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neverdoingmuch · 3 years

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a superhero au from this ask.

okay so in this au superheroes join different sects as disciples and go through a superhero training program and then if they pass they become official superheroes for the sect

for the most part things stay the same, your good guys go out and defeat evil and save the day but there’s also a bunch of extra stuff bc they’re in a sect

the extra stuff is mostly legal stuff like if you destroy a building in a fight, who pays for it and what happens if a superhero goes rogue, who stops them?

so the sects are good bc they give that security and also make sure things run smoothly, so you don’t end up with three superheroes in the one area

obviously you still have independent superheroes but they usually get picked up by a sect pretty quickly (or join the wens who are just the bad guys i guess but shh they’re hiding it,, badly)

for the most part though, new heroes realise they can’t cut it and quit

notice the most, because there are a few people who don’t, including people like the yiling patriarch

so, worldbuilding aside, let’s start with lwj

bc we still have sects, lwj and lxc both went through the training program together and even graduated a few years early, meaning they debuted pretty young

they were both way too powerful to actually be needed in the field most of the time so lxc ended up helping his uncle and lwj started teaching at the training program (and even when he is needed, it’s usually enough just to send lxc, so he hasn’t been active in like five years)

life is going pretty okay for lwj but then there’s a fight between some wens and yllz and a building ends up being destroyed - lwj’s apartment building

at first he’s like whatever i’ll just stay at a hotel till it gets fixed but then he gets told that there’s some issue with the building regulations so it’ll be more than a year

lwj goes apartment hunting and ends up finding the perfect apartment. it’s spacious and convenient and looks really nice and the only drawback is his neighbour (spoiler: it’s wwx)

now we have wwx

he used to be a disciple with the jiang sect and was on track to graduate their training program probably even younger than the twin jades but then he dropped out suddenly. no one knows why

what happened was that wwx had befriended wen ning at an intersect meeting thing where the training heroes could compete against each other

when wen ning found out the truth about the wens being evil, he begged wen qing to take their family and leave the wens to get to safety. wen qing refused bc who would they go to? who would risk everything they had to keep them safe?

wei wuxian would.

and he did!! when he found out what the wens had gone through, he immediately quit the jiang sect and spent the next four years helping them go in hiding, making fake identities etc.

the only people who refused to leave were wen qing and wen ning and a-yuan so wwx was like i’ve done my best now we gotta live and ends up buying an apartment for the four of them and gets a job

at night he goes out as yllz and tries to bring the wens down. it’s slow-going at first and he’s just busting minor crimes and not really gathering any useful information but he keeps going bc a-yuan and the others will never be safe for as long as the wens are able to keep hurting people

he works a full-time job during the day and spends his nights fighting crime and he’s always tired and sore but it’s fine because he needs to do this but then one day his new neighbour moves in next door

the first time he meets him, he’s come back from work and by the time he bakes a welcome cake it’s like 10:40 and he goes over and knocks on his neighbour’s door and the guy eventually answers and holy fuck he’s hot (also grumpy bc lwj does not appreciate being woken up)

lwj slams the door in his face without even taking it from him, so wwx just leaves it on his doorstep and goes back home to nap for a few hours before going on patrol

the next day when he gets home from work there’s a letter in front of his door and when he opens it it just says thanks for the cake it was very delicious if unnecessary

wwx writes on the back: it’s all fine! i’m glad you liked it. if you need any help settling in, i’d be more than happy to help. he adds his phone number and then he leaves the note on lwj’s door and that’s where it all starts

the next morning he wakes up to a text from lwj saying that he appreciates the offer & his name. it’s short and kind of rude but wwx is lying there going lan zhan, lan zhaaaan, his name is lan zhan

they run into each other in the morning a few times and take the elevator down together and wwx always chatters at him. lwj doesnt really respond but he doesn’t tell him to shut up either so that’s practically permission

and wwx is no idiot. he knows that hot neighbour + texting ability = potential romance so he makes sure to text lwj a lot

and by a lot, i mean a lot. lwj is sitting in a meeting with his brother and by the time he finishes he has fifty new messages

but that’s okay bc lwj kinda likes the attention he thinks? lwj’s neighbour is funny and cute

and after a while, lwj starts responding properly. it’s not like he’s sending 50 messages back but he’s engaging wwx in conversation and sometimes they call and once, when wwx was coming back from work, lwj had invited him in for tea

when lwj realises that wwx goes to work early and gets home late he starts inviting wwx over for dinner. wwx doesn’t mention that wen ning is more than able to cook dinner (if he ever mentioned that he was living with him at all) and they start having dinner not-dates and sometimes wwx falls asleep on lwj’s couch

the first few times wwx always felt really guilty bc lwj doesn’t want to put up with that and he’s letting down the wens but wen qing is like no, it’s good, you need to take some time for yourself and lwj is like it’s fine so whatever, wwx can sleep on lwj’s couch now

except it’s not just lwj’s couch bc wwx keeps waking up leaning on lwj and it’s very embarrassing bc he’s starting to find that he has difficulties sleeping without being able to hear lwj’s heartbeat

so wwx is falling in love. wen ning is supportive and wen qing is probably laughing at him but wwx is so conflicted

on one hand, wwx’s entire life revolves around the wens and trying to stop them or protect them, and here lwj is, a completely normal man, who has no expectations about wwx. he doesn’t need to be a guardian for lwj, he doesn’t need to be the terrifying yiling patriarch, he can just be wwx

on the other hand, lwj is a civilian and wwx doesn’t want to drag lwj down with him and risk him getting hurt or killed

so he decides to stay as friends. he won’t give lwj up but he won’t tell him he loves him (unless something happens to make wwx need to give lwj up, in which case he will)

around this time lwj gets a call from his uncle asking for help with the yllz

he’s never met him before but lwj does not like the yllz

like yes he’s taking down the wens which probably makes him good but he’s also taking what the wens had stolen for himself

so no one knows whether he’s a villain stealing from the wens or a hero who doesn’t trust the official means

Either way it’s a bad look for lwj & co bc they either look incompetent for not knowing about this guy & not being able to stop him or untrustworthy and maybe even corrupt

but lqr wants lwj to either bring him in as a disciple or as a criminal. whichever is easier

the first time hanguang-jun shows up to a fight wwx is completely shocked bc he vaguely remembers seeing hanguang-jun fight at the practise matches and he was good, definitely on par with wwx so if hanguang-jun were to fight him he isn’t sure that he’d win.

wwx quickly finishes off the wens and then turns to lwj, refusing to let his guard down but hanguang-jun just asks what he’s doing

wwx is cagey at first but eventually reveals the truth (or as much as he can tell) and hanguang-jun is like i don’t like your methods but what you’re doing is just, so i’ll help you and so commences the most awkward team up ever

wwx had expected to have to carry most of the weight but hanguang-jun is there defending him and helping him fight the wens and he can’t help but start to trust hanguang-jun.

hanguang-jun blocks a hit meant for wwx and wwx spends like half an hour carefully cleaning the wound on his arm and bandaging it up and at the end he presses a kiss to it and he immediately goes bright red but it’s okay bc hgj’s ear are red too

wwx slips on a roof and hgj ends up catching him and damn he’s strong and the look of concern on his face is almost making wwx think hgj doesn’t hate him

hgj brings in some intel once and wwx automatically goes damn i could kiss you right now and then decides to just become one with the floor

not only that but wwx talks a lot. when he’s patrolling, when he’s fighting, when he’s waiting,, he never shuts up and hanguang-jun listens to him every time and, just as wwx fell for lwj, he starts falling for hanguang-jun

it’s even worse in this case bc hanguang-jun is all righteous and good and here wwx is using the superhero equivalent of demonic cultivation (has he perverted his own powers or did he always have necromancy powers? up to you)

so here wwx is falling in love with hanguang-jun and lwj and he feels terrible about it

there is definitely a case going on in the background but it’s basically just the sunshot campaign if only lwj and wwx were fighting it for the most part

eventually he complains to wq about his feelings and she’s like just try confessing! so the next time he and hanguang-jun team up he tells him that he loves him

lwj is 100% in love wwx and semi in love with yllz. for the most part, the things he loves about yllz all remind him of wwx so he doesn’t really see it as a crush as much as more yearning for wwx

but lwj is very awkward so he gives this kinda terrible rejection? he’s like im sorry, i don’t return your feelings maybe we should work apart for a while?

from his pov he’s giving yllz room to deal w/ his emotions alone and they’ll team up later but from wwx’s pov hanguang-jun is so disgusted he never wants to work with him again

so they go their separate ways and when wwx gets a tip-off about some weird shit about to go down at nightless city so he sneaks in by himself bc hanguang-jun definitely wouldn’t want to help him and ends up getting captured by wen ruohan

lwj, for his part, is freaking out bc wwx hasn’t responded to his texts in over a week and maybe he’s come on too strong and wwx has figured out his feelings and is letting him down gently? (by disappearing??)

but then wq comes banging on his door and asks to come in. he lets her in and she immediately tells him i know you’re hanguang-jun

lwj is defensive and ready to be blackmailed or something but she just explains that wwx has gone missing and he’d received a tip the day before he disappeared and when lwj sees the message wwx had got he’s just like why is wwx involved with the wens?

because he’s yllz, wen qing tells him and lwj is Buffering

reason 1: yllz wasn’t meant to be someone he liked and lwj had definitely been feeling guilty about the fact that he would need to be brought in bc he is morally dubious on main & he can’t reconcile that with the sweet and kind wwx

reason 2: holy shit does wwx like me?

bc lwj is a disaster he only ends up asking about the latter and wq stares at him, dead-eyed and exhausted, and tells him wwx is in love with lwj and hanguang-jun

commence lwj’s plan to get wwx back and confess to him and hopefully get married but he’ll be happy if they just kiss and/or hold hands

he starts off by explaining most of the stuff to his brother who ends up calling jyl (bc they have to be friends, i’ll cry if they’re not) who is like my brother?!! and decides to help. also probably nhs bc friends who share porn definitely save each other from wen ruohan

so they attack the wens. for most of the heroes it’s bc they finally have proof of wen ruohan being evil (helpfully collated in a colour-coordinated binder by wwx) but lwj is just there for wwx

he finds him in the dungeons or something and wwx is hurt kind of badly and lwj collapses beside him and presses down on the main wound, trying to stop the bleeding

and wwx goes hanguang-jun? what are you doing here? and lwj says nothing just pushing down harder bc he’s losing too much blood and wwx is like oh, do you hate me that much that you won’t even speak to me anymore?

lwj can’t bear it for another second and rips his mask off and wwx just gawks at him. lan zhan? you’re hanguang-jun? wwx stammers and lwj just nods and rips some fabric from his cape (would he have a cape?) and tries to bandage the wound

wwx asks him why he’s here, why he bothered to come for wwx when he doesn’t care for him but he passes out before lwj can actually say anything

he wakes up in hospital and lwj is sleeping in the chair beside him and the second wwx twitches he jolts up and stares at wwx with such relief that wwx wants to blush

i love you, lwj says, not waiting for another second. the reason i didnt accept your confession was because i loved you. i didnt know you were yllz

and wwx is like and i didnt know you were hanguang-jun!! and lwj is like yeah but wen qing did /:

and wwx is like yeah but she’s smart & they kinda fall quiet for a few moments before wwx is like did you know i think hanguang-jun is very handsome and lwj is like yes? and wwx is like good! lwj is also handsome!

and lwj is like yllz and wwx are attractive to me and they finally kiss and it’s not a complete disaster thankfully

after that lwj goes back to his semi-retirement bc he doesn’t need to catch yllz anymore and sometimes wwx comes in to help teach a class with him and they’ll go home to lwj’s apartment after and watch movies together and not once do they comment on the miscommunication between love interests

#i forgot to find a place to include this in the au but lwj's mum was definitely an unaffiliated superhero #and part of the reason lwj is suspicious of wwx #this ended up being very long sorry!#mdzs #modao zushi #mo dao zu shi #wei wuxian #lan wangji #wangxian #cql #the untamed

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screamingatanemptyroom · 5 years

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I Can’t Eat Love pt 19

Spying on the King! What does he want?!!

Masterpost link here

Enjoy!

______________________________

Rig and I made our way silently along the secret passageway.

