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toomanystoriessolittletime · 2 years

Text

Equals

Summary: A forced marriage wasn’t something Din nor you had intended for your life. But when the council announced you as his fiancée you had no choice if you didn’t want to lose your new home. You fell for him eventually. And when he found out traitors in his own army wanted to take you away from him, he made sure that them and you know who you belong to.

Pairing: Mand'alor Din Djarin / fem!Reader

Wordcount: 2.5k

Rating: E

Warnings: forced mariage, implied age gap (legal), implied planned kidnapping, public sex, balcony sex, unprotected sex, praise kink, breeding, pregnancy, dirty talk,

A/N: The last kinktober fic! This week with the prompts Praise kink || Window/Balcony Sex || vanilla/slow & soft || Breeding || Pregnancy || Aftercare || Almost getting caught from @the-purity-pen's Kinktober prompt list. Biggest thanks to @the-scandalorian for beta-ing (and wanting Din just to be happy gdi)

Then

When the council decided that Din had to take a wife, his first reaction was to ignore it. Much like every decision the council made.

His council.

For some fucked up reason, Din had decided to accept the responsibility that came with winning the Darksaber and become the Mand’alor. Mostly, he reluctantly accepted because the alternative would have been his death. He realized pretty quickly that whoever challenged him for the throne knew his reputation. He spent almost all his life hunting down bounties. He was the one people asked for when they wanted the job done. When they searched for criminals, be it alive or dead. That was ultimately why instead of fighting him for the throne, Bo-Katan had decided to join him, and she made it her mission to reunite as many Mandalorians as she could while Din made it his mission to find a place they could live. Mandalore in its state of destruction wasn’t an option.

It took some time, but they found a habitable deserted moon. In the six years since they had established a city there, the population had risen daily. Whole towns were built within months.

And a palace.

He didn’t want it. He didn’t need it. But he decided it wasn’t worth arguing against. Mandalorians were very proud people, they wanted to show off. That was why he found himself here, now, sitting on a throne in a room full of people while you were kneeling in front of him, your eyes downcast, wearing a beautiful black dress. His bride-to-be.

He didn’t like this.

He didn’t want to marry anyone, much less a woman he hadn’t spent more than a couple of hours with. A woman who was young enough to be his daughter. A woman who had no choice when his royal council had decided that she was to take the place at his side as his queen. To bear his children, to produce an heir.

Din had become a feared man since he took the throne—an exaggerated version of the story of how he’d won the saber had spread—and everytime he looked into your eyes, he could see your fear. He hated it. He hated that you and he had been pushed together without your consent. He hated that he was the reason you would have to live a life you hadn’t signed up for. He hated that he thought you were the most beautiful woman he had ever laid his eyes on, and you felt nothing but fear for him.

He breathed in deeply, his eyes hidden by his helmet wandering over the crowd behind you as he got up from the throne, holding out his hand for you. Hesitantly, you took it, letting him help you up so you were standing in front of him.

“You are not to kneel in front of me. If we have to do this, we will do it as equals,” he said softly, only for you to hear. You were still looking at the floor, almost paralyzed by the fear of what the future would bring.

“If we are to be wed, I don’t want you to fear me. Fear will be reserved for anyone that is trying to destroy what has been built here. What we will build in the future. If you want to walk out of this, I won’t hold you back. I know this isn’t your choice, nor mine. But I promise you, you don’t have to fear me. Ever. I’m not the monster people are whispering about behind my back.”

You closed your eyes as you listened to him.

Being here wasn’t your choice.

For some fucked up reason, a council of people you had never met before had decided that you were to be the next queen to the most feared king Mandalore had ever had. A man you hadn’t spent more than a couple hours with and never in private. Always with someone else in the room.

It was sweet of him, offering you an out. He must know it wasn’t that easy though—you couldn’t just say no. There was a long tradition, set in place thousands of years before you were even born that played into finding the perfect queen. A process only few knew about, finding the perfect Mandalorian Woman to become the perfect Mandalorian Queen. Declining to marry the Mand’alor after being engaged would make you an outcast, and you would have to leave the only planet where you had ever felt at home.

“Mesh’la…” he whispered, and finally you looked up, ignoring the gasps behind you. In Mandalorian culture, it was forbidden for the bride to look at the groom until after the ceremony, even if his face was hidden behind beskar. That you had never seen his face didn’t make this whole thing any easier. Din didn’t care at all about that custom at all—he wanted to see you. But to his disappointment, he could see the fear in your eyes, and he felt you shaking as he held your hand.

“You know I can’t walk out,” you whispered just for him to hear. “So let’s get married for the public now, so that we can get to actually know each other after,” you continued.

Din just looked at you. “I’m sorry,” he whispered and felt you squeezing his hand.

“Me too,” you whispered back before you straightened your back to stand beside him.

Now

He could feel your eyes on him. And it was driving him crazy. He was angry, furious even, as he sat on the throne looking at the men on their knees in front of him.

Din had been gone for almost a month, fighting a war he hadn’t started but had still managed to win. He had spent the last weeks killing so many, only to finally come home—nothing but you on his mind—to find out there had been traitors in his own army.

You were on the balcony in the throne room, overlooking what was happening. You had been excited when Din had holo’d you that’d he be home by sundown. You had missed him. Really missed him. In the four years since your forced marriage, you had both come a long way, getting to know each other in the months after the wedding.

You loved him. How could you not?

The man that was sitting on the throne right now, the feared ruthless leader of the Mandalorians, was not the man you got to know.

The man you knew stayed up night after night just to talk to you. He listened to you, while you explained the stars to him. That was the man who you fell in love with—the man you married again almost seven months after you married for the public, exchanging the vows in private when you both actually meant them, before he took you to bed for the first time.

No, the man down there wasn’t the man you loved, but at the same time, he was. Din was a natural born leader, even if he didn’t like to hear it.

“You are lucky,” Din’s voice boomed through the room. “You are lucky that I don’t just order your execution for what you planned. No, I’m going to take my time to decide what to do with you traitors.”

Din got up from the throne.

“Restrain them so they have to stay on their knees while I make my decision. Have someone watching them,” Din said to a guard before he turned around and walked out.

You were about to leave the balcony and sneak off to your private chambers, when you felt a gloved hand wrap around your wrist and a hand cover your mouth.

With wide eyes, you turned around only to find yourself pushed against the wall and lips on yours in the next moment. You closed your eyes, letting your body relax as Din kissed you in a dark corner. You crossed your arms behind his neck, melting against him.

“I missed you,” he whispered against your lips, kissing down your jaw.

“I missed you too, my king,” you whispered back, tilting your head to the side as his lips wandered down your throat.

“Were you watching me?” he asked.

“I was…” you confessed.

“I should have killed them,” he sucked on your collarbone. “Killed them for planning to take you away from me,” he groaned, and you reached for his face, bringing him up to you, so you could look into his eyes.

“They didn’t, Din. I’m still here,” you said with a small smile. That the fact that you were supposed to be kidnapped by these traitors tonight and only hadn’t because your husband arrived home earlier than they expected still made you uneasy.

“No one will ever take you from me,” he vowed, kissing you again.

“Din... Please…” you gasped against his lips, as his gloved hand pulled at the neckline of your dress.

“What do you want, my love?”

“Fuck me. Fuck me right here. Make me yours while those traitors are just down there…” you reached for his chin, turning his head so he could look over the railing of the balcony.

You kissed up his jaw and whispered against his ear, “Cum inside your queen while the traitors that wanted to take me from you are down there fearing for what you might do to them…”

He all but growled, before he attacked your lips again, pulling his gloves off. Your fingers made quick work of his belt, opening his pants just so you could pull his cock out as he hiked your skirt up. With practiced moves, you got his chest plate and shoulder patrons off, letting them fall to the ground, not caring how loudly they clattered against the floor, too desperate to feel him close to you.

He kissed you again as his arms lifted you up against the wall. You crossed your legs around his back.

“All mine,” he moaned against your lips as he slowly pushed inside of you. You had been ready for him as soon as you saw him walk into the throne room.

“Din…” you whimpered against his lips as he slowly thrust into you, pushing deeper and deeper until he was buried fully inside of you.

“You feel so good, Din. Stretching me out so well,” you whispered, your hands in his hair. He groaned against your skin, taking his time to fuck you with deep, long thrusts.

“You’re so strong, always so fucking good to me. Missed you so much,” you sighed, finding his lips again.

“Missed you too,” he whispered back, his lips not leaving your skin.

“Can’t wait to worship your cock with my lips around you like you deserve. On my knees for you.”

“No,” he shook his head, finding your eyes. “You do not kneel in front of me ever,” he said with such conviction that your whole body shuddered in his hold. “I don’t need you to worship my cock. My cock is right where it belongs. Deep inside of your tight walls,” he growled, and you moaned louder than intended.

“Fuck, you are so sexy, I can’t wait to see you round with my child. Want to spend all my free time with my cock inside of you until I finally got you pregnant,” he whispered, his deep fucking voice sinful against your ear, and you bit your lip to try to keep quiet.

His thrusts never increased in speed, driving you insane as he held you up like you weighed nothing. You were so close. He buried his face in your neck, sucking on your skin. You reached for his face to turn his head to the six traitors kneeling below you.

“Look at them while you breed your queen, my Mand’alor,” you whispered against his ear and he let out a deep, desperate sound. You felt his cock twitch inside of you before warmth filled your core as he came inside of you with a low groan of your name.

You shook against him as you came shortly after, as he fucked his seed deep inside of you, making sure to not waste a single drop. He was breathing hard when he let his forehead fall against yours, before he kissed you softly. A movement from below made him snap his eyes down to the first floor and take a step deeper into the shadows. At the same moment, the guard looked up to where you had just been standing. You both watched him before he turned around and left the room.

“That was close,” he whispered, and you chuckled.

“Let’s get to our rooms. You must be tired,” you cupped his cheek, your fingers caressing his skin.

“Not too tired to take care of you, mesh’la,” he kissed you again, before he strengthened his grip around you, his cock still nestled inside of you and carried you back to your rooms.

You were resting with your back against his chest in the tub after he made sure you were relaxed and cleaned. He took his time, running the washcloth over every part of your skin, before he washed your hair.

“Do you think that was it?” he asked against your temple, his hands holding yours.

“What?”

“Do you think we made a baby?”

You smiled to yourself as you shook your head. “No. No, I don’t think that this was it,” you said, feeling his shoulders drop before you turned in his arms so you could look at him. “I think it was that one time a month before you left, when you were late for the council meeting. You know, when Boba was knocking at our door while I was riding you and we both came so hard that we had to take a ten minute break? I think… I think that was when you got me pregnant, my king,” you bit your lip, watching his reaction.

He was furrowing his brows before he blinked at you, his hands on your upper arms, holding you against him. “Are you telling me…”

“That I am pregnant? Yes. Yes, I am,” you smiled. You could read a million emotions in his face before the biggest smile you had ever seen spread across his lips, and he sat up with you in his lap.

“Are you happy?” you asked quietly.

“The happiest man in the universe,” he said before he kissed you deeply, and you felt him hardening beneath you. You grinned against his lips.

“Insatiable,” you murmured as he lined himself up against your core.

“And you love it,” he whispered, before he kissed you and pushed into you.

#my writing #tppkinktober2021 #din djarin #the mandalorian #Pedro Pascal #mand'alor din djarin #din djarin x f!reader #fanfiction #fanfic #fan fiction #kinktober

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nighttimepixels · 3 years

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TALK TO US ABOUT MASS EFFECT I HAVE BEEN AN INSANE MASS EFFECT/SHAKARIAN TRASH PERSON SINCE 20-FUCKING-11 AND LEMME TELL YOU THOSE FEELINGS HAVENOT TARNISHED A SINGLE FRACTION IN THOSE TEN YEARS OH MY GOOOOOOODDDSSSS!!!!!!!

I DEMAND A PLAY-BY-PLAY UP TO THE MINUTE OF YOUR REACTIONS TO EVERYTHING!!!!

you are so valid and I totally see why everyone I've ever mentioned it to loves the hell out of it

aksdjlsdfj I meannnn if you want to hear my rambling about it then hell yeah

Okay, gonna put this below the cut to save everyone else XD also- since I'm not leaving this Mass Effect obsession anytime soon, if you're not interested in seeing occasional posts about it, please feel free to block the tag "night plays ME"~

(mild spoilers ahead??)

((also for real I mean it when I say this is rambling as hell lol, apologies and no stress if absolute no one reads all this))

OKAY SO Mass Effect 1-

Stars help me, I was honestly hooked right from the start?? Like even in Legendary Edition (the combined trilogy just re-released in one "can play it on one system + minor improvements", for anyone who doesn't know) where it's smoothed out, of course it's obvious that ME1 is a decade old... but the foundation for these relationships are all there and gods I love them already.

Like - Kaiden right off the top is a delightful good fightin lad, what the hell. I've heard that he's viewed as 'bland' by a good portion of the fan community but I dunno, he's a delight and even more complex by the time 2 rolls around and you encounter him on Horizon, it was honestly Ashley I was way more meh about - mostly because before you can learn about her family history/etc, she comes off as hella xenophobic and I was immediately offended for my growing space family that she didn't like/trust all the aliens around, pfff.

(she gets redeemed a bit through further actions/evolving thoughts, but I thought in retrospect it was a bummer that they didn't flip the order there, give her a chance to be liked before the complicating factor of being so rude about aliens >:c that then she could grow from... ah well. Apparently she has a good arc but uh, let's just say I chose Kaiden at the "key junction" in the latter part of the game so I won't be seeing anymore of Ashley uh... anytime soon, haha.)

Garrus??? Is??????? The ABSOLUTE best???????????

I liked him from the start, I'm always a bit of a sucker for a rogue-detective "the system won't bring this bastard to justice, so I've got to" type and all their moral shadiness XD But he just gets better, honestly, and where I'm at in ME2 (right before the Reaper IFF mission, as of typing this, with everyone's loyalty!) I am only digging myself deeper into this hole-

-*wheezing* okay anyways -

Wrex is AMAZING I love fightin' middle-aged krogan bastard, gods. Liara is great too, I'm a sucker for a wlw relationship (playing fem!Shepard, so) - buuuut I'll admit she's a bit more one-note in ME1. Last week while I was still on ME1 I remember hearing (while trying to dodge spoilers) that her arc is really good, though. I think they leaned a little hard on the 'innocent but sexy' sterteotype on her (so despite the yikes aspect of a few of the things I've learned in ME2, lol, I actually really like the complexity that's been added to her character.)

Saved Liara first, so by the time I got to Noveria and had the standoff with Benezia there was the chance to have emotions over Liara having to face her TwT and of course, I made the questionable but quality decision to free Queen Rachni heheh. no ragrets

More than a blow-by-blow of my choices though I totally wanna take the chance to say that even in the mild jankiness of ME1 (goddammit, the Mako.... please..... please just go up this impossible cliff I just want to resource hunt-) the way that the lore, both obvious/key to main plot and the lesser/filler/background/world-building kinds... I just love it. It incorporates it well, you can go ham in the codex learning more, or just dive into the basics - it's clearly a complex galaxy (and they do an even better job in 2 of fleshing it out further), and it never really felt overwhelming. It was pretty natural figuring it all out-!

Plus the interesting implications of resource hunting amongst the sapient races, and the little side missions you better bet I did every one of- there's so much rich depth in the story if you do 'em!! (And that lead with that Keeper side mission...? Looking back, damn, clever foreshadowing-!!!)

And oh my gods, Ilios??? hell yeah. I loved that mission so much, especially having Garrus & Kaiden with me when talking to the hologram/computer, and more than anything, that last sprint in the Mako trying to get to the jump before it closed-???

yeet the boi-

Also mannn I love a good setpiece, and having to go up the side of the elevator, space-side?? such a cool setup!!

Plus it felt good having been Paragon enough (as simple as the good v bad vibe system is, I don't hate it, lol) to avoid one of the Saren fights, ngl. And the er, "second fight" with Sovereign-Saren.... hell yeah

... I'll admit I had to double check my choice re whether to save the Council. I did in the end, but I swear, sometimes the way they phrase things I'm like ".... okay but Garrus is right, defeating Sovereign is more important than these few leaders??????" woops. Listen, priorities, is all I'm saying..... (￣ヮ￣|||)ゞ

'Course later they emphasize (in ME2) that there were 10,000 people on that same ship and I was like well I wouldn't have second guessed if I'd known that, I mean c'mon-

Also I did indeed romance Liara in this one, so I got that scene ;Dc But,,,, I also knew by the end that I was totally gonna romance Garrus in 2 since he's an option then finally,,,,, lemme tell you the guilt as I waffled over whether to romance Liara bc of it. hahaha.

Aaaaand Mass Effect 2-

So I'm only up to right before the Reaper IFF Mission, so I don't know the ending, etc etc lol. That said, I've just finished every side mission I've found with the exception of the Shadowbroker Quest and the Arrival Quest (I've heard the latter basically leads into ME3, and the former is best either right before the Omega 4 jump or in postgame).

So from the start - fuck yeah fuck yeah what a high adrenaline start Shepard noooooo but also yes save Joker aH-

The motion comic too hot damn nice job

I loved this setup, seriously - especially forcing Shep into this situation, having to work with/for Cerberus, and the compelling reasoning given behind "why" they do what they do (I especially found it a good point that the Salarians have the Task Force, the Asaris the Commandos, the Turians the- etc... like, true, when you put it like that, having a similar group advancing human interests/solving human interstellar problems is pretty reasonable...). That said, I love too that it really isn't shied away from how Cerberus is nonetheless fucked up - or its at least done fucked up stuff.

Listen, I still think some messed up stuff is gonna be revealed in 2's endgame......... after that Horizon mission and the Collector's ship???? TIM I SEE YOU YOU SHADY MF-

aaanyways lol...

I'm so so glad on a gameplay level they nixed the Mako style exploration. A few Hammerhead missions are fine and a lot more focused than the slippery ass navigation in that glorified ATV, pfff. The probes are a neat way of getting after similar resources - and more importantly, having good levels and some good hubs (the Zakera Wards, Omega, Ilium, etc) is way way more fun than having a more 'sprawling' space that is.... a lot of empty nonsense, lol.

Then there's the fact that we get Joker right off the bat and you can interact with him so much - and him and EDI??? Get out gods I love them. Kasumi is so right when she says they sound like a bickering old married couple lol. I have a terrible feeling that some shit is gonna happen with EDI..... but I don't think she's evil as-is, at least.

Side-eying the hell out of those "access forbidden" parts of her that she doesn't even know.... and the fact that her AI core has a locked door access................... something's gonna happen gdi LEAVE OUR ADOPTED AI ALONE.

(Also Joker pls stop fracturing your thumb on the mute button)

Also please save me there are so many hot aliens in this game,,,,, the xeno/monsterfuckers really comin' through strong in the sequels............... doin' the lord's work........................................

In general, I love how many levels ME stepped up in two with complexity and interwoven narratives!! Like, to the point it'd be almost a drag to replay ME1, even though it was fun going through it (if occasionally a bit tedious with the cookie cutter rando planet science/mine facilities, lol). Like, just from how fun and interesting ME2 is, mostly! more of all the pre-introduced races, plus new ones, plus more filling in of intragalactic politics, and more interesting implications of all these space-faring races mixing....

Also gods WREX and his planet holy shit,,,,, fuckin' hell yeah my man get their shit together and also adopt Grunt yes good-

And Mordin??? My singing semi-evil scientist best friend forced to confront his choices more than he thought he ever would have???? With some of the best ongoing general report chatter of all the companions??

(when I tell you I choked on my coffee when I talked to him after confirming romance choice w/ Garrus and that 'pamphlet' and 'anaphalactic shot if ingesting-' kajsldkfjsldfjk)

Like, fuck, the fact that they actually dive into the mixed morality and horrors of the genophage, and you can confront Mordin on it, for good reason, yet he still stands his ground, until finally some bits of his loyalty mission seem to... affect him, and I'm guessing might set up things for 3 with him? Unsure, but either way, damn, the fact that they start to dig into it...

And Taliiiii my beloved forbidden alien wife TwT her loyalty mission was SO GOOD. I love how varied they all are?? Getting to defend her and discover what she'd unwittingly been a part of-!!

Zaeed is a bastard but tbh I love that he is and that he's unapologetic in him - and Kasumi omg, best thief. A heist?? Gods, yes- I love our couch lounge chats XD

Samara is..... illegally.......... she's an illegally powerful and beautiful and eloquent MILF...........................

(.... listen I'm sapphic as hell and I'm kicking my own ass for picking her up last aksjdlfksjdfl - but her loyalty mission, damn. And seeing how there's this interesting cultural subset, and the struggle with the Asari in that they unquestioningly accept/respect justicars, but also know that the impact outside their culture is a diplomacy nightmare waiting to happen-)

,.,,,,,T,,, Thane,,,,,

I am weak for morally implicated murder dads okay?? And that voice??? His mannerisms?????? How you first see him, and that prayer after assassinating her...???????? And his history/his people's history with the hanar, gods I love how messy it is, it feels so much more real!

Also Jack is a mess and I love her (and want to get her some therapy, omg), and her and Miranda nearly duking it out after you've done both their loyalty missions??? so good and makes a lot of sense-! Honestly I would love more interactions between teammates on the ship, but there's already so much the devs had to balance I can't blame 'em for minimizing, heh. But suffice to say I also love Miranda and Jacob, even if I'm softest for my alien crew XD Hell yeah Jacob, we'll get loud and spill drinks on the citadel indeed TwT

.... I could write a whole essay on how much I love Garrus oTL Perhaps because he and Tali are the throughlines from 1 on your 2 crew, I have some of the strongest feelings about them... but genuinely, he was one of my favorite companions in the first game, and how you find him as Archangel in two? Getting to help him fight his way out after he's gone nearly 48 hours straight fighting off three gangs alone, jfc. His vengeance quest and what can happen there.... That line? fuck me, that line -

It's so much easier to see the world in black and white. Grey? I don't know what to do with gray...

