a very bad idea.

- It’s definitely not all the time, but it does happen.

- (Me? Projecting sensory issues onto every character I like? It’s more likely than you think.)

- He has a very “go with the flow” attitude, to the point of being a character flaw sometimes. It can make him easy to manipulate.

- (Commodus: hey lityerses go put this barbed wire and war helmets and metal teeth on these ostriches Liyerses, in his head: uhuh uhuh uhuh uhuh yeah cool got it i hope i still have some fingers left tomorrow)

- He’s working on it though. He’s working on it.

- One side effect of this is that whenever Leo makes some pop culture or meme reference, Lityerses will just nod and agree. It takes Leo forever to realise that he was just lying going along with it.

- *mid conversation* Lityerses: I’d go get some food, but I don’t have any money Leo: dude, you’re literally just the 69 cents vine, not enough for chicken nuggets Lityerses: oh, for sure Calypso, overhearing: wait, you understood that?? Lityerses: no, I’ve never understood a single word that’s left leo’s mouth Leo: what?!!!! but you said you understood my reference to that dril tweet the other day, right?! Lityerses: yeah, of course Calypso: what’s a dril tweet?? Lityerses: I don’t know. Leo: YOU TRAITOR

- Another side effect: he’s a complete pushover for Georgie.

- At one point, when some of the Waystation crew are walking out in the city, she complains that she’s tired and wants to be carried. When her moms gently refuse, she immediately goes over to Lityerses and holds her arms out and says that she’s tired. He doesn’t even stop walking, he just swoops her up and puts her on his shoulder right away.

- Hemithia and Jo glare at him but he just avoids eye contact. “She’s already up there, too much effort to put her down now.”

- He was in the Fields of Punishment in the Underworld and wow was it incredibly traumatizing.

- His memories of death are sickeningly agonizing, but they also usually feel distant and unreal. Sometimes, though, they’ll worm their way into his dreams with horrific clarity. He’ll wake up in a cold sweat, hyperventilating, with full body tremors he can’t control.

- One morning after waking up like that, while sitting on the floor regaining his composure, Hemithea comes in to see why he wasn’t up yet. He pulls himself together in due time. He doesn’t answer any of her questions.

- He never talks about it, but he’s truly terrified of dying. He never was before, but now that he knows what’s waiting for him...

- It doesn’t help that he knows that, no matter how careful he is or how well he defends himself, he could die at any moment if Thanatos decides to bring him back to the Underworld.

- It weighs on the back of his mind that, at least on a technical level, he has no right to be alive. Sometimes he can’t help but think that the things he does now don’t matter in the end, because there’s no reason he would get a second judgement when he does eventually return to the Underworld.

- He does his best to shut that down and remind himself that trying to do the right thing helps the people around him, no matter what happens after his death, but the thought exists and it is painful.

- He really never voices these fears because he feels like all he can really do is try not to think about it, and when he does, he tries to forget as soon as he can. It’s a burden he shoulders as quietly as he can.

- He isn’t used to owning a lot of material possessions, both from how he lived in ancient times and then from being homeless for a while. He’s only ever described wearing that Cornhuskers shirt because it’s the only one he owned for a while.

- Not long after joining the Waystation, the first time he was going out somewhere them, Jo snapped that it just made him look stupid, trying to look tough by going without a coat when it was so cold outside. Earnestly confused and defensive, he tells her that he just doesn’t own one.

- After that, she insists on filling his wardrobe until he has enough clothes.

- (Speaking of the Cornhuskers shirt, he just picked it out on a whim, sort of thinking of Demeter (They grow corn here like we used to grow wheat, right?) and sort of just thinking it looked cool. Olujime once tried to talk to him about how some college teams were doing and Lityerses just goes “What’s football?”)

- He doesn’t really get modern fashion trends. Leo offers to catch him up, but he declines very quickly.

- In ancient times, dyes and patterns available for clothes were much more limited and much more expensive. He’s fascinated by all the colors and prints people can wear just all the time now. Lityerses wears a lot of bright colors because he thinks they’re cool and fun. He likes red, blue, and purple the most but he’ll wear a lot of stuff.

- Along with not really following any trends, he also hasn’t picked up on a lot of unspoken gender connotations that come with modern clothing.

- When the Waystation are first trying to get him some clothes, he picks out a pink jacket and Leo snorts at him like “You’re going for pink?” Lityerses just stares at him like “Yeah. It’s just pink.” Leo sort of realizes and goes, “Oh, it’s just, you know...” to Calypso. But Calypso is also just staring blankly and says, “No I don’t. I don’t get it. Is there something about pink?” And Leo notices Hemithea glaring daggers at him and he laughs nervously and goes, “Nevermind, it was a stupid joke anyway.”

- Hemithia: Leave the ancient demigod and ex-titan blissfully unaware of our complex, modern gender stereotypes. Leo, sweating: gotcha.

- He pretty much just wears what he finds comfortable. Generally it’s just t-shirts with jeans or basketball shorts.

- Lityerses is a super clingy sleeper and will reflexively grab on to anything within arms reach while he’s asleep. (He’s a big spoon by nature.)

- Leo discovers this and now, whenever Lityerses falls asleep on one of the couches, he’ll entertain himself by slowly pushing a pillow up to him until he inevitably grabs it and pulls it against his chest.

- No one gets those pillows back until Lityerses wakes up.

- He’s very buff. His muscles aren’t super defined, nothing at all like a bodybuilder, no six pack abs or anything. But he’s built. Thick arms.

- He’s very limber and flexible too. He has great balance, which lets him move as fast as he does in combat. He’s quite physically fit in general.

- He’ll never admit it, but he ended up getting attached to the highlights in his hair he got when Apollo revealed his godly form. He thought they were fun and different and he sort of missed it when his hair grew out.

#trials of apollo #toa #lityerses #pjo #litpollo #well none of its super litpollo but #you know you know #long post #also sorry for giving you super cute georgie and lityerses headcanons #and then punching you in the gut with the trauma of death and revival with no warning #not that sorry tho #god its been a long time since ive done headcanons like this #this better go in the tags #edit- it did for a min then disappeared :^)

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jcisthebestfightme · 4 years

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5 times gg/dd show they love each other

This is completely my own analysis. Do not take this seriously. These are just my top 5 favorite “episodes.”

1. Pancake - DD is very proud of his ability to make Chinese pancake, although he does state that he needs to buy frozen, prepared pancakes. He bragged about this 4 separate times (mag interview, ttyxs, detergent commercial, and on the surfing show). Many interesting things about his recipe: 1) He said he uses cheese and butter. Most Chinese families don’t have these ingredients. Also, this very Western style of cooking means he didn’t learn this recipe from his parents. However, we know that gg likes to bake cookies, bread, cakes, etc. so he would have butter and he also loves cheese. 2) DD said that you need to add butter at the end when the pancake is almost done. If you know how to cook, you would know that it’s because butter has a low melting point so you add it quickly at the end to give the pancake flavor and color. I doubt a person that didn’t know you need to wait for water to boil to cook noodles will instinctively know this. And this is pretty high level knowledge and only people who bakes will know. 3) DD said that the pancake is easy but you need to add fried eggs and bacon to it. He said this part so casually that it sounds like someone prepared those for him and he just added it to the pancake. My conclusion is that he just heats up the frozen pancake and gg prepared all the other stuff for him. But dd thinks he “cooked” it so he loves bragging about it and I think that’s hilarious. Also, what makes someone who notoriously is known for not knowing how to cook suddenly so happy about being able to make 1 dish?

Easter egg: if you Google or Baidu “溫婉居家” (meaning homey, a phrase gg always use to describe his ideal partner), the picture of dd pops out as the first image result.

2. “Dead duck mouth hard” - This is the literal translation, an idiom meaning someone who is unwilling to admit they’re wrong. What is interesting here is that gg said that he says this phrase to JC a lot but he doesn’t want to say this to dd because it’s “not good” to say it to him. Why? It’s because of the word “dead.” Dd has very dangerous hobbies (motorcycle, skateboard, etc.) and gg is very superstitious. He thinks that saying any word with the connotations of “death” to dd is bad omen so he avoids it.

Easter egg: Dd is also very superstitious. He once got mad in a show because people were joking about putting motorcycle helmets on the floor, a very bad omen for cyclist. So I think he would be very touched about gg’s care for him.

3. Art museum - When dd went to London, he visited the London art museum. (He was caught on video by an international student.) Rumor has it that there was a car exhibit (with motorcycle) next door but he chose to go to the museum instead. Afterwards, he was caught talking on phone. Speculations is that he visited the museum for gg.

Easter egg: That museum has a painting “Venus and Mars.” Gg has use “Venus” to refer to dd during the BZ photoshoot and dd has use “Mars” to refer to gg (because Mars = “Zhan” shen).

4. Dance - When gg went to ttxs’s 11th anniversary, the two of them did a dance. We all know how much dd cares about dancing and he’s very meticulous about keeping to the beats. However, because of reasons (see Bombology), they have to learn this dance on the spot and perform it. Gg tries his best to learn the choreography (can see him practicing over and over again backstage, but during the performance, there was one instance where he wasn’t on tempo. What does dd do? He looked at him and just repeated the move to match up with him. During the whole performance, he watches gg and just dance to whatever speed he was on.

Easter egg: Later on during this show’s filming, audience keep asking gg to dance freestyle, which he wasn’t comfortable with. Gg being super courteous didn’t know how to refuse. Dd first came out to dance by himself to diffuse the tension. When that didn’t work, he said “why don’t he sing instead?” Dd always speaks up to protect his gg.

5. Artwork - I personally believe that artists are very truthful to their work (song, painting, dance, etc.) so I love analyzing gg’s artwork. His painting of his ideal life was one of the most romantic and domestic thing (very fitting of his personality.) It showed himself with his cat. But at the far end, there’s another person approaching him (coming into his life?) This person is a tall, slander man (?) Next to him, is a bicycle, although the shadow looks more like a motorcycle. I find this interesting because we all know gg doesn’t really know how to ride a bike so for him to include it in his ideal world is strange. And then there’s a speculation that the waves spell out “WYB”.

Easter egg: I remember my art teacher from the past teaching us to put in our names secretly in our work as an easter egg. Some fans speculate that gg’s signature is a dot (can see it in the V-day and Dragonboat drawings). In another one of his painting, (boy holding lantern), you can see the letters “WYB” around a flower and “XZ” around another flower. The shadow in the lantern also overlays almost perfectly with a photo of them from xgds. This is all speculations though.

Just thought I would share my favorite moments.

#bjyx #yizhan

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antialiasis · 3 years

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Morphic: the Musical

The Thousand Roads forums have a fanfic music thread. While I don't really do those kinds of threads usually because I don't really listen to a very wide variety of music and generally have a hard time associating music that already exists with unrelated fiction, one of the questions in it is this:

Talk about what would happen if some Broadway hit-maker scooped up your fic and turned it into a script. What songs would be in it? Describe a dance number/dance battle?

