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adhd-merlin · 11 months

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unpopular opinion: arthur (as much as i like him as a character) was useless in terms of prophecy and liberation of the magic people. not just bc he never ended up lifting the magic ban but bc literally anyone sitting on the throne could have done that. i see no reason why it had to be arthur specifically. but the show liked to pretend like he was the only way to achieve a positive future bc the opprressed community cant simply help themselves that would be silly ig? no no they need to patiently wait that maybe one day their oppressor (whos literally continuing his fathers genocide even if less zealously) has a change of heart and they wont be hunted down like animals anymore. never mind the countless people that will have to die in the mean time. merlin can kill a bajillion people on screen and thats fine and for the greater good but if someone tries to kill One guy sitting on a fancy chair with a fancy hat suddenly thats too extreme. half the time it felt like the show was pointing to merlin as a poster child of how to act when oppressed. the fact that morgana growing bitter about uthers reign is framed as inherently bad and what directly lead to her becoming evil tm is particularly infuriating to me. the choice to create this very ya dystopian setting and then cast the oppressors as part of the main cast and the final solution is just very weird to me. i think it wouldve been objectively for the best if the magic community had overthrown arthur (or uther really but thats not really contested.. unless youre the bbc. this show is so british (derogatory))

in that vein: mordred has never done anything wrong in his entire life and that includes killing arthur

one more for the "arthur was a loser" folder

[ok but about the rest!! I have many thoughts about it. merlin as a member of an Oppressed Minority. his betrayal of his own kin. I'm putting it all under a cut bc you guys don't need to see me rambling about this and the disir again]

you make a good point — the way in which a story is framed, even the moment we choose as a "beginning", determines what characters we'll feel sympathy for, even when the facts at our disposal are the same.

I don't think the writers were trying to create any kind of deep social commentary btw. just so we're clear. merlin is the hero of the story and his mission is to keep arthur safe. we've got to root for them both.

to have a king with a hatred (fear) of magic gives us a convenient antagonist within the court. merlin having to defend the men that would have him killed for his magic is a great source of dramatic tension. it sort of follows that the people he has to fight against to defend the king/prince are other magic users, or magical threats. (it also keeps things interesting because there would be no challenge for merlin otherwise).

there isn't much of a point in exploring the motives and backstories of other characters with magic (with the exception of morgana, perhaps). They are only briefly touched upon — so these characters remain vaguely antagonistic for the most part. Neutrally aligned at best (see mordred).

We are shown that the druids are (mostly) aware of the prophecy that marks merlin/emrys as the saviour of their kind.

what I find fascinating are merlin's interactions with magic people who are either not aware of this prophecy (gilli) or have no faith in it (kara, possibly?) Because we're never given the chance or the time to see things from their perspective. To see merlin through their eyes.

When gilli says:

"It is time that someone struck a blow for the likes of you and me. And if you're too weak, then I will." (!!!)

It makes him sound like some kind of extremist, but really, when you think about it. isn't his anger kind of justified? I'm not condoning his violence, I'm just saying — it's understandable. uther has killed so many innocent people. literally drowned innocent children. and merlin's like "violence isn't the answer!" — and I can see his point!! but I can see gilli's just as well. and I find it so interesting that he's still addressing merlin as a brother ("the likes of you and me"), even when expressing disappointment in his actions and calling him weak. because they are the same. he's saying "you're deluded, and cozying up to the enemy won't save you"

this episode also contains what is (probably) my favourite dragon call. when merlin summons kilgharrah in other episodes, he's usually in the middle of some Urgent Situation. matters of life or death. there is nothing urgent here, really. yeah, it is arguably a matter of life or death, but nothing merlin couldn’t have stopped on his own. he really just called on kilgharrah to have a heart to heart with a friend — a member of his class.

("You are a creature of magic, and only a creature of magic could hope to understand.")

this episode is about merlin looking for kinship and still feeling isolated from his magic brethren. there's something tragic about the way the prophecy makes him unable to connect to some of the people who would be best placed to understand him.

and gilli plants a small seed of doubt in merlin's mind. "You've been pretending for so long now that you've actually forgotten who you are" (!!)

but kilgharrah reassures merlin that there's a golden age coming. so merlin does what he has to do — he saves uther once again. before gilli leaves, merlin reassures him that one day they will be free.

he tells mordred the same:

"It won't always be like this. One day we will live in freedom again."

and then, when he has the unique opportunity to use his influence on arthur to sway his opinion in the right direction. he fails.

he condemns himself, and the people he spoke to of freedom, to keep living in fear and in hiding — and what's even more upsetting, he does so while talking of a "just and fair kingdom"!

("You must protect the world you spent your life building, a just and fair kingdom for all." What an interesting choice of words. camelot isn't just and fair to all — as merlin knows well. he's lying to arthur, and possibly to himself.)

imagine being gilli or mordred and hearing him say that "there can be no place for magic in camelot." (!) What a slap in the face.

I've read meta suggesting that the disir were testing merlin just as much as arthur (or even more so than him). I'm inclined to believe it — I want to believe it. If anything because it makes the story all the more interesting and tragic. (I know what some are going to say — if mordred's destiny was to kill arthur, it would've happened anyway. but remember what else kilgharrah said — the future is never clear. there are many paths).

I understand why merlin did what he did, I really do. but for a moment, the fair and just kingdom he spoke of was within reach, and he failed to grasp it.

so was gilli wrong after all?

[and kara. I feel quite sympathetic towards her. we know arthur. she can't see him from our (merlin's) perspective. for her, he might as well be uther. magic people are still persecuted under camelot's law. she has spent her life on the run, she has seen people she loved be killed. and from our (arthur's) perspective, she looks like some kind of fanatic. but in reality. put yourself in her shoes. when arthur offers her a chance to save herself by "repenting" for her crime, she says she has nothing to repent for. "it is not a crime to fight for your freedom". that's the belief she's willing to die for. did she deserve to die for it?

(I also think there's an interesting parallel in merlin failing his kin in the disir, and arthur failing mordred in ep 5x11 by condemning kara to death. something about pinning all your hopes on someone who's going to fail you, and doom you both. idk idk.)]

sorry anon. you were saying

#merlin meta #more like brain vomit really #there is nothing particularly insightful in here #do you have an episode or a scene that makes you lose it #for me its that scene in the disir probably #I just [insert stick figure violence meme] when I think about it #many thoughts about merlin and the druids and those who knew him as 'emrys'#you have people like alator and finna - with an almost fanatic level of faith #but surely there must have been skeptics #druids who were like “what is he even doing. he's been in camelot for years”#“are we sure he's the right one”#it's just... from an outsider & skeptic perspective. merlin is a race traitor #defending uther and arthur like that #merlin iscariot #betrayal is such an interesting concept #but yeah I love it when he talks of freedom to his fellow oppressed sorcerers #bc it's easy to forget how much he suffers because of camelot's stance on magic #even merlin is so busy looking after arthur that he doesn't seem to have much time to dwell on his own oppression. if that makes sense #and meeting other sorcerers. it brings it back to the forefront #these are the people he's fighting for. brothers and sisters.#asks

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jessicas-pi · 10 months

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this AU all started because a mutual started liveblogging lesser-known classic lit.

and then i started reading said classic lit.

and because i have permanent Rebels brainrot, i thought, "hmm. it's giving kanera."

So.

Fair warning, this AU is only like 65% thought out, and I haven't even finished The Shuttle HOWEVER I am very close sooo. I'll just outline the basic character bits and come back and give more details once i have more thoughts.

Also, I just want to add: this is not just a Rebels/The Shuttle crossover AU. This is a Rebels/The Shuttle crossover, BUT with plenty of The Secret Garden mixed in, and maybe a touch of The Little Princess? (Which, btw, were all written by Frances Hodgson Burnett!)

ANYWAY!

Hera as the Betty Vanderpoel (The Shuttle) character, a rich American heiress who is going to England to cause problems for someone. I haven't quite figured out who that someone is, or if the reason she's going to cause problems for them is that they married her sister and then proceeded to emotionally abuse her and separate her from her family, and if so, who the sister would be, but quite frankly that can all be worked out later. Hera Is Here And No One Can Stop Her.

Kanan as the Mount Dunstan (The Shuttle) character, an English nobleman. Due to the actions of his (now dead) father and brother, his reputation is basically worthless. Also, he's raising Ezra, for reasons to be explained. (He's trying his best to Be A Dad but He's Struggling.) Due to Bad Circumstances, Kanan is low on money but refuses to consider marrying a rich American heiress to pay for rebuilding his estate. Side note, he is madly in love with a rich American heiress.

Zeb as Kedgers (The Shuttle)/Ben Weatherstaff (The Secret Garden), a gardener at the English estate that Hera has crashed and is fixing up nicely. He's friendly to her but bristly when it comes to kids.

Okadiah as the Penzance (The Shuttle) character, a mentor and friend of Kanan's and also a total Kanera shipper. Also, the cool grandpa for Ezra and Sabine. And speaking of the kids:

(Here's the part where I gotta explain more because this is where we get into Multiple Crossover Territory.)

Sabine as a Mary Lennox (The Secret Garden)-inspired character, a ten-year-old American girl who is stubborn and rude and never listens to anyone. Her parents decide they have no choice but to send her to an English boarding school to teach her, if not manners, then at least how to not be a feral dirt gremlin. Being old friends of the Syndullas, they entrust her to Hera's care for the oversea voyage. This is a mistake. Sabine wheedles and begs and finally gets Hera to let her skip out on boarding school and come along to the estate.

Ezra is a Colin (The Secret Garden) sort of character, but also Sara Crewe (The Little Princess) too. He's an orphan who went to a boarding school, and lived pretty well, until he was nine and his mysterious benefactor disappeared, at which point he had to work there, and he's sad and miserable. Kanan, looking over his lousy-and-now-dead brother's bookkeeping to figure out just how many debts the guy had, discovered payments to a boarding school, investigated, and found out about Ezra. Given his brother's life, Kanan knows it's not too far fetched to consider that maybe this kid is his nephew, so he takes him in and brings him to his estate, but Ezra (age eleven--he's slightly older than Sabine here, instead of being younger than her) is sickly due to his awful life at the boarding school. He mostly stays inside, and it's only rumored that he even exists; no one sees him. He only goes outside to work in the hidden garden Kanan gave to him. Sabine, who is still very much a feral dirt gremlin, is intrigued by this rumored kid, and because she's bored, she sneaks onto Kanan's estate and finds him and befriends him. (Also, Ezra is also a Dickon (The Secret Garden) character, because he's really good at befriending wild animals.)

I wish I had more to say about Kanan and Hera and their plot, but I think first I have to figure out why she's going to England and I can form her plot around that. Because I need a villain here to really shake things up. Maul is kinda my go-to villain but I don't think he quite has Nigel Anstruther's specific type of rancid vibes. Also, maybe I'm missing someone obvious, but I'm just totally stuck on what SW character Rosalie could be. Suggestions are welcome for any of those things!

That's all for now but it's likely I'll think of more later!

#this might turn into a doodle or two eventually?#jessica's writing nonsense #rebels au #i am fully aware of how weird and niche this nonsense is btw. i take no pride in it. it is simply The Brainrot.

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dearestones · 1 year

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Twisted Wonderland Matchup: Jade Leech

Warnings: Fluff.

Anonymous Request: hello! heard you were doin' character matchups :D surprise me with the fandom, but if you don't feel comfortable with that, then please ignore this ask if i had to choose one word to describe myself, i would pick kindness. i care deeply about everyone, especially my friends and family, and i find it hard to hold grudges. i am quite shy and not much of a talker. i'm also a big animal lover :) cats and possums are my favorite little guys! you wouldn't know it by looking at me, but i love horror movies, rock music and goth fashion, and i have a occasionally dark sense of humor that only springs up around people i'm really close with

my favorite color is purple btw and i like pasta

After going through the information given, I believe that you are best paired with Jade Leech!

I won’t lie to you… but Jade will. Nine times out of ten, he will use your kindness to his advantage and make it seem like he has no idea that he is doing so. When he first meets you, he’s somewhat surprised by how likable and easygoing you are around others. As one of the merfolk from one of the most dangerous parts of the ocean, he can say for certain that kindness such as yours only breeds naivete and eventual death. It’s not recommended that you be so kind and open!

Eventually, however, as he gets to know you better and he realizes that no matter how many times he screws you over you will always act charitably towards him, his feelings towards you will change. He will no longer think of you as an easy mark, but as someone who is worthy of his interest and attention. He won’t call it friendship, but he will refrain from taking advantage of you too often on the off chance you actually do form a grudge against him.

Since Jade is an observant sort of person, he realizes right away that you’re shy. Oh, my. You know what that means? Jade is going to have a field day with you. Not only are you so kind and generous and everything he’s not, but you’re also helpless in social situations! What a find! Instead of taking advantage of you in favor of his interests, he will either gently tease you or put you in situations where you have no choice but to speak up for yourself. If you ever ask if he’s doing it on purpose, he’ll either feign surprise that you think so little of him or he’ll tell you the truth. Just flip a coin; you’ll lose either way.

Cats and possums are such interesting creatures, Jade thinks. And you like other animals as well? Well, Jade can’t quite say the same for himself, but he can see the appeal in small furry mammals. They are soft and have several notable features that would make them adorable in most humans’ eyes. That said, a question burns in the dark recesses of his mind and he has no choice but to confront you directly. Do you happen to like eels? What about moray eels? What about merfolk who just happen to be moray eels? Would you like to pet one? (Depending on how brave and/or masochistic you are, just say no. You get to have another coin flip toss on whether or not Jade will be placid about being pet in his eel form or if he’s going to bite you… and you’ll lose both ways because it’s Jade).

Your other interests and idiosyncrasies amuse Jade. You, a shy, kindhearted individual like yourself, love horror movies? Allow Jade to ask you a couple questions and gather more intel on the matter. Don’t look so shocked, dear, friends are allowed to ask about their friends’ interests, correct? Please ignore that suspicious grin on his face and the fact that his eyes are more predatory than usual. He’s an eel and eels can be mischievous.

If you find yourself in a dark room with nothing but the world’s most terrifying, spine tingling, bone chilling horror movie ever, just know that Jade is taking notes in the corner. (No, they’re not about you; he’s just interested in what human entertainment is like).