How DARE you come for my heart like this, devs holy shit

(also, some other choice faves so far from the series from him include We can disobey suicidal orders?? and This wasn't in my training manual... [in 1, if you have him with you @ th Thorian fight] and his whole.... pop the heat sink - in his romance ;Dc)

asdasdfksadjfkl like I said I can write an essay on him PFFF suffice to say I'm very looking forward to his romance scene and where things go in 3

But yeah gods I'm just gonna keep rambling if I'm not careful lol. Gods I don't even know what to talk about it's all so good and while I can understand people roasting the obviousness of Paragon V Renegade (v neutral) choices/alignments, I think they do a pretty damn good job in 2 of pushing it further - to the point that there were some times that I accidentally got renegade points and I wasn't that mad, haha. There's so much fun in the interactions that I just have a good time anyways~

I have so many thoughts about TIM (The Illusive Man) and Cerberus.... theories evolving galore............... and like, what the hell!! Omega 4 going to the center of the galaxy is such a cool twist, goddamn - though my heart still breaks at losing Kaiden (his line if you haven't romanced him?? about feeling like he lost a limb when he lost you??? holy shit.... but I also can't blame him for not trusting Cerberus to the point of it affecting his ability to trust Shepard... like fuck Shep go after himmmm) I'm really excited to see where that goes since he comes back in 3, and what the fuck happens with Cerberus bc while I love the fact that obviously there are a lot of people in it for the right reasons, doing good work, there are those that are doing the opposite, and I have a very bad feeling about where TIM will end up landing....

All that said though I need to do the Reaper IFF mission (where I'm lightly spoiled as to getting That Boy, but not how/what happens to make it so - just that it's apparently wise to have all your side missions done before getting him...) and the actual Omega 4 jump. So we'll see what happens and what I think about it from there heheh!

.... major kudos and genuine props if you made it here to the end, I am so sorry for not editing on condensing all this, and appreciate you so much ;w;

#night answers #night plays ME #(yes that's a purposeful pun lol)#((i sure have played myself by starting this series its so good aksdjflskjfd))

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fonulyn · 3 years

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I need to scream about RE ID bc like. Did I enjoy it? Yeah, I did. Was it. Just wrapped up way too nicely and quickly? Also yeah. I was a little disappointed by it tho, like the length, and the flashback scenes weren't as clear as I think they should have been? Like I understood what was happening, but it took me a little too much brain power to like keep up with what was and wasn't a flashback lmao

Also I wanna say, I get wanting to keep Jun See alive but god, that did not look fun. Just let him die, dude, no one wants to live like that, smh.

Thank god they kept Leon's one liners tho, like thank you for that at least lol also Claire, my GIRL, I love her holy shit. Honestly she was amazing, like, just perfect. Not sure why she has a gun in the promotional poster, bc she just. Never has a gun throughout the entire show, I don't think? Also can we talk about how she took that guy down with that lamp, and then hopped on top of him just fucking ready to continue to beat the shit out of him? Chris would be so proud 🥲

Okay also, I saw what you said with that flirting scene, and I agree that it seemed like Leon was trying to lighten the mood, but it so didn't need to be put in there at all @ the writers. Like this show could have gotten away with no romance, or just that one moment near the end with Claire and Leon (which, I don't ship them much, and that moment at the v end where she was like "are you ever gonna stop treating me like a kid?" And he responded with "probably not" or whatever kind of ruined whatever was shown earlier? Like it feels like she's had that convo with Chris before too, so I'm like hm no don't imply romance and then imply that he treats her like a little kid every time they run into each other, now it's weird lol) and been fine. None of the story was contingent on any kind of romance between anyone.

Now with that said, can I just say Patrick absolutely wanted to suck Leon's dick? Like he was smitten, and I bet you they at least fuck after all this is said and done, if not date for a short period of time. I thought they were gonna kill Patrick off, I'm glad they didn't tho, he was v wholesome lol.

Also I wanna mention that every serious moment (save a small handful) I just. I couldn't take it seriously, it was too over the top. Acid? Really? That's the self destruct measure? Slowly rising acid? I dunno, that doesn't seem quite right to me, I don't think that's how it works lol

Honestly they should have just made this into a new movie, bc making it a series implies more to follow and in general a longer narrative, but these eps were barely 20 minutes each, so there's almost no point splitting it like that. Did I enjoy myself? Yeah, I always do when Leon is involved, but it could have been so much better.

Also the silly little shipper in me is kind of desperate for more interaction between Chris and Leon, bc as far as I'm aware it's just RE6, RE vendetta, and RE ID (and I think the person who told Chris to save Claire in either code x or Veronica was Leon? Not 100% about that tho lol) where they actually interact with each other, and considering that they're the two main characters of the franchise, they should probably meet up more? Idk, that's just my gay ass hoping for more Chreon content lmao but still.

ANYWAYS yeah, I would rate the show like a 7.5/10? It wasn't amazing but it wasn't garbage, either. Probably my least favorite of the four animated movies tbh, but I will take the Leon content, thank you Capcom. Also it was interesting to see Leon around the time following/around RE4 and RE degeneration, I thought, I dunno.

oh boy I agree 100% it was wrapped up way too quickly in the end. like killing Jason? by just dropping him in the acid? it was way too simple and easy if you ask me. and like, why didn't he yeet Leon into the acid when he had him by the throat? him not killing Leon makes zero sense to me??

asdfg yeah I get they weren't ready to let Jun See go, but I bet Jun See really would've preferred to go...

I am so happy that they kept the one liners!! Leon felt very, very in character which I loved so much. I was afraid they'd tone it down or make him super serious or so, and it was such a relief they didn't. he was so eager to help and so goddamn kind to everyone I don't know if my heart can even handle it ;;;;;

also Claire!! so badass!! I loved the part where she attacked the guy with the lamp (yes Chris would be super proud haha) and THE HEADBUTT seriously, one of the top highlights of the entire series :'D

(but honestly this is gonna get long i'mma gonna hit that read more here)

and the flirting scene, I do think they could've left it out entirely and it felt a little strong-armed in. but I'm trying to look at the silver lining? Leon was super goddamn adorable in it, like, so cute it hurts :'D and Shen May didn't seem bothered really, it was more this joking thing between them. so while yes, it was unnecessary, i'm focusing on the joking feel of it and choosing to interpret it as such :'D

also, can I just say, the "romantic moment" with Claire and Leon near the end didn't feel very romantic to me? I know it's a romcom cliché (or at least a fanfic cliché lmao) how they ended up in a pile after the rescue but ...it didn't scream romance to me? although I do kind of like the pairing! (not a top fave but a cute one)

and yes, the whole "when are you gonna stop treating me like a kid?" "probably never" felt SO much like a sibling moment!! such big brother energy from Leon, and I don't know, that made me super duper happy?? I want them to be friends. I neeeed them to be friends gdi. which is why I am unhappy with how mad Claire seemed to be at Leon in the end and how they left it off like they did. I am hoping that it sets things up for a second season? and they for whatever reason need them on kind of the opposing sides at first? because otherwise it makes no sense to me for her to be that disappointed in him. in Degeneration they already establish they work in different ways towards the same goal, and for that to do a 180 now feels... like a disservice to the characters? idk?

lmaooooo but yes Patrick 100% wanted to suck Leon's dick he didn't even try to be subtle about it :'D idk I would've wanted Patrick to have more depth and screentime too, i so wish they would've made it a longer series and given the characters more development. because I liked pretty much all of the new characters they introduced! but it feels none of them reached their actual potential!

then again that is kind of the whole deal with resident evil in general, they set up awesome characters and end up wasting them half of the time :'D guess i shouldn't be surprised.

THE SLOWLY RISING ACID PISSED ME OFF lmaooo c'mon!! it doesn't seem like a good self destruct measure. especially since ...you'd need different acid to dissolve organic matter and to dissolve inorganic matter if we're being nitpicky. and how would it be plausible for them to store enough of it safely to even do this?? they should've just detonated the whole place and blown it to smithereens or something, the acid was. stupid.

i agree, it feels like a movie. but I think @tirsynni is probably right when saying that it was sort of a test run to see if they should make more? which I am so hoping for. because even with the complaints I have of this, I DID enjoy it, a lot!! and I do want more! and maybe this time we get Claire and Leon actually working together for more than fifteen seconds! :'D

also I definitely would not say no to more Chris and Leon interactions. (yes it was Leon who told Chris to save Claire :) at least that) it... in general makes no sense to me how capcom seems to think friendships work? like how Sherry is all "Leon and Claire are my best friends" and then they imply they haven't met in years? if not more? idek it's. weird. it's like their characters go into storage containers in between their missions to be stored away so they can't even accidentally have personal lives or friendships or anything. weird.

(what I said about having amazing characters and ending up wasting their potential? yeah)

for me, personally, it's... well, my score for the show would depend on whether I just focus on the characterizations and what I liked, or if I try to actually take the plot and all into account too :'D but I did like this more than Degeneration! already the fact that Leon has actual facial expressions is enough to put it way above that one. (and for the record, I don't hate Degeneration either, I do like it, but... Leon is such a cardboard cutout with zero personality in it, it's super frustrating)

idk I think I need to still process this a bit to see how I will like it in the end :'D there are things i'm super hyped about in it, and things i'm disappointed in, let's see how they'll weigh in the overall experience eventually.

#idutr #replies #ask and i shall answer #re answers #infinite darkness spoilers #spoilers #infinite darkness

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genius11rare · 3 years

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Chit Chat 72821 AH 13 year anniversary

Chit Chat 13 year anniversary stream 72821 with Jack Michael Jeremy and voices of Geoff , lindsay , sudden matt and Ky

Jack: welcome to our birthday stream , sponsored by expressvpn if you don't have a vpn why don't yo- and i already lost all my frames…. Its our 13th bday we are no long preteens we are teens (someone , i assume michael uses airhorn sfx) Jack: hang on i got one (sarah no sfx x7) , we also got voices of geoff , alfredo is here , weve got Ky Deafened (jeremy wheezzes) and lindsay possibly and see trevor too… ok lindblad im switchin to firefox this is broken. Geoff: earlier we had our company wide All Hands meeting talking about whats going on… i don't expect you guys to go (jeremy uh oh) but i go cuz i care , trevor gave a speech about AH history and it was great , better than i couldve done so thanks trevor. Michael: wish i had boos and Hisses on my soundboard but i don't. Jack: todays also my wifes birthday so… im actually not supposed to be here today so *laughs* thanks to everyone whos supported over the last 13 years… Ky qwasnt even born yet (Michael: and she already made that joke) i know i said that in hope to get her to respond but shes deafeand. Michael: but that's how Deafen works… Jeremy: no shes like a jedi she would feel the joke. GeoffL di you get your internet fixed this week which then broke it 2 more times (jack: no , sounds like you tho) oh i guess that's just me then. Jack: geoff you hit record? Geoff: you know i didn't! *showing lucky 13 merch , at a poker table* Jack: so now that were 13 we can gamble. Geoff: 13 is legal gambling age in some counties of west virginia and mississippi Jeremy: and we should ALL model ourselves after those 2 states. Jack: the beacons of america. Michael: if you can see over the poker table you can play Jeremy: well guess im out Geoff: hes 5’4! Lindsay: are we sure about that? GeoffL some of us are , some of us have never not been sure . *moves onto Camp Betrayal* Geoff: out of curiosity who were your fave non AH on that shoot Alfrdo: ooohh calen (i think?) was a lot of fun but Noel surprised me the most. Michael: Kayla was fun cuz it was 3 overnite shoots so we actually somewhat hiung out… also charlotte (jack jeremy and lindsay: yeah charlotte was cool) Jeremy: is this a camp betrayal thing or a face jam thing , everytime i see someone post a pic of Eric everyone in the comments tell him to eat dirt. Michael: its camp betrayal Geoff: speaking of eating dirt were you ever the kids that ate worms for like a trick or to be brave (jack michael and jeremy: no) i wasn't either but… i feel like Matt Bragg probably did Matt: hey you're wrong *lindblad switches to a zoomed in photo of matt from the earlier lucky 13 merch drop shoot , starts shaking camera as he talks a bit* Jeremy: nice lindblad Matt: -et fucked geoff ! “are AH crew fans of cake or pie for bday?” Jack: who eats birthday PIE?!?! Ky: im just gonna step in , what about Ice cream cake (paraphrasing)... Geoff: …. I had cotton candy for dinner last night… whole kerfuffle getting it at HEB , grabbed it and the whole display fell on my head “Whose standup in austin have you seen and whos fave?” Jack: i havent seen stand up in a long time… last time i saw a routine of some kind was Penn n Teller in vegas 4 or 5 years ago. GeoffL i just saw Tom Seguarra (idk how to spell) in vegas a bit ago , and he moved to austin recently… *moves on to Season Pass* Geoff: talked about how i lost millie at that park once… tune in to find out if i found her. Michael: oh replaced her like Avril Lavigne? Geoff: yeah an almos identical millie… doesnt sound the same when she sings but its close….. Michael: and that's the one question… “Phoenix Edit: what has been proudest moment at AH?” JAck: doing any live show like selling out chicago… Michael: just hanging on i mean… Ky ill jump in (jack: whats your proudest moment at AH) you mean for the last month you mean? (Michael: yeah you have it alot easier) id say representing AH in last laugh season 2 Jack: you got knocked out like immediately though Geoff: can i give a sappy geoff answer? Its the day i invited you guys to my GFs house and we went swimming (michael: oh that was cool - i wasn't there) it was basically a perfect day , everybody - well almost everybody that mattered was there (michael laughs) and THAT day was when i told Jack and Trevor i was leaving AH . those conversations were really hard to have .. and i ws so comforted by how.... Oh idk *sigh* i just - i - i just how good a hands i felt it was in and you guys seemed so ready, and i knew it was going to continue and grow without me… sorry im getting so emotional in my old age, i yelled to much when i was younger. Michael: its weird to geoff cuz i couldnt make it and you went “oh no big deal, nothings going on anyway” and then trevor told me after wards geoffs leaving , and trevor kept saying “ive been waiting for this day ive ben waiting for this day” Geoff: he hi5 me before i even got it out of my mouth….. He fist bumped himself it was weird… Trevor: yeah did that and said “God took ya long enough” *cue airhorns and sarah nos* Jeremy:… alright let's play golf Jack: thanks for showing support from our live shows to our.. Our… idk the shows weve done *laughs* Geoff: GET IT OUT CMON! (Lindsay: GDI *jeremy and matt laughing* ) Jesus Christ! Jack: i had weird place , hardcore minigolf i got all them stuck in my head and couldnt get out the door

#chit chat #notes #text #ah #achievement hunter #anniversary #13 anniversary #july 2021 #idk what else to tag #for later #geoff ramsey #livestream #my notes #gen notes

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dotthings · 4 years

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Okay SPN 15.04, here we go, where I feel weirdly self-conscious about posting a meta post about an ep that had so much meta on itself and now I’m going to write meta about it, so it’s meta on meta on meta, while I’m having my feelings.

THAT COLD OPEN HOLY CRAP DIRECTOR JENSEN. As a director Jensen always pulls out warm performances from actors and he’s a really kinetic director too. That opening fight sequence I held my breath for a lot of it.

BENNY OH NOES IT’S BENNY (this must be the character Jensen said was one of his favorites and the actor came back to set for one day to do it). “I’ll see you on the other side, brother.” Thanks so MUCH, spn, I thought I was over this and then you come in and reopen that and now I’ve got feelings gdi. Benny was a good friend to Dean. My heart hurts.

Ohshitohshitohshitohshit demon blood Sam. Noooooo. And he kills Dean. I can never erase these images from my mind, thanks a LOT spn.

Just a nightmare of Sam’s except no probably not given Sam’s god-wound, so wow this maybe happens on one of Chuck’s other worlds, that’s fine, oh that’s okay I’m fiiiiine, it’s fine. *covers face*

So we have a flip on early S14 here where Dean was turtling to cope with his trauma which is a healthy thing to do but hiding from the world wasn’t going to fix anything so Sam coaxes him out with a hunt. Dean coaxes Sam out with a hunt only I don’t think hunting works for Sam the same way, it’s not Sam’s mental comfort food the way it is for Dean, but still I appreciate the mirroring there.

Sam’s struggling with Rowena’s death and I think those horrific AU nightmare visions aren’t helping much either, but it’s clear he’s feeling the loss. Her loss, all the recent losses.

Dean trolls Sam with real bacon, which seems like Dean is maybe trying to cheer Sam up by pranking him and trying to cheer himself up via food pranks. Dean has quite the case of the munchies in this ep.

I noticed almost every scene Dean is snacking or drinking from his flask. How’s that whole “Cas walked out and left apparently for good” working out for you Dean, wow, you’re suspiciously chipper while stuffing your face and drinking and Not Talking About It. Did Sam and Dean talk about where’s Cas? Who knows, the ep didn’t mention it, hey SPN you needed a Cas mention, OH WAIT THE EP IS GOING TO CALL ME OUT FOR SAYING THAT.

Seriously though, this is very Dean MO, and I have thoughts about his mood in this ep and how Cas’s absence was felt, and what it means, I’ll get to that later, but even before the last scene Impala talk, I was thinking Cas is a reminder of pain--and no it’s not all about Dean’s anger at Cas, it’s not because Dean is angry at Cas. Cas is a reminder of some things Dean just isn’t coping with very well and part of the problem is Dean cares so much.

So Dean’s snacking and drinking and Sam is feeling the weight of them knowing all the scary things out there while people go on obliviously with their lives and I’m not sure if Sam is envying them or Sam is feeling some existential angst about the state of the world, how people can go about their lives unaware there are real monsters ready to pounce and tear their lives to shreds. And feeling the weight of the job they do in every bone of his body. Sam’s in a dark headspace.

Ok I admit I was not thrilled to see Becky again given her previous episodes and role. SPN’s later in-canon fan characters were much more nuanced and successful and respectful depictions of fans. But as with many other things, this era of SPN is revisiting some things to move them forward in a different way than before, and subvert some things that needed subverting and Becky has had--wait for it--character development. How about that.

Yes, Becky, run, you do not want anything to do with Chuck. Run, Becky run. I’m rooting for her now. RUNNNN.

Along with finding a more constructive way of channeling her interest in the Winchesters’ lives, and having a satisfying fandom creative life and a full life of her own, Becky has funko pops of Sam, Dean, and Cas. LOL. I see you spn.

Dean, still with the case of the munchies. So this is like the eating a whole pint of ice-cream after a break-up, only Dean does it with junk food while hunting vampires.

I enjoyed this conversation between Becky and Chuck about writing immensely. Becky is actually right. Speaking myself as someone who’s suffered from writers block for a while, it’s miserable, and not writing just perpetuates the cycle. You feel cut off from an important part of yourself. And--oh here we go getting meta within meta--I find writing meta on SPN a positive outlet.

“Writing is writing.” Damn Becky’s takedown of Chuck’s derisiveness about fanfic was sizzling and oh excuse me Chuck, what is it you think you were doing with those Supernatural books about your favorite story. Even though he’s the creator, I know. But still. Also seems to be a sly comment on how male-authored “fanfic” based on someone else’s characters or historical characters gets to be professionally published novels and nobody wants to admit it’s fanfic but it is, but women write fanfic and women write novels based on someone else’s characters or historical figures and it gets derided.

Did not expect commentary celebrating the creativity and validity of fanwork of women in particular an episode of SPN, especially not with Becky of all people, but here we are.

Uhhhh is Chuck writing this episode, as it happens? I am seriously uneasy now. What is going on. What is real. Which is what I think Dean is going through because of Chuck and OUCH the Winchesters think they’re free but they’re not but also they are their own people and Chuck isn’t controlling them but it’s like he’s still making the framework?? Or would this case just be happening on his own and Perez is just messing with our heads in this script right now.

Oh damn because this ep wasn’t sadness enough now here we go with the Jack parallels. “I can’t control this.” “I’m a monster.” “I killed someone I love.” Parents doing anything to save their out of control teenage kid or does he need to be killed, so the parents are Cas, while Sam and Dean are Dean.

Interesting that Dean lowered the gun and didn’t kill Jack, but tells Sam they would do that for Jack if it was necessary. You didn’t, though, Dean. You couldn’t go through with it any more than those distressed parents of the vampire teen.

Becky is voicing various non-dire fan complaints here, every lane of the fandom is being gently called out right now. Hahaha including lack of Cas mentions in an ep that pointedly is not!Mentioning Cas because it’s not a mistake there’s actually reasons for that which is just lampshading how much Dean is pointedly Not Going to Talk About Cas.

“Where they sit around doing laundry and talk” -- again every lane of the fandom should feel very called out right now. Seriously, fandom lanes that hate each other’s guts all have that common factor of craving more domesticity, and would like to see the laundry ep of SPN and for many, it has better include Cas, or we’re working through our need for this via fanfics or fanart. Even Jared and Jensen have expressed interest in a “Winchesters do the laundry” kind of episode.

But here’s the thing--here’s the thing about SPN...it depicts domesticity. In small bits of pieces. Even in this ep there’s domesticity. SO HA. It’s not that SPN is against depictions of domesticity, it’s definitely in the toolset of its storytelling, to give the characters more layers, to make their lives seem more real, but there needs to be mostly an action plot because that’s the genre so they mostly kill monsters and we only get nibbles of domesticity.

