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absolutebl · 5 months

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This Week in BL - I'm finding rankings difficult, there's a lot of middle of the pack action and some serious top contenders

Organized, in each category, by ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

Dec 2023 Wk 1

Ongoing Series - Thai

Last Twilight (Fri YT) ep 5 of 12 - I love how they’re slowly revealing bits of their past to each other. It parallels the slow burn of them falling in love with each other. Knowledge + understanding = affection. I cried during the part with his doubles partner, of course I did. As has been mentioned many times in this blog, I am a sap. Also I’m realizing that there is something particularly clever about this show: Because Day is blind, there must be a ton of physical touch. And physical touch is something that Thai BL does really well.

(I gotta say, while I ADORE JimmySea in these roles, a small part of me wonders how JoongDunk would have handled these parts.)

The Sign (Sat YT) ep 3 of 10 - Phaya is SO DAMN SMITTEN. It’s great. Have I mentioned recently how glad I am Billy got this role? This was the: “it’s not a date” date ep.

I gotta say these 2 BLs are neck and neck favorites right now.

Cherry Magic (Sat YouTube) ep 1 of 12 - Uh oh. I like it a lot. I think I was always going to because I have a soft spot for TayNew on screen. It is such funny to watch Tay play such a stiff character. I like it. This is very fast paced for a Thai BL I wonder where they’ll take it with this speed, are they’ll following the manga more closely?

My Dear Gangster Oppa (Thurs iQIYI) ep 7 of 8 - Wait, no. Wahl you’re such a problem. The pacing of this is very KBL. I’m not mad about it but it feels odd in Thai. Still enjoying this one the most as my "early in the week" offering.

For Him (Thurs iQIYI) ep 2 of 10 - The booty call flirting is next level with these two. Like Bed Friends but with less pain. I love that Nail is such needy evil wild child - the story gets all its tension from that.

Baby boy gives off so many danger signals I wouldn't tap that with a 10 ft… pole. Him is a braver queer than I. I do like how the high heat is being used to drive the story. It stands in stark contrast to Playboyy. Which is using high heat to drive, well... piles apparently.

Twins the series (Fri GaGa) ep 6 of 10 - I'm enjoying it again, the main couple is getting more BLish.

Bake Me Please (Mon Gaga) ep 3 of 6 - Shin and Peach flirting is very cute. Although they got into that sack swiftly. Guy leaving was contrived and reactions overwrought but okay babies.

Absolute Zero (Weds iQIYI) ep 11 of 12 - Now I'm mostly just confused.

Which timeline are we in?

Do they know each other in this one's past or not?

Have they met yet?

Who has which memories of what?

I feel like I’ve been through a lot for the show.

I’m not saying the reunion scene in the theater was worth it, but it was a really spectacular reunion scene. I’m terrified that there’s one more episode. I wish it had ended here.

Cooking Crush (Sun YT) 2 of 12 - I’m just not that into it.

Pit Babe (Fri iQIYI) ep 4 of 14 - A new ship has been set afloat, we are now Team #WayKim / #KimWay and if you're not with us, you're against us. Trash watch happening here.

Middleman’s Love (Fri YT & iQIYI ep 5 of 8 - oh look, it’s everybody’s favorite big brother!

That was a kind (and kind of lovely) coming out sequence. KingUea being the worst best Gay Advice Dads is awesome. Mai is SO SWEET. And we end on some good old miscommunication / misinterpretation, so that Jade can behave in an even more unhinged manner next ep. Our brief respite from absurdity has ended.

My Universe (Sun iQIYI) Fake Love ep 16 of 24 - They cute fake bf but it’s oddly unappealing. I mean most us queers have slept with each others exes, that’s swimming in a small pool, for ya. In my experience, only hets get butt hurt about it. (Hets never use enoug lube, they butt hurt about everything.) So the whole drama just felt confusing to me. Or maybe that's just my experience with swimming in lube? 4/10 whatever... not recommended

Playboyy (Thurs Gaga) 4 of 14 eps - I’m seriously considering dropping this.

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

VIP Only (Taiwan Fri Gaga) ep 4 of 10 - They cute. Are aquariums now gay? That’s not the definition of fish that I grew up with.

Sahara-sensei to Toki-kun (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 2 of 8 - I'm suffering from terrible second lead syndrome. Glasses guy is new Best Boy. Also, Rise is trying to earn the Namgoong Award for Best Wingman.

It Finished But...

SHADOW (Thai Gaga) 14 eps - completed it's run. Reports are:

It's pretty good horror but not BL. Ending is unresolved.

Given that info and this review here, it's not for me. DNF

It's Airing But...

Behind the Shadows (Korea movie) - a historical I'm interested in (if it's BL) but have no idea how to find.

The Whisperer (Sun ????) 10 eps - Thai horror BL that ALSO involves cheating (what joy is mine). I don't think even the perfect single dimple can motivate me to watch. Word is... it's terrible.

7 Days Before Valentine (Weds WeTV) 10 eps - Giving me Luminous Solution vibes. I'm waiting to binge if it's safe.

Beyond The Star (Weds iQIYI) 8 eps - House of Stars meets Boyband. I was NOT impressed with ep 1. Been told I shouldn't bother.

What Did You Eat Yesterday Season 2 AKA Kinou Nani Tabeta? Season 2 (Japan Gaga) 10 eps - I find this series more fun to binge, so I'm waiting until after it completes its run next week.

Next Week Looks Like This

12/14 Dear Kitakyushu (Thai/Japan movie) in theaters in country only, I know nothing about distribution.

Still coming:

12/23 Dead Friend Forever (Thai horror) iQIYI

Original 2023 forthcoming BL master post (see comments, some are inaccurate, NOT KEPT UPDATED). With the end of the year upon us I'll do an "announced for 2023 but never happened list" soon.

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Of course I loved all the little language moments. I am here for the kinkification of phi.

That request for a shirt was v sexy phi+na. Thank you Jimmy.

Last Twilight bringing the pronoun and particle game to play hard.

It was a nice kiss. (Absolute Zero)

This as a perfunctory flirting kiss, I anticipate we still have The Kiss to come.

I love that Phaya's personality seems to be spin doctor, just accuse the boy of doing that you are already doing to him (or want him to do to you).

Boyfriend shirts!

And a meta reference.

The Sign is basically made for me.

(Last week)

#this week in bl #bl updates #Thai BL #Last Twilight #The Sign #my dear gangster oppa #cherry magic #for him the series #absolute zero #middleman's love #My Universe Fake Love

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hungerpunch · 6 months

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hi I love you longest and fiercest and kind of gross, my lobot. Will you tell me a story about Pierre and Este and Charles that hurts me real good in all my gayest bits??

ginba you always say the sweetest things (✿◡‿◡)

i guess i may have something ha ha ha. please note that while i've done some research i am not an expert so if anyone has a timeline qualm, have mercy.

He's 13 when he kisses Esteban, soft and scared and burning for it.

He's been confused about his friend for months, vexed by how the innocent urge to spend all his time with Esteban seemed to go from from something boyish to something more, something worse. He's unsure when Esteban's dark gaze started pricking at his skin instead of sliding off like water. Ashamed to admit exactly when his thoughts started being consumed by a repetitive longing to touch Esteban's inky black hair, or fit his hands around the disproportionately skinny clutch of Esteban's ribs.

But it happened. It did. And it's tortured him.

And Esteban kisses him back.

Pierre just had his first kiss with a girl a few weeks back. It made him feel warm and excited, an adrenaline rush that he couldn't stop smiling about.

Kissing Esteban makes him feel sick.

please tell me, Esteban begs over text after weeks of radio silence from Pierre. did that kiss mean anything to you?

No, Pierre texts back with shaking fingers. Sorry, he sends, and watches their friendship unravel over those next few and final years. At their best, they manage a stiff cordial, an all right, a phony politeness. At their worst, they're made of actively hostile barbs and little pushes. Everything from cold shoulders and rude hand gestures in between. There are so many factors that make Charles different. Age. Pierre having a little more job security, some therapy. Not to mention that Charles feels inherently safe and sure whereas Esteban had felt like holding his skin to an open flame: dangerous and reckless. Esteban is a good boy but he's got a bastard in him. Charles is just sweet, only sweet, through and through. Even when he's being bratty, it's vanity. Not deep. It doesn't linger. Nothing about Charles, not even that first disbelieving kiss, makes Pierre feel sick.

It becomes an open secret. It's wide out in the open for witnessing, hidden in plain view between hugs and hip-grabs and pressing close to whisper. The media doesn't look close enough to see it, team principals refuse to see it, non-friends see it and don't care, and friends tease them mercilessly in private.

Pierre is 22 the first time he has to contend with Charles, Esteban, and alcohol in the same space. At least, alcohol with the intent to get fucked up, rather than the occasional glasses of wine at family dinners of their youth. Pierre is no stranger to drinking but he hasn't exactly learned his hard liquor limits yet so he's leaning heavy and kind of sloppy on the bar while he waits to catch the bartenders attention. Charles is at his left side, patient, when an elbow shoves in to Pierre's right and a stick-like body wedges in.

Pierre recognizes him by scent first because he doesn't think Esteban will ever in his life stop using the same soap and deodorant combo.

"Ah, shit," Esteban says out loud when he looks down (down!) and notices it's Pierre he's shoved in next to. "Of course," he says with disdain, black eyes shifting from Pierre to the ceiling like he can't believe his luck.

Pierre, drunk, bristles. "Ah, fuck you." Esteban's spidery eyebrows raise at the back talk. Pierre feels a hand at his waist. "Are we having a problem?" Charles' voice sounds, loud enough to get both their attentions.

Esteban stares at Charles for a beat too uncomfortable before letting one corner of his lips furl into a lazy smirk. When his gap teeth glint behind the slow parting of his lips, they might as well be fangs. "No problem, Charles, if you keep your dog on a leash."

The comment winds Pierre, a brimstone fist in his solar plexus. "I'm not a dog," he says oddly, stunned for a second. Then the anger comes.

At 22, Pierre hasn't put on the pounds of muscle his future promises just yet, which is good because it means Charles is physically capable of dragging Pierre out of the bar before he can wring Esteban's neck.

At 22, he's insulted by the idea of being Charles' dog.

By the time he's 24, he's old enough to know he likes it. Both in bed, thick band of leather around his throat, and in the paddock, arm draped over Charles' shoulder protectively, waiting for Charles to sic him on somebody.

"Good boy," Charles will say and Pierre will think I would rip someone to shreds with my teeth for you. The only thing is, is that when the chips are down for Esteban… he has the same thought. The same viciousness in him. I would rip someone to shreds with my teeth for you, too.

#lo fic #pierre gasly #esteban ocon #f1 #ask #thekinkstheycarried

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natrome · 7 months

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this is the "what are the projects that are the foremost contenders for me to work on in my break between finishing SMST and starting lightless labyrinth and silent spiral" post. i want to give a general overview of what they are, the pros and cons of working on them, and how likely i am to dump time into them

this post got /disgustingly/ long, so to spare your dashes, under a readmore it goes

Partial rewrite of Life Out of Balance and add significant material to Lighting Out for the Territories

so, It Is Known that by a fairly wide margin, LOOB and LOFTT are the worst parts of WIAW. they're not complete write-offs, but they have foundational, structural issues that are like. breaking the series haha.

LOOB has one strong arc (annerose's story), which is very grounded and has a natural emotional flow to it, and has a strong thematic throughline. unfortunately it also has one weak arc (reinhard's story), where i couldn't really figure out how to pull together a like. strong enough thematic backbone to make it function as a /story/ rather than a disjointed series of events. the writing itself isn't bad, and there's a lot of things i like about the book (and, furthermore, there are a lot of people who like LOOB the best out of all the books), but this lack of coherency has set me up for major problems down the line. the book is also "fanfic-y" in a way that I would like to resolve-- secondary characters drift in and out of the story expecting the reader to already know and care about them, and events happen in a somewhat random way.

LOFTT compounds all of the existing problems-- reinhard's emotional arc continues to be slim-to-none, secondary characters are given even less development in this novel (except, maybe, muller), the narrative continues to be a series of events rather than A Narrative. it also fails to provide enough setup for the next novel, leaving the alliance side feeling completely bereft of the interesting meaning that the empire side has. most people who drop WIAW drop it at LOFTT-- it's an actively bad book that turns away readers.

also my timelines are jacked to hell and back 😩 which needs a fix in general.

so i would like to fix these problems if at all possible lmao

there are a couple thoughts i've had rolling around in my brain, some of which may end up fully happening, some of which might not.

the first option is to get rid of Reinhard's POV in LOOB entirely. i think this would be an interesting but difficult thing to do: rein is the main character, or he should be, but right now he's just sort of wandering around his own story. i think part of my problem is that i find a lot of other people's reactions to rein easier to write about than rein himself. i think it might be possible for him to have more of an impact on the story if, like in canon, people are recognizing him as this strange, maybe more-than-human force of nature, rather than being inside reinhard's "oh my god let me out of high school" head lmfao.

of course, this is actively counter to my intentions for WIAW as a whole-- i want to provide a humanizing story. (but what does it mean for 'nat rome' to humanize the victor? 🤔). but i think if i do this, i can maybe use that inhuman POV to make LOFTT more interesting, by suddenly being inside rein's head where we weren't before.

the second thing that should definitely be done is, as i said, give fredrica /way/ more screentime and chapters. i think building a contrasting narrative between the musel family and the greenhil family would be interesting and a good way to both get a greater worldbuilding depth in the alliance (get up close and personal with the politics earlier) and elevate fredrica from a secondary to a primary character.

similarly, i think caribelle needs chapters-- the story has not yet had an inside POV on the earth church, and having one i think would move it further into the realm of a concrete and vital plot element rather than something that exists and functions only because it exists in canon.

and it wouldn't necessarily happen until LOFTT, but jessica could also use some chapters. she needs to get radicalized i think.

granted, the issue with all of these things is like-- i can say "oh, i'll give these people chapters" but i don't actually have anything for them to do. which was sorta the problem with LOOB and LOFTT both-- there's just. events that happen because I needed An Event to happen to make the plot move forward to fill the book lol. so all of this is something that would need to be workshopped in a pretty severe way.

as you can see from the sheer volume i've written here, i'm fairly serious about this one as a project lol. i think if i'm going to rewrite these books, even in part, now is the time to do it, because it will set me up in a much better position to write lightless labyrinth. it will give me plot threads to work from, it will give me an emotional throughline that i can draw on, and it will stop me from feeling just plain bad about having to write rein's sections lol.

this would be a pretty ambitious project and i estimate it would take no less than 5 months, but it would also i think be worth that time.

the "alternative" to this is to write instead a whole bunch of short stories that attempt to plug all these holes. but this would make the existing reading-order problem much worse, while not meaningfully fixing the "LOFTT is a total turn-off to readers" problem, b/c nobody's going to stop reading LOFTT to go read a short story plunked down in the middle of it.

