#anyway manifesting her in episode two <3

[thatfeelinwhenyou]

KINDRED — yang jungwon

It’s your final year of highschool, and your only goal is to graduate top of your cohort, as usual. Except as student council president, your advisor can’t seem to leave you alone. What happens when you take Decelis Academy’s top student, their star taekwondo athlete and put them in front of a camera?

“Kindred” a student documentary. Pilot episode airing tonight on TVN 7PM KST.

PAIRING: athlete!jungwon x stucopres!fem!reader

FEATURING: enhypen, yunjin from lesserafim, ryujin and chaeryeong from itzy, chanelle from runext, beomgyu and taehyun from txt, wonyoung from ive, gunwook and gyuvin from zb1 etc.

GENRE: high school au, enemies to lovers, nerd x athlete, forced proximity, slice of life, coming of age, he fell first and harder, fluff, ANGST, teen drama, slow burn ish?

WARNINGS: contains profanities, horrible attempt at humour, urban lingo, probably cringy, kys/kms jokes, depression jokes, sexual innuendos (nothing too inappropriate), depiction of violence, reader can be a little bit annoying at first, family drama, incorrect timestamps/information, no fixed faceclaims, not proofread etc.

STATUS: completed! (01/09/2023 – 18/03/2024)

AUTHOR’S NOTE: please read! story concept is heavily inspired by the kdrama ‘our beloved summer’ other than that the storyline is completely original (or so i assume since i manifested this out from the crevices of my pea brain). i’ll try to keep this one to ard 30 chapters (who am i kidding). chapters with ‘(hw)’ next to them indicates that they are half-written, in case y’all skip over it! as always, the content and depiction of the characters in this smau do not in anyway represent them in real life. also i know how twitter has been rebranded to x, but we’re just gonna continue calling it twitter. lastly, if you do end up enjoying, please do like, comment (love reading your comments btw), and reblog so this can reach!! without further ado, enjoy!

TAGS: #tfwy kindred #tfwy smau

TEASER

profile. one | two | three

episode 1 - ratatouille and the underdogs

episode 2 - one way ticket to university

episode 3 - do you take constructive criticism?

episode 4 - unsolicited but appreciated

episode 5 - the art of benevolence

episode 6 - taekwondo-anti

episode 7 - beating the mentally ill allegations

episode 8 - can’t help it, i’m a libra

episode 9 - operation we-don’t-really-hate-each-other (hw)

episode 10 - she’s an oscar award winning actress

episode 11 - someone like me (hw)

episode 12 - ‘female-lead-realising-the-bad-boy-isnt-actually-that-bad’ arc

episode 13 - 5 foot 9 garfield meets avatar

episode 14 - yn the heterosexual

episode 15 - the ynwon getting closer montage :p

episode 16 - to the moon and back

episode 17 - eat 2 left toes

episode 18 - you are approved! (hw)

episode 19 - asking for a friend

episode 20 - rediscovering won’s ability to love

episode 21 - beomgyu’s 99999 eq

episode 22 - ynwon get together or else >:(

episode 23 - “hate”

episode 24 - not all problems can be solved with a formula

episode 25 - H.O.M.E.W.R.E.C.K.E.R

episode 26 - collecting facebook milfs like pokémons

episode 27 - you were brighter than the moon (hw)

episode 28 - no matter shrimp or whale, you deserve to flap your tail

episode 29 - the garden is full of surprises (hw)

episode 30 - weapon of mass destruction

episode 31 - the name above me (hw)

episode 32 - no offense but she’s a cockblocker

episode 33 - the bane of my existence (hw)

episode 34 - risky risky wiggy wigi this is an emergency

episode 35 - live my life on my terms (hw)

episode 36 - separation anxiety goes crazy

episode 37 - paparizzki

episode 38 - is it too late now to say Sorry?

episode 39 - everything will work out just the way you want it to (hw)

episode 40 (finale) - her entire being is loveable (written)

epilogue - kindred, signing off part 1 | part 2

bonus chapters!

yunjin x heeseung

i can fight

Copyright© 2023 thatfeelinwhenyou All Rights Reserved

#enhypen #heeseung #sunghoon #belift #jungwon #hybe #jay #iland #jake #sunoo #niki #riki #yang jungwon #jungwon smau #jungwon x reader #yang jungwon smau #yang jungwon x reader #enhypen social media au #high school au #enhypen scenarios #enha smau #enhypen angst #enhypen smau #enhypen fluff #enhypen crack #tfwy smau #tfwy kindred

[rewritingcanon]

next gen fav games:

albus: there’s two sides of him— dead by daylight (he forces scorpius to play just so he can bully the shit out of him and hear him scream on his mic when he gets jumpscared) or omori (someone check up on him maybe…)

scorpius: minecraft (he likes to be the housewife making his house look pretty whilst albus goes out and mines for their family of mushroom cows) and little misfortune (yeah he also needs a check up)

rose: sims 4 (how she deals with her god complex)

james: silent hill (says it’s because the protag is named after him but he’s actually very mentally ill and resonates with the manifestation of self-punishment)

lily: mortal kombat 11 (for the fatality, but mostly for mileena)

hugo: fortnite (bro is a toddler and likes to attend the concerts) and my singing monsters (bro was feeling… musical)

teddy: hades (local pansexual genderfluid sillyman lets himself get slain by the hot villains again) and baldurs gate 3 (for literally the same reasons except add character customisation)

victoire: cooking dash (she likes to feel stressed) and the witcher 3 (shes never played another witcher game)

lorcan: fnaf (he always thinks hes done with it and then a new game or dlc comes out) and it takes two (he forces lysander to play with him obvi)

lysander: little nightmares 2 (only game that had him shook)

fred: detroit: become human (loves story-based games and choose your own adventure) and batman: the telltale series (same reasons)

roxanne: telltale’s the walking dead (simply cant move on from any of the games except the third one)

dominique: the last of us (she’s an elitist and will yap about this game at any given chance)

louis: played doki doki literature club when he was 12 and that was it for bro (….core memories were made)

molly: resident evil 3 (she likes them all but is obsessed with jill) but also life is strange (she’s probably gay)

lucy: when asked will tell you its pathologic (which she still loves a lot and is an elitist about) but it’s secretly danganronpa (she likes feeling smart when she connects clues leave her alone)

yann: final fantasy 7 (hes obsessed with the world and its the only game he can play)

polly: amanda the adventurer (to no one’s surprise)

karl: roblox (he’s been banned on so many different servers for bullying little children and is one of the most infamous hated users in his continent)

craig: league of legends (he’s a bit of a loser) and injustice: gods among us (he needs to win the challenges and unlock the characters)

sophia: stardew valley (she wants to live in a world without conflict (she will get stressed over it anyway))

delphi: couldn’t play video games (she would’ve loved fran bow though)

alice: episode (she spends an embarrassing amount on gems)

frank: arkham knight (he’s literally batman guys) and what remains of edith finch (he has range guys)

auggie: project sekai (they need to go take a shower)

#literally made this whole list just to say james would be really into silent hill. this is non negotiable #sorry theyre all mainstream i am clearly not a gamer 😭😭 #rose granger weasley #scorpius malfoy #albus severus potter #james sirius potter #lily luna potter #teddy lupin #victoire weasley #dominique weasley #louis weasley #roxanne weasley #fred weasley ii #molly weasley ii #lucy weasley #alice longbottom ii #frank longbottom ii #auggie longbottom #craig bowker jr #polly chapman #karl jenkins #yann fredericks #sophia barclay #lysander scamander #hugo weasley #lorcan scamander #delphini riddle #hpcc #hp nextgen #rewriting

[heartgold]

as much as it's frustrating how only two of the umi episodes were penned by Sayo in the irl layer, I think it's fascinating to compare them with each other because so much becomes clear when you look at the writing choices in each one side by side

the specific ways in which Legend and Turn differ from each other makes me certain that one was among the first message bottles she wrote whereas the other was one of the last, but it's not clear which is which -- it depends on how you interpret her internal journey and process of creating all these tales and fragments. Sayo's writing as a whole is very marked by her personal observations of the sins and struggles of the family and using them as mirrors to actually write about herself, using characters as stand-ins that give voice to her own inner thoughts, but both stories are very different in tone and approach

Legend feels almost methodical with the ways the murders and illusions are carried out, and the way her resentment manifests is more controlled, understated. you need to wring it around a bit more to 'see', but in my understanding: it's interesting how the 3 cousins are all made to suffer incredible grief losing their parents and love interests in quick succession (Battler being the only adult cousin who only lost his parents and not a love interest feels important to get him to remember!), but they live until the end then get invited to the Golden Land and choose to resurrect their lost love. By contrast, Natsuhi is put through the wringer through and through while being given the opportunity to be the star of the episode with her struggles as a woman taking the center of the stage, only to lose a duel (!) to Beatrice and be denied entry in the very last moment. there's a lot of conflicting emotions all over the place in both cases which is of course very characteristic of Sayo but I'm fascinated by how the cousins' entire role in this episode is to lose everything they had, experience earth-shattering grief and be led towards a romanticized afterlife where they can heal that grief, making the choice to resurrect the love that was lost, whereas Natsuhi's role is to mirror and portray Sayo's actual interiority and struggles (many that were caused by Natsuhi herself!) that went unspoken her whole life and then be challenged to a duel and get shot. to shoot Natsuhi is to shoot herself. shooting her actual personhood and interiority and struggles to death. as a metaphor for the entire ceremony of Beatrice's revival being a suicide in order to pass on into the afterlife where compartmentalized parts of herself can simultaneously exist as whole and find happiness with their respective love interests. the final step of rejecting reality, seeking love by truly becoming fictional while the human heart of the actress behind the characters dies buried between the lines of the text unless you 'see' it. god she makes me insane. anyway

Turn by comparison is very brutal. Beatrice steps onto the gameboard and is at her cruelest here, and the deliberate narrative choices are dripping with anger, helplessness and sorrow. everything about the focus given to Rosa in her role as the main accomplice who only had eyes for gold vs the framing of the tragedy as the gift of a halloween party for Maria, the wolves and sheep allegory, the way Shannon and Kanon get repeatedly kicked around for trying to resist their fate and wanting to believe in love despite everything. Kanon's "corpse" being desecrated by being forcefully resurrected twice, not being allowed death. the barely contained sexual conflict and trauma in the themes and imagery all over the episode. the way Sayo personally kills Jessica and George and her personas are killed along with them, an utter rejection of the possibility of being loved in reality as something that can only happen in death and fiction, so they all get to die together and be connected by their souls, all portrayed as the innocent victims of a vicious witch. the unspoken horror of one of the few true closed rooms in the game, with Sayo physically killing herself while facing herself in the mirror after doing all that. no one could dispute that a coffin is a closed room. and with closed rooms in this game often symbolizing being trapped in your own logic even though the door was unlocked all along, it absolutely stands for Sayo giving up all hope. Beatrice won, the gold won, the family's curse won, Sayo's worst feelings regarding herself won. Kinzo won too, even as a dead puppet haunting the narrative, he 'lives' to the end and gets his miracle of meeting Beatrice granted again. just that says a lot. Turn is horror after horror and you can only fully grasp that with the context for her writing choices

Legend feels relatively composed and deliberate in its choices of allegory. it also carries a lot of pain and conflicted feelings (particularly with the way she hatewrote Battler in it) but the text in Turn is basically bleeding all of her self hatred and suicidality and conflict over the idea of being loved. Legend is for the most part a straightforward mystery embellished in illusions with her heart still very baked into the text, and it has a big focus on solvability (Eva as the main accomplice basically points Battler toward the solution... which he rejects) and gambling/risk-taking, with multiple moments where Sayo left things out of her hands and up to chance, making it so that she could've been stopped even by accident. and then Turn is basically an eruption of all the horrible feelings churning in her heart. it says a lot that in Legend, she left the people she loved the most alive until the end, as if hoping until the very end for the miracle that at least one of them would see through her and stop her from murdering them, while Turn kills off the cousins (barring Battler due to being the detective) and then herself before the ceremony even ends, destroying all outcomes beyond utter annihilation. Turn is absolutely about her surrendering and leaning right into the illusion she casts on herself of being an irredeemable monster, so Beatrice absolutely plays into that role here. fitting that it ends with Battler surrendering, too

the sheer tonal contrast between these two message bottles tells a story of the journey of how Sayo's mental state changed as she kept writing and running over her murder-suicide plans over and over again -- it can either show her hope and composure deteriorating as she resigned herself to accepting her dead-end of fate (Legend -> Turn) OR the raw emotion she felt in the beginning of the writing frenzy dissipating as she kept going, any result being a satisfactory outcome but still focusing on planning out a difficult but fair mystery, staking her hopes onto the miracle of having it solved by the person who shared her personal philosophy on mysteries (Turn -> Legend). I don't like relying on Confessions too much as "confirmation" of Sayo-related things because it doesn't sit well with me, but if you go by the way it portrayed the process, then it strongly suggests the latter explanation

wish we could have seen more of the countless tales she personally wrote because you can see so much of her personhood hidden within the text, her thought processes, personal views and authoral voice all providing characterization, but the two we got already tell entire untold stories. it's funny that the two first episodes are usually thought of as the least interesting ones on a first read when they're the ones with the most firsthand insight into the culprit's heart and how she felt about everything. the sorrows and pain but the strength of will and hope too

#umineko #umineko spoilers #◇ #suicide cw #literally the character of all time. if u even care

[cross-my-heartt]

Nitpicking episode four (affectionately so)

I know this may be controversial but sometimes we nitpick things out of love and that is very much the case for me here.

I love so much about episode four and much of it has already been talked about but I would still tweak some things to make it perfect because I'm an incorrigible Crosshair girlie and I'll both dissect and cherish every moment he's in the limelight while it still lasts.

Anyway without further ado

1.) Crosshair's recklessness. I love me a trigger happy sniper but my man would never come so close to decking that imperial officer.

By all means that should have been Omega. Crosshair's motto has always been playing it safe (the thematic manifestation of dispatching danger from a safe distance). The point of him staying with the Empire is that despite the drawbacks and the Empire's moral corruption, they would have been 'safer' there.

Crosshair is willing to tolerate a lot if it's in the name of safety and the only times he's downright reckless is when he's pushed to the brink (killing Nolan, escaping Tantiss). Omega on the other hand has already shown that she has a lower tolerance for injustice. Her standing up to Hemlock earlier in the season was a reminder of that and it would have been more consistent to make her the one nearly provoked into a confrontation here.

So I would have had him holding her back here seeing as assessing danger and realizing the benefit of laying low is something Crosshair should be better at between the two of them.

2.) Huge missed opportunity to make Crosshair and Omega cooperate during the gambling scene. It was fun to see them bump heads but I would have loved to see more of them cooperating in creative ways, like Crosshair using reflections to see the officer's hand and helping Omega cheat the game.

Otherwise I would have made it a game of Dejarik. Because we have context for her being good at that while we haven't seen her play much sabacc so far. It's kind of like saying that if you're good at chess you're automatically good at poker.

3.) This could just be me but that moment where it seemed like Crosshair was about to let Omega go after Batcher alone felt off for his character. Crosshair lives to fight for a cause and I'm pretty sure it's been established that Omega is that cause now.

The best explanation I can think of is that he was bluffing and I can completely see him doing that in an attempt to change her mind. If it were me I would have made it look more like a dropped bluff and less like a 'this could have gone either way situation'.

4.) Would have loved to see them resolve the escape situation a bit more creatively too. I'm not a fan of the all the creature moments (don't love them in the new Vader run either) and a cute little team up between these two, combining their shooting abilities and using stealth and the terrain in their favor would have been cool to see. And just imagine Crosshair caving in at the very end, agreeing to let the animals go anyway after Omega has puppy eyed him into doing it.

Ten out of ten would have lived for that.

5.) The tremor. Where is it?? Why aren't we seeing more of it??? This really should be a bigger deal, I really need it to be a bigger deal. Yes, we see him miss a lot of shots but I need more.

6.) Reunion. This is the hardest for me to criticize because it does make for some great drama and a great cliffhanger but I'm more for putting character before entertainment.

The only way I see them making dagger eyes at someone they were ride or die determined to rescue not too long ago is if they still suspect Crosshair of setting up some kind of trap. Which is a bit of a reach this far into the plot.

Character wise it just isn't a logical decision for me.

But yeah, I suppose it all depends on where they take this scene from here. Let me know what you think.