The space which had seemed so large when I was a child was now just barely wide enough to allow an adult to walk sideways. I heard a light scuffle in the distance, and wondered if we would see rats within the walls. I shuddered, thinking of the last time I had been here.

______________________________

“I hope there isn’t rats.” I muttered, trying not to breath too much of the dust that was kicked up by my passage. Rig had taught me to walk silently, leaving barely any trace of my passing, but I was too weak to manage it.

It felt like the final betrayal. Not only was I the last survivor of his group, but I couldn’t even carry on his legacy.

Useless. I chided myself silently.

I was tired, hungry, wishing desperately to sleep, but I kept moving forward, hoping desperately no one would notice the sound within the walls.

I had to find the Queen.

______________________________

“Lenora!” Rig whispered in my ear. I started, realizing with a shock that I had stopped moving, too caught in my memory of this passageway. Waving a hand to show I was fine, I moved forward once again, navigating the turns that would lead to the secret room next to the King and Queen’s suites

Rig didn’t look convinced at my silent reassurance, but followed along without further complaint. Finally we came to a slightly more open space, at least enough for us to sit on the floor side by side. I motioned to the small peep holes, and Rig took a look in one of them. Sitting back with an astonished expression, he leaned over to speak as quietly as possible.

“I can’t believe you got us here! How could you…?”

“An escape tunnel, for the royal family, long forgotten. The Queen only discovered it by reading old journals. She took me back here… a long time ago.”

“I can’t believe she trusted you with this…” He looked at me closely. “I thought you told me the Queen only was keeping up appearances, and didn’t really care about you?” Glancing at the unused passage around us, he murmured. “Doesn’t seem like it to me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I stared through the peephole, watching the empty room.

“Of course not.” He muttered, settling in down next to me to wait.

Fortunately we didn’t have long to wait. Only a brief amount of time had passed before the king entered the room. Even alone, in a casual robe, a stranger would have recognized him as a king. He had a presence, a sense of power, control around him.

He scared me.

Sitting in a chair next to the fireplace, he sipped on a drink, motioning towards the door, likely instructing the servant there. He waited patiently, watching the fire and drinking, while we spied behind the wall, barely daring to breathe so we wouldn’t be discovered.

“Father,” Ronan stepped in the room, looking unsure for the first time I had ever seen in two lifetimes. “What did you call me about?”

The king smiled, the expression making me nervous at the clear anger concealed within. “I wanted to talk to you about the… interesting… decision you made at your birthday party.”

Ronan chuckled at that, clearly thinking that his father’s smile was genuine. “Oh that. Well, I didn’t think you’d mind. I mean… Lenora’s so boring! There’s no way she would make a good queen anyways. I think you’ll really like the woman I’ve chosen instead, this young lady named Edith…”

CRASH!

The glass from the king’s hand went flying across the room, smashing into the wall just a short distance from Ronan’s head. He shrieked, jumping away, his tunic already stained with some of the wine that had splashed as the king had thrown it.

“You idiot.” The king didn’t yell, didn’t stand up or scream despite the fury lacing every word. It was unnerving, his words were so quiet we had to strain to hear him. “Why do you think I allowed the engagement in the first place?”

“Because mother wanted it!” Ronan was pale, but he regained some of his former confidence, rolling his eyes. “She’s always doted on that dull girl, who knows why?”

The king sighed, closing his eyes briefly. “Your mother requested the engagement, yes, but why did I say yes?”

“I- I…” stuttering to a halt, the prince simply shook his head.

“The Duchy of Armeny is the largest in the kingdom. Their leaders have always posed a significant threat to the monarchy. Do you know how many times when the king was questioned in past centuries? And each time they always considered placing the Duke of Armeny as the replacement. They have wealth, they have power, and they have influence. “

“But… they don’t seem…”

“Under incompetent leadership, the balance is held. The current Duke of Armeny was perfect. Lazy, overly trusting. It took only spending a few crowns in the right places to complete corrupt their system.” He rubbed his face. “But even then I wanted insurance, as there was no guarantee his heir would be similarly weak. Thus your engagement. It would have tied our family to the duchy’s for the next few generations, negating most of the risk.”

Ronan sat down, shocked. “But, it doesn’t make sense. If they are so weak now, let’s just crush them!”

“Idiot.” The King, pouring himself another drink, paused as if considering throwing this glass as well. “That girl completely overhauled the entire duchy. She threw out the corrupted officials, reorganized their economic structure, and started schools and charities everywhere, making the people indebted to her. “

“Lenora did? I don’t believe it! The only things she cares about are marrying me and her pretty dresses.” Prince Ronan smirked as he spoke, making me wish I could punch him. “She’s probably just being used as a front.”

“I considered that, but she seems to be the one in control of things as far as I can tell. I can’t corrupt any of her current government, and I can’t discredit her ability as a ruler, the people love her too much.” The King frowned, looking around the room as if searching for answers. I forced myself to hold still, even as my skin crawled when his eyes passed over our hiding spot. “It would have been fine if I could control her as my daughter-in-law, but you… you ruined everything with your foolish little stunt.”

CRACK.

The glass cracked in the king’s hand with the force of his grip. Setting the leaking glass down, he cleaned his hand with a handkerchief, staring silently at his son.

“Well, it’s too late now!” Ronan shrugged. “I’ve broken the engagement and I’m marrying Edith. There’s nothing to be done.”

“No.” it was practically a whisper. “You will fix this, now.”

“But…” The prince’s words choked off as the father walked over, reached out and grabbed him by the throat. Lifting him out of the chair, the king smiled at his gasping son, and leaned forward.

“If you want to see the throne, you will get Lenora back as your fiancé. I don’t care how you do it, what methods you have to use. Just get it done.”

THUD. He opened his hand, dropping the prince to the ground. Ronan rubbed his throat, struggling to catch his breath.

“Or I will.”

The prince ran out of the room, leaving the king alone, except for us, his unknown observers.

“Maybe it would be simpler if Lenora were dead.” He muttered. I blinked at the words, caught off guard.

______________________________

“LENORA IS DEAD!”

The scream didn’t sound like the queen at all. It sounded as if her throat had been scraped with sand, rough and barely understandable.

CRASH!

The loud sound startled me in my hiding place behind the wall. Trembling, tired, barely able to think straight due to hunger, I forced myself to look through the peephole. Queen Amerande’s face was twisted in rage as she stared at the silent, unreactive servant. To my shock I recognized Hallers. I chided myself for being surprised. I knew he had gone to work for the palace after my family’s fall from grace.

“Your Majesty, if I may… Lady Edith simply wished…”

“NOTHING SHE SAYS WILL CHANGE MY MIND! SHE’S DEAD, AND SO I’M STAYING RIGHT HERE!” She sat down unsteadily into a chair, staring moodily into a fire. The Queen then muttered something intelligible under her breath. I leaned into the wall, desperately trying to hear, but I could only hear a few garbled words.

“…wish… dead.”

I stumbled backwards, my tired and starved brain trying to make sense of what I heard. Edith was right. She tried to warn me but I didn’t listen, couldn’t believe that I was dead to her.

There was something strange about how she was acting, though… Something wasn’t right. If only I could think more clearly.

I shook my head. No. Anything else was fantasy. The reality was clear:

Love was a lie.

Ronan had betrayed me. My best friend had betrayed me. My parents had never loved me. Anyone who cared for me since had come to ruin.

And the woman I thought loved me like a daughter. The woman I had loved as my family, more than anyone else?

It was all a lie.

I headed silently back down the passageway, wishing I could steal some bread from the kitchens before giving up, heading back to the streets.

To die.

Alone.

______________________________

A hand grasped my arm, bringing me out of the terrible memory. I let out a gasp of shock, before clapping my hands over my mouth. Rig and I stared at each other, dismayed.

Had the king heard?

He had definitely sensed something. His head turning to the wall we hid in, he stepped closer, his expression quizzical. The king listened closely near the wall, and Rig and I held our breath, terrified.

Finally he sighed. “Must be rats. They need to set out traps again.”

With that he was gone.

Silently, Rig and I escaped the tunnels, not stopping until we reached our meeting point in the center of town. Now sitting down on the ground to catch our breath, he finally spoke.

“That… wasn’t good.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry I made noise…” I started to apologize, but he waved a hand, silencing me.

“Not that, girl! I’m talking about the king!” He cursed loudly. “And his idiot son! Do they really think we’ll stand by and take it while they threaten you?”

I put a hand on his arm, smiling. “Well, at least we know they’re coming.”

“But…”

“And they have no idea who they’re messing with.”

Rig grinned. “You’re insane.”

“Learned from the best.” We both laughed at that.

______________________________

The next day I was working in my office, going over some paperwork with Henry, when Hallers knocked on the door, his professional mask firmly in place.

“Nathaniel…” He paused looking over at Nate who shrugged at the implied question. “... Mr. Nathaniel here to see you miss.” He didn’t seem impressed by Nate’s secrecy.

I stood up with a smile. “Nate! I’m glad you could make it!”

Sitting down next to Henry after shaking his hand, he sighed with relief. “Not nearly as happy as I am to be here! Do you have any idea what it’s like to be stuck on a week long hunting trip with that idiot Ronan?”

“Imagine having to marry him.” I shook my head, pretending to be sad. “Poor Edith.”

“She’ll get exactly what she wants, which is more than she deserves after betraying your trust!” Nate grumbled. I noted that Hallers looked on the young man with a more favorable light as he complained against the girl.

“I’m just happy it’s not me.”

“Of course. Did you hear the song they’re singing in town?” Nate laughed. “Ronan the Ridiculous? Whoever wrote it was a genius!”

A smile flashed across Hallers face, disappearing before I could truly believe it was there. “Would you like some tea, sir?” He offered to the surprised visitor.

“Thank you, Hallers, I’m would be delighted to have some!” He waited until the butler left and then looked over to me, shocked. “I thought he didn’t like me?”

I shrugged. “Must have been something you said?”

Henry turned to Nate, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Did you see any good plants on your trip.”

“Henry…” I groaned. “Leave poor Nate alon…”

“Well, I saw an abundance of rosemary, which was great, as it doesn’t grow nearly as well in Tilendria! What I really need though is some mint. I found a small patch near a pond on our trip, but it wasn’t nearly enough to harvest and bring back...” He paused at my flabbergasted expression. “What?”

“You like plants?” I asked, confused.

He shook his head. “I like cooking. I keep a herb garden at home, but it’s pretty sparse.”

Henry was visibly shaking with excitement. “You like herbs?!”

“Y-yes?” Nate leaned back slightly in his chair, obviously unsure of why Henry was reacting this way.

“COME WITH ME!” Grabbing the young man’s arm, he pulled him out of the chair and towards the door. “TO THE GREENHOUSE!”

“WHa…” Nate shot me a confused glance to which I spread my hands helplessly.

“When you get back I need help arranging paperwork for two people to move to Tilendria, open up a new store there!” I called after them. I saw Nate wave an arm, indicating he heard me, before he was pulled around the corner and out of sight.

“…I have the tea.” Hallers stepped into the room, and looked around in shock. “Where…?”

“Henry kidnapped him.”

“Ah. I’ll take the tea to the greenhouse then. If Master Henry is excited about something plant related, it could take quite some time.” With an understanding smile, he headed out, expertly balancing the tray.

I looked down at my paperwork, rubbing my head as I tried to balance the accounts. Hearing someone enter the room again and assuming it as Hallers, I spoke without looking up.

“Actually, I will take some more tea as well.”

“I’m not your servant.” The haughty voice caught me off guard and I looked up to see Prince Ronan standing in front of my desk.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, not bothering to greet him properly or curtsey. He frowned at the insult, but brushed it off, making me even more curious as to his purpose here.

Taking a deep breath, he fell on one knee in front of him, an arrogant smile on his face.

“I love you, dear Lenora. Marry me!”

#writing #i can't eat love #pt 19 #second life #second chance #tw violence

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maleyanderecafe · 5 years

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The Fall to Lovesickness

What can be fun about writing a yandere is how they fall into that state of mind. While a lot of yanderes start out as being lovesick, the most interesting ones are the ones that eventually fall into it. Today we’ll be talking about those yanderes who started out normal and fell into the insanity of love.