Becky and Chuck arguing about Chuck’s incredibly dark story ending, after Becky criticized him for the story not having enough bite, was so interesting. While the episode’s dark story ending was actually quite well done IMO and not overdone and yes it’s bleak but it’s supposed to be. So it’s not that sad is always terrible writing, no. It isn’t. But its overuse has been a raging hot topic in spn fandom for years and SPN is a hopeful narrative as well as a bleak one. Overuse of loss of hope and misery can hurt the story, causes a number of fans to become desensitized and lose their emotional engagement for it (which has happened to be at a couple of points in SPN’s long run). So that conversation interested me a great deal, yes it did.

So.....SPN had its current biggest of the biggest of ultimate big bads, the ultimate power God himself, the author, and made him the enthusiast for overuse of the misery pr0n like that’s the only smart way to tell a story. The season’s big bad villain is a misery porn enthusiast.

I’m just gonna....sit here and absorb that for a moment.

Oh and this while all the PR for the show keeps warning us about how sad this story is and how bleak the ending will be, not a happy ending show. Are they warning us? Are they trolling us and misdirecting? Because they made their villain a misery pr0n fanboy and this intelligent, self-aware positive depiction of Becky the fan taking him to task for it.

I feel like could be headed for every story needs its darkness and its light, you need the darkness to appreciate the light, and you need some light or the story is less meaningful. We’ll see.

“I’m a writer,” says Chuck and then takes away everyone Becky loves and then unmakes Becky. This is a purposeful depiction of a writer creator as a sadist. It’s a diabolical reversal on the Stephen King’s Misery scenario. Becky played the deranged fangirl in the past, who kidnaps an object of obsession, now she’s the victim of the deranged sadistic writer who breaks into her home, destroys her life, and then effectively kills her because of his own obsession with making Sam and Dean wretchedly miserable because he thinks that’s the only way to make the story exciting.

*blinks*

In the last scene, oh thanks Sam, for vocalizing the Jack connection.

Hey Dean, that’s really a nice speech and yes Sam did give you a great pep talk but Sam wasn’t the only one who told you what you did still has meaning. This is like 15.01 where Dean is pointedly erasing Cas again despite Cas very obviously having done something Dean refuses to acknowledge. In 15.01 it was Dean leaving Cas out of his us vs the forces of evil speech to Sam, despite Cas having spent most of the ep shooting ghosts in the face and saving Sam’s life twice. Sam and Cas both have given Dean pep talks about the meaning of what they do but only Sam pulled Dean out of it...uhhh yeah that’s not writer error or canon ignoring Cas. That’s Dean trying to push Cas out of his mind. Something there hurts so much Dean isn’t dealing with it right now.

As I said, as I’ve been saying, it’s not so much that Dean is that angry at Cas. It’s not just about Mary. Or about Cas keeping things from him. Although those are all valid reasons for Dean’s hurt and anger. Dean seems to be afraid or hurt over more than that. And his love for Cas, IMO, is part of why this is weighing so heavily. What does he fear. I think it’s connected to the whole existential crisis about Chuck. What if none of this is real. I’ve talked about that in other posts, if none of this is real, if Dean still doubts, then what if what’s between him and Cas isn’t real, what if Cas doesn’t really care about him because none of it real.

Dean valiantly puts a brave face on things here, they keep going, they keep fighting for the sake of those they lost, no matter what, “keep putting one foot in front of the other.” Which makes sense. That’s how you honor those you’ve lost. It’s just that I don’t think Dean has really reached that. He is Not Dealing with an awful lot of stuff here. And we have seen again and again how hard Dean reels from losing loved ones. So what’s going on with Dean here. This is a healthy concept, but not if Dean is just whistling past the graveyard again. This might look like character development except look at what’s been going on with Dean. How deeply losing Mary, losing Jack affected him. The impact of those losses needs to be acknowledged and dealt with in order to truly move on and move forward. It’s like Dean is voicing a healthy outlook but isn’t actually experiencing it. I think Dean is posturing because if he lets all the hurt it right now, it will devour him.

There’s also the part where Sam and Dean have in the past displayed a lack of ability to just keep on keeping on if they lose each other, so they used to sell their souls, or violate the other one’s wishes and autonomy, or let the darkness free, but we’ve also seen them let each other go, and “keep putting one foot in front of the other.” Sam and Dean have done both ways with each other. Dean didn’t exactly just keep on keeping on no problem when Cas died at the end of S12.

Sam voices the other side of things, he can’t just move on right now. He’s feeling all the losses. They’ve piled up and piled up and it’s crushing him. Sam says he "can’t breathe” at times. He brings up Jessica, a loss he suffered 14 years ago.

So Sam and Dean are airing the two aspects of loss and grief on SPN. One the one hand, you don’t just give up and quit because of loss. Honor who you’ve lost and keep on fighting. But losses are deeply felt, and it’s not all okay either. Sam and Dean don’t just shrug off these losses because they have each other. That’s not how this works. They need more than just each other and SPN is increasingly having more and more open dialogue about all of this.

S15 so far has been so much about the impact losing people they love has on Sam and Dean, and why their isolation isn’t a good thing.

And there’s Chuck, the big bad, typing away to add more misery. Because Chuck gets off on giving them loved ones and taking them away, over and over and this isn’t presented as a good thing or a satisfying thing or a desirable thing or a celebration of anything.

#Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #Chuck Shurley #Becky Rosen #spn #supernatural #supernatural spoilers #meta #Sam and Dean: a work in progress #Destiel #Team Free Will #Jack Kline #Castiel

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janiedean · 5 years

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I hate d&d as much as the next guy, but Kit had alcohol/substance problems *for years*, waaay before season 8 was even conceived. Sure, stress over the finale might have contributed. But there's also British drinking culture, hollywood's substance abuse problem, the stress of being a lead on the biggest show of the world and leaving your formative job of a decade. While I'm sure the finale script fucked him up, I find it shady and unnecessary to blame Kit going to rehab on D&D.

I’m not going to blame them for it completely, but... especially if he had issues with that before, that’s exactly my point, he should have never found out at the table read with everyone else. like, even if he thought it’d have been better, if they were professionals and as showrunners you should give a fuck about your actors excuse me, they should have told him long beforehand same as they should have told emilia long beforehand about what was going to happen with dany (which they didn’t) and assured that he got some psychological support on the network’s dime since they had carte blanche or something like that. if he found out at the table read, I have a feeling they did neither. and like..... as far as *I* know (and I don’t know 10% of the cast gossip stuff, like I don’t follow it, I generally don’t care and it usually makes me feel like crap soooo):

they were extremely unprofessional with stephen dillane and never even gave him a prospect about what he should be doing with his character *and* kept on writing him unevenly so the poor dude who hadn’t even read the books had to make it up as he went or to improvise or research on his own or whatever and like... he didn’t have to read the original material, they should have provided him with the necessary background, and he remembers it as a general experience so fondly that last I checked when asked what was the best thing he got out of doing the show it was *the money*, and they did treat him like shit;

emilia got *two* aneurysms post S1 and S3, kept on shooting in extremely hot locations until S6, has openly said playing that character helped her get through it..... and not only they give her that goddamned ending but since they most likely decided it post S7 they don’t even warn her and she has to see her character done dirty like that, sell it in six episodes without having been told to make sure it was hinted in the previous two seasons, and who cares? like sorry but to me that’s unprofessional af;

ncw.... well, ncw has spent years trying to ask them wtf they were doing with jaime with reasons because they were fucking it up and all he got in return was his arc destroyed in the last two episodes, they didn’t give him clues about where the next seasons would go so he acted stuff in a way and then the next season it went in the entire opposite, and on top of that he gets always shafted when it comes to awards and the likes and from what I gather they never say one decent thing about him in dvd commentaries and that’s still not as bad as emilia’s treatment;

... do we all remember that when the actors playing ros and barristan (who are lesser names than any of the above three) dared complain to them and got killed off? (and I’m 100% sure ros was supposed to be substitute jeyne poole in S1 so...... imagine COMPLETELY FUCKING UP ONE ESTABLISHED PLOTLINE BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO BE PETTY WITH AN ACTRESS FOR HAVING SAID SHE WISHED TO HAVE A PLOT INSTEAD OF BEING NAKED ALL THE TIME XDD)

I mean, those four things are already pretty damning when it comes to how unprofessional they are as showrunners, but: exactly if you’ve got an actor who got addiction issues after being on your show when it was his first job ever on tv, he got it when he was in his early twenties and fresh out of drama school and who has had to lead it and pretty much carry the plot on his back for four seasons, if you plan to fuck his character over like that at least sit him down with the both of you before, insist for it, get him a therapist on set and make sure he has some support, and sorry but from what I see they didn’t give a single fuck about that. and like... that’s not blaming them for his issues, it’s pointing out that if they knew they were a thing they could have done something about it and tried to make it easier on him and they didn’t. also, considering that kit already had the pompeii history ie that he almost developed dysmorphia with all those damned muscles he had to put on and that wasn’t good for him as well so more than the addiction history he has a history of being negatively affected by shitty treatment when it comes to his projects (that happened because he had to contractually have the extra strong turtle chest muscles not for any other reasons) then maybe they could have thought about it and given a fuck about making sure he’d take it as best as he could.

especially if they had in mind of, oh, wait, taking from his character the payoff *they* built for eight seasons and make him do whatever the hell it is that he had to do. like, he did say he was pissed at episode three. I can believe that, gdi xD like obviously they’re not directly to blame, but they’ve been unprofessional assholes to a good number of people in this cast and I don’t even want to know the rest and their behavior with him was equally bad and like... running a show means giving a fuck about your actors, especially if they aren’t seasoned professionals when you take them on. /two cents

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #d&d can choke #kit harington from ts #addiction cw #mental health cw #alcohol cw #Anonymous #ask post

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soveryanon · 5 years

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Reviewing time for MAG148! X___X/*

- I still can’t believe that the “Extended” in the title was for (amongst other things) long-due [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF ELIAS GETTING BRUTALLY PUNCHED]. “George Icarus” would laugh in his grave from vindication if only his skin hadn’t been used during The Unknowing.

And it was so varied! Ben did a Great Work at it because it sounds like Basira got very creative in that scene? At first, sounded like a punch in the guts; got the feeling, right after, that it was her pinning her against a wall or the table, an arm twisted in his back, holding him by his hair? And with the:

(MAG148) BASIRA: Mm–hmm. ELIAS: [ASPHYXIATED NOISE] [STRANGLED] B–… But I… can see how maybe I… should have mentioned it…!

Sounded like Basira blocking his windpipe (ha.) with her forearm, pushing higher. Don’t know how other people are Hearing This Scene but I do appreciate that, anyway, it was moving and slightly different every time, we could hear it, and it was Various Shades Of Elias Having A Bad Time.

… well. I HOPE he was having a bad time. Because getting savagely thrashed around and then going:

(MAG148) BASIRA: [EXHALE] So. Why d’you agree to see me. ELIAS: I missed you. BASIRA: Right. That’s why you’ve been refusing my visits since we got back. ELIAS: I–I thought it might have… [EXHALING] been an idea to give you some space. BASIRA: Oh, and how’d that work out for you? ELIAS: Ah… Not–not ideally. […] Goodbye, Detective. I shall miss our little chats.

Is. Uh. With Jonathan “do I miss being chased?” Sims and now this, what is it with Beholding types and being-addicted-to-the-things/people-wrecking you. Was Elias fond of Gertrude in the same way.

(And what does it say about Elias that this scene was, like, a big moment of *BREATHES* in the last string of episodes, while it’s still about a prisoner getting beaten up by an ex-cop, who also threatened to make his overall situation worse, while prison guards should supposedly have stepped in to protect him? Not too surprised about the fact that the officers didn’t intervene spontaneously (they have had to deal with Elias for a year. Elias who has blackmail material and has such a Charming Personality.), and Basira had many reasons to lash out (used as coerced material for Elias to trap Daisy, basically a hostage; was recently sent all over the world on Elias’s bullshit leads), but. Still. Not great from Basira. Technically. (You did amazing sweetie, bastard had it coming.))

- I also wondered if Elias wasn’t actually a bit. High. During the whole altercation. Because he was reaaaaally… uh. Making things worse for himself here and there? While being absolutely aware that Basira was pissed and ready to kick him harder? And if really sounded like someone who was too out-of-his-mind to truly assess the situation.

On the one hand, some bits felt like they were feeding the Elias-is-actually-Jonah theory:

(MAG148) ELIAS: Uh! Look, look, look. I’ve… been doing this a long time now and, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about The Web, it’s that it plays its own game. […] ARCHIVIST: … I–I don’t know, I mean… We still don’t really know… what Elias actually is…? I thought… Maybe if he was more like me than we realised…

(And Jon miiiiight have thought about it too.)

… and on the other hand, the more shittiest he gets, the younger and younger he sounds to me, a sneaky opportunistic lazy little thing who just happened to get his hands on some power recently, and not a 200y-old person. Elias in s1? Can accept that yeah, 40-50y old. But he’s been losing ten years at a time to my ears ever since, and he’s currently at “early 20 stupid idiot”.

- Anyway, I have a special fondness for the line:

(MAG148) ELIAS: … And, hum… No more violence, Detective. Or I may have to call in the guards.

Because he sounded so Dramatic and Righteous, a bit reminiscent of… stereotypical thin old lady holding her bag, very blank face and solemn? I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but Ben’s delivery in that one cracks me up a lot.

- On the one hand, ahahaha, Elias is Being His Useless Self, Basira ranted about it, Jon&Basira acknowledged that he wouldn’t be helpful in anything but “useless gloating”, Elias himself looks… only Good At Bullshitting (like Jon described in MAG145). … On the other hand, it’s generally when Elias has been proven… less threatening than what we could fear, that he tends to prove that no, he can harm, and has ways to do it, and won’t hesitate.

Jon spitting at his face post-kidnapping in MAG102 and Tim telling him to fuck off in MAG104? Was followed with Melanie’s “performance review” in MAG106. The assistants scheming to take him down, ~fooling him~ with Martin acting as bait and Melanie finding proof to force Section 31 to arrest him? Was still followed by Elias designating Peter as the Head Director (and potentially having planned this… for a while… since he had sent Peter to meet Martin in MAG108, and Peter had already come in the Institute in MAG100), plus revealing that he knew about Jon’s dreams all along.

So, uh. If the current trend is to deride Elias… he might prove, soon-ish, that yeah, he’s not as big of a menace that he likes to make you think, but he’s still a Threat.

- SPECIAL WORRY OVER:

(MAG148) BASIRA: And when exactly were you planning to tell us he’s been feeding on innocents? [SILENCE] ELIAS: Ah… [HUM] I’ve… always thought that a man’s eating habits were… his own private business. BASIRA: Mm–hmm. ELIAS: [ASPHYXIATED NOISE] [STRANGLED] B–… But I… can see how maybe I… should have mentioned it…!

… because it puts to mind:

(MAG127) BASIRA: Can we cut the bullshit? ELIAS: What “bullshit” might that be? BASIRA: The part where you pretend you don’t spend your whole time watching us. ELIAS: … Sometimes I’m eating.

And alright, at that point, Jon had already attacked two people, could have been a reference to that. But mostly, what is Elias eating, or whom? He’s been in prison for (almost?) a year by now – how does he himself Feed Beholding…? I understood their exchange as… Elias saying that his situation had actually gotten worse in prison while she was away (?):

(MAG148) BASIRA: Right. That’s why you’ve been refusing my visits since we got back. ELIAS: I–I thought it might have… [EXHALING] been an idea to give you some space. BASIRA: Oh, and how’d that work out for you? ELIAS: Ah… Not–not ideally.

But I’m not sure, since he also pointed out that his “special treatment” was guaranteed because he was giving the police useful information. So. I don’t know. But beginning to fear that he actually has the entire prison under his control, and that he’s just in the right place to cause damages and get the Archives team in the direction he wants, while being sure that Jon won’t try to compel him…?

- Amusingly, this episode made small references to fantheories! There was the what-the-heck-is-Elias bit with Elias saying that he had been in the game “a long time now” (which sounded very orientated towards the Jonah Magnus theory); the connection between Elias and The Web, with Elias claiming that uuuh… Spiders are best ignored:

(MAG148) ELIAS: Uh! Look, look, look. I’ve… been doing this a long time now and, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about The Web, it’s that it plays its own game. All you can really do is… hope it doesn’t get in the way of whatever your plan is. Because the Spider usually wins…! Assuming you have a plan. Do… you… have a plan? Detective?

(And on the one hand, Elias is almost explicitly saying that he has no connection with The Web (although as usual, you can also read his sentence while focusing on what’s missing: it would work perfectly if he was actually talking about himsel in third person); on the other hand… he’s also doing exactly what Annabelle described re:The Web, ie constantly making people under or overestimate you as fits your plans. So. Yeah. Could be that Elias indeed has no plan at all, or barely any, and is mostly waiting for Jon to keep digging his own grave and Create A Beholding Ritual from scratch because Jon is too impatient. Could also be that Elias does have plans, and is mostly trying to get Basira to not factor him in too much at the moment – if so, it worked.)

And there was the “Detective” bit:

(MAG148) ELIAS: [SNIFF] Good evening, Detecti– [PUNCH] OW! [EXTENDED SOUND OF BRUTAL PUNCHING.] BASIRA: Useless, scheming piece of shit! ELIAS: Detective, this is quite unnece– […] BASIRA: No. No, I’m done with your game! ELIAS: Bas… Basira, let’s– […] Assuming you have a plan. Do… you… have a plan? Detective? BASIRA: … Why do you do that? What is that? ELIAS: Uh… Do what? BASIRA: You always call me “Detective”. Is that supposed to mean something? ELIAS: Honestly? I just like the way it sounds! BASIRA: [DISGUSTED EXHALE] ELIAS: … And, hum… No more violence, Detective. Or I may have to call in the guards. […] I’m sorry to say, Detective, but you’re becoming predictable…! BASIRA: [EXASPERATED GRUNT] ELIAS: Goodbye, Detective. I shall miss our little chats.

On the one hand: Elias explicitly says that no, ahah, the “detective” bit is just a random thing (for added drama? I mean, someone had been hand-gesturing a looooot, if the shackle sounds are any indication); on the other hand, Agnes was the living proof that Believing And Faith Is The Key when it comes to Fears, and that you create things if you think hard enough that they’ll work out. So. Even if the “Detective” is a title he went for because it literally sounded cool, it could become… something.

On the third hand: gdi Elias, give credits where it’s due!!! Georgie had been the first one to call Basira a “detective”, in MAG122!!! (… and I was assuming, until then, that he had Watched the scene and adopted it because indeed, it sounded nice; and this episode is… leaning in that direction, snorts.)

(… but worried/suspicious about Georgie’s tendency to be spot-on with key words or key concepts. Besides the “detective”, she also nailed “anchor” and “avatar”, which had been used during Gertrude’s time, according to Gertrude’s tapes… But Georgie couldn’t know that yet, and Jon hadn’t heard those yet back when he was discussing the concepts with Georgie.)

Anyway, glad that Basira highlighted Elias’s insistence over “detective”, and absolutely Not Surprised But Still Facepalming that Elias just. Used it even more than usual afterwards. He’s so shitty, Elias PLEASE…

(+ Bonus to the list of Current Fantheories nudge: we got a Beholding statement about technology which included wiring everywhere. Was that a nod towards the Webholding speculation going on?)

(… and meanwhile, we still don’t have that kind of joke or winkwink between Martin and Peter over the fact that they could potentially be blood-related. Mmmmmmmmmm.)

- Okay, Elias was a total useless cracky bust this week but I can’t help but always be wary of him and what he is saying, and he said about The Dark:

(MAG148) BASIRA: Unless you’ve got another crisis for me? ELIAS: [PAINED GROAN] No, no! [PANTING] … No. I–it–it’s fine. I–I’m, I’m sorry. BASIRA: Oh yeah? For which part? ELIAS: [HIGH-PITCHED] … All of it…? BASIRA: You sent us to the North fucking Pole for no goddamn reason. ELIAS: A, a–hem… miscalculation.

… And the thing is. That.

1°) Manuela didn’t explain how Elias and Rayner knew each other and had been “friends”. It seems to be going to feed the “Elias is Jonah” theory, since we know Jonah and Rayner were acquaintances back in the days, but… Manuela has now been taken care of, and who, besides Rayner himself, could have willingly talked a bit more about it?

2°) We’re past July 20th 2018 (MAG147) and. There is still the fact that a partial solar eclipse is bound to happen on August 11th 2018 (from real life). On the one hand, yeah, The Dark seems to be Absolutely Done For by now; on the other hand, they just tend to. never be truly done for and actually, surprise!, still be around and kicking. (And Jon had seen members of the cult, at the beginning of the season, meaning… there are still some of them around, even after their “last” collective attempt with Rayner in February 2017…? How come there were still people that Jon managed to identify as cultists, if the cult doesn’t exist anymore and their leader is dead…?)

- ALRIGHT NO, ACTUAL SUPER SPECIAL DUPER WORRY IS THAT ELIAS DROPPED SOME “ADVICE” AGAIN

(MAG148) BASIRA: Or that we were being stalked by some freaky spider woman. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about that! ELIAS: Ah, uh, y–yes… W–well… To be honest, I’d… advise you to leave that one – well alone. BASIRA: Oh yeah? ELIAS: Uh! Look, look, look. I’ve… been doing this a long time now and, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about The Web, it’s that it plays its own game. All you can really do is… hope it doesn’t get in the way of whatever your plan is. Because the Spider usually wins…!