#tbb crosshair #the bad batch #tbb spoilers #the bad batch spoilers

[canonmisogynyvictimstournament]

PROPAGANDA

CORDELIA CHASE (BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER/ANGEL THE SERIES) (CW: Pregnancy)

1.) (downs an entire bottle of vodka and slams it back on the table) SO. CORDY. Cordy started off as a supporting character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the start she was your typical high school mean girl character, but as the show went on we got to see more depth to her character: her insecurities, her courage, her capacity for incredible acts of kindness. Then after the third season she moved into the show’s spin off, Angel, where from the beginning she was basically the show’s secondary protagonist. Her and Angel were the two mainstays of the show’s main cast, she gets the most episodes centered on her out of all the characters aside from Angel (and yes, I’ve checked), and we really got to see her grow from a very shallow and self-centered and kind of mean person to a true hero who was prepared to give up any chance at a normal life to fight the good fight while still never losing the basic core of her character. There were some… questionable moments like the episode where she gets mystically pregnant with demon babies and things got a bit iffy like halfway through season 3 where the writers seemed to run out of ideas for what to do with her outside of sticking her in this romance drama/love triangle situation with the main character but overall, pretty good stuff right? THEN SEASON 4 HAPPENED. In season 4 she gets stripped of literally all agency and spends pretty much the entire season possessed by an evil higher power, and while possessed she sleeps with Angel’s teenage son (who BY THE WAY she had helped raise as a baby before he got speed-grown-up into a teenager it was a whole thing don’t worry about it) and gets pregnant with like. the physical manifestation of the higher power that’s possessing her. it’s about as bad and stupid as it sounds and also is like the third time cordy’s got mystically pregnant in this show and like the fourth mystical pregnancy storyline overall (you will be hearing more on that note in other submissions I’m so sorry). after giving birth she goes into a coma, in which she remains for the rest of season 4 and the first half of season 5. SPEAKING OF WHICH DON’T THINK SEASON 5 IS GETTING OFF SCOT FREE HERE. yeah so in season 5 the show just FULLY starts trying to erase cordy’s existence. she gets mentioned ONCE in the first episode and then never again until halfway through the season where she wakes up, helps out Angel for a bit and encourages him in his fight against evil, and then goes quietly into that good night and dies so it can be all sad and tragic. I’d call it the worst fridging of all time but even THAT feels generous because the whole point of fridging is killing off a female character so a man can be sad, and after Cordy dies basically no one’s even sad about it because the show immediately goes back to pretending she never existed. she is not mentioned ONCE in the two episodes after she dies. in the whole stretch of time between her death and the end of the season she gets mentioned exactly four times. again, I counted. anyway the fun twist to all of this is that all of this happened because the actress who played cordy got pregnant before season 4 and joss whedon was so pissed off about this affecting his plans for the show that he decided to completely fuck over her character and then fire her and write her out of the show. so cordy’s a victim of both writing AND real life misogyny!! good times!!

2.) OH SO MANY THINGS they menaced by giving her terrible hair cuts, making her seem like she’d get together with the guy she loves (and who loves her back) but instead she was killed and when she was brought back, she got possessed by an evil entity who used her body to give birth to itself. afterwards she was in a long coma and died. her character was so throughoutly assassinated

3.) She got demonically pregnant TWICE - there was this real sense of a womb/ability to get pregnant as like, a place for evil to get in. She got positioned as femme fatale and evil mother. The actress basically got fired for being pregnant, and when she agreed to come back for a single final episode she specifically said they could do anything but kill off the character. Guess what happened

MISA AMANE (DEATH NOTE) (CW: Imprisonment, Torture)

1.) Misa is treated so phenomenally poorly by the writers of Death Note. She is devoted enough to Kira’s cause to sacrifice half her lifespan for the additional power to see people’s names just by seeing their faces (you need a face and a name to kill someone with the Death Note), and she takes the time to understand everything about it. She, a random civilian, is able to find Kira all by herself by being clever, and she’s very devoted to Kira and Kira’s cause. You would think this would earn her some respect and make her a force in the narrative in opposition both to L’s lawfulness and Light’s god complex (because Misa is a true believer, while Light is some dude with a god complex and a willingness to commit mass murder to further it), but no, the moment she meets Light she falls hopelessly in love with him (not just Kira according to her), pledges her loyalty to him, and agrees to mindlessly follow him, with her sole condition being that he can’t date other girls (and if he tried to, she’d kill the other girl; note how this is not a threat on LIGHT’S life) and has to date her and at least pretend to love her. You would think, again, that these would become problems that potentially fuck Light over, but they are mild inconveniences at best. And, despite her ability to find Kira and only get found out by bullshit trace DNA and pollen nonsense that she, again as a random civilian with no knowledge of forensics that honestly sound SO FAKE (really, trace pollen from something that is super rare and exists near her apartment but few other places? Trace pollen that got in the shit she put together INDOORS? Come on, that’s SUCH bullshit, and SO contrived), had no way of knowing existing. Because she DID circumvent all the ways she’d incriminate herself that a normal person would know about, but because they got her on the SMALLEST SHIT, they’re like “oh, she’s an idiot.” And it’s not in a “oh, look at these guys, underestimating her” way, it’s in an “oh yeah, they’re 100% right, she’s an idiot” way.

EVERYONE in universe regards her as an idiot, both when she’s just known as the Second Kira and once her identity has been found out. The creators in a bonus book rank her knowledge at 3/10 and her creativity at 4/10, which is SUCH bullshit when all of her plans (the few ones they let her have) make creative use of her powers and talents. Like, she sent a video into a tv station that contained a journal entry that had multiple dates on it, with one being clear bait for the police to approach, one being irrelevant, and one containing information that only someone with a Death Note would understand, and she uses this to indicate a time and place they should meet. Except she doesn’t meet him there, she dresses up in a plain outfit and wig that look NOTHING like her and sits and watches the crowd, waiting for someone to walk by who is missing the date of their death above their head (an indicator that that person has a Death Note), and then goes home and researches him online. That is objectively clever! Even if the cops were there, which they were, they would never notice her (and they didn’t) or figure out that she got the information she needed. HOW is that not creative? HOW does that support her being an idiot? Light tricked a woman (Naomi Misora, who deserves her own entry) into giving her his name one time in a way that almost gave him away, and that was regarded as sooooo clever, but this is stupid? Ohba, explain. Matsuda, who I love dearly but also who has never a plan half as clever or interesting as hers, gets knowledge at 4/10 and creativity at 5/10. It’s misogyny, there’s no other reason that makes sense.

And when her anonymous videos that she used to draw out Kira mention the shinigami and notebooks very subtly, in a way the police wouldn’t understand, Light is like “Second Kira, you IDIOT”, but meanwhile, when Light had a victim mention shinigami in a note written before they died for the sole purpose of fucking with L, the narrative is like “Oh, look at him, he’s so clever mentioning shinigami when L has no way of knowing how important and real they are.” The double standard of it all!

Also, ok, so, the reason L dies is because Misa’s shinigami Rem fell in love with her and wants to protect her, even if it results in Rem’s death (which it does because a shinigami dies if they kill someone for the purpose of saving someone else). However, Misa is not involved AT ALL in getting Rem to go through with this. Light manipulates Rem into doing it, and the fact that this also doesn’t bite him in the ass, even though Misa and Rem were friends, is INSANE. Their logic is clearly that obviously Misa would never rebel against Light because it’s not like she has an internal life and feelings outside of devotion to Light, and if she did, she couldn’t do anything because she’s an idiot, so it’s not worth exploring. God forbid she have agency and be a force in the narrative, even though it would make the story more interesting and complex. She doesn’t even need to be super smart for that! The creators THEMSELVES rank her social skills, charm, and initiative at 10/10, and she gets to use them all of one (1) time. They just keep not letting her do things, and it’s at the expense of their story EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Also, after this, she’s gives up her Death Note (which means she loses her memories involved with being a Death Note user) when Light tells her to, and then she’s just written out of the story, with the exception of her looking sexy, being a jealous girlfriend, and being implied to die, even though TWO shinigami died for her and thus gave her their lifespans. Yeah, she halved one of those, gained the other, then halved that again, but she should have gained more than a total of, like, eight years from that! But no, Light’s story is done, so why would Misa survive when he didn’t?

That’s not to mention the weird fetish-y way she was tied up when imprisoned. She wasn’t in her normal clothes that she had been apprehended in, no, she was put in this raggedy, white straightjacket-looking thing, with a blindfold and her arms crossed over her and fastened behind her back. She was kept on some slab and set upright for FIFTY DAYS. Like, look at this shit:

Meanwhile, Light, who was also imprisoned, kept his regular clothes and only had his arms tied behind his back normally. The only difference in the powers they were assumed to have is that she could kill with just a face. So why the weird outfit, huh, Ohba, Obata? And, like, they sell FIGURES OF IT in the real world, people can BUY her in this outfit and DISPLAY it, and it is CLEARLY because they think some Death Note fans would find it arousing. And if the whole show was just fetish shit in all directions, then, sure, fine, go for it, but it is JUST her in this moment! And, like, if it was supposed to show something about L and how he’s kinda fucked up like that, you would think it would, like, come up again or something but it gets a fleeting mention ONCE and then THAT IS IT. Why do this, literally why??? Like, how high did they get off their own misogyny to come up with this?

I just. I can’t with how they treat Misa, I CANNOT. Like, I know they love to jerk off Light and talk about he’s sooooo smart and clever and charming, but this goes beyond putting her down because they want to lift him up. They put her in to cause some chaos a couple of times, pull some fetish shit, provide the method for killing L (but not do it herself or even play any active role at all in it), and then they’re done with her. She’s a convenient tool to the writers, not a character, unlike most of the male characters whose emotional reactions to Light’s bullshit come back to haunt him. For example: the way his responsibility for his father’s death and his dismissal of his father during his big confession lead Matsuda, who had liked Light but had a stronger emotional connection to his dad, to shoot him in a way that stops Light from using his Death Note scrap to get out of being surrounded after being definitively revealed to be Kira. And like, I love that moment for Matsuda, it’s great, my favorite scene in the whole show, but why don’t Misa’s emotions and bonds get to drive her to action in a way that is inconvenient to Light? Fine, she has unending devotion, why not have THAT do anything either? And it’s because this is the same type of treatment all the female characters in Death Note get (although Misa gets it worse by a country mile), being a POTENTIAL to MILD problem for Light and/or a person to use the Death Note in his place but little else, or someone to get kidnapped, it makes it clear that Misa’s treatment here is due to misogyny that infects the whole text, and it just. It rankles.

2.) Despite having the potential to be an interesting character (unhinged death note who doesn’t have excuses for killing people like Light does, actual connection to her Shinigami), she just gets reduced to Light’s plaything and fangirl, literally keeling over backwards for him. She ends up having nothing to do in the story, being reduced to this hollow shell of what she could have been, with her only personality trait being that she’s obsessed with Light, even after he routinely ignores her and even cheats on her. Every woman in Death Note gets put on the sidelines so the male characters can take the spotlight, but Misa easily has the biggest wasted potential of any of them.

3.) Left as flat, annoying, and obsessed with a guy who treats her badly the entire series. Could have had a lot more development but she just gets treated like an idiot at every turn despite HER INTRODUCTION including a pretty clever plan actually. As the series goes on it feels like they make her less and less intelligent just to justify why she’s keeping the exact same dynamic with light. Honestly the more i think about it the weirder that gets.

I don’t think it’s a problem in itself to have a character who isn’t especially intelligent or is easily manipulated or is an obsessive fan, and you can make really interesting stories using characters with those traits. But DN just did not do that, and honestly I think if Misa was written a bit smarter (not necessarily super detective chess nonsense smart, just having actual fucking agency and being able to come up with plans of her own) the series would be way better for it. You get a whole new dimension to the conflicts and scheming if she’s acting on her own terms, or trying to help and doing something unexpected, or just generally having another character with a death note and complicated ties to the main characters and actual human agency. Like even STAYING obsessed with Light she could have been so much more and the specifics of her motivations could be explored in more interesting detail than just making her a rabid fangirl even having spent enough time with the object of her obsession that the dynamic should have evolved.

She’s in a classic of the “so misogynistic it turned out gay” genre and like good for the gays i guess but holy shit she got done so dirty. She deserved better and DN would have been not only better in the “don’t be a jerk towards entire groups of people” sense but also probably better as a drama intrigue situation if the authors had a crumb of respect for her.

Also due to the story events she’s set to die pretty young and this is barely addressed? It’s a sidenote really and a lot of people die but Rem is the only one who gives a shit and their reaction is not focused on for long. I will not start about her and Rem because that will make this much much longer and is relevant more to why i like Misa than to why she got fucked over. (But hey it’s kinda fucked that she definitely did have people who supported and cared for her and they all got stripped away and it’s not even played as fucked up that this woman has no support network save for one guy who would kill her in a heartbeat if he thought it would help him and also that Misa can’t fully see the people who do care about her until it’s too late and this is never played as dark and serious in a series that thrives on being dark)

It’s just really really obvious that the authors do not see or write her as a person.

tl;dr SHE’S THE SECOND FUCKING KIRA and she gets treated like a PROP for most of the story. gets downgraded to scenery actually later in the story

actual tl;dr: introduced with an interesting plan and motivations worth exploring, slowly has her undeveloped personality steamrollered further and is treated like a tool and a prop for the rest of the series.

#polls #round 6 #week 11 #new #cw pregnancy #cw torture #cw imprisonment

[moiraineswife]

Moiraine And Lan - The Inability To Communicate Trauma

Hello friends. It has been quite some time. Quite some time since I have: absolutely lost all my fucking shit over my blorbos at great length via a long and quotation filled tumblr meta. Fear not: the status quo of the universe returns, and I am once again: back on my bullshit (literally hours before the next episode airs and this gets drowned/replaced with New Content. Because I’m smart like that). ANYWAY.

Today we’re going to discuss: Mo and Lan and the singular moron-flavoured braincell they share, bond or no bond. More seriously, however: I’ve noticed a few bits of commentary/takes/analysis of the current state of their…well state, let’s be frank here, and realised that my contrary ass has: Different Opinions. So I figured I’d share them. Bc that’s what I do.

(Obligatory disclaimer that there is no right or wrong way to interpret something - that’s why it’s an interpretation, and this is not a call out or a “oh wow you’re wrong and here’s why!!!!” post directed at anyone or anything. Just my observation that I am going against the grain of what I’ve seen and thus throwing out: a new chew toy for us to gnaw on).

Also: please do note that this post will cover, rather extensively/in-depth, the trauma arc that Lan and Moiraine are going through at the moment and will contain trigger warnings for: depression, PTSD, trauma response, rape (in the context of the analogy that Verin presented), suicide, suicidal ideation, suicidal attempt (again: all in the context of the show/previous events), and everything related to the topics that have been raised in the first two episodes for these characters. Be safe and tap out if you need to!

So. Obligatory wiffle aside: what shall we discuss? In a nutshell (bc I’m real good at that) I’m covering how, as I see it/am fascinated by it: the responses that they’re having to each other at the moment are mirrors/insights into the responses that they’re each having to the recent traumas that they’ve both suffered. In more depth/the points where I think I differ from the norm we’re going to cover: 

1)-why Lan is: not an idiot, actually. I see it as him being still perfectly capable of READING/understanding Moiraine without the bond; what he’s having difficulty with is COMMUNICATING with her without the bond

2)- that Moiraine is actually: ALSO failing dismally at communicating with Lan, and that she’s doing: a real fucking bad job of manipulating him. (is she HURTING him? Yes. 100%. Is she MANIPULATING him into doing what she wants? Given that she clearly wants nothing more than for him to: leave her, and that after 5 solid months he has: not left, I’m just going to put out the idea that maybe she’s not quite meeting her all of her targets in this area.

3)- wow they’re both doing incredibly stupid things, and they’re doing them for the same incredibly stupid reasons, and they are, in fact: INCREDIBLY THE SAME. See: singular moron-flavoured brain cell. This manifests slightly differently, due to their own individual traumas influencing the specifics of their actions/thought processes - but the general underlying thesis is the same for both.

The TL;DR here is that: these weirdos still know each other, and love each other, and understand each other without their bond. Can they communicate any of what they want to communicate in any kind of effective way? No. No they cannot. They BOTH suck. (I say that with legitimately all the love in the world).

So. Let’s start with Lan. Purely because I think my takes on him are the most Spicy/differ the most from everyone else’s and, let’s be honest, everything here feeds into everything else and this is going to get complicated where I start SO. Drama first. (I think it’s what they would want).

Okay so first and foremost I want to try and establish/explain what I mentioned at the outset of this thing which is: Lan is not blind, he’s not stupid, and he is not suddenly completely and utterly incapable of understanding a single feel that Moiraine feels if he can’t feel it with her via bond.

The largest and most obvious piece of evidence for this feels like the best one to start with and, for me, this is the fact that: HE DIRECTLY AND COMPLETELY CALLS HER OUT ON HER BULLSHIT, TO HER FACE, TWICE!!! 