For this analysis I’ll be specifically talking about those kinds of yanderes that do not become lovesick after first seeing their s/o, but rather those who fall in love normally and eventually become lovesick. I’ll be excluding yanderes that become yanderes with the reason of love at first sight or the s/o did something nice to me, so I’ll be crazy for her. So specifically I’ll be talking about those who are more or less “normal” in the terms of falling in love. I’ll be specifying love interest as the to-be-yandere and s/o as the person that to-be-yandere is in love with.

One of the ways that a yandere falls into the trap of lovesickness is if the s/o purposely makes it so that the yandere becomes obsessive. A couple of examples of this would be Kazuki Hoshino from Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria, I’ve Been Reincarnated as this Game’s Villainess, Genbuin Tamaki from I’ll Train the Main Capture Target to be a Yandere and the MC from yoosung and Jumin’s bad ending (although less so, since it’s not as drastic). In general, the s/o does one of two things to create a yandere: they either put the yandere in a situation that would cause them to go lovesick or draw on their already obsessive/possessive tendencies. In some cases, if the s/o is very intent on making their love interest into a yandere, they might go so far as the “break” them in some form or another. Techincally, s/os can intentionally break their to be yanderes unintentionally, but they can also do it on purpose.

Assuming that the s/o wants to transform their love interest to a yandere with possessive and obsessive tendencies on purpose, they might attempt to coax out some of those traits out. For instance, if their love interest was very protective of them, they might attempt to fall into dangerous situations so that their over-protectiveness comes out. Like a princess who intentionally gets kidnapped so that her knight comes to look for her. She keeps thinking of new ways to be in trouble, until she suggests that trapping her might be the best way of keeping her safe. Or if their love interest is someone who is very into cleanliness, the s/o might try to convince him that she is the only clean person around. For instance, a maid and a butler who is obsessed with cleanliness. She slowly circulates rumors about a disease that kills unclean people, first through speckles on their skin then through bleeding to death, and slowly kills those around him. She eventually gives those speckles onto his skin, and the butler slowly freaks out. She then removes those speckles and does so only when he does loving gestures to her, eventually telling him that those who fall in love with her are cleansed. In these two situations, the s/o brings about the yandere in an indirect method, and essentially end up training the to be yanderes to embrace certain traits as well as uses other traits to manipulate them into doing what they want. If you were to write this from another person’s perspective, we might not even know that the s/o were manipulating their yanderes, which could make for a good horroresque type of story.

However, if the love interest was reluctant on embracing some of these yandere traits, then perhaps the s/o might have to take more of a direct approach, especially if the yandere is a reluctant yandere. For instance, if the love interest was a formal criminal that used to be prone to violence who wanted to become a good person. They eventually meet up with the s/o and falls in love them. The s/o though, wants to have a yandere and eventually attempts to force their lover into violence. For instance, bringing back someone who he had a bad history with and attempting to stir both of them up. Or perhaps enlisting him into a situation where he would have to kill, like hunting animals or putting him in an assassination job. In this situation however, the s/o is being far more direct in drawing out the violence in him and is purposely putting him in situations that would draw out this tendencies. The s/o might prevent the love interest from becoming angry and leaving them by blackmailing them, manipulating them, threatening them or gaslighting them. They could show love and consideration that the love interest might not have gotten in their life at all and threaten to take it away if they don’t listen. Either way, through coaxing the yandere’s various yandere traits out of them, or placing them in a situation that forces them to embrace various yandere traits, the s/o would have to essentially train the love interest into behaving a certain way and would almost always be the villain or a generally morally evil person. This can be good or bad depending on how the character is written, but it does give the s/o a bigger role and a goal to achieve. This can be placed in a “for the greater good” situation for example the yandere had to be created from this person in order to prevent a terrible situation from happening. Like if the effect of creating a lovesick person was an experiment to show how abuse can change a person, or something of that effect. An interesting s/o can be created in this way, though they will not necessarily be likable.

However, the s/o might also have a hand in creating this yandere, without fully realizing. In general, this means that either the s/o is oblivious of the fact that the love interest is becoming a yandere or the s/o is purposely tuning out this fact for one reason or another. This would make the s/o a lot more sympathetic and “good” since it wouldn’t necessarily be their fault, especially if they were oblivious to it, but it can also make the s/o more incompetent and might make them more annoying as a character. A lot of times, this kind of thing tends to create a more tragic story, since it generally brings the downfall of the s/o for one reason or another. If the s/o is too busy doing other things to notice the growth of the yandere, it may become a huge obstacle later that they s/o realizes was with them the entire time. For instance, a s/o who is trying to find a long lost city to get medicine to save her people. As she tries to study the old texts, she decides to hire an assistant to help her with the workload. She hires a boy she knows from the orphanage, who has a neglected past and is a hard worker. The boy helps the s/o, slowly falling in love with her because of the kindness and praise she gives for helping her find the lost city (although to her, this is just common curtsy) . Eventually at some point, the s/o becomes very close to finding the city. Paranoid, the boy starts to freak out, believing that she will throw him away after she finds the city. Eventually, the paranoia sets in so much that he decides to burn down the library they’ve both been studying in so that she would have to either start over or give up and spend time with him. In this case, the s/o unintentionally causes the boy to become a yandere, simply by showing kindness. In this case, it’s not really the s/o’s fault and while she might have known that this boy may have slowly developed feelings for her, she simply ignores it because her priority is finding the lost city. This could escalate further when the s/o learns that it was him that burned the library down, and would send him away in anger. The yandere, devastated, might attempt to put her in a state where she permanently had to be taken care of, like having her leg cut off, or kidnapping her. This case is more of a “horror” style yandere, as it’s not something that the s/o could really control, and she just happened to be in a bad situation.

There are also ways that the love interest can become a yandere due to various situations that are out of the characters control. A lot of times, these things are time shenanigans that cause this, but it can be other scenarios as well. The criteria for these kinds of situations that are pretty common are: A. They force the love interest to be in a bad scenario where they are saved by the s/o and fall in love or B. they already are in love with the s/o or at least know who they are and are trying to save them. Usually it depends on their character, with a yandere in A scenario ending up being a dependent type while a yandere in scenario B ends up being an overprotective type. Generally the yanderes in scenario A are are the ones that are tortured or abused in some way or another, like in He’s Harmless, I swear or Uruwashiki Shuen, and the s/o saves them from this life or shows kindness. An example of this would be a love interest that is tortured in an experiment, being starved and sleep deprived to test out how a human would react in various situations like this. He tries to escape numerous times, but always fails, until he meets the s/o who is able to save him successfully. The love interest starts becoming dependent on this s/o and worshiping them in love. Scenario B makes it so that the yandere is the protector, and their backstory might be Scenario A, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. A lot of times, these are stories with time travel or time loops, like in Mirai Nikki or Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria, where they already know who their s/o is and are trying to protect them from whatever danger they are about to face. An example would be a psychic yandere who is trying to protect their s/o from people who are trying to steal away their s/o’s life because she’s the only one with food in a small town that’s starving. The yandere would then be able to protect their s/o from anyone who had bad intentions. Perhaps they only turned this way after developing psychic powers, to where he was able to see the corruptness of other people and saw the pure mind of his s/o.

Just some thoughts about writing a yandere that falls into their lovesickness.

#male yandere #yandere boy #yandere #analysis #opinions #writing

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shinneth · 4 years

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Gem Ascension Tropes (5XF-specific: G - J)

Primary General Post ✦ Full Article ✦ Primary Peri Post ✦ Primary 5XF Post

Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Hilariously shares this trope with Peridot and even invokes it on the very same person: Steven. During Chapter 2 of This is Who I Am, after Peridot is poofed via gator ambush, her gemstone – while thankfully undamaged by the gator – drops straight into murky waters and sinks out of sight. This prompts Steven to cry out for her and panic; he impulsively attempts to dive into the water unprotected to retrieve Peridot, but 5XF is quick to stop him and doesn’t hesitate to give him a stern slap while denouncing him for wasting time with his sentimentality when he should be going after his girlfriend in a sensible way that won’t get him killed.

Green-Eyed Monster: 5XF is extremely jealous of Peridot, and the rest of the Crystal Gems by proxy. Peridot, however, is the biggest offender by far. See The Resenter for the multitude of reasons why 5XF can’t stand her little sister. It’s actually somewhat justified.

Grew a Spine: A bit of a misguided variant that was triggered from living through years of Homeworld’s oppressive society rather than being fed up with Peridot and Steven’s antics. Though 5XF’s lack of faith in them did play a role in how she took this trope a little too far at first, it’s noted in the narrative and stated by 5XF herself that she was sick of being cautious and playing by the rules all the time. 5XF had to live that way her entire life in order to survive. Now, 5XF realized she did want to take her life back, but couldn’t bring herself to trust anyone other than herself in that endeavor (which was problematic, as 5XF was stranding herself on an alien planet she knew nothing of and had no home to return to). It was definitely to her benefit that 5XF worked up the nerve to finally act on her desire to be independent; though she initially stumbled a lot due to unfortunate circumstances coinciding with her nervous breakdown, she was able to meet Sphalerite due to this – and in more ways than one, 5XF finally found someone she could trust who could help rebuild her life.

Had To Be Sharp: Much like Peridot, 5XF had a strategy she stuck to in order to stay alive in Homeworld society. Unlike Peridot, 5XF’s method was more passive. While both saw no value in having “friends”, 5XF was content to just keep to herself and do her job rather than to go beyond her means. While Peridot aspired to dominate her kind, 5XF opted to blend into the background to ensure her safety.

Handshake Refusal: Not only does 5XF staunchly reject Peridot’s offer of a handshake greeting when she’s first released from her bubble, she doesn’t hesitate to slap that hand away from her.

Heel Realization: Hints of it were shown when 5XF got extremely upset at Peridot nearly killing herself just to keep her dark self from killing both sides of Steven. It wasn’t until the situation was entirely resolved when 5XF watched the fully restored Steven and Peridot cling to each other and sob out the mutual trauma they went through to keep each other alive against the odds that she realized she had done a very awful thing on par with 5XG’s level of brutality that 5XF so desperately wanted to avoid. Feeling shame and guilt rather than satisfaction after seeing what she put the couple through is what really made 5XF realize she screwed up and wouldn’t be able to live with herself until she properly atoned for this. Surprisingly, Steven and Peridot getting back at her earlier wasn’t punishment enough in 5XF’s eyes – she knows that alone won’t absolve her of wrongdoing, which is why she confessed her crimes to Garnet later and accepted whatever punishment was handed down to her.

Hyper-Awareness: Discussed by many characters throughout This is Who I Am. While she possesses no inherent supernatural abilities like her sister, 5XF has unusually exceptional observational skills and can easily pick up on details that often get overlooked. No doubt her insatiable curiosity is a factor here, but 5XF also has very sharp instinctive skills, reflexes, and deductive reasoning. These abilities are how 5XF could piece together that Peridot repressed a certain traumatic moment of her life that would be to her detriment to ignore. It also plays into how she of all gems was Genre-Savvy enough to implement an Opponent Switch on a scheduled Mirror Match, as 5XF applied what she learned in an earlier Info Dump to realize playing the latter trope straight would immediately backfire. And while 5XF is fully aware how rushed her relationship with Sphalerite is, she actually has a logical justification for indulging in it: she already pieced together that their relationship will be difficult to maintain due to Sphalerite being a fusion, which severely limits the time the two can be together. She rightly assumes Steven and Peridot won’t be okay with their relationship, either. Therefore, she intends to make the most of the time she does still have with Sphalerite, which requires them to rush through what few steps they didn’t skip. This way, 5XF can rest assured knowing she made the most of her limited time with her lover.

Identical Stranger: Aside from having loose-hanging sideburns instead of curls framing her face, 5XF looks exactly like Peridot prior to her reformation at the beginning of the story. However, Peridot never acknowledged 5XF’s existence during her Homeworld days, while 5XF only knew of her second-hand from other Peridots she terrorized directly, as they were assigned to neighboring workstations.

If You Kill Her, You Will Be Just Like Her: Seeing firsthand how badly she physically, mentally, and emotionally damaged Steven and Peridot made 5XF feel horrible inside when she expected to feel validated and fulfilled. Only then did she realize the elaborate trap she forced the couple into was incredibly cruel and sadistic; a trait scarily similar to 5XG’s approach. The last thing 5XF wants is to become anything like her little sister’s past life, so this revelation really forced her to reevaluate the decisions she made. 5XF came to the conclusion that she not only did wrong by Peridot and Steven, but needed to do whatever she could to redeem herself in hopes of distancing herself from being anything like 5XG as much as possible.

