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brainwormcity · 4 months

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I've seen people remark on how awkward the 1967 scene is and that is so frustrating because, for me, it is one of the most emotionally resonant flashbacks in the entire series. It is so multifaceted and ripe with implication and that assertion is baffling. As though just because this conversation appears to be hard for them, it must mean that there has to be some sense of weirdness or awkwardness between them?

This scene feeds heavily into my theory that 1941 ended in some sort of aborted romantic moment between the two, most likely initiated by Crowley. Aziraphale can barely stand to look at Crowley because the very first moment he looks him in the face, he can't stop himself from giving him this hooded eyes, barely contained look of longing.

The next thing we see is Aziraphale immediately launching into a statement about his fear for Crowley's existence that is as brutally sincere as it is heartrending. His eyes are wide, his voice is heavy with emotion, and it's clear that he is terrified beyond belief to lose Crowley. Even as he acquiesces and gives him the holy water, you can see that he wants to take it back and deny him it all over again.

Then, of course, Crowley asks if he can give him a lift, which is definitely something that they both know is a totally different question than what lies on the surface, given that they're mere feet from the bookshop and at first Crowley frowns so deeply that it's almost cartoonish but a moment after Aziraphale turns him down you get this glimpse of very real sadness:

Aziraphale sees it for what it is and in an attempt to comfort him, without being able to do what currently seems impossible to him, shares a fanciful but resigned fantasy about spending time together unbothered and unrestrained, all to the tune of these tight little, loving smiles:

When he asks again, you can just see Crowley's desperation for Aziraphale not to go. It's hard to say how long they'd been apart, but it's safe to say that for them, that previous interaction likely is very fresh in their minds.

Aziraphale has always been more fearful than Crowley when it comes to their feelings for each other. You could even potentially look at the holy water as a metaphor for their relationship. In his expressions of concern about The Arrangement, Aziraphale has always been remarking on how Crowley could be destroyed, similarly to his words here. So when he's telling him, "You go too fast for me, Crowley," what he's really saying is, "I'm terribly afraid and I'm not ready to take that step if it means that I could lose you." And it's plain to see by the wistful look on his face that it pains him greatly to say it:

The scene so quickly cuts to Crowley looking intensely at the holy water after Aziraphale has left the car (as if trying to convince you that that was the real point of the scene) that it's easy to miss this devastated expression on Crowley's face:

There's no look of perceived rejection on his face. Just a somber look of resignation. There are so many barriers in front of them, and I think that Crowley was willing to risk it but understood that Aziraphale wasn't ready to.

This is the most honest and laid bare we ever see these two be when it comes to their emotions. There's so much being said without being said and even their actual words (i.e. Crowley remembering exactly the amount of time when the 'fraternizing' conversation happened) are so full of emotion that it might even be a bit hard for some people to watch.

It's not awkward. It's just that the scene is just so incredibly earnest and heavy with coded language that it's easy to be swept up by the fact that the two aren't engaged in their typical banter and bickering. What we truly have here is an incredibly difficult and loving conversation between two people who are stuck in a seemingly impossible situation.

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #aziraphale x crowley #michael sheen #david tennant #good omens meta #abel talks meta #good omens through the ages #good omens 1967 #signed by an autistic pwBPD with a penchant for over-analyizing tone and body language #anthony j crowley #you go too fast for me crowley

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hees-mine · 4 months

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𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 - 𝐋.𝐡𝐬 𝐩𝐭.𝟔

Pairing: heeseung ⚥ reader

Warning: slightly suggestive, crying, angst, taboo relationship, cursing, hee is a lil sensitive.

Genre: 18+, best friends dad, smut, single dad, taboo relationship, minors do not interact!

WC: 2,682k

⟱ ⟱ ⟱

You were not all too fond of the way Heeseung was actively ignoring you every time you stepped foot into his home, but you understood, and it would be selfish of you to want him to treat you cordially after everything.

He barely looked at you, let alone talked to you other than a forced greeting, and that was it.

As much as you hated him ignoring you, there was something else you hated even more, which you didn't know was possible.

But apparently, it was when you saw Heeseung dressed in an all-black suit, spraying himself with expensive cologne and getting ready for his "date."

It hurt you weren't going to lie.

Knowing he was going to see another girl made you seethe on the inside. The fact he dressed up the same way for her as he would when he came to see you made you feel sick.

You hated feeling all these emotions, but you hated feeling this one the most.

Jealousy.

You were never a jealous person until today, and the feeling was annoying, especially cause you couldn't do anything about it. And on top of that, it was all your fault you were frustrated with yourself for being a bad friend and for leading heeseung on knowing there was no prospect of a relationship for you and him together.

"You look great, Dad," his daughter complements him while adjusting his tie, making sure it is neat and straight.

"Thank you, sweetpea." You watched the whole scene unfold in the living room, and you could feel tears pricking your eyes so as not to cause a scene. You got up and went upstairs.

Heeseung noticed you going upstairs, and before he stared too long, he quickly looked away and put on his finishing touches before going out on his date.

He originally wasn't going to even entertain the thought, but when he saw you and Jake all cuddle up and giggling with each other twenty-four-seven, he knew he no longer stood a chance, and he figured it was time to move on, and what better way to do that than to go on a date.

Besides seeing you and Jake being inseparable, there was one instance that made him lose all hope. Sure, he hated seeing you both interact and be friendly with each other, but he could take that. What he couldn't take was when he walked into his daughter's room to ask what she'd like for dinner and was met with you and Jake sitting on her bed, faces mere inches apart. He remembers it like yesterday.

Flashback

"Hey sweet-"he stopped in his tracks, eyes going wide and heart pounding in his chest at the sight of you so close to a man that wasn't him. He quickly put on a straight face, trying to act like the sight didn't just break his heart right into two.

Your head whipped in Heeseung's direction, and you swore you saw a flash of hurt cross his face, and before you could say anything, Jake was pleading his case to the elder so he wouldn't get in trouble. "Sir, it's not what it looks like, I swear." Jake scooted away from you and tucked his hands under his thighs.

Heeseung tucked his lips in, giving Jake a firm nod and lowering his head before walking out of the room with a flustered Jake rushing after him.

"Sir, I was just helping her! She had an eyelash stuck an-" heeseung stopped at the end of the staircase the scared boy bumping into his back with the sudden halt.

Heeseung turned around with a neutral expression. "What you two do isn't my business, but since this is the second warning, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop coming over" jakes shoulders immediately slumped down, and the pout on his lips almost made heeseung feel sorry, but the only person he felt sorry for was himself cause not only did you practically just dump him off and leave him in the middle of nowhere you also had the fucking nerve to bring a guy over and kiss him under the same roof you both once kissed in. the anger he felt in his body was astronomical he felt like punching in a wall or better yet, jakes face, but he controlled himself.

"We weren't kissing, I promise!" Jake pleaded his case. "I respect and look up to you a lot, and I wouldn't want to disrespect you in any way." Heeseung sighed, not knowing what to believe at this point.

The first time he met Jake and Jay, his daughter's crush, they impressed him way more than he thought. They were both upstanding young men. They had a lot of goals and ambitions, plus they were the most respectful people he'd met in quite a while. Their handshakes were firm and not lousy, their smiles were genuine, and after conversing over dinner with the two, he approved a hundred and ten percent.

Though he did trust them fully yet, he gave them strict rules: no funny business under his roof, they must clean up after themselves, and they must be out no later than eight.

The rules were simple and easy to follow, and up til this far, they were meeting all his terms and conditions, and to say he was disappointed when he caught you and Jake together would be an understatement.

After your initial shock, you followed them, stopping at the end of the staircase behind Jake. "Y/n, tell him we weren't doing anything." Jake looked at you with puppy eyes, knowing you'd back him fully cause he was telling the full truth.

You made eye contact with Heeseung, and you could tell he was angry. "W-we weren't doing anything, s-sir," you stuttered. It felt so strange calling him that out of the usual context.

His breath hitched in his throat. Hearing the word sir fall from your lips sounded oh so sweet. How he wished you still called him that while you were on your back, laid out for him while he buried every last inch of himself inside you.

In just a few seconds, he relived all your time together. He was so caught up in his thoughts just from hearing you say one word that he didn't hear Jake still begging for his forgiveness.

At some point, he snapped out of it, tearing his eyes from you with a slight shake of his head. "F-fine, but just go home. It's almost eight."

"Thank you, sir!" Jake said gratefully.

Heeseung strutted to his office, mind riddled with thoughts of the unholy kind mixed with frustrations, and he had never felt this annoyed before. He wanted to be mad at you, but hearing you call him sir after such a long time made the front of his pants feel tight. "Fuck” he exhaled a deep breath and leaned against the door, fingers fiddling with the lock on the knob before he sat in his desk chair.

He hated how bad his cock throbbed in his slacks. He felt so pathetic and so weak for getting riled up so easily, but how could he not? Your hair looked perfect. You were wearing casual clothes, and you looked so comfortable and cuddly. That was his favorite look on you, which explains why his cock is leaking and straining beneath his clothes.

He leaned his head back and spread his legs open, palm pathetically rubbing over the hardness between his legs.

He moans from just the smallest contact, not having touched himself since your guy's little falling out. To say he was pent-up would be an understatement.

The more he rubbed himself, the more he felt like it wasn't enough. Nothing could compare to your touch. Not even his trusty right hand could do the trick for him.

He just needed you.

But that wouldn't happen cause even if you and Jake didn't kiss, you were so close to each other that he's sure you were no longer thinking about him.

End of flashback

"Here's my card if you need anything at all. Call me okay, sweetheart."

"I know, I know, don't worry about me. Just go have fun for once." She practically had to push him out of the door to get him to leave.

She smiled and hoped that his date would go well cause even though he hid it well, she could tell the divorce took a toll on him, and all she wanted was to see her dad happy and in love like he used to be.