[TBD Phezzan novella]

this is also a WIAW project. this one i don't want to talk about /too/ much but it would probably be a dominique-POV side story that gives insight into the political situation on phezzan just prior to the alliance's invasion. i think it's necessary to give phezzan a whole lot more development politically, and there's no way to do that without an insider pov. in general i'd like to answer the questions of

where is rubinsky going and what is he planning post alliance invasion

what is the actual relationship of the earth church to the phezzan govt

what do dominique and kesserling hope to accomplish by putting him in the position of the alliance's puppet ruler

what is UP with that particular weird tangle of relationships [tie into the families overall narrative]

i'd want to keep it short, no longer than something like pictures of decency. if i don't decide to write this as a standalone project, it could get looped in to either the LOFTT added-material, or it would get folded into lightless labyrinth. but since it concerns events that happen prior, it probably makes more sense as a standalone. also it being standalone would make it easier to write, and i (and maybe this is silly of me) really like the WIAW novellas haha. i know they do nothing but confuse the timelines but they feel so nice in my brain

"finish" as in a mirror, dimly

what does it mean for my collection of short stories to be "finished" anyway lmao. there's a bunch i want to write that i think would make interesting additions to the collection, and i want to get the thing printed out, but i'm also aware that i could probably keep writing canon-compliant short stories for the next 10 years and not run out of things to say lol. so like where do i call that book done? what do i put in it? idk. but i like writing the stories and i have a vague list of them that i'd like to get through (+ a mental list of edits i'd like to do to the existing ones) so it might be fun to spend a couple months doing nothing but writing short fics

[untitled arle heinessen/book of exodus pastiche fic]

god. ok. while this is of all of these the least readable (i'm sure my audience is like. 10 people.) it is unfortunately the one i'd want to work on the most lol. i really want to write a verse drama......... unfortunately. the gist of it would be to write out the arle heinessen story as like a commentary on the foundational myth/civic religion of the Alliance, through the lens of the exodus narrative. writing it as a play i think would help me keep the scope in check (sitting down to write a novel i think it would get really out of hand lol), and i want to write a play real bad, and i want to write a verse play real bad, and i think it would be fun to give this project to "the real dietrich bronner" (since he's from the alliance, and is a playwright) and then have a frame narrative of Nat Rome's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Earth Trip to string up around it.

this is ofc the most self indulgent thing ever lol. but it really makes my brain soooo excited to think about writing it. so i really really want to. even if the end product is borderline unreadable 😂 i'm in my flop era i might as well embrace it lol

finish every hateful instrument

i can practically feel the like 4 people who read itsoh yelling and screaming at me through the screen to finish this one lol. i should. i really really should. i've been working on it on and off for the past several years, and it would be good to just sit down and actually devote my full and undivided attention to finishing it. i love it as a project and i think it's really in a solid place, and having an original novel that showcases exactly what my writing is like that i can hand to people has been something that i have wanted to have for a long-ass time.

the trouble is of course that i have like 4 readers for this project, a situation that is unlikely to change for the better in any significant way lol. so that makes it hard for me to justify working on it.

it's also a tricky and difficult project, and i expect it would take me minimum 9 months to finish. which is a huge time commitment, especially when i do have people waiting on WIAW. at least if i'm writing LOGH fic i'm still theoretically entertaining those people-- that is not the case if i jump ship and go to work on itsoh-verse stuff.

but otoh i fucking love working in the itsoh-verse...... so.

itsoh act 2 rewrite

this is a similar situation to EHI, except it's even less urgent b/c it's not a project that i'm currently in the middle of. i am going to rewrite itsoh act 2 eventually, but idk when the best time to do it is.

the plus side of this one is that it would be /way/ easier than EHI, b/c it's a second draft rather than a first one. I have already solved all of the problems, and just need to put it down on paper. so it would probably be a 4-5 month project, and it would be very nice to have the itsoh rewrite essentially current with itsoh itself (i'm ditching the entirety of what i have for act 3 lol)

the machine that builds the machine

this is a standalone fantasy novel that i want to write, that i have an outline for, that i wrote the first really bad chapter of when i was miserable with SMST, but haven't touched since. (the quick descriptor is like lesbian judasxjesus fantasy industrial revolution labor politics novel lmao.) anyway it would be a very fun project i think, and similar to EHI i would like to have An Original Novel to pass around, but this one got shunted to the back burner due to [gestures] everything else in the whole wide world. the brainworms that made me originally start it have also gone into hibernation, but i think i could get them out of their cryofreeze if i decided that i actually am going to sit down and work on it. this would also be a "i am intending to flog this out for traditional publishing" novel, but like, idk. who knows. we'll see where life takes us lol.

tomorrow ye will get your pay

aka the whale novel. if you haven't been following this saga, essentially there's a fellowship available at a local library that put out a call for proposals for Fiction Writing About Whales using research from their historical whaling collection, and i tailored a novel concept to put in an application for that. so if i get the fellowship, i'll 100% be writing this novel (literary fiction, ~80k words, due in the spring), and if i don't get it i'll 0% be writing this novel. i'll find out if i got it mid october, so i guess i'm kinda writing this whole post prematurely lol

since this one is short and more importantly on a deadline, i think i would have it out the door pretty quickly. but i've also never written literary fiction before. it would be a good break from everything else i think, and this, of all the projects, would be a good step in my ~~~writing career~~~ (for whatever that's worth, which, afaict, is nothing lmao)

something extremely random not on this list

it could be that when i finish SMST i'll just start writing the first thing that pops into my head, or i'll get assigned something for yuletide that will break my brain and make me want to write a novella, or whathaveyou. anything could happen. your duty, should you choose to accept it, is to Stop These Things From Happening. etc.

#a wheel inside a wheel #in the shadow of heaven

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imakemywings · 2 years

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This week’s obsession is Feanor’s adolescence.

Timeline thoughts: Miriel died when Feanor was young but I’m tempted to say not so young that he has no memories of her...if he was the Elf equivalent of 3 or 4, he might still have some hazy recollections of her that I think would likely exacerbate his sense of loss. Assuming then that Finwe takes a few years to process this and decide to remarry, I can see Feanor as potentially 11-13 when Indis comes into the picture which means he contended with his father’s remarriage and the birth of his half-siblings and puberty at the same time, which is just a fun terrible time for everyone.

Content thoughts: And just like...obviously Finwe loves the hell out of this kid, but I also tend to think Finwe doesn’t really get him. So he can try his damnedest and still not be able to get through to Feanor that no one is trying to replace him. And even at such times as he might convince him of that, something else will happen later and Feanor will leap back to his original concern and the cycle starts over again. Indis, of course, is the unfortunate focal point around which all of Feanor’s anger about everything that’s happened coalesces, so nothing she can say, no matter how kindly she might try, is ever going to make him feel better about anything and he will always assume the worst of her intentions (also, yk, she does get mad sometimes, because it would only be natural, that Feanor keeps making her and her kids’ lives so unnecessarily difficult, and that he picks up on very well).

Feanor is somebody with big feelings, and I tend to think Finwe and Indis are much calmer, mellower people in general, which means they are not well-equipped to try to help Feanor learn to manage those feelings, and especially not when he’s dealing with the ongoing trauma of losing his mother and his father’s remarriage. They don’t understand why he acts the way he does, although even they can see I’m sure that a great deal of his anger stems from pain, but they don’t know how to calm him down or get through to him.

This is how he ends up screaming at Indis and her kids or saying terrible things to people or breaking shit and then turning around and spending the next hour sobbing in his bedroom because he is convinced they all wish he had died with Miriel. There is possibly also reluctance on his part to really explain his feelings to Finwe, which of course makes it harder to try to help him with them and also makes Finwe underestimate how upset Feanor really is.

(He also has a habit of deeply romanticizing the period between Miriel’s death and Finwe’s remarriage as the time when it was just him and Finwe doing Royal Family Things together. It was a time of intense grief for both of them and Finwe recalls it that way, particularly as the first Elf in Tirion to lose his life partner, but to Feanor, retrospectively it became a time when his dad’s attention was all on him, and not being shared with Indis and her kids.)

So he ends up in this position of really wanting to be part of a family, but also continually assuming his family doesn’t actually want him around (which is not true) and consequently blowing way out of proportion (from the family’s perspective) things that happen that even suggest any of his concerns might be valid (which he’s constantly looking for). It just ends up being this whole mixed bag of a bunch of people with no bad intentions, but a lot of misunderstandings and mismatched emotional needs and messy feelings and it results in a difficult time for everyone.

Therefore, he clings especially tightly to his role as the crown prince and to Miriel’s legacy, and his insistence on her not being forgotten is both to honor her and because he loved her, but also because if Miriel is forgotten, what does that say about his own position? Suddenly more precarious, isn’t it?

That said, I think there were times Feanor was a fun big brother. He was, of course, always curious and testing things and inventing things, so when he was in a good mood, Findis and Fingolfin could convince him to show them what he was working on and sometimes to help him test things, and they really liked hanging out with him then--they just did not understand why he was so angry with them the rest of the time (because of course they were too young to understand, and I don’t know that the concept of death in general would have registered with a couple of Elf kids who had never seen or heard of anyone but Miriel dying before). So to them he was just incredibly unpredictable in temperament which was difficult for them because they never knew what to expect if they approached him.

Now he mellowed out some with adulthood until Melkor showed up, as most of us do, and I think settling into smithing and jewel-crafting and academics helped him feel he had a place where he belonged and that calmed him down a bit, and his friendship and later romance with Nerdanel made him feel that he had someone in his life who both understood him on an intimate level and also was pretty much by default on his side. But his teenager years did set the tone for his relationship with Indis and her kids and did shift his relationship with Finwe and left him with this underlying fear of someday being replaced by the people he cares about.

#under a cut because this is mostly rambling #aka I want to write a fic but I don't have time #Feanor will tell everyone he Does Not Care about what people think of him #but I tend to think he is a lot more sensitive to rejection than he would EVER admit #because he spent so many years being convinced he was being replaced #or that everyone in Tirion's life would be easier if he had not been born #or if he had died with Miriel #rambling #the silmarillion #tolkien tag #feanor #mine #indis #finwe

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kiwi-tai · 1 year

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What if Suresh was in s4?

Instead of coming in as a bombshell we play s4 as a regular opening islander. For the first recoupling we still get the same choices of Will, Kobi, James, and Najuma as lis

But a few days layers after we’ve gotten to know these characters better there’s a heart rate challenge (I’m not a fan of this challenge so close to the beginning but to stick with the s4 canon we’ll stick with this)

*enter the surprise bombshell* our ex, Suresh.

It’s shocking, it’s drama, the li your coupled up with is nervous coz that man kills the heart rate challenge and they’re even more uneasy since when the heart rate results come in Sureshraised mc’s heart rate the most!

(Even if your not in a Suresh route I think this is valid coz you could just be freaking out your ex joined love island w/ you)

So all the lis have some sort of reason to dump you right? (This is a genuine question) Will wanting to explore things with Thabi, Kobi being interested in Lexi, James and Najuma (?? ). While all this happening anyway we have Suresh trying to graft, apologize, and all that other stuff he was up to in s5.

Anyway all this leaves mc picked last next recoupling which ends you coupled up by default with the one and only Suresh who is obviously very smug about all of this but being nicer about it than he could have been (aka opting to sleep on the daybed).

Next night is when Bruno and Youcef arrive (I realize now this schedule is a little out of canon order but I hardly remember the timeline of s4 well) they get in and Bruno being Bruno is a strong contender when your only other option is your cheating ex.

So Suresh is hurt but determined regardless to win mc back and that night he sleeps inside. That convo from s5! (Coz I’m still not over him asking mc if he should leave)

Mc got tough choices to make but secrets challenge makes it a little easier when they discover Suresh had been flirting with the waitress while they were together!

So next recoupling Suresh isn’t an option (idk about dumplings and stuff coz this thought is only expanding as I continue to write this).

I can see Suresh coupling up with Cora when she comes in or Najuma or Valentina in the meantime as a trying to let mc move on thing but eventually that secret about the engagement ring comes up

And since it’s the s4 girlies there’s no “I would never propose to a man he’s supposed to do that” convo I’m looking at you Kat cool it with the internalized misogyny babe

You’re bestie sticks by you of course even if some girls Lexi if she’s still around, probably Juliet too suggest never considering proposing to a man (Juliet would def add some nonsense about power roles in a relationship or something, and just speaking of I feel like she’d try to be Suresh and MCs couples therapist or something like girl pls) on the other hand Angie, Thabi, Najuma, Cora would all be okay with proposing to their partner 100% but that’s beside the point back to this

Knowing mc wanted to propose does switch things up for Suresh and your current couple is a little shaken coz that is pretty serious (alfie had a right to be nervous by this but he took it to far) but you can reassure your partner or tell them that it was really serious and you just might not be completely over that

So if you aren’t over it your suresh route continues and idk did Suresh and mc even talk about this engagement ring? If they did or didn’t they do here anyways and somehow they both get that double date that happened in s5 yea coz that was great drama v hot I loved that the whole dress thing it was great

Then it’s like decision will you recouple with your current partner or go with Suresh

still no Casa coz it’s s4 but when Dylan and Oliver come in so does miss Gabi!

Dylan is still Dylan so he’s the worst but I wouldn’t make Suresh fall for that shit he’d probably go all lawyer on him and while your dealing with that creep you also have Gabi talking about her toothbrush and whatnot. Then we find out about Suresh’s ring too all that jazz. And no musical episode, just prom or whatever, and finale with mc and Suresh winning!

#litg #litg s5 #litg s4 #litg suresh #kiwi talks #damn me coming back to tumblr with full word vomit post of half assed ideas #I’m back baby!#with one functioning brain cell and worms in my head #currently hyper fixated on that fanon version of Suresh my worms made up #just love this made up version of Suresh but hate the rest of the s5 islanders

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goddessofmischief · 3 years

Text

Blue Monday, Chapter Five

Chapter Five

“Lady Loki?” you muttered to your partner. “Do you know about this?” “Believe me, no. I’ve had some... adventures, in the past, but no, I was not aware that a version of myself existed in a permanent female body. It’s not that shocking, either-” But he quieted, right away, because she had staggered out.

She.

You had to admit it - Loki made one hell of a woman. Her hair was dark, her neck long, her skin moon white and pallid. And she was tall.

Really, really tall.

“Amora?” she gasped, her voice strangled and disbelieving. “Amora...” “Oh, stars,” the Loki beside you muttered. “This should be entertaining.”