Ignorant Minion: Like the rest of her kind, 5XF has no idea what’s going on during Gem Ascension, and is only beginning to learn the details of her situation when she’s brought out of stasis on Earth in This is Who I Am. The very concept of being able to discover her own identity on Earth is something she’s still uncomfortable with.

Jerk-to-Nice-Gem Plot: While her actions in This is Who I Am Chapters 4 and 5 made her pretty damn diabolical, the circumstances of how it happened were pretty unavoidable; 5XF didn’t trust Steven or Peridot, and it’s technically their fault for not doing a good enough job making their guest feel comfortable in this strange new world (releasing her in some of the most dangerous locations on Earth certainly doesn’t help), while failing to properly foster a trusting relationship. And it turns out in the final chapter that 5XF legitimately feels terrible about her prior actions and is committed to atone for them, because the last thing she wants to be is a monster who gets away with her crimes like Peridot used to do regularly in her previous life. Now that Sphalerite succeeded where Steven and Peridot failed in helping 5XF understand how exciting and liberating her new life on Earth will be, she’s much more agreeable and compliant with the other Crystal Gems. She still hates Steven and especially Peridot, unfortunately, but hopefully future story arcs will show her gentler, more considerate side that has already been present in her introductory story arc.

Job Mindset Inertia: Granted, it hasn’t been that long since 5XF’s career (that she’s basically had since her emergence) ended abruptly, but even later chapters of This is Who I Am show her still worrying about her productivity/work rate.

Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: For the first three chapters of This is Who I Am, 5XF appears to gradually warm up to Steven and Peridot after immediately deeming them untrustworthy and incompetent when she’s first set free. She even acts selflessly for their benefit by urging the couple to discuss a difficult topic neither would have thought to do on their own. However, by Chapter 4, she’s back to doubting the couple’s integrity and honesty while questioning her own actions. Her snap decision to only trust herself leads her to stealing Peridot’s tablet and running away. She ends up in a temple, accidentally gets infused with power from a questionable source, and when Peridot and Steven nearly corner her to bring her back, she trusts the random voice in her head to give in to power so that she can instead capture both and force them into deathmatches while she watches with glee. She gets better.

#gem ascension #gem ascension tropes #gem re:ascension #ga references #this is who i am #tv tropes #steven universe #su fanfic #su fanfiction #steven universe oc #5xf #peridot #su peridot #sphalerite #garnet #su garnet #su ruby #stevidot #headcanon

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howtohero · 5 years

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How many times have you see this? You and your squad have gone storming fists first into a haunted castle or a rogue government laboratory. The place is big and most of the world’s heroest are off-world fighting *checks notes* three million jelly fish? Really? In space? So your team is small, so small that it will take you forever to find what you’re looking for and uch who has the time for that. So you split up. Your watches are synchronized, your communicators are charged, Mega Mouth, the loudest man to have ever lived, is there, if he calls out you can all converge. What’s the worst that can happen? The mission ends in success, you’ve recovered the nuclear flapjack or the souls of the seven warlocks of the east or you’ve brought down the criminal empire of The Mobster. In fact things went better than any of you could have ever expected. It almost seems like... No, it couldn’t be. Could it have been too easy? Have you perhaps misjudged what the bad guy’s ultimate goal here was? Are they actually closer than ever to achieving world domination? Yes, yes and maybe, depending on how competent they are. (A villain’s competence can generally be assessed by counting the number of underlings they’ve employed who are clearly waiting for a chance to stab them in the back. If the number is higher than zero they are incompetent.) You see you or one of your friends may very well have fallen victim to one of the oldest tricks in the supervillain playbook. Please join us as we embark on our 150th post where we will discuss:

Mind Control

“Mind control, because hiring willing employees is complicated!” “Mind control, because you shouldn’t have to tell them twice!” “Mind control, because free will is such an unpredictable thing!” “Mind control, because can we really trust people to have thoughts that we didn’t give them!” These are just a few of the many slogans that the mind control industry has used in an attempt to sell people on the idea of having thoughts sold to them. Supervillains have been using mind control ever since the first brains were invented, to get unwitting pawns to do their dirty work. There are many different forms mind control can take, let’s take a look at a few of them and how they’ve been used, and how we as a superhero community can fight back against them.

Brain Washing This is one of the oldest, and bluntest, forms of mind control. Brain washing is not when a brain is literally removed from a head and placed in a bathtub or dishwasher or something. Rather it refers to a metaphorical scrubbing, an erasure of everything that is contained within a brain, including memories, personalities and even emotions and feelings. The brainwashing process usually leaves a supervillain with a blank slate. The poor sap they’ve kidnapped can then be molded into whatever kind of person the villain needs them to be. A fighter, a chaufer, a professional heckler, whatever they need to fulfill their maniacal machinations. The reeducation process might include pro-crime propaganda (you know motivational posters that say things like “stabbing is cool” or “push your neighbor down a flight of stairs”) or specific anti-superhero lessons (things like “Did you know that Ultiman loves double-dipping?” or “Have you heard literally anything about Professor Paleontologist?”). In no time at all our brain-bathing baddies will have a brand new henchman all of their own. Supervillains sometimes make use of this method because- (hey, this is exactly why we hired a supervillain correspondent) We did not do that. (You’re telling me you can explain why a supervillain might brainwash somebody better than a supervillain who lives in our basement and is literally named Dr. Brainwave?) All right I see your point... <Excellent! I knew you’d come around. Ahem, brainwashed henchmen are far more reliable than those free-thinking goons we’ve discussed before. They follow orders to a tee. They have no regard for their own safety. They can’t be reasoned with or manipulated or bribed by those devious, super fools that are always trying to put a halt to your plans. But at the same time, brainwashing is only good if you have the means to build a person from the ground up. The victim will need to relearn everything. How to walk, how to talk, how to go to the bathroom on their own. They’ll be like an infant, smelly and useless. Sure, once a you’ve brainwashed a few pitiful maggots you can pretty much just have them teach and watch after each other but the first go around you’re going to have to spend a lot of time crafting the person you want. Which is why I almost never do it anymore. But you know who does? Which insignificant mad scientist wannabe is still utilizing these antiquated claptrap methods? That hack, Professor Brain-Scrambler. You’ve never met any man as pathetic as he. That absolute fo-> Yeah so that was a mistake.

Brainwashing can also be very difficult to undo. Generally when a brain is wiped clean it’s wiped clean, that’s it. Occasionally, the bad guys who are preforming the procedure might keep the “data” they pull from the brain for safe keeping (usually in the form of a glowing sphere) in which case all you need to do is retrieve the personality sphere and reunite it with the body. Sometimes a supervillain won’t do as thorough of a job as they’d thought <ha, certainly sounds like that buffoon Brain-Scrambler to me> and the victim’s former personality and memories can resurface, usually when they’re exposed to objects or people from their past. Other times though, the most that you can do for these people is to just rescue them from the employ of the supervillains and return them to non-supervillain society. Other times a skilled enough psychic can restore a brainwashed victim’s personality with enough time. (talk about the fish!) NO! <Did you know he isn’t even a real professor? He’s been rejected from the Villain’s College 17 times! I should know, I penned the rejection letters myself after intercepting his applications and feeding them to my mutant alligators.>

Hypnosis Similar to brainwashing, hypnosis allows a villain to imprint something new onto a victim. While brainwashing is often permanent though, hypnotism is always temporary. Hypnosis is useful when a villain needs a quick, disposable henchperson or if they want to ruin somebody’s reputation or frame them for a crime, especially a superhero’s. Hypnotized people will often have no memory of their actions while they were under the spell of the hypnotist and thus a villain can cause a person a lot of grief by using this method. They can force a person to do something unsavory, wait for the hypnosis to fade, and then wait for them to realize, or be informed about, what they’ve done and watch them collapse as they’re forced to live with the guilt of what they did for the rest of their lives.

Hypnotized people will often behave more like zombies than actual living people and so they are easy to spot and stop (and tops) before they get into any real trouble. Just make sure you don’t confuse them for an actual zombie and shoot them in the head or set them on fire or something. That would be bad. What this means though, is that breaking a hypnotist’s hold is about as easy as waking somebody up. Loud noises, vigorous shaking, true love’s kiss. Take your pick. (I recommend the vigorous shaking, especially if you’re using our new, state-of-the-art Unhypnotizeinator, which consists of what amounts to a tilt-a-whirl that we got for a steal after the amusement park it was in was shut down for having a “criminally unsafe” tilt-a-whirl.) Sometimes though, even after a hypnotized person is awakened from their trance they can lapse back into it if certain stimuli are in place. The most common one is falling into actual sleep. In cases like these the person who has been hypnotized will fall asleep, as people are wont to do, and then immediately wake up under the control of Pocket Watch or the Hypster or whomever. If someone you know has been hypnotized make sure that you always have loud music playing and just live out the rest of your days making sure that they never have a moment of sleep ever again. Or you can best the evil hypnotist in combat. That’ll usually break the spell. Either that or you’ll have to destroy the enchanted watch or pendulum that they’re using to hypnotize people.

Sleeper Agents Like hypnosis, sleeper agents can be switched back and forth between being fully-in-control and fully-under-control. But unlike sleeper agents, the victims won’t actually be asleep or in a sleep-like state. Even though the word “sleep” is right there in the name. What a broken language this is. Sleeper agents (sleepers agent?) can be activated through a series of codewords or images and once activated they become basically brainwashed victims. Except they come fully-loaded with all those nifty things humans can do. No matter potty-training dangerous assassins, these guys can go all on their own! Sleeper agents might have entire secret lives that even they themselves aren’t aware of. They could even have an entirely different skillset that is accessed only when they are activated by their handler. Right now you (yes you) could have the ability to breakdance or bake wonderful soufflés or shoot a moving target at 300 meters and you’d never know it! (Atlantis cable news rhubarb kerfuffle. Try now.)

Sleeper agents are some of the most dangerous enemies a superhero could have. Anybody could be one. Your best friend, the guy who runs the best coffee cart in New York City, the librarian, any of them could be sleeper agents who just need to hear the right sequence of colors and Major League Baseball teams to try to rip your throat out. It is extremely difficult to remove a sleeper agent program from a person’s mind. The process requires what amounts to a lobotomy, carving away at the parts of the brain, or hopefully, the implants in the brain, that cause the neighborhood mailman to turn into a hyper-competent ninja.

The Power of Suggestion This kind of mind control is usually superpower based. Instead of rewriting a person’s entire personality or taking control of them indefinitely, villains with this power will simply issue a command to some poor sap and use their powers to force them to carry it out. People who under this kind of mind control will usually be fully aware of what’s happening, but they are completely unable to stop it. Usually this type of control will fade either after a set amount of time or after the victim has carried out the command.

Generally, the only way to prevent a victim of this kind of mind control from carrying out their dastardly directives is to physically prevent them from doing so until the time-limit has passed. This could mean you have to physically restrain the person or simply knock them unconscious. (By throwing a brick at their head.) Be careful though, usually villains with these powers will be crafty sons of mothers. They’ll often have a couple of people under their control at the same time. These people will sometimes be redundancies, meaning if you stop one of them there will be another to carry out the same task. Other times they’ll be used to appeal to your sense of preserving-innocent-livesism and the sly suggestive supervillain will have ordered them to cause themselves or others bodily harm should the one who you’re trying to stop be stopped. With villains like these you need to outsmart them, or somehow find a way of disabling their powers. Otherwise, every moment they can speak is a moment they can place another person under their control. Remember, their powers are speech related so if they can’t speak they can’t use them. Try taking them out for a raging night of karaoke and screaming at pigeons, their voice will definitely be gone by the next morning and you can lock them up in a power neutralizing cell or like a deserted island where they can’t speak to anybody.