The date did indeed go well, just not the type of well she had hoped, though Heeseung had fun, and his date was undeniably charming and gorgeous. He didn't feel butterflies the way he felt with you. His smile wasn't as wide as when he was with you, and nothing in his heart felt like it was drawn to her other than a friend, a good friend, but nonetheless, just a friend.

Or maybe he was jinxing himself into thinking that way.

To be sure he wasn't, he went on three more dates, and they were the same. He laughed and smiled. He had fun, but deep down, he knew he wished it was you instead.

"So, how did it go?" His daughter asked excitedly, just like she had with all the previous dates he had gone on.

"Good." he gave her a lopsided smile.

You were in the living room listening in on the conversation, but you couldn't quite hear. You muted the TV, turning your head in the direction of the kitchen where they were talking.

"Just good?" You hear your friend say quizzically.

"Yeah, and we decided we're better off as just co-workers," he says regretfully, but ultimately, it was better off that way for the both of them. They shouldn't have to settle for anything less than they deserve just cause they got along well.

"Aww, Dad, I'm sorry," he chuckles softly, draping his arm around her shoulder.

"No need to be, sweetheart, I'm just waiting for the right one." he engulfs her saddened figure in a hug and meets your eyes from the kitchen. You jump in shock from the sudden eye contact, but you can't help but stare as he says those words while looking straight into your soul.

After a few seconds, you broke eye contact and unmuted the TV, pretending that never happened.

"You're such a romantic," she laughs, releasing her dad from the hug.

"What can I say?" He smiles sheepishly before ruffling her hair. "I'm headed to bed. Get some rest soon, okay? And tell your friends to come over for dinner tomorrow."

"Will do," she beams excitedly, happy that her dad approved of her crush. "Goodnight, Dad."

"Night, sweetpea," Heeseung went to his room, plopping down on his bed with a loud sigh, wondering what to do from here. He obviously isn't moving on from you, so what's a man to do?

Hours later, and he still hadn't an answer, he just stared at the ceiling, mind occupied with you, until he heard a soft knock on his door. He almost thought he imagined it from how quiet it was.

You were beyond happy Heeseung only thought of his date as a co-worker, but that was enough to give you more than a scare. The thought of him moving on with someone else terrified you, and you couldn't imagine how you'd live knowing he was happy without you.

So before anyone else got the chance, you were going to try to reconcile with him before it was too late.

"Sweetheart, I thought I told you to res-" The expression on Heeseung's face was as if he'd seen a ghost. He went silent, almost too silent, staring at you in complete shock. "What do you want?" He says in a monotone, quickly fixing his face and putting on a cold expression.

"I- I wanted to see if we could talk," you shifted nervously.

He scoffed. "I don't see why"

You sighed, heart, feeling heavy cause you had never seen him act this way towards you. He always treated you like you were the most precious thing to him. "I know I made a mistake, but I want you back."

"Don't say that," he says shakily, his eyes fluttering shut with nothing but a look of despair. "You can't just walk out and leave me with nothing and then show up like this."

"I-I know, and trust me when I say I messed up. I was scared we'd get caught, and I didn't want to ruin our relationship or my friendship with your daughter, so I did what was best and ended it," you said calmly despite your racing heart.

He sits up in bed, clear agitation on his face. "You're fucking kidding me. You did what was best? By fucking leaving and making me question what I fucking did to deserve this, you blocked my fucking number without even letting me apologize, and then the nerve to walk in here and say you did your best? Please help me understand because I'm trying, but I'm coming up with nothing but bullshit sounds to me like you gave me up cause you were scared" he's happy that it was dim in his room cause he could feel the hot tears welling in his eyes he hated just how vulnerable he could be with you the way he let his guard down, and his emotions flow like an endless river scared him cause it let you know just how much power you held over him you were capable of breaking his heart and he couldn't do a thing about it, he felt so helpless just like he did during his divorce. "Was I just an easy fuck for you? Did my feelings mean nothing? Did you ever even care about me? Cause if you did, then why?" He asked you everything that’s been eating him up for the past weeks.

"Why what?" You whispered, throat feeling tight and restrained due to all the emotions you felt after hearing him pour his heart out to you.

"Why did you give me up so easily? Sure, it was wrong, but you didn't even try to fight for us or for me. Was our relationship so meaningless that you just turned your back cause you were scared? I mean, we didn't even get caught, and you were already cracking under the pressure, are your feelings more important than our whole relationship?

"Heeseung, I'm sorry." You wanted to express yourself as well as him, but that's all that comes out.

"No, you're not! We could have done this together. We could have thought of a way to make it work, we could have been honest, and things might have turned out bad, but I think it would have been a whole hell of a lot better at least saying we tried, to at least say we fought for our love but no because you were scared!" you tried to walk towards him, but he was quick to dismiss you. "You know what? Just fucking go," his voice broke, and you could clearly see he was crying, and you couldn't help but kneel down by his bed, your hand resting on his cheek touching it softly.

"Heeseung"

Despite his words, he leaned into your touch, immediately feeling calmed by your presence alone. "Please, y/n, just go before I fall for you more" he said with raw emotions, praying that you listened to him cause if you didn't, he was too fucking weak to tell you again.

You removed your hand from his cheek the warmth instantly leaving both of your bodies. "Ok," you whispered, and stood up so you could leave, the least you could do was respect his wishes. "I just want you to know that if I could go back, I would have changed the way I did everything the day I ended things between you and i. I would have fought for you, I would have tried harder, and I would have told you I love you."

You closed the door, leaving Heeseung to cry all by himself, and even though there was no getting back together, you wanted to tell him those words cause if you had another chance, you would do it all better than the last time.

⟱ ⟱ ⟱

Thanks for reading please reblog and leave feedback.

#heeseung smut #enhypen heeseung smut #enhypen heeseung #lee heeseung #lee heeseung smut #heeseung #enhypen #enhypen hyung line #enhypen lee heeseung #enhypen hard hours #enhypen smut #enhypen fanfic #enhypen fluff #enhypen scenarios #enhypen lee heeseung smut #lee heesung x reader

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punkascas · 3 months

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okay, so i don't want to, like, Start Something or whatever so we're doing a barely-tagged, separate post. i also realise this is mostly pointless because others have already said what i'm going to say, and did it better, with far more grace, and sound less like an asshole than i do.

but jesus louise helen christ, the weird fucked up ideas people have around abuse and personal responsibility and the effect of trauma. like as an abuse and csa survivor, it genuinely alarms me to read posts that use arguments i remember my dad making. like, i'm assuming most of this rhetoric comes from gen z — maybe that's inaccurate; maybe that's unfair. but right now i'm very much Having A Moment Here that the kids aren't alright.

no 22-year-old should be repeating the same awful, manipulative, logically and morally bankrupt justifications for violence and torture my dad says. like literally what's in the first two episodes of ofmd s2 is torture.

i love ed; he's an amazing character. taika is hella wowza top marks acting him. but like.

like.

torture, my dude. physical and psychological. trauma. harassment. that we see the lasting effects of through s2.

just. i. what??

so here we go, okay. have too many, zealously highlighted screenshots so i can dig into details.

cut to save your dashes. content warning for discussions of abuse and trauma (if that wasn't obvious), as well as spoilers for ofmd s2.

re: ed knew what he was doing was wrong and felt guilty about it at the time:

we have no on-screen, textual examples of this. not in the dialogue; not in the acting; not in the blocking; not in the cinematography or music. nothing.

knowing the crew are overworked and kind of traumatised by all the violence, ed bribes them with cake. because, as we know, cake like tea fixes everything. only ed wasn't even with them to share in the eating of the cake. he made izzy responsible for that. he doesn't give the crew a break; he doesn't choose less ethically-fraught prizes to hunt. there is not one scene of ed talking directly to the crew — until he points a gun at each of them.

we see ed crying (and drinking, and rhino horn-ing [way to help further extinction, man]) but it's always paired with shots or flashbacks that reference stede. ed is still all up in his feelings about stede, and ed confirms this when he tells frenchie the myth about albatrosses never needing to return to land. ed cannot go back, does not want to go back, because he was rejected. (like, stede is literally landed gentry, come on!) all he wants to do instead is stay at sea committing to this unhinged version of unstable, sadistic piracy.

but okay, okay. say we ignore all of that. let's say ed does feel sorry and guilty and ashamed of his actions. he knows what he's doing is wrong and unfair and cruel. that it's harming others. that it's particularly harming the dude that ed has, for better or worse, basically spent his life with (izzy; i mean izzy). ed… still continues to do the things! how far off are we at this point from the definition of malicious? you know action x hurts person b and then you do it anyway. is that honestly a better, happier, more ethically defensible reading of the character?

re: the crew didn't mutiny because they love ed despite his violent, sadistic actions.

mutinies were a thing, yes. but both historically and in the world rules established by the show, mutiny is disincentivised through threats, distraction via extra work, and corporeal punishment. we see both ed and izzy use all three of these to try to prevent the crew from disobeying orders. they didn't wait until the storm and izzy shooting ed to mutiny because they understood or sympathised with ed; they took the chance to kill him then because that was the first real opportunity they'd had. the reward finally out-weighed the risk given that ed was going to kill them all that night anyway.

again, we have no scenes, no dialogue, no visual or audio cues to tell us that the crew understands or loves ed — excluding izzy, obviously. fang could also be on that list, if you take into account his personality and his behaviour both in s1 and later in s2 in the fishing boat scene. but in the first two episodes, we only see the crew show trauma responses around ed. they talk about him but almost never to him. and when they do have a direct conversation with ed, it is either confrontation or head down, submissive, "of course, blackbeard; anything you say" placating. i'm so baffled where the show points to any sign of love from the crew towards ed before his "death".

re: ed can't be held responsible because he was suicidal.