“Don’t smile at me. You can shut me out, try to drive me away, but don’t you dare smile at me. As though everything is fine. As though you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.”

This is from episode 1, where he finally snaps at her after she gives him that fake ass little smile and is like ‘is an aes sedai not allowed her secrets’ when he tries to talk to her/get her to explain: literally anything to him. And THAT is what pushes him over the edge. 

She has been cold. She has been dismissive. She has flat out ignored him like he’s not even present. He has taken it all. Not happily, and with obvious frustration, but he hasn’t said a peep. Not when she gives him one brusque, dismissive one-word orders (“door”) like a dog. Or when she deliberately turns away from him and refuses to so much as look at them - he endures all of that and just takes it and let’s her do it. Because he understands that this is her current expression of: not being fine. 

If she WAS fine, she would not be doing these things, and he knows that, and I think sees it as something like a storm to weather? It is something that will pass (he hopes) if he has the patience and the strength to wait it out. When she smiles at him? When she tries to make a JOKE out of what she’s doing? Out of the secrets that she’s been keeping from him - secrets like the fact that she was planning on going to the Eye of the World to die without him - THAT is not acceptable. She’s smiling at him and trying to joke with him as though they’re still capable of that - as though they can still tease each other the way they did, as though things are fine, both in herself, and between them, and they are NOT. When she’s treating him like a slave, or a stranger, or an annoyance - that is strangely better - because it’s this unspoken acknowledgement/agreement (the only one they’ve been able to achieve) that this is because things are not fine. She treats him badly because she’s not fine, he KNOWS she’s treating him badly because she’s not fine - is a strange kind of shared truth. Like sarcasm - something said/done where both parties know that the meaning/intent is completely different. Smiling, joking, pretending she’s fine? That is an insult, because he knows damn well she is NOT in that place.

Okay, so let’s look at the second instance of this, which occurs in episode 2 (oh how quaint) and is as follows: 

L: “Then tell me! You and I have walked this path together. Every step, every choice, every sacrifice.”

M: “We have never walked this path together. You have never seen the forest for the trees because I have never shown it to you.”

L: “I know what you’re trying to do. You can’t push me away.”

Again, as with the previous scene, he tries to get her to talk to him, to stop keeping secrets from him, to share this with her and let him help her carry her burdens the way they always have. She puts him walls, she, again, tries to force distance - she tells him that they have never been together as he says. And he calls her out. AGAIN. He knows what she’s trying to do. It hasn’t changed. She’s still just doing the same thing she’s been doing from the start of episode 1 - trying to force him away, because she’s desperate, and she’s suffering, and she doesn’t have anything else but this - even if he knows what she’s doing, even if it hasn’t worked so far. 

Both of them are guilty of this - both of them get one idea stuck in their minds of how to handle this situation/how to fix everything, and they both refuse to change. They both dig their heels in, plant their stakes, pick their hills to die on, and are refuse to budge for love, money, or common sense. For Lan it’s in trying to get her to talk, to open up, to push back on the destructive coping mechanisms she’s got - trying to force her to include him, tying to force her to include herself and come to dinner with them etc. For Mo it’s this: it’s pushing him away, because she is no longer worthy of him (and believes she never was) and protecting him.

(to continue this: unhinged adventure, pls continue under the cut!)

So she commits to this, even if she honestly knows it probably won’t work now, either. (she empties her entire quiver on him in this scene, and the atomic bomb she had in her back pocket too for good measure. These things she’s been holding back in reserve, the last cards to play - that she misled him about Rand’s death, that she has discovered they (and notice that she still says “we” when she talks about this - even though she went to the Eye alone, even though she made that choice alone, even though she rejects the idea that they have been together on this quest, as he says - when she is not actively choosing every word to hurt him, she thinks of them and what they’ve done as an unconscious “we” and a unit) have freed Ishamael/possibly other Forsaken - one after the other, meant to just overwhelm him and be the final coup de grace. And it STILL doesn’t work. She unleashes everything she has on him and he STILL insists that he’s not leaving her. And it’s because he knows - as he just said - what she’s doing, and why. And he will not let her. And he says that to her “I’m not letting you walk away from me again” - because the last time he did: she went to the Eye to get herself killed. And it’s only by some miracle and twist of cruelty that she was left alive to suffer instead.

Also I’m going to take a brief sidebar here, before we move on to Further Evidence/thoughts on this. But I think that it’s really important to consider LAN’S trauma in what he’s doing and why? Like, I think people are doing this for Mo already? They recognise that she wouldn’t be behaving this way if she 1)- wasn’t trying to protect Lan (her intention) and 2)- wasn’t suffering the effects of her trauma/being cut off from the Power at the Eye. Lan is a little less obvious (both in that his trauma is not a single fixed point/event that’s very obvious and easy to refer back to; and that he’s a bit less blunt Lan Mo’s “brick to the face” techniques and motivations) but, as I said at the start: his reactions to Mo are a direct reflection/window into his own trauma responses.

So, as I just mentioned - Lan is SO adamant about not leaving Moiraine, not giving her the opportunity to distance them/push him away - because the last time she did that, in just nudging him, like, an inch to the left, she used that to mask their bond and skip off into the Blight to go get herself killed with Rand. And there is: no doubt, and no question, and no room for wiggling or negotiation on this. They BOTH were FULLY aware that that was a suicide mission. The first thing he says to her when he finds her is “you’re alive” - because he was sure that history was repeating on him.

Because I think that it’s very important to not just consider Mo’s actions here, I think it’s important to remember Lan’s experience with Stepin as well. The two played out very similarly for him/parallel each other almost exactly. They both talked to him about Nynaeve, encouraging him to seek a love and a life with her. They both manipulated him/the circumstances to make it impossible for him to try and protect them - Stepin by drugging him, and Moiraine by masking the bond so he was unable to sense her, so that they could leave him. They both had clear plans and intentions - and both of their ultimate goals was for it to end in their death (obviously the REASONS behind this are very different - Mo was trying to save the world; while Stepin’s had already ended). But in both cases, Lan wakes up alone, realising that they’ve left him, realising, instantly, what they intend to do and in both cases: he was too late and he feels that he failed. Stepin he finds dead - and the only reason that he DOESN’T find that has happened to Mo is not because of something he did, it’s not because he got to her in time, it’s not because he protected her, it’s not because HE did anything at all - it’s just because some whim of cruelty decided to spare her. And these two events happen within, like, a week of each other I want to say? Like that’s…That’s an incredibly damaging and traumatising thing to go through ONCE - but back to back? How guilty must he have felt? How ANGRY with himself? Because how could he not have learned? How could he have let this happen AGAIN?

Of course he’s terrified now. Of course he’s terrified that if he leaves she’s going to die. Of course he refuses - past the point of any sense or reason - to just back down and leave. He is certain that if he does it will mean the death of the person that he loves the most in this world. And it will be HIS fault. She’s being cruel to him, she’s pushing him away, she’s ignoring him, she’s ordering him around, she’s deliberately pushing every button he’s got, and stabbing her knife in every sensitive spot she’s discovered over the last twenty years. And what kind of weak, selfish, useless person would he be to let that be all it takes for him to just say ‘well fine, I’ll just abandon you and let you kill yourself without me’. He cannot fail again. He WILL NOT fail again. He has been here, history is repeating on him again and he will not let it. Whatever she says to him. However she hurts him. Whatever he has to endure to weather this storm with her he will. Because none of this pain even comes CLOSE to what it will be like if he leaves her and she hurts herself and that is entirely his fault.

(Note: I do not actually think that Moiraine is actively suicidal at this point. As Verin notes - she chooses to fight every day. She wakes up, she fills her buckets, she puts one foot in front of the other and she clearly keeps going. It’s wobbly, and it’s messy, and she’s clearly grieving and depressed and traumatised - but she is not suicidal. Does LAN know that? Can Lan, without the bond, and with Stepin, and the Eye, haunting him even begin to scrape together the required rationality to see that? No. Lan sees Moiraine as being in just as much danger as she sees him being in and all he can do, all he has left to do in this world is protect her. And so he will).

To conclude the wrap of: the most painful breakup scene in the history of the world (for me and my present blorbos at this present moment in time, anyway) I want to just talk about the infamous “we were never equals”. And a lot of it has been covered, and I agree with the takes that Moiraine does not believe herself equal to Lan (and never did (SELF ESTEEM ISSUES!? IN MY CODEPENDENT PLATONIC SOULMATE RELATIONSHIP!? NOOOOO!!!!!!! NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)) and that is how she’s able to say this oath wise. I just want to touch on the fact that some people seem to be like ‘bro how can u not see what she’s saying DIRECTLY TO UR FACE, BRO!? COME ON LAN. LISTEN!!!!’ and like. So, to bring up a controversial and possible shocking observation: Lan is, in fact: still a human being! Emotions are messy, and logic is a fine and wonderful thing from a couch, yelling at your tv screen, and with the delightful ability to rewind and replay conversations/moments in time to be able to link them together nicely.

But Moiraine has been cruel to him for months at this point in an effort to drive him away. And, as discussed - he knows what she’s doing. He knows WHY she’s doing it. He is enduring it and putting up with it and stomaching it without throwing things at her because he knows it’s an expression of pain and is a reaction to what she’s been through. But he’s also hurt by it. Not least because: even if she’s only SAYING these things to hurt him/drive him away - she still believes them enough that they’re true for her to be able to actually get them out of her mouth. That HURTS. That’s going to break you down, that’s going to GET to you, that’s going to be thing that keeps him up at night and just echoes in his head over and over again and like - my man’s self-esteem and self-worth wasn’t actually sitting up at the peak of Dragonmount BEFORE 5 months of this, like dear Light people.

To have the person you love the most in this world tell you that “I don’t want my saddle to slip” (I don’t trust you to do this for me), to have her admit that she deliberately misled him, that she has actively kept important, possibly world-changing events from you, that she says, to your face - the thing that you are MOST afraid of, the thing that tormented him via Machin Shin, the thing that torments him still about Stepin - that he FAILED her? For her to believe that so firmly that it’s truth to her? Of course he doesn’t think he’s worthy of her? Of course he’s willing to take what she says at face value. SHE CAN’T FUCKING LIE!!!! And the set-up to this is so important, because she goes right for the jugular in this scene, and she does so repeatedly, in quick succession.

So she hits him with: ‘actually I lied when I said before that WE were going to the Tower - I’m going on my own without you. We yote a forsaken out into the world OOPS. -I refuse to explain anything to you. -We have never been walking this path together. -I have never showed you everything, I have always hidden things from you. -OH also ur lil sheepherder dude is actually: not dead and never was, I #lied to ur face abt that. -I am loyal to the Dragon - and ONLY him. -You can’t protect me anymore without the bond. -No, you’re not my Warder, you failed me, and I would be dead in spite of you if not for the help of people more competent than you. -ALSO here’s our good buddy Alanna and I am going to THREATEN TO HAVE HER TAKE YOUR BOND BY FORCE IF YOU KEEP REFUSING ME and I arranged this ahead of time to make this right. ALL of this gets dumped on his head in the space of LITERALLY AROUND TWO MINUTES. Like damn Mo the bloody Fades were less efficient than that.

He has just had all of that thrown in his face - the things she’s been holding back, keeping in case she needed them - her lying to him, her isolating him, her NEVER walking this path with him or ever showing him all that she saw, telling him that he is not her Warder anymore, that he has FAILED to protect her, that she will have him bonded against his will just to get rid of him. And he stands there on the ground, while she gazes down at him from on top of her horse (which she mounted - for the first time we’ve seen on screen - without his aid (which is a GUTTING little touch, because we see him smoothly and seamlessly help her mount a couple of times in season 1)) and she just says, to his face, the TRUTH, as he asked for: they were never equals.

And she can say that because she believes that he is better than her, and we know that, but can you blame him for not quite catching that in the moment????? She’s just told him that he’s a failure, that she’d be dead and he didn’t do a damn thing to protect her, that she will have someone bond him forcibly - and in this moment she just says what he’s been thinking for months, for YEARS honestly, given what machin shin torments him with “you can’t protect her. You’ll watch her die.” Of course he believes it. He is ALREADY taking an irrational level of responsibility over all of this, over what he perceives as his failures.

Adeleas calls him out for this and tells him he’s taking it too personally (and he IS) - he is assuming responsibility for not preventing something as though that means that he caused it. And again: this is a trauma response. This is an overreaction to a perceived series of circumstances that led to the death of a friend he’s had for possibly decades, to the one person he is supposed to protect, who he let go on a suicide mission alone so that he could get fucking laid, who he let slip away from him AGAIN to get attacked by Fades - where he failed her FOR A THIRD TIME. But like…He starts this little conversation off with her by apologising because he didn’t sense the Fades. He has: absolutely no way, reasonable or other ways, to sense INVISIBLE CREATURES THAT MOVE THROUGH SHADOW without the bond giving him the ability to do so. It’s a ridiculous thing to say. It has no logic to it at all and that’s the POINT. He is not capable of logic about this situation. He is blaming himself for everything - every single thing he can think of, whether it’s reasonable or not, is his fault, and his responsibility - he should have sensed the fades, he should have sensed her leaving, he should have stopped her going to the Eye, he should have stopped her from being cut off. He is trying to assert control, he is trying to assign blame and reason to the things that have happened to him - to the losses he has suffered - so that he can stop suffering them. And he can’t. He can’t. It happens over. And over. And over. AND OVER again. The trolloc blade that hit Moiraine in the Two Rivers and nearly killing her. Logain’s shield exploding and the axe handle piercing her side and nearly killing her. Being drugged by Stepin who killed himself while Lan was absent. Letting himself be distracted by Nynaeve while Mo went to the Eye. Missing Mo leaving AGAIN and her being attacked by the Fades. Actually getting there while the attack was in progress finally at LAST being able to DO something, to STOP something - and he can’t even fucking manage that. Over and over and over he fails people and he loses them and it’s his fault and he can’t stop it. He’s been retraumatised by circumstance, and is now retraumatising HIMSELF by adding even more perceived failings to the existing tally. Of course he believes her. He’s just been waiting for her to say that to him from the day they bonded. NO ONE IN THIS DYNAMIC HAS ANY SELF-ESTEEM. LIKE THEY STARTED WITH ZERO TOTAL AND SOMEHOW IT’S GOTTEN WORSE.

Okay so shifting focus slightly for the last thing I want to say about Lan, but still related, because: the problem (for me) is not that they cannot read/understand each other, it’s that they cannot COMMUNICATE with each other. And there is a distinction here. Lan’s issue is not lack of understanding where Mo is at - he sees her suffering, knows she’s not fine, understands she is reacting to the loss she endured at the Eye, he gets that. He’s known her for twenty years - bond or no bond - he knows what pain looks like when he sees it in her eyes. That’s not it. What he’s struggling with, and what he’s frustrated by is that they are not TALKING. He knows how she’s feeling - he doesn’t know what to do about that. He doesn’t know how to TALK about that with her. He doesn’t know how to fix it because she refuses to engage with it at all - and they’re SO bad at this that they don’t even get to the part where she can ignore him trying to talk abt the actual problem, bc she just nips it in the bud and ignores him/deflects him from the opening bland ‘small-talk’ set-up questions to start making forrays into that. 

Because before all of that would have happened instinctively via the bond - she feels the bad feels, he knows why, he sends the required good feels back/makes her tea/gives her an extra blanket/just responds without having to think about and, and this is the key point: without having to talk. Because, let’s be real here: these idiots BOTH suck at talking about their emotions/needs. Genuinely think they would both just lie on the ground and fucking die rather than say ‘I need a bandage because I’m BLEEDING PROFUSELY FROM EVERY ORIFICE.’ Because they’re deeply repressed, traumatised people who were never given the tools/language/space they needed to be able to safely and healthily learn to express their feels (but that…is a different piece of meta for another day). 

THE POINT IS: we’re now going to turn to my beloved, my man, my favourite, the myth, the legend, the ICON: Tomas and his tomatoes. And by this I do of course mean that we’re doing a deep dive of the scene where Tomas gives Lan some advice after they go out to the (absolutely THRIVING - good job my man) garden to pick some tomatoes for dinner (or at least….Tomas goes out to pick tomatoes for dinner; and Lan goes out to brood in his proximity while he does so. ) But eh. Tomayto, tomahto….) ANYWAY: 

So this scene gives Lan a chance to talk about losing the bond - and I think that is important as well? Likely obviously Moiraine is Going Through It here, and Lan hasn’t been cut off from the Power/isn’t dealing with that experience but WE DON’T PLAY TRAUMA OLYMPICS IN THIS HOUSE!!! PAIN IS PAIN AND IT SHOULD ALL BE VALIDATED AND DEALT WITH IN A CONSTRUCTIVE AND POSITIVE WAY. Ahem. Anyway. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: QUOTE TIME AGAIN;

“The bond made things easier. It was like a friend walking along with us chatting away so we never had to.”