Mind control is one of the most dangerous techniques supervillains use in their never ending quest to take over some body of land. Which makes sense, not only are they evil but they have a strong enough will to get out of bed every morning and clomp around town in a ridiculous psychedelic battle suit, they’re not going to be very interested in allowing other people to keep their substantially weaker wills are they? Fortunately mind control can be combatted, not only with all of the ways we just mentioned, but also with a regular old sheet of tinfoil. That’s right! None of these mind controlling methods can get through regular, off-the-shelf, aluminum foil. So unwrap that sandwich you’ve been saving and make yourself a gosh darn hat out of tinfoil. If you need help making said hat, Hatman actually runs hat-making seminars every Friday night. (So hey, I guess everybody’s free to do crime in Hatsburg on Friday nights.) <Good to know!> Wait, no!

Thanks to all of my fans and supporters (that’s you guys!) and death by a thousand bolts of lightning to all my enemies (that might be you guys too!) [Wait,what?] {Oh you still work here?} [Of course I still work here!] Here’s to another 150 posts, stay tuned for a master post and a few small announcements later today!

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ladyarjuna · 6 years

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Freedom, Thrones, and Uncrowned Queens

She didn’t have any reading glasses, but her outfit screamed ‘to the old men that she shouldn’t be giving this presentation.

Branch smiled. They thought they had a show now, but this was only the beginning. “Gentlemen! I have noted that many of you have been watching my portfolio! Yes, I did invest heavily in Japan. This was because Japan was the place I had the easiest access to! All other places being essentially barred from me for reasons stipulated in my grandfather’s will.

“Thankfully, that time is at an end. You have been, apparently, as eager to be rid of my grandfather’s assets as I have been to reclaim them.” Oh yes I did notice those mis-steps. And also your constant gazes over the last five years. “Now! I know what many of you are thinking. ‘surely, she could not be so lucky as she has been?’ And you are dead wrong. I have been acting strategically with my portfolio and my own gathered fortunes, such as they are compared to the Orange Lotus. And you will see, from the information I have given you, that their fundamentals are increasingly sound, and my assets have serious growth potential!”

They were no longer looking at the slides. Their mistake; if they were, and not simply dismissing her, they’d notice immediately she was not only making true statements, but comparing her portfolio to the recent acquires of the Orange Lotus. Tariffs aside-- which were dogging everyone in the American domestic market-- her portfolio was running as good or better year-over-year.

“Are you attempting to distract us with burlesque, Miss Natar-Pannikar?”

“You’ve been distracting yourselves with burlesque since I turned 15, why shouldn’t I?” Some of them looked like she was about to give them a heart attack. “Oh I’ve absolutely noticed, gentlemen. Take your hands out of your laps and actually read the information I’ve given you. Presumably you like money enough to become bankers, and this isn’t a middle school anymore.”

The pitch at the table turned to anger. “This is not the maneuver of a sound mind, Miss Natar-Pannikar.”

“Oooh, declaring me incompetent by method of mental illness! Fresh! I like it. But you’ll need to get in line behind everyone else who’s tried and somehow prove that my positions and tactics are unsound.” She leaned fowards on the podium, letting her blazer and her hands rest upon it. “Good luck when I’m outperforming you. The fact is, gentlemen, I’ve moved slowly, yet with speed. Considerable in power and careful in strategem. You believe I am interested in removing you from my side entirely. I am not. You are good managers, and aside from a few missteps, do not seem to want to line your own pockets while stealing from mine.”

She stood up and walked over to the eldest, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Except you. You embezzled three million dollars in brokers’ fees from the company and tried to cover it up, stupidly, by making like the account was headed to a middle-level accountant. Problem is, you fired him and never stopped using the account. Don’t get up, the police will be by shortly.”

She turned to the others. “Does anyone else have an objection to me resuming the helm of the Orange Lotus Group?”

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astrologista · 6 years

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Is Varian “evil”?

I don’t think so. Not really. I think he’s got a lot of redeeming himself to do, but he’s not through-and-through evil.

Varian’s strategy, his goal, was just to get his father freed from the amber. However, his tactics for doing that evolved over time due to highly extenuating circumstances.

Tactic #1 was to go get Rapunzel to help. Ultimately, this plan fails, even after he goes through an entire musical number while out in the worst storm Corona’s faced in years, probably for hours.

Tactic #2 was apparently to try and get someone else to help / listen (”I tried asking for help in a civil manner, but was denied by everyone in Corona”). This is because a rumor supposedly spread about Varian “attacking” Rapunzel when he went to ask for help. But what could others do, when Raps is the only one with the hair? Maybe he should’ve asked Xavier.

When he returns home, he’s too late to help and Quirin is fully encased by the amber. Even after making it to Corona through the storm and all the way back (remember, In Let Me Make You Proud, there are a few moments when Varian easily could’ve been killed if not for his resourcefulness), he failed the most important person in his life. But he would have “succeeded”, if not for Rapunzel’s choice not to go with him.

It almost seems like cruel fate. Here he didn’t mess something up for once and he still failed, at a time when failure is not an option for Varian. Varian sits there, crying, alone but for Rudiger, for God knows how many hours...

After the reprise of Let Me Make You Proud, Varian is still the same person, however, he has redoubled his old goal and added a new one - revenge. He tried asking nice, but now he’s not only going to get Rapunzel to hear him and fix this problem, he’s also going to get some nice payback for being ignored.

Varian has a pretty strong moral foundation, presumably instilled there by his father. But there are events that will make anyone forsake morality in the pursuit of greater goals. Varian knows he’s turning away from common decency (”and no matter what comes of me”) because he feels he has exhausted all civil recourse and resources available to him. Varian sees the line between right and wrong and willingly steps right over it in order to get his goals met. He’s not playing, it’s not just for fun, he’s not going evil for kicks. He literally feels like he has no other choice and there’s no one there to tell him why it’s a bad idea.

So it would seem that Varian’s fall from grace is a simple logical deduction, which would be in line with his personality. This is not the case, I would argue. Emotion plays a huge part in Varian’s turn. He’s just seen his father be frozen in a block of amber, and he can see the cause-and-effect that indicates Varian’s own part in this. Varian’s been through some very distressing events in rapid succession and he’s only 14. And things don’t get any better. They just get worse.

Varian’s next tactic is simple. Steal the Sundrop flower and use it to break the amber. In this plan, no one has to get hurt. He uses the Mood Potion cookies to get information, but that’s it. No one had to get hurt. No one had to potentially die for Varian to get what he needed. He executes the plan perfectly. And he succeeds. He’s even so confident that he’s right about the flower, that he smoothly burns bridges with Rapunzel by revealing his true motives. No real need to have her on his side anymore. He is able to escape with the flower with no problems.

Until that plan fails, too. He’s done everything right. Just like the Science Expo, just like in QFaD. Varian did everything right, but the world is cruel and for whatever reason plans fall through at the last logical step.

(You could say that the Sundrop flower is magic. Varian doesn’t work with magic. Not until now.)

When the flower fails, Varian finds himself losing control. It’s easy to deduce that he probably hasn’t gotten much sleep since this began, and it shows. He is starting to lose his mind a little bit after so many days of intense emotions. He’s just betrayed the only friend he has left in Corona, burned that bridge in the hopes he could bring Quirin back. Then he’d have someone again and everything would be fine. Except it doesn’t happen. He’s shoving things, he’s knocking things off the desk. Varian literally can’t deal with his pain any longer and it’s starting to manifest physically.

He squeezes the flower into tiny little pieces with a shaking hand and finally makes the connection he needs to make. Rapunzel is the Sundrop now. Too bad she doesn’t trust him anymore.

(Varian has this nice sketch of Rapunzel. That means both Varian and Rapunzel have drawn each other. We’ve seen Rapunzel’s nightmares. Lord only knows what Varian’s are like.)

This is where Varian’s plans go from benign to mildly disruptive to totally destructive. When he remakes the automaton, clearly he had to know it would destroy property and eventually hurt people. The same goes for when he transforms Rudiger.

It’s not just about logically proceeding to the goal anymore, quietly or in the shadows. It’s about being heard, and it’s about revenge.

Varian knows better than anyone how far someone will go for family. This is how he can easily come up with a kidnapping plot. He knows kidnapping the Queen is the fastest way to get Rapunzel to do what he wants. It’s a very cruel, ironic, “see how you like it.”

Varian has thought things through to the letter. And just like earlier instances, everything seems to be going his way. The decoy doll, the automaton ambush. Varian predicts everything like he’s been doing tactics for years. This reveals that he’s not just a very smart, dangerous scientist. He’s sort of a keen emotional profiler when he wants to be, rather than some goofy nerd who just stays locked in his lab away from people. He seems to know what people want and what they’ll do to get it at a very... uncomfortable level. (Is psychology one of Varian’s other interests? WHAT IS HE NOT AN EXPERT ON??) But after reading so many Flynn Rider novels, it could be that Varian is just really Genre Savvy like Syndrome from the Incredibles. You could draw a few parallels between the two, but Varian’s still the better villain. Why? Because he’s better at being a villain. As I said, he’s not just playing at being evil for fun. He didn’t come here to play. Varian is trying to get Quirin freed while at the same time proving that he’s not incompetent, and he’s not a child.

Sidebar - Varian is a little too smart and savvy for 14. He doesn’t even hang out with kids his own age that we’ve seen, Rapunzel, Eugene, and Cassandra are all several years older than him. And there’s a big difference between 14 and 19-20 year olds. That’s like a high school freshman hanging with college students. And both Cass and Eugene have referred to him as a “kid” with Quirin calling him a “child” indirectly.

But back to Secret of the Sundrop.

Varian isn’t apologetic about doing what he has to do. He feels righteous and justified. As time has passed, so his methods have gotten more extreme. And a new element has been added - he’s extremely disrespectful and beyond rude to the King and Queen. Tauntingly calling Arianna “your Highness” and “your Majesty” with a smirk. Telling her “Quiet” during Ready as I’ll Ever Be. And of course, who could forget how he interacted with King Frederick. “She’s right, Dad.” Varian, you’re lucky you don’t live in the real 1600s, because talk like this is a fast one-way trip to death row.

Varian’s affect in Secret of the Sundrop isn’t completely different from how we’ve seen him act in the past, which is the unsettling part. While usually respectful, Varian had a bright, witty quality to his banter, calling him and Eugene “Team Awesome” and Cassandra “M’lady” (Varian, just get a fedora.) and his “Assistant” and “Co-ladies in waiting” despite her annoyance. At the same time, it was obvious there was a lot of admiration behind what he said and how he acted. He just wanted to fit in, he wanted Rapunzel, the princess he admires and bows to, to like him and be his friend. He wanted Eugene, who he thinks is Flynn Rider (his hero) to be his friend and keep his secrets. He wanted Cass to admire him and see something special in him. Most of all, he just wanted his father to be proud of him, even after all of his mistakes that he is clearly aware of (”Maybe I make things a mess...” “Maybe you’re right to have doubts in me...” “When you see your son rising at last”). Even if his affect is similar to who he was, the admiration that was there is replaced with complete cynicism and apathy for Rapunzel’s or anyone’s feelings. Varian truly believed that Rapunzel would come through for him in his time of greatest need, because that’s what friends do. When she didn’t, he lost faith in her and he also lost faith in the system. In Queen for a Day, we see that there’s a long line of people in the castle every day demanding things from the Royals. Everyone is lined up and given a basic solution to their problems. Varian is starting to realize the problems inherent in such a system as well. Shouldn’t someone who has a life-or-death problem be given priority ahead of someone who just needs a place for their sheep to graze or something? (Corona has no 911. Unfortunately for Quirin.) What Varian has concluded is that his friendship with Rapunzel essentially means nothing to her because she was unwilling to drop everything and come help him, which is ridiculous, but to Varian, saving his dad is much more important than the overall welfare of Corona.

So he’s apathetic. He’s cruel. He’s practically sadistic. Watch him unfeelingly “speed things along” because they’re on a “time crunch” by setting off the amber reaction again next to Arianna, while Rapunzel and the King watch helplessly.

When the hair doesn’t work the first time, Varian keeps trying, becoming more and more agitated. Even when Rapunzel passes out and the King orders him to stop, he continues on, sure that he’s right because he has to be right. This can’t all be for nothing. To Varian’s credit, he does realize when things just aren’t going to work. His plan, once again, executed to perfection - probably the most difficult and elaborate scheme he’s ever pulled off. Timed to perfection, hours and hours of work on many, many, robots (all made by hand I presume), the Rudiger serum, getting the Queen back to his place, getting all the little chess pieces (people) right where he wants them by manipulating their emotions, and for what? His plan had a single point of failure. If Quirin wasn’t freed, then nothing was worth it. But he still has one secondary goal - revenge.