uhm. no. hard no. a harder no than stede's brazilian cherry wood mast. fucked up people do fucked up things but part of being an adult is owning your fucked-upped-ness and not fucking up others while you work on unfucking yourself. children, children are not fully responsible for the impact of their actions on others when they're deep in their feelings, especially if they're feeling their feelings as a trauma response. this is because literally their brain cannot do that kind of control. it doesn't have that software pack installed yet. ed does have all the adult updates installed, even if he isn't running them at that moment. he has no right to take out his feelings on other people: to maim them, to psychologically torture them, to abuse them, to work them to exhaustion. to kill them. he does not get a free pass to do suicide by abused employees. (like suicide by cop but more indirect and passive and harmful.) talk about passive aggressive.

secondly, ed is not just passively suicidal and happy to find new risks that might end his life. he is very purposefully taking izzy with him (see: literally removing the bits of izzy that would help let him walk away from ed; the fact that ed becomes actively suicidal only once he thinks izzy is dead; the whole keeping izzy's corpse in front of his and stede's beach shack i mean inn — the codependence, she runs deep). ed is also putting the crew through the same risks, the same isolation, the same danger. both stede and izzy agreed that ed had gone full scorched earth policy. you don't get forgiven for the murder part of a murder-suicide pact just because of the suicide part. not to mention that no one (once again, you could potentially argue izzy as an exception) was good on a murder-suicide pact with blackbeard.

and then to say the crew felt guilty? i assume i'm misreading that. the crew. felt guilty. for ed's actions. that is, if not victim blaming and if not darvo, a very close inbred cousin of them. like hapsburg jaw inbred close.

re: ed healing and his view of himself as a monster.

to heal means, in part, to accept responsibility for the harm you've caused, whether it was intentional or not. it means making amends. it means building or rebuilding relationships where possible. it means putting the other person or persons' feelings and boundaries and need for safety above your desire for absolution or forgiveness. it means working through your own guilt and shame and anger (or whatever drove you to act the way you did) in a separate space, not with the people you hurt, but someone who can be a step removed, more impersonal and objective to help you reflect and face hard truths as needed. i say this as both someone involved in activism and community reparations and as an abuse survivor who has done nearly 30 years of therapy learning this in order to not hurt people. it's not ed's fault he's fucked up just like it isn't my fault i am. but it is on me, like it is on anyone, to make sure i limited as much as possible the harm i can cause to others because i learned some awful but very effective tricks at a young age to survive.

ed does not really do any of the above. he doesn't say "sorry". he speaks in generalised language. he complains about the cat bell (which he seems to wear only for one day, given the implied timeline with lucius and pete's engagement). i have a model ship on a stand that says "this is a safe space ship" as a joke because i work for the government and have written press releases that sound just like ed's "apology". where you take no responsibility and encourage "the culture" to move on.

so, really, my question becomes: ed sees himself as a monster. in s1, we had enough balance between ed's current actions and his referenced past actions to see this belief as likely untrue. in s2 though — i mean, is it? is that an unfair or inaccurate belief? i can understand how carrying that belief can get in the way of ed's growth and eventual healing but like. from an outside perspective of ed-the-fictional-character. he's not a "good" person. he's capable of and has done and continued to do horrible, cruel things. ethically, can you argue with that statement about him?

re: ed trying to destroy relationships because of his self-worth issues and instead the consequences of his actions proving that he's loved.

this is the point that made me go: right, no, i need to respond. i need to say my piece about this. izzy and the crew suffering ed's violent tyranny and then sticking around on the revenge anyway afterwards is not a sign of love. it is not showing love to bear pain for someone. it not showing love to let someone mistreat you, threaten you, hurt you, maim you. their actions are selfish and done to give them feelings of power and control over you. lying back and thinking of england to get through it is not love. it is absolutely a survival technique. but it is not love when you do it at the expense of yourself or others.

i also disagree that ed was trying to push people away or break his relationships with others. we know from s1 that ed is fairly blasé about whether crew members die. again, we don't see any friendly or intimate exchanges between ed and any of the crew to imply any kind of relationship there beyond "tools who accomplish ed's goals". the one exception, as always, is izzy. and as previously stated, ed seems bound and determined, in a very conscious way, to bring izzy into death with him. ed does everything in his power to make izzy want to kill ed, or at least agree that it's best if ed dies, and to want to kill himself so ed doesn't have to die alone. that isn't ed breaking that relationship; it's making it permanent in a really fucked up shakespearian way. the only relationship we see ed waffle between wanting to keep and wanting to push away is stede. after his corporate "apology" and the fishing trip with fang, all of ed's dialogue is with stede and a little bit with zheng until izzy's death scene. the crew loving ed just isn't a thing, at least not one we're shown. not from either side. ed's relationships are with stede and kind of, sort of with izzy (because he does manage to, if not fully break, do some major damage to that).

love did not save ed. ed wanting to live, because stede came back, because he didn't want to jump off hornigold's cliff in the first place, saved ed. izzy saved everyone else.

so yeah: that's it; that's the post. the rhetoric that abuse is love or that abuse can be "cured" with love or that trauma isn't lasting and serious and has impacts on people's daily lives is just. wild. wild.

and terrifying.

my dad was born in the 40s. why is anyone born in the 80s or later still defending this mindset? it honestly, truly freaks me out.

guess it's good i have a fucking therapy appointment on monday.

#ofmd critical #ptsd problems

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general-cyno · 2 months

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I sort of rambled about this in the tags of a post, but I wanted to make a proper one myself since I find it very fascinating (law backstory flashback you will always be famous). so one of my favorite scenes is this one:

it is a very meaningful moment for these two, a very clear turning point to their dynamic at that time, and it's made even clearer by how law starts referring to rocinante as cora-san afterwards.

now, there are several instances throughout dressrosa arc where the similarities between doflamingo and law are mentioned, with the former going as far as to call them both birds of a feather. and as it's shown in the flashbacks, reading about flevance was enough to trigger doflamingo's traumatizing memories of his and rocinante's childhood, which seems to motivate him to bring law into the family. the way law seeks to lash out at everything then is reminiscent of doflamingo's own worldview and experiences, at least from his pov:

rocinante noticed those similarities as well and though he tried to (questionably) discourage all kids from joining the DQ pirates by scaring them away, law's case in particular prompted him to bring up the topic with sengoku at some point, as seen during sengoku's conversation with law.

sengoku repeats what everyone says about the amber lead disease, that it's incurable, and warns rocinante not to favor law much for it could jeopardize his mission. whether rocinante's agreement here was reluctant or not ig is up to each reader but learning of law's real/full name (his relation to the D clan) reignites his initial worries and some more, considering the historic opposition/threat the D represents wrt celestial dragons and how this could endanger him if doflamingo were to find out.

so there's even bigger reasons for rocinante to not want law to become doflamingo 2.0. though as he later admits amidst his drunken speech, the will of D no longer matters to him when it comes to saving law, as rocinante's journey to cure his disease ends up making him feel genuine sympathy for law beyond that. he's forced to witness first hand how much discrimination and dehumanization law's subjected to time and time again, because of his disease and ties to flevance. before all this, law's mentioned his imminent death more than a few times and does it after too. and during the first disastrous hospital visit, he tells rocinante: see? I'm not even human anymore!

which brings me to this bit of dialogue:

for all of law's similarities and/or parallels to doflamingo, it's worth noting that rocinante experienced the same things his brother did and due to his younger age probably understood even less of what was happening or why they were being targeted in the first place. compared to doflamingo, rocinante also has way less dialogue in their backstory but one he does have is this:

this happens in the part where rocinante, doflamingo and their father are strung up on a wall and shot at with arrows. the villagers all express their anger, grief, the violence and suffering they've gone through because of celestial dragons like the donquixotes. albeit different in nature, along with doflamingo, rocinante experienced a kind of dehumanization as well.

so, again: for all that law might resemble doflamingo the most, I do wonder... how much of himself did rocinante see in law, though subconsciously? a kid who lost his family, subjected to the kind of violence that led him to resign himself to death (seek it, even) and was treated by others as inhuman because of circumstances out of his control? it might've not been what rocinante believed to be his own motivations to help law, likely never actually saw or realized the similarities they shared, but imo it adds some more depth to his kindness and sympathy towards law.

this also marks a stark difference between the donquixote brothers. whereas doflamingo got caught up in a very vicious cycle (which traces back to the existence of celestial dragons as a whole and was further enabled by others like trebol) that he planned to continue with law, rocinante was able to see past law's rage and acknowledge the pain beneath. after all, rocinante knows too what it's like to be hurt by others who've been terribly hurt first and became someone who wasn't exactly keen on returning the sentiment, unlike doflamingo, regardless of whether it was in his nature to be so or if it's something that was nurtured as he grew up. that's not to say rocinante was an endlessly kind saint (he had his own biased views) or that he wasn't capable of violence (he did beat up all those medical staff and burn down hospitals for example), but those incidents weren't caused by a sense of entitlement on his part or such. he didn't blame law for stabbing him or in general for seeking revenge against the world, ultimately chose to protect and save him instead - which, indeed, changed law's life. as law presently insists, he owes cora not just that very life but his heart as well.

lastly - law himself might not disagree with doflamingo insisting they're of the same sort, but law is also the kid who couldn't fathom leaving his dying little sister behind. who softened and lowered his guard after receiving genuine kindness/love/sympathy for the first time in years. who saved a little mink and risked his own neck later on to save a boy who'd just lost his brother in the worst way possible. who didn't even consider putting his crew in danger when he knew (and expected) he might die and his whole revenge plan against doflamingo was rooted in love and grief to begin with, the same upon which the foundation of his crew was built and is a tribute to. last we saw of him, law orders bepo to go back in winner island because can't leave the crew behind, etc etc, so there's that too. how much of it is law's own nature and personality? how much is due to the impact cora had on him? both? would've doflamingo turned out differently or made different choices if his parents had tried harder to school him out of those CD views or if he'd had more positive influences aside from them, instead of the people he ended up surrounded by? would he have become the same kind of person he is rn no matter what? interesting stuff to think about.