Jade will never admit it, but he likes how your interests skew towards things that he thought he would never associate with you. Again, it’s your initial surface personality that has him stumbling over other aspects of yourself that he may have overlooked. Then again, it takes one to know one. He has quite a few diverse hobbies that no one else would have guessed upon meeting him.

With the above said, Jade is floored when he realizes that you have a dark sense of humor. At first, he might think that he may have misheard or perhaps you’ve said something that may only be apparent for land dwellers, but nope! You really can be quite dark when you want to be, my dear. If you catch him at the right moment, you’ll find that his polite facade fades into a moment of shock and true mirth before he covers it up with a light cough. (Do it again. As much as Jade hates to admit it, he doesn’t think he’ll get used to your dark humor).

Oh my, purple is such a lovely color! And pasta is a great dish! You know what’s better than having one or the other? Having both, of course! For the cheap price of working two weeks in Mostro Lounge, you can enjoy wearing the custom Octavinelle dorm uniform while carrying trays of pasta to hungry customers! How does that sound? No, you’re not interested? How about a discount on that pasta? He can promise that you won’t owe him anything in return… for now…

May whatever higher power out there have mercy on your poor soul because Jade sure won’t. Honestly, it’s on you for getting Jade’s attention like this. However, even if you do get teased a lot and get subjected to many of Jade’s dark whims, what you’ll gain in return is a friend who will take down your enemies and torture your tormentors. That’s a fair and equal exchange, yes?

(Before you ask, yes, Jade absolutely does like you for you and thinks of you as great friends. He’s not going to admit that, though).

If you want to donate a Ko-Fi, feel free https://ko-fi.com/devintrinidad.

TWISTED WONDERLAND MASTERLIST

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demonsfate · 2 years

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@hardasstaichou

lol his mother’s name is pretty easy to remember once you realize it’s just jin but with a ‘u’ instead of an ‘i’! (her name is jun!) and it’s funny because jun is probs my fav tek girl. she’s beautiful, she’s kind, she’s similar to jin in ways. but i just... didn’t find myself loving her as much in the anime. i think because her design was too different (and boring) and i did... view her pacifism as too extreme as times. which would’ve been better had they explained maybe the reason she’s so strict is because she’s paranoid jin will end up like his father. but like... they never tell us or hinted at that. jun refuses to talk about jin’s father, but we never see if she ever actually loved kazuya at all to begin with or how they became a thing, or how she even really felt by his supposed death. the relationship of kazuya and jun just isn’t there. which, yes, it’s not really there in the games either. BUT. in the anime, we were promised we’d find out new things about jin’s backstory that we didn’t see in the games. and guess what? we didn’t. literally everything told in the anime, we already knew happened in the games - or at the very least, we can guess happened. the only “new” thing we got was that jin was bullied lol. which honestly, i didn’t care for the bully story. while yes, it could show jin had trouble controlling his temper... which btw, does a poor job at that - bc in the anime he even STATES they’ve been PHYSICALLY AND VERBALLY ABUSING HIM FOR LITERAL WEEKS - anyone would’ve snapped at that. aaaand jin goes through so much anyway, why add him being bullied on top of everything? if i were writing it,

i would’ve made it that xiao was getting bullied, for being chinese. (therefore, would’ve acknowledged the elitism/racism that’s in japan) and xiao, being the optimistic and kind girl she is, is able to ignore this even if it does hurt. but jin, however, as we’ve seen in many other games and noncanon adaptations, cannot stand seeing xiao being hurt or disrespected - and that’s what causes him to lose his temper and start pounding on the bullies. perhaps this is why jun scolds him, because if xiao can refrain herself from violence, then so can jin. but of course, jin makes it a point - why should xiao be subjected to such when she can fight back? they obviously deserve it. that’s when jun will snap at jin, perhaps saying something like “i don’t want to see you become your father!” and then everything goes silent. maybe they’ll go into a talk later on where they can come to an understanding. jun doesn’t tell jin that kaz was influenced by a literal demon, but just that his anger and hatred led to him becoming a horrible person that eventually led to his death.

lots of fans, sadly, thought the anime was an IMPROVEMENT for jin. which made me feel they didn’t really understand jin’s character in the first place. i know stoic anime character is a trope, too. but with the way jin was just gasping at everything and being very expressive - just made him feel more like Generic Anime Protagonist, made him feel more like a shell the viewer can easily insert himself into the main character. i think jin’s lack of expressions or antisocial behavior can be relatable - there are people who struggle with this. hell, even i myself struggle with interacting with ppl. not only that, but jin is a highly traumatized individual. who, after his mother’s death, was forced to live with his grandfather - who was very strict, and had pretty abusive training. given how heihachi killed jin in the end, he clearly couldn’t stand having any small talk with jin. so - it makes sense as to why jin would be antisocial in the first place. also, i just like to think of jin as a weird little guy - it makes him more interesting than a sociable protagonist imo - at least, for jin, because that’s what his character is supposed to be - a flawed hero. not just because he struggles with anger, but he struggles with making the right choice, and he struggles with emotion and socialization. also - him struggling with emotion makes sense later on because if he does feel too much, then that means his devil will take over, and cause a lot of issues for the world. therefore, perhaps, jin is conditioned to believe that “emotion = bad” because of the consequences it can have on his devil gene. so, jin being the stoic “-.-” is both badass, and actually makes a lot of sense lore wise, too.

#hardasstaichou #✏️ - ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴏsᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏsᴛ // (ooc)

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letterstoponyo · 9 months

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08/18/23

dear ponyo,

dad and i were just talking about how much we miss seeing your silhouette beside the soundbar every night before bed. two days you’re gone, my love, and i doubt it’s going to get easier as that count goes up.

anyway, i don’t want to well up your eyes if you ever get to read this, which i know you would, because you’d always been a nosy, nosy girl. it feels weird to talk about you in the past tense, but we know acceptance has to start somewhere… baby, if we ever overlooked anything, or if it ever felt like we weren’t urgent enough about your health, please forgive us. dad and i didn’t know what to do; we gave it the best we could within our means and i hope to god if he is ever real that you find it in your heart to let us love you still and more from where we are to where you are. we revel in the thought that you may no longer be with us, but you’re in a paradise where pain is as good as a myth and neck rubs are given by the second.

i’m sorry. i know i said i wouldn’t want to give you the blues writing this, but you gave us one too many great memories that it’s next to impossible not to at least shed a tear realizing there wouldn’t be additions to what you left anymore.

i just went to the bathroom. didn’t want dad to hear me crying again, if he sees me crying he’s going to burst into tears too. sorry, baby, dad and i are gonna try to be less sad. i’ll try to remember that when i found out i got a failing grade and was devastated, you were behind me with that empathetic eyes you always had — i knew you were sad for me too. dad and i don’t want you to be sad, not when you were here, and especially not now that you’re there and we can’t physically comfort you.

your sisters miss you, baby. bambi more so, you know you’re her baby. she misses being a big sister to you and sleeps in places you last slept on. they’re taking antibiotics too just like you did. and just like you they put up a hell of a fight before drinking the entire thing. we discovered vanilla flavored vitamins, which came in gel form. milo and bambi love it so much, we think they would trade us for a tube of it. we also got ahold of these breath mints, something we got to remedy milo’s insane mouth hygiene. i’m sorry baby but i think you would have benefited a way or two from that pack. hehe. i wish you lived for a little bit more to have tasted them. you would have shouted at dad for so long that he would have had no other choice but to give you more, you fat, fat girl.

milo’s appetite is through the roof. we think in a few months she’d be even larger than you were. bambi too. you should have seen it, baby, they could finish up two strips of lickables. we thought only you could do that! quick side note, milo just fell from the ottoman. your sister is so clumsy we don’t know what to do with her. when you visit us, could you catch her when she falls please? my brother in christ she’s fallen so many times we’re beginning to think she has elastic bones in there.

i had to pause writing, bambi just climbed up the bed and lay beside us. it’s been long since she last did this, did you tell her to do it? you sneaky baby. but thank you, we needed this so much.

tomorrow dad and i are getting our shots at the animal bite clinic. you left me quite the gift baby. i’m actually thinking of getting my bite marks tattooed — you know, something of yours to always be with me everywhere i go (even if it was incredibly painful to have sustained).

milo joined in and she’s grooming bambi at the moment. i may have to stop here to tend to them. i’ll try to write as often as i could. my semester starts in a little over a week so mom’s gonna be a busy bee again. we went from sais to amis, btw (yay!). enlistment is a little more convenient now so i got 19 units :) which is a ton of workload so idk why i’m even glad. hope i make it through the sem. you, bambi, and milo are my screensaver, so the “inspiration” part is well taken care of.

i’ll talk to you tomorrow. do me and dad a favor and catch lots of zzzs, ok? we miss you, baby, so bad. and we love you so, very much. good night all the way to cat heaven.

loving you even more,

mom and dad.

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autisticandroids · 3 years

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Okay so this was a while back but im preety sure you had mentioned an au of yours where dean is a serial killer and cas successfully stalks him but i don't think you talked about it more than that and i just really want to hear a bit more bc that idea sounds so tastefully fucked up

okay so. weeks later i finally end up answering this ask. it inspired this post btw. anyway spn is a show that's like. all about justifications, as i said in the post inspired by this ask. it's about having no choice and doing what you have to do. and like there is the phantasy embedded in it, a phantasy that is both indulged and punished. but most importantly it's justified. the monsters are super strong to show how brave our heroes are for fighting them, the main characters let out great wails of grief every time their lady loves are violently ripped from them (even though now they are free to do whatever they want), the narrative twists to show our heroes as correct whatever they do. the fantasy (of being allowed to enact violence, of being free from feminine "control," of being right) comes first. the material construction of the universe of supernatural comes afterward. whatever the fantasy is, the universe of supernatural will provide material conditions to justify its acting-out.

and what this means is that our protagonists, dean in particular, are constantly doing just horrific things, which in any other circumstance would be unconscionable. but the universe of supernatural provides justification for these acts. the point of my serial killer au which i think about so so so much is to ask the question: what if these justifications melted out from under their feet? what if dean was left holding nothing but a lie and the weight of everything he's done?

therefore, the premise of my au is such (under the cut because this baby is long):

john and mary winchester, in the mid seventies, joined a doomsday cult known as the men of letters. the men of letters were rather unusual for a doomsday cult, in that they believed that the apocalypse could be prevented by human behavior. this started as correct living, correct worship, yadda yadda, the kind of behavior and thought control that cults are known for, but with the justification of: if you don't do this, the world will end. eventually, this escalated to human sacrifice. the men of letters managed to untraceably kill two homeless people in the late seventies. but they eventually fell apart. however, a month after john and mary left the men of letters (mostly john's choice, mary still believed), mary died in a house fire. john took it as a sign from god that actually, the men of letters were right, and the world would end unless john himself did something about it. so he took some of the (intensely numerological) theology of the men of letters. and he worked out his own formula. and he applied it to the yellow pages. and started ritualistically killed people to prevent the apocalypse, with his two sons in the back of the car.

now, obviously, this is some kind of grief induced temporary madness on john's part, shaped by the mental abuse he suffered in the men of letters. but the thing is, once you've killed a couple of people to prevent the apocalypse. well. there's this thing called the sunk costs fallacy. john wasn't gonna question his own beliefs after that.

and he raised his boys to believe it, too, or at least he raised dean to. they didn't tell sam what they did until he was twelve, and sam didn't buy it, tried to call the cops on them several times but in the end, they always prevented him. eventually sam ran off to stanford, where he now lives under a cloud of guilt that he's too loyal to his family to rat them out.

john died a few years back of a heart attack, but dean is convinced it's because he messed up a ritual two weeks before it happened, so it pushed him further into this belief system.

dean's killings (and john's before him) are ritualistic and distinctive, obviously the same killer each time. but they happen anywhere in the united states, seemingly at random, there are inconsistent amounts of time between each one (sometimes as short as days, sometimes as long as years), and there is no particular victim profile. obviously, since our killers are following an arcane mathematical formula to make their choices for them, but the police don't know that.

castiel novak is an unemployed shut-in with a small inheritance which he's living off of, a cryptography degree, and an obsession with all things morbid. he spends most of his time on the reddit true crime forums, playing amateur sleuth. by complete chance, he happens to recognize one of the symbols frequently used in corpse displays by the so-called sioux falls satanic slaughterer (so named because the first time three of his victims were in the same part of the country, it so happened that they were all in sioux falls, south dakota. this was in the late eighties.) as being mostly only used by a little known cult group called the men of letters, which dissolved in the mid eighties.

he only notices this because, as a teen, he had a special interest in cults and fringe religious groups. the men of letters weren't a particularly notable or well known phenomenon; they were small, and a lot like every other cult that formed during the seventies cult boom. (no outsider ever heard about the human sacrifice; there were rumors, of course, but they were garbled, sensationalized, and mixed up with satanic panic fodder.)

