#felt like this deserved its own post tbh
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my contribution to the bbc ghosts fandom
#felt like this deserved its own post tbh#idfk i think its funny but then my brain has worms sooo#bbc ghosts#julian fawcett#julian bbc ghosts#ghosts#video#ghosts edit#verbatim#mother mother#my posts
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pairing: Kenjaku x F!Reader, past Geto Suguru x F!Reader
word count: 3.6k
about: you become kenjaku's captive to ensure that he will not miss his opportunity to fight the strongest after his return from the prison realm. the temptation of being this close to the last remaining earthly fragment of the man you once loved, suguru, proves too much to resist and you give into your desires despite the hole they're bound to leave.
contents: NSFW - MINORS DNI. DARK CONTENT WARNING, MAJOR MANGA SPOILERS FOR CH 236 AND BEYOND | dubcon, manipulation, violence against reader, asphyxiation, kidnapping | reader is a sorcerer and went to school with geto and they had mutual feelings for one another, mentions of religion and references to god, kenjaku retained some of geto's memories and knows reader through them, reader has breasts and descriptions of vaginal anatomy are given, rough piv sex with little prep, reader is referred to as "girl", major character death (off screen).
notes: i've uh....been going through some things lately LMAO tbh i started this awhile back before thanksgiving but have felt weird about posting it and it very nearly stayed in the "between me and god" folder so i held back but today i said fuck it. if you read, thanks and i hope you enjoy!!!
header art is by jenny holzer and divider is by @/cafekitsune ♡
“The old occupant of this vessel was very fond of you, you know?”
How dare Kenjaku mention Suguru so casually, as if he were a tenant to his own flesh and bone instead of its rightful owner?
“You know nothing about him,” The words are full of venom, flying from your mouth not unlike the way you spat at the curse user’s face two days prior to now. He chuckled when the fluid hit his cheek, wiping it off without a second thought. “Or me.”
You felt so guilty for spitting at his face, the face of a man you once believed that you loved, that you wept until you began to dry heave atop the futon mattress in the room that has been designated as yours. It’s the same bed you rest on now, duvet over your knees that are hiked to your chest. It’s a means to protect yourself from any vulnerability but it’s truly no use. If Kenjaku wants to harm you, he will.
He has insisted your accommodations be comfortable since arriving three days ago given you are collateral and not a captive, his own clever wording for the situation, but you’re more than aware that if you were to attempt to escape from the cage that you’d hit the window just as all birds hungry for a taste of freedom do. There are no cuffs, chains, or bars but your freedom is no longer yours. It is a prize to be won pending the defeat of the man standing across from you in the doorway, shoji door open beside him, flowing hair as dark as the midnight sky brushing the backs of his elbows.
For years you wondered what you’d do if faced with Suguru again. Would you strike him, insisting he deserved it for all the hurt left in his wake? Ask him why in a scream so powerful your shoulders would shake with the weight of your fury? Perhaps you’d forgive him, as you’d been taught and encouraged to do your entire life, and those mumbled prayers cast to the God you believe in above you would be true for the first time since they’ve left your treacherous lips.
“I forgive him, I hope you can, too.” You have begged God aloud and silently since sixteen years old. You have always been devout in your faith despite abandoning most of the tenets that make someone a believer, your lack of devotion not enough to deter you from selfishly asking for absolution for a man who you know deserves none.
God’s answer is clear when faced with the fact that this is not Geto standing in front of you. There is no less mercy a person can be shown than their body being used as a sick prop after their death.
The space where his thoughts and dreams and hopes used to lie is occupied by something far worse than just visions of a world purified through means of violence, a place where people like you could live without the threat of death and sacrifice to keep others safe. Granted, that wasn’t exactly a noble purpose either, but at least it didn’t threaten your life the way that whatever lives inside of his skull does now.
“I know more about both of you than you think.”
Kenjaku’s words drip with smugness and your stomach flips. The natural responses of your body to a man who looks and sounds just like Suguru make you sick but you cannot focus on fighting them off and keeping yourself protected at the same time, you have to simply make peace with the butterflies in your stomach that feels like something is punching you in the gut over and over again. He dares enter the room and you scoot further up the futon, hitting the wall behind you and leveling a glare in his direction.
Suguru’s body reacts to you, as well, something that Kenjaku planned long ago to use to his advantage. It started with hazy dreams, a face he recognized as yours drifting through them, your thighs and your lips and your skirt. It’s a version of you a little younger, a little warmer - less edgy than you are now. You are sharp and finely tuned to harm while the version of you that lived in Geto’s mind will forever stay soft, a freshly unfurled rose.
“All you’ve done is vandalize him,” you accuse and he shrugs, dressed in a cotton yukata rather than the robes he stole in addition to the body they dressed. It’s easy to imagine another life where this is Suguru and you are you and he’s coming to your shared bedside, kneeling on the ground the same way Kenjaku is now while he invites himself to the only space you currently have as your own.
“You’re a smart girl, don’t play dumb.” Your glance moves from the doorway to him, disgusted by how brave he is getting this close to you. “Perhaps I’m simply using the power this body holds in the way he was too cowardly to attempt.”
Despite your current state of sitting in nothing but a yukata yourself, you are physically strong from spending the last decade of your life as nothing more than a glorified weapon to use in the fight against evil. Even if your Cursed Technique would be unlikely to have any effect on the man, you could be a difficult problem for him if you wanted to be, yet you sit and do nothing but wait and refuse to respond to his words. He chuckles at your stubbornness and reaches across the bed and your body to grab your chin between his thumb and index finger. He shifts your head until you’re staring directly at him and a smile crosses his lips.
You do not fight him off.
“Tell me, sorcerer,” he starts and you swallow, bottom lip quivering. You want to reach out and slap him away, to scream and kick but your body stays still, the only place blood is pooling between your legs and in the heat of your face. “Where are those teeth and claws you were so eager to show me on your first night here?”
He reaches his thumb upward and presses it against your mouth, stopping the shake with a single touch - your body’s natural reaction to a man you are now certain you loved, given it’s the only explanation for your behavior. It’s a form of trust, the muscle memory of a kiss he gave you in your dorm room at the school you once shared. The first night you were spitting and hissing, now you’re so placid.
“Nothing to say for yourself?”
Stubbornly, you shake your head and Kenjaku chuckles again, pulling his thumb away from your lip but maintaining the grip on your chin. You know this is not Suguru, it’s as clear as the stitches across the forehead of the practically empty vessel that further closes in on you. He moves silently until he’s mere inches away from you, his head hovering over your knees that are still pulled against your chest. You watch him with narrowed eyes, tucking against yourself tighter than you ever have as a means of comfort, but it does nothing to stop him from lingering.
“I could just make you speak if I wanted to,” he warns. The power in this situation belongs to him.
“What’s the point of fighting you? You’re going to do whatever you want with me anyway.” You admit, defeated. Whatever fight you had left in you was smothered weeks ago during the attack on Shibuya. Even the release of Gojo is not enough to fill you with hope for the future. It’s pointless to keep fighting when the only outcome is going to be loss.
The shaky sound of your voice makes the curse user move closer to you and you shut your eyes tightly, refusing to look at him lest your body continue with these inexplicable natural responses. Heart pounding against your chest, it’s inexplicably frustrating that it cannot seem to separate what your brain knows is true from what your body wants to believe.
It isn’t him, you scream within the confines of your own mind but it does not prevent your palms from feeling clammy and the squeeze of your inner thighs against each other to provide some relief against the heat in your core.
It isn’t him. It isn’t him. It isn’t him…
Chanting the words internally, you open your eyes and are met with a pair of golden ones staring directly at you. They’re the same that stared at you in a dorm room a decade ago although they’re missing the warmth they had back then, dripping honey sweetness hidden in the irises turned to tar.
“You’re right, I can.” He nods and dark hair falls over his eyes, catching your eye. Your stomach turns when you spot the stitches across his forehead but your gaze returns to his so quickly you can hardly think about it. “But will it be what I want or is it what this body desires, I wonder?”
This piques your interest and Kenjaku tilts his head to the side inquisitively, dark hair sweeping over your knees and around your body. It feels like a curtain, a veil like the ones you are so used to using to keep people safe and ignorant and outside of your world of sorcery.