And immediately, the musical analysis glint lit up in my eyes. This question was presumably intended in a lighthearted jokey sort of way - imagining some fight staged as a dance battle, a hypothetical Broadway hit-maker doing the adaptation. But that's not enough for me, say I! Musicals are a good and interesting medium for serious fiction that I care about and I am going to serious this up.

See, to me, the musical format has two major strengths as a narrative medium. The first is that it can explore the inner worlds of characters in a pretty unique way. Characters get to monologue in a sort of heightened, non-literal manner, intensified by music: we can learn what they're about, what makes them tick, what's going on in their heads in a particular moment, in a way that wouldn't really make sense presented as actual inner monologue in another medium. The music aspect itself then adds a layer to it that's impossible to replicate in any other.

The second strength of the musical format is that it's really good at highlighting recurring themes, parallels and contrasts. Reprise the same melody, the same lyric, a parallel but opposite lyric, and you've instantly connected two things together. Is there a character arc? You can highlight what has changed. Are there two characters going through something similar? You can draw that out. Is there a recurring theme throughout? Use a recurring lyric, a recurring melodic phrase! Nudge the viewer into forming connections! Delicious! And you can do subtler things on the music level itself - particular instruments with particular connotations, recurring motifs...

So naturally I decided I should think up what a musical adaptation of Morphic would be like. It'd be a fun exercise in putting all my thoughts on musical adaptations into practice, but also an interesting way to help sort out some of my thoughts about characters arcs, etc. for the actual Morphic rewrite. And in the process, I may have gone slightly overboard. I regret nothing.

(I'm about to spoil most of the fic here, if this wasn't obvious)

Morphic: the Musical - tracklist

(Note: this musical is not sung-through; there are regular non-musical sections with regular dialogue in between. Morphic would almost definitely not make for a good sung-through musical.)

Act I

[Intro song] (Brian)

A monologue by Brian at the TV studio as he tries to work through what to say, how to explain or justify any of this (which conveniently serves to exposit to the audience as well as introduce his character). He makes nervous false starts and cuts himself off, starting the verse over each time, and through these false starts we learn what's going on, that the press has been calling them Pokémorphs, that this was all Dave's idea, that alcohol was involved, that it was meant as a basis for further research, that there were never supposed to be *children*, that he doesn't know what he'd even do with a kid, that Dave roped him into going on this show because he couldn't.

[Dave song] (Dave)

This musical properly introduces us to Dave via Jane walking out on him followed by this song, wherein he contemplates chucking baby Jean out the window. It's a dark rock song with big emotional contrasts and raw lyrics that is almost definitely my favorite song in this musical in the hypothetical reality where it is an actual musical and I didn't write it, because I am me. Probably starts with a couple slower lines of desperate disbelief before launching into wild anger about fuck that fucking whore, followed by what I will be referring to as the everything-is-shit verse (please bear with me), just a general cynicism rant about why the world is a shitty place not worth living in, followed by him wildly fantasizing about killing his infant child. What a delightful human being that I adore. The song ends abruptly, he's standing there staring at her in his arms for a moment, then he silently goes to feed her. On the soundtrack you probably might think he just did it.

Fatherhood (Brian)

A montage song covering the timeskip, which probably reprises [Intro song]. Brian initially has no idea what to do with his new squirming horrorblob child and is convinced he will screw it up the way he tends to screw up everything. Makes a couple of false starts again, but then gains confidence as time passes as he genuinely bonds with Gabriel and legitimately thinks he's a pretty amazing kid. There's a repeated line along the lines of that Gabriel's a weird, weird kid, but he's his, initially in a tone of "oh god I'm responsible for him what do" but towards the end is said with pride and fondness.

[Villain song] (Isaac and Jacob)

A duet between the two brothers, exploring what makes them tick. Isaac is all about this heavy pressure and sense of responsibility, originally imposed by his father, that he continues to impose on himself. He's been appointed to take over leading the family/cult and was raised with that constantly in the back of his mind as his future, and he believes that they're God's true righteous people and he cannot go wrong. He has dreams with some regularity that he interprets as visions from God, as he has been encouraged to since childhood by his father. When he has one about murder, it frightens him but he sees it as basically a divinely-appointed mission.

Jacob privately doesn't really believe any of that. He is trapped in this cult and goes through the motions but is not actually driven by any of the things that are driving Isaac. He's fairly quiet for most of the song - as Isaac is going on about his vision, Jacob has a line here and there obliquely challenging it, but Isaac has an answer for everything, and he doesn't press it, instead moving seamlessly on to suggestions for how he should do it. Jacob gets a quiet variant of part of the everything-is-shit verse from [Dave song], expressing the same kind of cynicism in a more reproachful, apathetic way - all in his own head, of course.

Just Like My Hero (Jean and Will)

Jean sings about how she is just like her hero, Sarah Hooter! Starts off describing how they look the same, moves on from there to how she will torch anyone who's mean, etc., just like her hero. Halfway through, Will joins in, and it becomes a counterpoint duet: Jean may be immature and ridiculous, but he deeply wishes he was confident and adored and nothing would get to him, and he admires and envies that about her. His just like my hero has a bit more of an ironic vibe, he'd hardly properly call her his hero, but he looks up to her more than he'd normally admit nonetheless.

Storming the Castle (Jack and Gabriel)

Jack and Gabriel are playing a D&D game with their friends, arguing about the best course of action. Jack is eager to waltz into the bad guys' fortress, storm the castle, while Gabriel urges lying low, says they're too weak. Jack wants to take the leap and try it; Gabriel insists no, we're not taking the leap, it's stupid. "It's brave!" Jack counters. (In the end, Gabriel gives in and they go ahead with it, and it goes fine.)

Unique (Mia and Lucy)

Mia and Lucy play one of their games. The song is about how Lucy needs someone like Mia to challenge her and let her actually indulge her powers, which are otherwise unsettling to people and she's ashamed and self-conscious about them, while Mia needs someone like Lucy to get a real outlet for her hunter's instinct. The word the lyrics are built around is unique; by being the precise way they are, they are each the only person who can provide this for the other.

Mia doesn't sing. She speaks her lyrics in her usual monotone, not even rhythmically. They also don't rhyme. It's technically a duet but really it's just Lucy singing and Mia talking.

[Peter/Katherine song] (Peter and Katherine)

A counterpoint duet between the siblings, contrasting their experience as Pokémorphs. Peter can pretty easily hide that he's different and be treated mostly as a normal kid, and feels free in his privilege, not confined quite the way the others are, able to be a bit reckless and incautious. Katherine, meanwhile, has a very different experience, being extremely noticeably different, getting stared at, and struggling with basic activities, and feels a huge sense of responsibility weighing her down, worrying about Peter and grounding him and reining him in. There's a lyrical contrast involving something something bird freedom plant rooted down something.

Brian's Death (Isaac and Dave)

This is one of those mostly-instrumental pieces that they include on the soundtrack anyway, but Isaac gets a couple of sung nondiegetic lines in here, a sort of frantic excitement, realizing in a brief panic that he shot the wrong guy before rationalizing that God must have planned it this way.

Dave is probably also in there screaming and attempting to call the police, because I am always in favor of screaming and panicking on musical soundtracks.

The Funeral (Gabriel and Jack)

Begins with Gabriel at the church during the funeral, singing about his vague discomfort being there, but slowly becomes increasingly frantic and anxious, working up to a breakdown where he exits and finally manages to cry for his dad. There's a verse about little things, how they ordered pizza the night before he died, etc., culminating in the bit about him having been in the middle of this mystery novel and never getting to learn who did it; the verse trails off quietly there, backing instruments gone, as Gabriel breaks down. Jack follows to comfort him.

Act II

[Montage song] (everyone)

A montage of the days after the attack, where everyone gets a couple lines about how they're coping, scared and grieving.

Dave's lines are like, spoken slightly too desperate annoyance at having to do some work that Brian didn't get to finish, or rebuking somebody who asks how he's doing by saying he barely even knew Brian. He is not singing along with this kind of grief-porn bullshit, fuck you.

[Villain song II] (Isaac and Jacob)

The brothers come up with a new plan. Isaac is agitated, reprising some of his bits from the original villain song in a quicker, more frantic tempo, while Jacob picks up the slack, walking him through a new idea. Isaac takes to it with conviction and goes back to the original melody/tempo, talking again about his God-given purpose. Jacob does not join in with any of that, only with the bits about the actual plan.

The Kidnapping (instrumental)

I'm just going to say this is on the soundtrack too and contains panicked Gabriel noises because I want it to be.

Storming the Castle Reprise (Jack)

Jack tries to rally the others for a rescue mission, echoing the D&D game from Act I. The lines about storming the castle and taking the leap make a reappearance.

Just Like My Hero Reprise (Jean)

Jean, on the bus, miserably contemplates how she is unlike her hero. Again, it begins with a verse talking about how she looks - not a thing like Sarah Hooter anymore - but then moves on to how she's scared and pathetic and running away, unlike anything a hero would do.

Church Sequence (Will, Jack, Mia)

A single track, largely instrumental/dialogue/sound effects, with a couple of brief song snippets:

- Will reprises "Just Like My Hero" as he wills himself to go on. He is cut off mid-line as he is shot.

- Mia slits that guy's throat and she actually sings a few words, for the first and only time, before she is also cut off mid-line by a gunshot. The line is something about, like, warm blood in her face or the guy's satisfying death throes, reprising part of the melody of "Unique".

Strong (Gabriel)

Gabriel discovers his powers. Starts slowly, calling back to the bits from "Storming the Castle" about lying low, being weak. But as the song continues and he makes his discovery, the tempo builds, and he starts reprising Jack's bits instead: he is strong, taking the leap, storming the castle.

Perish Song (Lucy)

Another brief reprise of "Unique", distorted and deafening and terrifying, mourning her sister.

[In the Hospital] (Jack and Gabriel)

The two of them work out their feelings about what happened. Includes Jack going "It was stupid" (i.e. the rescue mission) and Gabriel responding "It was brave", echoing the bit where they said the opposite in "Storming the Castle". Jack blames himself for how it all turned out, feels stupid and weak, while Gabriel actually felt kind of awesome. (This is also calling back to their opposite bits of "Storming the Castle".) They end with a shared duet verse as they realize they've both got that same innate desire to fight and win. Possibly calls back to the weird, weird kid line from "Fatherhood".

Eulogy (Dave)

Dave's eulogy for Mia (which also touches on Will, but this is Mia's funeral). It reprises "Unique". There will never again be anyone like the two of them, two of the only truly unique people on this Earth. (And, while he doesn't say it straight out because hahahaha, he needed Mia, too).

Taking the Leap (Jack and Gabriel)

Jack's suicide attempt and his swirling inner turmoil as he tries to talk himself into taking the leap once again. Gabriel, of course, comes in with don't take that leap. Am I overusing this one line by putting it in like half the songs in this thing? Well, who's going to stop me.