When the hair fails, Varian doesn’t rage like last time. He’s shocked. He’s horrified. He doesn’t even notice what’s going on behind him. At this point, the plan is effectively over. He has no script for this part. Still, he tries to convince himself that he wasn’t wrong and it’s not his fault. Varian has been through so much in the past days (weeks?) that thinking clearly is the last thing he can currently do. He’s been alone, without human contact. Rudiger is there, so at least he has someone, but that’s not going to replace his father.

And what does he see when he turns around? Rapunzel being embraced by both her father AND her mother. Receiving love, contact, acceptance, protection, validation. Everything Varian wants and needs, has moved heaven and earth to try and get. And it’s just not fair.

Varian is exhausted, and he wants what he wants, and he’s out of ideas, so he does what any kid would do. He has a temper tantrum. They’re not going to get this happy ending and just ignore his pain anymore. This is the real turning point where Varian has gone from destructive, to manipulative, to hurtful and cruel and unfeeling, to murderous. Once Varian gets in the mech, he loses it. He fully intended to crush the Royal family with that first strike, and it’s unclear if he wanted to squeeze Cass and the Queen literally to death but that seemed to be where it was going if someone didn’t intervene. The red lights in the mecha definitely symbolized pure rage. Even with the legs torn off the mech, Varian’s last move was to reach out and try to grab Rapunzel. Only when the robot was 100% defeated and lost power, did Varian “give up”. And even then, he never really gave up, just yelled “NO!” like a little kid whose toy was taken away.

It was pretty obvious when Varian was being taken away that he’s been beaten but not broken. However, for as much damage as he’s caused, Rapunzel can’t help but realize how much pain he’s really in and begs her father to show some mercy. Which he says he will. And Rudiger seems to understand too, tries to comfort him a little bit, but it doesn’t seem to get through to him. Varian has caused a lot of damage because he’s dangerously smart and skilled. Varian also just happens to have a lot of qualities that make him good at what he does. He’s highly manipulative and seems to be capable of shutting off his empathy for others when necessary, as a scientist would do when experimenting on animals or people. That doesn’t mean that empathy doesn’t exist, however - he’s just capable of switching it on and off. He’s determined beyond normal boundaries and will continue to fight until he literally cannot fight anymore. He can come back with correct solutions to almost any problem you give him, except when it comes to magic. Not only are his solutions quantitatively correct, but are also highly inventive and creative. Like, seriously, if you can’t tell, I love an antagonist who is as quantitatively and mathematically skilled and logical as they are creative, inventive and aware of human motivations and flaws.

Eugene and Cassandra have already assured Varian that he is a good person. That’s good, but it’s not enough. He needs Quirin to do it for his arc to be complete. He needs to earn it. Varian has a long way to come back from what he’s done. He’s acted with foresight and brilliance beyond what most kids his age would be capable of, but at the same time, he’s acted immaturely and childishly without regard for the lives at stake. It’s understandable that he wants and needs to be heard and validated. He has gone through a lot of pain, a lot of grief, and being left completely to his own devices, he has justified things to himself that are a little too advanced for him to be thinking about and dealing with in his adolescent mind. Being 14 is not fun for anyone, it’s really not. 14 and 15 are probably the most difficult ages to be because you have to deal with a lot of changes very, very quickly. Your brain chemistry is flopping around, new hormones are changing the way you think. In fact, it makes a lot of sense that Varian has a combination of immature, impish traits and mature, adult traits. Without his mother around, and his dad being kind of awkward around him and still treating him like a kid, Varian’s main reference for the kind of person he wants to become is influenced by those Flynn Rider books he reads, as well, where extreme emotions and situations run hot, and sometimes the extreme solution is the right one.

A lot of people are trying to make arguments that Varian’s not responsible for what he did in Secret of the Sundrop. That might be believable if Varian were 10 or 11 years old, just a kid with powers he doesn’t understand getting a bit too rowdy and not understanding consequences. But Varian has proven that he understands what he’s doing, knows he’s crossing the line, but doesn’t care. I will say I doubt he was fully in good control of himself at the end of Secret of the Sundrop. He was highly stressed and agitated, and it’s like they say. You aren’t you when you’re hungry. He was having one of the worst days of his life. We can give him a little break for that, but despite all excuses, he seemed pretty sharp and quick on the uptake when he was telling Cass he knew he could sweep her off her feet, and when he was operating the mech, too.

After watching it over, I am pretty sure that for Varian to learn a lesson about self-control and self-esteem (which it seems his is pretty low, because he seeks validation from others at the cost of all else), Quirin and/or his mom needs to find him and set him straight. Those are the only two people he is likely to trust and listen to at this point, since he’s lost faith in the rest of Corona. I don’t think he’s ever going to be the same character that he was before QFaD, but that makes sense. He needed to go through an arc, and I would assume he’s going to come out of his arc as a new person, an older and wiser person, I would think. Certain core characteristics remain, he’s still a huge snarky geek-a-nerd, and really passionate and loyal about his family. But I hope he does do a little growing up in some areas, and realize there are other areas where he doesn’t need to grow up so fast. He doesn’t have to be a 1000 IQ genius and usher in the Industrial Revolution in Corona for his parents to love him. That’s what he needs to understand.

And quite honestly, I don’t know what Varian’s mom and/or Quirin did to him to give him a complex like this. Something don’t add up here. There is no way I can believe that Quirin is secretly evil or something. Come on, he keeps a huge family picture in his room, he saves little girls who fall out of trees. He’s a G. In QFaD, he’s actually considerably patient with Varian. He only snaps at him when Varian continues to persist on certain issues like going in to talk to the King, insisting that Quirin lied, wanting to experiment on the rocks. Even in What the Hair, Quirin doesn’t just immediately assume that Varian caused the disaster, in fact, his first #1 priority before anything else is to find Varian and make sure he’s safe. I get the feeling that having a kid like Varian who’s just so determined and can be so difficult when there’s something he wants is a tough parenting job for Quirin as apparently he’s been a single parent for some time, plus he’s got other shit that he needs to do. He doesn’t have time to hang around and constantly validate Varian’s work and his existence 1000 times a day. I can also get the feeling that Varian thinks that if he just keeps trying to do great things for Old Corona or whatever to make his dad proud, maybe he’ll make more time for him. Maybe then he’ll be “worth it”.

But it’s so, so obvious that Quirin loves Varian a lot. He’s a good dad. Maybe not the perfect one, but something has to be done to show Varian that he doesn’t need to be perfect. He needs a hug like the one Rapunzel got in Secret of the Sundrop, hopefully with both of his parents there telling him how valued he is, that he just doesn’t need to do any of this in order to earn their love. I think that’s where his arc is going.

Yeah... this is... it’s very... long...

#varian #no you don't understand #i love him #he's my son #he needs love #but he's just done so much #he's so brilliant #he's very tired #needs a nap #he's been very bad though #he's grounded #until he learns how to be a man #soon. very soon #i believe he has a chance in life #he is going to be such a beautiful butterfly #you'll see. you'll all see #THEN YOU WILL REALIZE

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jakelace · 6 years

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2017 IN FILM - FINALE (TOP 10)

10. Molly’s Game

“I was raised to be a champion. My goal was to win. At what and against whom, those were just details.”

Let’s not beat around the bush on this one. My love for this film comes almost exclusively from my love for Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue. Sorkin’s quick-witted way of writing is certainly not realistic by any stretch of the imagination, but allows for great lines and a thrilling way of telling a true to life story that might otherwise come off as a bit bland. Molly’s Game follows Molly Bloom (expertly portrayed by Jessica Chastain) who became a target of the FBI after running an underground poker game for years. It’s a truly larger than life story, which, knowing Sorkin’s penchant for twisting facts for a better story, probably is. But in the moment that doesn’t matter. I was fully engrossed by the fast paced dialogue, the top-notch performances, and the thrilling pacing of this outstanding story.

9. The Disaster Artist

“Greg, you have to be the best. You have to be the best you can be. And never give up.”

When I first heard that a film was being made all about the making of one of the best so-bad-it’s-good films ever made, I was on board. Although I would have never predicted the end product would be something so inspirational. The Disaster Artist follows Greg Sestero who, after meeting the infamous Tommy Wiseau, moves to Los Angeles to star in The Room. While the comedy and performances surrounding this retelling of a cinema-changing event are certainly very well done, it’s the inspiration I found in Wiseau that made me love this film. It’s easy to laugh along at The Room for its utter incompetence as an example of the entire medium, but when I took a step back to look at the passion and love for this story that Wiseau so obviously had, and his uncompromising dedication to making sure his directorial vision shone through, I began to see the man behind the film in a much different light, and one that inspired me to ‘be the best I can be. And never give up.’ ‘What a story, Mark!’...okay, I’m done now.

8. The Big Sick

“I’m guessing it’s a young, single Pakistani woman who just happened to be driving by our house, which is on a cul-de-sac.”

I shouldn’t have waited to watch The Big Sick as long as I did. It became instantly clear as soon as the credits began to roll that this would become the new standard that all romantic comedies are held to. Kumail Nanjiani’s performance is one of the most hilarious and heart-breaking of the year as he plays himself in a dramatization of the time Emily V. Gordon, Nanjiani’s girlfriend at the time, went into a medically induced coma with a mysterious disease. The writing is what really stands out here, with the entirety of it being written by Gordon and Nanjiani themselves. The laugh-out-loud moments mixed with the emotionally moving plot, affected me in a way few films have, making this one of the greatest rom-coms to ever exist. Oh, also, Holly Hunter is hilarious in this.

7. Get Out

“Now you’re in the sunken place.”

Get Out’s position has fluctuated the most out of any other film this year. Unsurprisingly though, it has always stayed quite high. Jordan Peele’s debut film is one that even veteran directors would be proud to have made, considering there are so few movies that even come close to how clever this film is in both its horror and social commentary. Every frame is so jam-packed with details that, though they may feel arbitrary at the time, provide us with a deeper look at characters, their motivations, and even their deeper psychology. Every moment is important with no time being wasted. Every performance (especially Daniel Kaluuya’s) is layered and nuanced with excellent characterizations. Get Out is a horror masterpiece that I am certain will be looked back on with the highest regards in years to come.

6. Star Wars: The Last Jedi

“Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to.”

I would have never guessed that putting a Star Wars film this high on an end of the year list would warrant so much controversy, but here we are. While I can understand a few of the complaints surrounding a few moments in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I honestly cannot wrap my head around calling this an objectively bad film. It is quite possibly the most expertly shot and cleverly written film in the entire franchise, and the directions Rian Johnson decided to steer the franchise are some of the most exciting yet. It takes everything we thought we wanted out of a follow up to The Force Awakens and turns it on its head. It delivers wonderful characters to us, both new like Rose Tico, and old like Luke Skywalker. Most importantly, it gives me a story that makes me proud to be such a fan of a galaxy far, far away. Also, I’m now a huge fan of the space battles. I’m not really sure when or how that happened.

5. The Killing of a Sacred Deer

“A surgeon never kills a patient. An anesthesiologist can kill a patient, but a surgeon never can.”

Once again this year, we have another Colin Farrell led Yorgos Lanthimos film as my number five film of the year. While The Killing of a Sacred Deer is a different genre than last year’s The Lobster, his truly unique style of direction and dialogue remains. Lanthimos is a master at creating the cinematic feeling of an idyllic utopia, whilst making nearly every moving part feel off at the same time. His style is very ‘uncanny valley’ in that way, and while that may turn people off from his films, I can’t help but be glued to the screen. I was riveted by his off-kilter method of storytelling and his purposefully wooden dialogue. Farrell gives another great performance here, with Nicole Kidman stealing the show as she injects a small amount of actual emotion and fear into the picture. For those looking for something unconventional and disconcerting out of their cinema, I can’t recommend The Killing of a Sacred Deer enough.

4. Dunkirk

“If we go there we’ll die.”