“What do you mean?”
A smirk is the response you are granted and he moves closer to you, one of his hands reaching for the duvet you’re using to cover you. Pulling it back gently, your robe covered body coming into view and once again, you make no effort to fight. With this barrier removed, he runs his palm over the outside of your thigh. Muffling your whimper at the touch, you attempt to hide your face in your shoulder but he stops you, still grasping onto your chin and still holding your gaze.
“Interesting.”
His hand travels from the outside of your thigh to the insides and you gently spread them to allow him access before realizing what he’s searching for. Attempting to cut off his access by closing your legs, he holds your thigh in place and lets his fingers dip lower along the soft skin. You quiver and shake beneath him like a leaf clinging to the branches of a tree in winter, desperate for somewhere to remain, and those fingers inch closer and closer to your core. He stops when he feels the coarse hair covering your mound and dares to dip a single fingertip between your folds, raising his eyebrows when he feels the arousal seeping from you.
“I knew it,” he whispers so low you wonder if you were even meant to hear it but the way he gazes at you, like that of a man starved, tells you that the words were meant for no one but you.
Your hand shakes as much as the rest of you when you finally lift it from your side, reaching out to him and taking a strand of hair between your fingers. It feels just as you imagined it would, silk between your digits, and a breathy sigh leaves you before you begin to cry. Dropping the small strand, you choose to reach out toward his forehead and use your hand to block the stitches covering it.
“Suguru.”
You babble the name like it is precious, your lip quivering just as it did before, and the evil man shakes his head, capturing your wrist with the hand he just removed from your chin. He lowers your hand enough that you can see the stitches unobscured.
“Kenjaku, actually.”
He lowers your hand to his lips and kisses your knuckles, amused when you squirm where you sit, practically delirious with lust and confusion. You do not want this, at least that’s what you tell yourself while parting your legs further and panting, chest heaving with every breath.
Wordlessly, he uses his free hand to untie your robe and it falls off of your shoulders, exposing you to him fully before he can blink. This is something he remembers seeing in one of those dreams but you look different than whatever the imagination of a man who was infatuated with you was able to come up with during his loneliest hours. It amuses Kenjaku that he is the one to see you like this, bare and willing.
Tracing down your belly and lower, he stops between your legs which makes you whimper. You’re so desperate to be touched, to pretend he is someone you’ll never have the opportunity to love as properly as you could have if you’d both lived a different life, that your hips actually arch off of the bed eagerly. It should embarrass you but you are past the point of humiliation, willing to be fucked by evil incarnate just for the sake of a taste of Suguru Geto.
“Pathetic little thing,” he coos and you say nothing in return. You’re well aware of your failings as a sorcerer and a human being as his fingers spread your labia to get a glance at what you have to offer. For a moment, you consider praying for Suguru again; to selfishly beg God to make sense of your own actions but you know that he no longer has mercy for an ill behaved member of his flock. You will simply accept the consequences, whatever they will be.
His thumb brushes your clit and you moan, tipping your head back and toward the ceiling. You wait for the sensation of pleasure to climb through you again but it doesn’t come until you look downward again, eyes fluttering open.
“Eyes on me or you get nothing.”
Too afraid to look away lest it keep you from the only good thing you’ve felt in who knows how long, you keep your eyes glued to Kenjaku’s face while his hand works between your legs, spreading the slick from your cunt toward your clit and back down. If you could just shut your eyes, you could pretend, but they’re open and glued between your legs, watching every feathery stroke of his fingers through your folds.
Kenjaku’s cock hardens against your thigh and for a moment you dare to feel powerful knowing you aren’t the only one surrendering to the most base of your needs. He drops your hand and reaches for the tie of his robe, opening it and giving you the only look you’ve ever been lucky enough to get of Suguru’s bare body.
Scarred, honed, a tool - just like yours. If you weren’t so lost in the moment, the lifetimes you have imagined for years would be playing through your mind.
You gasp and knit your brows together, bucking against the increasing pressure of Kenjaku’s fingers while he brings you back to him and out of your head. Whatever you’re thinking about doesn’t matter when he inserts a finger inside of you, only testing how wet you are with no intention of preparing you for his cock.
When he’s satisfied with how wet you are, he withdraws his finger and you whine. The sound is the most he has heard from you since the first night and it makes his eyes widen in interest. He shifts until he is standing between your spread knees and the realization that this is really happening hits you at once, your face flaming with desire.
“You’re so impatient.”
The curse user tuts at you with a roll of his eyes and spreads your legs as wide as they can go to accommodate the width of his body. He’s broad in shoulder and hip and you bite your lower lip when he runs the head of his cock through your folds, following the same pattern of his fingers. You expect the teasing to last longer but it stops abruptly. Before you can take a breath to prepare yourself, his cock is buried to the hilt inside of you, and you gasp with wide eyes, shocked.
“As good as you imagined?”
Words come to your mind but do not form enough to leave your mouth while he thrusts roughly, your body jerking violently against his. It’s painful, the size of him with little prep in conjunction with how he uses your body as nothing more than a glorified place to take his aggression out, but all of the numbness within you thaws and for the first time since you realized Geto was no longer Geto in Shibuya, you feel.
It’s hard to name all the emotions you are experiencing because they blur into something barely comprehensible. Pleasure and pain and bone chilling sorrow, the kind that makes tears silently drip down your face while he takes what he wants from you. He doesn’t bother to play with your clit and there is no need to, the joy you’re taking simply from being used by Suguru’s body enough that the knot inside of you is slowly beginning to unravel.
Skin on skin punctuated by his low grunts and your whines fill the small room and you are so lost, you lift yourself halfway up to meet Kenjaku and consider kissing him. Would it be close enough to kissing Suguru that you could eventually justify it or would it just sully the one good memory you have of him?
You don’t have long to think about it before you are pushed back down to the bed, one of his hands caging your throat and keeping you pinned to the bed below. A reminder that this is for his pleasure and not yours although you feel yourself coming closer to the edge than you were just moments prior, shutting your eyes tightly. All of the motion inside of you stops, the hard thrusts of his cock ending, and your eyes shoot open.
“Remember what I said. Eyes on me or you get nothing.”
Nodding, you keep them open and he begins again, pace rougher than before. You can do nothing but grunt and struggle to breathe, his cock carving out space inside of you that didn’t exist until he entered you. Every kiss of his tip against your insides knocks the breath out of you and finally you cum in a strangled moan, walls quivering around his length.
His hand inches further up your throat and squeezes experimentally. As expected, you do not fight back and he takes his indulgence with a grin, choking you with varying degrees of pressure and feeling your cunt spasm around him when he surprises you by tightening his grip.
You like this. You want this.
He leans forward and shifts his weight to his arm and hand, finally spilling inside of you with a deep moan. Warmth fills every inch of you and you wish that you felt as full in your heart as you do in your cunt but a void remains.
Kenjaku’s other hand slides up your body and wraps around your neck, both of his palms resting on either side of your neck and fingers splaying over your throat. It’s dangerous to let him have this much access to any part of you that he could possibly crush but you do not move, tearfully looking up at him and sniffling. He increases his pressure, not enough to harm you, but enough to make you work hard and you realize how easily he could just…end this.
“Please kill me,” you beg while struggling to breathe, realizing what you’ve done now that the afterglow of orgasm can no longer protect you from the cold hard truth.
You are a betrayer. You slept with the enemy to sate your own selfish desires and death seems almost too kind to beg for, yet you do.
“Kill me.”
Your face turns in shade and your vision is dotted with darkness, a miserable end to a miserable life you consider, but at least it will be over. The pressure of Kenjaku’s hands around your neck continues to increase until you are certain you are taking your last breath, lungs aching until he abruptly stops. He glances down from where he rests above you, half swollen cock softening and letting his cum leak out around the tip of it that is still inside of you and onto the sheets below.
“I will not give you the satisfaction of death until you give me the satisfaction of watching you fight for it.”