[Peter/Katherine song reprise] (Peter and Katherine)

The two of them contemplate indefinite house arrest (in contrast to the freedom Peter's enjoyed most of his life) and Katherine's failure to stop all this (despite her sense of responsibility). In the end, they both find their own ways to accept the new state of things and support each other through this.

Finale (Dave and Jean)

After Dave breaks down on his couch and Jean comes in to ask what's wrong, Dave sings a reprise of the everything-is-shit verse, going over the many things he's angry about, because that is the only emotion involved here clearly. At the exact point where Dave's song originally went from there to fantasizing about throwing her off the balcony, Jean throws her arms around him and sniffles "It'll be okay, Dad," and after a stunned "What? Jean, I'm--", he continues with a slow, hesitant *inverted* reprise of the everything-is-shit verse, "Everything'll be fine", constructing a little fantasy reality for her (and himself) where everything turns out all right in the end. It's backed by, like, a simple, quiet, slower piano rendition of the original melody, and trails off at the end, never quite coming to a satisfying conclusion before he tells Jean she should go back to bed.

#morphic #musicals #I spent far too much time thinking about this #except it was also exactly the right amount of time

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my-mt-heart · 3 years

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Hi! That Carol dream. I don't understand why we all think Carol imagined Daryl as her husband. No, i know why we assumed that. But looking on details it wasn't what seemed at first. I analyzed scene recently and as Kang said it was Carol's dream about normalcy. Scene repeated reality in some way - it was nod kinda, similar to that Stradivarius scene when she wakes up and walks out tent to say good morning.

I mean if we look on details in dream - Carol wears Ezekiel's ring and Daryl doesn't have any. So idk what that dream actually was about. But i thought if writers meant carzekiel as Something big and desirable for Carol they supposed to add Zeke in the scene or smtg. But that was only Daryl and Henry. And i also have slight doubt that was 100% nod to Stradivarius scene, because regardless dream was "happy" i always saw Henry in dream as element that makes Carol wake up. I feel like happy is her and Daryl living in normal world without walkers but then Henry appears, haunting her and she immediately wakes up.

I mean Carol definitely dreams about life with Daryl but she doesn't see them together romantic in her dreams. Although maybe it doesn't mean anything bad or specific she doesn't. Because it would be considered as "shippers pandering" from media and too as spoilery if it was made obvious there was romance element.

What do you think? Do you also find Henry as something that makes her stuck as his loss is source of her grief.

Do you think we need to be concerned how ambiguous things shown for caryl's future and Kang's permanent "they're PLATONIC friends" when st same time she doesn't show Carol with other or Daryl with other giving viewer feeling they're ultimate endgame?

Everything about a character’s wardrobe -- from clothing to shoes to jewelry-- is carefully selected to communicate something about them and Carol’s ring is no different. The show made a point of it being there on her finger because it serves a purpose. We know it has romantic connotations because it’s 1) being worn as a wedding ring and 2) one given to her by a former love interest. Daryl being there instead of Ezekiel implies that those connotations are being reassigned to him. On a subconscious level, Carol feels for Daryl what Ezekiel felt for her. Carol wants a life with Daryl that couldn’t be achieved with Ezekiel. Angela’s not going to come out and say any of that nor would she allow a dream sequence to make that undeniably clear. It would cheapen the real moment Daryl and Carol become canon and it would take away the mundanity/normalcy Carol’s meant to feel.

Carol woke up after seeing Henry, but it’s really her watch that signaled something wasn’t right. There were no hands, symbolizing that Carol was trapped in a specific time of grief. She can’t move forward with Daryl because she can’t get over Henry’s loss.

The ambiguity is annoying sometimes, sure, but I trust the subtle clues that are suggesting they will be more than friends eventually. Putting those in there just to fuck with the fans ruins the story’s integrity, so I have to believe that’s not what’s going on.

#caryl #carol x daryl #twd #twd season 10 #ghosts #caryl positivity

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currywaifu · 3 years

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𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: purple lilac (shine a little love) 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩: usui masumi/gn! reader (not director) 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: sfw 𝐰𝐜: 1.3k+ words

𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: basically masumi working up to a confession 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: this was a normal fic which got combined with a flower fic, hence the alt title. full a/n + dedications at the end of the fic.

It was strange. He was being strange, or at least that was what he thought of himself. Even with his headphones positioned atop his head, blasting one of his favourite songs in the playlist, he found it difficult to block out his thoughts. Specifically, his thoughts of you.

You shine a little love on my life You shine a little love on my life You shine a little love on my life And let me see

Masumi was surprised by himself. When it came to Izumi, he had always been vocal about his adoration for her, romantic or otherwise. Previously, he had little to no issue with bombing her with (ultimately pushed aside) proposals, (not taken seriously) confessions, (failed attempts to give her) gifts on days that weren’t even special occasions;

yet he couldn’t so much as speak up on his growing affection for you.

Having approached him for the pure intention of wanting to be friends, with enough persistence it wasn’t very difficult for you to worm into his heart, different from the rest in the sense that it was something beyond the friendship he’d slowly come to know during his stay in the dorms.

“Family, then?” when he expressed those feelings to you some months ago, you quickly turned away from him, gaze avoidant as you closed your eyes. It was a befuddling reaction, but it seemed like you were just taking your time to think before coming to a conclusion.

“Family…” he repeated those words to you, testing out how it sounded but more importantly, testing out the idea of family with you in the equation.

“Yeah, like siblings or something… oh, nevermind! Guess I won’t be calling you onii-chan~ any time soon.”

He must have cringed visibly, because you were quick to laugh it off and bounce back with a different topic ready at the tip of your tongue.

Family and siblings were an entirely different thing.

Masumi hoped you didn’t take it the wrong way, that you took it as him not liking you enough to be on the same level as the Spring troupe or even the other actors in Mankai Company… he wouldn’t spend so much time talking to you otherwise, but there was no way in hell he could see you in the same light as Sakuya or Tsuzuru, or heaven forbid Chikage or Sakyo. Gross. Just imagining himself being all affectionate with the latter two makes him sick in the stomach.

Remember, tonight We're gonna say, we'll never stop We got a good thing going on

Hours after that conversation and finally in the comfort of his room, he pressed his face against his pillow, finally coming to the realization that he was thrust upon a familiar situation once again, similar and yet all the more scarier.

Masumi wasn’t the type of person to joke around or play with someone’s feelings, you knew that well. The moment he finally articulated into words how he felt for you, then everything would change.

Would you feel the same? Yes or no?

He didn’t want to ruin anything.

So he lets the months pass by and though he remains mostly quiet about it, his actions speak differently. He neither wanted to just sit quietly and wait for his feelings to go away (they weren’t any time soon, by the way things were looking), nor was he about to wait for you to make the first move (you didn’t look like you had any plans to). The nosier guys in the dorm quickly found out and tried to help him, but he’d this time… he’d rather just do things his way.

Making you a playlist of songs he thought you’d like, offering to help you pick out new earphones after you broke your old ones, late night calls and messages.

It wasn’t like there was no pay off either.

Everything he’d do, you’d respond in kind.

A day after he sent you his playlist, you quickly followed up with one of your own, a playlist of songs that made you think of him, apparently, and with your words alone you rendered a blush out of him, not that you were physically there to see it. However, his roommate looked far too amused for his liking.

Then you wanted to test your new earphones by sharing the two pieces between yourselves, and though he was more of a headphones guy there was something heart fluttering about the distance (or lack thereof) between the two of you, shoulders pressed together as you listened to the same song (coincidentally, a song from the playlist he made for you).

And on the nights that he chose to stay up with Tsuzuru as the latter wrote the night away, you’d be there a call away, keeping him company for as long as you could before eventually falling asleep. Your steady and quiet breaths, a telltale sign of your slumber, warming his heart as he lingered for a few more seconds before ending the call.

Even if you somehow got the hint and tried reciprocating, as Muku and Kazunari so often insist, nothing would be official until one of you said something.

I know you've heard it all before But I really need you, darling Every day, I need you more

“Do you know about flower language, Masumi-kun?” Tsumugi asked him, on the way home after doing street acts together all afternoon.

He was being pretty sus. Normally Izumi would decide for them, but Tsumugi had specifically requested for the two of them to be a pair under the guise of having a specific idea for an improv, which while interesting wasn’t exactly groundbreaking.

“Only a little bit.”

Tsumugi hummed in response, and the younger boy couldn’t help but wonder what the Winter troupe leader was up to.

“Not everyone expresses their feelings the same way. Flowers are a good example– it’s indirect and subtle at first glance, but the gesture and meaning of whatever you choose make your feelings clear as day.”

Though his nonchalant tone implied otherwise, wasn’t his small talk actually a disguise for something else?

He’d been pretty doubtful of the “confession techniques” suggested to him by the others, from a poem (he’d rather just straight up confess) to a kabedon (wouldn’t that just confuse you?) to getting down on one knee and– (a proposal?);

Coming from Tsumugi, however, the suggestion didn’t seem that bad. Actually, you might like it– he didn’t doubt that you’d at least appreciate both the aesthetic and thought put behind the present.

“What if they don’t get it?” although the blue haired man’s smile remained perfectly serene, but something hidden within his eyes spoke volumes about his true intentions.

“Then you either, A, explain out loud and confess, B, tell them to look up the flowers online, or C, mix some red roses within the bouquet. Nothing’s more obvious than red roses.”

Tsumugi’s pace slowed to a stop, looking somewhere thoughtfully. Even without glancing back, the flowery scent quickly invaded his senses. Taking this route home… even this much was planned, then?

“Masumi-kun, is it okay if we take a look here before going home?”

Can you understand (yes, I understand) Can you feel it's right (I know it is) Will you be the same (I'll do it all again)

When he presents you the bouquet he’s chosen, you make the same expression you did all those months ago, shut eyes and head turned sideways. The only striking difference being the red patched across your face, matching one of the flowers in the bundle of 12.

The sight gives him more confidence, squashing some of his nervousness and giving him the courage to keep talking.

“The meaning of the red roses should be obvious, but you said you liked purple so I added lilacs to the bouquet, too… I thought you’d find them pretty. Do you like it?”

You peeked at him first, before focusing your gaze on the red and purple ensemble as you stumbled to say yes. Cute… if you keep acting this cute, he’ll just buy you flowers every day, then. Anything to get you this flustered again.

You shine a little love on my life You shine a little love on my life You shine a little love on my life And let me see

“Then, do you like me back?”

“ thank you for your hard work today at the flower shop! here, feel free to take home this purple lilac with you~ ”

【 purple lilac 】 represent the beginning of love or a first love, and are a perfect gift for new couples

“ maybe you’d like some more flowers before heading home? ”

-ˋˏflower series masterlistˎˊ- | -ˋˏregular fic masterlistˎˊ-

𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐨: for inspiration I listened to progressive rock bands, and I honestly… really vibed with them. Electric Light Orchestra was one of the bands I liked most. the meaning of this song is different, but I decided to just pick and choose the lyrics that have a more innocent/pure pining connotation, please don’t fight me progressive rock fans ue ue.

𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: i realized that going “hey, this fic is dedicated to xyz” kind of put off people from reading huhu, even though i still made sure it was written to be readable by anyone so i’ll just put all the dedications below huhu. again i apologize if you didn’t get your favourite character huhu

𝐝𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬: aish, ☔M~, lyd

#a3!#a3 #a3! x reader #masumi usui #masumi usui x reader #cafe: dessert menu #nathya's flower shop #a3! act! addict! actors!#usui masumi #a3! masumi #act! addict! actors!#reader insert

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justonecitizenoftheearth · 3 years

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Why the ending of Supernatural is problematic - the meaning of storytelling

Originally, I wanted to write a full essay on this and I still might, but since the university libraries are closed and I have three other big writing projects at hand, one of which is my final thesis, this might take a while. I still want to share my thoughts about this. A lot of this has been said before, but not yet by everyone. Trigger warning for mentions of suicide and homophobia.

The thing that bugs me most about the whole discussion about the ending of Supernatural is people saying “why do you care so much? It´s just a story.” Storytelling has been a part of human culture for thousands of years, it is something that everyone does and to think that telling stories doesn´t have a function in society that goes beyond entertainment is just plain wrong. Every part of storytelling, be it the actions shown, the words used, the characters involved or the connotations connected with any of the above, have the power to influence the way that the recipients of the story perceive reality. Now let that sink in for a moment.

To borrow some words from a text about gendered narration: “Narration is understood as a cultural practice that spans genres and media and it is of great significance for gender constructions and gender relations, because stories don´t simply reflect on the perception or imagination of ´gender´, but they create them. From this perspective, storytelling seems to be one of the performative acts that produce and establish identities and gender constructs in the first place.” (Nünning/Nünning (2006): Making gendered selves; translated from german). The important thing to take from this quote is the last bit: Storytelling is an act that produces and establishes identities. And from here, we jump directly into the ending of Supernatural.

I don´t think I have to explain a lot about what happens in the last two episodes of Supernatural. But I want to go into the potential impact. So, in the ending of episode 15x18, we see a male presenting character, Castiel, declare his love to another male presenting character, Dean Winchester. It is made very clear, both by the actual show and the comments of Misha Collins, who plays Castiel, right afterwards, that this is in fact meant to be romantic. Right after that scene, Castiel dies. He not only dies by coincidence, but confessing his love is the thing that makes him happy and therefore, because of a deal he made with the empty, is the thing that kills him. It is not explicitly said if Dean loves him back. In the next episode, this confession is never mentioned, but Dean shows some signs of wanting Castiel back desperately (begging Chuck to bring him back, running up the stairs because he thinks that Cas will be there), but these signs just stop at some point during the episode. In the series finale, Castiel is mentioned twice, but not once by Dean and always in a fleeting manner. It never becomes clear if Dean loves him back and life apparently just went on without him. Not to mention that death has never been a permanent or undefeatable state in the show. But Castiel never comes back, his feelings are never mentioned and neither are Dean´s, although it has been clear in previous seasons that he usually takes it very, very hard to lose Castiel, to a point where he becomes reckless and suicidal (see early season 13).

There are a few things to address here, but the main thing for me is that it seems like Castiel loses his status as a friend who will be dearly missed as soon as he comes out as in love with Dean Winchester, which is perceived by the audience as being gay (angelic gender discourse aside). And this is a bad message. It´s a really bad message both for people who struggle with their sexuality and see all their fears come true, and for people who have prejudices about LGBTQI+ people and get the message that they are less valuable as human beings. Which is not true, but again: Storytelling is an act that produces and establishes identities. The death of Castiel was only one of the problematic messages. Dean Winchester, who has been coded and perceived as bisexual and who has been a beacon of light for many who struggle with mental illnesses, dies too. Worse, he basically chooses death, which completely destroys the hopeful message of never giving up. Eileen Leahy, a deaf character who represents a group of people who are seldomly represented in media in a positive and empowering way, disappeares from the narrative, too, without an explanation and takes that empowerment with her. There are more examples, but the general idea is clear.

And this is, for me, the main problem with the Supernatural finale. The ending of Supernatural helps to establish hurtful tropes and assumptions. It transports messages that can be very harmful both for people who identify with those characters and see their own very real and important hopes and dreams fall to pieces, and for people who could use to see good representation of diverse characters to question their own values and opinions.

I hear you asking: “Okay, so bad media representation is bad in an abstract, cultural context. But how big can the impact of such media representation actually be for individual people? And how do you prove that?” So let me ask back: “Have you ever heard of the Werther effect?”

In 1774, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published the novel “The sorrows of Young Werther”. In this book the main character kills himself after being rejected by the woman he´s in love with. After the novel had been published, a number of young men committed suicide, following the example of the book character Werther. This is not the only case where the depiction of the suicide of a character inspired people who strongly identify themselves with the character commit suicide: “There have been other such “epidemics” [meaning suicides in imitation], such as the rash of suicides in young Jewish females after the publication of Otto Weininger´s Sex and Character in 1903. However, an earlier recorded epidemic occurred in the early 1700s in Japan.” (Krysinka/Lester (2006): Comment on the Werther effect. S.100).

Long story short, it is a known phenomenon that media has a huge influence on the lives of recipients, especially if they can identify strongly with the characters, all the way to existential decisions like suicide. And in the case of Supernatural, that´s an extraordinarily relevant question.

The character Dean Winchester has battled depression, trauma and suicidal thoughts and tendencies in his journey. Many people who battled the same issues could identify themselves with this character, which is a known fact in the fandom and has been said multiple times on conventions and on social media. Showing that this character accepts death, even though it is questionable if that was necessary, and implying that the only way that he can find peace is by dying is highly problematic. Combined with the number of people who identify as LGBTQI+ and who have a strong connection to the character Dean Winchester, and considering the high suicide rate among LGBTQ+ individuals, death as the conclusion of his character arc is a dangerous message.

To summarize my point, storytelling is an insanely powerful instrument to shape the collective social memory of a culture and it has direct influence on how we perceive the world and other humans. Bad media representation causes real life issues and can be very harmful, both on a personal level and in society, for those who are affected. It lets hypocrites, homophobes and racists stay in their bubble of righteousness and fails to call them out on their bullshit. It is a lethal threat to some. Bad media representation and thoughtless storytelling is dangerous. And this is why I care so much. Because it´s not just about a story.

So, that´s it for now. I would love to hear your thoughts about it!

And I send love to all of my mutuals, everyone who loves Supernatural and hates the finale because of it, all of my rainbow siblings and everyone who needs it! <3

#the15yearshow #destiel #eileen leahy #media representation #spn season 15 #spn finale #literature textpost #the importance of representation #the sorrows of young werther #meta post #I guess #narratology #storytelling #literature student #supernatural

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aiyexayen · 3 years

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Today I find myself thinking about Wei Wuxian and all the names he comes up with for things, and how much each one says about his character--his cleverness, his philosophies, his true feelings.

Like when he’s debating on what to name his spell--Binding or Bonding. This is an English translation, of course, but it still tells us that he wants to get the name right. He’s playing with it, thinking about what connotations each one has.

He’s using this, of course, to tease Lan Wangji in the process. Especially because it’s a clear callback (light blue, same wrists, and everything) to the Lan headband in the cave. “In what way are we bound? In what way does something like this bind a person?”

The fact that he thinks so much about words and their meanings, and then sees how to use them at other people like that, is just delightful. He’s just delightful.

Wei Wuxian named his sword Suibian, meaning “Whatever.” But we’re specifically told that it was because he had too many names for it--over 20--and none of them were good enough. None of them fit. And when he was frustrated enough to say “suibian!” he thought that, itself, was a great name.

Wei Wuxian decided that agonising over a name for his blade was counterproductive and, in doing so, made something of a statement with it about how his actions mean more than his words. How he can be carefree and seemingly careless on the surface yet as sharp and powerful as anyone could wish for once he acts. How a name is just a name and many people will fight to the death for the right one--spend hours trying to pick the right one--but what you do with yourself matters more.

Not that there is no value in a name, for Suibian itself is still a name. But when it comes to his blade, his tool with which to enact justice and be synonymous with his own place in society, that is how he feels. And some part of him wishes this known. It’s very meta of him.

It’s a sentiment he follows through on and lives his life by as he sacrifices his own good name and even takes on the name of a terrifying villain that is at fault for all bad things, and yet stands for justice anyway. That Suibian is the most loyal of blades, even once he has given her up in the name of love, is blatant approval of this way.

Suibian was claimed as a trophy by the Jin sect. Not a dark artifact. Not a useful tool. Nothing to do with the downfall of the Yiling Laozu, but a trophy of having completely ruined Wei Wuxian, the boy, by twisting his actions in the sights of others until they could no longer speak for themselves.

And, on a lovely poetic timing note, the day Wei Wuxian steals Suibian back from the Jins is the same day Lan Wangji publicly declares his agreement about justice being more important than reputation.

Wei Wuxian’s second weapon is, on the other hand, given a more poetic name from the start. Exquisitely done. Chenqing.

From what I’ve read, there are any number of ways to translate it and it can have many layered meanings. Anything from “to explain myself fully” to “to express my feelings.” And apparently a reference to the lines, “I wished to set forth my thoughts and explain my actions; I little dreamed this would be held a crime.”

Which is just, given Wei Wuxian’s story, utterly heartwrenching.

He thought his actions could speak for themselves, but nothing he did was good enough, even by the time he first names Chenqing. Lotus Pier has fallen and he has been blamed. He has sacrificed everything and it has cost others much as well.

He has sold his soul to the path of demonic cultivation and become a living weapon for vengeance. He is now a being of secrets and darkness and all he wants, all he ever wanted, is to be understood by and seen for what he’s done. Yet he realises this is now impossible. It might always have been.

So he’s wrestling with the idea that his most noble actions can never be explained and his feelings can never be discussed--his feelings about himself and actions, his feelings about his family, his feelings about Lan Wangji. That explaining them is as much of a crime as having them, as much of a crime as doing the right thing seems to be. He still thinks he’s doing what’s right, but nobody else will see it that way.

His weapon--his dizi--is still the one thing he can use to explain himself with, his actions still being self-justifying. His name choice, though, is no longer the youthful and bold declaration that this ought to be accepted, but a somber acknowledgement that this will not be understood. And that, as ever, he will do it anyway.

The name is still important, even if no one is paying attention. He will continue to express himself, even if he continues to be misunderstood. And he does.

Chenqing is recovered, after Wei Wuxian’s death, and kept safe and precious by Jiang Cheng in an undisclosed location that may or may not have been “always in his pocket close to his heart.” Just let me have this.

It’s not a trophy. It’s the last thing that Wei Wuxian used to try to act upon the world, and the last thing left of him in it. Jiang Cheng had been unable to understand anything there at the end, even as much as he desperately wanted to. So he keeps Chenqing, and he keeps trying.