I think this is a really interesting (and honestly fascinating) way to describe the bond - to personify it and see it as another individual existing between them and making things easier by doing the things that they both struggle to do - use their goddamn words. 

“She’s tired, she’s hungry, she’s angry, she’s afraid. Now silence.”

This part, too, I think is really telling. Because if I had to put money on it and pick out the Top 4 Feelings Moiraine Is Having I think I could do a lot worse than ‘tired, hungry, angry, and afraid’. He KNOWS how she’s feeling. He can read that in her still. He doesn’t need the bond to tell him that. That’s not what he’s missing. He doesn’t need the bond to point out what she’s feeling to him, and he doesn’t miss that aspect, he misses the ‘chatting away’, he misses the noise, he misses the COMMUNICATION, and he is struggling with the silence.

THAT is what the bond used to do for them - it used to ‘chat away so they never had to’. A friend, a helper, who facilitated between them and allowed them to communicate when they couldn’t speak/didn’t have the words. We see this over and over and OVER again in season 1. They have whole ass conversations without making a single peep. Most notably in extremely tense or emotional moments - Kerene’s funeral and the look they share, Lan struggling with Stepin’s grief, coming to Moiraine, kneeling beside her, holding her hand - so much happens in that scene in particular. Without saying a word he communicates an exhaustion, a fatigue, a grief and a sorrow - a need for comfort and support - and she gives it. At Stepin’s funeral - the lookk that he gives her, the way he seeks her in the crowd, again needing her strength, which she gives to him through their bond and across a room. THAT’S what’s gone. That’s what he keeps trying to get back. 

Because he gives her that same look - that same obvious cry for help and look of desperation at the end of ep 1 with the Fade battle. He is WRECKED he is DONE, he’s disarmed, he cannot stand, he can barely crawl - he NEEDS her, he needs her strength, he needs her help. She tries to channel - she reaches for the power, as she would once have reached for him through their bond - and it does not come. It is not there. It cannot help them. And the words that he speaks to her then echo a repeated sentiment he’s had for her throughout: “what aren’t you telling me?”

The bond isn’t there to talk for her anymore. And she refuses. Consistently. Verin and Adeleas comment on Bayle visiting - and Lan notes that she doesn’t tell him any more than she tells them. After Bayle is gone, Lan tries to small talk, he slaps on a casual little smile and he asks a mundane ‘let’s start the ball rolling on that conversation thing’ question, easy to answer, nothing tense, nothing painful, a very common “how did it go?” she ignores him. He presses further - asks who that person was? She gives him the bare minimum (and doesn’t answer the question he’s ACTUALLY asking) and then he tries to push again - what did she want. At which point she hits him with that fake smile and the ‘can an aes sedai not have her secrets?’ - and he’s not even really asking for much. He’s not asking what he actually wants to ask which is: how are you? Are you okay? What can I do? What do you need? What are you thinking? And this idea repeats - in ep 2, when he tries to point out it takes 8 aes sedai to cut someone off, she snaps that he has no conception of the power the forsaken have - so he snaps at her to tell him then. And she refuses. 

They are both FEELING - and their feelings are seen. Lan sees how Mo struggles he sees how she shuts herself away, he sees that she’s not eating, and not sleeping, that she’s frustrated, and she’s frightened. Mo sees that she’s hurting him, she sees that he’s frustrated as well. They know this. But they’re not TALKING. They’re not COMMUNICATING. And at the dinner sequence - this is what Verin, Adeleas and Tomas try to give them advice about - their history is the “common language” that they are; maybe he needs to listen to what she IS saying and not try and demand her to say other things. They don’t know how to talk about things like this - they’re not good at that ANYWAY - but with each other? When they’ve never had to before? When for once, for the first time for both of them, it was effortless to share these things and communicate these deep insecurities and emotions that they struggle to give to others? THAT’S what they’re lacking and that’s what the biggest problem is.

Alright let’s leave poor Lan be for now, I have tormented him enough. On to Momo. This will (hopefully, dear god) be shorter, because people have covered Mo before. We know that she’s traumatised, we know she’s trying to push Lan away to protect him, we know she’s trying to regain control, she feels powerless, she feels helpless, she is trying to deal with something life-altering, something that made her vulnerable and helpless, she’s being reckless with her safety, she’s taking foolish risks etc etc.

The point I want to touch on here is the idea around her ‘manipulating’ Lan, because I usually see this go hand-in-hand with the Lan stuff I talked about already. Largely: how ironic that without the bond Lan doesn’t understand her/cannot read her, but Moiraine is doing it so well with him and i must: respectfully decline to go along with that perspective. And this is (I imagine u know what im going to say now) *inhales deeply* because they SUCK AT COMMUNICATING!!!! 

It doesn’t really MATTER that he is trying to open her up/communicate that he loves her, and he’s there for her, and he wants to support her; while she is trying to communicate the same - she loves him, she cares about him, she wants to protect him. They are both: failing dismally. Lan’s incessant pestering of Mo to talk to him is just making her clam up more and more because she can’t and what’s more: she doesn’t bloody want to. She wants to shove her trauma under a rug in the corner of Verin’s study, and then she wants to drag a bookshelf over the top of it, and then she wants to fill the bookcase with books, and then she wants to put a whole bunch of extra things on top of the bookcase, and then she wants to flee the country and forget that any of that ever exists because she does not want to deal with it. And Lan keeps pushing. He keeps trying to make her talk, because he’s desperate, and he misses the chattering of their friend the bond, and he wants to help, her wants her to let him back in, and it’s just pissing her off. Which is what the cottage squad calls him out for (when will Mo get her ‘come to jesus’ talk?? For Fairness? Like i need this too).

So Lan is coming at this: far too softly, and far too indirectly in a lot of ways. He never asks about what he actually wants to ask about. He talks about the weather, or how shiny Aldieb’s coat is this morning, or how nice and red and juicy Tomas’s tomatoes are. He never actually just says what he wants to say which is: “I love you, and I’m worried about you, and I’m failing you more and more every day and I’m sorry and I need you” he pussyfoots around it and avoids it and lets her shut him down because that hurts and, well, he deserves that hurt so alright then.

And then there’s Mo. Who has managed to somehow twist the logic of the universe so that she can say “I love you” by, uh *checks notes*: Not saying anything at all/ignoring him. Or by saying things like “you failed me” instead. Because she is just THAT powerful. Okay I’m being a bit sarcastic here, clearly, but she has convinced herself (based on how her trauma is affecting her) that she: 1)- does not deserve Lan/is not worthy of him and so he should leave her so he can be happy and 2)- she needs to protect him and so he should leave her and go and be safe.

Maybe she tried to articulate this at some point? Sit him and down and be like ‘okay Allan so I know u have a lot of trauma abt, like, being abandoned/being left behind so ppl u love can go do themselves great harm but…it would REALLY be just swell for me if u left me all by myself while i go through possibly the worst things that’s ever happened to me: alone. Okay? Okay.” However I doubt this. Bc, as previously and repeatedly discussed: these two can’t communicate for SHIT right now.

I think she probably made some sort of roundabout suggestion? Like she didn’t directly say ‘you need to leave me because reasons’ but she probably…asked him to go the White Tower and watch over Nyn and Eggy, or maybe go with Perrin and the Shienarans to help, or even ‘hey remember Mat? The little scrungly one?? I wonder where he is’ and he just told her ‘absolutely fucking not’ (or words to that effect) so she had to try something else instead. Which is: being mean af.

So far so good and I think we’re all (relatively) in agreement to this point. But then people think…She’s being successful here? And she’s reading him well - largely because she knows EXACTLY what to say to hurt him? And yes, she absolutely does, I will 100% give you that. Blade directly to the heart each and every time, she never misses. HOWEVER. This is not the actual point. Causing Lan pain is not her endgame - it’s actually just the painful middle step that’s hurting her too to try and get her to her endgame.

Manipulation essentially involves doing ‘y’ (in this case being deliberately cruel/causing Lan pain) to make the person do ‘x’ (in this case: push Lan away and make him leave her), in theory/if it’s super successful: without the person realising that you’ve orchestrated this/making it seem like it was all their idea/decision. This is, uh, not working too great. It’s been 5 months and Lan is probably less likely to leave her now than he was when she started (because he now has 5 months worth of knowing that she is actively trying to get him to leave so she can do the Light only knows what and if that’s what she wants him to do while she’s in this state then it’s absolutely the last thing that he feels he should do - so in that sense this has actually backfired kinda spectacularly on Mo. Because: SHE’S COMMUNICATING JUST AS BADLY AS HE IS!!!!!!!!!! Just. On the COMPLETE opposite end of the spectrum to him. Because they’re drama and aesthetic that way.

And the added bonus content of this is: she CAN do this. She can (and does) manipulate people spectacularly well. Take Bayle for example (god she needed that little win SO badly, bless her and her buckets). She wanted: to see/examine the broken heartstone - but what is she actually going to DO with it? She doesn’t want to put it in a fancy display case or collect it, she wants to know WHY it broke. So what she ACTUALLY wants from him is information. Information such as: the poem. So she haggles with him on the thing she actually wants - makes him feel like he’s getting a win when he agrees to budge on that, far cheaper, item - but then he counters and says that he won’t move on the heartstone chunk itself - which she has no interest in. So she gets her essential infodump poem for a bargain price, and takes Bayle down like six pegs in the process. 10/10, excellently managed misdirection, making him do all the work and lowering the price of the poem so she didn’t even have to ask for it, and making himself look like a plonker into the bargain. Delicious. She CAN manipulate people - she just cannot manipulate Lan (not in this instance/about this anyway) because she’s as wrongfooted as he is, and is scrambling as much as he is without the bond, to try and find a language she never thought she’d need to try and speak with him.

And so if we now consider BOTH of them: they’re in this very weird space here, where the traumas that they have suffered, and the reactions they’re having are placing them in this fundamental position of opposition. Because their needs/the things they believe/have convinced themselves they have to do put them in direct conflict with one another. They’re like an immovable object meets an unstoppable force, right? And this idea reveals itself in several smaller ways - eg: Lan thinking that Mo needs company and to not isolate herself to get better; while for Mo that just feels completely intolerable and she wants to be alone and in Her Space, her study, where she is in control and can pretend to her visitors/informants that all is well and nothing has changed. But I think the biggest point it revolves around/where it’s most obvious is that, ultimately, their absolute overall goal is to protect the other person?

The difference/tragedy of this is that: Moiraine believes fundamentally that Lan is in danger WITH her, and that she has to make him leave in order to protect him. Lan believes fundamentally that Moiraine will be in danger WITHOUT him and that he has to stay in order to protect her. And this is the hill they’ve both chosen as their last stand/thing to die for. So she is going to push him and push him and push him, and she is going to hurt HERSELF by being crueller and crueller and crueller to him to protect him. And all the while he is going to endure and endure and endure and let himself be hurt to protect her.

AND THEN IT GETS WORSE (or better if ur twisted and u enjoy these kinds of parallels the way i do) because: they are both stubbornly trying to protect the other; but they’re also both feeling like they’re martyring themselves/are hurting themselves more and more to do so. She feels like he is being stubborn and forcing her to hurt him more and more every day - which she does not want to do - when he could just go, just let this end, just leave her the way she clearly wants him to! But this will make her stronger. She will be stronger for this, for having let him go, and for knowing that at least she managed to protect him. So she will just keep going - tomorrow, that will do it, he has to break tomorrow, he has to finally break tomorrow. And this goes on. The next day. Maybe the next day. The next–

And then HE feels like he is enduring, and that the pain she is inflicting on him is his cross to bear, and he has to endure it because he will NOT leave her, no matter what she throws at him. And it’s almost a test of his will and his love and his devotion (even though I think he knows it’s not: but it’s kind of become his own little personal quest. Because yes. Yes he SHOULD suffer this way. She SHOULD hurt him like this. He deserves it after how he failed her. He has to take this pain. He has to prove what he’s willing to go through for her, prove how dedicated he is, how much he will suffer for her, how even she cannot break him). And he too is thinking that next day it will get better. If he can just endure, just survive this onslaught, it will end. It will get better. She will get better. This will pass. He just has to prove his strength and last as long as he needs to in order to see that through.

And, to bring us back to the start of this extremely long and rambling essay I present you my final, deeply insightful, deeply professional, deeply ~meta~ thought which is that: they are BOTH. SO. FUCKING. S T U P I D!!!! (in a genuinely really interesting and complex and  fascinating way, as i have hopefully discussed/explained - the idea that their lost bond/connection makes them mirror/echo each other but now in a destructive way? That instead of seamlessly and instinctively meeting each others’ needs they are both unconsciously and unintentionally triggering the other person’s trauma and making things WORSE? What an absolutely fascinating take/an incredibly subtle but profound way to show the depth of exactly what they’ve lost/how much it has affected them while ALSO rooting the entire thing in their individual traumas, experiences, and characters - like who ever wrote/conceived of this NEEDS A GODDAMN RAISE I SWEAR) But also yes they are: morons. Absolutely. Without a doubt. One singular moron brain cell that ping pongs between the two of them but is, fundamentally: the same. Absolutely fucking delighted. Can’t wait to see where this goes from here. Join me again in the future for me: ‘wow Rowyn that’s a whole lotta thoughts u got there buddy’.

Also I swear I’m friendly and I like engaging/talking with ppl! Pls feel free to comment/reblog/message!!! And do note that if u reblog i WILL read and appreciate ur tags bc im: one of those Old People. 

OKAY BYEEEEEE!!!

#moiraine damodred #moiraine sedai #lan mandragoran #molan #wheel of time #wheel of time prime #wot #wotprime #wotspoilers #wotshowspoilers #rosamund pike #daniel henney #wheel of time season 2 #wot s2 #wot meta #molan meta #my meta #look at all dat trauma #once again pls remember this was: stream of consciousness written with no forethought or afterthought #so no planning no editing no HINGES #yes i AM aware that this is about to get DEVOURED by content/posts abt the new ep but u know what? #i didnt claim to be smart #i just claimed to be unhinged #anyway i had a gr8 time with this im sure you'll all deeply appreciate my angsty insights making this all: Worse #pls enjoy #also pray for the readmore cut #i know this is long as shit #i TRIED #i TRIED REAL HARD TO PROTECT Y'ALL FROM THE ENDLESS SCROLL #but tumblr is: not a functional website

[wolfmadefromash]

7x04 Thoughts

This is a long one, if you read to the end, know that I love you and appreciate you 😂

Obviously, I’ve been a little… unhinged in my reaction/behavior following Buck’s kiss with Tommy (I mean Buck KISSED A BOY!). I’ve been extra annoying to my friends and sending them most (all) my firsts since Buck kissed a boy. It started as something that just made me giggle then it turned into something I was doing cause I knew they (one in particular - if you found me on here you win. Congrats, you know can access my writing) were getting annoyed. It’s been fun for me 🤷🏻‍♀️

ANYWAY…

It’s been a few days and I am moderately more calm about this and I’ve seen plenty of other feedback/commentary on the episode. Thankfully mostly positive, which is amazing ❤️ The negative, some of you need to get over yourself.

The negatives saying this came out of nowhere or it’s part of some “agenda”, I would gentle suggest you rewatch the show and pay closer attention. There has not been anything that was necessarily blatant but there have been several moments over the seasons where there are things said that lead to speculation. Things that always had me thinking “yeah, I could see it.” Stuff that could be brushed off or explained away as a joke if this wasn't the road the writers or Oliver decided to take Buck down. But the moments, also help to support this slower discovery.

If you need some examples:

The first him Buck even sees Eddie, the other man is pulling of his shirt with his and on full display and “Whatta Man” by Salt-N-Pepa is playing. That could be written off as just a manifestation of Bucks insecurities about his place with the 118 and the fire fighter calendar coming up, he’s experiencing issue with his girlfriend too so he’s in a bit of a vulnerable place. But it could also be taken as almost an inner monologue, Buck seeing and appreciating an attractive man. If he wasn’t in touch with his truth, not fully aware of his sexuality or was straight up in some kind of denial, it would also explain his hostility toward Eddie as well. But it can easily be explained away as a sort of completion.

Maddie commenting on Buck’s “boy crush”. Typically a straight man will get at least a little defensive, saying no or it’s not like that or even get a little annoyed at the suggestion. Doesn’t have to be in a toxic way but there will be some sort of protest to the thought or idea they have a “boy crush”. Buck just kind of laughs and says “cute”. Not entirely damn, but makes you wonder. It’s also two siblings messing with each other so I can see where some may over look that moment.