Removing his hands from around your throat completely, he glances down at the pressure indentions of his fingers with a smile. Your eyes flutter shut, you’ve passed out from lack of air, and he admires the heap he has left you in, reaching for your robe and wiping the remnants of his release and yours on the corner of it.
Nobody is coming to save you, a secret Kenjaku knows that you are not yet aware of. Satoru Gojo is dead, defeated at the hands of Sukuna. The news broke this morning and he was preparing to come to your room to let you know until this little distraction occurred. He had an inkling you were susceptible to Suguru Geto’s charms even from beyond the grave but he had no idea it would be this easy, your slumped form resting on the futon beside him. He pats your head as one would a treasured dog, long and loving strokes that do not stir you, your bare breasts swaying slightly with every breath you take.
The new world is on the horizon and he may keep you around as a plaything for a little longer than he originally intended.
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Envy shippers are forgetting something, and thats kinda of connected to misogyny.
..........
Just warning before i start that i will be talking negativily about N a litte bit in this post, even If a love him very much, Its necessary lollll.
Also Please dont think this post is some form of hate against V or envy. Its a post about the way >some< NxV shippers treat Uzi and their double standards.
........
So, i saw that *one* group of people making jokes about Uzi dying/N killing Uzi so N can be with V again and after some time thinking i realized that those jokes are kinda of connected to how they think that "Uzi stole N from V" or "V deserves N more than Uzi does"
And thats make me think: why, them, as an envy shippers, chooses to throw their hatred at Uzi especifically? Why is the Idea of Uzi, the young girl who did >>nothing<<< to deserve what shes going through, dying so satisfing to them? Even If Its a "joke"?
And i guess i know the answer, they think V deserves N more, they are the one that deserve to be end-game, because they have a tragic love story, they had a spark and becuse they have known each other for way longer and all that stuff, right?
But I guess, them, yes, the one who love V and N as a duo and as a couple, are forgeting something important in this equation: N himself
If they want to blame someone for envy not working in the present time that much, N is the one they should be hating on (and V too tbh) not Uzi, Uzi is just having feelings.
N is the one that choosed to prioritize and protect a random purple worker girl he just met.
N is the one that choosed to change sides and fight against his own damn crush to protect the people of a random worker girl he just met.
he is the one that choosed to stop to act on his crush on V once he met Uzi, the random worker girl. (Srs, not even a single sigh of it since episode 2)
He is the one that choosed to keep holding Uzi's hand (and embrance It harder, when she was the one to ask him to let It go) while blushing at her on that hallway in front of everyone.
He is the one that randomly got her to have a dance with him in that prom fight.
He is the one that felt extremely bad of the Idea of Uzi being scared of him, yes, the random worker he just met.
He was the one to get angry at V for not respecting Uzi and say to her face "what is wrong with you?"
He is the one that ins't afraid to be all cozy with her in public (cabin fever is here as proof)
He was the one that, even after reexperiencing the thing he had with V in the past again, was happy to see Uzi instead of being nervous about it, when even V was embarassed.
Uzi never did anything, thats just a Uzi they created in their minds. wich ins't that surprising since they all dont even like to rewatch most of the show anyways (N and Uzi's interactions are too much for them to handle)
The worst thing she has done was being agressive to V, but mind you, thats bc V was treating her way worse when Uzi even considered her a friend.
>>N<< was the one that, accidently or not, made most of (If not all) his romantic moments with Uzi real.
But they wont talk about his position in this triangle right? Its just Uzi, Uzi this, Uzi that, Uzi is always the villian here.
Because N is the perfect boy who ins't capable of understanding love outside of his thing with V, right?
""N would never feel something like that for Uzi!!! Hes clearly being peer pressured by her!!""
"""the writing is sooo badddd!!! N would never do this ugggfhh""
""weirdo vickers, fix you damn show""
And..... you know what that sorta looks like...right? Yes, misogyny . Because they choose to hate on and make weird jokes about Uzi, the woman, when N, the man, had a bigger role with his romantic thing with Uzi than she did. And If they hate nxuzi so much, they should be hating on N too, but i know they wont.
For the people who hate to see N "being babied" they sure dont like to talk much about him in these things
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SOME ILLEGIBLE RAMBLES AND REFLECTIONS: THE DEAD THREE
Finished my first/main playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, and it’s had me turning over all sorts of ideas tied to Dungeons and Dragons lore. A bunch happens to be about cosmology so I'm slapping together one post about the Dead Three and a follow-up about deities more generally.
Buckle up if you decide to proceed dudes. This is chunky and opinion/interpretation heavy.
CW for mention (not extensive) of graphic violence and sex crimes during discussion of Bhaal and Yeenoghu.
MYRKUL
I get that there are multiple death-affiliated deities in DnD. Our buddy Jergal is the end of all things and the original incarnation of the concept. Myrkul stands for the experience of dying, decay, necromancy, graves, bones, and the fear of mortality. Kelemvor rules over the dead. Orcus is a demon lord and quasi-deity of undeath. Could prob go on.
I've read many different incarnations of death over the years. To set the stage on my Myrkul read, it bears mentioning that Terry Pratchett's Death is probably my favorite. I don't have it in me to see death as something totally malicious. It's very natural, and I tend to imagine that if there were to be an incarnation embodying it this persona would have an intimate view of all the love and grief, vulnerability and intimacy, ugliness and solitude, etc. that mortals deal with. Death has witnessed the end every living being faces, from the dawn of creation until now. Even if it isn't consciously accessed at all moments, death is ancient and experienced and not likely to be shocked by what mortals are capable of anymore. Mortals are small. Uncountably numerous though we are we are far outnumbered by the unliving. What are lives next to planets, to stars? Here I'd argue against assigning value according to how big or small something is, how eternal or how brief, how simple or complex. Everything that is, is a universe unto itself and deserves the gravity of that. It is also very mundane at the same time. To me, death needs to be able to balance the preciousness and commonality of life, of existence, on the tip of its scythe. Death needs to be able to deal with the most depraved beings to exist, but also with every beloved pet put to sleep. Every lost child or parent. Everyone who dies surrounded by loved ones and everyone who dies alone.
Initially, even knowing Myrkul in particular had been a mortal necromancer and not of particular moral standing--I had mixed feelings about him being the evilest of evil skeletons. He worked it well, but the idea of any aspect of death (or any character tbh) being flat evil felt off to me. Especially with 'we're all the protagonists of our own stories' being at work. People don't often look at what actions they'd consider to be evil then go 'I'm going to make myself that on purpose'. Disregarding morality maybe, but being evil on purpose is weird.
So I looked into further lore about Myrkul. One spot that gave me pause was that Myrkul as death (rather than the adventurer Myrkul Bey al-Kursi he’d once been) revels in inspiring fear of death and driving home experiences of loss. From what I found he isn't focused on the name of the individual holding the office of death, but for the force itself being feared. He can be bribed, and he will allow for necromancy/resurrections--but the fear and gravity of death is a sacred thing to him. Disregarding that is a pretty good way to get onto Myrkul's shitlist.
I want to take a moment to emphasize the importance of Myrkul focusing on his portfolio over his own ego. That is far from a given in the DnD pantheon, and like I said he's a former mortal himself. It wouldn't be out of the question for him to be a petty and insecure deity. He could have been the sort of guy where becoming a god of death by itself wasn't enough power. If Myrkul was a different person, he might have wanted people to stroke his ego and say how strong he is. He might have been someone who felt inadequate as a god without that affirmation. He could have (as a character) been unsatisfied and forever wanting/dependent upon the views of others to define himself. The fact that he DOES focus on death and decay as forces rather than himself is a big deal in reading him imo.