Dunkirk is, without a doubt, Christopher Nolan’s most masterfully crafted film. Inception may still stand as my favorite, but when it comes to the sheer skill and effort on display, it’s nearly impossible to see this as anything less than a technical masterpiece. Nolan’s knack for creating emotional moments, intense heart-pounding action sequences, and non-linear stories perfectly works its way into the setting of World War 2, while also introducing me to an inspiring story I had never heard before. And yes, I still like to call this Anxiety: The Movie. If you’d like to read more of my thoughts on Nolan’s magnum opus, you can do so here.

3. Baby Driver

“The moment you catch feelings is the moment you catch a bullet.”

Though I don’t normally set up my rankings with subcategories in mind, if I did, Baby Driver would win Best Soundtrack without a single hesitation. Edgar Wright’s creative vision for this music-based heist film is absolutely stellar. Each scene is interwoven with music of all different sorts of genres and time-periods, with each of the heists and action sequences in the film playing out in-time with each song. It’s honestly a marvel that it was done this expertly. From the very opening scene I was smiling ear-to-ear and tapping my foot along with every backbeat and wheel-screech I could hear. Baby Driver, though fairly played-out in its story, survives and even thrives on the style that is oozing out of every frame. Edgar Wright is a directorial genius, and I can’t wait to see what he has up his sleeve next. Oh, and it you didn’t want to drive around listening to John Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms” directly after listening to this...you’re lying.

2. A Ghost Story

“I don’t think they’re coming.”

Rooney Mara eats an entire pie for four and half minutes in this film, and I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t bawling with every bite she took. That’s just A Ghost Story for you though. By the time the credits began to roll my face hurt because of how long I had been ugly crying. Though I’m certain not everyone will have this strong of a reaction to the film, David Lowery’s deeply introspective film about loss and the inability to stop time from slipping through our fingers struck a massive chord with me. Every small motion, every flashback to happier times, and every major life event that flashes by left me emotionally devastated. It tapped into my own personal fears about love and legacy and whether or not we’ll be remembered when we pass, all the while providing one of the most compelling stories about the supernatural using barely any dialogue at all. A Ghost Story is a fantastically made and deliberately paced film that will haunt me for years to come...sorry, that pun was just too easy.

1. Lady Bird

“Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?”

Here we are, my number one favorite film of 2017. It’s been a long time coming, and we’ve discussed many other great films from the year, but in the end it could have only been Lady Bird, couldn’t it? There’s a certain undeniable love and connection I feel to coming of age films, and Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical masterpiece is no exception to that. Lady Bird follows a young woman (Saoirse Ronan) in her last year of high-school as she struggles to make a place for herself in the world. Ronan is an absolute delight as Lady Bird and has a chance to show her range as one of the greatest up-and-coming actresses through outstanding comedy and emotionally heartfelt moments. It’s honestly hard for me to describe what it is I love about this film so much though. Like most coming of age films, everything I took from Lady Bird feels so personal to me. Gerwig’s writing is so uncannily realistic and resonant in my life because she is able to capture the wild absurdity of growing up while also handling complex issues and relationships in such interesting ways and through her weaving of nostalgia and comedy, she creates one of the greatest films about growing up that I have ever seen. I don’t want to spoil any larger character moments or fantastically written emotional climaxes, so I will leave you all with something I can say with the utmost confidence. Lady Bird is one of the few film experiences that everyone should have.

#Molly's Game #The Disaster Artist #The Big Sick #Get Out #Star Wars: The Last Jedi #The Killing of a Sacred Deer #Dunkirk #Baby Driver #A Ghost Story #Lady Bird

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paintedvanilla · 6 years

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While given the opportunity to be a part of Peter and the Starcatcher at my school, and getting to play Mack, I’ve been developing him extensively. A day didn’t go by where I didn’t think about him and how I wanted to portray him, which meant building him as a character. I wasn’t given a lot to work with (“a very bad sailor who wants to be anywhere but under the thumb of Bill Slank” “a victim of abuse” “the worlds most incompetent/inept sailor” according to the script and the wiki) but that didn’t stop me from aggressively developing him way further than I’m sure Rick Elice ever intended. Even though the show has been out for almost a month, here are some things I have decided about Mack, as I played him. Mentions of physical abuse under the cut.

His father was absent, he left his mom when he found out she was pregnant and he never came back

Lacking a father figure, Mack was raised solely by his mother

As a woman in 1885 London, she wasn’t exactly being snapped up by many job offers, even before coming across Mack’s father

She worked as a prostitute long before Mack was born and long after she had him

Mack is an only child

He loves his mother very much

He never grew to be very tall

He’s very clumsy and not very nimble

He got a job as a sailor to help his mother out with their financial situation, hoping if he worked hard enough he could pull them out of poverty and his mom wouldn’t have to keep working the job she had

Mack walked right up to the first man on the dock hiring at the tender age of eight and offered himself up for any job he would give him

Bill Slank, sensing the boys nativity and always eager to take advantage of someone, hired him on the spot

Mack has been working on The Neverland for nineteen years at the start of the show

Mack will do any kind of work, but he’s been a presence on the ship for so long he can mostly get away with supervising the other sailors

While all the other crew members are frightened of Slank, Mack is absolutely terrified of him, having endured his abuse since he was a child

Mack put up with the abuse from Slank for his mothers sake

Mack had been saving up for years to buy him and his mother a piece of land in the country

Slank pays him next to nothing, and Mack knows better than to ask for more

About three years before the show takes place, upon returning from a particularly long voyage, Mack is informed by his mothers coworkers that she’s passed away, presumably from an STD

Mack, consumed with grief, spends a small amount of his savings on getting blackout drunk, and returns to The Neverland because he has no where else to go

Slank is the only one still there, and before he can get pissed at Mack for barreling onto the ship in the middle of the night, Mack tells him his sob story

Slank, an orphan, doesn’t care to hear about Mack’s grief for his mother, so while Mack whines and cries Slank repeatedly hits him with a plunger

Slank isn’t interested in the slightest until he hears the part of the story involving money, specifically Mack saving up money to buy him and his mom their own land

Slank leaves Mack to his drunken wallowing and steals the rest of the money Mack didn’t spend drinking, which is a lot

When Mack wakes in the morning and can’t find his savings, he assumes he spent it all on his drinking spree

When he asks Slank what he did the night before and how he ended back up on the ship, Slank just whacks him with the plunger

The only reason Mack hasn’t left the crew is because of his standing superiority over the other sailors

Mack knows the chorus of the sea chanty sung at the beginning of the show, but he knows the last verse better than anyone (“call all hands to man the capstan / run the cable down the chrome / heave away and say goodbye boys / far from england far from home”)

His grief over his mother hardened him as a person, and he’s no longer very kind to any of the other sailors, except Alf

He and Alf often bitch about Slank together, being long time members of the crew

Alf is much older than Mack, but he’s been around since Mack first became a part of the crew,

Mack respects him more than anyone else

Mack is notorious at cheating at poker

Alf knows this, and he’ll always find an excuse to refuse a game when Mack offers

If anyone other than Mack had invited Alf to a game of poker during scene three, Alf would’ve accepted and neglected bringing food to the lost boys

Slank’s preferred methods of abusing Mack are the plunger and his whip; the branding iron was a new thing, and it was extremely effective

Mack is Slank’s favorite to beat up; he’s his punching bag

Mack, in turn, abuses the orphans smuggled in and out of London on The Neverland

Mack’s abuse of the orphans on the ship is a result of both his mother’s death and his long lasting hatred of Slank

Mack looks to treat someone the way Slank treats him, and children are an easy target

His favorite orphans to abuse are the brothers Pip and Pin, who are now young crew members

After The Neverland falls apart, Mack floats to the shore of Mollusk Island, clinging to the wheel of The Neverland

He celebrates Slank’s death the entire way there, until he drinks sea water and begins to hallucinate him coming up from the depths with a plunger

Mack knows the song Swim On and sings it to himself quietly as he floats towards the shore to calm himself; it’s a lullaby his mother used to sing him

Mack returns to London aboard The Wasp, and never returns to the sea

Mack has scars from his abuse on The Neverland, especially the P on his left hand, until he dies

#op #Peter and the Starcatcher #abuse #um feel free to ask me more!#i've had so much fun with him #ask to tag #also the plunger thing is a show joke

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hanzi83 · 7 years

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Birthday Blog

My birthday is soon approaching and what way to celebrate it by writing a detailed blog about my shitty life and my existence like every narcissistic asshole on the internet would do, and how it’s everyone else’s fault except mine, even though I do take my share of the blame, but the cowardly douche bags who constantly harass me, or spread rumors about me will never admit the shit they have pulled to get the perks they need while still keeping my life under their control and then play innocent about it.

If one thing I could get for my birthday would be my freedom, but I guess I will just have to settle for tickets to a wrestling show, because that is going to erase everything that has transpired the last couple of years, and how they have mentally beat me into going into therapy so they have further control of me, and then play innocent about their role in this, when most of the people I have interacted with in my life time are more mentally ill than I will ever be and then they can join their cults and programs to make it seem like they are just regular human beings, all while still being obsessed with the notion of me not being tortured enough mentally.

I will pay the price for even writing such a blog, “Shouldn’t you be partying on the weekend? Its summer time” I have no way to decipher between seasons anymore because my life is full of emptiness and boredom. I have nothing I really want to accomplish. I contest I should have been dead a long time ago, but they still insist on keeping me here, since people I know have told me that they need me to exist, or industry type will message me and tell me to start a podcast, and I have no desire to do anything. I want to be a waste of space, and I will continue to be that, because I will never be vindicated for what has been done to me.

People will justify the insults by saying “This guy is delusional” yet still have so much energy focused on such a delusional individual who isn’t supposed to matter, yet a lot of these radio shows need me on their program and constantly use their resources to fuck with me anonymously and have that luxury to hide whatever the fuck they are doing, because if their fan base were aware of what deeply disturbing practices they are taking part in, they would be seen as the most mentally ill people on the planet, but don’t worry guys, these same people will be sweet enough to leave a suicide hotline number to show they give a fuck, when in reality if they did, they would expose what kind of vultures run the shadiness in those industries.

These people will hate me so much but then to my face show respect. They are already having a good enough life stealing people from my life and then getting their own perks for what they partook in and its still not good enough, they can’t have me exposing it or complaining about it, when in reality it’s the only thing I have. I don’t care for these people anymore because they don’t give a fuck about me. If I do go seek help, it will be recorded so they know what I am thinking, because they all have inner connections within these programs. So there is no true freedom I face. It’s also why I don’t go and pursue any woman to be with me, because most of these relationships are fake, which is why most of these closeted dudes are stuck in those relationships and hate that I point it out so they take their anger out on me but again they would never do it under their own accounts because they are cowardly cunts.

A lot of the heroes you look up to aren’t the good people you think they are. They invest in troll accounts to fuck with mentally ill people, because in their own industry they have been used as sex slaves and can’t get their mental freedom back, while making it seem they enjoy their lives, but they wouldn’t invest into too much trolls if they were truly enjoying it. Then these industry pussies give other people shit for needing safe spaces, when they are the ones who have safe spaces. “I can’t let the world know I am really a piece of shit and a fucking disturbed individual so I need to troll a fat Pakistani in his mothers basement and take out all my anger on him”

I don’t have to worry about saying this because none of those pussies will ever confront me about what I have said, they are too busy hiding behind their fake accounts and pretending they are making a living doing what they say they do, but the truth is they aren’t, they are expendable and this is the only way they can make any kind of an impact in someone’s life because again they are miserable shit heads who hide behind their luxuries and could never ever admit what kind of person they are.

I hope my words affect your brain and it makes you think about it constantly to the point where you can’t sleep at night, I know even though you perform in your community orgies and get access to other people’s lives and know what they are doing all the time, you will still feel like shit because you can’t be honest about anything. You needed me to get whatever you received and you all owe me a thank you for being connected to a powerful radio show that handed you the answers to work hard after the fact.

My only birthday wish would be for Howard Stern to be exposed, but none of these pussies in the media or in the industry will ever say anything, but they will pretend they are out for justice in the world, yet you let people like Stern get away with all the evil shit he has done, or I think he has done, while you think you are edgy because you make jokes about race, transgender people, gay people etc but you would never speak badly about the shock jock who has a dual citizenship and shills for the perpetuated hatred towards Muslims and whether he wants to acknowledge it or not had a hand in people wanting them dead. The blood is on his hands, and you people will stay silent for it. None of you are real journalists, when you are scared to go at that guy. You will tuck your tail between your legs and be quiet about it.