Wei Wuxian gets her back on the day that truth comes to light about all his actions and the actions of others. The day he is exonerated in front of the leaders of the four great sects in Guanyin temple. The day his secrets are exposed and he is able to express himself in truth for the first time on any number of levels with nothing in the way. The day Jiang Cheng finally understands. The day Jiang Cheng--who has held her for all these years--confronts and expresses himself, as well.

Once Wei Wuxian gets them back, Suibian gets to cut away secrecy and prompt actions and Chenqing gets to be the symbol of reconciliation and save the day.

It’s fucking beautiful. Fuck.

I could just keep talking about the way these two weapons connect? But? I won’t, because there are more names to discuss.

Additionally, Wei Wuxian names the Blood Pond and Demon-Subdue Palace. Or rather, keeps the name Demon-Subdue Palace from the past, I believe?

Either way, I think this says a lot about his character. It’s a way to bring humour into the dark. It also serves as a reminder to himself about who he does not wish to become; as a bitter irony, too, indicating he understands what people think of him already and a determination to ride that wave head-on as he always has.

“You want to think I’m the villain? Haha okay, fuck you. I’m the villain, I guess. Now buy my radishes.”

He’s always resisted people defining him to himself, so he takes what he’s given and twists it until he gets something out of it that he can use, even if nobody gets it but him.

He dares to laugh in the face of the fact that he now makes his home next to a pool that smells like blood. That he is regarded as a demon. He sees the value in wordplay and humour, even if it’s a bad joke. This is his life, possibly forever. A bad joke is better than giving up. A bad joke still means he’s human and he’s clinging to those shreds of humanity, for himself and for the people he lives with.

The last name Wei Wuxian comes up with, I believe, is Jin Ling’s courtesy name. Rulan.

Again, a lot of layered meanings here, which as far as I understand is kind of the point of names. But also shows that Wei Wuxian is good at doing it.

Rulan means “like an orchid” and, from what I’ve seen about it, just has buckets of symbolism relating to the honour of the Jin sect itself, many hopes for exemplifying gentlemanly qualities, being strong, etc. Orchids are also symbolic themselves of love, beauty, happiness, unity, stuff like that.

So Wei Wuxian bestowed his blessing on his shijie's union and her future child--his future nephew--with as much grace and love as he could cram into one word. And he came up with it on the fly.

Continuing to outwardly be huffy about Jins and Jin Zixuan in particular, but giving the future Jin Sect heir a name with a lot of meaning, is just so like him. He’s taking shijie’s happiness and love seriously, and he’s truly so proud of her and of the fact he will get to be an uncle.

If it happens to be homophonous with his husband’s boyfriend’s Love Interest’s zhiji’s family name, well, that's just because he's clever enough at naming to do both. Which Jiang Cheng is absolutely salty about and shijie thinks is adorable.

#thank you for coming to my ted talk #wei ying #wei wuxian #suibian #chenqing #jin rulan #demon-subdue palace #the untamed #wei wuxian's naming powers are op #lan wangji's naming style is extremely straightforward and direct #just like him #but that's another post #the untamed meta

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nomanwalksalone · 3 years

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TAKE MY IVY, PLEASE

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

A few years before my excellent state graduate school destroyed the promise of accessible public education and raised tuition to the same levels as the privates, my housemate, complaining that he wanted an experience that I had already had, transferred to Yale. Said experience, one I had never put a name to, was “the Ivy League experience.” I never thought that my undergraduate years at Dirnelli U (known to non-iGents as Brown) amounted to any sort of emblematic experience of the eight universities that compose the Ivies, nor that the sort of experience that expression connotes exists today outside of the imaginations of a few who have closed their eyes to the sartorial realities of college, whether on the campus of an Ivy League or elsewhere.

Certainly by the time I wandered my college town’s streets the idea of an Ivy look that was not the national college outfit of jeans, sweats or even pajamas was ludicrous, even if those wanderings frequently took me past Brown’s last two, soon-to-be-extinct, soon-to-be-unmourned, Ivy outfitters. Despite one of them adding a large wood carving of the Polo logo to its sign, they remained unrelatable enclaves surrounded by the diners with insane hours (midnight to four AM) and smoke shops with Sobranie Black Russians which I remember more sentimentally.

They weren’t welcoming, either, if I ever braved to venture past the window displays with Royall Lyme and defiantly middle-aged Barry Bricken and Tricots Saint-Raphael mufti. Undergraduates were not buying, and that shop, Hillhouse Ltd, closed my senior year. Times had changed to the point that I remember the opening of a Gap on Thayer Street drawing some criticism in the press for that shop’s expected priciness.

Richard Press evokes Hillhouse Ltd.’s predecessor, Langrock, and the other classic outfitters of the Ivy League in his sparkling memoir Threading the Needle, a collection of reminiscences from his posts on the website of J. Press, the ur-classic clothier founded by his grandfather. Even if J. Press is now owned by its Far Eastern licensee Onward Kashiyama, Richard Press remains the face of the firm, and, for all intents and purposes, its breezy, never windy, voice.

Press is ebullient to the point of becoming almost ethereal, a far cry from my memories of the weary heaviness of my local Ivy shops’ atmospheres, their prosaic furnishings and quite mundane merchandise… But then again, my first recollection of Ivy style, recognized in retrospect like a recovered memory, was of my high school English teacher’s tweed jacket, which he opened to lend me a pen that smelt as memorably bad as almost anything I’ve smelt since then, including tanneries and certain institutional wards, suffused as it was not with the Hebridean peat fires that Richard Press insists you could smell in the old Harris Tweeds his father sold, but with decades of spilt coffee and sweat-drenched wool that must have never seen a dry clean, so that his shapeless, indiscriminately patterned tweed jacket bore the pedigree of its soiling. My first experience, then, was of miasma, not Press’s ether.

No wonder Richard Press makes a virtue out of the emptiness of the actual Ivy stores, filling them with ethos and intangible evocations: a sense not just of community but of belonging. Belonging to the New Haven restaurants that only sat university students and staff, not townsfolk; belonging to the boisterous undergraduates who knew that Press’s frequently invoked “Boola boola” is a Yale fight song; belonging to a time when immigrant tailor Jacobi Press and his staff travelled the trails of the carriage trade and visited boarding schools to sell rich adolescents custom suits, the better to lock them in for college and life. Belonging to dangerous road trips between Dartmouth and its sister college in the days before co-education (or good highways) to flirt, or at least hope to loan out a J. Press Shetland wool sweater; belonging to Frank Sinatra’s party one whirlwind evening when the Chairman of the Board sat most of the J. Press New York staff at his table in all the chic watering holes; belonging to the small group of people who have seen Dean Acheson in his underwear… Always, however, the thrill of this inclusion is in its exclusion of others: through codes of language, through the financial means required to pay for custom tailoring (for children who would grow out of it!); through social class. It is a privilege to read Richard Press’ writing, but it would be unwise to forget the privilege his rosy reminiscences required.

Comfort and ease in tailored clothing, then as now, only came at great expense. It does not surprise me that those physical Ivy shops of Providence, untouched by J. Press’s halo, withered and died. Threading the Needle includes Richard Press’s jabs at casualization. He bemoans it as a great swindle on us, depriving us of knowing what to wear, and requiring us to buy cheaper, junkier clothes at much higher margins than what honest traditional merchants like J. Press were and are selling us. But the reason Ivy is dead is because the class that wore this syncretistic American clothing, a dowdy bastardization of Britishness with Puritan formlessness thrown in, reflexively because it was what was done, and what was sold where one shopped, was quite happy to wear lighter, easier, less confining clothing as soon as they could shed the weight of Ivy, the dress code expectations that changed so radically from the 1960s onward, and quite happy to spend less on cheaper casual clothing than on expensive tailored jackets and ties whose silk had to be madder-dyed in England. You may see a few young people wearing a Harris Tweed jacket or seersucker sportcoat on a northeastern college campus, but they are all doing so with intentionality, the intention to recreate something that no longer naturally exists, populating an invented ecosystem with overthought clothing to which they associate a politics that was not at all certain to be associated with it in the days when so-called Ivy clothing was the norm on Ivy campuses.

Press’s essays even give us, in pieces, the narrative of what actually happened to Ivy Style. Once upon a time it was the norm on rarefied campuses of young gentlemen who might continue using the same tailor who had bench-made their clothes in high school and college once they graduated to Wall Street, like a Fitzgerald protagonist. The aftermath of World War II democratized (to a point) college enrollment through the GI Bill, leading many, many more people, of theretofore-unrepresented social classes, to attend college and adopt a similar wardrobe. (Another prep school teacher once informed us that Columbia University had simply called up his father after the war and asked him to attend, allowing him to climb the social ladder.) Innovations in production allowed factory manufacture of Ivy-style ready-to-wear garments as well, so that the increased number of people who wanted to wear Ivy could also afford to wear the Ivy look without having to pay the prices of artisanal one-off work. Ivy became widespread: Press uses the word “heyday” in the titles of several of his essays from this golden age when Ivy was the look. And every fashionable look has its end. Not only did fashions change, but social changes in the 1960s meant that homogenous dressing on campuses was at an end, particularly dressing like one supposed a white-collar grownup would in coat and tie. The 1970s’ upheaval in prep school dress codes broke the back of coat and tie for kids, dealing another blow to Ivy. The Ivy partisans Press evokes who wore it during those decades, doughty men, men of intelligence like Dick Cavett, of integrity like John Chancellor, were middle-aged men who had started wearing the same style of clothes decades earlier as students. (Even Frank Sinatra, who scooped Richard up to his bosom, only lasted nine months as a customer in the late 1960s before sending an emissary to tell Richard Frank no longer wanted to experiment with the Ivy look.) Ivy as a style worn by current Ivy Leaguers, or by American college students pretty much anywhere, no longer existed.

Decades later I, too, wear tweed jackets, but keep them clean (unlike the original Ivy population), and am not a parafascist reactionary (unlike some of the most visible latter-day Ivy practitioners). Savile Row tailors had to sacralize the concept of tweed for me, washing away all its associations of brown, smelly, shapeless and hegemonic, so that my garments in it, strange alpaca Shetland weaves or unthinkable lavenders, are as far from Ivy as possible. Despite the awful Brown Daily Herald (for which I coined the motto “all the print that fits is news”) carrying a weekly News of the Ivies section, none of us felt any ineffable Ivy-ness. The closest I came to such a feeling may have been reading a cheesy story by Providence’s own H.P. Lovecraft, whose action suddenly shifted to the very room I was sitting in… or perhaps hearing a townie couple at a Spring Weekend concert by the very non-Ivy Violent Femmes mutter about how all the kids in the audience had good teeth.

I do not mourn Ivy, as I do not mourn the shops that died trying to sell it to the college populations that have moved on. I hope my housemate found what he was looking for in New Haven (I did successfully, and evilly, bullshit him into buying two Brigg umbrellas for his move there). Had I been him, no doubt I would have succumbed to some aspect of Richard Press’s winning fantasies, replaying the opening paragraphs of Franny and Zooey in my mind, wool-lined Burberry and all, in search of a possessions-linked romance that reality has no place for in this day and age, if it ever had.