Anyway. Myrkul's emphasis on death as something feared got me thinking about what would cause a person to put such weight on death being understood in its negative aspect. It struck me that this is actually a very common and even important thing. You don't need to demonize death to see it, either. If you value life as sacred, the idea of life being treated as cheap or disposable is horrifying. When you love something dearly, the idea of that beloved thing being defaced is beyond outrage. It's a kind of sacrilege. People who kill as casually as breathing, who revel in the permanent destruction of someone else, become a source of horror. The absence of love creates a sort of cruelty that can't even perceive itself. And it's not uncommon for human beings in particular to partake in this. Humans dance on the graves of those they deem enemies not because they're relieved to be safe, but because they glory in the end of other lives. They don't recognize that anything of value was lost. There is no tragedy in death anymore. Every gentle moment, every vulnerability, every tragedy in their opponent's life is something to be crapped on and gloated over. There is no greater insult to life itself. Myrkul stands as a reminder that such behavior cannot stand. You can't treat life or death as cheap. To see something horrific and fail to realize the weight of its horror is itself a form of horror. The idea of a death that demands to be acknowledged for what it is, particularly by the living, imo actually denotes a level of care for life too. It might be harsh or ugly, but I don't know about evil. So while Myrkul is certainly flawed and often serves as an antagonist, I’d argue the function he performs is not only important but necessary.
And while it might vary between players, I found Aylin's enthusiastic executions and body defiling pretty uncomfortable. I understand she went through a lot and am fine with her as a character. But I think Myrkul's point stands if the audience feels even a moment of disquiet seeing her celebrate over the corpse of a broken person.
Some things are meant to be ugly.
BANE
Of the Dead Three I find Bane the most disturbing and dangerous tbh—but not for how Gortash invokes him. Way I see it, the other word for tyranny is authoritarianism on a macro-level, abuse on an individual level.
I’d argue that in life, we can only healthily control ourselves and our own individual actions/choices. We can try to persuade others or appeal to their judgment, but we can’t MAKE another person think or act how we wish. When folks attempt otherwise (individually or more broadly) it involves fear, force, deceit, or other forms of pressure. Coercion, enslavement. These fall under the umbrella of tyrannical practice to me. You treat another person as subhuman and strip them of agency.
We don’t live in a pure and ideal world. If a tyrannical person is committing crimes and denying others their free will through force, I wouldn’t call defense through force tyrannical as long as it wasn’t needlessly excessive. Power struggles exist. But the whole practice of using fear, force, deceit, or pressure to control another person is dangerous imo. They're to be utilized as little as possible.
In DnD I don’t think the fringe evil cults would be the ones most at risk for corruption by Bane. I don't think individuals or groups who prioritize self-indulgence would be most at risk, either. The most dangerous and frequent disciples of Bane imo would be within good alignment. This means followers of benevolent gods as well as the nations or groups that consider themselves to have righteous causes. ESPECIALLY those with chips on their shoulders.
When someone assumes they have and always will have the moral high ground, that they are incapable of committing injustice, that their end justifies whatever means, that it doesn’t count as abuse with the 'correct' target… that, to me, is where tyranny festers. The person convinced of their own moral infallibility is the one who sees no need for brakes and so cuts them without concern.
I’d argue everybody has a seed of tyranny in them that can be fed or starved. We feed that seed with our own indignation to become a tyrant victimizing others while still seeing ourselves as powerless. The person who first victimized you can still also be victimized by you. There isn’t a target that exists where finding joy in cruelty gets a pass.
Bane, I think, thrives on the idea that it's no problem if you're enforcing your will. Especially on people contemptible to you.
For DnD purposes, imagine you have zealous followers of idk Tyr. They are willing to do whatever it takes to enforce and spread their definition of justice. They believe in making examples of people at every opportunity. They torture, isolate, rob, and shame those they consider to be unjust or dangerous. If their victims are falsely accused—well. It’s for a noble purpose so the sacrifice is not in vain. And imagine Tyr abandons these followers as hypocrites. He no longer empowers clerics or paladins no matter how they cite scripture or brand ‘heretics’ with his symbols.
Bane doesn’t enter calling himself Bane, god of tyranny. Bane claims to follow a higher justice. Maybe he uses an avatar, maybe he chooses a Banite disciple, maybe he finds a true believer. But he argues that Tyr as an individual was never ultimately what those zealots stood for—it was justice itself. And if Tyr has turned traitor to his own portfolio, mortals need to go over his head to the core concept and implement that. Bane offers a name that suits his purposes and begins sourcing power to clerics and paladins instead. And throughout, as the zealots commit increased atrocities against those they deem dangerous or evil they fail to realize they’ve spiraled into evil alignment after all. They’d think they were either just as good as they’d always been OR BETTER. The compassion of Ilmater is spent on the depraved and corrupt as far as they’re concerned.
I think the real threat of Bane is that he should be 100% capable of corrupting an otherwise heroic party member if they aren’t wary of that capacity in themself. You suddenly find your friend who listened to your problems and supported you through awful shit mocking a person sobbing on the ground as they kick them. And that friend looks betrayed and hurt (or outraged) if you challenge their actions, because they think you should know exactly how disgusting this piece of shit is and how much they deserve the abuse. And even if you concede that individual case—it’s not the only one. The slights worthy of torment become smaller and smaller. A thought or word out of line betrays the ideology of an evil alignment, with the only solution being to beat thoughts and words out of the target until they can only repeat approved ideas back. And even then, it may not be enough.
If it was explicitly confirmed that the deity the zealot followed was Bane all along, the zealot might genuinely not believe it. They might get pissed at the very suggestion. What they do against the wicked isn’t tyranny after all. They’re righteous.
Denial doesn’t serve to disempower Bane in the least if tactics remain unchanged.
BHAAL
I’m holding off on more detailed Bhaal thoughts until I complete a dark urge run, but I’ve listened to lore on both him and the demon lord Yeenoghu recently—and I think there’s room for a really cool potential contrast.
Yeenoghu Lore
Providing this particular video link for the curious, as a way to help illustrate what I’m drawing from.
Yeenoghu holds the title as demon lord of slaughter. He glories in filth, rape, excessively graphic murder, torture, violence, and playing with corpses along the way. He’s meant to come across as a bestial, self-absorbed, remorseless desecrater. And when I say bestial, I want to draw attention to a particular IRL factoid that might be worth considering.
I love animals to bits. I don’t think animals generally contemplate morality the way humans do just due to cognitive differences and limitations. I also think it’s important to remember that humans are ALSO animals, so certain things umbrella’d under ‘human experience’ would probably apply to at least some animals too. If there are human altruists and human serial killers, we should be able to expect that animals likewise have some altruists and some serial killers within the scope of individual variation.
Cruelty is not exclusive to humans. Orcas will essentially torture smaller animals to death by flinging them into the air with their tails repeatedly like balls until repeated beatings and suffocation kill them. Dolphins commit rape and chew on live puffer fish to get high off the toxins. Chimpanzees are a horror unto themselves with cannibalism and mutilation and basically whatever atrocity they can commit. Wolves and cats sometimes hunt to excess just for the joy of it and don’t eat all they kill. Hannibal the swan (as a specific and notably homicidal individual) beat and drowned any other swans visiting his pond and showed his signet how to do it. I could go on. Some cases it might be a matter of the animal not having theory of mind to recognize that they are inflicting pain on another conscious creature. Other times, like with pissed off chimpanzees, they know EXACTLY what they’re doing and it’s on purpose to cause maximum suffering.
I think Yeenoghu should embody a little bit of both propensities. He’s just utterly self-absorbed and doesn’t give a fuck about the experiences or perspectives of other living things except insofar as they impact him.
Bhaal I want to research more like I said, but one thing I remember from my initial play through was finding a note from the Dark Urge to Orin.
Little sister, whatever in the Gray Wastes are we going to do with you? Bhaal will never care that you waste your time, posing your corpse-dollies. Bhaal doesn’t care whether you give him the corpse of a pauper or a king. At the end of the day, all Father wants is death in droves, death in numbers. To sap away the life of this dull world as swiftly and widely as we can. You plan, you plot, you prevaricate, and you waste his time. Bhaal doesn’t need us to think. He needs us to kill. You kill beautifully, and have talents in your shapes’ magics that I never will. But you do not understand Lord Bhaal. Perhaps it is a failing of your diluted blood, as a mere grandchild. I am his sole living pureblood. I will accept no challenge from you, until you show some damned respect.
To be honest this is interesting af to me because it positions Orin a bit more in-line with Yeenoghu’s modus operandi in some ways. But what sets apart the principles of Bhaal from Yeenoghu or Myrkul?