Because I Remember Too Well two big pieces of “advice” that Elias had given Jon, and:

(MAG037) MARTIN: Sorry… Look, Jon, I do think we should destroy the table, though. I mean, if it’s the one from Amy Patel’s statement. Just in case. ARCHIVIST: Elias told me the same thing. Luckily, he phrased it as advice rather than an instruction, so for now I’m more inclined to keep studying it. We’re not in the business of destroying knowledge.

(MAG116) ELIAS: Oh, and, Jon – technically, I can’t stop you, but I would heavily advise against bringing any… rogue… elements. MARTIN: You can just say Tim. ARCHIVIST: I will take it under advisement. ELIAS: Hm. Anyway, don’t worry about staying in contact, I’ll know when it starts.

AND GUESS WHAT HAPPENED TO SASHA (WHEN SHE WAS ALONE WITH THE TABLE) AND TO TIM (WHOM JON ALLOWED TO COME TO THE UNKNOWING).

(+ Bonus, to Daisy:

(MAG082) ELIAS: I leave the matter of Jonathan Sims up to you, though I will not tell you where he is. I suggest you close the case and move on, but if you find yourself unable to do so, my advice is to kill him quickly. There’s no telling what he might be capable of.

… Like, yes, at the time, it was hilarious to imply that Jon could be a threat for anyone or anything, and it was mostly a “hEY” moment because Elias was… encouraging Daisy to go Hard on Jon, who was currently lost and sleep-deprived and spending his days researching on his computer, drinking tea, cleaning Georgie’s kitchen and catsitting The Admiral. But. Elias’s “advice” to Daisy didn’t age well / aged TOO well.)

………………… so additional current fear is that, yeah, Basira will end up not leaving The Web alone and. It. Will. Get straight back at her.

- Also SHIT, Basira:

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: Did he say anything about Annabelle? BASIRA: Not really. Sounds like he’s not too worried, though. Says to just ignore it. ARCHIVIST: [SNORTING] Yeah, good luck with that!

… this is NOT what Elias said. He basically said that you couldn’t do anything about it anyway. That’s. Not exactly the same thing. (And he sounded a bit scared of that one.)

- Gaaaasp, this season has been so vulgar so far, gaaaaaaaaaaasp

(MAG131) ARCHIVIST: Oh, I… Melanie, I–I’m so sorry, I– MELANIE: Oooh, fuck off?! ARCHIVIST: I was trying to save your life. MELANIE: Yes…! Well, you did! […] It didn’t stay in my leg because of some Ghostly Masterplan; it stayed… because I wanted it. ARCHIVIST: … Shit. MELANIE: Yes.

(MAG132) BASIRA: Jon, you stupid idiot! What did you think?! DAISY: … Hi.

(MAG143) BASIRA: [SIGH] So, what, this was another waste of time? What, no Church, no Dark Sun? … I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch…!

(MAG148) BASIRA: Useless, scheming piece of shit! […] You sent us to the North fucking Pole for no goddamn reason.

(I’m amused because, is the use of “fuck” actually a sneaky way to get a higher rating for episodes with actually harder content? Here, we had a beating up taking place in a cell; MAG131 had Jon trying to self-harm. MAG080 had a murder live. … Well, MAG065 and MAG104 were their Own Things and it’s the True Power Of Tim: getting to say “fuck” even when the episode content is otherwise typical.)

- Statement tiiime and I’ll go very fast because I messed up my timing again:

* Obligatory Gratuitous Tim Tears because I’m conditioned to think about him with the simple mention:

(MAG148, Sunil Maraj) “But there’d been some… problem, and the whole place had to be closed up for months. Samson said they’d found asbestos, I heard it was a lease issue, but… doesn’t really matter.”

-> (I KNOW, IT’S ABSOLUTELY GRATUITOUS… … but I think the beginning of MAG090 is still one of my favourite exchanges of the entire series, I relistened to it so many times, shut up >>)

(MAG090) TIM: … You do know, right? I mean, you must know. ELIAS: Know what? TIM: About this place. About what it does to us. ELIAS: [SIGH] Tim, this place is very old. It has all sorts of… idiosyncrasies, and not all of them are good for the people who work here. TIM: I think I’d prefer asbestos.

(+ Melanie’s old haunted building in MAG028 has had its share.)

(Yes, I’m aware of the RQ crew’s Personal Experience With Asbestos.)

* Same hat, statement-givers:

(MAG148, Sunil Maraj) “Now, I’m not sure I can legally name the shopping centre I was working in to you guys, but let’s just say it wasn’t the Westfield. […] The security office was a mess. The company I worked for – again, dunno if I can legally say them, but you can look it up, you know […].”

(MAG051, Antonia Hayley) “You’ll forgive me if I don’t give their name; I still hold out hope that I might go back to work there someday, and I’d feel like an asshole dragging their name through the mud, even if it is just to you and your strict confidentiality procedures. If you’re desperate, they shouldn’t be hard to identify, but it’s not really relevant to what happened.”

Not Telling You But You Can Find Out Easily Anyway (except if you’re not even interested in doing the follow-up properly and/or to try to see if this place is still dangerous :[[[)

* I’M EXTRA-SAD FOR SAMSON SINCE HE HAD A SMALL CHILD gdi, I’m even more upset when you know it will mess up people from the victim’s surroundings…

* Old tech obviously reminded me of MAG065, but this time with less of a trapping theme – 100% Beholding at work? And is there something with the 80s tech specifically…? Sergei Ushanka, according to the story, had died in 1983; the old Tecton multi-camera recorder was said to be from the late 80s here; and we don’t know how long the tape recorders had been in the Archives, only that Gertrude was using them at least in the 90s (so they could be a bit older).

(* I did wonder, when the statement-giver mentioned how he tended to shop a Treat for himself from time to time, and with how aware he was of the cameras… if he wasn’t trying to avoiding saying that he was actually shoplifting from his workplace.)

* That’s the 4th Beholding statement this season, And This Is A Lot More Than Usual, And I’m Scared. Beholding is just… looming. There. More and more present.

* Laughtrack.wav because oH MY GODS, JON??? JON, DO YOU EVEN HEAR YOURSELF WHEN YOU READ A STATEMENT????

(MAG148, Sunil Maraj) “So I lost my job last week. I mean, I quit, they didn’t fire me or nothing, but you know like, sometimes you quit because you want to, and sometimes you quit because you’ve got to?”

With the fact that the place Sunil had gone to was described as a “mess” that they had to sort out; that Samson didn’t have a lot of emotional support and was not in a nice headspace when they arrived (“Samson took it harder than I did. […] being thrown from one post to another all the time was really kind of getting to him. He tried to talk to me about it a few times, but honestly we weren’t that close…!”); that Samson got obsessed with putting the place in order and only focused on that and then began to follow his friend through the camera lens (or his own lens.)… It sounded an awful lot like Jon’s situation in the Archives, and the first paragraph and the mention from Sunil that a bit of distance had helped??? Sounded VERY oddly on point??? Jon, what does it say, if even Beholding is giving you “hey, sometimes, you don’t want to, but you still have to” talk through a statement???? Jonathan???

(Jk aside, because indeed, I think Gertrude was right to point out that the Fears don’t really have a consciousness, and it would sound very counterproductive from Beholding to invite its local avatar to hold up on feeding from innocents, but. Still. The rhetoric question sounded waaaay too exactly fitting for Jon, holy Mew.)

- Jon’s spiel about “ignorance” was a bit of surprise, I didn’t expect him to obsess over it? Because it… has been very present in the past, in the Archives or with statement-givers precisely explaining how “ignorance” doesn’t protect you from anything (+ is… still, in a certain way, Beholding’s domain):

(MAG032, Jane Prentiss) “And now I stare at it and not a word of it is even enough to fully describe the fact that I itch. Because ‘itch’ is not the right word. There is no right word because for all your Institute and ignorance may laud the power of the word, it cannot even stretch to fully capture what I feel in my bones. What possible recourse could there be for me in your books and files and libraries except more useless ink and dying letters? I see now why The Hive hates you. You can see it and log it and note its every detail but you can never understand it. You rob it of its fear even though your weak words have no right to do so.”

(MAG036, Nicole Baxter) “when I asked the two of them who they were, they just shook their heads and told me to leave. I asked them what was going on, and the old man looked at his companion, as if asking permission, said something about knowledge being a good defence here. She shook her head and said that leaving quickly was a better one. I didn’t need to be told a third time.”

(MAG039) MARTIN: Then why do you– ARCHIVIST: Because I’m scared, Martin!. Because when I record these statements it feels… it feels like I’m being watched. I… I lose myself a bit. And then when I come back, it’s like… like if I admit there may be any truth to it, whatever’s watching will... know somehow. The scepticism, feigning ignorance. It just felt safer. MARTIN: Well… It wasn’t. ARCHIVIST: No. No, it wasn’t.

(MAG047) ARCHIVIST: Yes, well, thank you for that, I suppose. And you still hadn’t told me why you… “intervened” at all. MICHAEL: [CHUCKLE] I’m normally neutral, yes, but… the loss of this place would have unbalanced the struggle too early. I am keen to see how it progresses. ARCHIVIST: You make it sounds like there’s a… war. MICHAEL: Eh…! Then I will say nothing further. I wouldn’t… wish to tarnish your ignorance prematurely. … Goodbye, Archivist. ARCHIVIST: Wait! [SCRAPPING OF CHAIR] Ah… ah, ow… ah… M– Michael…? Michael!

(MAG089) JUDE: Oh please, your god is nothing! The Eye, Beholding, Ceaseless Watcher, whatever you call it, that’s all it does, it watches and knows, sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge.

(MAG098) MARTIN: Yeah, we talked. Not long, he– Y’know, I think he thinks that the distance keeps us safe, you know? Like, like, if he just makes sure that we’re not involved, we’re somehow fine. TIM: He’s an idiot. Look, we didn’t know what that door was, and it still trapped us. Ignorance isn’t going to save anyone. MARTIN: No, I mean, you’re right, I guess. He was… Y’know, we know about Sasha now, and… he said he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. Like, y’know, it’s his fault. TIM: Isn’t it? MARTIN: No! No, it isn’t! I mean, you heard Elias… We never really stood a chance. TIM: Yeah. Maybe. But Elias wasn’t actually the one who offered me the job down here. MARTIN: No, I– Sure.

(MAG106, Jan Kilbride) “But I keep thinking back to an old professor of mine, back when I briefly studied neuroscience, talking about consciousness. About how we still don’t honestly know what it is – where it comes from, what aspect of the brain makes it possible. And I wonder if there might not be consciousnesses out there, so far beyond our comprehension that we could not properly recognize them as such. Minds so strange and colossal that we would never know that they were minds at all. Perhaps… out there, in the endless Vast, it would not notice or recognize us in return. And I wish that I could convince myself that ignorance was the same thing as safety. But then… how many weeds have you unthinkingly stepped on in your lifetime?”

(MAG117) TIM: I used to blame my brother for going off on one and poking around where he wasn’t wanted; I used to blame myself for not… helping him, but now? Now it doesn’t matter. I read through enough of these things to know that it doesn’t matter. The only thing you need to have your life destroyed by this stuff is just bad luck. Talk to the wrong person, take the wrong train, [SCOFF] open the wrong door – and that’s it!

(MAG137) GERTRUDE: Gerard may have a connection to The Eye, but I’m not convinced it will be enough. And I will admit I’ve grown… fond of the boy. I wonder, if I told him about Eric – whether he’d follow in his father’s footsteps. Still, that’s not like it kept Eric safe in The End.

(MAG146) ARCHIVIST: … I never thought I’d miss those days, when I could throw out some half-baked speculation about drug abuse or mental illness, and whoosh, away all the statements went. There is… nothing in the world more reassuring than ignorance which we can mistake for certainty. But no. Almost every one of those statements, those… people… that poor old man…

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “And in that vast, dark space of ignorance lies… free will! Isn’t that marvellous, Jon? Free will… is simply ignorance. It’s just the name we give to the fact that no one can ever really see everything that controls them…!”

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: I honestly don’t care, if Mr. Maraj was chased down and consumed by his voyeuristic former friend, or if he has forgotten the whole affair, living in… blissful ignorance.

I’m a bit ? at the fact that Jon is still holding on to the idea that (feigning) ignorance can help, although it’s been repeatedly demonstrated otherwise. Though with MAG146, it was akin to idealising the past: he was afraid already, back in season 1, and was just trying to not attract the attention of things out there by pretending he didn’t know anything, and it hadn’t worked. (I’m also a bit surprised that Jon is making the equation that knowledge/understanding/awareness fundamentally means Pain: both this and ignorance have been proven to not protect you, in this universe.)

- The… Martin mention…

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Basira… BASIRA: Yeah? ARCHIVIST: I’ve been meaning to ask. The… tape. The one of the, uh… my victim. You said Martin gave it to you. BASIRA: [EXHALE] Yeah. ARCHIVIST: How was he? H–how did he look, was he, uh… BASIRA: I don’t know. I didn’t… see him. He just left it on my desk with a note. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Right. BASIRA: Yeah. ARCHIVIST: … Can I ask what it said…? BASIRA: Hum… Yeah. It said to, uh… “Talk to him.” ARCHIVIST: [INCREDULOUS NASAL LAUGH] … [INHALE, EXHALE] I’m gonna get something to eat.

1°) Still not 100% sure that Martin indeed decided to pass the tape to the other assistants, or if… someone decided for him when he was hesitating.

2°) … not showing your face feels awfully Lonely, Martin D:

3°) Jon still gratuitously wondering about Martin for Unknown Reasons, uh.

4°) Ah. Ah. Ah. When Jon lost it at the “Talk to him”, I was reminded of many things:

(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: … Why are you here Martin? MARTIN: Well, well, Prentiss is out there and you can’t run so– ARCHIVIST: I mean at the Archive in general. Why haven’t you quit? MARTIN: Are you giving me my review now? ARCHIVIST: No… We’re clearly doing a whole heart-to-heart thing and, truth be told, the question’s been bothering me.

(MAG058) TIM: Look: I tried talking to Elias about it, but it doesn’t seem to do any good! MARTIN: He’s just under a lot of pressure. You know how messed up he’s been since Prentiss. TIM: How messed up he’s been?! MARTIN: Of course, I’m sorry – sorry, I didn’t mean that you weren’t, just– TIM: No! Because I didn’t start stalking my co-workers! MARTIN: Maybe try talking to him.

(MAG065) TIM: Shut. up. ARCHIVIST: … What? TIM: Shut up! Just stop talking. I’m sick of this, I’m sick of you! We didn’t kill Gertrude, and no one wants to kill you, you pompous idiot! […] After everything you’ve pulled, you should be gone. But no. Instead, we all get to talk about how you’re feeling, because we’re worried about our stalker boss!

(MAG069) MARTIN: Not like Tim. ARCHIVIST: Hm. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … Just talk to him, please. ARCHIVIST: I think we’ve said more than enough. I doubt there’s much more words can do for us. MARTIN: You can’t… work together like this. ARCHIVIST: Ironically, I think working is all Tim and I can do together. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … Look. Jon… when was the last time we all just… talked? Just talked, without all of this– ARCHIVIST: Thank you for the tea, Martin. MARTIN: … Oookay. Fine. [OPENS DOOR] He’s not wrong, you know. [CLOSES DOOR] ARCHIVIST: … [SIGH] [WEAK VOICE] I know.

(MAG099) GEORGIE: Look, when’s the last time you spoke to someone who wasn’t me? ARCHIVIST: That’s… I… I–I talked to Martin a, a… a… a few weeks ago…? GEORGIE: Did you talk to him? Or did he talk to you, while you tried to find a way to escape? ARCHIVIST: I… uh… GEORGIE: Look, you’re worried. I get it. But if you really think you’re turning into something… inhuman, you need people around you. You need anchors. ARCHIVIST: All my “anchors” are just as deep in this as me. GEORGIE: Well, you still need them. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Maybe you’re right. I… I’ll talk to the others. […]

(MAG102) ARCHIVIST: Oh, and… I suppose I… I did tell Georgie I’d try to talk to Martin. [DEEP SIGH] [...] ARCHIVIST: An–anyway, I–I–I should go. I–I’ve got a few leads to follow up. MARTIN: Right, right. ARCHIVIST: I’m, I’m sorry, Martin. We haven’t… I know we haven’t talked much since… Sasha and everything. MARTIN: Well, I mean it’s not too late, y’know. Unless the world ends. [MARTIN LAUGHS NERVOUSLY] ARCHIVIST: Yeah.

(MAG116) BASIRA: Do you think he bought it? MARTIN: We’ll talk about it later. ARCHIVIST: I doubt we’ll get time, we need to go. MARTIN: It’s fine. We’ve got this, okay. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] … Okay.

(MAG123) ARCHIVIST: I wish I could talk it through with Martin. … Or Tim. [SHORT SAD CHUCKLE] Or Sasha. But we never really did that, did we…? … Everything’s changed.

(MAG129) ARCHIVIST: I, er… I heard about your mother. MARTIN: … Yeah. ARCHIVIST: I am… so sorry. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Thank you. [INHALE] It’s… [SHAKY EXHALE] It’s better, this way. ARCHIVIST: If–if you do need to talk, I– MARTIN: I can’t. ARCHIVIST: No. No, o–of course.

… Martin who, unless there was a Plan going on and they were in a rush, had always pushed for talking, and who is currently absent and “silent”.

- Update on That Little Soap Opera You Call An Archive and cat is out the bag about Elias being (having been?) Basira’s intel:

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: You should have let me come with. BASIRA: No. Besides, he wouldn’t have seen me if I had. ARCHIVIST: I can’t believe you’ve been seeing him all this time. BASIRA: Oh yeah! That’s the terrible secret sabotaging the trust between us. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Did he mention it at all? My, uh… BASIRA: Oh, your new diet? Nothing useful. Didn’t seem too fazed by it. ARCHIVIST: [LONG SIGH] Right.

… I do agree that Jon’s “secret” is not comparable to Basira’s but. She really shouldn’t minimise the fact that she hid her connection with Elias from them: Elias admitted that he had needed her to go away to get Jon to go inside the coffin and learn to harness his powers further, meaning that no, Basira’s been played, and they’ve been going in the direction Elias was nudging them towards through his sessions with Basira. That’s bad. And unless Elias was preparing Jon for The Dark with this (which he tried to imply, but I’m reaaaally not convinced given how… he only began to talk about that threat after Jon had expressed concerns about it), that means he had other plans.

Plus, Daisy picked up on the pattern of Jon’s attacks pretty quickly; Elias probably knew, already, that there would be a third victim after the coffin…? And. Ssssssssssssssssh. Melanie and Daisy won’t take the fact that Basira has been in contact with Elias kindly. At all. And they’ll be right to do so.

Confrontation probably incoming soon (since Daisy wasn’t aware of “Floyd” in MAG147, which means… Basira has been keeping a lot of information from them), it. Probably won’t be pretty. I would like to hope that Melanie&Daisy are a bit more suited to making things progress in a better direction (laying down unpleasant truths on the table but… in an actually helpful way) but… we’ve never got that in TMA so far. Usually, when there is resentment, it explodes and it shatters things and relationships beyond repair.

- In fact, the way Basira has acted so far in season 4… is really reminiscent of how Elias had described Daisy?

(MAG082) ELIAS: You haven’t even followed up on any of the other potential suspects or leads, and shown no interest at all in the fate of Sasha James. All you care about is where Jon is, because you’ve decided on a course of action, and you’re going to follow it through.

I wonder – after Basira basically lost her centre of gravity (she thought Daisy was dead for seven months), did she try to act like she thought Daisy would have…? She got the single-mindedness, the ruthlessness, the obsession with getting things done while not paying attention to her surroundings…

The fact that she savagely came at Elias, and how she treated Jon this episode, really highlighted for me… how indeed, she has been an internal mess this season, trying to be in control and failing absolutely everywhere. She… didn’t achieve anything, didn’t get a “win”? Elias explicitly told her that to get Daisy back, he needed for Basira to be away (like, RUDE.) because only Jon could pull that one off; he subsequently presented Jon has the only one able to “see through The Dark” which, once again… didn’t leave a lot of space for Basira to do anything significant at all, except to be there and take care of some logistic matters. Before that: she had lost Daisy, she had seen Martin drift away, she was only witnessing Melanie getting frantic and angry. Melanie had been the one to stab Jared while Basira & Martin were trying to flee, and Helen was the one to trap him. That’s a lot of… occasions to feel powerless and resentful – and that might be why she’s exceptionally snappy at Jon right now, and not really able to connect anymore with Melanie or Daisy? Because the situation has gone totally out of her control, and she had to be in the one in charge while being faced, again and again, with the fact that she wasn’t managing to achieve anything?

- I extra-hope that Daisy and Melanie step in soon-ish, because it… sounds… like Basira is being accidentally toxic for Jon at the moment: she’s still partially counting on him and his powers to fight off other spooks (although aware of what it means), and Jon was trying to avoid the food analogy until she hammered it in – he then… went with it, too, and sounded clearly resigned.

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Did he mention it at all? My, uh… BASIRA: Oh, your new diet? Nothing useful. Didn’t seem too fazed by it. ARCHIVIST: [LONG SIGH] Right. […] BASIRA: Yeah. Jon, we’ve been over this. The “key” is to not force people to feed you their trauma. You know, just don’t do it. […] Any luck finding her? ARCHIVIST: I haven’t really been trying. Doing that sort of thing consciously, it… makes me hungry. BASIRA: Oh well, then find a statement to your taste, and read it. ARCHIVIST: Yes, yes, I know, thank you. […] … [INHALE, EXHALE] I’m gonna get something to eat.