We again have a moment that involves Maddie when Buck, Eddie, and Chimney are helping her move into her new place. She makes a vague comment “he’s cute”, not specifying who she’s talking about but she clearly believes Buck understands who she means. Buck tells her “he gets that a lot, you should see his kid”. Buck was not following what it was Maddie was saying, and he actually seems confused as to why Maddie would think Chimney is cute.

Buck goes with Eddie to bring Christopher to see Santa. They’ve known each other maybe 3 months at this point? It’s hard to know really since we rarely get any sort of dates. Christopher finishes with Santa, comes back to Eddie who picks him up and leaves. The helper elf stops Buck, having seen him walking up with Eddie when he picked up Chris, and says “you two have an adorable son”. An innocent enough mistake, one that most would correct in some way. “Oh he’s not mine” or something to that effect. It’s odd that Buck looks like he’s about to correct her but says a simple “thank you”.

There’s a poker night at Chimneys apartment where Josh and Buck are invited. Josh says “if I didn’t know better I’d think you were trying to set us up” meaning Maddie setting Buck up with Josh. Maddie says she likes Josh too much to do that to him to which Buck gets a little defensive. It’s light, not truly offended and could be brushed off as a joke but it also makes you wonder.

When the 118 is in Texas, TK Strand agrees to meet up with Buck if he’s ever in LA but makes sure to mention that he has a boyfriend and it’s pretty serious. Leaving Buck confused, now here he does look like he might be about to protest but it does also look as if he wants to question TK as to why he felt like he needed to warn him of any potential advances.

Buck himself has said women “flee” him when talking about his relationships.

Times where Bucks attraction to men is touched on, he does not react as you would expect. No it’s not a neon sign saying “Evan Buckley is Bisexual” but it’s enough to have you wonder or see where that could be a potential for him. But also, innocent enough where if his story wasn’t taken there, it’s easily explained. It’s the crumbs of Buck’s story that Oliver has mentioned in interviews about the 100th episode.

The negatives within the positives have been criticizing Bucks claim that he was seeking Tommy’s attention not Eddie’s. And to that I think it was both men whose attention he was looking for.

We see Buck going to Tommy first, and there are certainly some moments there (on both ends) that look a little flirtatious. Buck seems a little nervous for some reason when he asks Tommy out for a beer, and gets more disappointed than most would consider normal when Tommy says he has to take a rain check because he has plans. Eddie shows up, and I think Bucks abandonment issues really start to flair up and this is where I think the confusion begins for him. He was there for Tommy, not even thinking about Eddie (okay he was thinking about Eddie a little bit), but then Eddie shows up and now he's seeing that him and Tommy are building this friendship. Tommy, the person Buck specifically sought out, is leaving with Eddie, Bucks best friend. Buck acts a little strange as the 2 men leave, Tommy telling him he’ll take him up in the helicopter and Buck says something like “yeah I’ll do that … sometime” like he’s shy about it, stuttering and even looking like he's about to blush. He’s just acting weird. He was there to see Tommy but Tommy’s attention is on Eddie because they’ve made plans.

Eddie starts talking about the time he’s been spending with Tommy, the person who Buck had wanted to get to know and hasn’t been able to reconnect with for one reason or another. But, now he’s also seeing his best friend is connecting with a new person who has some of the same interests as him, his insecurities digging their claws in even more. He gets excited when Eddie asks if he’s free the night of the karaoke trivia, thinking he’ll be included in this outing with his best friend and this new person he’s been hoping to get to know only to be completely disappointed when asked if he could babysit. This feels like more of a brush off, and I’m sure Buck takes it that way.

Buck complains about Tommy to Maddie in a way that’s very elementary school; I wouldn’t be surprised if he threw rocks at him. He can’t stop talking about Tommy, everything about him bugs him. Finding out about the basketball game, a game Eddie has BEEN inviting Buck too, has him starting to spiral. Eddie’s been going to these games, building friendships with the other first responders who go and it hasn’t been an issue. But when Tommy’s shown to be going, it’s an issue. Because Buck wants Tommy's attention, he doesn't care about the other people going to the game or even the fact that Eddie goes to these games every other week without him. If Tommy's there, he need to be there too.

Buck showing off in the gym, letting out a loud breath and grunting to get Eddie to notice him, was about getting Eddie’s attention focused on him, sure but also if Eddie is focused on him he’s not focusing on Tommy who he seemed to be talking with on the phone. It would also be the chance he needs to try to insert himself in whatever activity the 2 are planning next, which would bring Buck BACK into Tommy’s orbit.

Buck shows up with Chimney to the pickup game. I think Buck's waring with himself throughout the episode about what is actually bothering him. Eddie finding a new best friend is certainly one thing I have no doubt he’s concerned about. But he’s also trying to figure out why he can’t get himself in front of Tommy, he’s doing all the wrong things to try and get this persons attention on him to be given a chance. It makes sense, with his childhood, that his brain thought acting out was the best approach to gain the attention that he was seeking (I mean, it worked). I don’t think he intended to HURT Eddie just knock him over or make him stumble. He’s looking to impress this person he hasn’t even been able to have a conversation with again since he took off to Vegas. Eddie has just taken the ball from him and Buck just snapped.

I think Buck kept trying to find a ways to get himself in front of Tommy, but essentially Eddie was getting in the way. But he also was seeing his best friend find this person he could relate to in a a whole new way. So Buck was battling with himself and genuinely could not figure out what it was he was trying to do or accomplish with his antics.

I see a lot of people saying Buck was never trying to get Tommy’s attention, that it was all about Eddie. Eddie was Buck's pass to Tommy in a way, he was trying to get himself in front of Eddie so Eddie would extend an invite to an activity he was doing with Tommy. Maybe he even hoped Eddie would talk him up a little. Getting Eddie’s attention meant getting Tommy’s too.

I also don’t know that Buck was conscious of his desire to have Tommy’s attention and that talking through the whole thing in the kitchen was what lead him to figuring it out. I recently had a moment like that myself. I was in a negative headspace but I could not for the life of me figure out what it was that was causing it. Talking with a friend, stuff started to just kind of come out and all of a sudden it clicked. It hadn’t know until that moment what was going on. It seems to me that it was very likely Buck simply thought that he was jealous of his best friend finding a new friend but through talking it out, he realized “oh, maybe it was him I wanted to see me”.

There was plenty of flirting, I think Buck is just a naturally flirty person. But there was a moment where it seemed to really switch, right when he said that he didn’t know Muay Thai. I thought things seemed to shift between them when they were just a couple feet apart but when they talked about Muay Thai, I knew there had to be something coming.

I still very much ship Buddie, and hope they find their way together, but this to me was just so much more satisfying so see unfold rather then it jumping right to Buck and Eddie together. Honestly that might have been weird, that sudden jump. Prior to the 100th episode it was canon that both Buck and Eddie had only dated women, or at least that all we saw. Their sexuality needed to be addressed, there needed to be confirmation that at least one of them is interested in men. At this point I don’t know that Buck is even aware that he has feelings for Eddie (and I do think he has feelings for him). He never knew he was allowed to have feelings for a man let alone his best friend. I think once he settles more within this new self of his, he’ll slowly start to realize that he no longer sees Eddie as JUST a friend.

I still have hope for Buddie, I could see there being some very strong canon hints this season, things that aren't up for debate. Maybe Eddie has a conversation with someone who’s not Buck and he comes to a realization of his own, or there’s a moment shared at the end of the season. I think there’s a possibility for a strong build up for Buddie with it actually happening by episode 3 or 4 in season 8.

But if it doesn't, I'm okay with that too. I want to see where things go with Tommy and what comes after for Buck. I could see the show runners leaving things with just Buck being Bi, it was a huge thing for them to take a main male character like Buck and give this coming out arc. Will they be willing to take another risk with Eddie? I don't know that they would do that this season, but they've certainly opened the possibility with 1/2 of the ship being queer now.

#buck kissed a boy #buck buckley #evan buckley #eddie diaz #evan buck buckely #911 fandom #buddie #buddie fandom #buddie 911 #911 #oliver stark #ryan guzman #lou ferrigno jr #tommy kinard #buck and tommy #bucktommy #tevan #911abc #911 abc #911 on abc #911 rambles

[icee133]

Hi! This is part 6 of the ongoing Marionette series I'm writing. This part is the longest one yet, and finally feels like we are getting somewhere with the story (lol). This series is going to be a bit on the longer side as "slow burn" might be an understatement anyways hope you guys like this part! Sorry for any writing errors 🤍🤍

If you would like to be added to taglist let me know!

The Marionette

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6🤍

Word count for this part: 2643. Enjoy!👻👻

Synapsis:

A new overlord has manifested in hell seemingly overnight. One that overpowered many if not all of the current overlords in all the right ways. Will this overlord use her powers for good to help the members of the hotel? Will she fall in love with a man and end up in a loving gentle relationship? Or will she get her heart broken and turn against them all, burning each bridge she meticulously made. 

The Marionette is a heart wrenching fic with many turns you won't see coming. Stay tuned for each of the episodes as they are released.

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It had been a few days since Nette had talked about her regret. The aftermath of which resulted in a long hug and discussion from Charlie that it wasn't her fault -despite not knowing all the details- she stood firmly on that statement as she truly believes it. Nette on the other hand firmly believed the opposite. She could've prevented it, and possibly could've changed her outcome. Though she wasn't certain of that half of it anyway.

Charlie had ended the exercise early after Nette’s confession. Thinking it probably best to try to do one or two instead of everyone at the same due to the heavy load each one is carrying with them. Nette had thanked each of them afterwards before retiring to her room for the night (despite it being early still). A part of her felt embarrassed that she had let the others see her in a very vulnerable state. A state that she thought she had been able to hide away to prevent it being used against her. After all, blackmail was something she was used to dealing with especially when it came to her kids. Many overlords thinking her love and affection for them made her weak, and attempting to take them from her. Leading to a unforseen bloody massacre led by the other 2 boys and her. Though she didn't like violence she definitely could show others a picture perfect reference to the definition of the word. Her kindness was never a weakness. Just more of a strength to her as ‘you don't need to be an asshole to be strong’ she would always say. Teaching her boys that manners truly matter and show a sense of superiority over your opponent.

Though she was embarrassed about that version of herself she knew Charlie and the others wouldn't judge her for it. Nor look at her any differently because they were each carrying something of a similar weight. They still saw her as their terrifying friend who isn't afraid to put a rude customer in their place. Nette had been thankful they had given her a bit of space after as they were sure she might need it, but she found herself feeling rather lonely in that time rather than anything else. Which led to her talking with Angel sitting at the bar one night feeling much better by just being in his company. She found herself often seeking out Angel for comfort as he seemed to be the one who understood her the most. He never judged her for anything she needed to talk to him about, and she offered him the same amount of comfort on that matter. They often spoke about things that the others didn’t know much about them both. Their relationship had evolved to one of being truly comfortable around each other. Even going as far as to reveal their true names to each other. Promising to keep quiet on the matter and to never use them around the others.

A bit later Nette took a few days away from the group to start working on the project of talking to a winner with her boys. Attempting to find out ways to get heaven to listen to them speaking with a winner. After all, the chances of heaven allowing them to sit down and talk to a winner was slim. Nette knew they would be worried about the sinners ‘corrupting’ the winner and having them fall down to hell. Though could a winner even fall? Could they even end up down in hell if during their life they proved to be worthy of heaven? Could they be corrupted? It wasn’t even a fact that sinners could be redeemed- though Nette had her suspicions about that- so if they couldn’t get redeemed could a winner even fall? They knew an Angel could fall, but that was a heaven born creature. Much like some imps and such in hell. Wait- could imps go to heaven? Wow what a way to get side tracked what a weird thought. Nette felt like they possibly wouldn’t allow it especially if they attempted to speak with the seraphim again. Though the one Charlie spoke of called ‘Emily’ might allow it. Seeing as she wasn’t high seraphim though might cause issues if the other one thought she was beginning to undermine her authority. The last thing they wanted is to cause another Angel to fall. Lucifer had been through enough down here. Seeing only the worst of people, only the evil and malignant. Lucifer might be able to help. How would she ask him though? ‘Hey Lucifer, could you reach out to speak to heaven?’ Yeah cuz that went swell the last time. Though heaven seems to still care about what he thinks. Or wants for that matter. But this isn’t them wanting to talk to the court of angels, this is wanting to speak with a winner. A soul that had ascended to heaven after their life on earth. Nette knew she could reach out to someone else for help but doing that would possibly cause a bigger problem than necessary for this. She figured she should at least speak to Lucifer first. Asking him for a few ideas on the matter wouldn’t hurt.

Nette’s relationship with Lucifer had evolved as well. Becoming more comfortable in being able to speak to him about anything to do with the hotel. She found herself not wanting to push their boundaries, often tiptoeing around any personal matters. She was also thankful he hadn't brought up her confession of her deepest regret since she last spoke about it. About him though, Hyperfixation seemed to be an issue of his. Leading to more issues such as the king forgetting to eat. Finding himself up to his chest in a mountain of paperwork that needed to be completed and time passing by without him realizing. She had brought him a few meals to his office as a way to ensure he didn’t starve for days. Seeing as he didn’t have anyone else but Charlie at the hotel. Choosing to leave his staff at his castle after him moving into the hotel. His way of ensuring he didn’t make it seem like his daughter was incapable of running the hotel on her own. Depression was also something Nette had found the king had. Anytime he wasn’t engrossed in a mountain of paperwork he was in his office creating ducks. Rubber ducks. Nette had to admit the ducks were cute, and found herself asking him about one of them that was on his desk when she went in to deliver a meal. Leading to an hour long discussion about ducks. Not that she minded, in fact, she didn’t mind one bit. After all, the king seemed a bit happier after being able to talk to someone about it so much so that she allowed him to do it again. Actually she allowed him to do it about 6 more times, but nobody needed to know that. She enjoyed listening to him talk about things he was proud of.

After thinking it over for a while Nette found herself standing in front of Lucifer’s office door. Behind it was an apple shaped part of the building. The door was an elegant red color adorning his signature symbol and a golden apple door handle. She wanted to knock but found herself feeling nervous about the situation at hand. Asking a fallen Angel to speak to the place that cast him out was not something she wanted to do. It felt a little too personal. Sure she let the man talk her ear off about ducks,but this was different. This is the place that caused him to end up down here. She sighed lightly before raising her hand to the door knocking 3 times before hearing a ‘come in’ echo from the other side. Taking a deep breath she opened the door, seeing Lucifer sitting at his desk reading paperwork with his hat and overcoat on the chair next to him. “Nette what can I do for you?” She hadn’t realized she had been staring at the man till he spoke. “I have something to ask of you but first, when was the last time you ate something?” She looked at him accusingly. “Oh uh- maybe a bit ago…” he trailed off at the end of his sentence. “I’ll bring you something after we talk, you really shouldn’t forget to eat Lucifer it could cause Charlie to worry” Nette found herself giving him the same speech she did each time she reminded him to eat. “You are right, I shouldn't forget something so important. Apologies, I did not realize how much time had passed. What was it you needed to talk to me about?” He stood from his desk walking to sit at the table he had off to the side. Motioning for Nette to join him there as well. She walked over to the table Lucifer had pulled out her chair to allow her to sit down before seating himself across from her.

He could tell she was a bit nervous about whatever this was about, which in turn made him nervous. As Nette wasn’t one who usually was readable in terms of her emotions, at least not this readable. “Thank you, It has to do with what Charlie and I discussed the other day about speaking to a soul in heaven. I was wondering if it was something you had given any thought to?” Nette could feel her nerves about the topic, and was hoping he couldn’t see them as much as she could feel them. The tidal wave of anxiety growing in tune with the second of silence between the two. “Of course, I had forgotten about that. What were you thinking?” Of course he wanted to hear my ideas Nette thought to herself. Still very much a pile of anxiety. “Well heaven wasn’t very keen on the idea of redeeming a sinner. They didn’t seem to take it very seriously either from what Charlie had told me. Though I wonder if Adam had anything to do with that. On the opposite side though many of them had no idea the extermination was even going on, or that any sinners were attempting to rewrite the wrongs they had done in life that landed them down here to begin with.” She paused, Lucifer had been listening to her intently as she spoke. Her slight accent and rambling gave away her nerves about this topic causing a small smile to form on his lips. “I believe that since the last extermination led to many of the exorcists being disposed of and the first man no longer being ‘alive’ -in a sense I guess- that they would be more willing to hear out what we have to say. Though I have suspicions about no sinner ever being redeemed. It makes no sense as to why they would think they needed to begin the extermination anyway without having some kind of reason. An uprising doesn’t seem like a reliable enough reason especially since angels were thought to not be able to be killed. The only thing I can think of is that a sinner had been redeemed before and possibly caused issues in heaven? Though I’m not sure. Sorry getting off topic” she turned her head away from the man in front of her.