The Dark Urge suggests the goal of Bhaal is the extinction of all life, but to be honest I’m a bit skeptical. Seems like short term thinking. Even if Bhaal pulled that off, once it’s done there is no more murder or god of murder for that matter. If Bhaal is aiming for a cessation of existence and wants everyone else along for the ride maybe that’s what he’s after, but I dunno. That seems like something fans/players/loremasters would have touched on before.
I’d like to invite this possibility for foiling instead:
Life consumes other life by nature. Animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, so forth—it isn’t just a matter of philosophy. One life cannot exist without destroying another. We need to eat. If we don’t, we die well before reproduction enters the picture. But it’s more than that… you take a step, you kill countless tiny organisms you aren’t even aware of. You swat a fly. You hit something with your car. You move gracelessly or touch carelessly, and catastrophe ensues. Etcetera.
It is inevitable that your existence will mean the end for the life of another living thing. That’s just how it goes.
It could be interesting on a LOT of fronts (both as members of the dead three and as former adventuring companions) if Bhaal acted as a kind of philosophical opposite to Myrkul the way I previously described.
If the Dark Urge’s note is to be trusted, Bhaal has no interest in ritual or glorified death per se. Bhaal would be more about the mundanity that comes through the act of killing. Life is fragile as-is and often ended by accident. Killing in its most common form is thoughtless and unconscious. To Bhaal, if every life is a universe then the universe looks meaningless. There is no importance or fanfare to any of it. If one side is ‘everything matters, give weight to life and death’, Bhaal would be ‘nothing matters, we are not capable of affording reverence to every single life and death we encounter’. More specifically, the mass deaths Bhaal favors would be a kind of illustration of the uncaring and casual relationship living things have with killing other living things. The more casual and effortless it is, the more I’d imagine it serves Bhaal. Sadism and revelry miss the point—there is no hierarchy. Suffering is inconsequential. Fear is inconsequential. Instinct is inconsequential. To live is to kill by Bhaal’s logic.
It isn’t limited to murder in the sense of a member of one species killing a member of the same species. It’s more Bhaal is the god of killing. He’d gain power from murder too sure, but also hunting, harvesting, and butchering.
With these interpretations in-mind, we can actually figure out how the Dead Three might have answered Jergal's question about what worth a mortal life holds. With the disclaimer this is very much conjecture.
I think Myrkul would likely be "Each life is of infinite value and merits sacrificing everything for." That lends life a heavy weight and makes death a fearful force for all. It would also mesh with Ketheric as his chosen.
Bane would lean into "That depends on a person's deeds", "The only life that matters is mine", or "Depends on the mortal". From those positions, the speaker argues for a hierarchy of life where some is more expendable than the rest. It's easier from that position to slide into adopting a role as judge and executioner, and from elevating yourself into a role of authority where other voices and experiences count less than your own.
Bhaal I think is reflected in "Life’s only value is as currency. Doesn’t matter to me otherwise", "The only life that matters is mine", or "No one life is worth more than any other. We are equal." Bhaal has the implicit question in-turn: what is the blood-price of your own life? How much have you claimed in your own name to keep moving? It's kind of the belief that while "The only life that matters is mine" is Bhaal's answer, every other living thing should be answering the same way.
There's more nuance than that of course, and likely truth falls somewhere in the middle. We aren't mentally capable of giving reverence to every death, but we can recognize in general terms and do our best case-by-case. We have a right to protect ourselves and what we love, but others share that right.
Feel free to offer different stances or thoughts though, and if you made it this far goddamn thank you for reading this monster.
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Snowtrapped 2 but it's emotional instead
I barely edited this thing but I must post it <3 I like it too much tbh
anyways light touches of suggestive, and references at snowtrapped obviously, although they don't outright talk about it, no cover this time we die like men
anyways word count: 4602
It started like any other day. With the usual arguments following them, as they perpetrated the intense part of their dynamic. 3 agitated 4, 4 agitated 3, hijinks ensued. It was how it always went these days. The 2 were fine with this… for the most part. The worst part of this was that both of them were sensitive but still liked to mess with each other. They had to walk a thin line for nothing bad to happen. And boy, was that hard.
It was a snowy day, and 3, 4 and friends went to an especially snowy place as a vacation. They all deserved it. Although, the snow could bring out memories for the 2, it was a bit easier now to push it to the back of their heads. It was the past. It was a different time. They were different. They felt different. They’re friends at this point! Although 3 seemed to deny it a lot, 4 could see through that. Which is also why it was so tragic when he accidentally pushed 3 too hard and had to again see the man upset by his own actions. It always reminded him of the past. Something he had a complex relationship with, as it was something that affected him to this day, with all its differences, similarities and furthermore things that would just confuse him. Confuse him in so many ways. He wished he had answers. Maybe he wished a bit too hard.
As their snowy hijinks, which they were doing with their friends brought them to an all too familiar situation: being snowed in. No escape. Only each other’s company. It was almost like faith that it was only those 2. Or maybe it was planned, who knows.
“Ugh…” 4 got up as he fell in pretty hard, he was on top of 3, more or less.
“Get off me, you bitch!” 3 quickly pushed him off, annoyed at 4.
As they got up, looking at the door, both realized what happened. And that they were stuck together.
“You’ve got to be kidding me” both said at the same time which made the 2 glare at each other.
“This is all your fault!” 3 yelled at 4.
“Mine??! How would it be mine?? I wasn’t the one launching a whole damn avalanche!”
“Shut the fuck up” 3 sat down, grabbing at his face. It seemed he was trying to keep at least some sanity.
“No, you shut the fuck up!” 4 said, also sitting down, facing away from 3.
Truly maturely they stayed like this for a while not uttering a word. But soon, the cold set in.
“Hey… 3…. m… my man” 4 sat beside 3, who looked at him cautiously.
“Yeeees?” he squinted at 4, not trusting him for a second.
“I’m cold”
“Well, shit, 4, I don’t control the weather!”
“No, I mean-”
“I’m definitely not desperate enough for that yet…”
“Yet?” 4 teased him, for which 3 hit him hard in the head.
“Stupid”
“In the meantime while you get over that, we could try and get out somehow. At least try.”
3 sighed as he got up.
“You’re unfortunately right…”
“Maybe we could even find a meme and use it to get out!”
“Yea, good thinking” 3 mumbled it a bit, although 4 could still understand.
“Don’t know why you need to be so defensive about me being right”
“YOU do the same thing as well”
4 was about to protest but realised that 3 was kind of right.
“Oookay…”
They started really examining the place. Not much food, no meme in sight, a single blanket folded neatly in a closet.
4 took it for himself fast.
“Hey, you hogger!” 3 glared at 4.
“As I said before-”
“I’m not cuddling your stupid ass!”
4 looked down to his feet. He knew that it was just their thing but.
“I really thought we got further…”
“What did you say?” 3 looked at him with an expression that was hard to read.
This scared 4. He wasn’t sure what to do, repeating it felt like a hard task, so he just stared.
“You can’t just talk in half sentences, 4”
“I just… thought you’d be more comfortable with me at this point”
3 was about to protest but thinking about it, he really should’ve been less stupid about it.
“I can’t just- I’m tense, okay, I’m tense! Are you happy now that I told you??”
4 chuckled.
“You never really tell me. I just have to guess myself how you feel”
“Well, you aren’t the easiest case yourself- it- ugh, I don’t want to go into it, definitely not right now-”
“Into what?”
“It doesn’t matter, forget about it”
“3…”
“Don’t 3 me”
4 sat down with the blanket under him so it wouldn’t be as uncomfortable to sit. 3 paced around for a bit. Tried to use his hands as shovels to maybe get out then quickly gave up. This kept repeating. It was kind of tiring to watch. 4 was on the verge of commenting on it. But he could see that he shouldn’t: 3 looked close to snapping. He knew that look. It was upsetting.
Especially as 3 seemed to tire, having to keep up with the cold, now he was starting to feel it too. He leaned against the cold wall, trying not to let the cold get to him.
4 was watching him. It was awful to watch. He could see 3 slowly slipping down against the wall.
“Alright, that’s enough” 4 had enough of this as he wrapped his arms and blanket around 3, who didn’t have nearly as much fight in himself as before.
“Dude…”
“What?”