“I knew you couldn’t be gone,” the woman said. She threw her weapon down, rushing to you, and almost crushing you in a passionate embrace. “Oh, I knew it- Amora, it’s been so long-” “Will you tell her,” asked your Loki, “Or shall I? Who you really are, that you’re not her at all-” Shushing him, you untangle yourself from her arms.

“It’s true,” you said, quietly, and looking into her blue eyes, you almost wished that you could be Amora, if only for a moment, if only to make her happy. “I’m... not.” For the first time, Lady Loki seemed to notice the male Loki at your side.

“Something’s going on here,” she spoke, ominously, picking her weapon up again. “And I don’t like it.”

You gulped.

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” you said. “But... I can try.” ...

She didn’t understand.

It was difficult to fault her for this, of course - it seemed that the alternate universe you and Loki had slipped into was the worst one yet. She told you that Amora, Thor, Odin, and all the others were dead.

She was the only one left.

So she’d come down to Midgard to rule. Without the Avengers, this plan had worked out spectacularly well. And none of the mortals seemed to mind, either, except for the one town you and Loki had been to, who still clung to to the old ways, the old gods.

The town that had previously possessed the tesseract, before she and her soldiers had stolen it.

You were still trying to figure out how you were going to get your way out of this one. Meanwhile, your Loki seemed to almost revel in his counterpart’s disappointment.

“So... that’s it,” you said, awkwardly, glancing up at her.

“Extraordinary,” said Lady Loki, not truly making eye contact with you. “She looks as mine did. Down to the last...” she wound a lock of your hair around her finger. “Curl.”

Loki looked dangerously irritated by this, almost... possessive?

No. This was too much for you to comprehend right now. Having one Loki to contend with was quite enough for a human - you couldn’t even begin to think of the all-out war that could occur if both were to fight over you.

You couldn’t hate the idea, either.

“Yes, well,” he said, briskly, and you noticed that a knife had suddenly appeared in his right palm. “Anyway, we’re partners, and we’re here for a mission.” “Really?” you muttered, unable to help yourself from being sarcastic. “Now we’re partners?”

He ignored you.

“Very well,” said female Loki, settling into a throne. “I’ll do what I can to help you.”

“Good,” your Loki briskly stated. “Give us the tesseract.”

She regarded you.

“That is... impossible.”

“How so?” “Well, I need it. If I am to maintain control of Earth.”

“But you have to give it back to the town,” you said softly, your eyes sad and pleading. “If you don’t, it’ll... destroy everything.” “She’s right, I’m afraid,” male Loki said. “It’ll change the course of history.” “Perhaps I want it changed. Have you considered that? Perhaps I desire to possess the one tool that would allow me to finally have everything I want. If I have the tesseract...” she looked at you. “If I have the tesseract, I can live in a kingdom where no one ever dies.”

You swallowed.

“Please,” you said, sinking to the snow-covered ground and kneeling in front of Lady Loki. “Please, you can’t-”

Your Loki, who already like he was about to kill someone, seemed to think this act was a breaking point.

“Enough of this,” he interrupted, tugging you back on your feet. “Get up. You look ridiculous.” “She’s a queen!” you protested, eyes wide, wrenching your wrist from his grasp. “I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“That’s funny, I’ve been alive for a thousand years. No one ever did it for me.”

He looked to Lady Loki. “What is it that you want?” “What makes you think I’ll want something?” “Because you’re me. I assure you, I know when I want something.”

Female Loki scowled.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll offer you a deal, if the cube is so very consequential. The tesseract... in trade for her.” At this, Loki had the good sense to look panicked.

“No. Absolutely not.” “Why not? It’s the only fair deal that makes sense. I won’t need the tesseract to travel to different multiverses if I have her. You can have the tesseract, and go about your mission. I don’t really need power, Loki. I just want Amora.”

“She does not even know what she is.”

You looked between the two Lokis.

“There has to be another way to settle this,” you said, your voice small. “Come on, we can figure something out-” “There’s nothing to figure out,” your Loki insisted. “Come on. We’ll just have to disappoint Mobius. Not shocking - eventually, I would have done it anyway.”

“Loki, we can’t just go-” “Well, I can’t just lose you!” he shouted. “...Not again!”

...Oh.

Oh, God. Loki was losing it.

This had quickly become personal.

“Loki,” you said, quietly, standing in front of him and grabbing his arms, “Calm down. It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m here. Let’s just walk away, and... we can come back. We’ll figure this out, I promise-”

He shook you off. “No,” he said, removing a set of daggers. “No, this ends now.”

”Loki-”

“Move, or you’ll be hurt.”

You groaned, standing off to the side while the two Lokis squared off and loading your T.V.A.-issued gun.

“Hand over the tesseract,” he said, gesturing at the cube on her shelf. “Last chance.” “Amora,” she countered. “Last chance.”

Your Loki hissed, and they ran at each other. Truthfully, you could barely tell one for the other. Both had similar fighting styles - no, the exact same fighting style.

Neither could win without an edge.

You didn’t want to hurt female Loki. You knew she had the capacity to be good, same as yours did. She just needed that chance.

But she wasn’t giving you that chance. And if she were allowed to possess the tesseract, the power would consume her - and destroy the timeline. Besides, you knew she wanted you. How many timelines would she wreck in her search? How many Amoras would she seek to find?

Decisively, you raised your gun - before an unexpected thought made you falter. Loki was a god - so was Lady Loki. A gunshot wound, even from a technologically-advanced gun, would barely harm either of them.

And a different thought struck you. A different... much more dangerous thought.

Loki was a god.

But you weren’t.

Slowly, you raised the gun to your chin, trying to stay calm.

“Y/N?” you heard Loki shout, mid-stab.

Stabbing? It had escalated to stabbing, now?

Well. You really shouldn’t have been all that surprised.

“Amora,” female Loki uttered, stepping toward you. “Amora, whatever you’re thinking, don’t-”

“I have to!” you said, trying to make your voice panicked and convincing. “Otherwise... you’ll kill each other. And it’ll be my fault.”

“Amora,” she whispered. She raised her hands to cup your face, “Don’t..”

The panicked expression hadn’t entirely faded from your Loki’s features, but you knew he had caught on, slightly. Unlike Lady Loki, he knew who you were, he comprehended it. You weren’t a weakness to him like you were to her.

She couldn’t know it. If she had to admit to herself that the Amora she had known and loved no longer existed, it would destroy her.

That is why she had to die.

“Give me the gun-”

“No!”

“Amora, we can fix this. I love you.”

Loki began to creep up behind her.

“Don’t say that,” you cried, tears streaming down your cheeks. The act was over. You reached up to clutch the hands that still embraced you. “Please, don’t say that-”

“I do, I love you, you can’t die-”

“But you can,” said Loki, plunging a magically-charged knife into her back.

She collapsed to the ground, and you fell down with her, cradling her in your arms.

“Loki,” you whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

Lady Loki shuddered, her chest contracting and her breathing labored. She reached up, one more time, and ran her hand through your hair.

“Amora,” she choked out, and then she was gone.

You let her fall from your arms. As you did, she slowly faded, disappearing into a golden mist.

“Come on,” said your Loki, gently, helping you up. “It’s time to go.”

“You got the tesseract?” you asked, drying your eyes with your sleeves.

“Yes.”

You nodded.

“Okay.”

...

Taglist:

gorgeourrific-nerd @suwupremeleader @sserpente @tripleyeeet

#reader is a bicon don't @ me #loki x reader #loki x reader angst #lady loki #lady loki x reader #amora #amora the enchantress #loki imagine #loki disney+#loki #loki and amora #disney plus #disney +#tom hiddleston x reader #tom hiddleston #loki x bisexual reader

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zenosanalytic · 4 years

Text

Harrow the Ninth: Wordplay and Implication

So I started reading Harrow the Ninth last night(haven’t gotten far; I’m only on page 47), but some interesting stuff cropped up I wanted to yack about. Explaining it requires some Serious Spoilers tho, so don’t read past this point if you haven’t reader further than me and are also avoiding ...spoilers... X|

Ok so: Harrow is obvsl going through some Things. To begin with she seems to be having some manner of psychological break exacerbated by(possible caused by) the Lyctor transformation? A huge part of it is obvsl grief over Gideon -she seems to be avoiding any memory or thought of her and this mental block seems to be impacting her ability to access Gideon’s soul and thus her full Lyctor capabilities- but she’s also overwhelmed by her new senses and her inability to feel physical pain, and a bit unstuck in time? Some of that just might be her grief-driven illness, but so far there’s been some jumping around in the timeline/her memories so it’s possible this is also a side-effect of the Lyctor transformation and existing on both sides of life and death.

Anyway, there’s some nifty wordplay associated with all of this :>

the first one is in an edited memory, and it’s right at the start of it, in the chapter-title for said memory: “Parodos”.

Now most obvsl, that looks&sounds allot like “parody” and, while they aren’t directly related, the connection btwn the two is STILL intriguing: “parody” comes from para(side/beside/parallel) and oide(song), in the sense of a comical/mocking “parallel” to another song; parodos literally means entrance, though specifically it’s the name of a SIDE-entrance in greek theater-design which gave actors access to the stage, or the chorus access to the orchestra, BUT ALSO it was the name of the song(oide) the chorus sung upon first entering the play, coming after the prologue. The connection to an actual side-entrance makes me suspect the “par-” phoneme is from “para”, but I can’t find a constituent breakdown of “parodos” so it’ll have to remain a suspicion :T

Regardless: it is, in the manner of a proper parodos(even IF Harrow, here, is her own Chorus; this is a 3rd person perspective section), seeming to introduce us to the central conflict of the tale; Harrow is censoring Gideon from her mind, altering her perceptions and capacities in response to her grief, struggling with feelings that she is LOSING her mind(associated with, possibly embodied by, her “hallucinations” of The Body[1]), and clinging to this expression of control as a life-raft among all this trauma. At one point The Body even appears in this memory just to tell her it didn’t happen like this which “gave Harrow a curious strength”.

IntriguinglyER(and this is more of a stretch and idk if Muir really intended this implication) parodos is often popularly confused with/assumed to be related to “parados” which is a fortification embankment built to protect the rear of a military position(it’s basically the backside equivalent of parapet. Parapet=forward, parados=behind). What makes this intriguinger to me(aside from the fun of a FALSE pun for a FALSE memory :p), is that the false memory is part of Harrow’s mental DEFENSES, and in it she asks Ortus Nigenad to PROTECT her by keeping the secret that she is “insane” because, since opening the Locked Tomb and seeing the girl trapped there, she’s been experiencing full-spectrum sensory hallucinations of said girl(ie: seeing her, speaking with her, feeling The Body[the girl] touch her, the whole hog, etc etc). I feel like this is MOSTLY symbolic though, and the REAL secret she’s asking him to protect her from is Gideon’s death(and her “consumption” there of; since becoming a Lyctor The Body has had Gideon’s amber-colored eyes). Of course there’s another aspect to this and one of two OTHER potential secrets; Gideon’s body wasn’t recovered from Canaan House, Harrow does not seem to be in “possession” of her soul(though she does have SOME aspects of Lyctor abilities, so perhaps it’s partial or a connection?); so

it’s possible the SECRET Harrow is actl using Ortus to protect is that Gideon isn’t dead, that they healed her after defeating Cytherea and somehow undid the Lyctor process. OR

They’re keeping Gideon’s existence a secret for some reason

Now I think these are a bit out there theorywise because, while I’m not far into the book, I’m fairly certain that it’s only Harrow who is thinking Nigenad was her cavalier at this point. I mean: the Emperor would have spoken to Ianthe, and there’s no reason why she’d keep Gideon’s existence secret(also everytime the Emperor says Ortus Nigenad it’s attached to a description of his mouth moving oddly, so I’m fairly certain he’s actl saying Gideon Nav and her brain’s editing it to Ortus Nigenad to spare her facing Gideon’s death). Also and SUPER tellingly there’s this passage:

The Resurrecting King took on the expression of a man working out a very difficult and emotionally taxing anagram. He said, “Ortus,” again, but the bile was sputtering up into your throat...”

Now that just seems like an INVITATION to see what Ortus Nigenad can be an anagram of, doesn’t it? And, INCREDIBLY OBVIOUSLY it’s a partial anagram:

Ortus Nigenad

Gideon

Of Gideon’s name. Partial, because it doesn’t include “Nav”, and also there are these left-over letters

rtusna

Hmmm... What can THAT be an anagram of?

rtusna

Saturn

Well flog me with a spoon! I have NO IDEA what this, GIDEON SATURN, could POSSIBLY mean in the context of this convo or of the larger story(also: maybe this anagrams to other words? I honestly didn’t try too hard after this very obvs one. AtRSun??? Taurns?? OF COURSE Harrow would play Horde if she played WoW, but I’d imagine she’d’ve been a Forsaken Warlock, or Orc one at the very least :p), but that we have a character’s name being called an anagram by the narration and then that character’s name turns out to BE AN ANAGRAM of the first book’s, now(mysteriously[2]?) absent, protagonist plus the planet Saturn[3], seems an awful coincidence. Of course that doesn’t mean it ISN’T a Coincidence, nor that it means anything in relation to the story even if it IS intentional; it could be meant to throw off theorycrafters, or just as something Muir thought would be fun to do(making Gideon Nav, “the greatest cav the Ninth ever produced”, a near-anagram with Ortus Nigenad, one of it’s worst). Of course, it could also be a hint to Gideon’s origins, or where she/her body is now. For what it’s worth, I seem to recall the big contenders for her origins were Third through Fifth House, and those seem to be the most likely to be the Gas Giants&GG Moons(Third’s the wealth-house, and there’s probably more concentrated resources in Jupiter and Saturn than on any other planet in the solar system. And, for whateverMORE it’s worth, Saturn WAS the Roman god of wealth&the harvest. If Mars’s ...Martial[X| X|]... associations are a firm enough basis for its guess in the order, then why not Planet Fucking Saturn? Of course the trident theme suggests Neptune, but why in the cosmos would THAT be the third colonized planet in the system? Makes no damn sense |:T |:T).