(the men of letters' two sacrifices were nothing particularly romantic or fantastical. they first lured panhandler josie sands back to their compound with promises of food and a warm bed when she admitted she couldn't get a bed at a shelter, and was thinking of getting caught shoplifting just so she could be under a roof in the county jail. the men of letters' leader, a man who took on the name alistair, forced his inner circle to dress in the ceremonial black robes he had given them when he initiated them into his nearest and dearest, and which his wife had sewn out of old bed sheets and dyed black with home made oak gall dye. these robes still left black smudges on the wearer's skin occasionally if they sweated too much. josie was laid, bound, on the altar, a slapdash thing constructed over the course of two days from scrap plywood and a couple of milk crates. a rich red tablecloth purchased at macy's for $3.99 hid its ugliness and gave it grandeur. alistair attempted to kill the struggling miss sands by bringing a sharpened kitchen knife down on her bosom and piercing her heart, but, having never killed a human or even slaughtered an animal before, was unaware of the problem presented by the human ribcage. after rather ineffectually poking at the area beneath sands' bosom with his knife while she shrieked in pain and terror for about ninety seconds, alistair tried a different tack, and slit her throat, which worked just fine, and she bled out quite nicely. the second and final victim of the men of letters was a local vagrant named larry ganem, an older gentleman who walked with a limp. he was lured back to the compound in approximately the same manner as sands, but instead of being bound, he was fed stew laced with sleeping pills. even if alistair hadn't slit his throat, he wouldn't have woken up. it's actually arguable whether he was still alive at time of sacrifice; mary winchester (eight months into her first pregnancy), who, as a member of the inner circle, was in attendance, actually tried to take ganem's pulse as he lay on the altar (now covered by a different tablecloth; the red one had turned stiff with sands' blood and been subsequently burned) and found nothing, so it is entirely possibly only sands' death can be directly laid at alistair's feet, and ganem's is the fault of mrs. ellen harvelle, who prepared the laced stew. regardless, these two deaths are lessons in the nature of human evil: it is very rarely skilled, suave, or smooth. it's often slapdash, half-hearted, and just plain incompetent. but that makes it no less grisly. alistair may have begun to drink his own kool-aid, as it were, and escalated this far out of genuine belief that the apocalypse was coming and it was up to him to stop it, but it is far more likely that he sensed the imminent collapse of his little empire, and wanted to bind his subjects to him through the horrors of shared guilt, considering two lives a small price to pay for the continued loyalty of his inner circle. and the tactic worked: the men of letters didn't start to collapse in earnest until almost four years later. perhaps if alistair had continued the killings, the men of letters could have lasted for far longer, maybe even up until the present day. but it seems that alistair, a psychiatrist by training and unused to violence, simply didn't have the stomach for it. unlike, say, john winchester, who before his time with the men of letters had done a two year tour in vietnam, during which he had killed three living, thinking human beings with the american government's go-ahead.)

anyway. castiel is the first person, ever, to make the connection between the men of letters and the sioux falls satanic slaughterer. and once that connection is made, castiel begins to research the men of letters far more in-depth. and he notices something: the theology of the men of letters was intensely numerological, filled with patterns, significant numbers, and even spiritual equations.

castiel thinks of the seemingly random selection of the slaughterer's victims, and has an epiphany.

he cracks all his fingers, and gets coding.

six months. it takes castiel six months to discover an equation that could fit the slaughterer's pattern. it's complex, but also clearly based on several of the men of letters' holy numbers, and accounts for every single one of the killings. it also suggests that there should have been two or three more deaths scattered across the years, but more than likely those did happen, it's just that they weren't reported as part of the slaughterer's portfolio.

but much more importantly, castiel's model can also make predictions. there will be two killings, fifteen days apart, in a city seven hours' drive away, six weeks from now.

so castiel waits. and he books a hotel room. and two months later, he's waiting outside 217 oak street when a shadowy figure climbs up a tree and lets itself into the upstairs window.

dean winchester is feeling particularly all alone in the world when he breaks into maisey banks' home (217 oak street). his father has been dead for half a decade, and he hasn't spoken to his baby brother for twice that. it's not like this whole grizzly saving the world business makes him a lot of friends. so once he's done killing maisey (which is easy, she was ninety three and dying of cancer anyway. she doesn't even wake up when he slits her throat) and arranging her corpse in the appropriate manner, with prayers and sigils, he turns around. and sees a man standing behind him.

smiling slightly.

as he watches dean gut this old woman.

dean freezes.

the man takes a step forward.

"you're very attractive for a serial killer who's been operating since the eighties."

dean is silent.

"family business, is it?"

silence continues.

"i'm not here to report you to police. i'm just here to see if my algorithm worked right."

and dean finally breaks his silence: "what the hell is wrong with you?"

what's fun here is that dean knows (or rather "knows") that he isn't a serial killer. so he finds what cas is doing, this amoral serial killer stormchasing, morally repugnant. because cas has no way of knowing he isn't a regular serial killer.

there's also the fact that that cas proceeds to flirt with him. aggressively. and follows him back to his motel.

but the thing is that dean is all alone in the world. and as cas continues trailing him around, he starts getting, well, flattered. and feeling a little bit less alone.

it doesn't take very long before they fall into bed. even if cas is an amoral stalker with a fetish for what dean considers a distasteful yet necessary vocation.

so. they fall into bed. they fall in love. they make a little life together, in dean's big sexy car. dean tries to explain to cas that he's saving the world. that these people's lives are a necessary price to pay. and cas seems to listen.

of course, castiel doesn't believe a word of it. but he's found that he likes dean. really likes him. and he realizes that the collapse of dean's belief system would destroy him.

so he sets about becoming as complicit in it as possible.

even to the extent where, when dean is hit by a car and ends up into the hospital a day before one killing is meant to take place, castiel agrees to take on the job. (he doesn't actually kill anyone, obviously. but he does use his extensive skill with computers to create three fake newspaper articles which make it look like he has.)

but five years later, something goes wrong. really, really wrong. dean miscalculates the formula. and by the time he checks his work, the actual date of the next kill, as demanded by the formula, has passed. in fact, so have three others. and the world didn't end.

dean collapses. he hyperventilates. all those people. all those people. for no reason. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people. all those people.

cas seems totally unfazed. dean stares at him in shock. but cas just takes dean in his arms, and whispers in his ear: "oh, dean, i never believed in the equation. i love you no matter what you've done."

and dean buries his face in cas' chest.

#spn #asks #anonymous #abuse tw #violence tw

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cursedwriter · 3 years

Text

Cursed! - Gojo Satoru

Jujutsu Kaisen Masterlist

Synopsis: After running some errands you’re caught off guard by a curse user. Unbeknownst to you, he has something up his sleeve that would mean a fate worse than death to you. How will you get out of this? And what role does your boyfriend - the Satoru Gojo - play in all of this?

Words: 2.6k

Author’s Note: Feeback is - as always - highly appreciated! I’d love to hear your thoughts! Requests are still open, btw!

“Hey, there. Are you okay?” You hesitantly approached a man who had just stumbled upon a protruding cobble stone on the sidewalk. The street lamps were just lighting up, signaling for another day to approach its end. The air felt chillier on your skin and you briefly wished you had taken a scarf with you, or at least put on a warmer jacket.

“I’m fine. No worries,” the man grunted and waved you off, but you didn’t stop, opting to check on him nonetheless.

“Are you sure?” Your feet stopped just a few inches away from him, hand already outstretched to help him get up and off the ground. Hesitantly, he reached out for it. His movements slow, but not in a timid kind of way. It was more like he was anticipating something to jump at him at any given moment if he touched you. As if he was scared you could poison him with a single touch.

Suddenly an uneasy feeling swept through your body. A shiver ran down your spine and the hair in your neck stood up. A familiar sensation overwhelming your senses. Blood running cold in your veins, freezing still, numbing your nerves. The chill of the night was suddenly no longer noticeable on your skin. Instead, the breeze felt almost warm now. This was the presence of a curse. An acidic taste spread through your mouth, making you swallow hard as you subtly roamed your eyes around the neighborhood, trying to find out where the curse could be hiding.

To your surprise, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary. The only thing that was ticking you off was that there were no longer any people in sight. It was just you and the man in front of you now. Everyone else had suddenly vanished. Cursed energy was flowing through the air, probably causing everyone else to feel uneasy too, hence why they left in a hurry. People relied on instinct much like animals did. So even though they might not know why, they could definitely tell when something bad was about to happen. Much like how animals could sense when a storm was approaching. Therefore, this really wasn’t all that surprising. What surprised you was that everyone else had been quicker than you to notice the alien presence in your midst. It was almost like someone had been concealing it from you specifically. That was what was worrisome. And then it hit you… the lack of a curse running around, you alone in an empty neighborhood with only one other man right in front of you and the fact that you had only been able to even sense the cursed energy floating around the moment you had reached out for him… This was a trap. A trap specifically designed for you.

Everything inside of you was screaming for you to run away. Just run. Run. RUN!

But you couldn’t move.

You couldn’t even retract your hand that was still outstretched to help the stranger get to his feet. You looked down at him. The shock in your eyes as the realization hit you must’ve been obvious, because as soon as he noticed the fear glimmer in your eyes, a menacing smile spread across his face. It almost looked like he was bearing his teeth at you.

Without breaking eye contact, he got up from the pavement, ignoring your hand and dusting his pants off.

“Ugh, the look on your face,” he laughed. “It’s truly hilarious, I wish you could see it.” His eyes lit up and he held his index finger in the air as if he just remembered something groundbreaking. “Wait, hold on. A right,” he laughed again, “as if you have another choice.” He stalked around you, reaching for your back pocket, hand lingering on your ass longer than was necessary in order for him to get your phone. Bile was rising up in your throat as you send a million death threats his way. You wanted to scream at him to tell you what he wanted, but even your tongue remained unmoving, pressed to the roof of your mouth. It felt like you had transformed into a stone statue.

It was obvious that the man in front of you wasn’t a cursed spirit. So he either had to be a curse user or, like Yuji, swallowed a cursed object and absorbed its power. Whatever he was, whatever he wanted, though, by the way he looked at you, it wasn’t anything good.

“Okay, now say cheese.” He held your phone in front of your face. It was close enough for you to reach out and swat it out of his hands, but much to your dismay, your body just wouldn’t listen to your commands. Everything you could do was stand there helplessly and watch as he did whatever he pleased. “Ah, right. Almost forgot, you can’t talk,” he shrugged unimpressed. “Well, no matter. This’ll do just fine.” The clicking sound of your phone camera rang through your ears. The sound completely out of place compared to the eerie silence that surrounded you.

The man turned your phone around to show you the picture he’d just taken. At first glance, you almost didn’t recognize yourself. Your eyes were blown wide in horror, mouth slightly opened in a silent scream.

“So, what do you think’ll happen if I forward that little picture of you and send it… let’s say, to your boyfriend?” He raised one eyebrow in amusement, gauging your reaction, obviously toying with you. “What do you think he’d do if I’d do that?” This guy evidently knew who you were and he also knew who your boyfriend was… Then why did he sound so delighted at the prospect of Gojo – the Satoru Gojo – coming here and probably tearing his limbs off? It seemed to you that he was almost counting on it. That he, in fact, looked forward to it.

Okay, so this guy wasn’t actually trapping you. You were just the bait and Gojo seemed to be his real target. Which got you thinking… Was he just another egomaniac thinking he could take on Gojo and defeat him and in return make a name for himself? Did he have a death wish? Or could he be that one in a million to have an actual chance at defeating him?

“It’s really not any fun when the conversation is this one sided,” he complained, scratching the back of his neck in thought. “Okay, because I’m in such a good mood today, I’ll let you talk. But no funny business, alright?” He held a daunting finger up in the air as if he was an adult scolding a child for misbehaving.

Suddenly your tongue felt loose again and you could move your mouth, though, the bitter taste remained. It felt like someone had poured acid down your throat, leaving your tongue to feel like sandpaper in your mouth. Except for that, everything remained the same. Not a single muscle in your body would follow your commands of making a run for it or, at the very least, get a good punch in.

“What the hell are you doing to me?” You croaked out, voice hoarse and cracking at the end. “What do you want with Gojo?”

“Uh uh.” He shook his head in displeasure, though, the sick grin on his face remained. “One thing at a time, love. Don’t get ahead of yourself or I might revoke your talking rights.” The way he referred to you as ‘love’ made you physically sick. And the way he talked so happily, as if you were old friends catching up on lost time, made you want to punch him all the more. What was his goal? What could he possibly want?

“Just spit it out!” Your patience was wearing very thin at this point. And though, it might be reckless to talk to this visibly crazy man in such a manner, you didn’t really care. You always had a problem with your temper.

“My, you’re a feisty one, aren’t you?” The man cooed in delight. He was still holding your phone tightly in his hand, looking through God knew what. Ugh, now you really wished you had put a password on it, but before now you never really had a reason to. You weren’t hiding anything in it, but still, it felt like he was roaming through your head while you had no idea what he was searching for.

“Aren’t you two just adorable?” He dangled your phone in front of your face again, fake sweetness dripping off his words like poison disguised as honey. On your screen was a picture of you and Gojo where he was kissing your cheek. Your face was flushed, totally embarrassed when Gojo made Fushiguro take the picture a couple days back. But still, there was this love drunken smile on your face, eyes glistening in a way that radiated pure joy. You remembered how happy you were that day. Actually, you were always happy when you were around Satoru. “You’re so cute together, it makes me sick!” He stood up straight again, nose wrinkling in disgust as he scrolled through your phone some more. “You know, you’re a hard woman to get alone. You’re always with him… Frankly, it was quite frustrating to watch you two be all lovey dovey. But here we are at last, right? So I guess, it was worth it in the end.” A throaty laugh escaped his throat, causing every hair on your body to stand up. So this guy has been watching you? Following you around for God knew how long? A shiver ran down your spine at the thought of all your intimate moments being tainted by some weirdo watching you from afar.

“So, what is it that you want from us?”

“Right,” he clicked his tongue, shoving your phone in his back pocket and out of sight. A small sigh of relief left your lips. Finally, it didn’t feel like he was digging through your head anymore. “You see; I was in love once, too. We were as happy as you can imagine. Our future together was already within reach.” Suddenly the man reached forward to hold onto your shoulder. At first it seemed like he needed the additional support to keep himself upright, but as his fingertips dug deeper into your skin, you guessed this wasn’t all there was to it. He needed a vent to release some of the anger that was burning in his eyes… and you just so happened to be the closest thing nearby. “Everything was perfect. Suki was pregnant and we were planning to get married… Everything was perfect,” he repeated. There was a strain on his voice now as he talked about the woman that he loved. But you were still confused as to what that had to do with you. “Suki was a good person. The best, in fact. There wasn’t a single bad bone in her body and still… and still, someone cursed her. And not just any curse… No! They turned her into one! Into a monster! My Suki! MY SUKI!” Describing him as furious wouldn’t even come close to the burning hatred you saw searing in his eyes. The grip on your shoulder impossibly painful at this point.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” The sincerity in your voice caught him off guard. You could feel his grip loosening ever so slightly, but the flame in his eyes seemed to blaze more intensely than ever before.

“You don’t get to say sorry!” He spat in your face. “Because your precious excuse of a boyfriend was the one to kill her! HE KILLED HER WITHOUT BATTING AN EYE! WITHOUT EVEN TRYING TO FIX HER! HE KILLED HER! AND HE DID IT RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! SO, YOU DON’T GET TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY!”

Suddenly everything clicked together. Everything started to make sense. This was a man with nothing to lose and he was out for retribution. If you weren’t scared before, you were definitely scared now. People with nowhere to go, people who didn’t fear death or didn’t care for it were the most unpredictable ones. He probably already knew that there was no way for him to defeat Gojo… and that in turn meant that he must have something planned that would make him suffer the same way he had. Because what do you do if you can’t kill your opponent? Right… You make them wish they were dead. And you had the dreadful feeling that the role you’d be playing in all of this wasn’t merely to lure Gojo in.