“...Thanks.” 3 lightly leaned closer into 4 arms. That was shocking to 4. He wasn’t sure how to feel.
Sure, he insisted on 3 joining him, but he… never really considered what he would do once he did. He never considered what would happen if 3 didn’t fight him. The comfort made him weird. He wanted to stay somewhere deep in his heart but decided to just slip right out of the blanket and just put it on 3.
“Oh..?” 3 looked at him, the weakness in his eyes showing. He looked painfully genuine.
“I’ll try myself this time”
3 glared then looked away from 4. It was hard to tell what he might be thinking.
4 tried to separate the snow. It was easy, the snow was soft yet cold, and the more he would shovel with his hands to the side, the more would fall in. He panicked, which made him feel agitated as he started to get faster with it. He got so fast the snow of the ceiling fell on him, leaving him colder than ever.
3 rolled his eyes.
“I always think you can’t be more stupid but you always manage to prove that wrong”
“Sh-Shut U-Up” 4 was practically shaking from the cold. Who knew he was so sensitive.
3 sighed and got up. He brushed the snow off of 4. Usually such casual touch wouldn’t be this bad for him but the isolation was getting to him. He cared so much. But, right now, especially right now, he didn’t want that to come out. He didn’t want his caring side out in the open, for 4 to witness and tease.
to his surprise 4 only gave him a soft smile before adding a few words to his reaction.
“You didn’t need to do that, I can take care of myself”
3 was disappointed.
“I don’t want to be in the same space with a dead body”
“Hey now, you’re already thinking of me dying??”
“Well… It would be funny now that you say it” 3 grinned.
“I don’t find it funny”
“When did I say I care?”
“I see through you, my friend, I do”
“You’re as blind as a bat actually”
“I’m not, I got the 20/20 vision going for me!”
“Crazy if true, considering how much you’re on your pc”
“SAYS WHO”
“ME”
The 2 glared at each other. For quite a few painful seconds. The tenseness in them took over as they started to fight physically.
Although it was one of those little slap fights. It felt less like a fight and more like a comedy bit.
The 2 separated, although 4 found himself cold again. He stared at 3 without realising.
“What?” 3 asked, in a defensive manner as if 4 was about to strip him with his eyes. The thought sent a shiver down his spine. It just further reminded him of past events… But they were different now, it wouldn’t happen.
4 took a bit but he did manage to snap out of it.
“Huh? Nothing! Nothing at all”
“You’re cold, aren’t you?”
“Noooo, what gave you the impression?”
“You shivering”
4 facepalmed. 3 was right, he couldn’t believe how obvious he was.
“Come here, I did say I don’t want to be stuck with a dead body”
4 resisted first but the cold got to him, he had to. He didn’t like it but he had to.
“Jeez, I didn’t think you would be this cold”
“Why did you think I was shivering”
“... Fair point”
4 leaned into 3’s chest, trying to get closer in a less uncomfortable way. It was really hard though, considering how they were just a few moments ago. He was too tired and cold to care though. He even wrapped his arms around 3, having a secure hold on him. 4 didn’t like how comforting this felt. Something about cuddling 3 felt different. Suddenly the memories hit him again, of the past. It made him feel a bit gross for his thoughts. He wouldn’t ever wanna think of 3 that way. Not again at least.
The 2 stayed silent for a while, it felt illegal to speak. Even though both of them still felt tense. 3 felt too weird in all this, he had to comment on it.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you enjoyed this”
“What?? You think I do?” 4 looked offended.
“You were cuddling me with the same glee Eggdog would and oooh he loves me a lot” he talked with with his baby voice at the end when mentioning his child. Just simply the thought of him made him feel happy.
4 rolled his eyes.
“I’m just trying to stay warm, really. If I liked cuddling you, I’d do it outside of dire situations like this”
“Like I’d care if you would… stupid”
“Would you?”
“No!”
“Oooh, but it looks like you would” he found 3’s reaction just a little bit entertaining. Indulging a little shouldn’t hurt much!
“Shut up! I wouldn’t! Even the hand holding feel unnecessary”
“Well, we had to do that, to save the world and all that stuff”
“Okay? Doesn’t change a thing. I don’t like to do it”
4 stared at 3, unimpressed. 3 felt a bit nervous.
“You’re as annoying as ever” 4 said as he got up “You know what, I rather freeze”
3 felt that struck at his heart. That HURT to hear, christ.
“The fuck you mean you’d rather freeze??”
“If you don’t want to be near me so badly, then I won’t bother you. I can try and bury myself in the snow so you don’t have to face me dead cold”
“Jeez, how kind of you to- HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND??? You THINK I WANT THAT??!”
“FELT LIKE IT”
“YOU DUMB IDIOT”
“DUMB AND IDIOT MEANS THE SAME THING”
“YES, I’M POINTING OUT YOUR SPECIALLY LACK OF SMARTS”
“FUCK YOU”
Aaaand they fought again. This time a bit more violent as 3 pinned 4 down.
“Any last words?” 3 was tired so he didn’t sound as threatening as he would’ve wanted to.
“You’re gay” 4 teased as he pulled 3 down on him with the little strength he had left. Unfortunately, this way they were left to stare at each other, it was kind of hard to pay attention to anything else when they were this close. 3 didn’t look amused. 4 chuckled.
“Gotcha”
“And you said you don’t want me near”
“I would push you off if I had the energy to”
“Nice excuse”
“It’s a reason, not an excuse”
3 sighed as he fully laid his head down on 4’s chest. He was now truly too tired to care.
“Why can’t we just get along”
“Cuz you’re a piece of shit”
3 looked at 4 again, clearly unamused.
“Like yourself, of course”
4 found it interesting how 3 deflected by calling him an ass too.
“Maybe, yeah… I don’t know why really”
“We’re just like this? I guess, I don’t know. We should be, right?”
“It’s… what’s the best, right?”
3 thought for a bit, some hard words on his mind.
“We’re… friends”
“I… I know”
Air felt heavy, as the 2 were trying to comprehend each other, what were they going for.
“You know…” 3 started, already feeling his face heat up “Ever since we became friends, it’s been… a bit less fun to be a villain. Juuust a smidge”
4 found himself smiling, hearing that his heart just warmed up whole.
“Glad to hear that…”
“It’s something I struggle with it a lot though”
“Why so?”
“Who… am I if not your local villain… who would I be?”
The question caught 4 so off guard, staring shocked at 3. He never thought 3 could feel that way. He kind of felt bad for a lot of the things he’s said and done now. He gently grabbed 3’s face by his cheek, by which he noticed 3 being a bit more hot. He was sure it’s just them slowly feeling weird from the cold.
“Hey now, don’t say that… you’re so much more… a cool streamer, a great meme guardian partner… a great friend, maybe… my greatest”
3 was practically turning into a heater from the compliments. But it definitely didn’t mean anything. 3 collected all his courage, to ask one thing he wanted to know.
“Your greatest?”
“Yea… pretty much”
“Isn’t it Mario for you?”
“You’re… different”
“Different?”
“Well, you know- yeah, you’re a friend in a different way than he is to me. You’re just… different… I guess, we just work differently”
“You mean the meme guardian stuff?”
4 glanced to the side, it was hard to guess what he could mean by that.
“That too”
“You know… I do kind of find it weird… that we have to hold hands to use our powers.. or at least touch”
“Yeah… but I don’t think you would be this close to me without it”
“Let’s not even think about that”
3 looked kind of bummed about the idea.
“Awww, you’d miss being friends with me that much?”
3 growled, though too tired to act.
“You say that like you wouldn’t”
“Of course, I would miss it so much” 4 said, hugging 3. The air being not so tense felt nice. It was easier to express himself.
3 was in deep, Jesus. He could barely think, besides lightly hugging back.
“You could’ve warned me at least”
“Nope, it’s more fun this way”
“But you said you care about me”
“There’s some privileges you’ll never get”
“Tch… stupid”
“Ahem… Tsundere”
3 stared at 4, a single word making him feel energy come back to him. Out of anger of course. God, that made him so so angry.
“Not that word again, no, shut the fuck up. No one wants to hear that, idiot”
“I wanted to hear it personally” 4 chuckled.