#one piece #tp #donquixote rosinante #donquixote corazon #trafalgar law #every day I am plagued by Thoughts abt these guys help me #hope this is somewhat coherent ajdkkgg #also writing this made me realize cora kind of? subtly told law abt his and doffy's relation to the celestial dragons?#probably flew over his lil head tho #long post

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moonlight-tmd · 1 month

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Thinking about Warframe!Bumblebee while still a minibot.

They're all still fresh on Earth and Sari is showing them all sorts of activities and fun stuff. One time she brings some movies to watch. Some animated or with actors.

It's just Bulkhead, Prowl, Bee and Sari watching. Sari brought Hobbit/Lord of the Rings this time.

It was all fun and games until after watching the movie Sari asked Bee what he thought about it. He didn't answer and one glance to the side at him told them why-

Bee was all still and silent, gaze fixated on the screen even tho there was nothing playing. His expression would be stone cold if it wasn't for his optics that were wide and unfocused, giving his faceplate a terrified tone.

He only reacted when Prowl, who sat next to him, tapped his shoulder to get his attention- the little touch was enough to get him to jump back to the end of the couch.

Bee kept saying he was fine but his reaction was enough to tell the others he wasn't. He went to his room, saying he just needed a moment.

The only one to go after him was Ratchet- the old docbot needed to do something near where the group was watching the movie. He stayed for a bit to watch too, none in the group seemed to notice he was there. He recognised the expression Bee had- the very same expression had those who had seen what war is like, the ones that ended up in his medbay long ago, be it soldiers or just civilians. Some of the scenes in that movie were enough to bring back Ratchet's painful memories of being deployed on the warzone, rushing to help but never getting on time in some of the cases... He himself was a beholder of the same expression when he was trying to recharge peacefully. It was most often the reason why he usually buried himself in work and checking every file possible until he passed out in berth or on the desk...

Knowing that Bee was a victim of reformatting also meant he knew what war truly looked like. Sadness gripped Ratchet's Spark at the thought of what else the poor kid had to go thru at such a young age.

He disappeared from the scene when the others were talking and went to knock on Bee's door. Bee didn't answer so carefully he let himself in. Bee was sitting on his berth, blanket draped over his shoulders and back, his favorite bee plush gripped tightly close to his chest. Ratchet closed the door and said he wanted to check on him.

Bee, again, said he was fine, but Ratchet didn't need the sadness in his voice to know it was a lie. He sat on the berth next to him and comforted him, he pulled the kid into a side-hug and gently rubbed his arm. None of them said anything really, but the presence of someone who understood what it was like was enough to ease the pain.

One of the habits they developed since Ratchet's discovery about Bee's frame is that when Bee has a flashback episode or when he notices Ratchet is behaving off, he'd come to Ratchet and they'd spend some time together, just the two of them- sometimes they'd talk about various stuff to keep the bad thoughts away, sometimes they'd just keep each other company in silence. (in this case it's a movie, but there's other stuff like something exploding or if Bee stares at fire for too long.)

None may show it directly but they both know how close they've grown because of these. Coping with PTSD is difficult but they manage it just fine.

#maccadam #tfa #tfa ratchet #tfa bumblebee #warframe!bumblebee au #tfa au #angst

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t1sunfortunate · 1 year

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the unfortunate reality is that sns just isn’t that good.

sure, it could have been good if this or if that or the other thing, but the fact of the matter is that it’s not, and the main reason it isn’t is actually touted by a lot of sns fans as one of the central pillars of the relationship.

when kishimoto retconned naruto and sasuke’s relationship to state that they always understood each other, he undermined an entire series where the central conflict was about the two of them not understanding each other. to read from the beginning with this interpretation requires you to cast a ridiculous, needlessly complicated filter over all their interactions, giving them the character of a pair of chessmasters, rather than young boys. naruto and sasuke, if you throw out the retcon, read as a perfectly comprehensible narrative about two children who (realistically!) can’t see past the intricacies of their sociopolitical situations to understand that they have a lot in common. over time, their emotional maturity grows, allowing them to begin to realise this.

this is why the “i’ll bear the burden of your hatred and die with you” scene is so weighty; naruto is acknowledging that it is the realities of their circumstances that keep them apart, and he wants to meet again in another life where none of that exists. this scene is the canary in the coal mine, letting us know this relationship is going to end in tragedy; they’ve chosen separate ways, paths which are inevitably fated to cross, and the only way for them to meet again as friends is in death. he’s finally come to understand, but it’s too late. when faced with the choice of sasuke or konoha, naruto chose the village. that’s a huge choice that should, realistically, come with a consequence. even if this ends, somehow, with the both of them alive, the memory of that choice, and the circumstances that created it, remains. because naruto (the manga) is an immature narrative, however, there are no realistic, interesting consequences. sasuke is made to give up and magically let go of his grudge against an institution which murdered his family and destroyed his life, of his pursuit of justice, which, from the very start, defined him as a character, so naruto can have both his friend and the admiration of said institution. the end of the series is the death of sasuke’s character, and i could go into an in-depth analysis of chapter 699 and how i think kishimoto knows this on some level, hence why sasuke never truly returned to konoha (ergo, to naruto, since, in becoming hokage, naruto becomes synonymous with konoha). sns is depressing. i see the tongue-in-cheek posts about the sns affair, the sns divorce arc, and all i can think of is how bleak an ending this is for sasuke, and how out of character it is. what i wouldn’t have given for him to hear “i know your heart, and you mine” and lash out with a resounding “no you don’t”.

but the late series, and shippuden as a whole, more and more as it drags on, is synonymous with predetermination superseding free will. i don’t think it’s a coincidence that i don’t see many sns fans talking about the first part of the series, where naruto and sasuke are actually forging this relationship. sns would be nothing without the story pre-timeskip, but people tend to focus on shippuden-era sns, which, to some extent, i understand. this is the era most fraught with emotional tension (and where naruto spends the entire time with a thought bubble that says “sasuke”, because he lost all of his depth as a character from part 1 in favour of that, but i digress), but when it comes to looking for the core of their bond, to the actual raison d’être, the entirety of part 1 gets far less press than the scenes of them as young children in the academy – scenes which were introduced extremely late in the series as brief flashbacks. kishimoto’s fixation with destiny invalidates the themes of part 1 on all levels, and the sns relationship is in no way exempt.

so could sns have been good? yes, as a tragic relationship, disregarding the retcon. except, from what i see, people who like sns seem to really, really like it. they take the overly-complex retcon interpretation and use it in support of a “naruto and sasuke always loved one another” or “naruto and sasuke had their positive feelings for each other twisted by their martial society” reading. it’s not even that these are inherently bad takes, in a literary sense, it’s simply that they don’t hold up to the rest of the manga. asserting in the very late series that these two characters have been watching each other for some time doesn’t hold up with the reality of the story, which begins on naruto and sasuke having no thoughts or opinions of one another beyond their surface-level feelings towards a classmate they don’t particularly like or understand. the growth of this into their genuine bond is much more meaningful, because it occurs textually. it is a true show of increasing mental and emotional maturity, rather than a frustrating wait for the characters to stop dancing around the conclusion of their emotional journey, which they already know, for some reason, from the beginning. that’s the core of it, really: the retcon puts the end at the beginning, making the entire story a pointless exercise in futility. destiny is wholeheartedly embraced as romantic and self-evident, rather than the death of narrative and interpersonal complexity, and the fundamental truth that love is a choice – the continual, conscious decision to choose each other, day after day – and we already know what naruto’s choice was.

(you might say, well, I think X or Y should have changed; naruto should have learned about the destruction of uzushiogakure and understood he and sasuke came from a very similar situation, – which, itself, rests on another late-series destiny boner retcon – naruto should never have become loyal to the village after the way he was treated, naruto should have joined with sasuke to tear down konoha – but that’s not the way it was written, and if this is your justification, you admit it is a relationship as flawed in its narrative as the ones it is so often purported to be so much better than.)

#naruto #analysis #meta

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purpleangelsele · 1 year

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Since there’s a post using very tired arguments I’ll just talk about it.

From what I say onwards is my opinion and anyone can disagree, this is just my observations and opinions on what actually happened in the show.

Side note: If your post is clearly anti mileven, do better in censoring and tagging your shit because it still shows up in the tag.

Okay? Moving on…

——-

Okay so let’s start with this section.

So there’s this problem that B*lers have with not stating it’s their opinion first and foremost. Because they state that El “clearly” didn’t believe Mike when he said I love you…but where’s the exact confirmation? That sentence alone is an opinion that is not based on facts or even context. And apparently Mike idealizes El?

The same Mike that was worried she was draining herself way too much for everyone else, the one from the very beginning that said “she’s not a dog.”, the one that said “no, you’re not a monster, you saved me. You saved me.” But he’s idealizing her? He clearly states that he loves her with or without her powers. That is factual and from the show.

El doesn’t believe she is a superhero anymore because of the way she views herself. It is why she pulls away from Mike because she would hurt more if Mike saw her as monster, but Mike never saw her a monster just who she was. Personally, I think her powers make her a selfless superhero at times, she is always saving everyone and the world from danger.

So about the argument scene. El crying in front of Mike is not just because their relationship, it’s everything that happened yesterday, with hopper being gone, Angela showing up and humiliated her, and she hit back. but because she let her anger get the best of her, she’s feeling like a monster because of it. Her flashbacks to kids dead covered in blood with Brenner asking what she’s done, triggers her downward spiral internally. Which makes it harder for her to see clearly how Mike doesn’t view her as a monster.