Melanie threw jokes around it in MAG147, and Jon had been using food analogies too before (+ both Mike and Jude presented it as “feeding what feeds you”) but here… it really sounded like a capitulation, and I really don’t think that… presenting what Jon is doing as “eating” is going to help them stop it. Making jokes about it has its limits (it’s still a sore spot for Jon at the moment), and presenting it as “feeding” isn’t really neutral, and only reinforced the idea that it would be an unavoidable necessity, when the point is to stop?

- And we got Jon, extremely… emotionally-stunned at the end of the episode:

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: Does reading a statement of The Ceaseless Watcher count as a sort of… auto-cannibalism, I wonder? Or some sort of… bird-like regurgitation of Fear, re-consuming second-hand terror. … Whatever the analogy, I’m finding it harder and harder to ignore the diminishing returns. How much less satisfaction each one gives me. My desire for “follow-up”, for “verification”, for… [HUFF] “proper digestion”… of the experience, it grows less and less. […] I just find my mind already wandering to the next statement, in the hopes that it won’t be… quite as stale.

1°) … I think this is the first time Jon has referred to The Eye as The Ceaseless Watcher, and WOOPS, because coming from him, it sounds a bit more… grandiose and my-patron than “Beholding” or “The Eye” in passing.

2°) Indeed obsessed with the “food” and its quality, and disregarding entirely the grand pattern or the people hurt in the process. No mention that the manual could have been a Leitner; nothing about the fact that technology-based statements tend to be rare (he had told Tess, in MAG065, that they didn’t have many resources but that a student was dedicating their research to this). Nothing, just the statement, consumed without any appreciation or questioning, and the fact that it happened to someone… wasn’t enough to want to learn about it.

(3°) oh gods, his melodrama is definitely too much for me, though.)

4°) … Current problem definitely sounds like he’d “need” a live-statement to properly heal after having watched The Dark Sun, back in MAG143? Jon did mention that he was not entirely back to shape. So. The problem, at the moment, really seems to be tied to him using his powers and the question is what will happen first: Jon having to use them again to neutralise something attacking the Archives or trying a ritual, or Jon attacking someone with A Story – whether it’s a civilian or an avatar?

- Lots to unpack here:

(MAG148) BASIRA: Yeah. Jon, we’ve been over this. The “key” is to not force people to feed you their trauma. You know, just don’t do it. ARCHIVIST: It’s not that simple…! BASIRA: No, it is. Or I put you down. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … That’s… I mean, that’s hardly… BASIRA: Daisy has been managing. ARCHIVIST: Daisy is… [PAUSE] [SIGH] Yeah. She’s managing. Did he say anything about Annabelle?

1°) Not The Right Way To Go, but I still feel like Basira got a point: if Jon doesn’t want to stop, if he doesn’t have any solution to stop, if he only spends his time repeating that he is unable to stop… then there’s nothing differentiating him from the other monsters? Although it’s not helpful, it’s not worded in a way that is even remotely contributing, it’s absolutely savage, it’s a bit transparent that Basira might be pissed at herself because the victims happened right under her nose while she was at the Institute (and she specifically let Floyd happen).

2°) Aaaaaaaaaand I can see where Basira is coming from, too: since, unless he’s pretending right now, Jon… indeed didn’t know until this episode that Elias was Basira’s intel. And Basira had told him, sternly, to stop Knowing about her – which he… did, in the end? He didn’t know about her activities, in the same way that he kept away from Martin? And he was using the same rhetoric with his Insights at first: that he couldn’t control it, that the droplets would sneak around the door anyway. But telling him off / giving him a motivation to stop… more or less worked? (He had random knowledge with Basira in MAG140, but not about the Broad Picture of her plans…?)

3°) Jon is not helping his case at all in the way he keeps repeating that he can’t really stop it…? Okay, so, Daisy had pointed out how Jon was casually self-destructive/prone to go for things that could kill him. But he sounded almost… defensive, here? I heard the beginning of his sentence, after the silence, as a shock because he didn’t think that what he had done (and was at a risk of doing again) warranted death…? And what we really don’t need re:monster!Jon is for him to grow an active self-preservation instinct….? But, Jon, indeed, what are your options other than stopping entirely or going full monster and being taken care of in a definitive way? Going after other spooks to feed (HI, PETER LUKAS IS RIGHT THERE)? Being sealed in the coffin again (but he managed to come out once, and he “had regrets” about going inside – he probably wouldn’t go willingly)?

4°) ………………. I’m………………… worried about Daisy……………………….. I don’t know if Jon’s half-sentence meant that Daisy is Having A Hard Time And Not Exactly Managing (managing to not hurt people, but being deeply affected in the process), or that Daisy has Basira and is not alone so that their cases are not comparable, or that Daisy didn’t give herself to The Hunt like Jon did to The Eye in his coma (and that Daisy could be removed from her patron’s influence in the coffin; Jon was still using his powers inside, and found the way out thanks to them), or… that… Jon… knows something about Daisy… that we don’t know yet… which might be that Daisy has been Hunting again behind Basira’s back… (I’m especially worried because of the fact that Basira puts her as an example of actual success, Someone Managing To Step Away From A Fear… as if precisely, it’s meant to be an illusion, and she’ll have to face that things are less pretty and hopeful than she thought. Basira has always been biased for Everything about Daisy: she was already… allowing Daisy’s killings during her officer’s day although she did have a strong sense of justice for other matters, and she was still taking Daisy’s defence in MAG117.)

(But at the same time, it… would feel a bit pointless to me, if the overall conclusion was that there is no hope and nothing positive to achieve, that yes, Daisy should have killed Jon when she had an occasion; and Tim was right; and they all should have died in The Unknowing just like Tim did because you either become the hunter or the prey; and the things hurting and manipulating you are bound to successfully turn you into an uncaring predator, too…?)

- Okay, so remember how Tim was giving off the feeling that he had Given Up, between MAG092 and MAG104? Thaaaaaaaaaaaat’s Jon now.

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: … Whatever the analogy, I’m finding it harder and harder to ignore the diminishing returns. How much less satisfaction each one gives me. My desire for “follow-up”, for “verification”, for… [HUFF] “proper digestion”… of the experience, it grows less and less. I honestly don’t care, if Mr. Maraj was chased down and consumed by his voyeuristic former friend, or if he has forgotten the whole affair, living in… blissful ignorance. I just find my mind already wandering to the next statement, in the hopes that it won’t be… quite as stale.

1°) But at the same time, oh my gods, just cut out the melodrama Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way, seriously.

2°) Cutting the bird analogy because Jon. Don’t. Jon, gross, Jon.

3°) … Same Guy who was complaining about His Feelings in MAG139 (around two months ago in-universe), so what the heck happened/is happening for Jon to just. Collapse like this.

One Thing We Know About Jon since season 1 is that inaction tends to take a big toll on him; while Basira remedies to it by trying to do anything, Jon… tends to be unable to focus on anything else once he has a Current Threat or an objective in mind (yes, Aza, I know, it’s ADHD). He was extremely aware that they were waiting for Jane Prentiss to strike, and that they could only wait for her to make her move; he knew The Unknowing was coming and, even with their plan already laid out, he was restless waiting for the day; he repeatedly pointed out in season 4 how the fact that nothing was happening was becoming overwhelming:

(MAG031) ARCHIVIST: It’s… been two months now since Martin returned and we became the ones being… hunted. Are we being hunted? Martin’s still living here, and I’m leaving less and less. The worms keep turning up. We kill them, but there are more each week. What is she waiting for…?

(MAG115) ARCHIVIST: Whatever Elias has Daisy doing, it seems to be working. Nothing’s made a move on me or the Institute since I returned, and last time I saw her there was the distinct smell of burnt plastic. So I suppose I’m safe. But everything just feels like… killing time, running down the clock. I don’t think I like it. God, do I– do I miss being chased? That’s depressing. No, it’s… I just miss feeling like I’m moving, like I–

(MAG130) ARCHIVIST: … It’s been two weeks since I heard from Basira. I’m not waiting any longer. I’m getting Daisy back.

(MAG135) ARCHIVIST: Can’t honestly say I blame them, none of this is easy. Everyone’s just trying to get through as best they can. Living one day at a time. [SIGH] But I can’t afford to be just living one day at a time, I need… a plan. But I don’t even know what I’m trying to achieve… And no one… no one wants to tell me.

(MAG137) ARCHIVIST: I feel like I’m on a deadline, like I’m running out of time somehow – and I don’t even know where to go! What to look for, o–or… [EXHALE] Just casting around blindly for more clues to just… drop into my lap. Everyone else is… running towards something, or running away, and I… [SIGH] I don’t know what I’m doing. [PAUSE] [SIGH] I’m just tired. Think I might go lie down for a while. Get a cup of tea [HUFF]

(MAG145) ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] The more I listen and learn, the more it seems to me we’re all just… “groping about”. Trying desperately to find out what we’re actually meant to be doing. […] But I’m really starting to worry that there aren’t any answers. Not like I want there to be. There aren’t any answers in Ny-Ålesund; there aren’t any answers in the past; I’ve been inside The Buried, and there were no answers there. Elias always seemed to know what was going on, to have a plan, but… I sometimes wonder how orchestrated some of it really was. […] It’s just this nagging sense of unease that won’t leave me. … I was so sure I’d find something up there. But instead, it was just another broken person trying to come to terms with the wreckage of their life. And here? I reached out, I took another tape, eh!, hoping for a bit of guidance, but… [HUFF] To be honest, this hasn’t helped.

And a lot of things this season seem to have contributed to the aimlessness and the pointlessness. Jon managed to remove the Slaughter bullet from Melanie, and to get Daisy out of the coffin in the month following his awakening. Since then… Nothing tangible happened, and Jon has complained about his lack of goal; he’s been aware that Martin is in a bad place, but has been stuck with his promise to trust him. Trying to take a peek through The Lonely backfired; going to Norway to fight The Dark turned out to be a letdown (and even the Dark Sun didn’t kill him); going to Hill Top Road didn’t help, Annabelle denied any Big Involvement; and now, even Elias seems… absolutely useless and out-of-his-depth.

So cumulating that with Tim’s recent death, Georgie deciding to stop trying to help him, the fact that Martin is actively not interacting with him, the fear of Something happening in 2018 for the Institute’s 200th anniversary (… well. Assuming that Jon is fearing that one and not enthralled by it.), the knowledge that he’s Indeed Turning Into A Monster (which was… a gigantic concern of his, in season 3), and then the fact that nothing is leading anywhere, that there is no apocalypse to focus on and try to stop… there are enough elements for Jon to let himself sink and stop trying at all.

(Additional fear related to Jon’s wording in that moment:

(MAG148) ARCHIVIST: How was he? H–how did he look, was he, uh… BASIRA: I don’t know. I didn’t… see him. He just left it on my desk with a note. ARCHIVIST: Oh… Right.

That was generic and all, but. Pointedly not “Did he look mad/disappointed/worried/tired” etc. There is still the nagging fear that at some point, Martin would begin to appear in Jon’s dreams because Beholding’s protection would fade away, and it’s not going into that direction, and Jon has been Thirsty For Anything Martin all through this season but… Let’s say that if, yeah, Martin was beginning to appear in his dreams: could be the final nail in the coffin (ha) to make him definitely unmotivated/depressed and make him give up on trying anything because there is no hope of anything feeling better ever again, uh.)

- While, at the same time, if there is no “catch” to it, we’ve had counterexamples of people who went through an awful place and… managed to fight back and (more or less) find their footing again. It took some efforts from Georgie! Melanie was hurt, manipulated into signing up with the Institute (we. still don’t know. what that static was, when Elias asked her if she wanted the job.), emotionally tortured (even if it was unrelated, it took 42 episodes for Elias To Get What He Deserved for that.), under influence… and acknowledged that it was her, was lost, and went to seek therapy – and if she’s not currently being preyed upon again, or at least if her therapist is genuinely using their sessions as actual therapy… it seems to be doing wonders with her (she’s less aggressive while still snappy, more aware of her surroundings, able to word her discomfort – it’s not fixing her life but it seems to… help! And that’s the point of therapy, to give you tools or insights to regain some control over your life!). Daisy, if she hasn’t secretly fallen back to The Hunt, has been more peaceful, is trying to communicate, is staying away from what could make her snap or hurt her (trying to find company to chase the loneliness and The Buried’s flashbacks), and has been trying to pull Jon back up when she could (sharing her Archers listening with him, taking him out for drinks).

Basira and Jon are currently sharing the title of In The Worst Headspace in the team right now, and it’s… probably an exceptionally bad idea to allow Basira to try to be the one monitoring him at the moment, although they don’t have many options. At the very least, she… doesn’t seem to be, at all, the one person he should be talking to if they want to avoid Jon sinking deeper. But Georgie, Melanie and Daisy…? Extra-hard for Georgie since:

(MAG094) GEORGIE: And I realised I was in my bed. According to my phone, I had been for several days. I numbly got myself some water, and ignored my weeping mother. She tried to hug me, but her arms just slid off my limp shoulders. And that was my life for several months. Eventually, the memory began to fade, and I started to feel again. I took the year out of university under the umbrella of “medical reasons”, and by the time I met you I was, well, I don’t think I’ll ever be the same person I was before, but I had started being able to actually live again. I never learned for sure what happened to the people in the Medical Science building, […] and I never saw Alex again. There was one thing that never returned to me afterwards, though. Since that day, I’ve never been able to feel afraid. My fear’s just… gone. I’m not foolhardy. I can still recognise danger, and I understand the likelihood of harm, but actual fear? Simply not something I experience anymore. And I’ve never been able to figure out if it was cauterised, or… if it was stolen.

She Doesn’t Have To Do Anything For Him, but seriously, if someone has to remind Jon that “hey, I lost someone I cared about so much, my life became a mess, I became emotionally stunted, I even lost one of my Feelings forever, but I pulled through, and I’m still impacted, but I also have My Life” is not a fatality, and is good at giving valuable advice (/kicking Jon’s butt in the right direction, whether he elects to ignore it or not)? There is Georgie Spooktacular Barker.

- So, overall, still! Findint! it! very! hard! to feel sad over Jon’s current state since MAG141? I mean, I wasn’t even feeling !!! over the Martin mentions once the episode finished, because… Yes, I was immensely fond of the Jon->Martin bits this season, but I don’t especially care over Jon who only cares about Martin and not about victims, and is more interested in the Fears mechanisms at work and the statements-as-food than in the-victims-as-people?

(Because, like, yes, Jon has been through a lot in the first three seasons, he lost people he cherished, witnessed abominations, suffered and suffered, and being depressed is a Thing and makes everything hard. But in Jon’s case, it now comes hand-in-hand with “having repeatedly hurt people, being aware that it was happening, liking it, trying to convince himself that he was mindcontrolled into doing it – and still having hidden it from people who could have monitored him to ensure there wouldn’t be any further victims”. Whatever Jon’s reasons (denial, fearing he would be abandoned or the disappointment or to have to acknowledge that He Had Turned Into A Monster Like The Others, etc.), I’m still “Mm-MMMMm.” at the whole ordeal because, with the added bit of “I don’t want to stop” and him insisting that he can’t stop at will? There is nothing differentiating him from a serial killer or assaulter trying to present himself as The Victim Who Only Do These Things Because Of Uncontrolled Instinct And Who Has Had A Hard Childhood, while he… isn’t… the main victim…, and doesn’t deserve anything right now except to be stopped – people need to be protected from him first, and I don’t feel like I can care much about his story or his Worry Over Martin when I know that he’s hurt people, and that they’re still being tortured (Jess…). Whether or not the Spooky Powers influence indeed pushed him to do it and it’s actually impossible to truly fight against it… Jon’s main fault, a fault that is his and his only, is truly that he hid what he had done from the others, and kept repeating to them that he could be trusted. That the first victim happened? He wasn’t prepared for that one, alright. The following four, nop, you tortured them, and the fact that it happened was absolutely your fault, Jon. And it doesn’t feel especially tragic or sad to me right now, just “shrugs, so that’s how it is? Yeah okay goodbye Jon, then, I guess”…?)

(It’s also Daisy’s case! But I’m biased because 1°) a bit more impermeable to this rhetoric from a man’s mouth, especially given how we learned it through a woman’s recalling (and how heavily MAG142 just felt coded like a regular physical assault), 2°) we haven’t heard from one of Daisy’s victims from their mouth, 3°) … presumably, Daisy was only going for the kill with spooks-or-spooks-influenced-people-who-had-hurt-people; it was bad and Not Okay, even more given that she was still a police officer back then, but on the scale of atrocities, it still feels a bit less nauseating than going after innocents like Jon did, 4°) Jon is still currently the MC, so obviously, his actions and their consequences will get scrutinised a bit more since… it’s “his” story, first, and why does his story deserve to be told? 5°) I’m really expecting Daisy to die soon-ish, since she has a redemption arc-vibe to her, and it would already lay out the groundwork for a Satisfying Death – whether she snaps again like she did in The Unknowing and has to be killed-killed for real, or sacrifices herself, or dies trying to achieve something Good but being prevented from it. … But yes, I’m fearing a bit that we’d get the testimony of someone explaining how Daisy had absolutely wrecked their life unwarrantedly a few years ago, at some point.)

(- I wonder if it’s not Team Archives’ cue to… try to research about Adelard Dekker, though, if they want to find a way to stabilise Jon / ensure that he stops attacking people.

Because Annabelle Cane, whether she’s lying or not, claims to barely have intervened, and outside of ensuring that Jon stays alive, has certainly not been presenting herself as an ally, and is aware of Jon traumatising innocents but sees it (officially) as a Jon problem. Elias is (officially) a bust, and doesn’t care about Jon’s rampages. They’ve never met Peter Lukas, so can’t know if he’s knowledgeable about other spooks (Martin knows but, also, Peter could be bullshitting as well as Elias – and please, don’t ever tell Peter that he might be the Most Knowledgeable Guy around, or his head won’t fit through that door). Whether we can trust that or not, the three of them claim to not be that much in control, and are certainly not Allies On The Side Of Not Hurting People.

Gertrude, Gerry and Leitner were the most knowledgeable people around, and they are already dead and definitely silenced (Jon has burned Gerry’s page). But there is still Adelard’s case: Jon knows that Adelard was collaborating with Gertrude in the business of stopping Spooks (binding the Not!Them to the table in MAG078’s statement, helping to move Gertrude’s things and to temporarily stop an avatar of The End in MAG114, contributing to stopping The Flesh’s ritual attempt in MAG130). If Team Archives was searching for someone’s help to deal with Jon’s current status, and their overall situation… he’s currently their last resort?

I’m still expecting Adelard to be dead, by now, or to have turned into an Extinction avatar or something; and even if he’s still around and mostly on the side of stopping the Fears… I doubt that he would be super receptive over the concept of “Jon might be salvageable”. But if they have to seek out someone for Spooks-related help… he sounds like the best candidate.)

Title for MAG149 is… I don’t know, feels so non-threatening (well, like a “casual” statement not having anything to do with the current Awful Situation) that my instinct is to think it may be a small respite, and my reasoning is to get Prepared to be slapped extra hard? I have… no clue about a potential “Archives life” meaning for this one (unless it takes place in a café or something??).

It would be a good title for an Extinction statement, and we’re indeed due for Martin’s meeting with Peter’s “friend” (and what does it say, that the episodes that potentially feel the less tense are about Martin and/or The Extinction?) – Adelard, Salesa, Simon Fairchild, surprise!stillalive!Rayner, Martin’s dad, another Lukas, Mr. Spider, Alfred Grifter…? If not, hum. Second half of the title has been used in the context of both Spiral and Hunt, and there is the potential musical angle (I’m not talking about “–ON THE COLD HARD GROUND – OH! (TROUBLE, TROUBLE, TROUBLE.)” but that one crossed my mind too.) which makes me think of Slaughter. I… really… hope… it’s not Hunt, because WorriedAboutDaisy and I see how it could fit, if it were to refer to her Hunting again ;;

(Still no love for Corruption in s4, but Anil has guaranteed that we haven’t Heard The Last Of It. I know that statistically, unless an episode contains multiple Fears, each one would be supposed to get less than 3 episodes per season for them to be Equally Represented but x’) Corruption got the short stick this season, uh.)

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #the magnus archives #tma season 4 #tma spoilers/#mag148 #tma liveblog #long post/#*sighs and pushes placebo's 'song to say goodbye' in the m->j playlist*

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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Just wanted to thank people again for their reblogs and donations, I will never be able to describe how I feel about the support - both tangible and emotional - that people on here have given me over the past three months in particular. Especially now that I have a definitive diagnosis and course of treatment to aim for, and an optimistic timeline of maybe even having the surgery within the next few months, at least before the summer....it really just depends there on whether my insurance approves that expense or how much of it, etc.

I still definitely could use continued help, though I’m trying my best to not rely on it as much as possible. Its just...yeah. We’ve kinda hit the point where its really just not possible period for me to make it where I need to get to without support. The slight downside to all the positive stuff I mentioned above is I’m a very goal oriented person. And this has been a very long and constant ordeal for me, where its been nothing but seven days of constant stress and pain a week, not able to rest or relax or take a day off working or searching for work for literally months and months. The only way I’ve managed to keep going is by fixating on some nebulous future point I had to reach and kinda use that to drag myself forward day by day. Its not nebulous anymore. I have answers, I have concrete needs and timelines and all that. But that also means now I have a very clear awareness that I can not make it the rest of the way with just the resources I already have myself.