The last thing(two things?) that I wanted to bring up, though it’s not really related to any of the above, is Alecto, the name for the next book. Presumably, this is The Body/The Girl. Alecto means “Implacable/Unceasing Anger”, and it is the name of one of the Erinyes; the Furies; the goddesses and purveyors of Vengeance. The Furies, according to Hesiod, were born from the blood of Ouranos spilled when Kronos castrated him. Interestingly, the way Necromancy works in this universe(as explained in these early pages) is that the Cohort “breaches” a planet, after which point its “thalergy”(life energy; presumably metabolism-produced energy since necros aren’t snacking on ambient heat&light) begins converting to “thanergy”(death energy, tho it’d be more precise to call it the energy generated by the detachment of a soul from a body), which Necros can use to do Necromancy. The microbiology within a planet’s soil can similarly be drained, as can the animals and plants, and the process of “breaching” allows Necros to draw on the thalery/thanergy of all of these. So Necromancy is a metaphor for environmental/planetary destruction&exploitation. Kronos is a harvest-god(his name is obscure, but probably means something like “the cutter” or “the striker”); Ouranos is the sky(probably a raingod with a name related, hilariously, to the verb for “to piss” :p :p), but at the same time still a planetary deity. Coincidentally, the primary antagonists so far in the book are “Resurrection Beasts” which seem to have been created by The Emperor Necrotising the Nine planets of Dominicus, and who have been pursuing him and his Lyctors to destroy them for this/for becoming Lyctors(Lyctordom is legit called “the indelible sin” by the Emperor himself) ever since. Sounds allot like the Furies, doesn’t it?

In this context, the Kronos Ouranos myth can be read as a story of planetary exploitation/injury(caution: I am NOT saying that’s the intended meaning of the myth originally, just that it is a possible application of it as a lens of analysis[it being referenced by the series through Alecto] to this story), and THAT suggests that Alecto, the Fury, may have been associated with this initial Necrotization(The Resurrection/Nine Resurrections, which SEEMS given what little I’ve read so far to be what they call the initial Necrotization of the Nine planets of the Sol System? Though maybe they were already Necrotized&all used up, and the Emperor revitalized them somehow?? I’m not sure yet), may be something instanced to stop it, or may be a “Resurrection Beast” herself; perhaps the initial form they took before 10k years of thwarted rage pushed them to become more monstrous. Alternately, I wonder if Alecto might be a manifestation or servant of Death? There’s a repeated focus on the Emperor having “defeated” Death, and The Body in the Locked Tomb is repeatedly referred to as a foe he defeated once but could not defeat again, so there are good reasons to disregard all the mythological trappings and focus on the clearer, less metatextual possibility.

Of course: it’s probably none of this and I’m just spinning Fantasy wholecloth from between my entirely metaphorical ears :p :p :p

[1]The Body is The Girl in the Locked Tomb which Harrow fell in love with. I’ll get to why this is relevant very soon after this footnote

[2]I mean we watched her force Harrow into Lyctorship by killing herself, so I’m still more convinced this is all trauma response. Her corpse IS MISSING, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t super-dead. Though: Camilla and Palamedes DID have a contingency, and Gideon DID wink at Harrow post-Lyctoring, and it was ambiguous if this was her impaled body or her spirit/hallucination doing the winking, so I can see ppl running with this theorywise...

[3]which is one of the Houses, obvsl(or at least it’s moons), though I’m only really confident on Sixth House(Mercury), Ninth House(Pluto), and 2nd House(Mars) at the moment. Seventh House is PROBABLY Venus, giving all its connections to poison, wasting disease, and Aphrodite(Cytherea is another name of the goddess), but that’s all just thematic suggestion. Oh also, I figured I should throw this in here given the large digression on Kronos and Uoranos, Kronos is Saturn’s Greek equivalent(or at least, the Romans considered him so).

#Tamsyn Muir #Harrow the Ninth #Harrow the Ninth Spoilers #TLT Theories #The Locked Tomb Series #HtN Analysis #Greek Myth #analytic posts #zA's Wildeyed Guessings

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go-ldy · 4 years

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My top 5 Bughead scenes

5). There were a LOT of contenders for this spot and while I was pretty set on my top four, this was hardest. Honourable mentions to their Seventeen duet in 3x16, "Jug, will you to prom with me" in 3x20 for the sheer adorableness of that moment, and the emotional release of their reunion in 4x15 including the Betty beanie buuuut I ultimately settled on their first kiss is 1x06. I love that kiss. I love Jughead comforting Betty first ("we're not our parents"), he is SO GOOD at reaching her when she is spiraling, like right from the beginning of their relationship. And then his "also" followed by that beat of hesitation & "what... what" before he goes for it. You go and get her, man. And then when he pulls away and Betty keeps her eyes closed and kind of basks in the glow of it before her realization about the car. Like the kiss rocked her world but also cleared and centered her mind. I love love love it.

4). Dark!Bughead in 4x19. I mean obviously this scene was going to make my list. And I specifically mean the scene where Betty says they didn't CUT REGGIE'S BRAKES, what happened was an ACCIDENT quickly followed by Jughead sinisterly saying they can't change what happened and then whispering in Betty's ear while the rest of their friends melted down. Like, that scene just DID things to me. I know it was an in canon AU version of Bughead (a strange sentence to write but here we are) but also, JUST GIVE ME DARK BUGHEAD IN ALL THE FORMS. Plus I will never be over real Betty's reaction to Jughead writing her as a murderous psychopath with "best story ever what a plot twist I love it." This whole episode was a gift and we are blessed to have had it as our de facto season 4 finale. 3). Betty sending Archie to break up with Jughead in 2x05. THE ANGST I LIVE FOR GIVE IT TO ME. Betty being forced to break up with Jughead by the Black Hood and it being the absolute worst thing for her but she has to do it anyway to protect him? Rip out your own heart for the one you love etc., a trope I am always here for. But also not being able to face it herself and so delegating it to Archie instead o m g. "How are you going to put him and yourself through that?" "I was hoping maybe you would do it." Lili just SELLS Betty's pain and anguish in this scene. I ate it all up. And Archie does it in like the worst, most painful way possible because of course he does, it is Archie, why would you trust him with anything. (Dumping via Archie is, by the way, way worse than via text.)

2). Betty threatening Donna in the woods at the end of 4x14, "I know you killed him, the man I love" while wearing Jughead's jacket. THIS SCENE. THIS SCENE. First, is there anything better than Betty's drive to burn everything to the ground, destroy Stonewall Prep, everything, everyone because they hurt Jughead? YOU GET 'EM BB. There is also a noticeable shift in Betty's demeanor in this scene from earlier in the episode. She is almost enjoying herself in this scene. I think at this point in the timeline, Betty knows Jughead is going to be okay. So she has shifted from grief and worry and straight into VENGEANCE for going after her man. Vengeance on Betty Cooper is a LOOK. Plus she gives her "daughter of the black hood" speech, a classic speech, never gets old. All while wearing Jughead's sherpa. Oh my god I love it.

1). The booth scene at Pop's in 1x10. This scene STILL gives me butterflies in my stomach. The way they lay themselves bare to each other. Jughead shares his fears about being an outsider, what if she does not really want him / what if this ends in rejection? And Betty, naming the darkness in herself, showing him the indentations in her palms. It is soft and intimate and raw all at once. The acceptance and love when Jughead kisses her hands is beautiful. The thing about Betty and Jughead is that they know each other's dark, raggedy edges better than anyone else in their lives & they accept and love each other for it. That is true OTP content.

Tagging @imreallyloveleee, @heartunsettledsoul, @thatiranianphantom, and @feisty-aquarius4 for your top five favourite Betty/Jughead scenes. And anyone else who wants to share. There are no bad answers here.

#Riverdale #Bughead #Riverdale discourse #sorry season 3 #you are unrepresented #I'm here for the angst I guess #and season 3 had so little bughead angst #long post

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jebazzled · 4 years

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Why Aren’t People Writing With Me?

Why aren't people writing with me?

Real talk: do you often find yourself waiting weeks or even months between partners replying to your posts? Do people seem to prioritize all their other threads over yours? Do people seem to be just not that jazzed about writing with you? It's the worst feeling, when you're spinning your wheels and on the outskirts, wondering why you're struggling to gain traction. Sometimes, sites just be like that - people writing with their friends, or closed groups hard for a newer member to break into, or folks writing on slow timelines, or not keeping track of how long they've kept a partner waiting. It comes with the territory. But sometimes, it might be your writing that's holding your threads back. I know what you're thinking:

But it's something everyone can genuinely stand to consider, when they're having trouble getting a thread to keep moving: how much of this is my thread partner holding me up, and how much of it is me? Is there anything I can do to keep things moving? No matter how long you've been writing or how advanced a writer you are, it can be easy to forget that writing is ultimately a game of improv, and writing well is only part of the job. Part of the job is setting your partner up for a good time, too.

This tutorial is about writing starters & replies that make your thread partner excited to write back.

We'll be covering:

Starters that stall vs. starters that enthrall (sorry! the rhyme was necessary.)

Common tactics for writing replies - and common pitfalls of them

Alternate approaches to writing replies

Hopefully, these tips and tricks will improve your rp experience - because aren't we all here for a good time?

Onward!

STARTERS

Ah, starters. The bane of every roleplayer's existence. Starters are difficult because they often require some scene-setting, leaving the writer to try to set up a premise and a vibe without powerplaying for their partner. And then, you've got to start the interaction. There's a lot to contend with, so a lot of people avoid starters at all costs.

Personally, I like starting a thread: this way, I'm not waiting on a post; I have control over when it goes up. Thread partners often appreciate you writing a starter for them, so it's an easy way to engender good will. And finally, for me, it lets me make sure the thread is off to a good, actionable start.

Starters come with pressure - the starter sets the tone for the thread. A dud starter will stump your partner on replying, and they may even grow to dread posting. Which isn't fun for either of you!

Some things to consider when crafting a starter that will get your partner excited:

PREMISE Whether you're writing an open thread or a plotted thread for a specific partner, every starter needs a premise. The premise might be simple: perhaps your character is going to pickpocket your partner's. Maybe it's two friends catching up. It could be two strangers bumping into each other in an alley. It might also be more complex: maybe you're setting up an enemies-friends-lovers-enemies-rivals-lovers-friends-enemies plot. Maybe your character is defending the teaching of evolution to schoolchildren before a jury of his peers. Maybe it's a duel.

Generally, the more specific the premise, the better. This doesn't mean you need every beat of the thread plotted out, but it is good to think about: What do we want each character to get out of the thread?

Think of this as your overall goal for the thread. Is one character seeking reassurance or advice? Is there a business transaction being made? Have you and your partner agreed to hurt one character in a duel? If you can't think of an overall goal or point for the thread, the chances of stalling are high. This is common with "catch up" threads, especially ones in which neither character has particularly exciting updates to share. If only one character is "getting something" out of the thread, be careful in your own posts to set up plenty for your partner to respond to. Not every thread will have equal actionable payoff for both characters, which isn't inherently a bad thing. But if your posts don't give your partner much to engage with, the thread can read as selfish or one-sided - which isn't anyone's intention!

How do we want the events of this thread to impact this character, moving forward?

Related to the above, if both characters can walk away from this thread without any change - perhaps reconsider the premise or necessity of your thread. There is no shame in not doing a thread when it wouldn't mean anything to character development or plot progression for either character! "Just because" threads are always the first that drop on thread priorities - why not save yourself the trouble, and plot something you will both be excited about?

What is the most reasonable entrypoint for this thread?

Reality is filled with filler - moments in which nothing interesting happens, but which carry us from point A to point B. Conversation that goes nowhere and just happens for the sake of filling silence. But this isn't reality, this is fiction, which means we can cut the boring stuff and jump straight into the meat. If your premise is Character A pickpocketing Character B, don't open with Character A just wandering around the market, waiting for Character B to wander around the market, so Character A can pickpocket them: close your starter with Character A's hand around Character B's wallet. This gives your thread partner something to respond to (the theft) and in two fewer posts than it would have taken otherwise.

ACTION Dialogue is an engine for plot progression and for character development, and there is nothing quite as satisfying as strong dialogue. But questions, greetings, and other standard ways to launch an in-character conversation aren't your only options.

All a starter needs is action, and saying "hello," "what are you doing," or "hey! That's my pod racer!" are all actions. But actions can be silent, too, so long as they trigger a reaction from your writing partner. Character A pulling their hand out of the butt pocket on Character B's jeans, wallet in hand, begs Character B to react. Character C puking into the same trash can where Character D is searching for the utility bill they need for proof of address gives Character D something to dodge. Character E speedwalking through the grocery store and destroying the greeting card aisle gives Character F something to be horrified at. Even if A, C, and E all do it without saying a word. One thing you'll notice about each of the above premises is that they involve doing something - pickpocketing, puking/dumpster diving, grocery shopping. If you suspect your starters are leaving people underwhelmed, consider building your premise around action. The action doesn't need to be dramatic like the above examples. For instance, let's say that Character G is catching up with Character H after her divorce. They can do this over coffee in Character G's living room - but if they're walking their dogs while Character G's kids are with her ex-husband, you and your partner can use the dogs as emotional stand-ins:

Hannah dug her heels into the ground as Penelope started after a squirrel. Beside her, Gloria and Fifi both seemed not to see it. Hannah had never seen Gloria so out of it, so disconnected from the world around her. It frightened her. "How's Fifi holding up?" she asked, quietly, once Penelope calmed down and they kept walking. "I know Mike wasn't great to her, but - she probably misses the routine?"

Giving the characters some sort of verb to do beyond talking gives you more lenses through which to view an interaction, plus more opportunity for body language for your partner to respond to.

STARTERS: TL;DR Now that we've talked about how to start a thread on the right foot, let's quickly review our main food for thought items. Mind Snacks, if you will:

What do we want to get out of this thread?

Start on track for that result - do not lead with a detour!

Build around action - even small ones

Is the concept of this thread important or interesting? Would we be better served skipping it and writing something else?

REPLIES

Now your thread is off the ground. Excellent! It's a few posts in but your partner doesn't seem very excited - maybe they don't message you about how much they liked your reply, or how fun the thread is so far, or maybe they don't react to the tag in the server; maybe it's radio silence from them until they reply a month and a half later, when they're caught up on the threads they seem to keep shuffling ahead of yours. How do we move your thread up in the shuffle? Make it fun to reply to, and easy to reply to.

COMMON APPROACHES An easy way to tackle a reply is by having your character react to each action and dialogue from your partner's character:

Maycey slid into the navigator's seat of the L2-47 spaceship, almost kicking over a cup of Dark Matter Decaf.

"Sorry," she said, not looking at Brooks. "Are we still checking out Planet 42601, or did General Berry have us change course?" Brooks watched Maycey enter the cockpit, snorting as she almost knocked over his coffee. Though it wouldn't be funny to see what the brew would do to the controls of the L2-47. "No problem," he said. "General Berry wants us to do a pass over 42601, but we aren't doing a full landing."

This reply covers everything Maycey did in her post, but doesn't advance the thread. What comes next? Brooks hasn't given Maycey much information to process, nothing to act on, no juicy body language to consider. Maycey's writer is fully on their own to advance the thread. To move it forward in a meaningful way, they might come up with a plot development they need to run by Brooks's writer to make sure it's not stepping on anything Brooks had planned. They may need to make up some lore. They may need to expand the premise of the thread. Brooks may or may not have helpful input, but when push comes to shove, Maycey is the one who is going to put it in their reply.