If someone was sobbing in front of me, begging me to say I love you to them, I would be shocked and not immediately say I love you because then it wouldn’t seem genuine. Also her emotions are fully controlling her so hearing I love you wouldn’t have made anything better. She could have just said it was a lie or think he’s lying because she’s not in the right headspace to accept those words in that moment. That’s what I think. Obviously I have no idea what is going on in their minds but I can guess.

Mike was dealing with deep self-esteem issues and considering he’s been bullied his whole life, he thought he might not be needed anymore, because she didn’t tell him about her situation and he doesn’t know if he’s a good boyfriend for not even noticing her going through it. But he only had letters and he believed what she said in them. Both of them are not to blame, they are two teenagers still navigating this crazy world they live in where the upside down resides.

I believe that, Mike cares and loves El in a romantic sense because both of them felt like outcasts but understood each other when no one else would. Yes they have shared trauma but their relationship is far deeper and has a foundation set by a literal ride or die friendship.

Alsooo, remember when I said some annoying B*lers thought it would be hilarious if we thought Mike meant what he said?

Yeahhh. That’s exactly what I was talking about. Proving my point once again.

I personally don’t see how Mileven was a mess. Maybe I’m too biased but I’m pretty sure they’re the healthiest couple on the show. Even when they were broken up (briefly), they never stopped being considerate of the other and being there for the other person. Mike said “it’s a fight you cannot come back from.” And that makes me think.. wow that’s such a teenage thing to say, because any argument when you’re in relationship feels final but it wasn’t, because I think El still loves him and is willing to work things out with him, but it’s going to take some time. It doesn’t mean they’re a mess, they just have way too much to deal with, aside from their relationship. Like Hawkins falling apart, and Vecna still alive but hurt. Call it wishful thinking but I’m not worried about their relationship.

Now, this same old opinion that has been circling since season 4 “ El was distant from Mike after the Speech.” Again considering what happened in the show, it’s understandable that El isn’t in the speaking mood. She just found out Max was in a coma and couldn’t find her anywhere in her mind. That can mess with her mental state especially because El feels like she failed Max.

But don’t forget that she wasn’t denying physical touch and closeness with Mike during the hospital scene with Max. They stood side by side and she was wearing what I assume is a hoodie of Mike’s. And automatically she leans against his shoulder while he rubs her shoulder briefly. That does not signal to me that she’s planning to breakup with him because she can still think about taking down Vecna but want the relationship with Mike in tact.

El being independent has been the whole show. She’s been alone since her birth, considering she was builled by other kids and escaped by herself and only had herself to rely on until she met Benny, and then the party. She gets separated from the party at the end of season 1, she stays in the woods by herself for about a month I think. Then Hopper takes her in but she’s still so isolated and alone because she can’t interact with her friends in fear of Brenner finding her. And then In Season three she gets to spend more time with Max and got to know her better. In season 4, she’s separated from Mike in handcuffs, and then by Dr.Owens taking her to Nina. She spends majority of the season alone because she was learning more about herself and getting back her abilities in the process. When they finally reunite it feels amazing and both of them are just elated to see eachother alive.

El can be independent and still be the one to save everyone because Mike is not the one with powers here, she can take care of herself and she’s shown that time and time again.

Mike Wheeler is more than El’s boyfriend. He is the leader of the party, the one that comes up with plans and follows through. He’s also the one that comes up with plans that help El or like season 4, find her location. He is dealing with untreated trauma, watching El “die” in front of him, talking to his Walkie-Talkie and feeling her there but feeling crazy for thinking that. His family situation(enough said). The way school has affected him in terms of the cliques and the bullies. Then there’s the Upside down and the constant fear that he’ll lose the person he loves to Vecna. He’s so much more than her boyfriend, he is a fully-fleshed out character that deserves more respect and honestly, I hope to see him grow more in season 5.

Is there any confirmation that they are miserable with eachother? No? Then don’t say it as a common fact. El deserves to be loved unconditionally and Mike does love her unconditionally, that’s why he takes their conversations more seriously, that’s why he’s different than his dad, he actually thinks on what he said and how it affected El. And he works on himself to be better and more open about his feelings especially with El. And Mike did say I love you to someone, El.

In the show, he said I love you. Personally, I think that type of post is dismissing the complexity of their relationship and is only scratching the surface of it. Also love the cherry pickiness of scenes that are twisted in such a negative way that I never would have thought upon viewing it the first time.

At the end of the day this is my perspective. I’m not posting this to change anyone’s minds. I just want people to read this and at least understand why I think this way. Instead of being sheep, develop your own opinions about the ships in context of the show and if you don’t then that’s okay, Fanon is cool too. It’s only problematic when Fanon is treated as Canon facts.

That’s all. Thank you for reading the whole post!!

-Sel💜

#mileven #mike wheeler #el hopper #mike x el #stranger things #anti byler #my post #my thoughts #selwrites

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batmancomicanalysis · 3 months

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Did Batman kill The Joker in The Killing Joke?

Note: "Alan Moore said" is not a valid refutation. A great article on the concept of authorial intent with particular reference to TKJ:

1. Batman’s early statement “I don’t want your murder on my hands” could foreshadow The Joker’s murder by Batman’s bare hands, à la TDKR. Ironically, Batman’s hands are literally stained (by white makeup) in this scene. Joker’s death may have been foreshadowed again when Batman crushed The Joker’s card in silent rage in response to hearing what he did to Barbara

2. Batman asks The Joker impersonator “Do you realize what you’ve set free?”, implying that Batman doesn’t regard The Joker as a mere human but an animal, a force of nature or a demonic entity; i.e., dehumanised, something one would have fewer reservations about destroying

3. In a conversation with Alfred (prior to The Joker’s brutal assault on Jim and Jim’s daughter Barbara), Batman admits that he hates The Joker: “How can two people hate so much without knowing each other?”

4. Batman states that “in the end, one of us will kill the other” near the beginning in Arkham (with Batman and what appears to be The Joker, captioned as “two guys in a lunatic asylum…”; the start of The Joker’s eponymous joke, sitting opposite each other in The Joker’s cell, with Jim on the outside looking in) and the “one of us will kill the other” monologue (the second time internal) appears again towards the end: Batman reluctantly accepts the necessity of killing The Joker (if The Joker doesn’t kill him first). Batman’s “we’re both running out of alternatives”, “Maybe it all hinges on tonight” and “it doesn’t have to end like that” come just before The Joker apologises, rejects Batman’s “last chance” offer of rehabilitation (after “all these years” of conflict) and tells the eponymous "killing joke"

5. Batman laughing maniacally with The Joker (who recently committed atrocities against partner Barbara and best friend Jim to boot) is extremely out of character (getting through to archnemesis Batman and breaking his stern exterior represents a major victory for the former failed comedian in itself), possibly suggesting that Batman’s snapped (proving The Joker at least partly right whatever way you look at it, whether one views an endlessly pacifistic Gordon or homicidal Batman as insane but TKJ is predominantly The Joker’s story) and is raising his arms to kill (in the last panel where we see Batman’s face, his facial expression can easily be interpreted as being sinister)

6. The way the perspective pans down after Batman places his hands on The Joker, first excluding their chests and above, then excluding all but parts of their feet, and finally omitting the two men entirely, suggests that something significant may be happening just out of our view

7. The laughter ceases abruptly (maybe of one first, then both) while the police siren continues

8. In the last panel the “light” (which has been “on” since the very first panel) has gone out, the “bridge” has disappeared and the two men are out of the picture, their visual opposition gone. Having finally understood the insane futility of trying to rehabilitate The Joker (who has escaped from Arkham to maim and murder time and time again), Batman may have ended their duality and conflict by killing him

9. The title being “The Killing Joke” may be a hint in this direction: the final joke doesn’t directly describe killing but perhaps that was its consequence, killing The Joker physically and Batman metaphorically

10. The flashbacks show what was potentially the “bad day” which sent (an already mentally unstable) pre-Joker over the edge, maybe TKJ is (an already mentally unstable) Batman’s second “bad day”, orchestrated by The Joker with fatal consequences

11. From The Joker’s perspective, Batman (a renowned costumed nightcrawling outlaw and obsessive genius of questionable sanity and ambiguous sexuality, with a generally unknown identity, whose genesis was a response to tragedy) has more in common with The Joker than he does with the politically correct and legalistic Jim. Hence: “You know the laws regarding mistreatment of inmates as well as I do!”, “If you harm one hair on his head…” and unlike Batman and The Joker, Jim is seemingly unchanged by his “bad day”: “I want him brought in by the book!”, followed by Batman’s “I’ll do my best” (with Batman looking in the opposite direction to Jim), suggesting that he’s seriously considering murder, especially if his last desperate attempts to rehabilitate The Joker are rebuffed (which they are). The early appearance of an imprisoned Two-Face in Arkham (simultaneously looking more like Bruce Wayne and The Joker than usual) is another nod toward their duality, as is the hall of mirrors (also present in The Dark Knight Returns and The Man With The Golden Gun). Furthermore, Batman was apparently present and instrumental in The Joker’s “birth”, there’s a perfect symmetry if The Joker was present and instrumental in their “deaths”

12. TKJ was an extremely brutal, politically incorrect, “realist” graphic novel

13. It’s strongly implied that Batman killed The Joker in Miller’s TDKR, which was published two years before TKJ and influenced Moore

14. TKJ was written as a standalone story, perhaps as the final Batman-Joker conflict (similar to how Moore’s “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”, published 18 months prior, was written as the final tale of the Silver Age Superman)

Batman’s murder of The Joker can be interpreted as a mercy killing: The Joker’s laugh is a warped form of crying at the random injustice of human existence; he wants Batman (his sole equal and opposite) to put him out of his misery (“It’s all a joke! Everything anybody ever valued or struggled for...”)