“For what? You’re implying you’re my crush or something? You’re wrong then, bitch” 3 got up, angrily pointing and gesticulating. Oh, that touched a nerve, didn’t it.
4 raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t say that… Only you did, just now”
3’s face was painted with realisation, as then colour drained from his face. Oh no, he did not fucking do that!!
“The word is literally used that way. How am I supposed to take it then? Why did you call me that anyways, asshole” 3 turned away from 4.
“I just found it fits… even in a platonic way. It’s so obvious you want affection but you still push people away”
3 looked back at 4 then away.
“Just like that” 4 sighed.
“You… YOU” 3 turned back “ You ALWAYS think you’re the bigger and better person”
“Well, I am right now? I’m not the one misinterpreting shit”
“You just have this air around you, you know? Like you always think you’re the god of this show! That nobody is better than you, especially me, I’m really tired of that. Really fucking tired”
“Are you really getting mad about me calling you a tsundere??”
“IT’S MORE THAN THAT”
“HOW CAN IT BE MORE???”
“IT’S A PATTERN… a long going one” 3 stared daggers into 4. It was like a whiplash compared to what they had previously.
“What pattern???”
“Stuff’s always about you. You’re always trying to one up me as well. It feels like whenever you butt into something, it becomes about you.”
4 stared. He didn’t know what to do with that information.
“You’re so weird. First you say you wished we were friends earlier, now you berate me”
“Because you can’t shut the fuck up when you need to. Maybe if you did, we would get along better”
“Well, MAYBE, if you stopped being an ASSHOLE, that would help a lot more”
“MAYBE. IF YOU STOPPED BEING SUCH A WHINY BITCH IT’D HELP EVEN MORE”
The 2 stared at each other, unsure whether to feel angry or sad.
“You know where it hurts, huh? You know me so well you know EXACTLY what to say to make me angry” 4 spoke, anger seething through him.
“Not hard when you get upset about everything!!”
“You make me more than upset”
“Oh yeah? What do I make you, huh? Tell me”
4 looked down.
“Confused. And sad. You make me sad”
3 stared at him.
“That’s it? Really?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Well, now I god damn do, not like I care about your thoughts”
4 had enough, as he got up and pushed 3 against the wall. It was cold, just as cold as 4’s stare.
“Do you REALLY want to know, 3?”
3 tried to look anywhere but 4. 4 grabbed 3’s chin.
“I… I guess… I can’t really back down now, can I?” 3 was visibly nervous.
“You make me so… bad. I feel bad, each time. I don’t know why”
3 still tried looking away from 4. This was starting to feel uncomfortable.
“So… you don’t even know how I make you feel, huh?”
“Well, how do I make YOU feel then? Huh?”
“Tense, very tense. Especially right now, with backing me into a wall and everything”
“Ah-” 4 stepped back, giving 3 his space back. He felt a bit embarrassed about what he did. He realised what that looked like now- he was glad it was only 3 to see him do something like this. Since considering how they were, this was definitely not getting out from between the 2 of them.
As they stood there, they felt cold again. 3 thought for a bit then grabbed the blanket and threw it over 4’s shoulder as he then leaned into him, shoulder to shoulder. It wasn’t too much to handle at least. 4 stayed silent but he didn’t move either. His head seemed to be full of thoughts.
“Hey… I’m sorry, 3… I gotta learn how to control myself around you”
3 looked at him, with a questioning look.
“I mean yeah but… what the hell do you mean? Around me”
“You just bring the worst out of me”
“Well… I can’t argue with that”
“I think… I do the same to you…”
“Hmm…”
Both stayed silent for a while, then 4 spoke words that had no right to hurt so much.
“It feels like we’d be better apart…”
3 didn’t even know how to react. He just… stood there. 4 couldn’t look at him for a bit, feeling his own words even claw at his own heart. But when he did… oh, he wished he didn’t.
He didn’t want to see 3 so sad, tears running down his cheek. His lips trembled looking back at 4 before punching him in the face.
“WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT??”
4 stumbled but didn’t fall. He was never able to say the right words.
“I… well” he felt himself getting drawn to tears as well “We… fight so much…”
“I care too much about you”
“I know but… look, it feels like we never get along… I care too and the idea hurts me too…” his tears came too, matching 3.
I just- I can’t do this-” 3 started pacing and suddenly decided to get back to the snow again, desperately wanting to get out.
4 felt guilty. He felt awful. He thought this would give him some peace of mind but it didn’t. He thought, he thought very hard- how could he solve this? How could he make this right for 3?
“How could I… make this right for you?” 4 asked, his voice weak.
“By shutting the fuck up” 3 continued shovelling the snow with desperation. 3’s hands felt cold. Way too cold. But at least it was almost distracting him from 4’s stinging words.
4 hated looking at what 3 was doing. He turned away, trying to close him out but the quiet sobs and the soft noises of the snow being shovelled by hand was too prominent in his mind. He wasn’t able to close it out, not even a little bit. He clenched his fists. He must do something. Anything. Just stop this.
3’s hands were starting to hurt so much he could barely take it. But it didn’t make him want to stop. What stopped him was 4 grabbing both of his hands and pulling him away from the snow. And 4 wasn’t easy on him, having strong grips on both his hands. As 4 felt just how cold 3’s hands were, he held on even more, pulling 3 close.
“I can’t… I can’t just watch you hurt yourself.. you mean too much to me”
“I thought you wanted us apart”
“Want and need are different”
3 looked ahead of himself, embracing he was now trapped in 4’s hold, as much as he didn’t want to be.
“Are you saying you need me?”
“Yes”
4 replied so fast, it made 3 feel a bit hot again.
“So… you need me, even if I… cause you to be worse?”
“I need you because I…” 4 stopped. 3 paid attention for a bit, waiting for an answer. The more seconds passed the more tense he felt.
“Don’t leave me hanging, dude!” 3 spoke nervously, he hated feeling this uncomfortable.
4 just didn’t move, not until he whipped 3 into a deep embrace, pulling as close as he could. It was the kind of hug you couldn’t escape from, no matter how much you wanted to. It was tight, scary, full of emotion yet somehow fulfilling. 3 slowly hugged him back. It still wasn’t quite as comfortable as he wished it should be, but the tightness definitely helped. He wished it would be just that easy to press the bad things out of him.
This lasted a while, neither wanted to speak. Neither knew what to say. But they both had a lot on their minds. But they chose to remain this way. At least for a while, some peace.
4 slowly pulled out a bit, looking at 3. 3 only noticed a bit after, his face still red from crying and the cold. The 2 just stared at each other. Felt like no one else existed to them but each other. It felt so obvious. It felt so obvious what they wanted, it was written all over them. Just a single thing on their mind, a simple yet disastrous wish. Something so easy yet so hard.
3’s grip tightened on 4 as he pulled him in, it happened so fast, yet 4 followed along immediately. The desperation finally kicked in. They needed each other so so badly and it showed. And when they’d pull away, they’d just pull right back in. Their lips touching were too addictive. It was a rush of excitement neither have felt in a while. 3 was the one to end up against the wall, then quickly switching to 4. 3 had a strong hold on 4 that made him feel weak. He didn’t know that feeling weak by someone could feel so good. It felt like it should be a crime.
They slowly let go, although they didn’t want to. Especially since they then had to face each other. It felt… weird. Where did this come from? Why were they both so into it?
“So… that happened” 4 awkwardly scratched his neck.
3 facepalmed.
“Is that all you’re gonna say?”
“Umm well… I guess I always liked you, heh,... uh… yeah”
3 couldn’t keep a straight face, he laughed. He found 4 ridiculous, yet somehow cute.
“I love you too, idiot” 3 replied finally, after leaving 4 hanging with just laughing.
4 looked down then back at 3. He was visibly getting so giddy it was a joy to watch. 3 pressed a kiss on 4’s cheek. 4 could explode the world with the happiness he was feeling. This whole thing really made him realise what he was feeling, as it was previously an unknown thing to him. He didn’t realise, even though he felt it badly. He’s a fucking idiot.