You tried to gulp, but a lump was forming in your throat that made it hard to swallow or even breathe. You didn’t care about the things that could happen to you, but if you were to be the reason Gojo had to suffer, you would never be able to forgive yourself.

The wheels in your head started turning, eyes blown wide in horror. The man in front of you could visibly feel your distress. He wet his lips in anticipation. Almost like a famished animal waiting to finally feast on its prey.

“Please, I beg you… just let me go, okay? Please!” It was a pathetic attempt, you knew that. There was no way in hell he would let you go now, but you still had to try, at the very least. “This won’t bring her back, okay? Torturing me won’t bring your Suki back… So please, I beg you… just let me go.”

His head fell back in his neck as a bitter laugh ripped through the night. His whole body shook with the action. The sight caused your heart rate to speed up, hammering against your rip cage like the wings of a hummingbird. This was a mad man with nothing to lose and with nowhere to go.

“Torture you? No, no!” He shook his head, finally letting go off your shoulder as he clasped both his hands together in pure delight. “I have something way better planned for you… You see, my cursed technique is mind manipulation which you might have already noticed.” Ah, now it made sense why you couldn’t move and only talk once he allowed you to. “It’s a rather straining technique, but that won’t matter…” The smile on his face didn’t falter, if anything, it got even bigger. His eyes almost sparkling with perverse glee as he hungrily looked you up and down. His hand reached for his back pocket again, getting a hold of your phone. The screen illuminated his face, highlighting a single scar that traveled across his right cheek. “So, I’ll call your boyfriend now, okay? I think you two have a little catching up to do.” He winked at you. “But before that…” He lowered your phone slightly, intently looking you in the eyes and capturing all your attention. Even if you wanted to look away – and you did – you couldn’t will your body to do so. Never in your life have you felt so helpless. “Y/N, when you see Satoru Gojo’s face again, you’re overcome with the sudden and unbearable desire to kill him and you will stop at nothing until you accomplish your task… or you die trying.”

You stopped breathing, blood freezing in your veins as your brain absorbed these horrible words.

No. No! NO!

This was a fate worse than death! Not only did he make you fight his sick battle, he probably counted on Gojo having to kill you which would… break him. If you can’t kill your enemy… make them wish they were dead. And God did you wish he would’ve just killed you and left you for Gojo to find you. This would’ve been more merciful.

“Oh, he picked up.” Your eyes snapped up to see he was already holding your phone flat against his ear. “Gojo Satoru, I believe I have something of yours in my possession. Please be so kind and pick it up, okay? She really can’t wait to see you.”

***

Part Two

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queen0fm0nsterz · 3 years

Note

I wonder if Scarecrow girl regret pushing away someone that she initially disliked? Given one of the meanings for scarecrow in dreams is wanting to correct negative decisions and realizing the good qualities in a person you dislike?

(give this post a read for context!)

MASTERPOST

Ok, I'm going to use this question to answer a few of the Ladies related questions I got. Thanks to all of you for the positive feedback on that theory, I really appreciated it!

Starting with you, anon.

1) About Scarecrow

You know, after making a full analysis on the Ladies and getting a good look at each one of their rooms, both in the Residence and in the Nest, I think I agree.

The question now would be, who was she pushing away?

An obvious answer would be (her) Mono. As I previously established: a Lady of the Maw cannot exist unless a Thin Man creates her and a Thin Man cannot exist unless he's betrayed by said Lady. Maybe she regrets leaving him to his fate? The Eye paintings are quite prominent in her section.

Or, this could be referring to the other girl.

I theorized that Scarecrow may have had a sister who ruled the Maw alongside her. Not only that, it might have been one of the others as well.

The candidates to fit this role would be Tengu and Teapot. I lean more on the latter.

Tengu is tecnically the second in line, following the order we previously reconstructed, yet I also mentioned that she and Scarecrow may have been interchangable because you can choose to retrieve them in either order. They're the only ones to which this rule applies; Fox will always be first and Teapot will always be last. Plus, Scarecrow's pedestal is taller than Tengu's, effectively making her the second.

Another thing I think is worth mentioning is that, in the way to reach Teapot, we have to pass over the two armchairs. Reminiscent of when Teapot had to sneak past the sisters, perhaps?

Then, when we do get Teapot, to leave the room we have to once again sneak past Tengu (albeit it's her false persona).

Lastly, I wanted to mention that Red and Blue have always been opposites. It would make sense for Scarecrow to dislike Tengu, especially considering how drastically different they behave. For example, while Scarecrow prefers to hide away from the monsters and ignore them, Tengu actively engages with them and pretends to be a monster herself. I could easily see the Lady in Blue be either disgusted or irritated by this way of handling things.

On the other hand, we have our other candidate, Teapot. I do believe it's less likely, but pictures of one of the girls in the paintings (the one with long braided hair) are seen in her area.

Of course, it's also possible that Scarecrow's possible sister is not one of the other Ladies and was someone else entirely.

This lowkey got me thinking though.

If the "Lady & Thin Man coexistence theory" (yes we're naming it lads), is true, then this means that, if there were two Ladies governing the Maw at the same time, then the number of Thin Men wouldn't line up... because one Mono accompanied two Ladies. Consequentially, our Mono would be the fifth Thin Man and not the sixth, and the number 6 on the Thin Man's door was indeed referring to the number of Ladies.

Now I can't help but wonder how such an event would go down. My guess would be that the Thin Man of the time only took one of the girls (maybe only one of them was wearing the yellow raincoat?), awakening her Hunger which would then lead her to become the Lady while her sister helplessly watches and follows.

Mh. I have to think this one through. The concept is really interesting though.

2) About Fox (and Six)

" I wonder if Fox Mask Girl met a gruesome end for being too kind? Given that kindness will guarantee suffering with certain death in the little nightmares world so it won't be too farfetched that she got killed by someone that she offered kindness to. " - anon

" You know given how Fox mask Lady was able to have children be comfortable in her presence and how she likely died a gruesome death, maybe she was the type to continue on being kind and caring despite what she experienced as a kid and becoming the Lady of Maw? Her horrible death is definitely her being punished for still being kind since the world of little nightmares is where kindness will make you suffer and guarantee certain death. " - anon

I do think she met her demise as a consequence of her gentle nature. But in her defense; if the order is correct, then she was the first Lady ever. Maybe she wasn't aware of the cycle/loop. I'm pretty sure she died at the hands of her successor after trying to offer her kindness and shelter.

(Another thing to think about: the rip on her statue kind of looks like a bite.)

People who try to be kind always get the worst possible outcomes in the Little Nightmares universe. Once again, that famous achievement expresses the core belief behind this world: "Kindness will be your undoing!"

And talking about achievements... the other day I was on the wiki reading the achievement list - as one does - and something caught my eye.

Little fox.

In the achievements, Six is referred as a couple of small animals that relate to her in some way. For example, she's called a "little canary" or a "sneaky rat". Both connections are obvious: the canary is a bird with bright yellow feathers and rats are considered vermins - which is how Six is seen by the monsters.

This only draws more paralleles between Six and Fox, who have been stated to be quite similar in many ways.

3) Additional Color White Meaning - Teapot

@pidgeapodge

That is absolutely correct! Then again, this begs the question: who or what could the Lady in White be mourning?

Again, maybe (her) Mono? Or perhaps she's mourning her own lost freedom?

Out of all the Ladies, current one included, Teapot really seems to be the most depressed about the whole situation. It's really heartbreaking considering how her coding made her out to be an innocent, pure hearted, happy go lucky soul.

4) About Scarecrow's and Teapot's masks.

@doragonlw

Thank you so much for the kind words!

So, personally I do think they kept wearing their masks, even if they're a little peculiar.

You have to keep in mind that people wearing masks is kind of the whole "brand" of the Maw.

When Six gets there every single employee and even some of the guests are wearing masks, with the only exception being the Granny. Then again, the Granny is a contractor, not an employee. She kinda does what she wants and no one can really stop her, which is really funny in my eyes.

Plus, Scarecrow is not the only one we see wearing a sack on her head. We have the Hunter as well! So I wouldn't say it's that uncommon.

Teapot's choice of mask is way more goofy, bc let's be honest. An extremely powerful force of darkness going around with a teapot on her head? But then again, it lines up with her innocent nature.

It's a stark contrast with the current Lady, who is so refined and came right after Teapot.

5) Lady Six design? An headcanon, I guess!

@agandcw20

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE!

I actually may have to correct you on one thing before we go though: if the girl in this portrait in the Lady's quarters is infact a younger Lady, then it's safe to assume all Ladies before her wore a yellow raincoat as well.

Perhaps that's their signature clothing, like Mono's paper bag. Paperbag and yellow raincoat, always together.

Moving on!

Yes, I do agree on Six's kimono being yellow. A darker shade of the Lemon color - like how the Lady's kimono was a darker shade of Tangerine - would be PERFECT. Lemon is usually associated with Awareness, Enlightenment and Alertness, which I think would fit Lady Six. She finally realizes how things work in this world and how she was just a pawn into the Eye's plan all along.

As for the mask, I actually thought about it for a while. I don't think it would be the same as the Lady's, because they're really different from each other, but I still think it would have something to do with Noh masks.

Personally, I settled on the Ja mask. It's badass and scary, something I think Six would definetely wear.

(Btw, I tried searching for what Noh mask could be associated with the Lady's. I found several, but the Fushikizō may be the best candidate.)

6) Same person from different dimentions?

" Random thought but what if the ladies and Six actually exist similar to the movie "Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse", where they are actually a different version of The Lady brought into Mono's dimension to continue the cycle? Some of the masks seem to hint the presence of other worlds, AND Six's connections to previous mask owners. Six herself is also hinted to be from a different world as well, as she is labelled to be "awaking in a world she cannot recognize" " - massive brain anon

OK BUT THIS ACTUALLY MAKES A LOT OF SENSE???

And this actually explains why Mono and the Thin Man would be drawn to her! It's still his friend, but a different version of her! Especially after we've established how the human children are all lured from other dimensions in the LN universe... Wow. Good thinking, anon. This way, the selection of the next Lady is not casual and actually makes sense all things considered.

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redxblueihateloveyou · 3 years

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Hi, I read the post where you said Kuroko knows Momoi and Aomine are oblivious to their feelings for each other. I am 99% sure in one of the Replace novels Kise looks at Momoi and Aomine (in Teikou) and thinks that they are oblivious to their feelings for each other. Why do you think they’re oblivious? Maybe M can be since you can like 2 ppl at once and she likes Kuroko but M has big boobs and A loves boobs, and she likes basketball. I’m really surprised A doesn’t actively want her romantically.

Yeah, I think it was mentioned that Akashi, Kuroko and Kise know.

I think oblivious here is only Aomine really, Momoi is just in denial. I mean she for sure doesn’t like Kuroko romantically and I’m like 99% sure from many scenes, that she's also well aware of that. Now as to why she behaves the way she behaves I can only guess. I always just thought that she’s just in denial of her feelings for Aomine, so she created this whole “I’m in love with Kuroko” theater bc of this. Like as we know Kuroko doesn’t take it seriously and she also knows perfectly well that Kuroko doesn’t take it seriously.

And if she was in love with Kuroko truly, after the Teiko split she would go with him, I mean bc like tbh no matter how great someones friendship is (and Aomine and Momoi have been friends for forever), if you fall in love, you still pick your love (like Akashi who desperately wanted to take Kuroko with him). Like Shion and Safu can be mega great friends, he’ll still pick Nezumi and go with him, given a choice; Sousuke and Rin - wonderful friendship, but again once Haru was in the picture, it went bye-bye Sousuke. It’s just what happens in real life, too. So the fact that she decided to stay by Aomine’s side, I mean she didn’t do it bc it was the school of her choice or smth.. we know that she’s a very intellegent gal, despite her pretending to be a barbie sometimes, so I think she knows about her feelings for him, she just doesn’t want to go there if you know what I mean. At the end of the day everything that she does, she does for Aomine, whether ppl like it or not. So to me, it’s like she knows about her feelings for Aomine, she just chose to pretend it doesn’t exist, bc of reasons and maybe along the way even also a bit started to believe her own lie.

As for Aomine, well he’s dense af, I mean, it’s been mentioned that he’s so dense, that he’s almost impossible to talk to. Not to mention the fact that he’s always running around with all those boobies magazines and models, so it’s kinda not surprising that Momoi tries to pretend that she’s not into him lol. But yeah, she’s practically his ideal, he always describes, who is right under his nose, so I guess it’s funny.

Aomine is also very bad about noticing ppl’s relationships in general, he doesn’t get it and doesn’t seek one for sure. From what I saw I think he just doesn’t even think its needed. He’s ok with porno magazines and basketball. So he simply doesn’t even consider having a girlfriend. It’s not even about Momoi per se.

They still flirt with each other and act like a couple and that’s what Kuroko and Kise see obviously. Aomine does it unintentionally, I think, like he genuinely probably doesn’t get what he’s doing. I also think he most likely does believe that she’s in love with Kuroko, bc he doesn’t have enough brains to catch the truth as many guys btw who watch KNB.

Like that one homophobic not a long time ago commented under my akakuro vid: “Kuroko has a girlfriend, so stay mad, fags” xD I was like “Momoi is canonically Aomine’s girl, so.. stay an idiot?”.

But I mean, yeah, there are ppl who truly believe that Momoi is really Kuroko’s romantic interest. Guys especially. They probably also read those Niguo scenes like “omg his dog doesn’t like her” lol. I think Aomine is also one of those. But I personally don’t even see Momoi/Kuroko as one-sided, I mean, she likes Kuroko for sure as much as everyone there, but she certainly doesn’t see him that way, I mean sometimes her performance looks close to idiotic and comedic, which doesn’t quite work with the fact that we know perfectly well, that that’s not who she is.

And there are 3 characters in KNB who hide their real feelings this way btw.

Now some ppl believe that they’re in a “love rosie” kind of situation, when bc they were friends for so long that they tend to overlook each other as romantic partners, but I honestly don’t see it like that. I wasn’t surprised when I found out that they’re canonically intended couple, bc they’re really written like this. I definitely didn’t see them as “they behave like siblings”. And I don’t know what sibling would look for so long under their sister’s skirt and comment “that’s pretty bold of you to wear such underwear today”, but like to each their own xD

Tbh I very much approve, bc they’re not one of those gooey, pinky, dumb hetero relationships in animes, that I don’t even know where their feelings came from, you know. I mean, she handles him perfectly and loves him despite knowing all of his flaws and still wants to stick around and she’s practically the girl of his dreams, so I mean, in KNB I’m surprisingly like okay with all the who author thought belongs with whom situations.