#batman #the joker #the killing joke

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queendumpling · 1 year

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on Tiletta, and the search for understanding between Mithra and Rutile

It's an idea that I've actually had running around in my head for awhile, but was also really happy to see that the shower thoughts about Tiletta I posted in a Twitter thread because I couldn't sleep seemed to also resonate with other people. So I just wanted to expand on it a bit more!

Tiletta is a character that we constantly come back to throughout the course of Mahoyaku, that she might as well be added to the cast of side characters. Unlike our usual cast of side characters though, Akira has never met Tiletta. And because she's, well, dead, we probably never will meet her, and I think that's actually for the best.

There's a recurring idea in Mahoyaku about connection and the bonds we have with others, but also about how tenuous those bonds can be. In search of connection, we strive to understand each other, but often run into difficulty when we do. Some of the most interesting dynamics within Mahoyaku are built precisely upon this struggle for understanding and desire to understand. And that brings up the question: how much can we truly understand another person?

We can approach this question through many different character dynamics, but I think it's most interesting if you look at it through Tiletta's character. Everything that we know about Tiletta is solely from the impressions and memories of Tiletta from other people. (While there are some stories, such as the Walpurgis 2022 event, which do show us a flashback scene of Tiletta, we as readers are still left on our own devices to draw conclusions about her.) Akira never gets to speak to Tiletta, ask her to tell her story, and have her share her thoughts and feelings in the same way they get to do with the other wizards. Our understanding of her thoughts and feelings are solely through the filter of others, one step removed away from the actual source.

The added layer to this is that those impressions of Tiletta vary greatly from each other. It's explored in Rutile's Affection Story, where Mithra describes her as "a sexy, evil, ravenous woman" and Rutile says that she was "a modest, maidenly woman who was also a great chef." In the same way that Mithra cannot comprehend how Northern Tiletta could become Southern Tiletta, Rutile has only known Southern Tiletta and has little understanding of what his mother used to be like.

Mahoyaku is careful not to outright reject one side of Tiletta to be the "true" version of her. North Tiletta is just as "true" of an answer to this question as South Tiletta is. In doing so, both version of Tiletta can be understood to be "correct." So the most straightforward conclusion we can make is that Tiletta was all of those things: sexy, modest, ravenous, evil, and maidenly. Northern and Southern Tiletta are not mutually exclusive of each other and coexisted in her.

But it's not so easy for the characters to understand this, and it is in fact the basis of the conflict that appears in the 2nd Anniversary story:

The foundation of Mithra and Rutile's relationship starts with their shared connections to Tiletta. Yet, the conflict that we see in their relationship mirrors their shared lack of understanding of Tiletta. Rutile only knows his mother as a kind Southern witch and still has yet to reconcile that impression with the more wild and fierce Tiletta of the North. Likewise, he doesn't understand Mithra's innate Northern personality either. We see it with Mithra too, who struggles to understand Rutile's ways of viewing the world and just as adamantly rejects the Southern Tiletta impressions.

As the two continue to reject the opposing Tiletta impression, the more they will continue to reject the each other. If we could meet Tiletta in the present timeline of the story, it's possible that we could get an easy answer for this discrepancy. Tiletta could tell us herself the kind of person that she is and bridge the wide gap in personality between Northern and Southern wizards. But I doubt that we will, precisely because it is the easy solution. Instead, we get to see Mithra and Rutile work on understanding each other through time and effort, and likewise, start to fill in the missing pieces to the mystery of the witch that is Tiletta. (Figaro is possibly the closest of an answer that we may get though, which does add a great layer of complexity to answering this question. Figaro is the one who helps Rutile understand Mithra better. But Tiletta (to my (and all of our) limited impressions) seems to feel more solidly integrated to the South in terms of personality/at terms with her Northern and Southern qualities vs Figaro, who is still in the works.)

Something that I do think is worth noting is that this Tiletta discrepancy is nothing new to the present timeline either. Mithra refers to her as both a flower and a wild beast in his memory (The Lingering Scent of Affection, Mithra's Affection Story). Tiletta was a person filled with contradictions - which I think is a safe way to describe many of the characters in mahoyaku.

The only difference being that for everyone else, we get to reconcile those differences in a much clearer way. Akira and the other characters can speak with them, ask them questions and get answers. With Tiletta, we don't have that kind of luxury. But what we are able to see is how our characters reconcile those differences in Tiletta and turn that into understanding of each other. The more that we learn about Tiletta and uncover those pieces of her, the more that we actually get to understand our present characters as well, too.

The Bonds We Formed, Like Magic; 2nd Anniversary (tl. healingbonds)

And sure, if one day we got to see a conversation between Tiletta and Akira happen, that would be neat! But in some ways it's more interesting if Tiletta is a continued mystery to us. We can get as close as possible to gaining that understanding of her, but never quite getting there all the way. The effort that Mithra and Rutile will have to put in to understanding each other will be done solely through that continued effort, and not through easy and simplistic answers.

I think Mahoyaku could have left Tiletta's character behind in the main story, after the reveal of the promise Mithra made to her. But the fact that she continues to come back, her ghost and continued mystery almost haunting the story itself, allows her to be a part of the growth of her child and magic protegee.

Etude of the Frog Taking Shelter from the Rain (tl. healingbonds)

Tiletta, most likely aware of the fact that Mithra has always been lonely and would be left even more so after her passing, ensured that there would be a bond between Mithra and Rutile after her passing. Even if that bond would be something forced upon him, Rutile is adamant about having this bond be something positive, to be Mithra's good fortune. What we get to see is the growth of a bond turn from a "misfortune" into "good fortune."

Their lack of understanding of each other now may be a misfortune, but Mithra and Rutile slowly get to move towards that understanding of each other and eventual strong connection to each other. Slowly but surely, they'll move in the direction of being each other's good fortune.

#mahoyaku #mhyk #mahoutsukai no yakusoku #ok i think that's all i have to say about this for now #i really wanted this to be more tiletta focused but honestly i just like thinking about mithra and rutile's dynamic #i think on paper they're maybe not as compelling as the other fated pairs but i think there's something really interesting going on #something worth exploring and i can clearly type 1k+ words about mfdjfkf

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caffernnn · 1 year

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Haru may not have died, but his characterization certainly did ☠️

Ok I know I’ve been a hater of sorts for weeks now but like!!! It’s a frustrating thing!!! I keep rehashing and articulating my problems with it in the hopes I can feel better about it but idk friend!!!

I was having a conversation earlier about how so many of us believe “the swimming anime” would benefit from having less swimming in it, and as wild as that sounds, it makes sense in consideration to how we’ve understood the show and its characters up to this point. (Hold on lemme pull up some of that rant from the DMs)

Isn’t one of the original key tenets of the story that there’s life outside of the pool, and the reason swimming really means something to them in the first place is because of how it honors all that they are and what matters to them in other parts of their life?? Haru has a love for water because engaging with it in different ways (sensory seeking, symbolism, etc) centers him, and it’s such a pervasive and present part of nature that the familiarity of it everywhere helps him better understand and process the world around him. It’s how he ponders the movement of time and how attitude dictates free will: the idea of nature being powerful enough to cause delight or destruction but ultimately if you respect it in your dive forward, the water’s fangs are less scary, and you have the freedom to continue forward with your own level of control within it. He understands his friends better by the ways they engage with water — being scared of the ocean, braving storms and potential drowning repeatedly to learn how to swim, splashing and thrashing during races out of a mix of passion and frustration, almost drowning more than once in those years spent in turmoil… all of these moments and memories reveal vulnerabilities and (malleable, but still present) truths about his friends that help him figure out how to reach those friends and care for them. I digress, we are aware that swimming is important in the story, but so many of the issues we seem to have with canon at this point come from different perspectives as to why. We enjoy Starting Days because Makoto struggles with figuring out his motive/“why” and ultimately arrives at a similar conclusion as a good chunk of the audience: he’s there because he does learn to love swimming, but he’s also there because he loves Haru, and the pool essentially becomes meaningless if either of those tandem truths gets repressed or denied. The show is at its strongest when it works to acknowledge and honor both the sportsmanship/craft they’ve honed from years of dedication to swimming, as well as the the bonds and love that give them purpose.

Different people have talked about feeling disenchanted with the final relay in a way that they never seemed to be with other big relay scenes in the past, and it makes sense — we lose faith in the pool being this place of discovery and connectivity when the story does the disservice of pisspoor conflict-resolution and character erasure outside of it. Like, why does the pool still matter if the characters can’t even talk to each other or tap into the feelings and learned truths they’ve gathered from being vulnerable in the water in the past? Why should I keep putting stock into the “power of friendship” when the story skirts over possible confrontations and heartfelt chances to display the ever-evolving strength of those bonds?

One of the biggest problems with the FS movies, in my opinion, comes from a lack of balance between those two drives. The Haru we know, time and time again, marches forward on this path because he loves swimming and his friends. At some point, the urge to actively show those friendships growing stronger in the storytelling became less of a priority, active moments getting replaced with implied offscreen bonding (when they’re not completely ghosting each other) and flashback montages. The urge to show Haru as a person outside of swimming seems to fade in the narrative, which is sad to recognize when we are being shown so much evidence of this exact imbalance in Haru’s life being what’s hurdling him straight into burnout. Haru being thrown into a storyline where he loses his balance for a bit and spirals can be compelling, like I truly do believe that, but for it to be done well, the narrative has to acknowledge the importance of that balance in the first place. If they’re to insist on an ending where Haru breaks down and doesn’t consider quitting until he’s forced to take a hiatus, and then further insist that whatever happened during that hiatus gave him enough balance and strength to return to the world stage with confidence, the focal point should’ve been on that journey to rebuild Haru’s center. What’s sad is that we know that type of storytelling is possible, because we see it with Sousuke’s different arcs (which could be a whole separate post and conversation), so why can’t we have that with the insisted protagonist of the whole show? Was it a lack of time left to show the details of a messy healing process, or a belief from the writers that those details weren’t that important to show this time around?