Realize this, if it ever does leak out, you will all owe me an apology and that is probably why you will work harder not to say anything because why let me be vindicated for anything that I have had to go through and how much people I know partook in mentally torturing me. These people are parents and are supposed to be responsible contributors to society, and this is the kind of stuff they do. Realize if you are in the media and you are not exposing what kind of exploitation Stern has done to people who have made his show, and has used under handed tactics in ensuring that people like me call in and constantly be berated but being ensured we would be rewarded for it, you will not get to speak with me. I know right now it seems like it doesn’t matter, because I am in my mother’s basement on a Friday Night, but when it does come to the surface, you will be needing me. I won’t budge for you though because you didn’t even fight to expose this kind of shit. You let him become this edgy shock jock who exploited all the negative taboos like they were the coolest thing, while the system allowed him to do so while pretending they were against him and were fucking with him.

These same “liberals” claim they hate Trump and want to expose everything about him, but for some reason you won’t touch the fact that Stern has contributed behind the scenes to his campaign and it must be some shred of truth to that because ever since I have been calling it out, slowly but surely Stern has been making fun of Trump a little more, not entirely, but is doing everything he can to seem like a likable liberal dude. They will make excuses that no one cares what Stern is doing because he is irrelevant, but behind the scenes he is still powerful.

Half the stories you try to humiliate the black celebrities with, I can guess that someone like Stern is guilty of a lot of that stuff too. I can’t prove it, but no one would even try to insinuate that because all these radio hacks are scared of him and instead of actually coming up with creative radio, they are just doing his old bits. Oh my god, lets complain about your shitty breakfast not coming in on time, or wait how about the gag of humiliating your producer for being incompetent. I haven’t heard those ones before. They want you to think someone doing what the right wing types think are edgy is some martyr shit, and by these so called liberals trying to censor everything, you give that shit more life, and you help blurry the lines of what is free speech and what is not.

If you want to talk about edgy stuff then talk about how different factions that have obtained power in this world, whether its for good or bad, can essentially enlist someone into a program and spy on them and fuck with them constantly. Then they have their system supplied trolls mock people about it like they know nothing will be done. I keep having trolls send me links of how they can use different methods of bugging your house and the electronics, and furniture inside it. This is how they keep track of people, but these same loveable liberals will just use the mental illness card against you, and when it comes to these issues, you are no different than the right wing assholes who bombard comment sections under the orders of their corporate overlords to say the most ignorant and racist things and drive people to wanting to be isolated. None of you don’t give a shit, or just admit that media outlets only report on stuff they are allowed to, because exposing a powerful radio host who has government connections isn’t on the priority list. But you have enough time to report on a joke Lil Duval told about transgender people, whether you thought it was funny or not, I don’t think it’s something that should make headline news, while you constantly protect the Zionists in the industry who have done much worse to black people especially.

Now when you say Zionist, they even allow the white supremacists to use that word and the same type of arguments so they can lump everyone who calls out the powerful Jewish people, who don’t actually give a fuck about Jewish people themselves, just like I as a Muslim am supposed to denounce the backwards assholes who claim to be religious and do horrible things. No one wants to admit that part though, you get labeled an Anti-Semite for even slightly criticizing Israel, and they have generalized that too with their stupid “DOES ANYONE THINK JEWS RUN THE MEDIA LOLZ” but none of these “social justice warriors” who rep a limited form of feminism, even though people are still having to blow someone to get a cosign, but will never go that extra mile to report on the guy who has helped perpetuate a culture of making guys think women are the shadiest people and they are no good whores, like Stern has. That is what discredits all these feminists when they claim they are but they are still buddying up and sucking up to Howard Stern. It just tells me you aren’t really for it, and until you call out his antics, and you won’t because Howard will use his power to have you eat out of a doggie dish for not being subservient enough to him, and he will make other dudes do gay stunts for him, because to Howard being gay or being with a transgender person is supposed to be discrediting, even though he claims he advocates for their rights etc, but he still makes fun of them and spreads rumors about me doing that, because I have tried to expose that he makes people do gay things on his show to get any type of air time.

I didn’t want to partake in a gay segment, when his weasel contributor Shuli asked me to play a game where there are 2 truths and one lie, but he insisted that the one lie has to be something gay, and when I said “Nah that’s cool, I don’t really want to do that” then the game was basically dropped. He has made the departed Joey Boots make out with a dude to get back in the good graces of the show, and then Boots used that label of him being gay, to go out and harass minorities and spew his racial hatred. Boots also was a patsy during 9/11 because he was one of Howard’s actors to give a report of what was happening in the street and perpetuating the hatred towards Muslims.

So now the Stern show trolls are spreading rumors that I kissed another dude or that I have been with a transgender person. None of those are true, and if they were I wouldn’t give a shit because there is nothing wrong with being gay or being with a transgendered person. But it shows you how Mr Progressive still thinks those kind of rumors are what discredits someone. If you were a progressive about those issues, you would denounce people like Stern, but guys like Judd Appatow would never do that, and the token minorities he has at his disposal would never call that out, they will call out the minority celebrities etc who do something wrong. Let’s go after Dave Chappelle for making a transgender joke, even though the joke isn’t really disrespecting someone for being transgendered. And trust me with stuff I said in the past, these same assholes will get their token brown dudes to call me out.

So anyways happy birthday to me, fuck Robin’s birthday, if you want to get me a good gift, the only gift I will take are being in a coma for the rest of my life so I never have to speak to anyone I know ever again and have to see how much better their lives are than mine, then show it off in subtle ways or exposing Stern. None will ever happen. I have been eating fatty foods and smoking cigarettes, but I am still here unfortunately. I wish I was gone because the other side is so much better than what this life is, and I frankly hate the lies that exist on this earth and how fake everyone is and how much politicking a fan base exists and how you have to buy off people’s opinions to get a good review. Fuck that. If you like me, like me, if you don’t then don’t. Fuck the politics. Fuck everyone.

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#Hanzi 2017 Howard Stern Show Illuminati Birthday Blog Trolls Harassment Secrets Secrecy Insanity Mental Illness Exposing Zionism Liberals #Conservatives politics fan base horrible rumors cowardly paid trolls safe spaces

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johnseminario · 7 years

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The Fast & The Curious

With Fate Of The Furious speeding into theaters in just a few days, I decided to finally sit down and watch every Fast & Furious film for the very first time! Buckle up, mi familia, because it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

The Fast And The Furious

The Fast And The Furious literally begins with a truck heist. I get that there was a greater emphasis on street racing early on in this series, but to argue that these films “actually used to be about cars” might be a bridge too far. This movie is about an undercover cop attempting to get in good with a gang of street racers to ultimately bust whoever it is stealing all of the DVD players.

Favorite Moment: Vin Diesel shouting “NOS!” right before the car blows up.

2 Fast 2 Furious

While it certainly is nice to see the unconventional method of naming these movies become a thing so early on in the series, this one has very little going for it outside of that. 2 Fast 2 Furious is bad, but definitely not as bad as I was led to believe. Roman Pearce is a fun character with some good moments, and he and Brian work well as friends/partners, but everything else is largely forgettable. Oh right, Ludacris is also in this one!

Favorite Moment: Roman Pearce shouting “EJECT-O SEAT-O, CUZ!” right before he eject-o seat-o’s one of Carter Verone’s hired goons, obviously.

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift

Man, this movie is so much better than 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Han is still unquestionably the best character in the entire series. That being said, I understand why people would dislike it. At best, it’s The Car-ate Kid. At worst, it’s essentially The Fast And The Furious: Gaiden. Still, Han is a phenomenal character, drifting is cool, and the main character literally settles a debt with the Yakuza by winning a drift race so who gives a shit!

Favorite Moment: “Man, do you even know what ‘DK’ stands for?” / “Donkey Kong?” / “Drift King.”

Fast & Furious

Fast & Furious obviously lays the groundwork for everything that is to come, but it takes itself far too seriously. Also, they specifically went out of their way to set it before Tokyo Drift so why the heck is Han only in the very beginning of the film? The drug tunnel scenes were cool, though, and it was nice to finally see Brian and Dom onscreen together again. Oh, and Gal Gadot is in this one!

Favorite Moment: I mean yeah, the drug tunnel stuff.

Fast Five

I wish I had known going into this that it would be the last time I ever considered Tokyo Drift the best film in the series. It was my favorite for a long time and I will cherish it always... but Fast Five is so damn good. The Rock is incredible, all of the action is exceptionally well done, and the filmmakers make good on the reuinion that was only teased in Fast & Furious, pulling characters from every previous film into this one. Brian and Roman are messing with each other, Han and Giselle are flirting with each other, and Ludacris... is a hacker now? Sure, I guess that works. This was the payoff. This was the moment every longtime fan got to get up out of their seat and jump for joy. Everyone was here under one roof. It all feels like a good version of The Avengers.

Favorite Moment: I’m a sucker for a good “gathering the team” montage, and this one was real good.

Favorite Moment, Runner Up: The Rock looks over to his teammate, who is pinned under a jeep, when he sees a live grenade drop right in front of the helpless guy... and then another grenade drops next to that one. And the entire scene was in slow motion. Goddammit, that was hilarious. Rest in peace, Rock’s teammate.

Fast & Furious 6

In many ways, Fast & Furious 6 just feels like more Fast Five, but in many other ways, it also feels even better. All of the heavy hitters from the previous film return again, and even minor characters that you maybe didn’t know you remembered make a re-appearance. With so many cameos, it’s nice that none of this fan service ever feels forced and, instead, feels in service of the plot first and foremost. Also, Han essentially becomes a legitimately tragic character by the end of the film, so there’s that. I still have no idea how Ludacris got so good at hacking.

Favorite Moment: It’s a small thing, but I really enjoyed the fight scene between Han/Roman and Owen Shaw’s goon. Han is the coolest and Roman is the cockiest, so it was neat to see them be totally incompetent fighters. Not everyone can be good at everything.

Furious 7

For just how gradually the previous films ramped up in craziness, Furious 7 feels borderline too over-the-top at times. Jason Statham single handedly takes out an entire SWAT team, the Rock falls out of a three story window and has little more than a broken arm in a cast to show for it (which he will later flex out of when Dom and his crew need his help ((which ultimately leads to him driving an ambulance off of an overpass to destroy a drone pursuing Letty and Ramsey (((after which he removes the drone’s machine gun and uses it to shoot down an enemy helicopter)))))), and Vin Diesel duels Statham atop a parking garage with various repair tools and broken pieces of metal. This movie is nuts. But then you have the situation of real-life Paul Walker’s death, which the filmmakers handle super gracefully, paying their respects to both Walker, the actor, and Brian, the character he brought to life. To balance those two very different tones and to have it feel natural is no easy task, and the fact that the filmmakers have been so consistently good about getting into and out of those heavier character moments across all of these films speaks to the quality of writing that really is there.

Favorite Moment: You know what, the Paul Walker send off. That was legitimately touching and a great way to pay respect to his character.

Epilogue

Every few years, I would see yet another new trailer for yet another new Fast & Furious movie and I just wouldn’t understand it. “What the fuck do people see in these films?” I would think to myself, certain that the only people who could possibly enjoy these movies were brain dead morons who liked loud action movies, cool cars that go fast, and Vin Diesel. Those all sounded great on paper, I guess, but how do things like that keep a franchise going for years?

And hey, I’m not willing to discount the idea that there are plenty of people out there who are just in it for the super dumb shit.

I think there’s something admirable, though, about just how well everyone tasked with making these movies handles everything. These films do so many things way better than they need to. They found a way to turn paper thin characters into people with actual personalities. They went from a story about stealing DVD players to a story about, essentially super spies, and it somehow all found its way there naturally. They accidentally created a legitimately fantastic ensemble cast. These films know what they’re about, but they actively decide to be more because they care about these characters. And you know what? So do I.

Seriously though, I have no idea how Ludacris got so good at hacking.

Final Ranking

Fast Five

Fast & Furious 6

The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift

Furious 7

The Fast And The Furious

Fast & Furious

2 Fast 2 Furious

What do you know, it really is about family!

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