#answered #anonymous #KNB #Kuroko no Basuke #Aomine Daiki #momoi satsuki #aomomo

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thevindicativevordan · 3 years

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You did one for Hulk (incredible btw). Got any thoughts on Spider-Man?

He used to be one of my favorites.

It's easy to see why Spidey took off as Marvel's premiere character, and competitor with Batman for the most popular superhero ever. If you'll indulge my DC bias, Spider-Man sits at the intersection between Superman and Batman. Like Superman, Spider-Man never knew his birth parents, and was instead adopted and raised by an elderly couple. Uncle Ben and Aunt May are the people Peter thinks of as his mom and dad, and it's their lives that help shape Peter. Both Superman and Spider-Man wear colorful red and blue costumes, both have iconic jobs working for newspapers with cantankerous bosses, and both have a lot of Jewish DNA in them because of their creators. Like Batman however, Spider-Man has a tragic parental figure's death to motivate him, he has a very poor reputation with the public, they both style themselves on animals, and both have strong roots in the cities they protect. That Peter's greatest foe, the Green Goblin, also stands at the intersection between Lex Luthor and the Joker makes for a great parallel. Add in that Spider-Man has the second best Rogues Gallery in comics, and it's clear Peter drew on the best attributes from his predecessors as a foundation.

What separates Peter from them though is that he was the first hero with real problems. Neither Superman or Batman had to worry about paying rent regularly like Peter did. Both stood apart from their peers by choice, while Peter wanted to make friends but wasn't able to do it. Krypton and the Waynes died through no fault of Supes or Bats, but Uncle Ben's death was something Peter was at fault for if indirectly. Then you had Gwen Stacy killed as a direct result of Peter's superhero career, introducing the idea of heroes who could fail. Spider-Man was pitched as the flawed hero, the human hero, the guy you could think of yourself as being if you got superpowers. You would screw up and make mistakes, but you'd try your best regardless. Of course the readers would be drawn to, and identify with him, and that's both the secret to his success and what keeps fucking him over. A lot of guys see Peter as their self-insert, so they keep trying to return to their youth through him which keeps derailing him as a character. My entry into Spider-Man fandom came during one of the brief lulls from Marvel trying to reset him to what they see as his "roots".

I remember seeing the Rami Spider-Man movies in the theater and being utterly entranced. I played the first Spider-Man movie tie-in game pretty religiously as a kid (fuck that level where you infiltrate OsCorp, those robots were insane), as well as other Spider-Man games such as Web of Shadows. Can still hear the theme song of the 90s animated Spider-Man show in my head, that show's versions of Green Goblin and Venom are still my favorite takes. All this is a rambling way of saying that "my" Spider-Man was formed during a period where Marvel seemed ok with Peter being more adult, something they've been trying to roll back ever since.

Peter was a college student in the 90s cartoon, the comics had him and MJ married (my first Spidey comic was vol. 1 of JMS' Amazing Spider-Man run, so Peter and MJ being married is the "default" for me), the video games were set in the Ramiverse so he was a college student there as well. It's such a weird era to look back on in retrospect given what's to come and what came before. Peter had problems and was flawed, but he was also so much more mature and thoughtful, intelligent in a way beyond just being a science whiz. He and MJ had a great dynamic as a couple under JMS. They were so clearly in love and also utterly unwilling to take each others shit that it was just a joy to read. That relationship really was something I dearly loved, and of course I took it poorly when Marvel broke the two of them up. Making it a plot where not!Satan comes down and takes their marriage away only rubbed salt in the wound.

Suddenly Peter was a lot more immature and stupid, and Marvel was insisting that this was "how he should be". Marvel was claiming that Spider-Man was all about youth, thus he needed to remain young and marriage free in order to work, which flew in the face of the character as I understood him. To me, Spidey was a character about the opposite, he was about growing up.

More than any other character in the MU, Peter was the guy who embodied character development. In his early years under Lee and Dikto, Peter was an asshole with a chip on his shoulder. Far from being the martyr figure everyone sees him as today, Peter initially just kept trying to make money with his powers. He was constantly moaning and bewailing his lot, because he was a fucking teenager! EVERY teenager treats ANY setback like it's the end of the world. Yet over a period of years, both in universe and out, Peter grew into the great hero everybody sees him as today. He became kinder, more charitable, and made friends with his peers. He acquired a steady stream of super hot girlfriends, ultimately marrying MJ. Peter married MJ before Clark Kent married Lois Lane, that's a huge freaking accomplishment! Totally makes sense that Peter would get married first because while Superman was more or less frozen in place like all DC heroes, Spider-Man was the one who embodied the Marvel trait of growth and change. The world kept throwing shit at him and Peter dealt with it as best he could, and that gave me hope because if he could overcome the forces arrayed against him to find some degree of happiness, so could I.

One More Day completely obliterated all of that. I didn't recognize this character anymore, I didn't care about the shallow relationships they teased him entering, relationships we all knew didn't matter. If Peter couldn't stay married to MJ, he wasn't going to last in a relationship with Carlie Cooper or any of the girls Slott set him up with. Peter being immature worked great when he was actually in high school and college, but Marvel wanted to write him as a high schooler without actually deaging him. The contrast between how he was characterized before and after OMD was just too jarring for me.

Ultimately I left for a while. I read Superior and Spider-Verse, but I was no longer religiously following Amazing Spider-Man any more. Checked out Ultimate Spider-Man which I had never read, and I enjoyed it, but I also held a grudge against it's success. Clearly this was the series that enshrined high school Spider-Man as the "ideal" status quo for a lot of people, and I couldn't help but blame the series for Quesada's successful torching of a more mature Peter Parker. I also read Spider-Girl which took place in an alternate continuity where Peter was still married and he had a daughter with MJ named Mayday. I loved that series a lot, and Mayday became my favorite Marvel superheroine. Eventually I came back to ASM with Spencer because a few of my fellows told me he reminded them of JMS, and I've enjoyed his characterization of Peter. Doubt the marriage will be coming back any time soon but it's nice to read a more adult Peter after how he was characterized under Slott.

Hard to say what the future holds for Peter. Tough to say for certain but with the end of high school Peter in the MCU approaching, it feels like we're on the edge of another shift in status quo for Spider-Man. May be that the creation of Miles is allowing Peter to finally start to mature again since Miles can be the corporate wet dream of an eternally young "diverse" Spidey. The insistence on putting Miles into more and more of Peter's stuff, with Peter mentoring him, makes me hope that Marvel is becoming more ok with Peter growing up. The Insomniac Spider-Man is a college graduate, he feels the closest in tone and character to the Spider-Man I grew up with under JMS and Rami. They even got to kill Aunt May off, something Marvel is still terrified to do in the comics, and the relationship between Peter and MJ is portrayed as crucial to both (as it should), even if MJ is a little too Lois Lane lite for my liking.

Hopefully Spider-Man can shake off Quesada's lingering influence and start being what he was created to be: the guy who moves forward rather than running in place.

#spider man #peter parker #marvel

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error-404-fuck-not-found · 3 years

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welp. tales games you’ve done it again

you gave me a story i liked, characters i adored, mysteries to solve, gameplay that was charming and engaging... and then you completely fuckin flubbed the landing.

if you want a review of the Tales of Arise ending that doesn’t bitch about romance being somehow bad and evil, it’ll be below the cut. Obvi beware of endgame spoilers. Note that I haven’t gotten to whatever postgame quests there may or may not be, so I’ll try to keep my complaints to whatever story elements are already set in stone.

It’s probably the single most predictable Tales ending of all of them. Not a single unexpected thing happens, but even so, the way in which all those anticipated events happen is underwhelming and clunky.

let’s take the “vox populi, vox dei” moment where Alphen calls upon the will of Dahna to function as an intermediary to seal the great spirit. essentially... the citizens who are supposedly so intrinsic to this process are barely aware of what’s going on, if that. nobody’s will is united. nobody’s thoughts are bent their way. they all see a lil glob of light leave their body and go, “huh. that was weird. back to cleaning out my earwax, i guess” and that’s that. it has the vibe of alphen swiping his debit card at a walmart checkout and having to ask the listless cashier for his cashback. it feels transactional at best - no heart or soul in it, for all that it’s intended to be an emotional scene tying in all the NPCs we’ve met through our journeys.

for that matter, that scene would have been rendered completely unnecessary had Alphen not tapped into his inner theater kid and monologued in front of the villain before grabbing the Renas Alma. there’s literally no reason he would have made that choice. it’s obvious that was only included to shoehorn in the desired Vox Populi scene. it just doesn’t fit. clunky, like i said.

what would have worked would be if, after his defeat, Vholran scrabbles on his hands and knees madly to snatch the Renas Alma before Alphen can get close. he clutches at it, eyes wide with madness and frustration because he knows if Alphen tries to take it from him now, he’s too weak to stop it happening. and there’s Alphen’s voice, soothing, like he’s trying to calm a wild animal. trying to offer understanding and compassion. Vholran’s too far gone to see it for what it is. he is, at the core of his character, a child having a tantrum. this is no different. he screams his rage and in a last burst of strength, he beats the Renas Alma on the ground over and over until it shatters, laughing and crying and screaming in equal measure. a man who thought himself god, reduced to the level of a toddler throwing a pissfit. given not the slightest shred of dignity in his final moments, because he was offered a way out, and refused to take it. the narrative had no business treating him like an adult with valid choices when he had only ever acted like a child. for that matter, they had him vanish in a flash of light. it’s completely unclear what the fuck happened or why.

hell, they don’t even explain where that field of flowers is, when Alphen and Shionne are released. is it Rena, reborn? wtf do you mean it can be returned to its former state? are we now saying that Hollowing is reversible? is Migal revivable? how about all the others? can anyone on god’s green fuckin earth explain to me how gravity and oxygen worked for everybody on Rena? THEY WERE IN SPACE, CHIEF. most of Rena’s volume was hollowed the fuck out. was the mass just obliterated? if so, where’d the gravitational field come from? is hollowing liquid really dense and that’s why? but judging by the amount of fluid in the puddle that used to be Migal, that’s not the case. it’s fairly dense, sure, but not enough to account for an entire planet’s worth of matter.

i really don’t think astral energy, once drained of a thing badly enough to annihilate it, can be returned like it’s within the thirty day policy. i don’t think it issues receipts. this seems like a load of horseshit, particularly after Mister AlienMan-35 told them the planet of Rena would implode the instant the great spirit was removed.

but if they were somehow teleported to Dahna instead, HOW?????? WHERE’D THEY END UP??????? oh, and another fucking thing: how in the shit did Vholran end up getting to Rena in a ship identical to Alphen’s (which was a 300 year old relic, btw - they don’t make those anymore)? Where’d he get the ship? Last we knew, he was burning to death on Lenegis. But now we’re expected to believe he went out and found the only other 300+ year old ship in the joint and took it for a joyride. and somehow lit this thing on fire too. oh, and don’t forget that he drove that piece of shit directly into the final boss stage which was quite literally in an alternate dimension; Alphen et co had to jump into a portal to get there, and even that was after walking the full length of the final dungeon because they were told the shielding precluded just flying directly into its face. yknow. the way Vholran flew directly into its face. SOMEBODY WAS FULL OF SHIT, HUH

so much about the ending was dumb or fell flat or couldn’t be explained or was outright a plot hole based on earlier dialogue. literally the only part that worked was the romance, so if anybody is complaining about that, you know they didn’t actually use a single critical thinking skill.

btw it’s not a hetcetera if alphen’s bi which he obviously is going by how hard he’s flirted with dohalim

#tales of arise #toa #toa spoilers #i've got any number of bones to pick

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dont-call-me-algernon · 2 years

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For the Pokemon ask, 1, 5, 9, 11, 19, 22!

1. Who was your first starter pokemon?

Torchic! Which is extra funny considering I have never picked it agai, not even in the remakes, and nowadays my go-to Hoenn starter is mudkip. Also, 11-year-old me with no reliable access to the internet and 0 pokemon knowledge outside from the anime thought there was a “right” choice you could make when the game asked you to select a pokemon to help the professor, so I think I just…picked what I thought was the correct one 😂 I learned about starter pokemon mechanics only waaay later in the game.

5. Favourite region?

Sinnoh, which is very fortunate given how much Sinnoh-based content has come out in the last few months. GameFreak keeping us Sinnoh stans well fed after ignoring us for years lmao

9. Favourite type?

Fire! No rhyme or reason, other than I find myself consistently liking fire-type pokemon designs more and more often than other typings (yes, you can tell I’m a Serious Pokemon Gamer who choses her teams mostly based on looks). I think there’s only just a couple fire-type of evolution lines I outright dislike?? The magmar and tepig lines come to mind.

Dark and Flying are both close seconds, though!

11. List your top 6 pokemon

Boooy this was hard! I’ve had the top 3 figured out for a while, now, but thinking about the lower positions I realised my tastes have changed A LOT, recently, ever since I got back into pokemon games during lockdown.

1. Vulpix/Ninetales

2. Umbreon

3. Flygon

4. Empoleon

5. Porygon 2

6. Breloom

19. Which evil team is your favourite?

As cliché as it sounds, I really like Team Rocket. [insert bad joke about Italians and the mafia here] Kid me found Giovanni extremely intimidating and extremely cool at the same time, and he’s still one of my all-time favourite pokevillains. It probably helps that I’m a fan of crime fiction in general and it’s easy to picture Team Rocket, as opposed to other evil teams, as the main antagonist of a more serious, “adult” pokemon adventure.

22. If you were a gym leader, what would your typing/theme be?

This is so fun! I’ve actually given it some thought before, when a fandom friend and I were talking about what kind of npcs we’d be in a pokemon game and I came up with this:

Fire-type gym leader actually a tired university student working on her degree and battling challengers as a way to clear her head after spending too many hours hunched over textbooks (basically what I’m doing irl, expect instead of pokemon battles I waste time on shiny hunting in pla and aimless walks around the block when the weather allows it😂 ). The gym is styled after a public library and the gym trainers are basically other students and library employees. Also idk why, but there’s something weirdly amusing and pokemon-like about hosting battles with lots of fire type moves in a building full of VERY flammable material.