It’s like...desperation energy, that’s fueled me to get this far and last this long, but there’s a difference between desperation and futility, and motivating myself with the thought ‘just hang in there long enough to get answers and solutions and FIX things’, like, it did what it needed to do, getting me in sight of all that, but it took pretty much everything I’ve got to use all that to tread water, to just stay afloat to get to this point. There’s just not enough there to stretch that out to continuing to stay afloat WHILE doing three times as much work on TOP of that. I know my capabilities and have a lot of self-respect for them, but I also know my limits and I can’t afford to waste everything it took to get to this point just so I can pretend I’m capable of more than I am. Because that’s the other downside of being in sight of the finish line, but still having it far enough away its not anywhere you’re gonna reach in just a few more steps.....like, lmao, I’m fucking tired. I want to rest. And I’ve gotten just enough good news after nothing but years of new rock bottoms that my brain and my body are trying to take that as a sign that its okay for me to just collapse now and take a breather. But I can’t really. Because I’m still not actually there yet.

So on that note, putting the link to my paypal up here nearer to the top for a change, for people who don’t actually need my long-windedness, lol.

https://paypal.me/bigskydreaming?locale.x=en_US

And then on a related note, I just wanted to say again that I’m totally okay with and even eager for people to leave notes with their donation for any writing commission I can do in return. Again, this is totally MY issue, and not something I think should apply to all donation posts: expectations of a quid pro quo. People help out because they want to help out. As long as whatever information a donation post includes is sincere, however much or little that information is, I think that’s the only parameter that matters. People have different personal criteria for what motivates them to actually donate to a relative stranger on the internet. If someone donating to a person whose post is just a simple paragraph of need with no context for why or what their situation is, if that doesn’t make sense to you? It doesn’t have to. That’s not actually any kind of scam. Someone just wants to say, hey I need help and no, I don’t want to explain why? Sure, a lot of people might not feel inclined to donate but anyone who does, they’re not being scammed. Someone asked for x amount of help, someone else decided, hey I can provide this much help and I’m okay with doing that with no further context needed. The end.

Just wanted to clearly express my opinion there, before proceeding on: for ME, personally, I like a degree of quid pro quo for the help people give me, because that’s something that works for my situation. I don’t LIKE not being able to work as much as I want to, because thing is, I have been fortunate enough to make careers out of work that I actually enjoy. My income over the last ten years has almost completely stemmed from acting, writing and graphic design, all things I enjoy. LOL I rant endlessly about how much I hate capitalism, and its true....but I don’t hate doing things I love. Obviously for the past year I haven’t been able to do any acting jobs cuz of my health conditions, and my writing and graphic design work has been unreliable for the last several months for a variety of reasons.

The major way my health stuff (and related mental health stuff) has impacted me is not even with actual work, but finding new work. My headaches and chronic pain have lessened how many hours I’m able to be focused on work, but not so much that I can’t do what I need to get done when I have a clear objective and goal to focus on. It’s when that’s done and I have nothing else to work on and haven’t made the money I need yet. When I try to power through several hours a day of headaches/pain in search of new jobs as my lack of results amps up my stress and aggravates my health stuff even further....that’s what really makes days suck. And because of my mobility issues with vertigo and not being able to drive and all that, going out and getting a non-internet based job just flat out isn’t possible for me at the moment.

So I’m really starting to feel hopeful again that there actually IS an end point to all this and it might be soon even...and then I can get back to business as usual and build new client bases same as I did before, even get back to acting (omggggggg I miss it). But until that happens, as long as I still need to ask people for help and financial support, like, PLEASE do not feel like you’re imposing on me by suggesting something I can write in return, especially if you’re someone who’s been donating to me regularly. Or if you follow me in part because you enjoy my writing and my headcanons and fics and such. It’s not a chore, its something to do that I CAN do, that I LIKE doing, that I WANT to do. It actually helps make all of this more bearable, because like I said....writing and graphic design as my sources of income...they don’t feel like work. I ENJOY doing them. They actually get my mind off my issues, they give me a reason to get up in the morning, they make me feel productive, like I’m actually doing something with my life instead of just existing, and going through the motions day by day just to survive.

So if you make a donation and you can think of something you’d enjoy seeing from me, please don’t hesitate. All I ask is that you understand that I’m not in a place to make guarantees at the moment, but when and where I can devote my time and energy to a direction you’ve pointed me in with your donation, I’m happy to, and hopefully that might result in something sooner rather than later. And eventually, if all goes well, I will get to a point (quite honestly a better place than I’ve been physically AND mentally in years) where I CAN be better about staying true to my intentions.

For now, just a rundown of things I have been writing for people who did make requests (though most of them are friends whose names I recognized and I hunted down and badgered into telling me what they’d like so I could do this, lmao. There were definite GDI WHAT DOES IT TAKE FOR ME TO MAKE YOU TELL ME WHAT I CAN DO FOR YOU convos being had, lolol I’m such a well adjusted person, honestly how do I stand it, science may never know).

Anyway, for anyone interested, the current slate of ‘commissions’ I’ve been working on, just so there’s no need to make a duplicate request:

Lightning Crashes Update - LOL a long awaited update to that beast. Its a 3 POV chapter, Kira, Liam and then Allison, and came out to around 10K. It’s done and just needs a final read through and polish, which I’ll do literally as soon as I manage to finish paying my insurance for the month and get caught up with what I owe my motel. Which means in the next couple of days for sure, if for no other reason then I like....have to make sure to pay those things by then one way or another lmao. But point being, for anyone still invested in that fic or interested in reading more, since its been so long and you’ll probably have to reread the existing chapters to refresh your memory, I think its pretty safe to go ahead and do that whenever, and the new chapter will happen somewhere in the next few days.

As to the rest of the fic after that - this is one of three fanfics that I’ve always sworn I really want to finish someday no matter what, and that remains true. The clusterfuck TW fandom became for me really hurt my ability to write that story the way I originally wanted to, mostly because I didn’t want my resentment of Stiles to affect how I wrote his necessary part of the plot, and by the time there was enough emotional distance between me and the show/fandom to write it again, like....all this happened, lol. So I do think once my health issues are resolved and I’m settled in an actual permanent place, I’ll FINALLY be able to resume it. There’s like, a couple hundred thousand words worth of unposted story already written there, lmao, its just I outline and then write nonlinearly, so most of all that just doesn’t work without me finally writing the bridge chapters that pull it all together.

Born Under a Bad Sign Update - Same thing pretty much, as this is one of the other Big Three fics I’ve always wanted to finish. Largely because its got a sequel that’s already written in full, lmao. The sequel is my YJ version of Under the Red Hood, but builds on the plotline I always had in mind for BUABS. The sequel was just easier for me to write first because it wasn’t as personal. BUABS doesn’t have as much pre-written as LC, but its not nearly as long either, and it has always been totally outlined and with a lot of dialogue for later chapters pre-written. Anyway, this is what I’d like to post after the LC update. It’s not finished, but its also not as long as the LC one. It’s a Roy chapter, and doesn’t have a time break but while writing it I’ve split it into two parts just for my own purposes. The first is Roy and Ollie confronting Catalina, the second is Roy and Ollie talking about their own shit in light of that. For this one, the first part is written, the second has the dialogue written but the rest needs fleshing out. It wont take that long to finish, its really just a day or at most two days of writing. When that’s done just depends on when I can next devote time to it.

Untitled X-Men One Shot - Someone asked if I’d write something about Scott and Bobby’s friendship and some kind of reunion between them after Scott’s return from the dead. I will of course be ignoring AoX completely, lmao. This one’s mostly done, its like 10K lmao (look those two had a LOT to talk about okay), but the last couple thousand words of that is all just dialogue I needed to get down before I had to focus on other stuff. So everything I need is all there, I just need to return to it to finish fleshing out the last quarter or so of it.

Untitled Dick and Jason One Shot - Someone else asked me to write something with just Dick and Jason interacting, set in the comic book universe. I’m going with a blend of pre-nu52 and a little bit of nu52 for the setting, pretty much ignoring Rebirth etc, because a) I think the Rebirth reboot mostly sucked and b) I really don’t know much about post Rebirth continuity cuz I’ve read so little of it cuz what I have read I think mostly sucks. This one is basically Dick and Jason finally airing out their shit and all the things I’ve long wanted them to say to each other and know about each other, so they can try and build an actual functioning relationship as brothers. Its got all the dialogue written, but not much else. The dialogue’s really the only framework I need to build a one-shot, so it won’t be hard to write around it, its again just more about when and where I get the time to do that. It will be Jason POV, as in canon its usually Dick reaching out (to whatever degree) and Jason not trusting his sincerity. So the angle I’m going with is this one shot’s about Jason realizing he doesn’t know his brother as well as he thought, and that if he’s always trying to get the family to accept he’s not the same person he was before, like....the same can be true for Dick. Neither of them are the people they were back then, so the reasons they weren’t close aren’t actually reasons they can’t be close now. And what Jason thinks are Dick’s issue with him might not actually be what Dick actually has a problem with.

Original Superhero Novella - This is likely the last of these things to be finished as its the longest and thus more on the backburner, like just writing 1 or 2K at a time on it. This one’s the request of a friend who knows enough about my original superhero universe (I call it the Ellis Eighteen universe) to know who she wanted to read about specifically. Which - not surprisingly, given that Batfamily is one of our shared fandoms - is my version of a Batfamily. Only not really, because lol I don’t like being derivative or writing analogs of existing characters aka I must be the specialest snowflake ever. So its more like I was like ugh I love the Batfamily but hate how rarely DC lets them like, GET ALONG, oh hey, I’m gonna shove all my resentment from that into making up my own dysfunctional blended family of superheroes who actually love each other even if they’re bad at saying so. Plus superpowers.

So their concept is there’s a C-List supervillain named Murphy, as in Murphy’s Law. He has low grade probability powers. Basically he makes it so anything that can go wrong will go wrong in a designated area. He doesn’t have any control over how that manifests, but he’s great for diversions, so he gets hired for a heist by some big name supervillains to just create mayhem while they do the actual work elsewhere. Except Murphy discovers the corporation they’re stealing from donates a lot to children’s charities and is heavily involved with ‘supporting’ the foster care system...as a means to seek out superpowered children who end up in the system, and exploit them for their powers. And while looking for the best place/way to make a diversion, Murphy stumbles across evidence of this, as well as four boys on site in advance of them being sent to a home specially intended to raise the boys to feel indebted to their benefactors and eager to do whatever they want them to.

Which doesn’t work for Murphy at all, because he’s not so much a bad guy as someone who ended up a criminal due to circumstances and desperation and from there just never found a reason to stop. This though, he’s not okay looking the other way, so he says screw this company and screw the guys who hired me, and he breaks out the boys and they go on the run, keeping anyone from getting their hands on them and moving from place to place while he tries to provide as much stability as he can, let them grow up and decide for themselves what they want to be.

Eventually though, the two oldest, Misfire and Crossfire (I call them the Fire brothers because even though they’re all biologically unrelated, they each have powers that lend themselves to picking the codenames Misfire, Crossfire, Ceasefire and Backfire). So anyway, after a couple years of this, Misfire and Crossfire end up sneaking out to be vigilantes. And Murphy catches them of course and is like wtf are you thinking, do you know how dangerous that is? What if you get hurt? What if they (asshole corporation) find you?

Only it turns out, they just wanted to be like their dad. Which Murphy doesn’t really know what to do with, cuz he never talks about his past with the boys. Because he’s ashamed of it, doesn’t want them to think of him as a villain. Which they don’t of course. He’s the one who rescued them, who gave up whatever his life was before to make it all about protecting them and always doing what was best for them. To the boys, Murphy’s always been their personal hero, so they kind of took it for granted....that’s what he was. Murphy was never a big name player, and they’ve always assumed that he was just some masked hero or vigilante who retired when he took them in so his old enemies wouldn’t come after them too.

So basically its a found/adopted family where the boys grow up to be heroes, thanks to the values and role model their father provided without ever having a clue how they really saw him, due to his own insecurities. And then it backdoors into Murphy eventually becoming a hero as well as its the only way he knows to keep making sure he’s there to look out for them, as well as like....he’s inspired by his kids, who in turn were inspired by him. He wants to be the man they see him as, live up to that image of him, not realizing that like, he always already was that man. That image of him is based on his actions, the way he raised them. So in reality, its not even that he’s inspired to heroism by the example his kids set, its more a gradual embrace of the role he’d always played for as long as they knew him, no matter how he personally had seen it (and himself).

And because I’m me, they end up making it the family business, with the older two boys and their dad working together to expose and topple companies engaged in exploitative practices, while the younger two ignore all orders to stay home and always stow away to make sure they’re part of the action. Like.....its the Batfamily with superpowers meets Leverage, if the Robins came first and Bruce only became Batman to be their partner and have their backs. And also he used to be a crook which is still way better than a billionaire. So, that’s that on that.

So that’s the slowest of the current slate, its at about 18K of a projected 30K, with this particular story being set after Murphy and the two oldest are already established as vigilantes. Murphy’s in his forties, Misfire’s 21, Crossfire’s 18, Ceasefire’s 16 and Backfire’s 14.

I’m open to writing pretty much anything I’ve ever talked about fandom wise, and that you know is something I’m familiar with. If for whatever reason a request is something I’m not open to writing or I’m not familiar enough with to write, I’ll just make a post about it and you can hop on anon and either clarify or ask for something else. And its okay to ask on anon ahead of time if I’d be open to something.

Anyway, on that note, I’m all done here, thanks again for everything!!!

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sunshinetrappedinourhearts · 5 years

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Nathmarc month day 11: “I love you.”

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16491026/chapters/38920409#workskin Whoooooop, I’m still behind one day, but hey, at least I’m still writing. :D I hope to write two stories on one day soon, but I’m not sure if that’ll work out. If not, I’ll just finish one day late, lol. I’m quite satistfied with this one. It practically wrote itself, since I planned something entirely different but suddenly this happened, gdi Marc. (Or Nath, tbh not sure whose fault it is. xD) @nathmarcnovember

The mountain of envelopes was staring at him, begging him to send them, finally letting them fulfil their long-awaited purpose. There were at least twenty of them. And the collection was still growing. Marc blamed his head full of words, his heart full of feelings he was unable to convey. If only he’d be able to hand them to the person whom they were addressed to… He sighed and once again put the envelopes away, preparing to leave to meet up with Nathaniel.

They had agreed to meet at one of their usual spots along the Seine, it was a quiet spot, and comfortable to work during the summer. Hugging his notebook, Marc walked on the riverbanks, and his body felt a bit numb, small electric sparks teasing his arms and legs as he moved himself forward.

His mind was filled with his soft smile and the way his ocean eyes lighted up whenever he spoke about something he loved, the way he hid them behind his bangs whenever he was shy, the way tiny glitters danced within them when he was drawing.

Marc wanted to tell him, he needed to say to him those three little words full of meaning, because he deserved them more than anyone in the world.

But.

What if he would hate it?

What if he frowned in disgust, what if he laughed and walked away, what if the light disappeared from his eyes of disbelief and anger.

What if he could never ever see him again because of those three words?

The sparks sank to his legs and he pushed them forward with difficulty, sighing as he felt his hopes leave him once again.

He couldn’t say it. He could never.

There was too much at risk.

‘Hey, Marc.’

The voice awoke him and he looked up only to see those ocean eyes he found so beautiful.

The sparks came back and he smiled. ‘Nathaniel.’

The artist boy smiled back at him. ‘You were lost in thought, huh? I saw you walking but you didn’t notice me at all. I guess that means you got ideas for our next chapter?’ He grinned at him, and they walked a little further until they reached the bench they always used.

Nathaniel sat down, taking out his sketchbook. Marc joined him.

‘Always,’ he said, opening his notebook, but a single paper flew away, blown away by the wind. At first, Marc was confused, until Nathaniel caught it, faster than him.

Flashes of memories came back to him, writing another poem, but forgetting to put it in an envelope far away from his favourite notebook.

Oh dear god, no, it was too soon, too-

Marc quickly grabbed the paper, and Nathaniel looked at him, blinking as he still hold onto it.

‘Marc…?”

The sparks were everywhere, his stomach, his hands as they trembled and his cheeks as they flushed red. He couldn’t look him in the eye.

‘Ah, erm…’

‘If you don’t want me to read it, that’s alright, you know,’ Nathaniel let go of the paper, pushing it into his hands. ‘Everyone has secrets. There are… also some drawings I… can’t show you.’

Those words confused Marc and it was too tempting to try and read his expression, so he looked up to try. But it was hard. Nathaniel smiled a bit, but his eyes were half hidden behind his hair, and he was scratching his face a little awkwardly. Marc found it… cute…

‘Well, uhm, let’s… trade then?’ The words were gone before he could consider them and calculate all the possible consequences, and he bit his lip as a thousand worst case scenarios ran through his mind.

Bad idea. Very, very bad idea. Nathaniel was probably talking about drawings he was insecure about, thinking Marc had something similar. But if he agreed and read the poem then-

‘Ah, I mean, uhm, forget that I don’t want to push you, haha, let’s uhm, carry on and discuss the new chapter, shall we? I have some ideas we can use about-’

‘Sure.’

Marc stopped talking. Breathed. The look in Nathaniel’s eyes was calm, yet determined, gentle yet serious. He had trouble averting his gaze.

Nathaniel smiled. ‘I’ll show you one of the drawings if you let me read the paper. It’s a fair trade, no? Besides, I trust you, and you trust me, right?’

Marc was frozen. The sunlight glittering down on Nathaniel’s face as he spoke was a bit enchanting, causing shimmers of light on his hair and cheeks. It made his eyes even more bright ocean blue than he remembered.

He didn’t know how to say no, so he nodded, even though every single sense of foreboding screamed at him from the inside of his mind, begging him to stop this nonsense.

But his body moved at his own as he handed the piece of paper to Nathaniel, who took it from him, but didn’t read yet.

‘Alright, I’ll turn around, okay?’ He handed him his sketchbook, his finger on a certain page. ‘It’s this page. Don’t look until you’ve turned around as well, okay? We’ll give it back to each other after five minutes. If that’s enough time for me to read. D-don’t say anything before that.’

He was fumbling with his hair, and Marc found it adorable. He nodded. ‘O-okay.’

He took the sketchbook from him, and took a deep breath, turning his back to him. Electric sparks back as they glided through his limbs.

Nathaniel would realize. He wasn’t stupid. Had never been stupid.

There was no way back now.

He just hoped the artist would believe him… and take him seriously…

He sighed. He just had to trust him. They knew each other for two years now. Nathaniel knew Marc would never make fun of him.

He absently let his index finger go over the side of Nathaniel’s sketchbook. How would he react…? He shouldn’t have done this, he shouldn’t have… It was a bad, bad idea and maybe this was just a bad dream and he needed to wake up and-

He closed his eyes. Opened them. Nothing.

Marc sighed and opened the sketchbook on the page the artist had marked.

And he blinked.

He couldn’t understand the green eyes that looked into his from the page, not the messy almost-black hair, not the slight hint of pink colouring the cheeks, nor the hands covered by fingerless gloves, one of them resting under the chin of the person Nathaniel had drawn.

This…

It…

Huh?

No matter how long he stared, and how many times he blinked, there seemed to be no doubt.

He was looking at himself.

‘Ah, Marc? I finished reading… You can… turn around now…’

Oh, no. He had almost forgotten. Nathaniel had read the poem. About ocean eyes and silky red hair, about elegant fingers making brushes and pencils dance and creating the most beautiful of scenes. About carefree, gentle smiles and a warm hand in his and how he wished to feel that warmth more often. About how he wished to see more and more of the small lights within his eyes and desired them to be looking at him the same way he looked at them.

He wanted to run and disappear and turn back time right there. But…

‘…Marc?’

He hadn’t noticed he’d turn around but with his eyes squeezed closed.

Carefully, little by little, he opened them, the sparks all gathering at the area where his heart was, forcing it to beat louder and louder as they caused the blood to rise to his cheeks.

Nathaniel was looking at him, a slight blush on his face as he hold the piece of paper tightly.

Marc stared back, unable to move, unable to speak, frozen solid.

The silent seconds seemed to pass at hours between them, and they finally spoke, both of them at the same time.

‘I-’

Marc blinked, Nathaniel did too, but he chuckled softly right after. It made Marc smile, the sparks in his chest calming down a little.

‘You go first,’ he said, fumbling with the strings of his hoodie as the tiny smile was still teasing his lips.

‘No way, you go,’ Nathaniel grinned.

Marc breathed. ‘I… I…’ He tried, but the words stuck. ‘Ugh. I… It… Ngh…’

Nathaniel just waited, smiling gently.

Marc closed his eyes. Exhaled. Opened them again. ‘I love you.’

He blinked, unsure whether he had really spoken the words out loud or if he had imagined them. To confirm, he glanced at the artist boy carefully.

His cheeks reddened and he was avoiding his gaze a little.

Oh.

Oh, great.

He had said them.

What would happen, would he yell, would he run, would he hate, would he disappear would he-

Nathaniel suddenly looked right into his eyes, and his heart skipped a beat.

‘I love you, too, Marc.’

He smiled. ‘Guess it made sense, huh?’ He pointed at his drawing, grinning.

Marc didn’t understand what was happening, and it felt like he was dreaming and watching himself as he answered. ‘W-well, for me, too, r-right?’ he nodded at the piece of paper Nathaniel was still holding.

Nathaniel moved a little closer to him. ‘Y-yeah. I… suspected it a little, but I was… too scared to believe…’

Marc moved a little closer as well, their legs touching slightly. ‘I couldn’t tell you… I was scared as well…’

Nathaniel smiled, reaching out, and Marc felt like he was on fire when his fingers softly touched his face. ‘Marc… Can I… kiss you?’

Marc nodded and closed his eyes.