I just. Hmm. Big Haru emotions. I’m excited to see fans fill in the gaps themselves by chatting/writing about Haru’s journey after the burnout themselves (the hard conversations and decisions that either lead him back to the world stage in some capacity or break free from the pro circuit entirely), but I wish we got just a smidge more in canon. We could’ve had just a smidge more in canon.

#rest in piss haruchan you would’ve loved actually talking with your friends #fs2 #fs2 spoilers #meta #haruka nanase #I’ll get to dissecting what’s actually IN the movies at some point #but I want to acknowledge what’s MISSING first so that that doesn’t overtake those conversations ykwim #aaaaaanyway #thanks for sending <3 #queerbuck

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gmwsuperfan5467890 · 2 years

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HSMTMTS Season 3 Finale Opinions (in no particular order)

-Big Red is bi!!!!! I’ve always thought that both him and Ashlynn are queer and I’m glad we got confirmation.

-So, from what I understood, Big Red and Ashlyn both realized/accepted they were bi this summer but Big Red came out if it realizing that Ashlyn was ‘the one’ for him, while Ashlyn now has eyes for Maddox....ooof. Though, I don’t think Big Red is truly in love with Ashlyn, I think he does have feelings for her and he is mistaking those feelings for true love because that’s what his parents had at his age and he probably always expected to meet his soulmate at the same age his parents did. I definitely feel for Big Red and I hope we get an expansion for that plot line next season.

-I also do hope that Big Red has another love interest next season.

-Ashlyn and Maddox for the win! I’m looking forward to their relationship developing even more next season!

-Is Ashlyn’s actual surname Moon? It’s giving me flashbacks to Veronica Luna 💀💀

-How old is Jet exactly? He’s younger than Maddox who is 15, so he could be 14 or 15? Is Kourtney 17? I don’t know if I can be okay with this ship unless I know their ages. I’m assuming, Jet will be a sophomore in season 4, while Kourtney will be a senior, so it won’t be that bad. Also how is Jet in love with Kourtney when he’s only known her for 2 weeks?

-Kourtney sounded amazing and I’m glad that they didn’t make her anxiety magically disappear and that she will be seeing a therapist. That scene with her and the girl that plays young Elsa was so cute.

-AHHHHHHH THIS IS ME!!!!! AND EVERYDAY!!!! MY FAVE SONGS

-Miss Jen and Corbin Bleu sounded amazing together!

-Channing is such a man child.

-Why did Channing even edit the trailer?? You’re telling me there’s no other editors at Disney+

-Why was everyone pissed/shocked/mad at each other when they saw the trailer??? They knew that Channing would edit them to make them look bad. What was the point of Ricky’s secretly recorded confession being introduced as a major plot-line when it wasn’t even included in the trailer.

-Does everyone know Ashlyn is bi? It would have been nice to see her come out to some people.

-Why did Big Red tell national television that he was bi before telling Ricky and Ashlyn?

-Why did they make it look like Carlos was cheating with some random guy we have never seen before, when they could have done something else, like something he said/did in the previous episodes that can be misconstrued.

-I feel so bad for EJ, he has an unsupportive,controlling father and now he thinks that his ex-girlfriend wanted another guy instead of him, that same guy who his other ex dumped him for.

-I’m saying this as a Rina shipper, Gina genuinely had romantic feelings for EJ and it’s so weird that they tried to undermine their relationship in the last two episodes. I think Gina deserves to have time to be in a genuine relationship that is not with Ricky, like Ricky did in season 2 and EJ deserves to have a girlfriend that doesn’t dump him for Ricky.

-Gina’s last conversation with EJ was so weird to me. Why didn’t she correct EJ’s assumption that she was eyeing Ricky at camp and say that she did have genuine feelings for him but they just didn’t work out? Why did she immediately confess to Ricky after that? Why isn’t she allowed time to heal from her break-up and she and Ricky can start her relationship in season 4? It really does seem to me like Gina didn’t care about EJ that much. I really do feel bad for Portwell shippers, your ship deserved better.

- I do like Rina’s confession scene itself. I like how it is a callback to how Gina ‘never does anything right the first time’ ie confessing to Ricky after the season 1 musical, which was the wrong time and confessing now, which was the right time. I am looking forward to their relationship in season 4 and hoping it is done justice.

-In my opinion, I don’t think EJ and Val will be a thing. I think they have more of a Stobin like friendship.

-I loved Nini’s send-off and it was really nice seeing her have closure with Miss Jen, Kourtney and Ricky. The lotto ticket was a sweet gift but I loved how her relationships with Kourtney and Miss Jen shined the most. I think Nini’s character arc was always about going new places in in order to follow her dreams and I’m glad she tried again even though it didn’t work out the first time.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this season finale. There were some things I liked but a lot of things were confusing to me. I feel like it was very rushed and there should have been more episodes or episodes with a longer run-time. Also camp should have been for the whole summer instead of two weeks.

#hsmtmts #hsmtmts season 3 #high school musical the musical the series #nini salazar roberts #ricky bowen #gina porter #ej caswell #val hsmtmts #maddox hsmtmts #jet hsmtms #big red #ashlyn caswell #kourtney greene #carlos rodriguez #miss jenn

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seawherethesunsets · 1 year

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It was a slowburn for sure.

His friend!! Meanwhile it's fun to see his smiley face because of discovering the tension btw these two, I'm a lil bit sad about what he said after selling his car. Hope it won't get any deeper. I like their friendship, I need them to stay as one.

Yeah... there is a spark in his life. I'm slowly wondering what Dong Jin would look like when he is happy. I'm so used to see them serious or sad.

"don't like me" thing wasn't annoying! She regrets about her previous actions and is stressed about her new positive feelings building up for him. I like that these are the factors of her mixed actions! She puts a distance as well as does things in his favor. I can't find a proper way to explain it now but like... the confusion in the episodes were understandable for me. And yes it was also fun to watch Dong Jin reactions. Idk maybe I'm convinced well that this time it didn't annoy me seeing a main couple avoiding each other. Kdrama writers have a shitty timing preference for this type of situations.

the number of side characters/plots and episodes concern me. I don't want this drama to end up like Cheer Up. I genuinely hated to see all potentials getting wasted. I'm praying hard for a possibility that the writer(s) thought thoroughly about the direction of the scenario.

Coming to my experience with this week's episodes...

His ex's past and (seems like our permanent villain) old boss took a bit of space in this week's episodes meanwhile the main characters were busy with putting a distance.

Ex's past wasn't a waste of time, surprisingly. I liked and understood the reason perfectly since the drama did a great job showing how annoying and tiring Dong Jin's mom is for everyone. Dong Jin wanting to give more time for his gf for her sake and Minyoung misunderstanding this as reluctance on taking a step further... understandable.

Ending of ep7: her realization of her feelings. PERFECT. For her part, I loved the confusion and the long talk. Additionally, I loved Sung Joon's eyes in that scene. He delivered well and it was shot well. Those eyes were pretty! (Alexa, play 예뻤어)

Ending of ep8: his acceptance of his feelings. PERFECT. one "어" and lots of feelings on that face. I also liked his talk before this moment.

And it is cute that both characters lived that moment while they were alone with their close friends.

Ms. Baek!! She keeps getting my attention. I liked her small scene with Dong Jin. (Also remember how she got soft towards Woo Joo at one point?)

There are small plots winking at us. Woo Joo's sister takes some pills?.. Dongjin promised to go to camping (and we all saw that picture but unfortunately didn't see the SCENE yet)... Woo Joo's mom getting mentioned pretty often... Jun's confusing acting performances?.. (does he really act? which statements are he actually serious about?) There are some uninteresting ones, too. Like the old boss's revenge. I thought and hoped he would stop at one point but he's racing for the main villain role... Aaand I don't think we would have a fun time with Woo Joo's dead father's will? The less I see that woman, the better.

Hope there would be many good/fun things to mention next week!

frienddddddd the way you go off with all the detailssss i could neverrrr!!!!!

like you said, I too feel the main couple "avoiding" each other is very apt in this storyline. It's the way they wanna put distance but keep doing things against it like how woojoo sewed his button and told him she want to do it so dont stop her or lock the door aasdjkjfd. It doesn't feel frustrating or draggy yet (I just dont want it leaning that way soon >.<).

Yesss I really want to see more of the other characters mainly her sister and jun. There's a lot to explore so I hope they dont make the side characters get drowned unnecessarily. and i also picked that up about haesung supposedly taking pills???? 👀👀

everytime they show flashbacks I get more intrigued. I would think dongjin already talked to minyoung about his mom and how he's brought up. From the flashbacks, dongjin seemed to be quite emotionally stable despite his own baggage when he was with minyoung. It's understandable that minyoung would feel that him delaying to meet the parents as reluctance for the next step but the fact that she cheated for a year still doesnt sit right with me. Although, there might be possibilities that she fake cheated cos she didnt get married anyways and stayed in US alone.

OMG yes ms baek seems to be such a sweet person and she was also very accepting of woojoo when she joined because she can do her job. I like that she's always supportive and professional in a very subtle way.

i hope the mum rot in jail or somewhere and never bother anyone again like goshhhhhh. and his ex boss...in the next ep teaser he seems to be wanting to assault minyoung w a rock? like bruhhhhhhhh

im looking forward to the revival of best fairs after all they went through!

Have a great week ahead! cant wait for wednesdayyyy

#ask #call it love #❤️❤️❤️#im so sorry if i always dont give enough insights hahahah im so baddd #but i appreciate all the points you made like yes yes yes!!

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princeescaluswords · 2 years

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During my rewatch, noticed how in the episode where Scott is feeling such guilt over Derek's apparent death that his body is refusing to heal, one of the words Stiles is quizzing Scott on is anachronism and how it seems relevant due to this episode being inter spliced with flashbacks.