Btw, thanks for the ask!

#pokemon #ask games

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felassan · 4 years

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Some DA4 BTS vid analysis

The sentiments in PW’s recent word on concept art applied and were sensible to bear in mind before the tweet thread was made, and are of course still important to remember now. Dissecting and overanalyzing what we’re given is still fun as hell though, so now that I’ve slept and had yet another pass at it with fresh eyes and a non-vibrating mind, and with the caveat flagged, here are some more thoughts on and speculation about the DA4 BTS video. For context and contrast, here’s some of my initial main thoughts. Cut for length.

Yes in places it veers into wild speculation bc why not

The domes and domed architecture here and here don’t say Tevinter to me. Tevinter architecture has strong horizontals and verticals; it’s more about spikes and boxy blocks than domes and curves. I'm reminded more of Rivain

or Nevarra.

The figure here is dwarven in build. I want this place to be something dwarfy in nature. What kinda technology are we looking at here? The structures actually remind me of the Vaults in Mass: Effect Andromeda. It’s different enough to Orzammar-style structures that I’m hoping we can finally go to Kal-Sharok.

This isn’t Dorian. :[ Crow-style armor (the distinctive metal segments on the arms and legs), sword at his waist. I’m not fussed about this fact though because Dorian is still clearly shaping up to be in the game anyway from the Trespasser slides, TN etc. This guy is instead reminiscent of Mr Longhaired Rogue. Compare the hairline, hair color, length, rogueishness, general clothing style. I think this is the same guy, and I still think this guy is Lucanis.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that third from the right “Ezio” from the lineup is him too - assassin’s hood, AC-style belt insignia.

The brunette here could be a dwarf from her build and the fact that the swordsman next to her (who incidentally has Inquisition insignia on his chestpiece?) is kneeling. She’s reminiscent of the Harding-like woman in the underwater shot, and indeed of Harding. Compare the cape and bare upper arms. Not a surprise, given Harding’s presence in the Trespasser postcredits.

Elsewhere in this shot, the architecture is Tevinter (that doorway and corner). As for the big guy, his clothing style bears a resemblance to Archon Radonis.

This and this follow in succession and look to be of the same place just from different angles. Wings, griffons, blue pennants, the desolate brown rocky environ. I think we’re looking at Weisshaupt in the Anderfels and I hope this means we can finally go there. The dangling Warden plot thread is begging attention what with the civil war, the Warden weirdness in TN, the return of the griffons, etc.

I’m not convinced that the presence of floating objects means the Veil has already come down. We’re going north, and in Tevinter there are buildings which float, so the magic capacity for buildings and similar objects to do is in the mundane world is established already. The boats are reminiscent of aravels though, and funnily enough, Dalish Keepers use their magic to allow aravels to move through forests. In Last Flight, Isseya remembers tales of how Dalish used their magic to float their aravels through forests, and fashions improvised aravels which are held aloft by magic and pulled by griffons.

Zooming in here, the silhouettes of these nearby animals have antlers. These are straight up halla (so they’re horns, not antlers), not horses. I think this image is of an elfy place, perhaps from ancient times, or like the places we travel through in Trespasser (the hills and landscape reminds me of what we can see in the distance in there in the elfy bits), or one of the mysterious ancient elven enclaves which still persist in Thedas to this day, or in the heart of Arlathan Forest.

Our new reptilian pal is potentially along the lines of a lurker, deepstalker or dracolisk (and Tevinter is fond of its dracolisks!). Compare the body structure to lurkers.

The pillars here look dwarven. I wonder if the snowy environment in that shot connects to the snowy environment from the now-infamous tree teaser, which is what follows next. This is unmistakeably dwarfy architecture too, but daylight in the upper levels? Somewhere like Kal Repartha, or perhaps upper halls of the Ambassadoria in Tevinter? The main part of the Ambassadoria is underground so the dwarves who work there don’t have to become surfacers, but there would have to be a part connecting it to the surface so that Tevinter diplomats and so on could go in to do business.

This guy bears a resemblance to previously seen dwarven statues (DAO, dotted around in DAI).

The Crow on the left here isn’t Zevran, I’m afraid. It’ll be another one like the blond lady in Crow-like armor, Lucanis, “Ezio”, etc. For the lady as an example, compare the waist sash and other aspects.

Moving on, there’s a flimsy similarity in this lady.

This place reminds me somewhat of DAI Temple of Mythal concept art.

“Ezio”?

The candle bois in this clearly-Tevinter scene strike me as wisps bound to the candlestick bodies by Magisters for the purpose of serving, like the lil spirit the Mortalitasi had bound to stir her tea in TN. People do that kind of stuff in Tevinter, see Dorian’s banters with Solas. Also in this image the machine-hand form of transport is super notable in terms of implications for technology and accessibility in Thedas (note: I don't mean like there will be a plotbeat based around this or a 'hand', I just mean I find it notable lore-wise that Thedas has tech/magic that can do this and find that important when thinking about accessibility as with Neve's prosthetic etc).

If this person isn’t Maevaris I will cry. The outfit in the middle’s color theme and shoulder features reminds me of her comic appearance, and the one on the right reminds me of her Trespasser epilogue slide appearance. The leftmost image is the least Maevaris-y, but the other two definitely strike me as Mae.

On guns: Not out of the realm of possibility for this world. Dwarves have lyrium-based explosives. Qunari have gaatlok, which is safer to use, and cannons. Varric’s Bianca is a repeating crossbow. An old Iron Bull concept has him with an arm-cannon. With technology like that in Thedas, guns aren’t far behind. Possibly a very recent invention in Thedas and still new to the vast majority of the population? In addition, the Sha-Brytol Earthshakers can manipulate lyrium into a unique explosive (though this is because they’ve drank lyrium and lyrium-infused armor has fused to their skin). Sha-Brytol Crossbow Bolters’ crossbows look very gun-like too, although they’re definitely crossbows, not guns (it’s in the name).

I’m curious about the plot implications of guns in the setting, if they are indeed a thing now. I don’t want them to be too OP or too modern, don’t want the high/dark fantasy vibe diluted, but curious about how they might level the playing field in a world with magic, or might turn the tide in one of the setting’s neverending battles (like the Qun vs Tevinter war). From the look of the possible gun in the lineup, it gives me a “guns in Fable”-gun vibe. Also, I wonder what Varric would think, considering how his past was much concerned with the issue with the secret to making a repeating crossbow and everything that entailed.

Second from the right in the lineup looks like a hornless qunari.

The skeleton entity appears 3 times, almost certainly the same entity in each appearance, and imo from its multiple appearances likely a companion. It’s not Cole (I’ve seen that suggested). If a companion it would be the designated ‘notable’ one on the roster in the way that Shale, Justice-in-dead-body and Cole were. If it’s a spirit inhabiting a body I’m glad the body is a skeleton, because we’ve had a spirit inhabiting a rotting fleshy corpse before already (Justice in Awakening), so that’s been done. I don’t think the green flame is Veilfire or Fade magic; in TN it’s noted that the Mortalitasi Myrna’s necro/Mortalitasi-type magic is emerald green. I like the notions that this is Audricuriosity from TN, a char a la Fane in Divinity, or a Mortalitasi that’s undead in that they (or a spirit mimicking them) have managed to ‘remain’ ‘in’ their skeleton after death, as opposed to just “this is a spirit inhabiting a skeleton”. Anyway, the focus we had in TN on Nevarra, the Mortalitasi and the undead is continued in this video - the dragon dissection looks like it’s taking place in the Grand Necropolis. Or maybe the Fade? The windows in the background at the top look upside down. Btw there is great dissection of the dissection image (ehue) which I recommend to check out here.

Compare his design with Nevarran styles.

Davrin? Suitably heroic, Warden-esque.

Rapier lady is surrounded by crows which reminds me of Leliana’s raven motif (not saying I think this is Leliana). She looks rogueish and assassiny so with that + the crows it wouldn’t be wild to assume Crow. However Mark Darrah retweeted this tweet which compares her mask to this Orlesian fashion.

The insignia on Solas’ new outfit in his concept art looks like the Mask of Fen’Harel from Felicia Day’s DA: Redemption.

This looks like the snowy environment from the tree teaser. Notice the statue of Andraste [?] in the background. The entity’s weapon looks like it would fit right into the Red Lyrium Weapons pack for DAI. Question: What happens when red lyrium infects a corpse or a corpse inhabited by a spirit?? Is that what we’re seeing here? elsewise it’s a darkspawn and red lyrium darkspawn.. [Mordin voice] Implications.. disturbing.

Davrin’s name is one letter off Davri as in Bianca Davri. Curious choice.

Hands-spider and the other Cetus-like monsters: Ghilan’nain, her original creations, and the Horror of Hormak.

The red lyrium tentacles being modeled look like what these guys are fighting off. Incidentally, with the sleek gold armor and advanced weapons/powers, maybe these guys are ancient elves.

The red lyrium environment from the tree teaser now returns. Remember the spirited discussions about whether these tendrils were deep mushrooms corrupted by red lyrium? :D

Then it jumps back to the ominous snowy environment with the statues of Andraste [?]. The statue does however also remind me of the elvhen statues in the Raw Fade in DAI. Note the sky here in the corner which looks kind of like a breach. As for the red lyrium egg - now where have we seen red eggs before? In the Crossroads in Trespasser. iirc Inky uses them to extend bridges in the Crossroads. The egg in the vid even seems to have bits of gold on it. Does the egg have something to do with the weakened Veil here? Is it red lyrium?

This shot is the same dwarven hall as before (see above speculation on the Ambassadoria, Kal Repartha etc). This time we can clearly see that the ceiling is open with ‘skylight’-type windows to the sky above. Possibly reaching, but the foreground structure looks like a dwarven take on the DAI elf tree statue asset. Some elves and dwarves did dwell together for a time in Cad'halash, and we find elven statues in the Deep Roads in Trespasser.

But this particularly sticks out to me because of the nature of Kal Repartha, how it was built on the surface (daylight from the ceiling), trees + Mythal, Mythal striking down the pillars of the earth and what some of the ancient elves did to the dwarves, Mythal + dragons, Kal Repartha + the urtok:

[quoting me] The scholar who was investigating Kal Repartha in the Hissing Wastes found pictures on walls of weapons with dragons (the urtok) worked into the decorations on them as part of an ancient crest. These were accompanied by an inscription of a verse that was passed down by Fairel’s ancestors for generations, from long before Fairel ever led his house to the surface and would have encountered dragons in the sky and from long before dwarves would ever have encountered Archdemons in a Blight. Curious. I suspect these are a holdover from when Mythal struck down the Titans and the ancient elves’ conflict with the dwarves/Titans. Given those events, it’s no wonder the dwarves of that time period had folktales about a dragon scourge.

Still with me??

Now here we are inside Weisshaupt or the Warden fortress from before. Note blue banners with the Warden griffon sigil again. I want to believe there are big open archways in the walls/out to landing-pad style ‘balconies’ in the way it’s suggested that it’s built here because in ye olden times you’d have Wardens on their griffons flying to and from the fortress. Is that Davrin? It looks like it could be the same warrior guy as before, only this time it’s definitely a Warden. What’s happening outside? Why is the light/sky outside sickly Fadey green? Reminds me of the sky in the corner of the egg pic. And of Fade Weisshaupt from DAO.

If he’s not a Lord of Fortune, perhaps a Raider of the Waking Sea. Might tie into why Isabela is there in the underwater picture, or why there’s an Isabela-esque pirate-type lady in that pic at least.

now

#dragon age 4 #the dread wolf rises #dragon age #bioware #video games #tevinter nights #tevinter nights spoilers #tevinter nights spoiler #spoilers #spoiler #solas #cole #spirit boy #gpoy #mj meta

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rinharu-purple · 4 years

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Mr. Love MC’s Choice: Gavin

We fellow producers all have our favorite LI in the game for whom we save our gems and dates, replay their chapters over and over again, sucking our bank accounts dry during the process. And that’s what makes this game so fun! However in my opinion MC’s personal choice is Gavin. I will try to explain it as thoroughly as possible in this post. Obviously they are only my personal opinions at the end of the day so please don’t freak out if you beg to differ ^_^

There are spoilers ahead and this post is a long one, you were warned!

A big, warm hug and grandious thanks to @smallersocksx for proof reading so fast and sharing her ideas! <3 </p>

Up until now, I’ve always analyzed ships in subtopics, so this time won’t be any different so I will just dive right into it:

Body Language

The law of attraction between two people in a romantic way has some thumb rules, one of them is that when you like someone then you try to touch them at every opportunity. From all of our LI’s Gavin is by far the one with the most body contact to the MC (The main story only atm, I will come to his dates in a minute ;)). I think the anime speaks for itself, in every single Gavin episode and some of other LI’s episodes (ahem…ep 10 but also ep 11…ahem) Gavin and MC are always in an embrace or a meaningful “hands-on” moment…In the game MC and Gavin are quite often touchy with each other, MC seems to not holding her hands back every time she feels like Gavin’s hurt and reflexively touches him, she is also highly concerned about his hair since every time his hair get messed up by the wind, rain or hormones (swh ;)), MC doesn’t waste any second before correcting his hair. Every reunion they have results in MC reaching out her hands towards Gavin and surprisingly never other way around. Even in a perillious moment in chapter 22 when Gavin goes completely wild and unleashes his “beast-self” the first thing MC wants to do is embrace him. In chapter 24, at the very end among all routes, MC only tells Gavin that she’s missed him and hugs him. Chapter 27...again MC wants to check Gavins body for injuries and tends to them the second they are alone in a closed room. They both yearn for each other’s touch all the way, no matter in which narrative.

If I were to start counting Gavin’s touchy touchy moments on the other hand, then we have to prepare a 4 volumes encyclopedia because that male individual is all about touching MC. Another hint for their closeness is that MC makes notes on Gavin’s scent quite often, mostly related to his jacket or his embrace and while doing it, she always uses adjectives like “clean”, “distinct” or “unique”. Again in ch. 15 she knows its Gavin standing behind her even without looking, because she senses his scent: “A scent that I’d recognize anywhere”. Surely there are many scenes, where MC holds hands with another LI or makes a remark of their scent, but they are not at the intensity or frequency level that of Gavin’s.