#nathmarc november #rainbow tomato #nathmarc #miraculous ladybug #marc anciel #nathaniel kurtzb #nathaniel x marc #marc x nathaniel #marcthaniel #fanfiction #my stuff

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ofstarlightandfirehearts · 5 years

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Kingdom of Ash

So it's been a few hours since I've finished KOA and I'm still nowhere near okay because so much happened in it - so much joy and also so much pain in this book. I loved every second of it.

Before I start on my thoughts on it (all under the cut to not spoil anyone) I just wanted to give a shout out to Sarah J Maas - for creating such beautiful, beautiful flawed, complex, very human characters in this beautiful world. It has been a wonderful ride, following this amazing, strong badass character go through her trials, her struggles and still being so unyielding, still so full of light and hope even in the face of darkness. I love Aelin's character so much. So... what I'm saying is... Thank you so much, Sarah.

Now, onward. Also... this will be lengthy.

I think the best way to do this is by characters and my favorite (heartbreaking) moments from each of them or around them in their chapters.

But first... Aelin, Dorian and Manon just... they shone through this entire book. All of them had their personal doubts about their task - CAN Dorian get all the Wyrdkeys, CAN Manon unite the Irontheeth and the Crochans, CAN Aelin live with herself if Dorian somehow forged the lock and CAN she let him do it, CAN she rule Terrasen if she were to find a way to live after forging the lock?

I had so much fun reading each of their POVs because these were the 3 rulers of the new world, that better world they all fought for, and yet how much they doubted how can they make it happen, will it happen, if it did happen how can or should they rule? There was a lot of internal struggle with them all. There were a lot of personal revelations for them along the way and it was really, a beautiful journey.

Okay, now for them all separately. The sections for Aelin, Dorian and Manon are gonna be long.

Aelin: - Her not being tricked by Maeve's mind games, holding on through Cairn's tortures all for Terrasen - that was her one thought that kept her from breaking: how can I protect Terrasen? - Her escaping Cairn and her running into Lorcan and Gavriel, and her screaming TAKE IT OFF TAKE IT OFF and then Rowan, bless him, trying to calm her down enough to try to get it off. That part just... that gutted me. - All the blood oaths... including Gavriel's. That was such a somber, beautiful moment. The one with Fenrys was just... amazing. She refused to let him stay there in that camp alone AND SHE BROUGHT HIM BACK TO LIFE. - Her using her power - all that power she had kept pushing down to save for her showdown with Maeve - to save the soldiers (and Lorcan and Elide) at Anielle. That was some next level AMAZING, badass shit man. I will definitely be drawing this scene. - Her falling through the worlds after forging the lock - after opting to save Elena over them taking Erawan with them... only to be betrayed by those stupid, ugly selfish gods... and then having Aelin get payback by unleashing literal hell on them in their realm. -Her falling through the realms was so... cool. So cool. - AND WE ALSO GOT A CAMEO FROM THE WONDERFUL RHYS AND FEYRE. SHE FELL THROUGH EFFING VELARIS. I FREAKED. I'M STILL FREAKING. THAT WAS AN AMAZING WAY TO BRIDGE THE TWO SERIES. - AELIN/CHAOL/DORIAN REUNION.

- The comraderie between her and all the females in this series. Her and Hasar's fond bickering, same with her and Borte and Ansel. The faith and pride she had in Yrene and Elide. Her friendship with Lysandra will always be one of my favorite things about this series. The weight of the world that only she and Manon can understand up in the aerie after the battle and her support in Manon's loss. There were so many beautiful friendships between all the females in this book. THIS GIRL MAKES FRIENDS WHEREVER SHE GOES AND IT'S A BEAUTIFUL THING. - The final showdown - her playing with Erawan, trying to pit him against Maeve. And then after Erawan was carried away, her pulling her cadre out of their hallucinations, opening up that portal to allow the old Fae of Terrasen through, having Fenrys deliver his well-deserved killing blow to her. - Her coronation - the Little Folk coming to give her Mab's crown - LET'S JUST TALK ABOUT THEIR NEVERENDING SUPPORT OF AELIN THROUGH ALL THE BOOKS. AND LET'S GO BACK TO THE KING OF THE NORTH - THAT BEAUTIFUL STAG WHO LIT THE WAY FOR AELIN AND THE KHAGANATE TO GET TO ORYNTH. - Okay, Aelin's coronation - the procession, how she had all the females go down into the city with her because they all played just as huge of a part in the war. They honestly did so much. - AELIN/CHAOL/DORIAN GOODBYE EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT A FOREVER GOODBYE. LOOK, I SOBBED THROUGHOUT THAT WHOLE PART. MY BABIES. MY BEAUTIFUL BABIES WHO STARTED IT ALL, BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH AND LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH. I CANNOT. - The ending - her waking up to the field of those flowers that were thought to be wiped from existence during the first siege all those years ago. Another scene I must draw.

Dorian: - Dorian learning how to shapeshift was just... I wasn't expecting that at all. And he learned it so well from the Stygian spider - and the way he LEARNED how to do it - by digging into the spider's mind and finding that kernel of power and taking it for himself. - This poor kid is still so traumatized by what happened to Sorscha. And I know there's a lot of mixed feelings about Sorscha but honestly I liked her. His guilt over her, and also how he left Rifthold in ruins to flee. His doubts on ruling, can he rule, how will he be different from his Valg "father" and also the ultimate question he had to come to terms with: Was he himself part Valg, since his father's body was possessed by a Valg. - His friendship with the Thirteen. I just. And then at the end... that's who he looked up to the skies to find, not knowing he'd never find them in those skies... or any skies ever again (crying). - MORATH AND MAEVE. Those were some of the most stressful chapters of this book and I was worried for a bit, especially when Maeve found him. - THE WAY HE TRICKED MAEVE AND BROUGHT DOWN MORATH FROM THE INSIDE. THAT WAS BADASS, DORIAN. I’M SO PROUD OF YOU. I will also be drawing this. - CHAORIAN REUNION. HIS REACTION WHEN HE SAW THAT CHAOL WAS STANDING. STANDING. AND THEN RUNNING TO HIM. THOSE STUPID, STUPID BEAUTIFUL BOYS AND THEIR STUPID BEAUTIFUL RELATIONSHIP. - Him desperately trying to reconnect himself with Aelin after Aelin pushed him back out the portal as she finished forging the lock by herself. The sheer panic Dorian had because he could not, would not let his friend do this alone. That was heartbreaking. - Dorian is so clever - I always forget how clever. His ruse at the end with Erawan - and as Yrene had him pinned down, him nonchalantly going, "Oh btw, I was the one who destroyed Morath." - I know a lot of people were kind of complaining about the lack of Manorian in the book but WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN. THIS BOOK WAS FULL OF MANORIAN. Their quiet support of each other. Them knowing each other so well - Dorian figured out Manon was the one who led the Ironteeth back to the Crochans to prove herself just like that. Him thinking of who he most wanted to be like when learning how to shapeshift himself, and he thought of Manon. - The ending where he wants wyverns as part of his aerial legion, and he wants Manon to come and teach those future riders how to fight, how to be. - “What do you want.” You, all of you. GDI. -THAT BIT WITH YRENE. "You could just get married." AND THEN DORIAN BLUSHES FURIOUSLY. BOY. YOU WANT TO BE WITH MANON. JUST GET MARRIED ALREADY.

Manon: - OKAY I'M JUST GONNA START IT OFF WITH THE THIRTEEN AND JUST HOW MUCH THEY LOVED MANON AND RESPECTED HER. SO MUCH THEY ALL SACRIFICED THEMSELVES FOR HER, THEY DID THEIR UNYIELDING SO SHE CAN HELP CREATE THAT BETTER WORLD THEY ALL WISHED FOR, EVEN IF THEY COULDN'T BE A PART OF IT, AS LONG AS MANON LIVED THAT'S ALL THEY CARED ABOUT. LOOK, I THINK I CRIED FOR THOSE ENTIRE 2 CHAPTERS AND THEN THROUGH HALF A THIRD CHAPTER. I'M STILL GETTING TEARY EYED THINKING ABOUT THEM. HOW DARE YOU SARAH. HOW DARE YOU. - That field of flowers, how everyone at Orynth paid their tributes to the Thirteen and Manon in the center of it, quietly mourning those beautiful, brave loyal twelve women who have done nothing but support her for all those years. I just can’t get over it. This will be the first scene that I draw. - How Aelin promised that she would put up a statue, something to pay a permanent tribute to them. - THE PART WITH ABRAXOS ALMOST DYING AND ALL ABRAXOS WANTED TO DO WAS SAVE MANON. JFC. AND MANON LITERALLY BEGGING ISKRA, HER ENEMY. TO LET ABRAXOS GO. - Manon's doubts over winning over the Crochans. It was a long, long process for her to do so but she kept at it, trying to earn their respect as much as she could. - The showdown between her and her grandmother and the Yellowlegs heir. Hells. yes. - The way the crown lit up as soon as it sat on Manon's head. You go girl. - I loved Glennis. - The passing of the eternal flame through all of those hearths in even the remotest parts of the country when the word went out their Crochan Queen needed them to fight for Terrasen. That was a powerful, powerful scene. - When she went to the Ferian Gap to speak to Petrah, to lay out the truth of what the Ironteeth at Morath planned to do - what her GRANDMOTHER planned to do - which made those Ferian Ironteeth rebel and join them against Morath. In other words... MANON WAS BORN TO LEAD. - The end, when she sees Dorian and he realizes the Thirteen are not there. "I miss them." (CRYING) - I also love how she struggled to care, to feel that being a caring leader did not make her a weak one because that's what she was taught. A good leader does not care, they are ruthless and do what must be done - but Manon has always had a softer heart, even if she didn't want to admit it, and her caring... it made her a stronger leader. - Her realization that the curse had been broken - they all - Ironteeth and Crochans - can return to the Wastes. Because the curse finally, finally broke. Starting with the Thirteen's sacrifice. Even in death, they helped her get home. - Her promising to stop by Rifthold to pay our wonderful King of Adarlan a visit time to time.

Rowan + the cadre (minus Lorcan): - Rowan, you beautiful beautiful bird you. He was so relentless to get to Aelin and after finding her... his patience with Aelin afterwards, helping her train, helping her heal. - I'M SO ECSTATIC WE GOT ONE MORE CARRANAM SCENE WITH ROWAELIN IN THAT FINAL BATTLE. - Rowan exacting exquisite revenge on Cairn after finding out Cairn whipped Aelin. I think Cairn deserved an even more gruesome death than he recieved... and that death already was gruesome. - Rowan finding the strength to tear himself out of the hellish hallucination that Maeve played with him... with a little help from his Fireheart. - Rowan's reactions as Fenrys told Rowan little by little just what was done to Aelin in those months apart. - Listen, Rowan's farewell to Dorian and Chaol was just as emotional for me. - HOW MUCH HE JUST LOVES AELIN. THAT EVEN THOUGH HE'S HELLA ANGRY AT HER (Hello, forging the lock scene) HE LOVES HER SO MUCH AND THAT HE'LL TAKE HER ANY WAY, whether Aelin possessed exponential amounts of magic or not - he just loves her as she is. - How he noticed right away that she wasn't as warm as he remembered after she gave most of her magic to forge the lock. AND ALSO AFTER SHE JUST GOT BACK FROM DORANELLE. He could see she was faking most of that famous Aelin bravado and swagger. - Fenrys - god my heart broke for him so many times. He had to watch his brother literally kill himself because of the stupid blood oath to Maeve, HE couldn't do anything to stop it or help Aelin as Cairn tortured her over and over and over again... but it was the thought of Aelin being almost burned alive, that he knew she was being taught to fear the power that she loved so much that Fenrys fought and WON against the blood oath with Maeve. - How he couldn't winnow because it reminded him of Connall and it hurt too much and Aelin understood why he couldn’t. - Fenrys being that lifeline to Aelin during those months too, and it never stopped being their personal form of communication even after they were rescued from Maeve. I loved the relationship between Aelin and Fenrys. - Gavriel - everything he did was to get back to his son, and by god, he did get back to Aedion just in time... TO SACRIFICE HIMSELF. JFC KIDS. STOP SACRIFICING YOURSELVES. - Also, Gavriel, was that really necessary? Was it? - Gavriel being the gentle voice of reason, of being super sweet with Elide, using his magic to brace her leg. Also for being the buffer between Lorcan and Elide, which could not have been more awkward of a situation to be in. But he did it without complaint. - THE CADRE'S TRIBUTE TO GAVRIEL IN THAT ROOM AS THEY SUNG THE SONGS OF OLD TO HONOR THEIR FRIEND WHO HAD FALLEN FOR NO GREATER CAUSE THAN TO AEDION (and Terrasen).

Elide/Lorcan: - Lorcan. Lorcan, Lorcan. You big lovestruck idiot. The entire book he tried so hard to get Elide to forgive him. - I was LEGIT scared he was gonna die in Anielle. BUT ELIDE CAME AND SAVED HIS ASS. And she would not let him go, even as he told her to abandon him so she might make it back in time. This whole scene had me on the edge. - LET’S ALSO TALK ABOUT HOW ELIDE WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO REALIZED LORCAN WAS NOT UP ON THE WALL WITH THEM. And she did not care, she literally took Chaol’s horse and went hunting for her tall brooding brute. - LISTEN, THIS BIG BROODING BRUTE PUNK GAVE UP HIS IMMORTALITY TO BE WITH HER. LIKE. LORCAN. - ALSO. LORD LORCAN LOCHAN. - ELIDE IS A BADASS OKAY. From pretending to be Cairn's jilted lover to get intel to find Aelin - which was HER idea, btw to her facing down her uncle - her abuser for so many years and telling him she will never think of him again as she walks out leaving him there with her head held high, even though all she wanted to do was run. - She is so smart. So so clever - SHE came up with the plan to take down Erawan. And holy shit, it worked. - Her friendship with Yrene was so sweet. I love how those two bonded. - Elide walking down during Aelin’s coronation, but not wanting Lorcan to brace her foot. She wanted to take that walk down the aisle with pride. I’m so proud of you girl.

Chaol/Yrene: - YRENE IS MY FAVE. Like what an angel. SHE is also one of the biggest badasses in this series. TAKING DOWN ERAWAN THROUGH SHEER WILL AND TALENT ALONE. - All the healing she did - always endlessly healing and she did this while being PREGNANT. - Her always healing while Chaol was fighting kept me on edge because if one of them falls, both do. And this is the sole notion that kept Chaol fighting so hard. - Chaol and his father - what a complicated relationship. But Chaol kept his shit about him around his father. And as furious as Chaol was that his father kept all those letters from his mother from him... "Keep them, those will be the only things to keep you company" is more or less what he said before wheeling himself out of the room... and Anielle. - Chaol's first thoughts as he went down during the final battle was Yrene. And the joy he felt when he saw she was there after waking up from his unconsciousness, alive with him after taking down Erawan. The pure pride he has for her. UGH YOU TWO STOP IT. - Yrene's beyond brilliant idea to build a Torre Cesme on the main continent, so that she may still teach others how to heal. And she’s going to be asking some of the Old Fae from whom a lot of the healers are descended from. - Yrene has such a gentle soul - I love how she's thought of ways to help Elide's foot for days after she met Elide because she just wants to help her and fix her foot. - I was sad we didn't get as much Chaorene as I would have liked but there was so much going on.

Aedion/Lysandra/Evangeline: - First off... Aedion made me so angry this book. Like... how dare you blow up at Lysandra like that - humiliate her and SPEAK TO HER LIKE THAT. Do you think it was easy for her to go along with that plan? Knowing that her best friend was somewhere being tortured, not knowing if she'd ever even SEE her best friend ever again alive? His treatement of her during the first half just pissed me off. - And he didn't realize how much he hadn't meant it until Lysandra had shifted into Aelin's likeness as she tried to take down the ilken... THAT ALMOST KILLED HER. And she did that to rally HIS army to keep fighting. - LIKE YOU NEEDED HER TO HAVE A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE TO REALIZE HOW SHITTY YOU'VE BEEN TREATING HER? GET OUTTA HERE. - So yes, I felt like him having his title stripped from him was justified. For that treatment of Lysandra alone. And I love how Lysandra told him straight up just that too. "I've had men degrade me but never as you have and it is unforgivable." - But I also like how the newly appointed general was like "Yeah thanks, so Aedion what are we gonna do?" - LYSANDRA YOU DESERVE ALL THE MEDALS IN THE UNIVERSE. THIS GIRL IS A FIGHTER, SHE IS A BADASS, CONSTANTLY SHIFTING INTO WHATEVER SHE CAN TO TAKE DOWN AS MANY MORATH SOLDIERS AS POSSIBLE. I FEEL LIKE SHE DID THE BULK OF IT IN ALL HER FORMS. - As angry as I was at Aedion... I was also super happy when they did sort of get back together. And I like how it was subtle. - ...Except for that hallway scene. If you know what I mean ;) - EVANGELINE! What a sweetiepie. This girl wore down one of the toughest Lords of Terrasen. I love how soft Darrow was with her. It was very, very sweet. And bless her heart, I love how she wanted to keep busy being Darrow's messenger, and I love how Darrow kind of sensed that she needed a purpose. Something to ground her while her friends fought. - Aedion, as much as you made me angry the first half of the book, I gotta hand it to him for holding off Morath for like 90% of the book before Aelin + co. got there. You go Aedion, you go. - THE BLOOD OATH. HE FINALLY GOT HIS BLOOD OATH WITH AELIN. AND SHE DID IT BEFORE SHE WAS CROWNED. I cannot.

Nestaq + the Khaganate: - DISAPPOINTED WE DIDN'T GET MORE NESTAQ. I WANTED MORE SARTAQ WORSHIPPING THE VERY GROUND NESRYN WALKED ON AS HE DID IN TOWER OF DAWN. - I feel they were just there for the updates in the war, what was happening sky-side... I just needed more from them. I know there was a lot going on but... a little bit of Nestaq cuteness would have been great in that big clusterfuck of a situation. - I will say, the cute thing at the end where Sartaq teases Nes about being Empress and she makes that face. Cute, Nesryn, cute. - I DID WANNA SEE MORE OF BORTE AND YERAN BECAUSE THOSE TWO CRACK ME UP. - I fell in love with Borte in TOD and I was even more in love with her in KOA. She is so fun, so snarky... I love how she got the opportunity to lead the cadre at the front lines during that final battle. - "You are all Fae?" Oh Borte.

Okay so I'm gonna end it here. I still have so many thoughts and feelings on this series. Still sad that it's over because I love these characters so much.

If you've read all the way through... I congratulate you. And I'm sorry that I like to talk :P But I appreciate it!

Feel free to message me if you want to continue talking about it BECAUSE I'M NOT DONE TALKING ABOUT IT.

#kingdom of ash #kingdom of ash spoilers #koa #sam talks tog

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justanaspiringsomeone · 5 years

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Noblesse x Dream Drop Distance AU

So for those who don’t know Noblesse:

Noblesse is about a powerful noble - Cadis Etrama Di Raizel (referred to as Rai) - who has been asleep for 820 years with no knowledge of mankind's advancement and scientific successes. At the start of the webtoon, Rai wakes up in an abandoned building in South Korea,[1] and starts to get used to the modern world. He goes to a school, where he reunites with his loyal servant Frankenstein. With Frankenstein's help, Rai enrolls into high school and inadvertently befriends athletic teenager Shinwoo, computer geek Ikhan, and Shinwoo's crush Yuna, and a few others. Noblesse follows the group's often dangerous adventures against a secret organization while uncovering Rai's past.

For those who don’t know Kingdom Hearts:

Kingdom Hearts is a series of crossover action role-playing games owned by Disney and developed and published by Square Enix (originally by Square). It is a collaboration between Disney Interactive and Square Enix, and is under the direction of Tetsuya Nomura, a longtime Square Enix character designer.

Idea:

Ok, so this idea has been in my mind for a bit. Reason because of how the Realm of Sleep is relatively ‘malleable’ so I could make work for this AU of mine.

Also there’s a lot of characters who died that we’ve never got the chance to see in a different light. Like the Traitor Nobles, the Werewolves, Modded Humans and the First Elder’s Royal Guard.

Why Dream Drop Distance?

Well because after the drama happened with Sora, Riku and the nightmares being everywhere. I’d think having some sort of security would be there to keep it together. Only strong spirits or ones with a want for redemption/life can become part of this ‘security’.

How this ‘security’ would get into the Realm of Sleep

Basically scanning magic from Yen Sid looking through worlds of strong spirits. He skims across the Noblesse world, and finds a few who meet those requirements. However he added up that ‘security’ gradually, because making the ‘security’ would take time as these spirits would be ‘special’.

He learned a couple of things from said test:

that strong spirit would first come with little to no memory of their life in the living, that would come back gradually

If that strong spirit has a strong bond or connection with someone or thing in the living they can go over into where they are, but only for a bit

They can also see what the ‘connected’ can see, like a mirror almost

Even if they don’t have a strong bond with anything they can still go into the living world but are like phantoms

Most recent memories would come first then past memories

Because they died in the living world the spirit would have to relearn skills and abilities they once had

Each of these ‘special’ spirits have exclusive moves only to them

The strong spirits would look like what they did in the living world but with characteristics of a Dream eater (I.e. yellow pupils in eyes, dream eater symbol, and maybe some dream eater body parts should they not have any when they died)

Don’t technically need to eat but not eating weakens them

Since time doesn’t work in the sleeping worlds, sleeping is all over the place

The one thing that’s known is that they become sleepy in the day and active at night

What they’d look like

for the Nobles, it’s relatively simple. If a family leader or noble dies and doesn’t have an heir they’re picked up into the Realm of Sleep. Eyes are still red but have yellow unique pupils.