And of course, I cannot NOT mention the BRILLIANT scene with Allison hallucinating Victoria. Her mother telling her to approach the problem unemotional and clinically, echoing Gerard who told her to attack the situation from a place of strategy vs emotion. How Allison is fully aware her mother wasn't a flawless person but still loves her and as you stated once, chooses to take strength from certain aspects of her. I have no doubts Victoria genuinely loved Allison and her always pushing her to be "strong" knowing the world(s) they occupy and what's expected of women in their family. And here she is, struggling to save the life of the same boy her mother tried to kill to keep her safe and ended up taking her own life because she was bitten. The love was definitely genuine, I could see it as Victoria tried to talk to Allison one-on-one but was told she was busy but rather than be upset she was disappointed and chose to die in her bed to be close to her.

One of the things I love so very much about Teen Wolf is how it was willing to push the boundaries in its storytelling conventions. One example of this that I've talked about before is the idea that it grounded its perspective in the experience of teenagers, none of whom were occult scholars, so some of the supernatural things they witnessed simply went unexplained. The adults who understood these didn't teach them the intricacies of the supernatural world either because it allowed them to manipulate the teenagers, as in Peter's case, or because they thought that the teenagers should be allowed to be teenagers, as in Deaton's case.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, sometimes it didn't work. They weren't successful when they focused an entire season on a character's absence (6A) or when the story's surprise reveals frustrated the audience rather than disoriented them, such as the Dead Pool's computer towers. On the other hand, I'd much rather watch a show which tried new things and fell on its face than one that stayed conventionally predictable.

But Frayed (3x05)'s experimentation with non-linear storytelling did not fall on its face, mostly because it used the fractured narrative to highlight essential aspects of individual characters that could get lost in the plot. It also helped that it dropped the audience enough hints to suggest that they not spent too much effort on the narrative mechanic and more time on what the mechanic brought to the story.

There were two hints. The first was that particular word that started Scott's vocabulary quiz --

Stiles: "Anachronism."

Scott: Something that exists out of its normal time.

The second was Lydia's textbook: Thermodynamic Asymmetry in Time. This is one of the basic building blocks of the universe: certain functions only go in one direction.

In my opinion, these point to the show -- there are certain characteristics (both positive and negative) that Scott and Allison show that are not dependent on events to motivate them. They exist within each character, and not only as a response to the horrors around them. By breaking up the narrative, we can isolate those particular traits.

Scott: It is this episode that I find definitive proof that Scott is motivated primarily, and forcefully, by compassion. The events of previous seasons came at Scott, he had to react to them. But in this case, the event has already came and went: Derek is dead. We see that Scott has compassion for Derek, perhaps too much as it becomes guilt, and that he is unwilling to use it as an excuse not to take action. By seeing his reaction to Derek's death before we learned the particulars of it, we can see he doesn't feel this way because he's being forced to by expedience. The deed is done; Derek is dead. There's no necessity for Scott to have to feel bad for Derek or to take responsibility for the aftermath. It is part of his nature.

Allison: For her part, I find this episode a refreshing statement that Allison may have been shaped by her parents but she's not their puppet and that Gerard's manipulation of her was an anomaly and not a real flaw. Without the burden of the linear narrative, we see Allison accept the teaching of her mother, which helps her save Scott from his overabundance of compassion, but she we also see her reject the teaching of her father (which, ironically, he is also rejecting). Allison, outside of the flow of events, is and will remain her own person. She's not being pressured to help because of external expectations but by her own internal concept of duty.

By randomizing the audiences experience of this particular part of the narrative, Frayed separates Scott from the pressure that certain events create in characters, allowing us to see that they are the way they are not only because of where they find themselves, but the way they act on the inside.

As you can no doubt guess, I'm very pleased with how it worked in this episode.

#scott mccall #allison argent #teen wolf meta #frayed #tw 3x05

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joiedecombat · 1 year

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Thinking a lot about your unravel fic and what those kind of scenes might have looked like earlier in their relationship. Since Aymeric's interrogation by the Heavens Ward happened before they were together, how and when did the subject of his nightmares arise? How much detail has he shared with Raine? Has the Echo shown her anything and how does she feel about seeing/not seeing his trauma?

It took quite a while before they could have that conversation, for sure.

I've talked before about how Aymeric is accustomed to not really being able to show weakness. Raine always had a very general idea of what he went through at the Vault between going in to speak to Thordan and when they rescued him, but especially with everything else that overshadowed that whole sequence of events, they didn't talk about the specifics or the lingering effect the experience had on him. Even if he'd been inclined to talk through it with her - or anyone, to be honest - there were simply too many other things to focus on.

(Shadowbringers and oblique Endwalker spoilers and some tldr below the cut.)

Raine's Echo primarily shows her scenes that were/are heavily charged with either aether (use of magic or other forms of strong aetheric activity) or dynamis (strong emotion). His interrogation at the hands of Ser Charibert and the Ward definitely falls into the latter category, so yes, at some point not all that long after the Vault she undoubtedly had an Echo vision of some part of that experience. She wasn't in the best emotional state herself at that time, and her response was essentially to pretend that particular vision never happened. I imagine Aymeric at least suspected, but it was pretty much a "let's never speak of this" situation for both of them as they channeled their coping mechanisms into dealing with the crises in front of them.

The two of them didn't begin sharing a bed until after Raine returned from the First, which was over a solid year and a half at the absolute minimum from the Vault.* By that time, Raine was dealing with some recurring nightmares of her own, mostly dealing with Sin Eaters and her experiences with Light aether corruption nearly turning her into a monster, with some Final Days soul flashbacks for extra flavor. She spent at least six months in Ishgard after wrapping things up in the First, so once they started sleeping together it became inevitable that one of them was going to disturb the other's sleep… and Raine's nightmares were considerably fresher than Aymeric's.

That's what finally opened the door for Aymeric to admit to having nightmares about his time at the Vault. Talking about it was a way for him to let Raine know he understood something of what she was going through, encouraging her to let herself be vulnerable with him by allowing himself the same. Broaching the subject opened the door for some heart-to-heart conversations that both of them, and especially Raine at that time, badly needed.

He's still never gone into detail about the content of those dreams - except to explain that it's not always the interrogation; sometimes it's centered on Haurchefant's death, which he will always carry a sense of personal responsibility for - but he doesn't have to. Raine was extremely uncomfortable at the time to have experienced his trauma through the Echo, but with the distance of the intervening time to dull the edge of the experience, she's kind of grateful that it allows for that kind of understanding between them without forcing Aymeric to verbally relive the whole thing to her.

*(My personal rule of thumb is that each expansion takes about a year of in-game time, but I haven't quite worked out how the time differential between the Source and the First affects the timeline.)

#ffxiv #oc: raine d'arcy #aymeric de borel #heavensward #shadowbringers #endwalker #kind of #wolmeric #thank you for the ask!!

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crymeariveronceagain · 2 years

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Hi!! For you and the anon who was asking about Keefe’s broken glass memory with Cassius, it is a real scene and is described on page 356 of Flashback. (At least for the Hardcover version.)

my stars.

oh my stars.

"I suppose that makes us even, since I much prefer Alden's sons. But since I'm stuck with this"-- he gestured to Keefe from head to toe and crinkled his nose-- "I'm not going to let you ruin our family!" Keefe smirked, and Sophie could feel something inside him shift as he said, "Good luck with that." It was as of he'd decided right then and there to do everything in his power to humiliate his father. And Lord Cassius must have felt that resolve, because he hurled the goblet he'd been holding, splatting Keefe's feet with fizzleberry wine as it shattered against the floor. "Clean that up!" Lord Cassius ordered. "And plan on spending your entire break making up for your lack of dedication. I'll have your first study assignments sent to you in the morning." "Running off to Atlantis again?" Lady Gisela asked as Lord Cassius stalked toward the staircase. "Don't start with me," he told her, "And don't wait up." Her eyes flashed and she lifted her chin, keeping her head high until he was gone. "Well," she told Keefe. "Sounds like you have some work to do." She was halfway down the stairs when she glanced over her shoulder. "Keefe?" she said, waiting for him to look at her. "Someday you'll be glad you're not a Vacker." What was that supposed to mean? Fitz asked, and Sophie winced.

So much is going on in this scene excuse me while i just screech into the endless void.

Cassius is a trashbag jerkwad, I'm not surprised by that, this whole exchange is eXTREMELY ANGSTY. Thank you for finding that!!!

The depiction of Gisela here is extremely interesting, as well as the thing at the end about the Vackers.

For instance, here it implies that Cassius and Gisela's marriage is doing really poorly, in kids' book terms, with that little argument and the "Don't start with me" line. I've always had a headcanon that while these two understood each other, they never liked each other, or at least were willing to fight tooth and claw for whatever they wanted, not taking each other into much consideration. A little bit like Oberon and Tatiana in Midsummer Night's Dream, if you know the vibe. They don't care about each other all that much, are willing to have fun at the other's expense, and are willing to be extremely petty and fight over stupid things. Idk though. Could be reading too much into it.

But then again, this scene is in the book. And it presents more questions than answers. Soooo here I go, doing my English Major thing.

Moreover, Gisela's depiction is very different than Cassius. She's still hurting her son, but it's the same kind of way. Subtle and manipulative until Keefe doesn't know she's been hurting him. On top of that, here we clearly see her take her husband's side when it comes to punishing Keefe. So that's a fun tidbit. Gotta love Gisela!

And the line about the Vackers, as well as Fitz's response, if we wanted to read into it, could be an implication towards Alden being another trashbag jerkwad. Like, Gisela would know about how he treats his family if she worked closely with him.

Stars, why does all the stuff I read support both Neverseen Alden and Alden being a trash parent?

I don't like being right about fictional children being hurt. Stars above.

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