2. The Setting

All four LI’s are representing a certain archetypes women are usually attracted to:

Kiro is a pop idol (target audience 13-15)

Victor is the young successful businessman with a high dominant demeanour and Mr. Grey-ish attitude (target audience 25 upwards or any 50 shades of Grey reader)

Lucien is a young attractive professor with a mysterious and enigmatic vibe (target audience 20-24)

Gavin is the misunderstood bad boy (high school) and later a righteous police officer (16-19 for the bad boy Gavin and 20 upwards for the righteous police officer, special agent, military commander... a pilot?! anything including a uniform fetish)

So, in the game, Elex could take any of these paths and develop it in a way that the chosen path becomes a true love story. I gotta admit, Victor’s story comes at times very close to being one. However, his never-ending bickering and belittling in his 90% of the time cold demeanour just make him lose major points. Plus, MC mostly goes along with Victor’s tone, even though she is a kind and friendly person, she bickers with Victor not because that’s her personality but because that’s the way she can cope with him. If only he were a little bit less domineering.. Which is why I never feel like MC and Victor would belong together irl.

Seemingly Elex and Mappa take Gavin’s way imo. Because…

In the main story MC loves all of the LIs in a different way and also has romantic feelings to each one of them to a certain degree, but when we look at it closely and read in between the lines of MC’s thoughts Gavin is a little bit more romantically portrayed than the other guys.

a) First of all Gavin had a crush on MC during high school cannonically: Even though Gavin only says that it was a farewell letter, MC says once that she wishes that she could’ve read that “love letter”. I will stop here with Gavin’s feelings because this post focuses on MC.

b) MC, too, was kinda into Gavin during high school because in Episode 18, when she goes to Loveland Hugh during her farewell tour before going with her ultimate sacrifice , she remembers Gavin in intimate things like “watching his athletic body” or “wearing men’s clothes-meaning his-”. Additionally she remembers taking note of his face shining in the sun in the very back of the line during her recital. Even before it all she was specifically interested in him. Her memories with the other LI s are comprised of rather friendly moments like flying kites together but when it comes to Gavin she once again thinks about more intimate elements. Not to mention that the game gives MC a farewell with Gavin. In her final moments she only thinks that for Gavin her grievance would be the hardest. In the End of the Abyss era (ch. 15-18) MC meets all of the LIs after their changes again and reacts to all of them with joy…surely, but only when she sees Gavin hovering above her in the helicopter it is again…drum roll…drama: “The next second I saw a pair of amber eyes…shining like brilliant skies” this girl is always romanticizing Gavin.

“-Can you hear me?

-Can you see me?

-See my heart pounding again at the sight of you?” (so are you saying that your heart wasn’t pounding before? oh ok ;))

Fast forward to CH34 where MC fights Leto for the final time and remembers our guys and again, while she remembers other LIs for their sacrifices and their protection of her, she remembers Gavin's warm arms...

c)The game takes his time and turns the half of a whole chapter into a date in chapter15 Ep 1-9. There is no other chapter in the game where MC spends time with any of the other LI’s in which there is only the two of them, whereas nothing relevant to the main story happens and they share solely many sweet, romantic and almost hot (when MC tries to dry Gavin’s face in her flat and realizes that she stands way too close to him, she then prepares herself to say something, but gets interrupted by the alarm) and again, MC is getting close to Gavin, not the other way around like Lucien pushing MC against the blackboard, that little sneaky Lucien (actually I could write a post with a masterlist of Lucien’s advances to MC:D).

d) MC’s premonitions revolve mostly around Gavin (when they are not about the whole world or the black queen). Her dream about the rooftop rescue, her Room 404 dream, her daydream in the office in 6-13 in which Gavin’s suffering and from which she wakes up crying out his name leading to Willow, Kiki and Anna remark on playfully how unfair it is to dream about Gavin and disregarding the other guys. She also sees his future in episode 15 twice! If I am not mistaken, she only sees Victor’s future once in her dream and a vague vision of him in ch 18 but other than that she has no premonitions about Lucien or Kiro. Besides in the anime MC uses her power unintentionally yet instinctively twice while having Gavin in mind in episodes 5 and 8. The third time, she uses her powers in this way is in episode 11 with Victor but he is not her driving force for this but she is driven by the imminent danger they both are in and she doesn’t particularly think about Victor at this moment. In the game it additionally happens in chapter 22 when Gavin is cornered by the mechanical arms and is in a tight spot, this sight makes MC have a surge of rage and to unleash her powers in a great magnitude. Gavin is Queen’s soft spot i.e. More importantly Gavin is a constant part of MC’s future frame. She has her visions about other LI’s past but when it comes to Gavin it’s only his future. MC doesn’t have visions about Gavin’s past, like, ever. While Kiro, Lucien and Victor are stuck in their pasts with MC, Gavin has made peace with his past, is living in the present and looking forward the future (one of his best qualities imo, not being stuck in the past). Ironically, it’s MC, who’s stuck in the past in Gavin’s case.

e) I will intentionally not delve much into S2 stuff, but one thing has to be in this post…We know that in S2 MC goes back in time and relives the last 17 years. During these 17 years she makes sure to spend her high school years close to Gavin. So given the chance to rewrite her past, she would choose to make good for the lost years that she regretted dearly in S1 (she gushes out about her regrets in S2 Late Autumn Date in detail). We are yet to find out more about the nature of their relationship during high school, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a “will they, won’t they” situation. Since the game wouldn’t put any of the guys in an ex-boyfriend role, that would be the most romantic frame possible.

3. How other people see Gavin x MC

f) In CH 36, the one before CH 37, where every LI gets the same intimate moment with MC, only Lucien and Gavin are getting close to kissing her to which MC doesn't show any rejection towards... She is the one accidentally kissing Gavin btw and this is the only time before CH37 that MC either accidentally or willingly kiss any LI on his face or near his lips.

g) In S1, MC only posts two pics with the boys in her moments. One of them is a selfie with Lucien and the second one is with Gavin, hugged from behind. No other LIs ever have a moment with MC. Neither on their accounts, nor on MCs.

It is always a good indicator to look at how other characters perceive a particular ship. For Gavin and MC, it is almost obvious that once they are standing side by side, others see them instantly as a couple. Sure, at the orphanage some children ask Lucien if MC is his girlfriend or that one actress threatens MC to stay away from Victor because he’s hers (btw what happened to her?) With Gavin however, it’s practically a running joke.

As mentioned above, her once daydream in the office with Gavin shoutout in CH 6-13 drew the attention of her co-workers, leading them to mock her for thinking about him too much even though her dream was rather a nightmare. Besides, Gavin is the one showing up the most in MC’s office and he also lift her up to his shoulders once in the Visiting Hours date and Homer took a pic of that hilarious moment.

Every time MC is at STF HQ, respectively, Gavin’s co-workers or subordinates too take note of her presence and in chapter 12 they are even caught red-handed by one of the agents as MC is busy “correcting” Gavin’s hair (because see point 1). Eli seems to be aware of the intimacy between the two and even probably assumes that they’ve done the deed, because in ch 12 he is surprised to hear that MC hasn’t seen Gavin’s wound yet. He presumes that she already saw him naked…oh Eli! Season 2 has even more eminent scenes, we just have to wait and see.

In chapter 15 when they deliver Perry to the hospital, they are mistaken to be his parents by the hospital personnel not once but twice! Needless to say, they don’t find it necessary to correct the misunderstanding. I mean Perry is, what, 6…MC 22, Gavin 24 but they automatically think that they must be the parents?! Sure thats common sense- wink wink nudge nudge ¬‿¬ -

In chapter 22 Shaw makes a comment on MC willing to go to where Gavin is with a “Really, all you do is following him, isn’t it?”. He uses MC to trigger Gavin in Airport date as well.

And of course, there is Minor…The ultimate number one wingman and the most original Gavin-stan! Minor uses everything in his power to bring them together both in the main story and in dates. He even calls her Sis-in-Law in public in CH 35 which MC doesn't reject. This doesn’t even need explanation.

Last but not least:

Their couple chemistry went viral lol.

Visually speaking, when they stand side by side, for me Gavin and MC look the most like a couple (Kiro is too childish and fashion icony compared to MC and Victor is too mature and business attire-ish making him look like her uncle rather than boyfriend, Lucien is the only one besides Gavin who actually suits MC visually). I am not saying that looks are the main indicator btw so don’t lynch me please ^_^

Come to think about it, MCs life is intertwined with that of Gavin's the most. Considering how she knows his father, brother and colleagues and spends so much time in "his world" whether it's at STF or NW. In the main story MC and Gavin have their favorite restaurants (ehm it's never souvenir due to obvious reasons 😉), share the same passion for music, have many common memories from high school and most importantly their world views are very similar. Both are prioritizing others safety over themselves and are compassionate for anyone who is in need. They are both ambitious and hardworking but not to the point of being power driven. Both are humble and finding hapinness in the smallest things. Maybe that's why they say the same things simultaneously or say the things the other would say simultaneously. MC and Gavin are highly compatible and have a harmonious, healthy relationship despite the conspiracy around them.

4. Anime

Okay okay, listen…Yes, the anime wasn’t the best adaptation and many of us were disappointed by the ending (including me), still, the anime makes a part of canon MLQC universe and no Gavin-stan should complain about the anime because the anime put canonically Gavin on a pedestal. In a total of 12 episodes, all guys had 2 episodes each BUT Gavin was actually blessed with 3 episodes and so many romantic moments to count…let’s count them anyways :)

Mappa introduces all guys in episode 1 so MC encounters them all in the first 25 minutes but she first meets Gavin in episode 2 and the two spend almost the entire time of the episode together, not to mention the extremely romantic first-fly scene in the sunset. As I mentioned in point 1, MC and Gavin are always in physical contact in any given episode. Anime made sure to portray every single interaction they have romantically.

They even went so far to mix Gavin scenes in other guys episodes (he offers her a ride to work in ep 3, she has an emotional moment with him after the first shooting misunderstanding while Lucien is standing right next to her in ep 4, Gavin is the one to catch MC mid-air in ep 10, this episode ends with them in their life and death embrace falling down in dawn… and then he falls on her in ep 11).

When it’s a Gavin episode MC has no romantic scenes with any of the other guys, let alone having any scenes at all. Its only about Gavin in Gavin episodes. Also, the storyline is edited in a way that between MC and Gavin a romantic story develops. Their meet cute conspiracy, their misunderstanding with Lucien, followed by the “drop the senpai” offer and finally that 5 seconds long gaze deeply in the eyes in ep 8 while holding hands.

It is really sad that the anime ruined this development in the final episode but taking into consideration that there might be a second season, they probably chose to make the change in Gavin’s character after the NW project remarkable.

Another point in the anime is that they kinda exaggerate Gavin’s Evol a little bit. During his stand-off with Lucien Gavin’s bullet cuts through Lucien’s shield and all in ep 8,11 and 12 there is a significant emphasis on the intensity and destructive power of Gavin’s Evol. I mean, whose Evol is the most upfront one in episode 12? We see Lucien using his Evol only twice, both very briefly, Kiro/Helios/Key and Victor even have to use guns to protect themselves and/or MC. Gavin’s shown using a pistole once at the beginning, after that it’s all turbines and tornadoes and just Gavin unleashed.

I think it’s an exaggeration because in my personal opinion, Lucien is actually the one with the strongest Evol, followed by Victor and then comes Gavin. Lucien’s ability to copy an Evol is simply the strongest trait one could have, sure it comes with the downside that he then doesn’t have enough time and focus to excel in any of those Evols, Victor can literally create black holes are you kidding me?! But because his Evol has its limits it puts him in the second place. But in the anime, Gavin’s Evol is extremely powerful and destructive and they also created some really cool scenes in which Gavin uses his Evol in various styles (accelerating his bullets speed, dodging a bullet, lifting MC in any and every situation, flying- obviously- and sometimes just overpowered destruction).

But in the anime in comparison, Lucien looks like a copy-cat of Evols and Victor like someone who travels through time to find out nothing can change the course of events (on a side note I will never understand why did Mappa toned down Victor so heartlessly, he is a powerful character and has countless sweet, emotional moments with MC).

5. Dates

I left dates to the end because they are highly subjective and don’t belong to the main story. NEVERTHELESS, Gavin’s dates include here and there some hints which may indicate that MC tends to like Gavin maybe just a little bit more. I will just add it as bullet points here since I’m pretty sure that the list will be enriched over time.

Slightly drunken date: Shouting out loud in public “Gavin! I’m crazy for you!”

When the Galaxy Falls Date: “...and in that moment, I make an eternal vow in my heart. To give all the blazing love and the most endless warmth to the person in front of me. Standing on my tiptoes, I carry a heart which is filled with courage to move forward, receiving Gavin.”

2 become 1 date “No matter whether the wedding is real or fake I only want to be your bride.” Here comes the Groom event where MC had a prob wedding with each and every LI but she actually only wanted to be Gavin’s bride (obviously Gavin’s heard her loud and clear since he’s bought a gem/ring right after) and that gem is brought up in…

The Returning from Afar Date - Thank you for silently watching over my mood. Thank you for always returning to my side no matter where you go. The white muslin drifts to and fro. My heart stirs, and I gently touch the muslin in front of me. Sunlight streams in. My fingertips brush the soft white muslin, tracing the word “Gavin” on it. I turn my head to the side, blinking at Gavin a little playfully. “This word - apart from it being your name, it also has another meaning. It’s “courage”. MC getting poetic, but who wouldn’t in that date (thank you @smallersocksx for reminding me and without @cheri-translates we poor Eng-server players would be left in the dark so thank you for translating season 2 for us!!!) but than MC verbally and literally makes her feelings clear in…

Late autumn date (2nd season translation by @cheri-translates) “I close my eyes, holding onto his solid arms. I lift my head to welcome his lips, savouring his unique breath. The person in front of me has shed off the roughness of youth, leaving behind only the purity of youth. He often makes me forget that he once used to be unrestrained like the wind. He has a body that is stronger than everyone else’s, a tough soul, a will that is as firm as steel, and a heart full of tenderness – it is soft beyond compare.

I cling to his waist tightly using my calves, wanting to brand every part of him into my heart.

“I want to bear his everything.”

Gavin: “Do you like it?”