Maycey whipped her gaze to her captain, shocked. "But sir - we've come all this way to rescue 42601. Berry - sorry, General Berry wants us to abandon them? Their distress signal took three days to reach us; the atomospheric poisoning has got to be lethal by now." Her hands didn't touch the controls - she couldn't bear to take them off course to the desperate planet. "Sir, we have to do what's right." Brooks took a sip of his coffee, thinking about his own family back on Orbital Sphere 23-Y2K. They'd put out a distress signal years ago, back in his own training days. He'd seen it during radar detection class, and he'd had to ignore it. For the Good of the Galaxy. Not a day goes by that he doesn't think about the flashing signal on his screen, and about clicking the popup window. Dismiss. This, too, is for the Good of the Galaxy. He has to pretend it doesn't bother him. "The right thing is what General Berry says," he said, putting the coffee cup back in its cupholder. "For the Good of the Galaxy."

All of that work from Maycey, and Brooks only gave us one sentence to propel the plot. Yes, he had a lengthy internal monologue debating it - but that interiority means nothing to Maycey, who isn't a mind-reader. In this scenario, the focus on Brooks's tragic backstory, without giving Maycey anything actionable, sets up a very one-sided dynamic. If this happens consistently over one or many threads, the tragic backstory no longer feels tragic in a meaningful way, but just feels like a trite device to be trotted out - to tell rather than show a reader that a character has depth.

How could this post give Maycey more to work off of? Below is the same reply from Brooks, with additions made in green, rearranged wording in blue.

Brooks could feel Maycey's stare - bewildered and accusatory. He can hardly blame her, but she should know by now that this is how the Galaxy stays out of the Great Bezosian Black Hole. Sheer obedience. He avoided her eye contact, took a sip of coffee. Sheer obedience. Just like years ago - back in his own training days. He'd seen it during radar detection class, his own family's distress signal back on Orbital Sphere 23-Y2K, and he'd had to ignore it. For the Good of the Galaxy. Not a day goes by that he doesn't think about the flashing signal on his screen, and about clicking the popup window. Dismiss. This, too, is for the Good of the Galaxy. He has to pretend it doesn't bother him. "The right thing is what General Berry says," he said, putting the coffee cup back in its cupholder - his hands are shaking; it misses the rim twice, sloshes onto the knee of his parasuit. "For the Good of the Galaxy."

This version acknowledges the primary beat of Maycey's post (something we will talk about later) - that is, her accusation - and adds body language betraying his doubts. While interiority is great, externalization makes it possible for other characters to engage with your character's thoughts and motives. Brooks's new post gives Maycey more to engage with, which will better set her up to give Brooks more to engage with, and so on. When you both do the lifting, you both have a better time.

Another common method - especially in conversational threads, especially in "catching up" premises - is to lean on dialogue and, more specifically, questions. But most conversations we have in life aren't nonstop questions!

"Trudy said you got married," Annabelle said, fiddling with the edge of the linen tablecloth. "Is that true? I thought you didn't like Edgar - not like that." Sasha took an enormous bite of raw cucumber, not even bothering to slice it. "We just got engaged, we're not married yet. Don't you like Edgar?" Annabelle looked away, suddenly nervous. She didn't know why it mattered to her whether or not Sasha liked Edgar - only that it did. "He's fine, I guess. But do you like him?" "I do! I love him. Will you be my maid of honor?" Sasha grinned at her friend. She wanted nothing else in the world but for Annabelle to be part of her special day.

This series of posts involves a number of questions both stated in dialogue:

Is Sasha married?

Does Sasha like Edgar?

Does Annabelle like Edgar?

Will Annabelle be Sasha's maid of honor?

And unstated:

Why is Annabelle nervous?

Why does Annabelle care whether or not Sasha likes Edgar?

The stated questions are yes/no questions, somewhat procedural. The unstated question and its implication - that Annabelle cares about whether or not Sasha likes Edgar because she might like Sasha - is a juicier question than the minutiae of wedding planning. But Sasha's writer isn't letting Sasha notice or react to any of Annabelle's body language (her nervousness, her fiddling with the tablecloth) and focuses instead on the simple questions, which are a cover for what isn't being said. Information does not need to be voiced for it to be acted upon. Let's look at the same line of posts, with additions in green for Sasha and in pink for Annabelle.

"Trudy said you got married," Annabelle said, fiddling with the edge of the linen tablecloth. "Is that true? I thought you didn't like Edgar - not like that." Sasha had wondered when Annabelle would ask. She seems on-edge, fiddling with the tablecloth, as though they've never had a picnic outside before. She's not sure why Annabelle is out of sorts, but it's making her feel out of sorts. Sasha took an enormous bite of raw cucumber, not even bothering to slice it. "We just got engaged, we're not married yet. Don't you like Edgar?" She gently grasped Annabelle's fingers, unclenching them from the hem of the tablecloth. "Edgar thinks you're the bee's knees." Sasha's hand on hers - her stomach did a flip, palms instantly feeling clammy, like she could swoon in the summer sun. Annabelle looked away, suddenly nervous. It's worse that Edgar likes her. Makes her feel vile for resenting him like she does. She didn't know why it mattered to her whether or not Sasha liked Edgar - only that it did. "He's fine, I guess. But do you like him?" It's a silly question - of course she loves him; how could she have said yes otherwise? But Annabelle seems not to believe her. Annabelle seems to worry. Annabelle is worried so much of the time - and so much for her - she tries to be reassuring, gripping her friend by the shoulders, offering a grin. "I do! I love him. Will you be my maid of honor?" She wanted nothing else in the world but for Annabelle to be part of her special day. Annabelle is her best friend - the only person she could stand at the altar with besides Edgar.

See how much more complex the dynamic is between these two when they have things to react to other than dialogue?

REPLIES PART 1: TL;DR So now we've addressed two common approaches to replies and seen how they can fall short, and discussed tips for elevating them. Your main takeaways:

Acting is reacting - react to your partner's dialogue AND body language, and give them some to work from, too!

Dialogue is not a game of Questions Only

If you're not driving the thread forward, you're slacking - don't leave it to your partner every time!

SYNTHESIZING: YOUR NEW APPROACH TO WRITING REPLIES

Now that we've discussed the pitfalls of action-by-action responses and dialogue-only threading, let's synthesize all of the above into one methodology for writing replies. The common pitfall of action-by-action responses is that one writer ends up only ever progressing the thread one sentence at a time - thinking of a post in terms of beats helps separate what actually needs substantive response, versus what is background information to inform your response. When I write a reply, I copy and paste my partner's post into the wordcounter window where I write my posts. I read their post and identify the beats - that is, what actually happens. For example:

Getting elected student body president was no joke. Hattie had worked for eleven long years to earn the position - bossed around her peers all the way from preschool. Back then, she'd been interested in power and prestige. But by the time she'd won the election junior year, she was exhausted. Now, on her first day of senior year, she was just excited about the choice parking spot. And yet, someone had the audacity - the nerve - to cut her off on the turn into the Keppler Family Parking Pavilion and slide right into her coveted parking spot. Crooked, so they took up the access lane to the adjoining handicapped spot. Too far forward, enough that she could see the metal RESERVED FOR STUDENT BODY PRESIDENT sign shaking on top of its pole. She threw herself out of her car, aiming the sole of her left Doc Marten into the license plate of the offender's Buick. "Hey, genius, there's no fucking run-off election this year!"

Because this is a starter, much of this is scene setting, which my partner could choose to echo, but the main things for them to react to are what my character - Hattie - offers in the moment:

dramatically throwing herself out of the car

kicking their license plate

swearing at them

Once I've distilled a post to the beats I need to respond to, I work my way through them, creating beats for my partner to respond to. With this method, a reply to the above might look like this:

Aunt Mildred's car was affectionately called The Boat for the first ten years of its life. Huge and unsinkable. That had changed when Aunt Mildred died in a boating accident over the summer, leaving Mikey the Boat's captain. Now, he just called it the Buick. And he wasn't very good at driving it - already he'd been honked at twice, overshot the turn into the parking lot, tires riding up on the curb. He pulled into the first available space. Figured he was outside the lines - but it seemed like the Buick was too wide to fit between lines anyway. And Aunt Mildred had never been one to follow rules. The terrible park job was in her memory. The sound of metal crunching at the back of the car, however, was not. If it's an accident, the Boat - the Buick - always wins, so Mikey gathered his violin case and drawstring backpack from the passenger seat, opened the driver's side door, and slowly got out of the car, turning his beanie backwards as if it mattered while he shuffled in his Adidas slides to the trunk, where a very short, very angry girl driving a Smart Car was trying to put the Boat - the Buick - in its place. "The car's not moving," he said, pulling a roll of Bubble Tape out of his backpack and taking a huge bite out of it. "But thanks for telling me my voting rights."

Mikey responds to Hattie's abuse of his car, but also gives Hattie a lot to respond to - minor dialogue, but a LOT of personal eccentricities that are bound to piss her off.

The dialogue and the action contribute to the trajectory of the thread - and giving Hattie something to play with keeps the musing about Aunt Mildred from feeling self-indulgent.

It's a small shift, going from thinking of posts as paragraphs to respond to to thinking of them as specific, small, actionable moments - but it makes a difference, especially in encouraging writers to be more thoughtful about creating opportunities for their partner to react.

REPLIES PART 2: TL;DR

beats, babey! not every sentence requires a response, but be sure to write some that do, whether it be dialogue or action.

ACTING IS REACTING!!!!!! if you don't give your partner something to react to, you are letting them down!

And that's all there is to it! Hopefully these examples are helpful as you think about ways to drive your plots and threads, and how to keep your own writing great for collaboration. The most important thing is to think of your writing partner. What do they need to be able to write back? What will make this thread exciting for them? How can you make sure this thread isn't serving you alone? Cheers, and happy writing!

#christ this was annoying to format #rp guides #resources #writing resources #rp writing #posts #starters #replies

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zktop10 · 4 years

Text

Guess who’s back with shitty stats?

Writers in Quarantine

This list is for all fics UPDATED in March, 2020. I’ll be doing another list for new March stories. Happy writing to my fellow authors! Readers, please remember to share the love as we all slowly go crazy from being stuck inside. ALSO! Share this list, because Tumblr will ignore it due to the external links!

As always, I excluded Underage, Rape/Non-Con (LOOK AT TAGS FOR #5), and Crossovers.

And finally, these numbers are arbitrary. This list is not a judgement of works but is merely to push up stories that might get overlooked.

Data pulled April 2, 2020 at 1730 EST

Current Sx: 0.69

Note: Alumni means they’ve been on a major Top 10 list before.

1. There is No War in Ba Sing Se by Polywantsanother (Transparency Note: This is my story.) 9.5/10

Rating: T

Tags: Not Canon Compliant, Alternate Universe- Multiple Timelines, Mulligan AU, Slow Burn (but PG because they’re minors), Drama, friends to strangers to friends?

Words: 27,058

Summary: Zuko went to bed as the new Fire Lord; the war had been ended, his friends were safe, and his uncle was running a tea shop. His future was, finally, hopeful.

When Zuko woke up, he was back on his ship sailing toward Sokka and Katara's village.

Lu Ten is alive, Aang is still missing, and there is no war in Ba Sing Se. Still, Sozin's Comet is coming, and Zuko thinks it's his only way back to his timeline.

If this one doesn't kill him first.

Updates every Thursday!

2. Modern Love by GrapefruitTwostep, 9.1/10

Rating: T

Tags: High School AU, 1980s AU, Underage Drinking, Smoking, Fist Fights, Domestic Violence, John Hughes, Slow Burn, Alumni (All Fic & Rated M 2019)

Words: 93,675

Summary: High school should be the best time of Katara's life -- her brother certainly feels that way -- but after being ostracized by her popular friends, things aren't looking so good for her junior year. On the other hand, Zuko already hates high school and is just counting down the days until he can get out.

In order to make this anything other than the worst year on record, they'll have to contend with malicious siblings, overenthusiastic jocks, the worst friends imaginable, and, most insurmountably ... each other.

3. The Summit by AJ_Lenoire, 8.9/10

Rating: M

Tags: Post Canon, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Angst, The Blue Spirit, Slow Burn

Words: 97,573

Summary: To commemorate the end of the Hundred Years' War and to ensure nothing like that ever happens again, the Four Nations agree to hold a Summit every year. Two weeks of political talks, cultural immersion and utter harmony. As Fire Lord, Zuko is in charge of hosting the first, set in the Fire Nation capital. As war-heroes, Katara, Sokka, Toph, Suki and of course Aang are in attendance also.

However, as Katara finds herself yearning for a life beyond that of the Avatar's faithful companion, it appears that politics will not be the only tumultuous waters they have to navigate.

4. The Last Waterbender by myshipsaresunk, 8.7/10

Rating: G

Tags: Avatar Katara, Alternate Universe, Creator Chose to Not Use Archive Warnings

Words: 117,365

Summary: AU where Katara is the Avatar// While on a quest to restore his honor, Zuko stumbles across a girl stranded on an iceberg. Katara has no memories when she wakes from the ice. They journey together through the South Pole, Zuko trying to find the Avatar and Katara trying to regain her memories. A cruel twist of fate pits their destinies against each other and even as Katara is accepting her legacy as the Avatar, Zuko must decide between her and his destiny.

5. The Masks we Wear by JiggleWigs, 8.6/10

Rating: M

Tags: Anastasia AU, Displaced Royalty AU, Graphic Depictions of Violence, IMPLIED/REFERENCED RAPE/NON-CON

Words: 100,465

Summary: AU. Soon after the birth of Fire Prince Ozai's second child, an attack on the Fire Nation Royal Family causes the fall of the monarchy of the Fire Nation and the alleged death of all those related to the Fire Lord. Fifteen years later, with the war ended and the Fire Nation fallen, a young man strives only to support and protect his sister and single mother in the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se, but when a chance to permanently provide for both of them as well as learn the truth about his past arises, he'll risk everything.

6. The Two Sides of the Sea by anothersilentwriter, 8.3/10

Rating: T

Tags: Canon Divergent, Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Fix It Fic

Words: 25,602

Summary: There are two different versions of Katara. One of them sings for blood and controls the drums of heartbeats, and the other stops the tears and heartbreak. She switches between them as easily as a wave crashing into the shore returns to the sea.

Zuko is the only one who has seen both.

7. Thinking Out Loud by jacqstoned, 8.2/10

Rating: T

Tags: Modern AU, Blind Date, No Bending, Fluff, Dating, Humor, Romance

Words: 82,202

Summary: Toph sets up Zuko and Katara on a blind date, and it does not go well. Zutara AU

8. The Lost Firebender by calmecirce, 8.2/10

Rating: G

Tags: Avatar Zuko, Role Swap, Old Man Aang

Words: 25,754

Summary: An AU in which Zuko is the avatar, trapped in ice for 100 years, Aang is a crazy old man hell bent on capturing him so he can teach him air bending, and the whole story is re imagined based on this change:

Water. Earth. Fire. Air.

Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them. But when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar, a firebender named Zuko, and although his firebending skills are great, he still has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe Zuko save the world.

9. Pride & Politics by melps, 7.9/10

Rating: T

Tags: Drama, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn

Words: 60,660

Summary: Three years after the Comet, Katara and Aang part ways. After a mysterious message from the spirit world, Katara leaves home for the Fire Nation. She takes on the role of Ambassador for her people, while facing ominous interactions with the spirit world, threats on Zuko's life, and her own journey into adulthood. My post-series headcanon. Eventual Zutara. Chapter 13: Revelation

10. Scar Tissue by Neva_Borne, 7.9/10

Rating: Not Rated

Tags: Post Canon, Canon Divergent AU, Fluff and Angst, Eventual Smut

Words: 47,535

Summary: Katara and Zuko both nearly die while fighting Azula for the Fire Nation, but the war is won. They have a long journey of physical and emotional healing ahead of them, the world is demanding their help in rebuilding, and Zuko's mother is out there, somewhere. In their mutual struggle to redefine themselves in a world that demands everything from them, they find themselves gravitating towards each other for support. And within each other, they find the strength they both desperately need.

#zutara fanfiction #zk fanfic #fanfic rec list #fanfic recommendation #zk top 10 #feels good to be back #but none of my formulas make sense anymore #my stupid ass has to relearn all of it #but welcome to the pandemic

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jinruihokankeikaku · 4 years

Note

Classpect analysis for a Witch of Mind?

This is a really interestin one, though I’m startin to feel as though I say that a8out all of them ::::p Here u go!! Sorry bout the nearly three-wweek delay, there’s 8een some small technical difficulties ::::p

Title: Witch of Mind

Title Breakdown: One who actively manipulates [bends the rules of, mutates, transforms, innovates through] Mind [super-ego, law, justice, decision-making, dialogue, free will]

Role in the Session: Here we have a cool, restrained Aspect combined with a wild and rebellious Class. The resulting Role is one of skillful navigation of minds and systems, a Hero capable of bending the rules as far as they can be bent without buckling under the pressure. Their Role is to transform Mind (literal minds, as well as dialogue, law, and justice, et al.) into the form that their session requires of it, and as such they are granted a vast quantity of Aspect-related power from the start. The challenge presented to them by the Game is an ethical or normative one, rather than a practical one – that is to say, they are challenged to use their abilities to further the good of the team, rather than to pursue their own ends, despite the temptation inevitably presented by such significant power.

The form that this power will take is, of course, peculiar to the Aspect of the Witch in question – in this case, the Witch of Mind. Mind is often associated with telepathy, in addition to its more symbolic domains, and the various capacities of the Witch of Mind can be extrapolated from this. As someone who breaks and bends the rules of the Mind, the Witch can invade minds with ease, planting ideas and suggesting courses of action either through brute-force invasion of the psyche or through more subtle verbal and conversational manipulation. With enough practice, the Witch could ultimately bend masses of people or beings to their will – a dangerous power indeed. Their Quest will require them to use their power with a moral sensibility, not merely wreaking their will upon the weak masses of consorts (or worse yet, their co-players) but rather subtly shifting the prejudices and decision-making processes in those who are unjust, awakening within them the same sense of justice that burns within their own Mind.

In addition to the temptations that all Witches face, the Witch of Mind must also contend with the challenges peculiar to their Aspect, Mind. Mind players have a tendency to lapse into indecision, and become fixated on the process of decision-making to the point of failing to decide at a crucial moment. A Witch of Mind may struggle with the temptation to estrange themselves from their friends and from the game to pursue their own “masterminding”, which despite their intellectual capacity would indubitably undermine team cohesion, and diminish the odds of a successful session. Witches are an extremely Active class, and as a result can be drawn towards solitary pursuits at the team’s expense – something the Witch and their co-players should make every effort to avoid. To this end, a Blood player, especially a Seer of Blood, could serve as effective counsel to the Witch, ensuring that the Witch’s telepathic wrath is directed away from their co-players and otherwise supporting an effective and well-organized team. In terms of enhancing the psychic maelstrom of the Witch’s powers, I can think of no better co-player than a combat-oriented Light-bound Role; perhaps a Prince or a Knight, with whom the Witch could orchestrate devastating psionic tactics.

Opposite Role: The Seer of Heart, a Role which both deeply conflict with the Witch’s ethos but could also serve as a crucial counterbalance to the Witch’s knack for wreaking psychic havoc. The Seer of Heart is uniquely capable of espying the best possible course of action based on their personal, essential viewpoint – their soul (or Heart) if you will. This, of course, contrasts drastically with the Witch’s personal beliefs and capacities – the Witch of Mind is a Role oriented towards altering and bending every possible course of action, and just as Heart bends asymptotically towards “pure subjectivity”, so too does Mind bend asymptotically towards “pure objectivity”. The core of the Witch’s powers undermines the core of the Seer’s, and the Seer’s subjective, emotive wisdom clashes rather intensely with the Witch’s strange concoction of impersonality and impetuousness. The Witch will change what they feel they must change, regardless of what they have been told; and so will the Seer hold fast to their understanding of their essence regardless of the Witch’s meddling.

God Tier Powers

Mind is the Personal-Associative Aspect, and its domains, as mentioned above, include psychic/psionic/telepathic effects, thought, contemplation, justice, self-control, and free will. The Witch is the Active Manipulation Class, with a great deal of raw power accompanied by dark temptations towards the worst inclinatons of their Aspect – in this case, callousness, isolation, manipulativeness, and indecision. With these things in mind, here are a few concepts for powers that an Ascended Witch of Mind might wield…

Mindbender: Fueled by the sway of their Aspect, the Witch of Mind will, once Ascended, be capable of telepathy and psychic manipulation on a vast scale, even without any inborn psionic talent. By channeling Mind, the Witch can perceive and alter people’s potential future actions – that is, their thoughts. While of course direct mind-control in the fashion of everyone’s favorite cerulean thief is a possibility, this ability is better deployed as a series of subtle nudges, relatively minor suggestions, as opposed to such an egregious violation of personal autonomy. Of course, psychic suggestion is hardly more ethical, but it’s certainly more subtle, so the wise Witch will wield this with caution.

Mastermind: By directing their power inward and altering their own thoughts, the Witch of Mind can greatly accelerate the process of strategizing and plotting. By making the web of their various potential futures and decision-points manifest on a sensory (or extrasensory) level, they can acquire something vaguely resembling self-awareness. This isn’t a shortcut to actual wisdom or experience, but directly modifying one’s own thoughts and memories is a rather useful way to both evade the attention and aggression of psychic enemies, and is more broadly a handy “reset” button for when every avenue appears exhausted – just slightly bending a decision-point can radically alter a potential timeline, as the Witch will no doubt quickly learn.

No Luck Required: Despite its fatalistic slash deterministic window-dressing, the Game does seem to rely to some extent on RNG. An Ascended Witch of Mind can bypass such randomosity with ease, essentially rendering fixed what would otherwise be left to chance. The power of Mind cannot alter Fate, at least not alone, but where there is room for deviation, the Witch of Mind can exploit it, ensuring that their schemes remain unhindered by the inconvenient intervention of dicey cosmic forces.

Personality: Between the Witch’s exuberance and the tendency among Mind players toward debate and dialogue, the Witch of Mind is likely to be rather sociable – hence the emphasis on the fact that the Witch isolating or recusing themselves being an unhealthy state of narrative development. They’re likely to fancy themselves some sort of academic, investigator, or advocate, and this isn’t empty bravado – a Witch of Mind will almost certainly be “intelligent” in most conventional senses of the word. They’ll also have a strong and stable, if idiosyncratic, sense of justice; though lawful by nature, perhaps, that set of laws which the Witch adheres to may be dated, futuristic, or simply alien – abstracted, certainly, from the legal norms of the moment in which they live. Their mind is their greatest strength and their greatest weakness, and their spreading and spiraling patterns of thought will render this terribly apparent – in the event that the Witch succumbs to temptation, they’re likely to see it as a right and justified course of action, and be an active participant in the series of unfortunate events, rather than merely a naïve tagalong. In order to avoid this “bad ending”, the Witch must take the time to think deeply about their personal morals and ethics, despite the discomfort they might feel at confronting their true self behind the layers of performance and (engineered or inadvertent) deception.

Songs

Pups to Dust by Modest Mouse

Birth of Serpents by the Mountain Goats

Cool James by Harvey Danger

~ Thanks for the ask!! I hope you found this analysis enjoya8le and/or informativve; do let me knoww if you havve any other questions ::::>

~ P L U R ~

#Homestuck #Classpect #Classpect analysis #Witch #Mind #Class #Aspect #Witch of Mind #Mythological Role #anon #ask

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askdawnandvern · 4 years

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WT: Well if we are going to go that far, literally anything could and has happened in terms of Dark AUs, but if you want my like...spin on some concepts, I can throw out some hypotheticals.

In terms of going full on dark outcomes, I feel like I would always have the worst timelines end by tragically blowing up in the schemers faces. Realistically, I feel that in every case, whether it was Dawn or Aster at the helm, it would catch up to them at some point, or backfire in a spectacularly unforeseen way.

Starting with Aster, let's say his plan hadn't been stopped. Instead of an exciting chase sequence where Vernon absconds with Dawn, the wolf takes the a different route, demanding to be taken into custody alongside Dawn. While they don't arrest him, the group of them go down to the station where it is impossible for them to intercepted by Aster's goons. However, Judy's fixation on Dawn and her presumed guilt wastes precious time cracking just what is actually being planned and who is planning it, and though they make enough progress to figure out what is coming and dispatch the ZPD to stop as many tankers as they can, a few get through and there are some casualties and serious injuries. Aster and his cronies are caught, but with more of a mess to clean up in the wake of the worst terrorist attack in Zootopian history, many more of the co-conspirators are able to flee or cover their tracks behind the veil of confusion and misery, and it takes Judy and Nick years to finally pin down every mammal involved.

Taking it to a worse degree, lets say Aster is completely successful. The kidnapping still happens and instead of using night-howler to deal with Dawn, Vern Judy and Nick, he simply elects to shoot them all. With no one else as close to the case as Nick and Judy were, there is no mammal to stop Aster and his goons. The districts are flooded in night-howler, and the city begins tearing itself apart. The unexpected turn of course is that the Night Howler doesn't kill everyone. Of course there are those mammals who escape the gassing, but they different methods of dispersal and the way it is diluted lead to a bulk of the mammals hit with it coming down with mild poisoning, (basically what we say in Dawn's original plot). Doug had made an incorrect calculation. Thus, while he, Aster and the others attempt to flee the city they are caught by a mob of savage mammals and meet a brutal end. Of course, with so few animals dead it's just a matter of catching them and giving them the antidote. And with many of them to act as witnesses, having seen what Aster's henchrams attempted to do first hoof, well, his efforts to hide his tracks would have quickly crumbled. It would take years after that to repair the city, and flush various water reservoirs and other areas where the diluted poison had pooled, and just as long to sniff out all the co-conspirators, but sadly many of them would have escaped.

With Dawn's death, as well as Nick and Judy's, public consensus would have settled on the idea that she must have had something to do with the plot, and that perhaps she had killed Nick and Judy as a final act of revenge, despite the lack of evidence and what little was found of their remains. As for the Hunter's, not only was there a good chance that Dorian, and Zach would have met grizzly ends at the paws of their co-workers, but there's a good chance Wade would have also died in the chaos of trying to contend with a savage tundra town. And of course there would still be the mystery of just how Vernon died, and why what little of his remains were found alongside Dawn, Nick and Judy's.

Finally, rolling back further we have Dawn's original plot, and three different outcomes there. First is the less brutal outcome. Dawn notices the blueberries, and swaps them back out with night howler, tagging Nick and waiting for the chomp. But much to Dawn's complete shock, instead of pouncing on Judy, Nick coils around her protectively. This causes Dawn to completely snap, the madness and irritation reaching a boiling point as she begins to berate the fox, calling him a dumb pred, and lamenting that he can't even hunt right. This backfires horribly, with Nick making a surprisingly spry leap out of the pit and mauling Dawn to death.

Alternate path two, well that diverts from the Nick getting dosed with night howler point. Only this time, Nick does what was intended and violently mauls Judy. Unlike before though, Dawn's psyche breaks in an entirely different way. At this point the ewe had been running on Adrenalin and the fear of getting caught. But now, seeing a mammal she once saw as a friend be brutally murdered in front of her, and because of her, Dawn is immediately regretful and traumatized. The ZPD bursts in and shoots Nick with live ammunition hoping they can save Officer Hopps if the acted quickly enough, but it's too late. As for Dawn, she is too shocked to even speak, the ewe left mute as she stares back into the lifeless eyes of her once friend.

I've vaguely talked about the idea behind this before, a now remorseful and guilt ridden Dawn growing into a rapidly weak link in the entire operation from this point forward. Eventually the ewe makes the mistake of admitting to Doug that she intends to come clean and turn herself in, and this forces Doug's hoof to eliminate her. Naturally, this is done by staging a savage attack, and Dawn ironically meets her end the same way she had damned Judy to.

I guess the last one would be, for the sake of argument rolling it back enough to the point where Judy made the connection to the 'Night Howler' flower and simply nixing that whole realization entirely. Judy lives out the rest of her life in Bunny Burrow, memories of the case fading to the point when Night Howler finally comes up in discussion, she is no longer capable of making the connection. Meanwhile, in Zootopia the city plunges into chaos. After Gazelle is mauled at her peace concert by her own dancers, Zootopia becomes increasingly totalitarian. Nick and Finnick flee, as well as many other predators before Dawn announces the construction of a predator only zone called 'Happy Town” (Code named: Savage City). Predators that insist on staying in Zootopia are forced into the district, and eventually access to the outside districts is limited and suspended to all Happy Town residents. Eventually election privileges are suspended as well, until 'peacetime' returns to Zootopia, which of course never occurs as the increasingly mad Dawn begins planning creating new districts to further segregate the more dangerous populations in Zootopia. First the Mega-fauna for being to large and dangerous to more average sized mammals, then the Micro-fauna for 'their own protection' and so on until the City is split into a multitude of micro districts for a variety of other mammals, and the older, largely districts are left exclusively to caprid folks.