Thinking to herself that she was rambling about nothing at this point. “No need to apologize, I’m following.” Lucifer said allowing Nette to continue “I just am not sure if they would risk us talking to a winner. After all I believe they would be worried that the soul might end up corrupted and find themself well… down here.” Nette said quietly. Lucifer nodded before saying “I haven’t heard anything about souls falling from heaven. After all they proved they could end up there in their life on earth, but I do see the issue. If we are saying a sinner can be redeemed that would mean a winner can be corrupted. Which would cause issues with the very foundation of heaven itself.” “Yes, this is why I wanted to speak with you about it before I went to Charlie. After all, the chances of them speaking to hell again after last time might be a bit more, but I have a feeling they’d want to hear us out at least. All things considered. But allowing us to speak to one of their souls might be pushing it. I just don’t want to let her down but I think this might be out of the question.” Both found themselves pondering over the thought for a bit. Before Lucifer spoke “I think it would be worth asking them. If your feeling is right about a sinner having been redeemed then that would mean all the souls that had been exterminated could have been redeemed and sent to heaven. Corrupting a soul could be as easy as it is to redeem one, which is not at all. I think reaching out couldn’t hurt.” “Who would you ask? Sera doesn’t seem one to listen, but the archangels are well… them” Nette said before realizing she spoke as if she knew them personally. “I mean they’re basically the equivalent of the sins down here, and if they’re anything even remotely close I doubt they’d hear out what Charlie has to say.” She quickly corrected herself. “I believe they will listen even if just for a moment.” Lucifer seemed to have a much more determined demeanor about the hotel then how Charlie originally explained it. “Okay I think that’s for the best then. We start with asking them and see where it goes from there.” Nette said before standing. “Thank you for hearing me out about it, and glad we came to a consensus about the matter.” ‘Of course, thank you for coming to me about it first” Lucifer said standing from his chair as well. He could help but find himself smiling at the overlord in front of him. Forgetting his earlier feelings of reprise towards her thinking to himself that he enjoys her company. Nette opened the door to the office before turning back towards the Angel and saying “I’ll be back with food for you. Also, don’t work too late, you need to try to get some sleep tonight. I know you didn’t sleep at all last night Luci, that's not good for you.” He sheepishly nodded before saying “would you join me for the meal?” “Of course Luci I’d be delighted to” Nette smiled before closing the door behind her. Leaving the Angel alone in his office once again to ponder over how she knew he didn’t go to bed last night, and how she had given him the nickname ‘Luci’. Maybe he liked her calling him that.

While walking down to the kitchen Nette found herself enthralled in admiring how Lucifer stood by Charlie’s dream and would do anything to help her with it. Whatever lies in store he would help her through it. Nette found herself wishing she had a father figure like this. One that was proud to call himself her father, one that would help her through things. She couldn’t help but want that. But she knew it was an absurd dream to wish for anything like that from her actual father. After all, he was the one who ended her life as she knew it. The one who stripped everything from her and threw her away like she was nothing. Maybe that’s why she found herself not wanting to overstep into personal matters with the fallen Angel. Perhaps she related to him a bit more than she’d like to admit. But she also couldn’t help wanting to get closer to him.

Taglist:

@popamolly @preciousbabypeter

#hazbin hotel #alastor #angel dust #charlie morningstar #hazbin alastor #hazbin husker #hazbin lucifer #huskerdust #lucifer morningstar #marionette

[circledotdestroy]

Retrospective - Chapter 3: Square One

Pairing: Shouta Aizawa x F! Pro-Hero! Reader (slow burn)

Main Summary: After 12 years, you, Pro-Hero Strife, has to return to Japan. Your objective: discreetly track down and capture Akari Kaneko, a.k.a. Pro-Hero Aegis— your old classmate who attacked you during her visit in America. In the aftermath of All Might losing his power, however, using UA resources has its complications. The most unexpected complication being Aizawa, someone you never expected to see again. Why does your past have to come back to haunt you now? Masterlist First Chapter Last Chapter Word Count: 6,133

A/N: I'm back before a whole month passed! To celebrate, here's the chapter I spent those weeks revising. If you have any notes on how I did regarding the second portion in particular, I would appreciate it because it changed about 5 times. Anyway, it's A LOT of words so get comfy! I hope you enjoy the fic, and have a wonderful day.

All conflict is announced with lightning. Half your life was lightning rattling inside a box. Spine. Skull. Ribs. Fingers. The electricity, the HEAT craved consumption. All the things you were: fire, lighting, heat, raw energy– they were the visible manifestation of reactivity. 

Pointed gazes of your classmates charged you with the focus of a wall outlet. But you weren’t training right now. Homeroom finished seconds ago. You didn’t do anything–this time. No pre-battle taunts. No staring back. No staring at all, really. Akari missed out on today’s episode of “Strife’s Astute Observational Skills” because you had to pay attention to your homeroom teacher. 

Today was the day. You couldn’t misunderstand or forget a single word he said.

This moment was your career, your life. It was the CRUCIAL event of debuting your early hero career; and the whole world was going to see. 

So why was everyone staring at you? They should be concerned about their own strategy. Akari turned her chair to talk to you before the next class, but stopped to look at the students around the two of you. No one dared to whisper in the intense silence. You wondered if Akari felt the heat radiating through the room like you did. 

The tension got boring. When nothing happened right away, you picked up your bookbag to prepare for the next class. You flipped through the folders until you were interrupted by Akari tapping your desk rapidly for your attention.  Humming in acknowledgement, you grabbed the next folder and sat up. Aizawa was by your desk. You glanced at Akari, who gave you her look that said “I don’t know what’s going on”, then back at Aizawa. He looked down on you with unrivaled intensity. 

Aizawa, the boy with the rare ability to cancel other’s quirks with sight alone–what did he want from you? “I’m going to beat you in the Sports Festival,” he challenged you. It’s strange he felt the need to do that; whether coincidence or by design, he’s usually your opponent during training.

 Quirk-wise, he won the lottery. He was the most annoying person you’ve trained with in class. Not just because the teachers rarely let you go against anyone else. His quirk disregarded the prepwork you did before training to improve your quirk! Maybe YOUR physical training put you ahead of the game, but being paired with Aizawa all the time– and you mean ALL. THE. TIME–does nothing for you. It stalled your progress. It wasn’t fair. Everyone else gets to practice with their quirk, they get to have teachers give them pointers to improve their technique. But guess what? Most of these idiots can't punch correctly!

It’s clear the frustration wasn’t one-sided either. Aizawa never talked about it to you, or anyone in class, but before every challenge your spine sparked, after everything was done, his restless upset lingered. His combat was unpolished. Aizawa can take your strength away, but there’s only so much he can do against someone with years of formal training. 

UA doesn’t include non-quirk-based combat in the curriculum. Observing All Might’s fights told you that much. He relied on his strength and speed instead of any classic fighting style. You should’ve guessed UA didn’t cover brawling, but hey, no one’s perfect. 

Despite what other students have said, Aizawa wasn’t hopeless. In fights, he made plans in a snap and constantly tried new strategies to win. Going against him could be more interesting, if it wasn’t a frequent occurrence. Growing up in the hero industry, you had an eye for finding possibilities. Aizawa was a gem. In a world where anything is possible, he could dictate a fight’s terms. An advantage any agency would, and should, invest in. They’d be idiots if they didn’t.

Now though, he was here. Standing in front of you–with his little death glare. Challenging you to the event the whole grade is competing in by default. There was something about having the quietest boy in class show this much—what was it? His words were direct. He forced everyone’s attention on him and you, so contradictory to his usual self.

“Okay,” you shrugged. It wasn’t like you two weren’t competing for the top spot anyway.

“I’m serious.” 

You nodded, unsure why he was upset. You accepted his challenge, did he not hear you? You repeated yourself, “okay.”

Aizawa stayed at your desk. His bottom lip pushed out. Was he pouting? “Are you listening to me?” 

You shrugged lightly once more and turned your seat his way. “I said "okay ". Did you want something else from me?” An extra surge fizzled through your nerves. Aizawa’s eye twitched. He’s never done that before, you don’t think you’ve had ANYONE do that before. The closest thing was one of your dad’s coworkers–who’d twitch her lip when someone didn’t put the gym equipment away. 

“It’s unbelievable how you think you’re better than everyone. You’ve done nothing to earn it.” 

‘Done nothing?’

You pushed yourself up from your chair. ‘Done NOTHING.’

The hell does he mean “done nothing”?

You’ve gone above and beyond your whole damn life, but you’ve “done nothing”. In a room full of idiots who have NO fighting technique outside their quirk, YOU’RE the one who’d done nothing? 

You scoffed. “I have earned it.” The lightning bolt rattled inside the box looking for how it could run free. Closing the remaining distance, you became aware of how short Aizawa was compared to all the other boys in class. He didn’t move. You leaned closer and squinted at Aizawa’s face. Short and had a baby face to match. It’s like he came straight out of middle school. 

Normally standing this close caused most people to become uncomfortable. They’d look away or step back, but Aizawa didn’t break his gaze. He hasn’t once during this whole time. Didn’t he think you were a threat? The lightning bolt knocked against the box again. Why not nudge it open for a little while? Just enough for the boy in front of you. 

“Aizawa, last year I was accepted in a hero course in America. This year I was accepted into UA. Both times other students only thought about how ‘cool’ their quirk was, but people who only rely on quirks are lazy and become useless in the field. If you don’t learn other things, you’re an idiot.”  After years of training, and practice, and studying. After years of fighting to improve. There was no way in hell idiots should get a gold star because of their quirk. THAT would be doing “nothing”. He of all people should know better.

Staring inky droplets, you waited for his response. In seconds, his eyes widened and started to dart around the room. His breathing became shallow, increasing in speed. This part didn’t happen this quickly, then again, targets usually aren’t face-to-face with you. There was all this room between the desks for him to move away, but he didn’t. Aizawa was petrified.

Something gnawed in your stomach. Telling you it was a mistake, to let it go. Reminding you to not get caught. You shut the lid once more. You’ve scared him enough. Standing upright, you gave him a better chance to speak up. Something to back the big talk from earlier. 

Nothing.

You backed off from him, disappointment and restlessness swirled inside you. “I accepted your challenge. Practice your combat and don’t make us look bad, okay?” 

Aizawa responded in silence. Whatever he had when he first walked up to you was absent. He sulked to his seat, scowling when both your eyes met. You sat in your chair first, watching as he did the same.

The audience grumbled disappointed the show was over. They broke off into their own chatter about the Sports Festival. You looked ahead, rolling your eyes flippantly at Akari. She chuckled as she dug through her book bag in front of you for one of her notebooks. Any conversation had to wait. The next teacher should show up soon.

“Good morning, everyone,” a tired voice announced at the door. You turned from the back of the room, then trailed up, and up, and up the body of a frightfully thin man, slouching with a broken arm. Despite your own physical state, if you didn’t watch where you were walking you could send him flying into a table. He was a neon sign reminding you to stand tall and keep your shoulders back. In the heavy armor you wore, it’ll make you look stronger than you feel. Just like in those old All Might specials you watched when you were younger, “stand tall, keep your chin high, and show confidence.” The man, easily over seven-foot, paused in place, acknowledging you. Your hand rose from your side to wave–but, this was supposed to be a professional meeting. Wouldn’t a head bow be the polite thing to do?

Before you could do so, he spoke. “Hello, are you here for the meeting too?” 

“Yes.”

Mic stepped ahead. “All Might,” your eyes shifted back to the tall man. Crap, that’s All Might? Why is All Might here? “This is my old friend, Miss America, the Queen of Terror, and your Number 1 Fan in middle school–” your head snapped back toward your friend as he rushed that last statement and finished introducing you. “Strife, this is All Might, you know him already.”

All Might continued to smile, extending his unbroken hand for you to shake. You did, not having the heart to say Mic was exaggerating about your fan status. Yeah, you liked All Might, most people do. However, being his “number 1 fan in middle school” meant studying his fights when they came on your radar. Watching interviews to practice your Japanese. Not buying merchandise and knowing every detail about him. The only merch you’ve had for him was maybe two t-shirts gifted to you by one of your instructors growing up. In spite of still liking All Might as an adult, you’ve since come to the conclusion you’d never actually want to meet him in-person. 

“What part of America are you from,” All Might asked in english.

You took your hand back, not expecting him to continue with his own conversation. “I moved around a lot, so almost everywhere?” Switching back to english-mode was easier than stumbling through casual Japanese. All Might must’ve sensed it somehow and decided to save himself the headache.  

“Even in California?”

“Mostly for work, but I know Los Angeles loves you.” If you pulled up the news feed in America, there’d be several articles about LA’s celebration of All Might’s last fight. You couldn’t imagine being in his place– forced into retirement. Reminding him about the love he has back in the States would be a nice gesture, you thought.

“That’s good to know,” he responded. The man standing before you didn’t look like the hero you remembered, but his voice held sincerity. You understand why people were at ease around him.

Y’know, Strife went to school here because of you. She was in the same class as Aizawa and I,” Mic said, also in english 

“Really,” All Might was taken aback. Whether it was because he forgot popular heroes tend to inspire people to go to certain schools or because of Mic’s general behavior, you weren’t too sure. Mic did say you should work here. It’s like he wanted to introduce you to as much staff as possible, including the hero who inspired you to go to a different country, so you’ll be convinced to stay here. ”How’d you like it?”

Memories snapped together in your brain. A blinding window in the principal’s office. Piles of rubble you dug through. A pro chasing you in the woods— Hizashi started to fidget and laugh beside you nervously. Not the best things to remember about your school. You gave the white walls of the room a once over. Black fabric held your attention. ‘Training was fun.’ Eating on the roof was great—when you got over how tall the school building was. Getting your hero license was still one of the best days of your life. Just when you started thinking of the good times, a man–wearing a uniform similar to your old one, came into the room. He did a double-take, his eyes hardened into a glare, his underbite became more pronounced. Eyes burned into your back. When you glanced behind you, Aizawa already looked away. “I learned a lot,” you said making eye contact with All Might.

This guy with the underbite didn’t say a word as he walked behind All Might. He watched you as he lumbered to his chair at the center table of the ‘U’ formation—between Snipe and Aizawa. Aizawa glanced up from the folders to the other man. The man with the underbite nodded to him. Were they colleagues for a long time? Were they friends? 

Shaking the thought, you refreshed your smile toward All Might. It wasn’t a difficult thing to do considering who he is. “It was definitely… an experience,” you chuckled.  

“I’m sure we can talk about specifics during another time,” Mic jumped in. He’d have more stories to share than you would, and he’d relish the opportunity. It was for the best. What you remembered from high school was limited. Since graduation, a lot happened. There was always something. It didn’t help that your memories were typically sinkholes. It was usually up to your conversations with Hizashi and Nemuri to fill in the blanks when it came to your teenage years and some of your early twenties. 

“I’m sure it’ll be fun,” said All Might. He wished you luck in the meeting before he went to his seat at Midnight’s table. With the arrival of underbite guy, the entire roster showed up. The principal walked to the front of the room as Mic shook your shoulder for luck and went to his own seat by Aizawa. Aizawa stacked the folders and pushed them to the edge of his table, closer to the man with the underbite.

Underbite man continued sizing you up.  Aizawa stared you down as well. You widened your stance, daring either of them to speak, but nothing came. The men shifted their attention to their boss.

Pain and hunger paused as the meeting rapidly approached.

 What would Aizawa have in those folders, you wondered. He was reading those in the hallway and he went into the meeting room after the principal. Did Nezu know what was inside? Was it something Aizawa had against you? If you went over there, you could swipe one and see what he has; but it’s too late.

Nezu’s in front of the room. “I want to thank you all for taking the time, early this morning, to have this meeting—” No plan that involved getting close to Aizawa would work now. If you planned ahead, you could’ve done something in the hallway. Aizawa’s attention left Nezu and went to you. Frantically, you darted your eyes to the back corner of the other side of the room. Yes, because that doesn’t look suspicious at all.  “–current events and the changes in the school’s security, I want the decision to be made by you, my most trusted staff.” Aizawa totally noticed you staring at his folder! “I know the six of you will make a fair decision.” 

Like hell this was going to be fair, you thought. Aizawa has a folder with—

‘With what, exactly,’ you questioned. ‘What evidence could Aizawa physically have against you?’ 

Your breathing slowed and the walls of the room collapsed away into void. Hizashi and Nemuri are here. You met All Might and it was ok, in spite of any reservations you had. You were being ridiculous. 