A werewolf needs to have strong sense of repentance or to protect in order to go to the Realm of Sleep. Same eye color with yellow unique pupils so it’s the same as the Nobles.

A modded human.... is a bit more complex. It depends on what they did in their last moments, and if they’re truly repentant of what they’ve done. However, it is up to debate what it takes for a modded human to become a Dream Eater.

Out of all the types a modded human would look most like a Dream Eater. Though it depends.

So the Dream Eater ‘Security’ Team

So this team is a bit.... unique since it involves:

-Edian Drosia

-Urokai Agvain

-Zarga Siriana

-Mirai

-Bashum

-Gotaru

-Kalvin(Maybe, because he was a 15 year old kid)

-M-24(cuz he needs a better ending than he got gdi)

-Roctis Kravei

(If you have more characters to add in, reblog~)

Plot

No definitive plot per say, as said before it’s like a second chance at life. It’s more for seeing the growth of these characters and to see them in more or less relaxed settings. As well of some Headcanons of mine~

There’d of course be action with taking down nightmares in sleeping worlds (maybe even unique type nightmares~)

But it would revolve around their regrets and them trying to make up for it AND RELATIONSHIP BUILDING~

And who knows? Maybe some Kingdom Hearts characters would visit to check up on them or to see these new ‘threats’

@mevekagvain I know you love the traitors, but don’t know if you know KH....

@earl-of-221b idk if you like the traitors or know KH

@argentinecosmos what do you think? I know you are in a slump but opinions?

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justaramblingromantic · 6 years

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And this too, shall pass.

Characters/Pairing: Kobayashi Rindou and Tsukasa Eishi/EiRin

Type: Canon-divergent AU, Post-series, Peerless-verse, Freestyle

Word Count: 1860

A/N: Erm. My muse is disrespecting the hell out of me. I am so angry, this was supposed to be a happy fic, gdi.

In the aftermath of it all, he was…confused.

Yes, losing had been an incredibly upsetting blow, and maybe he was still reeling in shock at the moment because it had been so long since he had last lost a match on the field…yet somehow, the dull ache of this defeat had only felt passingly insignificant in light of the other bigger thing that had been callously wrenched from him as a result.

His belief.

Everything that he had so firmly believed in, all that unwavering conviction that he once possessed in choosing this path to walk had crumbled and dissolved like wet, shifting sand in the face of the relentless tide that was the opposition, sweeping him so far out into the faithless depths of the unknown, leaving him aimless and without compass to ever find his way back again.

He did not understand it at all; were they wrong, after all? Was he so wrong, for believing in and fighting for the ideal that he had honestly, wholeheartedly, thought was right?

He had always been one to be straightforward and unhesitating when it came to his goals. Everything that he had done in the course of his life had been for the sake of achieving his dreams, and he went after them with relentless, hounding tenacity and focus. Discipline, dedication, drive. They were all he knew to be. Some people called him ‘selfish’, but such was the only way he knew to stay true to himself.

Even then, the road was never easy, but the goal had always been ever clear. All he had to do was keep his head up and keep heading unerringly towards the light, no matter how many times he stumbled, no matter how many times he fell. Making Tootsuki, making the Elite Ten, making First Seat…they were all stepping stones and milestones that would eventually lead him to his purpose in life.

But this time, for the very first time, the guiding light that beckoned at the far horizon had winked out abruptly, the ground beneath his feet that he was always so certain of had vanished, and he could not see, and he could not regain his balance. Blind and disoriented, there was no more path to follow. What to do. What to do now?

He was so lost.

They called him knight, but what use was there for a knight with no clear cause to champion, no proper purpose to pledge loyalty to? It had felt like a sharp stab of betrayal, to realize that Azami was wrong, to understand that he himself had only been made used of and deployed about like a pawn in an elaborate game of chess by the man he had so deeply respected and regarded as a close friend and mentor, and it left such a dark, bitter taste in his mouth, because with this undeniable confirmation, all the victories that he had gained on the man’s behalf and had been so proud of now felt pervaded by taint and wrongness.

His confidence was badly shaken. He did not know what to think anymore. And now, there was also disturbing unease and uncertainty roiling turbulently in his heart, because if the ideology he had always supported so staunchly was corrupted, then what should he do now? Should he carry on obstinately even while knowing that his beliefs were riddled with flaws, or should he abandon his ideals, these same ideals that he had known and embraced for as long as he remembered?

Both possibilities pained him equally, for different reasons.

If he abandoned his ideals, did that mean all that effort and passion that he poured into achieving his goals over the years…were they all for nothing? Was he going to have to let go of all that staggering amount of work and sacrifice and start building from ground zero all over again?

The thought was enough to make him flinch.

…But if he stubbornly persisted with what he had now, still insisted on going down this path for the sake of self-preservation, because cooking for the sake of himself was the only thing he had ever known…what would become of him eventually?

There was a vague idea that he had once entertained, when he was still very much in awe and admiration of his mentor, the latter so cynical yet so incredibly worldly and sophisticated. The man had been dazzling and charismatic with his visionary ideals and grandiose philosophies, and there was something intrinsic about him that really appealed to Eishi too, like a nod of recognition from one prodigy to another. They were the same type. It was so comforting to know that there existed someone in this world who was so much like him, who faced the same challenges and frustrations that he faced and it had given him so much hope when it seemed like Azami had actually found a solution to this existential issue that he had been circling round and round and struggling so hard to deal with but to no avail.

So of course he had jumped at the chance to offer his services when his mentor had requested for it. To make a difference, to see to fruition this grand new world that they had always talked about. He wanted so much to make that difference, and was willing to throw himself tirelessly into supporting a resonating cause where his thoughts and inputs and ideas were actually valued and appreciated for their weight and worth, and not just simply because he was a genius and thus automatically commanded respect regardless of what he did and said.

…As if that one simple word was all it took to define everything he entailed, easily glossing over all the complications and challenges that he has had to surmount just to bring life to his masterpieces, the intricate dishes that he had slaved and struggled so hard over to produce.

Towards the end, the term genius had felt more like a grievous insult than praise…and the culinary paradise that Azami had always talked about had sounded more and more like an ultimate utopian dream…

Unfortunately, a dream, ultimately, was just a dream. Something unsustainable.

Eventually, it was time to wake up.

It was very quiet now.

The deafening roar and cheers from the spectators of the Regiment Shokugeki were no more, and the stands were all empty, the humongous competition hall echoing, filled only by the ghosts of past battles. The long steel counters and state-of-the-art, industrial-grade kitchen appliances on the arena were pristine and gleamed silently beneath the powerful stage lights, all the utensils immaculately washed, dried and kept neatly in their places, silently waiting to be used again by fiery cooks who would put everything they had on the line to achieve their dreams, fighting tooth and nail for their prides and ideals.

Somehow…he had become jaded too, it seemed.

Still in his chef uniform, he had aimlessly wandered back out to the hall after all the others had left. He was one of the last ones still here…but he was not alone.

She had wordlessly followed him, keeping him company even when he was hardly in the most sociable mood right now…but then again, she wasn’t making any attempts at conversation, either.

She was just there. Giving him all the space he desired, but an undeniable presence at the edge of his senses all the same, a silent sentinel.

He sighed, lifted his face and looked up, and was promptly blinded by the stage lights.

Blinded by the brightness, how ironic.

But it was true, wasn’t it. The light from high above him was so all-encompassing, he could barely see anything else.

He closed his eyes, just stood there and let all the stillness and quiet wash over him. It was almost peaceful.

…But then, eventually, the lights started to go out, silently, one row after another, until they were doused in semi-darkness. It was late; the technicians backstage were leaving. He slowly reopened his eyes. He could not help but think it symbolic, a curtain call.

He turned his head to gaze at his quiet shadow. It took a while for his vision to focus, gradually adjusting to the dimness. She was standing at the edge of the stage, hovering by the side entrance. Even as their eyes met and held, she made no move to approach him. Like him, she too was in uniform still.

He wondered what she was thinking.

She had never wanted to be a tool to be used to further Azami’s ambitions, and he also knew how much she quietly disliked the older man. Still, she had joined all the same, for him.

But doing that had changed her a little, too. She was quieter, more restless and fidgety, sometimes a bit distant, as if distracted and lost in thought. And other times, she just watched him, her expression inscrutable…like now.

“Are you still afraid?” he asked quietly, his voice hollow, finally breaking the silence. The rest of the question hung unsaid between them.

Of me?

The question was almost ridiculous. Her, afraid? She had always been fearless.

But even so, after all these years, he would be blind not to correctly read her demeanor…and he was never clueless when it came to her. She was wary. Guarded. Reticent.

He wondered to himself which was worse; for her to learn to fear him, or for her to be utterly disappointed in him.

She slowly started forward, treading almost soundlessly until she was before him. She tilted her head back a bit, looked at him unflinchingly.

“Should I be?” she responded evenly, her gaze holding his, her expression uncharacteristically somber.

He was silent.

“…I’m sorry.”

She huffed, a glossy sheen growing brighter in her eyes, and stumbled closer.

“Stupid; what are you apologizing for,” she muttered. And then she reached over, grabbed her best friend by his scarf, and pulled him into her arms. He was taller so he ended bending over a little to accommodate her forcefulness, but her embrace was firm, unhesitating. And so unreservedly warm.

She held onto him so tightly, as if anxious that he would disappear.

He stiffened, not sure what he was supposed to do.

“I was never afraid of you,” she mumbled after a long pause, her voice cracking. “I was afraid for you. Stupid.”

Oh. Oh.

His hands clenched with silent relief by his sides. It was awhile before he could convince his fingers to uncurl. He hesitantly reached up…and wrapped his arms gingerly around her. She did not protest his action. All the tension in his entire being leeched away, and without it, he slumped wearily into her, his face turning, buried into her hair, eyes squeezing shut, drained.

There was no one more disappointed in him than himself.

He trembled, shoulders shaking.

She seemed to understand his grief, even without him having to say a thing. Her hand came up, fingers sliding haphazardly through his hair, blunt nails scratching at his scalp. Blindly, instinctively offering comfort.

He tightened his arms around her, struggling to breathe.

There was nothing else to hold on to anymore.

#Kobayashi Rindou #Tsukasa Eishi #Shokugeki no Soma #Food Wars: Shokugeki no Souma #EiRin #freestyle #my fics #EiRin: Peerless AU

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whichchick · 6 years

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So fall effort with Dressage Lady Barb (hereafter, as always, DLB). How’d that go?

You know how it went. It went the same way it always goes. Fucking ends in tears, snot running down my face because I am totally 100% that middle-aged female adult ammie at the dressage clinic. I’m also fat. And on an inappropriate pony. Here I am, the absolute stereotype of dressaging.

I go in and demonstrate my homework from last time. She says my homework looks good. Wonderful, terrific, great. “I can tell you really worked on this.” I look “so much better” and have “much better control” of my body. I am “not interfering” and “being supportive” and blah blah blah.

Now, my horse has been off for five weeks (abscess, making hay, torrential downpours) and he’s not fit. But we did, since our last visit with DLB, put tape on the damn reins and work on having an elastic, consistent contact at the walk with a steady and unchanging rein length. We worked on it a lot. It was the only homework she gave me because I am apparently too stupid to have more than one homework. Despite my limitations, I worked the shit out of the homework she gave me.

Honestly, the only consistent thing here is that I work on the DLB homeworks. I whine and bitch and moan about the DLB clinics and then I go do the thing, over and over, in spite of the fact that I do not particularly understand what I’m going for. I am frequently cargo-culting it along in my little and lame dressage journey.

So today we did canters. She’s like “Tell me some things that were good about this canter effort.” (I hate this. I seriously hate this. It is one of my LEAST FAVORITE THINGS EVER, the “TELL ME GOOD THINGS ABOUT THIS SHITTY EFFORT” drill.) This canter effort is on a 20 meter circle and horse is getting tired, so self-carriage is not really there and he’s trying to phone it in a little and he falls out of it about halfway around the circle. It’s not a particularly stellar canter effort. It’s an OK canter effort given that he’s not falling on his face and he’s not counterbent or frantic or whatever, but it’s not like a good effort.

I know clinician is trying to teach me to look for the good things and to be happy about all the wonderful progress we’ve made on our dressage journey (round and round in stupid little circles at a very slow jog, basically going nowhere fast slowly) but I hate having to find “good” things in what is overall a relatively lukewarm effort. GDI, I do not need a participation trophy. I am not here for my self esteem.

We also did trot. Apparently I need a quicker, lighter trot. She was all “choppy pony trot” which is not the sort of thing I expect to be told to generate in a dressage clinic so I was like... “I do not understand.” So she was all “Just do the thing. I’ll explain later.” Later happened and she was “I use the phrase choppy pony trot” because most people understand that to mean the feet spend less time on the ground in trot with quicker, lighter steps.” Okay. Or, since I’m not eight, you could just say “quicker, lighter steps.”

We did “I can see you want to argue with me.” I didn’t say anything. Nary a peep. I pointed out that I didn’t say anything. “But you want to.” WTF? I can’t even. I am not able to make myself have agreeable-looking body language. I can keep my fucking mouth shut and I can do the riding you tell me to do but I will never in a million years be able to make my body look like I am compliantly in agreement with you.

We did “I’m going to compliment you again and you’re going to have to sit there and take it even though you don’t believe me.” (This is excruciatingly uncomfortable for me. I am not sure why she does it and I really wish she wouldn’t. And honestly, that there is a straight up quote from DLB. I am not exaggerating for comedic effect.) I am paying for riding instruction. I am not paying to be made massively uncomfortable on an emotional front that is unrelated to riding instruction.

This reminds me of when I was in junior high and my English (favorite subject, always) teacher was all talking to me about why was I unhappy and my feelings and blah blah and finally I was like, “Look. I’m here for school and I’m not ALLOWED to leave. I have to be here BY LAW but I am not your private pet project. Teach me the damn subject and leave my unhappiness alone. It’s my concern, not yours.” She didn’t stop. A few weeks after that, I went to the principal’s office and told him that if Mrs. T. didn’t leave me the fuck alone and stick to the subject matter that she was paid to teach that I was going to lodge a formal complaint about her.

Apparently, what I did in junior high was VERY WRONG (said my mom) and NOT OK and I REALLY HURT MRS. T’s FEELINGS and she REALLY CARED ABOUT ME A LOT. Mmm-hmm. Maybe she did, but damn she had fuck-all of a clue how to display her caring to me. Not at all. Maybe that shit she did works with most kids but it was like I was a slug and she just kept pouring salt on me. (In fairness my parents were getting divorced and things at home were... not good. I probably looked a hell of a mess, but her caring was poking every single sore spot I had until they all bled. Daily. It was UNREASONABLE AS HELL to expect me to put up with that shit to spare Mrs. T’s feelings and I’m still kinda mad about my mom for telling me I was in the wrong there. I should not have to suffer so that other people can feel good about their attempts to “help” me.)

Emotionally this is about where I am with DLB. She’s helpful on the horse front, honestly she is. I learn things. The homework is annoying and frustrating and feels cargo-cult-ish but that’s because I have an insufficient understanding of it at the front end. DLB is not great at using her words to explain what the homework is FOR or what it’s supposed to accomplish because I guess she does more with how it feels and how it rides and figures I can get it from “There, right there like that! Do That.” And that sort of intuitive kinesthetic stuff is super awesome and it’d be SO HELPFUL if I were made to understand that stuff, but I am not. So my insufficient understanding and my frustration that I can’t make my body do what I want... it is not leading to joyous smiles of instant understanding. That said, with sufficient reps and substantial effort on my part in the quiet of my own head, the homework does eventually make sense.

Like remedial jogging, which I did for about two years. At the outset (see link) it made no sense. It made no sense for a while and I bitched about it a lot. But it turns out that if you do like three million jog circles, your horse’s head eventually comes down. He eventually becomes rhythmic and steady. You can start having something like contact on the reins, light and fluttery because neither of you really understand it, but something like contact. He will get better and better at picking up The Jog on demand and immediately going into it instead of getting there after half a circle of flail first. He will become, from endless practice, better at coming down to walk from trot instead of throwing his head up and flailing on that transition too. He will start to be able to listen to cues to bend on the turns because he’s not so busy flailing. Because the work is simple and repetitive, even newbie floppy riders likely can’t fuck it up. Floppy rider, because of all the practice at remedial jogging, gets really good at feeling the horse start to trot, finish trotting, feel like he’s going to fall out of trot, yadda yadda yadda. Floppy rider becomes less floppy because “floppy” makes it harder for the horse to remedial jog correctly. This improves rider position. So yeah, remedial jogging. Now it makes sense but in the beginning, I had no idea why I was doing it.

I am, swear to FSM, making headway under her tutelage, such as it is. It could be faster if it were more explain-y with words instead of this mystical Miyagi shit, but if she (and EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET, APPARENTLY) can perceive the mystical Miyagi shit and I’m the only one who can’t... yeah, the adaptive effort has to be on my part because she has no idea what I can or can’t perceive.

But fuck it all, I cannot keep going to these things when she has me fucking bawling in the goddamn ring because she can’t leave my emotional state alone. She wants me to be “happier” about my progress. She wants me to be more “appreciative” of our improvement. She wants me to give myself and my horse credit for all of our hard work, to be thrilled about the growth of our partnership... honestly I’m over here doing my slug cringe just typing this shit.

I know that DLB means well but she completely fails to realize that I have done approximately six projects IN MY WHOLE ENTIRE GODDAMN LIFE that I have been happy with for more than five seconds. I am unhappy with almost everything I have ever done, even stuff that other people think is pretty darned decent. DLB is not going to be able to “fix” this about me and her TRYING to do it is what makes me bawl in the ring like a frustrated toddler.

DLB: I am NOT FUCKING BROKEN. I AM FINE. IF YOU WOULD JUST LEAVE ME ALONE TO GET ON WITH IT AND STICK TO PROVIDING INSTRUCTION ON THE THINGS I CAN LEARN TO DO ACCEPTABLY INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON THE THINGS I WILL NEVER, EVER BE ABLE TO FAKE WELL ENOUGH TO APPEASE ONE OF THE FLESH PEOPLE, WE WOULD BOTH BE A LOT HAPPIER.

This inability to be happy with my projects is not the handicap to me that DLB seems to think it is. I wish like hell she’d get over the “whichchick is not happy enough about her progress” thing and just do the riding instruction part because this shit is like salt in open wounds. (Yes, I have tried Being A Grown-Up and Using My Words. No joy on that front. I do not typically lack clarity, so not sure what the hell the problem is, there. My mother’s super-helpful advice: “Tell her you’re autistic. Apologize for having absolutely no inherent talent for riding. I can’t understand why you persist in doing things you TOTALLY SUCK AT, but if you’re having that much trouble with this and still want to do it (MOTHER OF GOD WHY ARE YOU SO PERSISTENT AT SOMETHING SO EXPENSIVE THAT YOU TOTALLY SUCK AT? YOU KNOW, THERE ARE MANY THINGS YOU CAN DO QUITE ACCEPTABLY. IS THERE SOME REASON YOU CAN’T DO ONE OF THE THINGS THAT YOU DON’T SUCK AT? ARE YOU TRYING TO BE UNHAPPY?), ask her to dumb it down further for your broken and incompetent brain. If you can’t do that, then obviously you don’t want to do the thing hard enough anyway.” Thanks, mom. I’ll get right on that. Also, you are a pillar of support.)

So at the end of the clinic’ing, with tears and snot running down my face, I’m like “You usually give me homework for next time. What is the homework?” -- This represents pretty good personal growth for me. I didn’t want to ask. I wanted to slink out of the ring and take my useless stupid self and my idiotic and inappropriate horse home. But I asked, even though it was hard.

DLB: “Experiment.”

The fuck?!? No. No. NO. That is not useful. That is lacking in direction and clarity. That is not at all helpful. I don’t even want to try to do something with that because anything I do is going to be wrong. Anything I do is going to suck.

Anything I put forth is going to be “Awww, look at you, back again to play dressage with your sweaty fistful of money! It’s so cute that you keep trying at this thing which you are fundamentally unable to do. When last we met, I told you to EXPERIMENT. Such fun! I’m really looking forward to seeing what you spent your entire winter working on. So, show me your work. *beat* Did oo twy weally hawd? You did? That’s adorable! You’re such a Hard Worker! If only you appreciated your own efforts in a way that I could perceive... but you don’t, so I’m going to call you out for not liking your horse or yourself. ...And now you’re crying at me. God, have you no self-respect? Grow a pair. Also, what you have brought me, you do know it’s shit, right? ‘Cause this is shit. Shit does not stop being shit because you work really hard. Can’t polish a turd, dumbass.”

Four years ago, I brought you a four year old horse and you were all “What can he do?” and I was enthusiastic about what all he could do and you were “LOLNope.” and you sent me home to jog in fucking circles, extremely slowly, for two years. At this juncture, I am not at all going to put myself out there again because clearly I can’t teach a horse how to do anything at all. You don’t have to kick me in the teeth twice for me to get it. You say “Experiment” like I’m supposed to run right out and ... what?

Put a tie down on him? Leverage bit? Sidereins? No, of course you don’t mean that shit and you’d be pissed if I suggested any of those things. So you DO have an aim or objective in mind. Care to share it? That’s what my eighty dollars was paying for, y’know. If I wanted to fumble around in the dark, with no particular idea of what I was doing, I would be eighty dollars richer today.

Maybe I should be buying more feed and fewer dressage clinics.

Maybe I’m just not cut out for dressage.

#dressage lady barb #bird #project horse #dressage

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