#rjman #reginaldjeromedemans

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toverijenspokerij · 4 years

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Saintly witches and sorcerers.

So an anon asked. And I had to dig out my journals. But here we are. There are two saints that I know of that are connected to witchcraft and sorcery. Or to put it broadly; magic. I only know of these saints, and have no dealings with them on a spiritual/magical level. So keep in mind that this is purely research. So whatever options for contact I’ve written down; these are suggestions and should not be taken as a set-in-stone-rule. And before anything you read here: I encourage you to do your own research. And by that I mean; read whatever you can find about said saint. And. Write. It. Down. Write down your own impressions, assumptions and whatnot down as well. Then take practical steps. Pray. I’ve found that praying to Mary/Christ/The Holy Ghost first and then to X saint just seems to ‘fine tune’ the whole process. As well as provide some level of protection. Just as living humans, the dead- even saints -can act up/be difficult. Take precautions like any sensible practitioner would. It doesn’t have to be big- like mentioned above.

As my last piece of advice: don’t go around giving offering right away. Again; nothing big. Prayer can be an offering, as well as the usual candles and water. Elaborate offerings can always be used as payment/holding up your end of the bargain. Though specifics are to be worked out between you and X saint. They’ll let you know what they prefer. First, a (dis)honourable mention: Saint Thomas Aquinas. He is firmly against magic during his lifetime. Stating that the magic art is both unlawful as it is futile, tells you pretty much all you need to know. Everything is traced back to demons, and frankly, boring. Reading his work(s) you’d almost get doubts on whether the man wasn’t an intensely pissed off failed ceremonial magician himself. Although if you want a saint who could neutralize magic send against you, he’d probably be a good one to contact. His work(s) are/were/are considered a must read/study for those who want to become a priest. His work on the nature of souls is interesting.

- Saint Columba of Sens: There is some confusion around this saint. Her modern day cult is in France, Sens. She is a mix of Spanish and French. Saint Comba or Saint Columba is literally an entity that is ‘in between’ things. Is she a nun or a (converted) witch? Is she for witches or against them? Or both, depending on who calls on her? Did she remain a witch after converting or did she join because of the protection of being a nun gave? Whatever the tale is; her patronage literally includes rain, witches, magicians, hags, wizards and magic. As well as Andorra and Galicia. Her attributes are a broom and a witches hat! Through another story- on how she was saved from rape -a female bear could also be one of her symbols.

Her day is September 17th. Although within the Catholic church it is presented as Saint Columba was only martyr, in older Galician resources a somewhat different story comes to light. According to Poska, the woman known as a saint from Sens was none other than a famous witch in Spanish Galicia.

''Across Galicia, St Comba is known as the patron saint of witches, a curious notion in and of itself. On the one hand, she acts as an intercessor on behalf of witches, while on the other hand, people go to her to defend themselves against witches. One informant told Marisa Rey-Henningsen, ‘there . . . you can see she was a great witch, and now she is the greatest of saints.’ Even today, Galegos remain comfortable with both the positive and negative connotations of having witches in their midst.''

Whether this is about two different women, who over time got fused into one character is something you- the reader -must figure out for yourself. Know that there ís such a Saint Comba. Though I’d argue that since she is specific to a region, you read up on that particular folklore as well. To contact her I would keep it to a simple prayer, though with the addition of doing that on either a full or dark moon. - Saint Simon the Sorcerer: Simon Magus, Simon the Magician, Simon the Sorcerer, the Bad Samaritan. From Samarië Most known for his clash with Saint Peter. He is often described as the founder of Gnosticism. Reputed to be a ‘formidable’ sorcerer as well as one who has the skill to levitate. The bad Samaritan nickname is linked to his malevolent character. Has no known symbols or feast-day. Though a black book, wand, black bull, crucifix or gold would work. As would any Sunday would suffice as a feast-day. His conversion to Christianity- in my opinion -was more due the fact that he saw a source of great power; which he as a sorcerer could have the one-up on others. But that is just me. In various tales his temper and ambition play a huge part. Often portrayed as a magician who wants to become a god or sees himself as a second Jesus. This most notably in the myth of Simon and Helen by Epiphanius

The apocryphal Acts of Peter gives a more elaborate tale of Simon Magus' death. Simon is performing magic in the Forum and in order to prove himself to be a god, he levitates up into the air above the Forum. The apostle Peter prays to God to stop his flying, and Simon stops mid-air and falls into a place called "the Sacra Via" (meaning "Holy Way"), breaking his legs "in three parts". The previously non-hostile crowd then stones him. Reputed that he would rose from his grave, like Christ, after 3 days. Sadly, he stayed in his grave.

Minus the early Christian politics; to me this seems like a saint who has quite a temper when provoked. Though no lack of power and ambition. Suited to sorcerers or practitioners who need a patron in this direction as well as exploring deeper mysteries. Do not place on the same altar/shrine as St Peter; risk of a potential power struggle.

#toverij & spokerij #working with saints #saint comba #saint of witches #saint simon magus #saint of sorcerers #saints of occult arts #folk catholicism

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nobody-wants-ice-cream · 4 years

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Everything Wrong With The Umbrella Academy. Episode 8, I Heard a Rumor.

This episode is particularly brutal. Warnings include child abuse, domestic abuse, suicide, rape, gore, and manipulation. Keep yourself safe.

We Only See Each Other at Weddings and Funerals

Run Boy Run

Extra Ordinary

Man on the Moon

Number Five

The Day That Wasn’t

The Day That Was

Disclaimer: This is all in good fun! I wanted to do a really nitpicky re-watch of the series and found some really cool and interesting things I didn’t notice before. This is meant to have a Cinema Sins-esque tone. However, I did take off a lot more sins than Cinema Sins would have because I do genuinely like the series and the people that made it possible. So all of the good things got one sin off and all the bad things got one sin added. This is a really long post, so grab some popcorn. If there’s anything that I missed, feel free to add it!

I would also like to add that normally you wouldn’t watch a show this way. I am purposefully looking for mistakes, easter eggs, and other things that we’re not supposed to notice. I am watching not with the goal of entertainment, but for analysis. So most of the things that I sin, I am seeing for the first time.

Also, no I can’t do better. I am in no way qualified to give this level of criticism about anything. I am not taking this seriously. At all.

I Heard a Rumor

Stormy Weather by Etta James. I adore this song. When I first watched the show I was so happy when this song came on.-1

I am also taking a sin off for the Emmy Raver-Lampman version -1

It looks like Allison genuinely adores her daughter. And Claire’s bedroom? I would want to have that room now and I am at least ten years older than her. -1

Speaking of, how old is Claire? Sin until we have answers. +1

The animations for the story of The Umbrella Academy defeating the robbers at the museum. -2

“While your Uncle Klaus got a little distracted.” What did Klaus do on missions again? +1

Allison carefully censors the mission so she is still telling the truth but doesn’t actually say that Diego used knives or that Ben used the horror to (presumably, we don’t know how much control Ben had) kill four people. Good job. See Reggie, this is how you don’t traumatise your kid with violence. -1

“Their leader.” Looks suspiciously like a villain from the comics. -1

“I wanna hear the one about the Eiffel tower.” Me too, Claire. Especially since the magazine clips we see suggest Five was there this time. -1

Mind control. ON A CHILD. This is what bothers me the most about Allison as a character and I am glad that she is moving past it. However, in no universe can I let this go. Depending on how Allison used it, Claire’s emotional control could be fucked for life. +40

Patrick behaves like a rational human being and doesn’t blow up at Allison for this in front of their child. He also divorces her in order to keep said child safe. Good. -1

“I heard a rumor you love me.” Who did she say this to? It doesn’t matter who, it’s still disturbing, but oh dear God who did she say this to? I think this is the second most fucked up thing we hear Allison say after the rumoring Claire scene. +10

Allison is going 120 kmh, or 75 mph, in the rain. If you have ever driven a car in the rain then you know exactly why I am sinning this. For those who don’t know, google hydroplaning. Allison could have died here very, very easily. +3

Title screen on a billboard! I forgot how cool the episode 8 title screen was. -1

Allison doesn’t bring her proof with her when going to confront Vanya, who has been shown to be irrational when it comes to Leonard. +1

Bird jumpscare. +1

“They want me to come back tomorrow be fitted for a prosthetic eye”. Leonard places emphasis on the words “prosthetic eye” to remind the viewers that Leonard is bad news. Good acting choice. -1

Leonard’s clothes look freshly bloody when the blood should be several hours old and therefore a more rusty brown color than a bright red. I think. I don’t know if that’s how it works with such large amounts of blood. +1

Luther’s bed is now magically big enough to fit both him and the rave girl. +1

Luther’s reaction to the rave girl. Rewatch this scene to get such a laugh at Luther’s face. -1

How out of it was Luther vs the rave girl? Consent issues on both sides. +3

Luther treated the rave girl to some wine? Or cranberry juice? How thoughtful. -1

I really, really hope they were safe though. There is no evidence to imply they were safe. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you’re too young to be watching TUA). +1

Klaus is such a little shit. “Wakey wakey! Eggs and bakey!” while ringing the bell. Peak sibling culture is doing this sort of thing while knowing that the other sibling is NOT going to appreciate it. Also, Klaus deserves his revenge after last night. -1

The little wave the rave girl gives Klaus. -1

Go back and watch this scene. Holy shit this is so underrated. This is the funniest thing ever. -1

“He popped his cherry! Now you’re gonna have to marry her” -4

Klaus doesn’t remember his first time. Consent issues. +3

“No dilly-dallying, alright?” I love Klaus. -1

Klaus makes french press coffee for Luther and Ben. Klaus is a good brother. -1

I would kill to see Ben’s reaction to Luther and the rave girl. +1

Five snatches Luther’s coffee and not Ben’s, ya know, the guy who can’t drink the coffee. And is invisible. Five is a dick to Luther or Five wanted to be a little shit to Luther after having to hear him and the rave girl. Either way, +1

He steals the coffee and he complains about it. +1

Ben! -1

“This is a bad idea” no shit. +1

The awkward pauses where Ben is presumably speaking don’t make sense here. +1

The camera trickery used to make Luther look like a giant compared to Five. -1

Five knows where the aspirin is “top shelf next to the crackers” because he was also hungover. I think. I can’t remember if FIve stopped back at the house, but presumably he and Luther had to go there to get the car. -1

Luther still isn’t getting up to get the aspirin even though he can listen just fine while getting it. +1

Ben adding to the dramatic tension of the scene in a uniquely humorous way that only this show can pull off. -2

Luther doesn’t believe Klaus about Reggie’s suicide. What reason would Klaus have to lie about this, Luther? +1

Five believes him right away. -1

Convenient Pogo backing up Klaus is convenient. +1

This has nothing to do with this very dramatic and important scene, but the mismatched chairs, while cute, don’t appear in any other scene. +1

Five calls Reggie a “sick bastard” under his breath. That’s one way to describe him. -1