Of course, it was easy to keep the predators in check when it was only them Dawn had to worry about. Predators were outnumbered by prey by nine to one. But locking down pretty much every other mammal species aside from caprids created a massively growing tide of dissent and unrest, which would eventually lead to a full scale city wide riot. A riot that Dawn would be unable to contend with despite her best efforts. In this scenario Dawn would meet her fate at the end of an angry mob, made of both predator and prey, and united by their mutual hatred of one Dawn Bellwether.

So there's a heavy look into some dark AU's for you. I hope you like it, cause that went on way longer than initially intended.

#Zootopia #askdawnandvern #Assistant Mayor Bellwether #Bellhunterverse #fan character #dawn bellwether #wastedtimeee

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deltaengineering · 4 years

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winter anime 2020 part 6: it is fin(e)

Part 5 seems to have fallen into some sort of Tumblr memory hole (it’s not flagged and I know this because I have plenty of actually flagged posts, and people can see it just fine with direct links, but it doesn’t even show up in my own timeline), possibly because of screencaps of shota bulge. But that’s just Interspecies Reviewers, and I’m a honest dude with honest screencaps. You can find it here.

A3! Season Spring & Summer

Oh, P.A. Works. You never know whether you’re getting Dr. PA (Shirobako) or Mr. Works (Glasslip) with them. The last thing they did was most definitely a Mister production (since it was Fairy Gone), so maybe they’re up for some greatness again? In short, no. A3 isn’t dreadful, but it’s more reminiscent of the likes of HaruChika, so maybe an undergraduate at most. It’s more than a bit confusing but at the end of the day it seems to be about a girl that inherits a shitty theater house and now has to make the various boys that hang around in the vicinity do actor things. This is based on a mobile game of the otome persuasion and while I was sussing that out, I saw some people be very insistent that it's MOST DEFINITELY NOT A REVERSE HAREM. It must be some other genre of fiction that is all about one girl being surrounded by pretty boys all day then. Anyway, the main girl is alright, so it seems fairly watchable, but overall it’s just somewhat clunky and not of the highest quality, so I don’t think it’s for me.

ARP Backstage Pass

ARP is a boyband anime, remember those? It’s a really predictable one too - mostly just introductions of the characters, who are all the kinds of characters you might find in a boyband anime doing vaguely boybandish things. You know how these go. What’s funny though is how it looks, which is to say it looks painfully cheap. Not that that’s rare for boyband cash-in anime (I’ve covered the topic extensively), but ARP is unusual in that it has above average looking CG performance sequences too. In the end this makes it look like they had these fairly okay CG music videos already and thought “I know a guy, we’ll pay him 10bux and have him bang out some flimsy connective animation and then we can pretend we have a TV show.” A+ hustle if true.

Dorohedoro

The manga Dorohedoro is a fairly known quantity, and that’s a good thing too because fuck me if I have to explain what it is. Okay, what it IS is not hard to explain: It’s a surreal tone piece defined by a grimy punk-on-acid aesthetic and an irreverent and dark comedic tone mostly based on ultraviolence - what’s hard (and tedious, and beside the point) is to explain the narrative content, so I won’t. The line between lolrandom nonsense and on-point surrealism is very thin, and you need a ton of style to pull the latter off convincingly. Dorohedoro definitely manages to make it work so far, and the only thing I don’t like as far as style is concerned is that they do the main characters in CG. It’s not bad CG, but this is a show that’s particularly good-looking otherwise so it’s still a step down - though CG tends to hold up better when the looks deteriorate over the season, and MAPPA aren’t the most solid in that regard. Hey, at least with them you can count on a ballin’ OP and Dorohedoro definitely comes with one of those. It still makes very little sense, and going by the opinions of people who read it, this won’t change in the foreseeable future or possibly ever. As long as it keeps the style and the quirkiness coming, I don’t really mind.

Kyokou Suiri / In/Spectre

So I was pretty positive on the first episode of In/Spectre, in particular the way it escalates from people sitting on a bench talking about nothing to youkai hunt shenanigans. I also liked the main characters quite a lot and the chemistry between them even more. Still, a few doubts remained - it wasn’t very visually appealing, it’s obviously based on a very talky novel, and what it eventually ended up revealing is that it’s essentially just some modern edgy version of Gegege no Kitarou or the many, MANY imitators thereof. But so far, so good, seems like a winner.

Then I got to episode 2 and it was so excruciatingly bad that I dropped the whole show 20 minutes in because I couldn’t take it anymore. Episode 2 is 5 minutes of very stilted characters banter, followed by, no joke, 15 solid minutes of Kotoko reading a newspaper to a snake. It’s not particularly relevant or interesting news items either - apparently Exposition Shinbun does gangbusters in this universe. The lame direction doesn’t help with any of this, in the end it was the director of Endride after all. With my professional duty already fulfilled by this point and an episode that is a contender for worst episode of the season so far, I ain’t got time for this shit.

Natsunagu

Natsunagu is a short whose unique selling point is, and I quote, “the first over-the-air television anime produced by a local government that lasts one quarter of a year.” Thanks, Kumamoto Prefecture, that’s exactly my strike zone right there. Apart from that bit of hilarity, it’s quite alright I guess. There isn’t much to the first episode because it’s all of 3 minutes long and barely establishes the concept (girl goes to Kumamoto to find an internet acquaintance), but it looks nice and it has a smooth tone that goes down easy. Might just watch it to be able to say I did.

Runway de Waratte

Runway de Waratte is about a girl who wants to become a super, nay, hypermodel but is overly short, and a guy who wants to become a fashion designer but isn’t an asshole. You know, I’ve had some luck with fashion-based anime before, but Runway de Waratte is no Paradise Kiss. There, I said it. It doesn’t even have a Franz Ferdinand ED! Runway de Waratte is the most basic shounen take on the same material; while Paradise Kiss was about a bunch of weirdos and outcasts, this right here is about a rich girl who’s mad that she’s too short to get everything she wants for free, but makes up for it with trademark assertive shounen enthusiasm. Designerman is, of course, the sensitive type and the show thinks that makes it say something about gender roles, which is just adorable. Runway is also very peculiarly paced, to the degree that I’d say it does border on just plain badly written - there is so much time spent on establishing the characters in a vacuum (and they’re hardly complex), only to rush through the part where things actually start to happen during the end credits. And it’s a bizarre coincidence plot too. This is another show that isn’t fundamentally busted and borderline watchable, but would simply have to be significantly better for me to give it more chances.

Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita

As someone who has been known to post charts about zettai ryouiki golden ratios and whatnot to social media with the comment “SCIENCE, BITCH”, I can’t really complain about this comedy in which science people attempt to get into romance but can only do so scientifically, graphs about chingrab angles etc included. Furthermore, I also think it’s more funny than not. Don’t expect too much from it, and in particularly don’t expect a show about ostensibly clever people to actually be clever itself. But I have an opinion about spicy romances between people trying to one-up each other, see #1 on this list for details. Of course, RgKnOndSs is nowhere near as good as Kaguya-sama, since it’s far more pedestrian and predictable, and it has some aspects that outright stink too; in particular, the obligatory interlude where science bear appears to badly explain some superficial science concepts is an annoying waste of time every time. Less bad but still not good are scientists #4 and #5, because they’re just very tired otaku clichees that I’ve seen a million times before. The main pair isn’t any less stereotypical, but at least a romantic comedy about them is news to me (no, fucking Steins;Gate does not count and even if it did, Okabe and Chris are tremendously unlikeable jerks with negative chemistry), and rounding out the cast is common sense girl that has common sense, which is probably necessary but not exactly innovative. In the end, this is a very minor production in all aspects, but Himuro’s incredibly dumb/adorable ponytail wag makes it worth watching. Q.E.D.

#anime #impressions #winter2020 #A3! Season Spring & Summer #ARP Backstage Pass #Dorohedoro #Kyokou Suiri #in/spectre #Natsunagu #Runway de Waratte #Rikei ga Koi ni Ochita no de Shoumei shitemita

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keelywolfe · 5 years

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FIC: Blow By Blow ch.1 (baon)

Summary: Set the day after ‘With Brotherly LV’. Jeff is having his first day working at the Embassy, Stretch is having a bad anxiety day, Red is having a bad text day, and Edge is just having a day.

Tags: Spicyhoney, Established Relationship, Prejudice Against Monsters, Angst, Injury Recovery, Hurt/Comfort, LV Issues, Brother issues

Notes: My timeline is getting a little wonky due to a few drabble sets and shorts. So this chapter directly follows With Brotherly LV

Part of the ‘by any other name’ series.

~~*~~

Read it on AO3

Read it here!

~~*~~

For once, Edge was not surprised that Stretch got up with him on a weekday morning. After last night, he likely wanted to keep Edge close as long as he could, had crept into his arms the moment Edge returned to their bed, heedless of the drying sweat still on his bones.

They'd slept restlessly in each others arms and in a rare indulgence, Edge used the snooze function on his alarm, skipping his morning run to stay buried in the blankets, and Stretch’s arms, for a little longer.

But the morning eventually needed to be faced. He’d left Stretch sleeping while he showered only to find the bed empty when he came back. When he went downstairs after dressing, Stretch was in the kitchen, sagged down on the counter in front of the brewing coffee pot with his head resting on his folded arms. Even the ducks on his bathrobe seemed somewhat wilted, the fabric drooping from the haphazardly tied belt. “It would be more comfortable for you to sleep our bed,” Edge pointed out. “mmph.” Edge couldn’t tell if that was agreement or a general statement about the day. He patted the back of Stretch’s skull then reached past it for the coffee carafe, pouring out two mugs. In the one cheerfully painted with the chemical formula for caffeine, he added enough creamer and sugar to bring it to a muddy consistency, leaving it on the counter and taking his own black coffee back to the table. There was enough time to skim the newspaper before he needed to leave. He took a sip of coffee, relying on the Beanery’s special roast to enhance the morning, because stars knew what he said next wasn’t about to. “Would you rather I come pick you up after work tomorrow to see Alphys or do you want to take the bus and meet me at the Embassy?” “i dunno.” It was muffled into Stretch’s arms to the point of being almost indecipherable and Stretch turned his head to the side to add, “the bus, i guess. no point in you coming home just to go right back.” Except for the fact that Stretch was very nervous about the upcoming appointment and sitting alone for the long bus ride was not likely to help. Saying that wouldn’t end well, though, and Edge only said, mildly, “I don’t mind. If you want to think about it, let me know what you decide tonight. "sounds good." Stretch's tone made it clear that he thought it was anything but good. He finally straightened with a groan and reached for the still steaming cup. His contended sigh at that first mouthful of coffee broke off as he turned and Edge frowned as Stretch did an actual spit take, coughing the sip he'd taken back into his cup. "Are you all right?" Edge asked, rising from his chair in concern. Skeletons didn't really have a gag reflex, he knew it personally and not simply because he was one. Stretch was staring at him, his mouth open and finally he recovered enough to say, "um, you've got something…?" He gestured vaguely at his face. Edge plucked a napkin from the holder and wiped at his mouth. "Better?" "um, no, uh...babe, what the fuck?" His voice rose shrilly as he stumbled forward with one hand reaching out, hesitating before it touched. "The problem isn’t on your face, it is your face! did red hit you last night?" Orange was starting to bleed into his pale eye lights, a visible sign of his anger rising. Edge could only stare at him in bewildered surprise. "Of course not, my brother wouldn't hit me." Not with his hands, at any rate. "yeah, okay." Stretch scrabbled his phone out of his robe pocket. A couple quick taps and he handed it over in selfie mode. What it showed made Stretch’s reaction seem far more reasonable. Edge traced a gloved fingertip down the side of his face with resigned dismay. There was an ugly bruise around his right socket, leaving a crow's wing of swelling darkness down the side of his face all the way to his jawline. Ah. One of those attacks must have caught him hard enough to bruise. He hadn't even noticed. Edge shook his head and handed the phone back. “I was using one of the private exercise rooms, I didn’t even notice I’d done this.” Not quite a lie. From the thinly veiled skepticism in Stretch’s look, he believed exactly none of that, “how the fuck do you not notice getting half your face smacked off?” He blew out a sharp breath, letting it go. “okay, okay. have a seat, babe, i'll heal it a little for you." Edge resisted the pressure of the hand on his shoulder urging him towards a chair. "I'm already running late, you can do it tonight." Stretch only looked at him in disbelief. "uh, yeah, no, you are not going in to work like that. are you fucking kidding me? my phone will be blowing up in two seconds and i don't have time to explain to the whole town we don't flirt that way.” He pointed firmly at a chair. “sit!” Edge sat. The electric surge in the air as Stretch called up his magic so close to him prickled along Edge’s bones. In the past, that would have been a warning, a threat, but his soul knew that magic, the touch of it even sweeter than the scent. Cool fingertips rested against his cheekbone, soothing the bruise even as they warmed. Edge closed his sockets against the rising green glow, sighing as that gentle warmth grew, spreading across his skull. He hadn't even noticed it hurting until the pain leached away, dulling to a barely noticeable throb. When he opened his sockets again Stretch was looking down at him, dissatisfied. "welp, that's the best i can do for right now. would have been better if i’d caught it right after. It's harder to heal shit once it settles in.” “I appreciate the effort.” Edge caught his withdrawing hand, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. But Stretch was not to be cajoled out of his irritation. He tugged his hand free, flopping down to sit in the opposite chair. “wasn’t only for you but yeah. i’ll try a little more when you get home, but i don’t want to overdo it or it’ll only make it worse. put some ice on it at work, might help.” "I will." Edge said with infinite patience. It was nerves, and Stretch was going to be jittery and snappish until he heard what Alphys had to say about his tests. “I do need to get going.” “uh huh,” Stretch emptied his desecrated coffee into the sink and poured another cup, doctoring it with obscene amounts of cream and sugar. Normally, his moans of appreciation would follow his first sip, but this time he leaned against the counter and said, “anyone asks, tell ‘em the other guy looks worse.” “Thank you for the advice,” Edge said dryly, “but no one is going to ask.” His allowances for Stretch’s anxiety did not mean he was willing to leave without a kiss. Edge stood, prowling over to Stretch and braced his hands against the counter on either side of his husband, caging him in. Stretch only smirked, taking an exasperatingly long sip of his coffee, and saying nearly into the cup. “you need something?” “I do.” Edge let his voice drop to a teasing growl, watched the faint shiver that came from it. “And you can either give it to me or I’m going to take it.” That lazy smirk widened. “ooh, threats. think you’ve already been playing a little too rough, babe.” But he set his coffee aside, his cup-warmed hands gentle on Edge’s healing bruises as he ducked his head and offered a kiss. Edge lingered too-long on that coffee-sweetened mouth, sighing as he drew away. He looked into that beloved face and said sternly, “Behave yourself today.” That earned him an agreeable enough hum, until he started out the door and Stretch called after him, “i will if you do.” That was either a promise or a threat, and Edge could only hope the universe didn’t attempt to make good on it either way.