“I like it…I like it very much…I like it so much that I don’t know how to prove how much I like it” “The rest of my life is yours, The years that we’ve missed out on are also yours” (whatever I have, I will give it to you. I will give everything to you, leaving nothing behind)

I rest my case

#mlqc #mlqc gavin #mlqc haku #mlqc bai qi #mlqc baek gi #mr love queen's choice #koi to producer #studio mappa #elex #papergames #mldd #analysis #tag your otp #romance #anime couple

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snarkwriteswrasslin · 3 years

Text

17.12, you want to kiss me, mjf

Title: you want to kiss me

Theme: Holiday fair/Carnival

Fandom / Character(s):MJF, AEW

Warnings:Lots of banter. A mutual physical attraction. Sharp tongues and attitude galore.. Oh and a little kissing.

Word Count: uhhh... roughly 1k, give or take..

This is my entry to @champbucks 12 Days Of Christmas Challenge for the day. This one pretty much came to me as I wrote the other one I did for the day, with Sweetpea, on my multifandom blog. And at first, I started to go with Kevin Owens, but.. MJF is the perfect mouthy, egotistical idiot for this. So, I went with it.

BTW>. i made the banner thing. No stealing.

Tagging:

@kyleoreillysknee

@rampagewriting

@writertoo18

@thatnerdwriter

@wrestlingismyguiltypleasure

@chasingeverybreakingwave

@waywardwrestlewritingwaif

@sassymox

@champbucks

@hungmanhorsecarriage

@wardl0w

@ryantaylorgirl

@dilfmoxley

@hotyeehawman

@gabbynorth98

@bec0m

@irish-newzealand-idian-dutch

@daddyslittlevillain

[ about page | masterlist | tag list ]

“Did you hear yet, man? Rhodes volunteered us all for some carnival thing they’re putting on in town.” Wardlow’s words barely registered with MJF because at the moment, MJF was too busy staring.

Wardlow caught onto his friends distraction and he followed Maxwell’s intent gaze, nudging him in the side as he chuckled. “Her name is Jocelyn. She’s the mayor’s secretary. I think she’s the one who came over to negotiate things between the mayor and Rhodes.”

“A secretary, huh?” Maxwell answered in a bit of a daze, making Wardlow chuckle again and shake his head. “I just said that, dumbass.”

Maxwell was back to it again, staring a hole right through her. Wardlow rolled his eyes and cleared his throat, reminding Maxwell, “We have a match. Come on.”

“I’m coming.”

As they walked past where Jocelyn stood, Maxwell stopped, sizing her up and rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Ya know, you’re cute. For a secretary.”

Wardlow grimaced and he was just about to grab hold of his friend, the idiot, and guide him away and out of potential danger, but before he got the chance, Jocelyn responded. And what she said had Wardlow trying to resist the urge to double over laughing. Especially when Maxwell started to fume immediately and all she did was roll her eyes and walk out of the arena.

XXX

“You’re kind of cute for a secretary.”

I’d been just about to walk out of the arena that the little wrestling company was holding their show in after having talked to it’s owner about maybe lending a hand and letting some of his wrestlers make appearances at our annual carnival. It’s no secret the town is dying and we need the money.

I already wasn’t thrilled with having been the one relegated to the negotiation process, but honestly, I’d gotten kind of used to it in the four and a half years that I’d been working as the mayor’s secretary. It kind of went with the territory by this point.

Dealing with cocky entitled assholes, however… I did not have to do that. And I wasn’t exactly in the mood for it today.

I almost ignored the guy and just kept walking. But something about his tone. And the posturing. And that stupid cocky smirk on his stupid sexy face.. Well, it got right under my skin almost immediately. I turned and stared him down, a dismissive roll of my eyes as soon as mine settled on his. Only after lingering far too long on decently enough kissable lips.

I mean.. Not that I’d ever admit that in a thousand years, especially not to that fucking guy…

“You’re kind of brave… For an idiot.” I stepped a little closer to him and a little further from the door. He walked over to me, staring down at me as he rubbed his chin.

“Do you even know who I am?”

“Uhh. My guess is nobody special. I mean you’re literally getting your ass beaten for a living. On live television, in your underwear. So..” I shrugged.

“Ouch.” the guy cringed a little, a hand over his heart. Teasing smirk in place and a look in his eyes that somehow made me both want to strangle him and climb the man like a tree all at once. I backed away when he stepped even closer.

“I mean all that may well be true but.. Who’s the one actually making money, huh? Because my guess is you barely survive on a secretary’s salary. I mean… Since you want to go there.” he smirked just a little more and I grit my teeth. He had a point. And given the fact that the town’s budget was a nightmare at the moment, my salary and paychecks were only getting smaller and smaller.

“Meathead.”

“Stick in the mud.”

With the last pleasantry exchanged, I spun and stormed out, making sure to let the door slam behind me as hard as I could possibly slam it.

XXX

The carnival was just starting to kick into gear and I rushed around, meeting with vendors and the people hired to run the petting zoo, the ice rink and the few actual rides that we were going to have on the midway. I was running on coffee and fumes at this point, and when my friend Georgia walked up, tapping my shoulder, I turned and tensed a little, preparing for whatever bad news she was about to give me.

“Bob can’t do the kissing booth.” Georgia informed me.

“What do you mean Bob can’t do the kissing booth?” I asked, the words leaving my mouth in a whine. I didn’t have time for this.

“I mean that Bob got arrested last night. It was on the 6 o’clock news, Jocelyn. He robbed the Home Depot over in the next county? Tried to make off with 3 grand in tools and a giant tree…They had a chase and everything.” Georgia was barely hiding a laugh and I groaned, raising a hand to drag through the front of my hair.

“Okay, can we get Tom?”

“You know Tom’s girlfriend isn’t gonna loosen up the leash she has him on long enough to allow that.”

I grimaced. My eyes settled on a group of the wrestlers from that AEW show that was stranded in town for the time being and I rubbed my chin. “Actually, Georgia?”

“Yeah?” Georgia was raising a brow, but when she saw my smirk, she gave a soft laugh. “You have an idea, don’t you?”

“I do, actually.. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before...Go find everyone we had originally signed to do it. Tell them they might not have to man the kissing booth, but to be on standby, just in case...If I can make this happen.. This might just put some actual money back into the town's funds..”

Georgia’s eyes followed my intent gaze and she leaned in, mumbling against my ear, “I call dibs on the one with the lashes and Jesus hair.”

“All I can tell you is that I’m going to try.”

And after finishing off the rest of my coffee, I took a few deep breaths to center myself. Then I marched over to the group. Surprisingly enough, after explaining exactly what was going on and just how bad our town’s financial situation was, there were more than a few willing participants who eagerly signed themselves into a slot at the kissing booth. Some of them were even asking if they could donate directly, which I gratefully thanked them for and gave them the link to the GoFundMe that Georgia and I had set up back in the fall as a last resort.

As I walked off, I heard my name being called. And I didn’t have to turn around to know exactly who was the man calling it.

I did wonder how the hell he knew my name, exactly, and for a second or two, I simply pretended to ignore him, focusing more on walking over to where the animals were being unloaded and herded into the indoor building where the petting zoo and arts/crafts booths and some of the 4H booths from our local high school were already setting up for the day.

But he was persistent.

He caught up to me, a thick fingertip jamming into my shoulder impatiently. After another second or two, I turned to look up at him, glaring.

“You again? What exactly do you want? Because I’m entirely too busy to have my time wasted.”

“You didn’t ask the obvious choice to be in a kissing booth?” he pointed to himself and I nearly snorted in laughter. I wanted to double over, but I kept myself together. He stepped closer. And before I could stop myself, so did I.

“It’s a kissing booth, sir. Not a pay me to shut the fuck up booth. Perhaps if it were a pay me to shut the fuck up booth, your services would’ve been needed.”

“You know a lot of women would pay good money to see me.. Not to mention kiss me… Right?”

“Maybe in your own deluded mind.” I argued, sensing that even as I did so, it was pointless. That for whatever reason, this was going to end with him, adding himself to the line up.

,, not that I’d ever admit it, but he does have a damn good point. If I liked cocky jackasses…” I thought to myself, quick to shove that little thought out. Because honestly?

The guy was exactly my type… Circa four years ago, that is. I’d have eaten that right up.

I shoved the list into his hands and smirked. “Let’s just see about that, shall we?”

The smirk that came told me that I’d hit the nail head about him being the type unable to turn down a challenge.

He took the clipboard and signed his name on the list.

“See you at 7?” he called out to me after I’d taken the clipboard back and I was walking away. I stopped to look back at him and shook my head. “You’ll see me in your dreams, Maxwell.. That is your name, right?”

“It is.” he beamed at me and took off, nearly colliding with his giant of a friend, a guy named Wardlow that I’d actually talked to around 15 minutes on the day that I went in to see if the roster would like to be the special guest stars of this years carnival.

It felt like yesterday and not nearly three days prior.

And the biggest part of those three days had been spent with me, replaying the whole meeting between Maxwell and I over and over in my head.

Yeah.. If I know what’s good for me, I will stay far,far away from that kissing booth tonight.

XXX

He’d been watching the line like a hawk since he manned it ten minutes before. He’d been managing to keep an eye on her all day, knowing that she hadn’t left the carnival yet. Maxwell just knew that if he could get her in the kissing booth’s line, she’d quickly realize just how much she was lying to herself.

Just the thought had him smirking to himself. He spotted a young woman that he’d seen Jocelyn talking to most of the day in the line for Kris Statlander and he cleared his throat, trying to get her attention. She eyed him and then waved when she recognized him.

“Think you can come by my line when you’re done in that one? There’s something I have to know...”

“Dude… you are so barking up the wrong tree right now, if you’re trying to hit on me...” the brunette explained, shrugging. “Was there something you wanted though? Because it’s almost my turn. If you make it quick..”

“Your friend.. Uhh.. Jocelyn… has she said anything about me at all? Like.. anything that would indicate that she wanted to kiss me?” Maxwell asked the question and waited impatiently, rolling his eyes when one of the women in the front of his line cleared her throat for the fifth time, demanding her kiss already.

Jocelyn’s friend shrugged. “That she wants to strangle you but she also wants to climb you like a tree. You know she’s got a temper, right?”

“Yes, I realize this.. She really said… That.”

“She did. Also said that she’s going to stay as far away from this booth as possible, because you’re in it and she’s not giving into temptation.”

“Yeah, we’ll see about that. Thank you. This helped me a lot.” Maxwell thanked Jocelyn’s friend and turned away, rubbing his chin in thought as the plan began to piece itself together. And just when he thought he might not even get a chance to try out this plan of his, he happened to spot her wandering past, a steamy mug of cocoa in her hand as she talked to 3 other women.

Smirking to himself, he called out to her.

“Jocelyn.. Remember what you said earlier? About how nobody wanted to kiss me? Well,” he gestured to his little line and waited on her reaction. She looked up, grumbling as she shielded her eyes from the lights to see him better, all while tapping a Bearpaw clad foot against crunchy snow.

“What can I say? There’s not many eligible men in my town?” Jocelyn mused, shrugging. She bit her lip and took a deep breath.

“See… I think you’re fighting obvious feelings.”

Jocelyn’s sudden all over tension had him rubbing his chin thoughtfully. By now, everyone in the line and everyone around them or passing by was stopping, staring intently at the little confrontation.

“Right. I mean, if you’re talking about disdain then yeah.. You’re one hundred percent right.”

“If you really can’t stand me then you won’t have any problem at all coming over and kissing me… Right?” Maxwell challenged, chuckling when her mouth opened and closed and he heard her muttering a few obscenities under her breath.

Not even Wardlow’s warning headshake would stop him. No, he was determined. One way or another, this whole thing ended now. Tonight, he was getting her out from under his skin.

XXX

“Did he seriously just... “ I muttered, swearing as I dragged my fingers through my hair and glared angrily at the kissing booth that Maxwell currently stood behind.

“I ought shove snow down those fancy dress pants. Maybe that’d cool down the raging fire in his dick.”

“Or, you could call his bluff and go kiss him?” from my left, my friend Alexis spoke up. I bit my cheek and shook my head vehemently. “Oh no. No,no,no,no.. Not gonna…”

When Alexis and Chandler started to cluck at me, I gave them both my best and most firm go to hell look.

“She wants him.”

“All she’s done for 3 bloody days is fume about the man.” Chandler teased and finally, I stomped my foot, glaring at the booth. I swallowed hard and then shoved my hot cocoa at Alexis. “You’re going to wanna hold that.. Just so I focus more on kissing him to prove your asses wrong and less on how much I want to dump it over his damn head.”

“I knew she had the hots for him!”

“You go girl! Go get your man, boo.”

I wanted to turn and shush them both, but I was too focused. I shoved past all the others and slammed a 5 dollar bill down on the false wooden tabletop. Then I grabbed hold of that ridiculous Burberry knockoff and tugged his mouth right against mine greedily, very nearly pulling the man over the table between us in the process. “Does this prove you wrong?” I muttered, a whine closely following as he seemed to pick up and clue in, his hands going to my hips, pulling me in even more before drifting upward and tangling in a half fallen down fishtail braid that I had my hair tied out of the way in. At first, I’d been gripping that stupid scarf to keep him close or push him away at will. But as his tongue boldly darted right past my lips and clashed with mine hungrily, I wound up gripping hold of a handful just to stay upright as the feeling in my legs proceeded to vacate, making them feel as if they were jello from the knee down instead. He chuckled as the kiss broke and we pulled apart.

I wiped my hand across kiss swollen lips and glared at him. “Well?”

“Oh, you proved something alright, princess. And if I didn’t have twenty five more minutes left in this booth..” Maxwell trailed off, his eyes roaming over me before settling on mine. The cocky smirk was gone, replaced by a more gentle one.

I was just about to walk away, go somewhere and take a few minutes to pull myself back together, but he caught up to me, tapping my shoulder. I turned and he grabbed my hand, pressing a slip of paper into it.

“If you want to get to know the real me, Jocelyn.. I have a 9pm reservation for us. Ask for Maxwell Friedman’s table.”

I eyed him as he shoved back through the crowd, taking a bow at the catcalls and cheering awaiting him as he took his place at his kissing booth again.

“Ooh… are you going?”

“Maybe.” I answered my friend Chandler’s question as I tried and failed at not staring at Maxwell intently…

Maybe I’d been wrong about the guy.

Maybe going tonight would at least be a fun distraction. One I’d been wanting for a while now….

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