Pogo kept this secret for a long time. Not telling the kids was a strange choice and I’m not sure why Pogo made it. On one hand, he would be respecting the wishes of his creator and friend but on the other he would be helping these people come to terms with their father’s death. Pogo’s character motivations are strange and I don’t understand them. +1

Luther said it best, “there’s always choice.” +1

Random thought I had, where was Harold’s grandmother when he was being abused and then going to jail because he killed his abuser? +1

Leonard says some nice things in this scene. If we didn’t know how manipulative he was I would give him credit for this line. +1

Agnes looks adorable out of the Griddy’s uniform. Costume/hair people, you did good. -1

Agnes keeps saying things like “we aren’t in a rush” and talking about seeing three years worth of stops to remind us that there is no time. Hazel looks heartbroken by it. -1

Allison abandons her vehicle. Do not take driving advice from The Umbrella Academy, ever! +1

Allison sees a random scarf from several cars away and immediately connects it with Vanya. Does she also have super sight? +1

The first time we see Allison get recognized by a random stranger for her acting is eight episodes in. +1

Cheddar (the cop Allison is talking to) is so enamored by Allison that he stops doing his job correctly. +1

“Jackpine cove” who named these towns? +1

Allison and Five have the same little shrug when they finish telling terrible lies. -1

Allison is a terrible liar. +1

Diego is still in jail. They’re talking about transferring him upstate. This is really bad news. +1

“Did she use that word? Contentious?” The definitions of contentious all say the word argument. Beeman says that Diego and Patch had an argumentative relationship. This matters to Diego. Why? +1

This conversation was written by someone who doesn’t understand the connotation of the word contentious. +1

Beeman encourages Diego to escape and go on the run. Are all the cops incompitent on this show? You have Patch, who hasn’t pinned Diego for obstruction of justice despite the show implying that Diego has touched evidence he wasn’t supposed to many times, Cheddar, who is so distracted by Allison freakin’ Hargreeves that he forgets that taking her along to a murder case is unethical at best, and Beeman who straight up encourages Diego to escape from jail. That last one is definitely illegal. +10

The parallel between Five and Leonard reading something they aren’t supposed to have in the bathroom. Both the apocalypse file and the journal are red, too. This means something but I don’t have the analysis skills to really go into it. If anyone wants to take a crack at it, go ahead. Sin removed because I know this is smart even if I can’t figure out why.-1

Vanya’s training implies that Reggie has been training these kids hard since they were at least four years old. +7

Current Sin Count: 73

Reggie doesn’t praise Vanya for breaking the glass, he just demands that she does it again. Say it with me now, Reggie is a dick. +1

Leonard straight up uses the word extraordinary. Sigh. +1

The description for how Vanya’s powers work (concentrate on a constant sound until that’s all you can hear and then use an emotional connection to target) is surprisingly good. This is the best description of somebody’s powers we’ve ever gotten in this show. -1

Klaus is attempting to get the yarn on the needle and failing miserably. This is one of the simpler, if tedious, things we do in knitting. Therefore, it is completely understandable how a beginner can’t make heads or tails of it. -1

Five is still injured. The old man walk gives it away. +1

Five treats Klaus like a second in command. I want more of this duo. -1

“So how’d the crazy bastard actually know to kill himself a week before the end of the world?” We would all like to know the answer to that question. Five would be excellent at cinema sins. +1

“Don’t answer, that was purely rhetorical.” Nice cop out, show. +1

Reggie used The Apocalypse to make his kids do the dishes. Checks out. +1

Five and Klaus bond over hating doing the dishes and the person making them do the dishes. Sibling culture. -1

“Where have you been?” “Jail. Long story.” The looks on Klaus and Five’s faces! -2

Vanya breaks the monocle. Good job, kid. However, if you know the comics then you know why I am mildly concerned about this. -1

“That will conclude your training for the time being.” Meaning the next 25 years. Reggie, you suck. +1

Now Vanya’s powers are a bit more vague and imply that she has super hearing. +1

Leonard’s training routine actually includes some praise, which is a step up from Reggie. However, a step up from Reggie is still someplace in hell, so it’s still a sin. +1

It’s also a sin because it’s uncontrolled and Vanya is afraid of it, yet Leonard keeps pushing her. +1

Leonard uses the kind of language Reggie would use to describe Vanya’s powers. Checks out because he read Reggie’s book and is using his ideas to train Vanya. +1

Helen Cho’s missing person poster reminds the viewer that Leonard is bad news. +1

Vanya plays for the St. Pluvium Chamber Orchestra. First of all, no they have a conductor. +1

Second of all, “Pluvium” means of or relating to rain. The Umbrella Academy fights against the leader of the rain orchestra in episode 10. Who came up with that pun? That is absolutely hilarious. -1

Based on a post by @seven-valid-libras I think Griddy’s is across the street from this bar? I am not 100% sure. If it is then that’s a sin off because Agnes definitely has a bunch of drunk people coming in for doughnuts every now and then. I lowkey want to write this fic. -1

“Maybe they’ll brood each other to death” Is this a reference to the fact that Luther and Diego were both too emo for umbrellas in episode 1? -1

I feel so bad for Luther right now. Reggie really fucked with his head. +1

After hearing that Vanya’s boyfriend is a convicted murderer, Luther is more concerned for Allison than he is for Vanya. +1

Diego’s face when Luther says “you should have led with that!” [the fact that Allison went after a convicted murderer alone] -1

Luther is right. Diego should have led with that. +1

Luther breaks the door in his rush to get out of the bar. Checks out. -1

Mary J. Blige. -1

The shop is closing because Agnes is leaving? Who owns Griddy’s? +1

And if the shop is closing, then why leave doughnuts on the shelf? Are they gifts for the other waitresses who are now out of a job? +1

Agnes keeps a flamingo (presumably, scented) candle in a bakery. +1

Cha Cha was way too close to that explosion to not get some scratches at the very least. +1

Sergeant Cheddar is letting Allison stay in the room while he interrogates Mr. Luntz (the man that survived Vanya’s powers). +1

What kind of person allows themselves to be hired by some guy in order to beat him up in front of his girlfriend? Who does that? Are there people like that who exist in real life? +1

Allison doesn’t get pissed off when Luntz says that they started to hurt the girl (Vanya) too. +1

Sgt. Cheddar finally gets pissed off with Allison after she starts leading Luntz. This took way too long. +1

“What I really need to do is practice,” said every musician ever. Including me. As I’m typing this I’m putting off practicing. Vanya is calling me out. I deserve it. +1

Also, Vanya just got first chair and so far she still hasn’t learned the solo the day before the concert. That is such a mood. -1

The cracks in Leonard’s personality are finally starting to show. If Harold was smart he would let Vanya do this without attempting to manipulate her into more practice. +1

Vanya left her violin propped up in the middle of a sofa. That is a broken violin waiting to happen. +1

Where is her rosin? Don’t tell me she reuses the same rosin and doesn’t clean her instrument. Please. +2

Leonard doesn’t tell Vanya where he will be going. He just sort of leaves without a note. This would be fine if this universe had cell phones, but it doesn’t. Leonard is a dick. +1

Agnes would like to spend her (Hazel tells her it’s hypothetical but we know it’s not) last two days on Earth with Hazel. That is so sweet. But also, they met less than a week ago. +1

This is the turning point that makes Hazel an active character that wants to stop the apocalypse. Finally some character motivation that makes sense! Whoop! -1

They Call Me a Fool by Damon is another one of my favorites from the soundtrack. What can I say, I’m a sucker for jazz. -1

There is a parallel between Five leaving Vanya’s apartment and Leonard leaving her at the cabin. Her brother (whom I assume she loves) and the man she is infatuated with both leave her at some point without warning. The people who Vanya loves keep leaving her. +2

Vanya puts her violin down on a chair and lets the bow fall. Bows are expensive. +1

“I made a secret place just for you. None of your siblings get to play there.” Of course Reggie is framing it this way. He’s scared of her. +1

The further away from Pogo the camera is, the less real he looks. +1

Reggie and Pogo locked Vanya in this cage. +1

Vanya’s violin bow fell down but in the next shot it’s propped on the chair. +1

Sgt. Cheddar tells Allison to stay put but has no way to verify that she actually will. Also, if he’s such a fan then shouldn’t he know that she used to be a superhero? +1

Allison kept her proof about Leonard/Harold in the car again. +1

“I love you. And I wanna be here for you as your sister.” -1

“I love him.” Vanya you met him less than a week ago. +2

If there was ever a wrong time to bring up the fact that you took Vanya’s powers away and left her with a horribly low self esteem due to the poorly worded “I heard a rumor that you think you’re just ordinary”, it would be now! Now is the wrong time to bring this up! +10

Reggie used Allison to make Vanya powerless. Reggie is a dick. An absolute bastard. A complete scumbag. Etc. +20

Reggie has also been drugging Vanya since she was FOUR YEARS OLD. +50

Insert Reggie insults here. Feel free to come up with your own in the tags. Fuck this guy repeatedly with a rusty chainsaw. +20

Vanya is not in the right state of mind to understand that Reggie is the one that made Allison rumor her. +1

The final fight between Allison and Vanya is heartbreaking. Emmy Raver-Lampman and Ellen Page are excellent actresses. -5

Vanya’s skin keeps getting paler and paler. Foreshadowing. -1

This is the only time Allison attempts to use her powers in the show. To save her life. I would say that it is pretty justified. -1

Violin bows are not sharp enough to cut human flesh. Is this another part of Vanya’s power? +1

Gore warning! This is super fucked. Not gonna lie, I gag a little every time I see this.+4

Vanya is freaking out and then Leonard walks in. Vanya’s mental state is completely out the window at this point. +4

Leonard manhandles Vanya into letting her sister die (as far as they know) on the floor of the cabin. +10

Allison has definitely lost enough blood to kill her, yet she survives this. +1

Leonard went out to kill Luntz. +10

Nobody in the car (Five driving, Klaus shotgun, Luther and Diego in the back) is wearing a seatbelt. +1

Also, of these four people, Five is the most qualified to drive right now? Diego is sitting right there! And we saw Klaus drive the ice cream truck! Luther would have some trouble driving because he’s so large. But really?? +2

“Can you go any faster?” “Ask me again and I’ll burn you with the cigarette lighter.” The comic relief doesn’t really land here because the scene before was so dramatic and the music is still playing. To change the mood, the song would also have to change. +2

Independently, that is a pretty funny Grandpa Five line. -1

Including Ben in the scene where they find Allison bleeding out on the floor is a subtle reminder to the audience that if Allison was dead, Klaus would be able to see her ghost. The lack of a ghost means she is still alive. +1

Also, this scene has all the original members of The Umbrella Academy in it. Look how far they’ve come from the bank robbery. +6

No one is checking for a pulse right now. They’re just assuming that Allison is dead. +10

Overall Review: It goes without saying that this episode is fucking brutal. When I first watched it I had to stop and go do something else for a while because of the rumor reveal and the throat thing. That was really, really concerning. Props to Emmy Raver-Lampman. She fucking killed it this episode. If anyone was wondering if she was a good actress (ya know because of all the “come look at this” lines she kept getting) then this episode made it very clear that she can act and she does it very, very well.