Right?

Any dirt Aizawa had on you would show dirt on his own hands. If he wanted you gone, he’d have to rely on present examples or poke through your arguments. So far he had access to neither. Apart from that, you’ve been to countless meetings.

 “Strife,” Principal Nezu said. 

The walls reformed around you as you acknowledged him. Heat pooled behind your neck as you looked at the people that will decide your luck on the investigation.  “You have the floor.” The principal walked to his seat, by the edge of Nemuri’s table, where a notepad was set. Mic gave you a small thumbs up with the hand that rested by the edge of his table. You nodded, doing a discreet thumbs up of your own with your left hand to your thigh. 

 You grinned politely, making sure to thank the principal for the introduction. Showing you have good manners could sway the faculty by showing you weren’t a horrible dungeon troll. “And thank you all for your time, as well. As said before, I’m Pro-Hero Strife. I’m in Japan for a mission. I understand UA had some challenges in these past months and now is a critical time. With this in mind, I want to do my mission quietly. If you would do the favor of allowing me to do research here, I'd appreciate it greatly.” You made sure to look at everyone in the room, even at the two scowling men.

Aizawa had his arms crossed, unconvinced of the introduction you pulled out of your ass. Because, of course, he’d remember you are a horrible dungeon troll. You’re ready for him to speak out, but his partner took initiative.

“It’d be easier to make a decision if we got more details for your mission.” Underbite guy’s demanding tone almost made you break character. No objections came as to how the guy spoke to you. Of course, he couldn’t be the silent, suspicious type. Someone here had to be the ‘brash’ one, just like your ex-boss from the old agency. 

You continued to smile like you were taught. “That’s fair,” the arrangement looked riskier on their end. They couldn’t accept the agreement blindly. Sharing a few details could win their trust. “I’m looking for someone. A Pro-Hero by the name “Aegis”, her legal name is Kaneko Akari.”

“KANEKO?” You flinched at Mic’s outburst. Eyes bounced to him as the sunglasses hung from his face and his jaw hit the floor. You forgot about how over the top his reactions were in-person. “This meeting’s about HER?” 

Question marks filled the room. Aizawa continued his cold stare. The other guy held skepticism in his features. Particularly in the way he furrowed his brow as shown by the curves on his mask. Now that you really looked at it, an orange mask was such an odd choice for his uniform! His outfit is red, black and white, making the orange way too much. Maybe if he wore a visor instead it would add more variety in the texture and have a practical use—

Poor design choices aside– not preparing Mic ahead of time deducted points from your favor— you had to focus! You didn’t know if the staff knew Mic set this meeting in motion for you. But his reaction says you told him something and didn’t bother with full details. It makes both of you look bad. There’s no spinning this observation without pinning the blame on Mic. You’ll just have to take the hit and see if you can make up for it somewhere else.

“That name sounds familiar, " Midnight commented with slightly furrowed brows. Those words made you ready to jump. If Mic’s shock wasn’t a reflection of what you didn’t tell him, you can correct this misstep. Like if there was information, the type the media hasn’t released yet. “Wasn’t she in your class?” 

Disappointment washed over you. If she wasn’t told anything confidential, then there was no news. You shouldn’t be surprised Midnight didn’t know much about Aegis. In school, Nemuri met Akari once, off the top of your head. They didn’t interact after. After all, Akari was shy, Nemuri was… not.  

“Yeah, she was.” Mic answered as you swallowed your disappointment.  “Aegis has been ranking higher on the popularity polls for the past few years. Unexpected, considering her whole brand revolves around her fights. She doesn’t do much press events or interviews. Other than that, she’s a complete hermit!” Mic swung his arms out, nearly decking Aizawa, and leaned into his chair, making it drift backward. Aizawa scowled at him. “What do you need with that weirdo anyway,” he asked, pulling himself back to the table. 

Unlike when you spoke to him in the hallway, you took a moment to think about what to say exactly. Irritation was weaved throughout his response. Whether he was upset with you, or if he was annoyed at the mention of Akari was unclear. But you knew when this was over, no matter the result, he’d tell you everything.

You staggered for words, but only found broken porcelain and glass. A sickening crack. High pitched shattering then soft thumps of the pieces hitting the ground like rain. The blood oozed from Akari’s mouth as she left you with a cryptic message. One you weren’t sure you translated right when you were actively bleeding onto the carpet. “Kaneko got into trouble while she was in the States. The current charges include: multiple counts of vandalism, aggravated assault, breaking and entering, and arson. I have to find her and bring her back.” You’d never admit this outloud, but you were surprised you remembered how to say all those crimes as well as you did. Meanwhile, the teachers picture-posed like mannequins. Principal Nezu held his pen against the paper for a moment, then scribbled ferociously. 

“Those are serious accusations,” Snipe said. “Are you sure she did all this?”

“Yes.” You strolled over to your briefcase, bracing to pick it up “normally”. Your jaw clenched until your face was in the faculty’s view again. You stood with it by Mic offering a quick “excuse me”. He responded by gesturing ‘go ahead’. Setting the briefcase onto the table, you pulled one of the five disks out, along with a tiny remote, before shutting and shoving it under the table.

 “There are pictures of Aegis entering and leaving the location.” Going back to the center of the room you held the button on the disk. When it blinked blue, you dropped it while pressing the remote’s top button for the hologram to appear. When you pressed the next button, four images of Akari post-fight walking away from the hotel room, labeled and dated, alongside an image of her in uniform taken from a news article. The faculty reacted accordingly. The only exasperation you processed was “it’s really Kaneko” from the table behind you. In the top right picture, Akari held her overnight bag close to her body like she would a shield. Right arm going across to help her carry the weight from the camera’s point of view. 

You pressed the button again to transition to the next set of images. The hotel room. Two beds, one with a busted frame. A shattered window. Glass. Porcelain. Splinters. Splashed all over the floor like water. Then the splatters of dried blood in more places than you remembered.

“This is where the assault took place,” All Might asked in awe of the destruction. 

You confirmed, glass shattering in the back of your mind.

“It’s hard to believe a hero would go to another country to swap sides,” commented Snipe.

“Aegis isn’t being charged as a villain,” you corrected. “There’s no evidence she used her quirk, these are criminal charges.”

“These claims can cost a Pro their career without proper evidence.” Underbite responded. You didn’t like the way he said it. It wasn’t an exasperated comment, made in the shock of a Pro Hero throwing their like away overseas. The way it sounds, and the way he was looking at you as he said it, it sounded like an accusation. 

He didn’t believe you.

“With her rise in popularity, there’ll be an uproar regardless if the charges are made public. Especially now with the current condition of hero society,” All Might’s words drifted off. His hand met his chin. Pondering about the power vacuum his retirement is leaving behind, no doubt. If not, then he’s thinking of the scrutiny UA has been facing due to the villain attacks. Based on what Akari had brought up with that so-called “Hero Killer”, there’s been discourse on the idea of a “true hero” these past couple months. Combining all three concepts together painted an ugly picture explaining why you go to Japan’s Hero Commision. Who knows what they’d do with the current facts of this case if they find out.

“Popularity be damned! A criminal’s a criminal, a crime's a crime,” Mic bursted out. “That’s clearly Aegis, let’s just let Strife investigate here already!”

“It’s not that simple, Mic,” Midnight countered. “Even if there is evidence Aegis committed those crimes, that’s not the topic of the meeting. We need to think of the students before we let any hero investigate on school grounds. Think about it, there’s a reason why we don’t bring our investigations here as teachers.”

“Confidentiality is a big one. At least with the hero-side of our profession,” Snipe added. “On the teacher-side—even if there isn’t a rule against it, having a student see our cases runs the risk of them telling others, making them panic. Strife being here solely for an investigation does the same thing.” He had a point, you wouldn’t be confined to the school’s basement if they let you research here. The investigation required you to come in and out of the building to follow leads. With hundreds of students in the same area, they’re bound to notice you around. “Tensions are high with the students as it is.” 

But you could be careful–

“They’ll know she doesn’t belong here in seconds,” the soon-to-be world's third most grating voice reached your ears. 

Your eyes whipped to Midnight’s side of the room and looked at the wall behind her and Nezu. ‘Deep breaths,’ you told yourself. If you made eye contact with Underbite now, end badly. For you. ‘Deep. Breaths.’ The Principal didn’t look up from his notes, Midnight had her head cocked toward the center table with narrowed eyes. 

“C’mon, Vlad, give her credit! Strife graduated here, she’s a Pro, and she can keep a mission on the DL,” Mic argued coolly. 

“Of course, you would say that. You were in her corner before you knew why she was here. This is a critical time, do we really need anyone bringing more problems around this school?”

‘Breathe in. Breathe out.’

“Alright, let’s calm down,” All Might spoke up. His calm voice relaxed you enough to stop your inner commands. “Who’s to say it’ll cause problems? We don’t know what her investigation looks like yet.” All Might ended his statement looking at you.

You bowed your head ready to grab his gift, this opportunity he gave you, and run. “Outside myself, she had no contact with anyone in the States. On the first day of her disappearance, no one in the agency could find her. One of my coworkers found the postcard she left behind implied she was heading here. She doesn’t have contact with anyone in the States, but me. Japan is different. I need to learn about the people Aegis talks to regularly. Mic said she didn’t do interviews often, meaning I must look deeper. I know UA has records of Alumni, I think those records will be the most helpful.”

“Right.” You roll your eyes, ‘what now,’ you thought. So far, he was a mix between your old boss, the Medic, and your blank-eyed homeroom teacher with the way he’s testing your patience. We’re just going to hand over confidential files because you say so?”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Vlad,”  Mic asked, getting equally annoyed as you. Even Aizawa’s side-eyeing him for being as subtle as a freight train.

“I mean ‘I don’t trust this woman’,” Vlad responded. He gestured toward your direction. “For all we know, this is an old crime scene!”

“What are you talking about,” Mic asked.

Vlad pointed at you. “This woman has no business being around our students!”

“Excuse me,” you said without thinking. 

“Don’t act innocent. I know you have a history of manipulating people,” Vlad argued. He was the one starting problems! You wanted to argue back, but the principal was watching. Holding your tongue you glance around the room. You paused looking at the folders on Aizawa’s table. Aizawa watched you while Vlad accused you. Despite his insistence of knowing why you were here, he hasn’t said a thing since the meeting started. It was Vlad. They nodded to each other when they saw each other– Vlad knew what was inside those folders.

What the hell did Aizawa have on you?

An aggravated sigh left Aizawa. He rolled his chair back toward the wall as Mic and Vlad argued. It was the type of sigh you would let out when a new grad didn’t know a proper fighting stance—one that didn’t get them punched in the face. You clenched your left hand, ready to fight back against anything Aizawa had to say. He looked at the two men. “You need to calm down.” He turned to an irritated Vlad, who was as shocked as you were right now. “This is about the camp incident?” 

Vlad cocked his head at Aizawa— like he was asking the same thing you were. What does the villain attack have to do with this? 

“Our teachers resolved that years ago.” You took a step back. He wasn’t talking about the villain attack. But what did he mean by ‘our teachers’, Vlad wasn’t a student here. “Everyone panicked because a pro hero had unchecked anger issues and shouldn’t have been left alone with the students. The teachers at the time said everyone overreacted because of the heat,” Aizawa explained; he used the same rehearsed story. “It was fifteen years ago, we all moved on.” 

But why?

Vlad squinted at him in disbelief. “And what about the fights?” Red alarm lights went off. No one outside the school was supposed to know about those. Vlad was a student here!

“Fights?” Aizawa’s brows furrowed. He turned to Midnight, who looked down tracing her nail along the table’s surface. Then at Mic, who took to inspecting your briefcase underneath the table for quality.  

“We resolved those as well,” Principal Nezu declared. Tension left your shoulders thinking about the office window. How the setting sun shone through your eyelids as you stared below the desk, picking at a loose string that used to hold a gold button in place. The only memory you have of that day was when he said: ‘This is the last chance I’m giving you, you must make better decisions.’ “Vlad, if you have a relevant point, say it before we move on.”

 Vlad took a deep breath of his own. “I’m sorry for getting worked up, Nezu,” he sat down. You rolled your eyes, noting how he didn’t apologize for his behavior toward you. “I wanted to point this out as a pattern of behavior. Aizawa said the Pro Hero who watched over us had no reason being around students. I’m saying the same thing about Strife.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion, but Strife’s conduct during this meeting has been stellar. She had more patience than even I thought possible.” Nezu’s words made your head spin. You wanted to accept the compliment, but what did he expect you to act like? Did he think you'd punch Vlad in the neck? C’mon, you were a crappy teenager, but you wouldn’t have done that!

Vlad’s face scrunched up. He wanted to argue, but was holding back. Acting hostile toward you, whether it was his intent or not, worked in your favor. If he didn’t want you to stick around, he couldn’t rely on the past. To everyone else, anything you did prior to graduation was a long-rusted hatchet.

Nezu asked if anyone had any other concerns before getting on with the meeting. The teachers looked amongst themselves, a few shaking their heads.

“I do.” Aizawa’s eyes pierced through you expectantly as he leaned closer to the table. The last thing you said to him during your little reunion. You were supposed to tell him why you’re here, and he’s not satisfied. There’s no walking away this time.

He did you a favor, it’s your turn to pay up.

“How did you get this case?”

 “Kaneko visited me at my agency out of nowhere. I was working on a mission with a team when she arrived. She saw the agency was behind, crime has been getting worse these past few months, and she offered her help. The boss approved and she was added on to the mission. When we were done, we went to a hotel and this happened,” you gestured at the holographic images of the disaster zone. “I don’t know why she did this, but I know this wasn’t planned.”

“How,” asked Aizawa, still not pleased.

“She committed her crimes before she got paid. Boss told her she’d get the check the day after the mission finished because the money needed to be decided.” She hit you in the back of your head while you were looking for the commission paper. The mission was difficult. No smart or sane person would do it for free. “I have to find her– if Kaneko committed these crimes on her own, she has to pay.” 

“You have a personal stake in this,” All Might realized.  

You sighed looking at your boots. You knew this would come up. “If I said I didn’t, it’d be a lie. Kaneko showed up, I invited her in, and now I have to fix the problem. Without the history, in my agency I’m the only hero qualified to come here and bring her back. The Boss said my background made me the best option.”

“In the hallway, you said that your investigation should take less than two weeks,” Midnight said, lacing her fingers together on the desk. “During that time, the only students that must be in the school are in the first year hero course.”

“We already said, she can’t go in and out of campus without suspicion. How do you think that’s going to work with the first years after a villain attack,” Vlad asked. Midnight fumed in response, making him back off. 

Before you could respond, Aizawa spoke up. “What he means to say is our classes are training to get their hero licenses soon. They need to focus. If you’re around with no explanation, you’ll be a distraction.”

The cogs turned in their place as you realized who you were speaking to right now. Your smile came back. “That’s right, Mic told me about that!” If all you needed was an explanation… the deal wrote itself. If Aizawa wanted you gone before, you had to give him something to reconsider. “I could help with the exam.”

“Is that so,” asked the Principal.

“I’ve judged sixteen American licensing exams and I’ve mentored younger heroes at my agency. Mic said I was qualified to work here.” Mic agreed enthusiastically, Midnight doubled-down on the notion saying she could verify the information. Most importantly, what you said captured Aizawa’s attention.

“And you have time to do this during your investigation?” Nezu asked. 

“I’ll make time.” Nezu seemed pleased with the answer and he started writing something in his notepad. That’s when you remembered what he said earlier. The principal wasn’t making the final decision. You sauntered closer to the homeroom teachers. “Eraser, we were in the same class. You know I do great work. I’m sure you’re doing fine on your own, but if you let me do my research here, your students will excel in the exams. I’ll make sure of it.”

Aizawa considered your offer. Regardless of whatever you two had, you two will never be friends like you used to. Both of you destroyed that bridge and the foundation withered to dust. It didn’t matter if you two hated each other now or not. You could be professional. You could play nice. Sentiment would never work on him. Eraser Head needed a logical choice.

“Fine with me,” Eraser huffed. 

The grin on your face got bigger. 

Behind you the Principal asks for Vlad’s opinion. “If Aizawa wants Strife as an advisor that’s on him, but I'll stand by what I said earlier. If I’m not around, I don’t want her around my students.” You knew that was coming, but he didn’t matter. Soon after he spoke, the teachers put your investigation’s approval to a vote. When the result was clear Nezu spoke up. “Well then, it looks like Strife’s first day as Provisional License Advisor starts today.”