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His first stop of the day was only a short drive from their house. Edge pulled into the driveway, absently noticing the well-manicured flower beds and making a note to ask what the orange-tipped blossoms were. He knocked briskly on the door and instead of Blue, Jeff answered, already dressed in a shirt and tie that Edge knew were probably fresh from the iron. Jeff wouldn’t know it, but he’d personally pushed through an advance on Jeff’s salary to allow for him to buy some new clothes, and if they were more off the rack than Edge preferred for himself, he well understood how difficult it was to break free from years of frugality. “Hey, what’s up? I was going to ride in with Blue— holy shit, are you okay?” Jeff’s amicable greeting screeched to a halt, blue eyes widening as he caught sight of his Edge’s face. "I'm fine,” Edge waved away his second dose of concern this morning. “Stretch healed the worst of it." “It looked worse?" Jeff asked doubtfully at the same time Blue wandered into the living room and began, “Oh, hello, Edge, I—what in the world happened!” Edge sighed. This had the makings of a very long day. He waited patiently as Blue ran out, the kitchen door rocking on its hinges, barely slowing by the time Blue bustled back through it with a disposable ice pack. He twisted it briskly to activate it, gesturing for Edge to kneel down. Arguing would probably take longer than simply accepting the fussing and with some bemusement, Edge crouched. Suddenly, Stretch’s tendency to grudgingly accept his brother’s coddling made more sense. He hissed at the cold against his skull, pressed gently to the bruising. “This is a several hours old, why didn’t you call me?” Blue fussed, his eye lights stark with disapproval. “I didn’t notice it,” Edge sighed, tipping his skull obediently to allow Blue to inspected it. “Your brother healed some of it this morning.” “I can tell, I can still feel his magic signature. There’s no point in me trying more, he did the best that could be done.” There was a certain warm pride in his voice and Edge wished Stretch was here to hear it. He never believed he was as skilled a healer as Blue. “Keep the ice on it and if Papy isn’t up to trying again tonight, I can,” Blue added. “Now, can I assume you’ve come to steal my roommate away?” “I have,” Edge agreed, glancing at Jeff who was standing awkwardly, trying to both watch and not. “There are a few things we needed to go over this morning and my drive in is all the time I can spare.” Blue only nodded. He understood very well how important Edge’s work was. He took Edge’s hand, settling it pointedly over the ice pack to hold it against his skull and bustled back to the kitchen. The lunch bag he returned with was sleek and professional, and Edge watched with amusement as he handed it to Jeff, rambling about the contents; food and medicine, reminders for Jeff to call if he felt ill or needed any help. That Jeff accepted it all patiently, even happily, was only another indicator of what Edge already knew. That beneath the cheap tie and crisply ironed shirt lay the soft green of a compassionate soul. Edge allowed Blue to fuss a moment longer, then broke in, “We do need to be going.” “Yes, yes,” Blue agreed absently. “But if you need anything—” “I’ll call,” Jeff said with a hint of amusement. “It’s only for half a day.” “I’ll look out for him,” Edge threw in. He supposed he deserved the look Blue gave him, his starry eye lights lingering pointedly on the ice pack. It took another minute to detangle Blue’s apron strings enough to get back to the car and Edge nearly sighed in relief as he closed his door, tossing the ice pack on the center console. Jeff was close behind, already buckling his seatbelt. He fidgeted as Edge started the car, for a moment almost absurdly reminiscent of Stretch as he toyed with his tie. “Do I look okay for my first day?” “You look fine.” His nervousness was almost endearing, though Edge did take a hand off the wheel long enough to stop him from wrinkling the tie any further. “Jeff, forgive me for overstepping, but if you ever wanted to wear a skirt, no one at the Embassy would think anything of it.” That stopped his fidgeting completely, but discomfort was not the hoped-for replacement. “How did you…never mind. Of course you do. Um, thank you? Sometimes I just…like it…but…I don’t think I could.” Edge only nodded understandingly. “I’m aware that the Human community can be strange about these things if it isn’t for, say, a thrift store competition. I simply wanted you to know that tasteful clothes are acceptable whether you feel the day is one for trousers or a skirt. Monsters aren’t going to question your choices, your gender, or your sexuality.” The discomfort didn’t ease and Edge let it go at that. He’d said his piece and Jeff’s choices after were his own. But making Jeff uncomfortable when he was already nervous had not been his intention and he regretted not waiting to bring it up. Thus far, his entire morning had been less than a success story. A subject change was in order. “How has it been living with Blue?” That seemed to be the right approach. Jeff brightened visibly. “Great, actually. Blue is really nice and he’s a really good cook…not that you aren’t a good cook!” Jeff added hurriedly, as though Edge would be offended if Jeff admitted to liking anyone else’s cuisine. “I’m very familiar with Blue’s skills and I agree, he is a good cook.” His preferences were for more homey meals, filling recipes of soups and pot pies whereas Edge preferred something with spice. Stretch never complained about either of their offerings, but then, it wasn’t a competition. At least it wasn’t to Edge. Jeff seemed relieved that he hadn’t taken offense, but his expression was still clouded. “Stretch was a little…odd, when I said I was moving in. He’s not mad, is he?” “Not at all.” Concerned was a more appropriate term. The day they’d learned about Jeff and Blue’s plan, Stretch had been near-manic in his worry, pacing the living room for hours broken only by occasional outbursts. “you know how blue is!” Stretch said during one of them. “babe, if you’re a mama bear, blue is a general waging war with soup and pillows! i’d ask him to see a therapist except first he’d have to admit something was wrong.” He’d flopped down on the sofa then, curling up against Edge’s side in a silent plea for an embrace that Edge was glad to offer. “at least i always admitted i was fucked up.” His attempts at comforting Stretch had been flawed by his own worries. It would either be good for them both or the worst idea possible, but they were both adults who could make their own choices. Only time would tell. Today was definitely not the time to admit his concerns and Edge only said, “I’m glad to hear it’s working out. I did want to tell you that your car will be delivered tonight. “My…car?” Most of Edge’s attention was on the road, but he spared a glance at Jeff because nothing was going to make him miss the conflicting emotions that clouded his face. It was better even than when Edge gave him the Ipad. Humans were sometimes difficult for him to read, but Jeff was as clear as the windshield in front of him. Confusion, outrage, shame, and beneath it all was what Edge wanted to see in him; one quiet spot of hope. “Transportation is part of your employment package.” Luckily Jeff wasn’t as adept at catching him in a lie as Stretch. “It won’t be a car like mine, I’m afraid, luxuries need to be purchased with your own salary, but—“ He trailed off as Jeff’s breath hitched, directing his gaze back to the road to give him time to get himself under control. The music from the radio was a counterpoint to those little sniffles, but soon enough Jeff managed, roughly, “Any car would be fine.” “Dependable rather than flashy is probably best, anyway. I’m sure Stretch will coax you into chauffeuring from time to time.” Possibly. Stretch could be very prickly about asking for rides. And Edge trusted Jeff, hard-earned over the course of the last year, but he couldn’t keep from saying, “Be careful with him in the car. Make sure he does up his seatbelt. Please. If you think the ability to teleport would help in case of an accident, you’d be wrong, their shortcuts don’t defer momentum and—“ and in bad accident, it would do little more than delay death. True, yes, but the words refused to come. Jeff didn’t tease or mock, only offered a lopsided smile, crossed his finger over his heart the same way Stretch did. “Promise.” Edge nodded, accepting that. The rest of the ride was quiet and it was only as he parked that Edge’s phone chimed with a text message. He took the time to walk inside, Jeff at his side with his lunch bag in hand, before he opened it, frowning at the message from his brother. hey, boss, why the fuck am i getting poison pen pal texts from your liability? Well, it seemed Stretch hadn't been so willing to let it go, after all. He texted back, I’ll talk to him. sure but answer the question Edge ignored that for the moment as they walked up to the security desk, already reaching for his badge. The guard began greeting them automatically, “Good morning…oh!” He sat up straight as he caught sight of Edge’s face, eyes going wide as he scrambled for his radio, “Did the protestors get through the barrier again?!” “No,” Edge sighed. Jeff was digging for his own badge with far more than the required amount of attention. “I’m fine.” “But—“ “It wasn’t the protestors!” Edge snapped, swiping his badge with unnecessary force. He stepped quickly into the elevator and held it until Jeff joined him. “Public relations is on the second floor, all the way to the right.” Jeff nodded and his earlier nervousness was still there, but mostly quelled beneath determination. “Got it.” The door opened and as Jeff stepped out, Edge said, softly, “You’ll do fine.” That wide, hopeful smile disappeared behind the closing elevator door. Edge got off on his own floor a moment later, walking towards his office with unseemly haste. No one was in the hallways, but Janice was at her desk, looking up from her computer with a cheery, “Good…gracious! What happened!?” Edge sighed.

~~*~~

TBC

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #by any other name

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lunapaper · 4 years

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So while I was writing my Chainsmokers piece, I was trying to think of other mediocre pop songs that had been released over the years. 'Strip That Down' immediately sprung to mind.

And then I realised... 'OMG, was it Liam or Louis who released that track?'

I'm no 1D fan, but as far back as I can remember, I've always confused Liam and Louis for one another. Like, the resemblance isn't uncanny, but they're both cut from the same Abercrombie vanilla boi mould, y'know?

Anyway, now I know that it was indeed Liam Payne who gave us the execrable 'Strip That Down' ft. Quavo, a track, mind you, that took 12 writers - including Ed fucking Sheeran - to compose lines such as 'One Coke and Bacardi (Sippin' lightly)/When I walk inside the party (Girls on me)/F1 type Ferrari (Six gear speed)/Girl, I love it when your body (Grinds on me, baby).'

But can you blame me for being confused? From 1D's inception, Liam was always known as the 'sensible’ one, Mr Boring, totally and utterly forgettable…

Or was forgettable.

While Harry Styles received critical acclaim for his second album Fine Line, Payne’s debut LP1 became a late contender for Worst Album of 2019. Yeah, he outright stole the title from FKA twigs' much, much more superior 2014 debut.

And my God, are the reviews gloriously brutal! The Guardian called it a ‘terrible pop album, but very effective contraception.’ NME claims that it ‘cherry-picks from pretty much every genre that’s in vogue right now.’ Most scathing, however, was Pitchfork’s review: ‘[Payne] relies on inane songwriting concepts, rote misogyny, and feelingless flexing. The lyrics are puerile and half-baked.’

Never has an album lacked so much character, filled to the brim with generic trap and electro pop that already feels about eight years out of date. Only one track passes the four-minute mark. It’s amazing just how lazy, calculating and unintentionally hilarious it manages to be at the same time.

Throughout, LP1 fails miserably at casting Payne as a bad boy loverman. ‘Bedroom Floor’ proves a cheap JT imitation as the object of his affection tries to claim she doesn’t like-like Payne, but she so does. ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ is hardly subtle as the singer threatens: ‘You're too hot to chill, oh/Ain't no faking, the animal I'm caging/Wants to come outside and kill’ as he tries to coax you ‘Right in my bed-ed-ed, in my bed-ed-ed.’

‘Get Low’ (ft. Zedd) is unfortunately not a cover of the classic Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz track. The Mendes-esque ‘Remember’ deserves to be forgotten. ‘Rude Hours,’ on the other hand, features what’s possibly the worst line on the entire record: ‘Meet me in the parking lot/Yeah, might be a bad idea, I prob'ly do your ass in the car.’

You hear that? That’s the sound of a thousand lady parts shrieking in pure, unadulterated horror… No, I don’t want your 1D, Liam.

And then there’s ‘Both Ways,’ the much-maligned single that got Payne cancelled on Twitter due to its perceived fetishism of bisexuality. But as seedy as it indeed sounds (‘Flipping that body, go head, I go tails/Sharing that body like it's our last meal’), the song feels way too safe and boring to warrant any sort of scandal. And whoever told Payne he could try and emulate Future was playing a cruel joke…

The amount of rote lyrics and sleazy clichés littered throughout LP1 is mind-boggling. The wittily titled ‘Heart Meets Break’ has the gall to steal its lyrical echo from Kendrick Lamar’s ‘Swimming Pools (Drank),’ laying on the schmaltz thick. ‘Weekend’ tries to dip a toe into the drowsy, neon-soaked hedonism of… well, The Weeknd, but resembles more of a dull night at home on the couch.

‘Tell Your Friends’ is a weak retread of Drake’s dancehall-inspired tracks, but most importantly: WHY HAS NOBODY MENTIONED THE FACT THAT DYLAN BALDI FROM CLOUD NOTHINGS CO-WROTE THIS SONG? FOR REAL? HOW??? IN WHAT DANK TIMELINE DID THIS OCCUR?

The aforementioned ‘Strip That Down’ – released almost three years ago now – of course, is the obligatory post-boy band release that tries to assert ‘You know I used to be in 1D (Now I'm out, free)/People want me for one thing (That's not me)/I'm not changing the way that I (Used to be)/I just wanna have fun and (Get rowdy),’ but in a cruel irony, no one would give two shits about Payne if it weren’t for 1D.

Along with Quavo, the singer collaborates with seven other acts on LP1 as if to distract us from the fact that he can’t carry a whole album on his own. And even they all seem to be phoning it in. On ‘Stack It Up’ (ft. A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie), he turns the Nintendo Wii beat into your run-of-the-mill trap fizzer. ‘Live Forever’ (ft. Cheat Codes) could easily be mistaken for a Marshmello cast-off. ‘For You’ (ft. Rita Ora) – released back in 2017 – is a cold leftover from the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack.

And I used to think Niall was the resident dweeb of 1D. Whether it was fear, a lack of imagination or being psyched out by Simon Cowell, it’s disappointing that the singer would hold back on his debut, to finally put the naysayers to rest who accuse him of being ‘forgettable.’ ZAYN’s 2016’s Mind Of Mine should’ve been a warning to Payne not to go down the cheap trap pop route. Not even a Christmas song tacked on to the end was enough to lift it out of chart obscurity (Payne was probably banking on people mistaking it for Mariah’s original).

And it’s not like he was short of inspiration for this record, opening up to the Guardian last December about fatherhood, his battle with substance abuse, his role in 1D as the ‘diplomat‘ and clashes within the band (‘When you’re at the stadium, and if you get the least screams, it’s like: ‘For fuck’s sake’). It’s the kind of angst that’s just ripe for the picking.

And yet, we get… this.

I wasn’t expecting much from Liam Payne’s debut album. But to think the group of execs, managers, producers, songwriters and PR agents would just let him make a fool of himself in such a major way is so, so painful.

LP2, when?

- Bianca B.

#music #liam payne #lp1 #albums #longform #opinion

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