So, Vanya’s sanity is out the window, Allison is down for the count, and no one cares about the apocalypse right now. That last one is understandable because of Allison’s situation, but damn it really isn’t looking good for the Hargreeves siblings.

Also, I want to talk about something. This is the last episode in which Allison and Vanya are both capable of speech. And in the eight hours we have known these two women, they have had multiple conversations. All of them have been about a man. Their brothers, their father, Patrick, or Leonard/Harold. Seriously, the two women in this show that are main characters never have a conversation that isn’t about a man. There is no excuse. With the fridging and this, you have to wonder if the writers on this show hate women or something? I don’t normally add sins post analysis, but I think I will make an exception for this one. +100

Total: 283

Sentence: Serious gore.

#The Umbrella Academy #all in good fun #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #leonard peabody #harold jenkins #show warnings apply #this episode is brutal

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bebepac · 4 years

Text

WIP 06.17.2020

Another WIP Wednesday is upon us, and I’m back to work. I work the next 4 days (Wed-Sat) so i’ll try my best to work on these stories and get them out, as always I will try, but can’t make any promises. I usually don’t have to work Saturdays, but unfortunately this one I do, so that eats into my writing time, which when I’m working, I do a lot of my writing time on the weekend.

I am working on my last chapter of Scar Tissue before the Epilogue! Whaaaaat?!?!??!??!!?!? Thank you to everyone that’s liked, commented and shared this one. As It’s the first series I have completed. I’m sure if you messaged me about this story line, you guys know, my intent for Scar Tissue in the beginning was it to be a once shot, then I kept feeling like it had more potential, and then it evolved on me.

What are my fellow writers up to?!?!!?

Tagging: @queenjilian @burnsoslow @loveellamae @dcbbw @bbrandy2002 @nomadics-stuff @kimmiedoo5 @cordonianroyalty @cordonia-gothqueen @lodberg @glaimtruelovealways @custaroonie @texaskitten30 @janezillow @atha68 @my0123456789universe @kaitycole @indiacater @losingbraincellseveryday @furiousherringoperatortoad @marietrinmimi @hopefulmoonobject @annekebbphotography @sevenfuckslefttogive @ac27dj @queen-arabella-of-cordonia @ritachacha @mrsdrakewalkerblog @marshmallowsaremyfavorite @islandcrow @axwalker @sanchita012 @queenwalton @flutistbyday2020 @the-soot-sprite @gabesmommie1130 @mom2000aggie @jared2612 @gibbles82 @thanialis @ramseysno1rookie @lovablegranny @hopelessromanticmonie @datynasuha @storylineofnothing @coolpsychicempathhumanoid @cordoniaqueensworld @iaminlovewithtrr@thatdoctorownsme @seriallover99 @drake-colt-lover-99 @amandablink @kaishamarley @choiceswhodunnit @marshmallowsandfire @yukinagato2012 @princessemberphoenix @random-blog-of-random-stuff-etc @princess-of-fuckup @batgirlassociationofgothamcity

First up we have:

This is Who I Am

My Country is Burning Chapter 3

Bebe was completely exasperated. “Ellie! What is that in your hair?!?!?!?!?"

“I’m sorry Mommy."

"Is it chewing gum?"

"Yes, I fell asleep."

“With chewing gum in your mouth?”

Liam chuckled. Both of them had agreed Ellie was more like him, with her mannerisms and her seriousness. Maybe Ellie was a little bit like Bebe too. Bebe could fall asleep anywhere. When Bebe was pregnant with Christopher, she fell asleep mid sentence, talking to him, while eating an ice cream cone. It was only when the ice cream started melting down her hand, Liam woke her up. He thought it was hilarious, pregnant Bebe did not, and cried because it was a waste of good mint chocolate chip ice cream.

“Yes.” Ellie nodded.

“Where did you even get chewing gum from?”

“Uncle Maxwell.”

"He hasn't been here in two weeks?"

"He gave me the whole pack."

She noticed Liam walk out of the room.

"Go get it and bring it here."

"But Mommy…."

"Right now Eleanor Alexandria Rys."

Little Ellie stormed off, just as Liam walked in the room.

"Where's she going?"

"To get the gum your friend gave her."

"Don’t look at me like that Bebe. Technically, that's your brother you know, since House Beaumont sponsored you."

"I don't want to cut her hair Liam, she has such beautiful hair."

"You're not. Besides it's just hair. It will grow back."

Liam set the jar of peanut butter next to the comb.

"I mean it's different with Black hair. My hair doesn't grow nearly as fast as her's. Just the thought of us cutting her hair upsets me. Because in the Black World, our children have good hair."

"Is there such a thing as evil hair?" Liam played with Bebe's own curls, making scary, monster sounds. Bebe swatted Liam’s hand away from her hair.

"Yes there is, well bad hair. There has always been a negative connotation that darker skinned people’s hair is more coarse and thick, and harder to manage."

"Your hair isn't like that."

"I'm lucky. Without chemicals in my hair, when I wet it, it curls, or coils, just like our children's hair does. Not every Black person’s hair does that."

"Mine curls like that too, well it gets wavy."

"Yes, but we have different textures, Liam. My hair is more coarse than their hair, and the kid's hair is softer, than mine, but not as soft as your hair."

Ellie came back to the room in a huff. She handed Bebe the gum. Bebe raised her eyebrow giving her the Mad Mommy look.

"Miss Crown Princess, Queen Mommy is not liking that little attitude right now. It had better change fast."

"Mommy means business Ellie." Liam said as backup.

Liam looked at their daughter, who her face was still pink, with her arms crossed over her chest, with a sour, pouty look on her face. Even with her little mad face, he thought she was the most beautiful little girl in the world. No wonder he was the pushover, when it came to disciplining the children. Every time he looked at their children, he always thought that they made such beautiful children together.

"What are we going to do about her hair?"

"I already got it. Peanut butter. As many times as I got gum in my hair as a kid thanks to Leo. Ellie come here, Daddy will fix it."

Ellie looked back at Bebe. "Daddy, Mommy always does my hair. Do you know how?"

Liam's face registered shock, looking at Bebe for help.

"Daddy knows how to do this part to get the gum out, and Mommy will show him how to do the rest."

Liam pulled Ellie onto his lap, and worked the peanut butter around the gummed parts in Ellie's hair. Waiting for a few minutes then gently using the comb to get the gum out.

"Now we just have to wash it, so Daddy won't get hungry and add apple jelly to it too, and eat you up!"

He made munching sounds at Ellie as he kissed her cheek, causing her to giggle. He picked her up in his strong arms. Bebe followed them to Ellie's bathroom.

^*^*^*^*^* next story *^*^*^*^*^*

A Couple of Firsts

Pop’s Place Chapter 3

“So since your plan is for us to catch our dinner, I packed us lunch, Drake. Cuz there is no way in hell my F.A. is going to be on a boat all day starving to death. “

Drake laughed. “Don’t call yourself that Mia.”

She slapped her thighs. “What do you call that?”

“Sexy as hell.” He kissed Mia’s lips.

“Smart Man.” Mia giggled.

“I packed roast beef and cheese sandwiches, turkey and cheese, and because i’m a kid at heart, some PB & J as well. Some chips, some fruit, and sodas and water.”

“Damn girl, we are not trying to live on this lake for a week, and what kind of J?”

“My favorite, apple jelly.”

“Mine too Mia.”

“I just wanted you to have some choices. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I packed a little bit of everything.”

Drake smiled. He’d never had someone care so much about what he thought before.

“I’m low maintenance that way, I’ll eat anything. Turkey and cheese is fine, so is roast beef, even PB & J. Hell I’d eat one of each, if there was extra.”

“She smiled, you’re going out with a cook’s daughter, there’s always extra. That’s how we roll.”

She put the cooler on the table. Drake laughed.

“Where the hell did you find a hot pink igloo cooler at?”

“The Gentral, where else?”

( author’s note: The Gentral = Dollar General, a store that seems to be on every corner in the south, and you that was Walgreens, naw bro. It’s a Southern Thing, does a hilarious video where they are Dollar General execs, and they find out that they are not building new DG stores, that they are building themselves. HILARIOUS )

Drake smiled. “You 'bout ready?”

Mia grabbed her hot pink sunglasses. “I’m ready now!”

*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^* next story *^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

The Recovery

Scar Tissue Chapter 13

Riley and Liam had been going to therapy for almost 9 weeks. They had therapy sessions separately as they were dealing with separate things, and marriage counselling sessions together.

They walked in the office holding hands. They never walked into the therapy room holding hands. They were usually so tense, and nervous. The therapist noted this as a positive step in the right direction as they had taken baby steps.

Dr. Murdoch looked at the two of them.

“How have things been since last week? Queen Riley would you like to start?”

“Things went okay. We moved back into our chambers from my old room this past week. I’m sleeping through the night completely there, so is Liam. I’m not having those panicky feelings in the room anymore like I'm being watched.”

“That’s good to hear Queen Riley. Did you do two complete the date nights I assigned?

“Yes and no.”

“The dinner date went great, I really had a nice time with Liam. It was just so nice just being the two of us, and we danced, and it was beautiful.”

“So then the massage date didn’t go well then?”

“I have no problems when I touch him, but I clammed up when he touched me.”

“Because of Drake?” Dr. Murdoch asked.

“Yes.”

Riley is it okay for me to go to Liam for a little bit to talk to him about things?”

Riley nodded.

She could tell by Liam’s body language he was angry and frustrated after what she had said.

“I don't know what else I can do Dr. Murdock. He studied what I did so he could use it against my wife, to make her think he was me, and now he’s turned her against me. It’s like he has tainted everything I’ve done, because he copied me so perfectly with her. And I love my wife, and I just want to be able to make love to her again. Laying next to her and not being able to touch her intimately is killing me. The last time we tried to make love, She screamed. My wife screamed because I was touching her!!!!!! Our guards burst into the room thinking she was being attacked.” We haven’t been intimate in over 4 months now. I miss her.”

“You think I don’t miss you Liam? Of course I miss you. I still want you.”

“THEN YOU SHOULD TRY HARDER!!!!”

“I AM TRYING LIAM!!! WHEN YOU TOUCH ME, I SEE HIS FACE!!!!”

“We’re going to take a break. King Liam, I need you to step out a few minutes, so I can have a few minutes alone with Queen Riley okay?”

Liam got up and walked out slamming the door behind him.

“I don’t know if we’re going to make it through this. Dr. Murdock because I can't let him touch me. He needs a level of intimacy, I can’t give him. I’ve even thought about asking him if there is anyone he wants to go into a Cordonian Agreement with, until I am able to give him what he needs again.”

“No, Queen Riley, that's not the answer. I’m afraid if you go that route, it will permanently drive a wedge between the two of you. You have to work through this together. Can I ask you a question?”

*^*^*^*^*^*^* end of chapter teasers *^*^*^*^*^*

#bebepac writes #wip wednesday

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