Taglist:

@lonelyghosts-stuff

#mha x reader #bnha x reader #aizawa x reader #shouta aizawa x reader #mha x female reader #retrospective by dot #aizawa shouta x reader #aizawa x y/n #aizawa x you

[selene-moonie]

I went to get my hair braided and my SP showed up

I literally went by my hair-braiding friend for a vacay and to get my hair braided. My SP and my hair-braiding friend are close friends, and they live 20 minutes from each other. He came to bring something for her and ended up staying the entire 5 days I was there because she had two urgent things to do.

We spent most of the time watching anime. I started and finished Death Note, started the new Bleach season (I'm not past the first 20 episodes of bleach btw), started the new JJK season, and rewatched the last 10 episodes of Skip Beat (because that's a vacation tradition I started in secondary school). We were also up till the wee hours of the morning (one morning we saw the sun) talking. Which is absolutely my vibe, and always has been.

Anyway, I didn't plan on seeing him - I had barely even affirmed to see him if I'm being honest. The month prior to seeing him, I remember thinking about him a lot, how cute he is, how much I really like him and so forth. At one point, I showed a new friend a picture of him, just to show him off.

In any case, it is an absolute vibe when things work out perfectly because the hair-braiding event was an overlap of 3 manifestations: my hair, my sp, and the perfect vacation.

#manifestation #manifesting #law of assumption #master manifestor #loassumption #motivation #neville goddard #self concept #specific person

[mamahersh]

MAG 189: Gotta say, Martin getting actually pissed over something was kinda entertaining. Also, once again, rather unsubtle social commentary, though a least a little bit nuanced.

Martin that was incredibly unsubtle.

> "And Jon, no tape recorders".

Now Georgie, I know that you weren't here and that Melanie is an incredibly biased source, but I would like to inform you that generally Jon can't actually control the tape recorders. It's like trying to tell him to stop getting kidnapped in Season 3, it's generally out of his control.

And then the midseason break happened! I was tempted to listen to this one yesterday, and then listen to the next two only today. But I have a schedule, irregardless of the actual contents of the episodes. Admittedly, if we're hitting the tunnels now, I think thematically (despite the break) this actually worked out to a good division of episodes.

MAG 190:I'm going to strangle Georgie.... I might not strangle her.

Really entertaining tunnels episode, gotta be honest. However, if I have to listen to Jon going back to getting raked over the coals for things he has no control over I will reach through the screen and strangle some bitches. But yeah, is it bad that I was happy to hear Georgie actually apologize for the shit she put Jon through in S4? Or at least acknowledged that she had generally fucked up with how she judged Jon without knowing the whole story? Made me feel things that Jon was so... forgiving? See I don't know if forgiving is the right word here, because to forgive someone you have to agree that they did something wrong, and I don't think Jon actually thought Georgie did anything wrong in S4. I know at the time he was saddened and somewhat bitter about her leaving, but I think over the course of the season he convinced himself that it was for the best and that she was completely in the right. He turned it around on himself at least once on tape when he asked if he had made the wrong choice to come back from the coma. After he found out that everyone would have been freed if he had died, he couldn't answer Martin if he would have gone through with it if he had Known that earlier.

Anyways, Jon's going to make me strangle him too at this rate for suicidal ideation and self esteem lower than mine.

MAG 191: Not a lot to say, characters are reiterating and finalizing their positions to each other: Jon and Martin promising to make the hard choices despite their inclinations. Melanie and Georgie realizing that to make hope a reality they need to help Jon and Martin even if they don't like Jon (Melanie) or think the risk would normally be too great (Georgie). And an... ominous little aside where Martin realizes they'll need to move on sooner rather than later.

I would assume next stop is the Panopticon, so I’m excited to see how the initial confrontation goes. Admittedly, I would assume most people generally assumed that this moment coming so soon in “Act 3″ of Season 5 meant that it wasn’t going to go as hoped. Can’t have nice things in Hell and all that! Because here’s the thing, I think that what Jonny specializes in during this season is recreating a literal “Hell on Earth” scenario. You remove the literal concepts of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness from the equation, dump everyone into horrors of their own making, and you get S5 of TMA. I mean, in C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce”, we catch a glimpse of what Lewis’s take on Hell might be like: Humanity divorced completely from God and left to their own devices. Arguably, while S5′s stated intentions are nothing like that, in many cases people’s Fears are manifested in a way that are spurred on by their faults.

Anyways, see you all tomorrow to find out if I actually can reach through the internet to strangle my blorbos from my podcasts.

#tma #the magnus archives #the magnus archives liveblog #mag 189 #mag 190 #mag 191 #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #georgie #melanie #jon sims #martin #It is literally like screaming at a brick wall

[ibrithir-was-here]

@ibrithir-was-here I've been reading about your Endless Heirs AU (actually I saw the post that inspired it), and I just wanted to share a few of my ideas.

1. The police were amazed when the abducted and supposedly dead Daniel Hall turned up at a hospital, alive and unharmed, but with his hair having turned white from the stress/fear, having been dropped off by an unidentified man in sunglasses. The whole affair becomes a popular episode of 'Buzzfeed Unsolved'.

2. Lyta finds out exactly what happened to her son when all the Endless siblings(and Matthew and Corinth) manifest in her apartment to explain the situation. She was shocked to find out her son was now turning into something a level above a God, but was even more astounded to hear that Morpheus (who she was sure was a heartless monster) was basically willing to die to save him. She finally understands when Death tells her about Orpheus.

3. Daniel always lets his hair grow slightly long. If its short, it has the same 'just-stuck-a-fork-in-the-electrical-socket' look as Dreams.

4. Due to his hair and eye color, as well as his name, Daniels nickname in school is Ghost.

5. Daniel refers to Morpheus as 'Pops', and the other Endless as his Aunts and Uncles (or Auntcles, in the case of Desire).

6. When he falls asleep and enters the Dreaming, Daniel takes on his Endless form- basically his normal self with paper white skin and star-filled eyes. This is the only form he can use his powers in. He eventually learns to take this form in the Waking world when he's a teenager.

7. Morpheus gives Daniel the emerald as an eighth birthday present. He constantly wears it.

8. Daniel has mild narcolepsy. This means he occasionally falls asleep at random times. Any teacher who berates him for it faces the full wrath of Hippolyta Trevor Hall.

9. Daniels favorite subject is English. He's able to read entire novels in the span of an hour. He DESPISES Shakespear though.

10. When he turns ten, Daniel gets a raven of his own (mostly because Matthew is tired of trying to babysit two idiots). His is a female named Mal (kudos if you know who I'm talking about).

Anyway, I love your work!

#submission #hey thanks!!! #your ideas are really fun I like them! 👍👍 #daniel definitely deserves his own raven #sandman #morpheus #daniel hall #lyta trevor #lyta hall #sandman spoilers #the bit about him having narcolepsy is especially clever #dream of the endless

[awkwardwithapause263]

Spoilers for Episode 3 of Mayfair Witches if you haven’t watched.

The sheer audacity of Carlotta be like hi, I’m your great aunt and the dead woman was your mother why don’t you come back to my place. Knowing damn well she snatched Rowan from Deirdre then kept Deirdre in a catatonic state for thirty plus years then wanna be all woe is me I failed her, our family and god then jumps to oh look he’s looking for his whore but wait she’s made of stronger stuff than her mother. Bitch! Her words alone after the things she’s done make me despise her, but binding that innocent woman to Lasher knowing Lasher would kill her in one of the worst ways imaginable all because she did the morally right thing makes me be like I won’t be sad or sorry when you get pushed off that balcony.

How was Lasher able to leave the grounds if he was bound to the maid?

It was Cortland that killed her why else would he be in such a shock at himself like oh my god I did that combined with I know you’re upset I loved her too, but on the bight side you’re now free to bind with the thirteen witch and the fact Lasher was beyond pissed off at him.

So I was right about Ciprien getting there and Rowan deciding to go with him instead and about the safe house being what is keeping Lasher at bay.

Ciprien my dude don’t you know you never tell a woman how she feels even if you know how she feels and anyways it would have seemed like a invasion of privacy if someone told me I know what you feel I felt it when I touched you even if it was done on accident.

People can’t be that gullible to the point he can get into the crime scene and the morgue without much effort.

The medical examiner was an insensitive dick people really should do a thorough background check when hiring and then continuous ones throughout their employment.

Up until their final scene together Lasher and Rowan felt like a drugged girl awkwardly making her way down the block while some guy is taking advantage which I guess is what we’re meant to get from it. I was mentally screaming come on Rowan some woman is insistent you have a drink even when you told her no(when she popped up and started talking I was like who is this some old friend of Deirdre) then some guy appears after you have that drink in a mask. Stop and think about it that’s him. Inside the episode someone said he and Rowan bonded over shared grief I agree in the beginning when he was that woman they did.

He had absolute nothing to say for himself when Rowan snapped out of it and figured out wait this isn’t right you aren’t my mother it’s you it was you all along.

And girl what the fuck are you doing wandering around at night when there’s a psycho demon after you I would have stayed near that building and gone immediately back inside once it was all clear.

I was expecting those boys to follow Rowan then Lasher to swoop in and kill them all to appear the hero.

I wonder if Ciprien’s sister is going come back into play, those heels underneath the couch were a one night stand kind of moment, why is she working in heels pregnant, when she said are you seeing my brother I was like not yet she’s not, Rowan sweetie now is not the time to project your shit onto other people.

Cortland was going through Rowan’s belongings uh excuse you sir?

That last scene with Ciprien and Rowan was cheesy, cute, sincere and kinda intimate.

Love how we getting an expanse on magic and how the physical manifestation of Ciprien’s ability has adapted. In the first two episodes it was like a portal opened and he saw what was behind the object he was touching now it’s like we see a reflection of what he sees via his glasses.

Might add more.

This episode didn’t get me pumped for the next one which I guess is the point being it’s meant to be very solemn.

Was Lasher aware that Rowan felt what he was doing to Deirdre? Doesn’t seem so.

Why do I get the feeling Carlotta’s protection is putting and keeping Rowan in a catatonic state until she dies? Oh that’s right it’s what she did with Deirdre.

Ciprien’s directions were for your own safety don’t leave the apartment, but she ended up having to because of the fire now she’s thinking I won’t be able to go back inside for some time, but I can’t stay out here where Lasher can find me I know I’ll go to the Mayfair house because Carlotta said I’d be safe there. When in all honesty that is the absolute last and worst place she needs to be.

You remind me of her. Yeah exactly what a woman wants to hear(note sarcasm).

So let me see if I got this right when she took that drank it projected her consciousness into the ghostly plane where she could physically interact with Lasher and see other ghost but none of the other humans could see or interact with her or them and when she snapped out of it she came back to herself on the street corner where it began.

If you’re only separated for a minute why don’t you go find Deirdre and leave Rowan the fuck alone.

Anything could have happened to her while she was unconscious on that street.

I’ve heard people say all rowan does is cry, she looks a mess and is making poor decisions. Well in the first episode she was killing people with her mind and her mom was gaslighting her about it, in the second episode her mom was dead and her boss wouldn’t let her work and in the third her birth mom was murdered in both of her mom’s death she had to watch and could do nothing about it.

I think Lasher was scratching at the necklace through Deirdre but couldn’t get it off because she was so drugged.

Maybe that’s why Josephine was there to make sure nothing did.

#mayfair witches #rowan mayfair #ciprien grieve #lasher #amc #carlotta mayfair #cortland mayfair #season 1 episode 3

[knee-stockings]

I finished listening to Alice Isn’t Dead seasons 1 and 2 (excited to listen to 3) and I have Thoughts and Ramblings

Overall it’s an interesting and engaging time!! Really enjoying it. Kinda want a shirt that says Thistle or Praxis on it. (Spoilers under the cut)

I’m enjoying digging into the conspiracy behind it all, hoping that season 3 has the answers I crave. (Idk what the name was of the woman who was hunting Keisha so I’m calling her Coyote) I like the villain vibes that Coyote gives off, the way that she wanted Keisha to discover some horrible truths so she could watch her soul get crushed before killing her. Playing with her food like a sadistic predator. But very very relieved that Alice showed up to save the day. I’m fully expecting season 3 to start with the duo running away and realizing that now the govt is probably on their tails.

Speaking of which, I can’t wait to learn what’s in it for the govt. Learning that Bay Creek and Thistle were two sides of the same coin that’s being flipped by the govt was wild…but also kinda made sense. That question that Coyote prompted Keisha to ask: “who benefits?” That’s stuck in my head. I guess the govt benefits, but what could be in it for them?? Staging a fake war between Bay Creek and Thistle and giving both sides resources and funding while pretending they’re enemies?? What could they gain…?

Random thoughts about episodes: I liked the episode narrated by both Keisha and Coyote, where sometimes their words would converge. That was so cool. Also I keep thinking about the episode with the black ship, where people who are too curious about it disappear and then reappear on that ship, a little different. The way Keisha reacted to it was so interesting. Instead of continuing to investigate the mystery of the black ship, she just “that mystery is going to be a story that doesn’t involve me.” Fascinating. It feels like the opposite of main character syndrome—instead of thinking that everything’s about you always, you realize that sometimes you’re fated to be a background character. Sometimes you’ll walk away from a mystery without a satisfying conclusion where everything’s wrapped up nicely. No explanation, no resolution. Sometimes you’ll watch that black ship break in half and sink without ever finding out the truth about it. And that’s okay.

I’m kinda hoping that the Thistle people *don’t* turn out to be the result of human experimentation. Maybe they’re from an alternate dimension, maybe they’re the manifestation of human fears of the unknown, maybe they’re unexplainable and just appeared one day out of the blue, but I’m just hoping they’re not human experiments done by the govt. idk why but that would be immensely disappointing to me. Like…it would be veering towards sci-fi instead of supernatural, if that makes sense. Anyway

I’m kinda hoping that the Thistle people *don’t* turn out to be the result of human experimentation. Maybe they’re from an alternate dimension, maybe they’re the manifestation of human fears of the unknown, maybe they’re unexplainable and just appeared one day out of the blue, but I’m just hoping they’re not human experiments done by the govt. idk why but that would be immensely disappointing to me. Like…it would be veering towards sci-fi instead of supernatural, if that makes sense. Anyway

#ignore me #mimi reviews #alice isn’t dead #pls no spoilers #I will prob finish listening today tbh #also hoping that using :readmore: on mobile will work #I can’t find another way to do a read more on mobile anymore???? #this podcast is doing wonders for my work time boredom

[thegreatmelodrama]

⚠️STRANGER THINGS 4 SPOILERS⚠️

Okay, but the Doctor Zhivago reference in episode 2 👀👀. I’m picking up on two meanings. Also the movie is, as Robin (roughly) puts it, about “doomed love” and takes place in Russia during WWII and the Russian Civil War

1) This is the most obvious one. It could relate to Joyce and Hopper’s storyline and I mean the parallels are there to a certain extend. I mean one of the main characters in the movie is named Yuri as well. I think this movie, from reading the plot line (I haven’t seen it myself) is more of a nod to the ending of season 3, but it could also relate the future of Jopper. Now I’m fairly certain Hopper and Joyce won’t die this season—like I’m 99.9% sure of this. And until Volume II drops, I can’t make predictions for season 5.

2) So the second interpretation relates to Steve and Nancy. With Stancy somehow re-emerging (it’s giving that one gif of Angela scaring Dwight), I feel like we are building up to Steve’s death (but I’m hoping I’m wrong). But Robin’s doomed love comment isn’t really helping to combat this theory. It could also mean Nancy dies and I don’t want this either as I truly love her character (I also relate to her in many ways, minus upside down shit and relationship wise—unless you count pining over Steve Harrington) However with Nancy and Robin forming a friendship (however, it’s giving romantic—or should I say roNantic—tension/chemistry) and Eddie and Dustin having a better bond, Steve is no longer the thread keeping them together so it just seems likely. It just seems like Steve is on the way to receive closure. But Steve’s death also seems too obvious at this point. Like yeah people have been scared in the past he was going to die, but I feel like more and more people have predicted him to die this season (idk it just feels different this time around). So it wouldn’t be much of a twist if Steve died (BUT it would still hurt); I’m manifesting a fake-out. OOF I went on a rant when I told myself I wouldn’t. Anyways if you are still reading, I think the “doomed love” thing could be pointing to how Steve and Nancy’s rekindling is doomed, either by death OR them just not working out (I’m hoping it’s the latter). But I feel like I’m reading way too much into this and instead used this reference to word vomit some of my thoughts about the future of Steve Harrington in stranger things.

(I’m sorry but I feel Iike this gif perfectly captures my reaction while watching this season and then seeing those Stancy scenes happen). This is NOT my gif, it belongs to @dwightandjimoffus

#st4 spoilers #stranger things spoilers #I defintely used the Doctor Zhivago reference to talk about Steve #steve harrington #stranger things #jopper #I have so much I want to say and talk about with this season