3 knew very well but it wasn’t exactly something he liked to think about. It was already hard to make friends, let alone admit his feelings for his ex rival.
“I’m… glad you do, 3”
“Do you know how hard it was to keep this away from you??”
“Uh.. no? I think you hid it well”
“That was the intention”
“Yeah… you know, I only realised just now”
3 blinked at 4.
“You.. You can’t be serious”
“Why can I not be?”
“Whatever… I’m just glad you feel the same”
“Yeah… we’re still trapped though”
“No shit” 3 sighed.
The 2 rested against each other. At least now they had less reason to be tense about that.
“I mean… the others know we got stuck, right? They should be able to help then…”
“I sure do hope so”
The 2 thought though, anything they can come up with. 3 had an idea float in his mind, now feeling like it’s less embarrassing to suggest.
“Hey so, 4… you know how we channel meme energy with touch?”
“Yeah?”
“What if… it’s possible to channel it with kissing as well?”
4 rubbed his chin then with seemingly zero hesitation, he pulled 3 in for a kiss, and concentrated. Maybe a bit too hard at that, or maybe it was just such a powerful move that the energy practically blew up around them. Their prison was gone. Literally, they blew the whole thing up with their meme energy kiss.
“Woah” 3 chimed up quietly, trying not to look too impressed but… meme explosion?? 2 of the greatest things together??
“Yippee we’re free we’re free!!” 4 hugged 3 and jumped up and down.
That’s when the crew noticed the 2, with 4 jumping around crazy. That’s just how it is with them sometimes. At least they chilled out now! It’s been needed for a long while now.
#smg34#opening up asks in case someone wants to yell at me#gen I'm up for discussions#just closed that before due to feeling a lil anxious#also you can yell at me if I caused light emotional damage with anything here
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I don't know much about you as a person, but from what I can gather you've had a long journey with art, but still have the motivation to continue even when its rough. I'm sure you didn't start out making masterpieces, so if its not too much trouble, do you have any advice for a 16 year old artist losing motivation? i feel like im stagnating right now and its awful
Idk man, all I can say is, draw watchu want without the care who's gonna see it or what they gonna say , commit to new ideas and care less about pleasing everyone, because I know that way too well, I started learning by drawing animals, flowers and nature, "you should draw something else", switches to furries " No you must do human portraits", draws humans *no one fuckin cares*, and I felt miserable drawing what I didn't want all the damn time just trying to please everyone and be liked, hell, I still do that sometimes cuz I'm a dumbass. When in reality, when you do your own thing is when you're the happiest, this internet bullshit? Yeah don't trust the likes and favs, people like what they find relatable, no one really knows how much time you've spent on your drawing or how much you love it, when a 5 min doodle you did could do more than a painting that took 2 whole days to complete just to be scrapped in a new speedy record, paint what you love for yourself and you only.
Don't be shy to learn new things, I have tons of stuff I don't post here cuz I know people wouldn't care about it, but here for this post, have this that I practiced when I felt too depressed to think of anything good and wanted to step back from the MD artstyle
You'll see, you'll thrive when you draw what you want, and get yourself a drawing buddy! That way you'll stop focusing on the internet and more on each other, and each other's improvement. Tbh I struggled with that one. Since everyone I had were not into art irl, I somehow managed to find someone after 10 years of drawing alone. I honestly wanted more people to join in and make an improvement circle, but unfortunately that never happened.
I found myself twice as productive now than ever, even though I'm not active here as much I am still drawing and making things, ofc giving you more comics! And other fun things in the future I hope.
If you're struggling to draw something just do it, man commit, i was uncomfortable drawing men and male characters for years, I've wasted so many years being "too uncomfortable" and draw a naked person like yeesh who fucking cares, it's for studying.
And ofc if you feel like you're not improving at all please, please experiment with your artstyle and try something new, please refresh your mind, I was stuck for years doing the same thing over and over, same colors, same 2px brush, drawing like a machine same shit over and over, I felt so stuck and lost, but also afraid to do something new, idk why, I guess I never felt good enough or deserving of it. I also didn't go to art school, I am NOT a professional, nor will i ever be in my opinion. Hell, me feeling like I'll never be good enough left me afraid to try and apply for art school, they were asking for sculptures, different mediums all that scary stuff and I was like, I don't.. know.. how to do those things... I can't build a portfolio in less than 3 months?!?! I don't even know how to use half of what they're asking for!!
In reality at the end of the day, art is what you make of it and no one can stop you, search for inspirations and don't be afraid to try, yes you'll fail fist 2 or 10 or hell even 100 times, but you'll come back with more knowledge than ever.
For ending I give you the most confusing drawing to ever exist [dw he's just sleeping on top of her and she's just ghasping for air but awe romance or sum lol] is it weird? Yeah but I had a fun time making it hahaha
Idk I'm bad at putting my thoughts together, but hopefully some of this helps.
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ok quick thoughts, spoilers behind the cut.
Pros:
Halle. HALLE. H a l l e. Her voice, her face, her mannerisms. They took what made Ariel special in the animated movie and built on it and she was the perfect person to pull it off.
Her beauty was distracting.
So glad they finally got a singer for a live action, I couldn’t take another B&B autotuned disaster.
Made me want to get to the nearest rock and play mermaid ngl.
I had my doubts with Jonah but he did a great job with Eric, played the shy, kinda awkward potato prince charming to perfection. Loved that they expanded his backstory and his interest in adventure and the sea. Also A+ for the movie knowing he had a white shirt on while surrounded by water and using every chance it had to drench him.
Eric still being caring and worried about Ariel even under Ursula’s spell? 10/10 no notes.
He came to chew bubblegum and be dreamy and he was all out of bubblegum.
Halle and Jonah’s chemistry was insane, I need them to do ten movies making eyes at each other.
Seriously the movie could have been 2 hours of them interacting in that library and it would have been money well spent.
or just two hours of them being cute smol and tol in a boat idc
TRUE LOVE INDEED
Can’t wait for this movie to be out in D+ so I can reblog all the gifs.
Part of Your World and all reprises were ofc gorgeous. Vanessa’s Trick is haunting and exactly what one would want for a siren song. For the First Time is gorgeous and underrated, felt very Broadway-esque. Eric’s song was corny but in a good way.
The rest of the songs are adequate but are not as good as the original ones.
Gotta said, song aside, the Kiss the Girl scene was more endearing in this version. When she helps him figure out her name?
Melissa was good as Ursula and made the character her own, though I think she was not as scary as she could have been. Better than I expected, though.
The actress that plays Vanessa knew she had 5 minutes to make an impression and used them to the fullest. Delightful.
Cons:
The CGI felt unfinished and so did the color grading/lighting. I edited all the movie images in this post (just played with the saturation and the contrast) and I’m mediocre at best. HIRE TUMBLR EDITORS, DISNEY.
Halle deserved to wear more outfits, I can't believe Disney missed an opportunity to sell more dolls. Would have given her a dress for each day on land and the water dress. Mouse, I thought you liked money.
we could have had it all
Wanted more of her sisters tbh. And less Triton, Javier phoned it in imo. I know Triton and Ariel’s relationship is an important part of the original movie but idk if it was his half assed acting or me wanting more of the sisters, but I wasn’t moved.
Flounder's weird character design was saved by his stellar voice actor and Sebastian grew on me, he was hilarious. Scuttlefina was tolerable but gosh she’s always playing the same character, stop casting her in everything.
Less I say about Scuttlebutt the better. Kids are probably gonna love it, though.
The ending was kinda weird? It felt rushed and the battle with Ursula was disappointing. Which is a surprise because the OTHER stormy scene at night was wonderfully done.
Up to Ursula taking Ariel back to the ocean it felt really cohesive but the second Triton appears to save her it was like they were trying to speed things up and it got... weird.
Didn’t mind Ariel being the one that killed Ursula, after everything she put her through.
Cannot believe the movie robbed us of Jonah screaming “I lost her once, I’m not gonna lose her again!”
Overall it was a well paced (up to the finale), entertaining, charming movie. Despite its faults, the only Disney live action I want to rewatch (outside MAYBE Cinderella).
8/10 Justice for the foam dress.
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So.. I finished Alchemy of Souls
Guys, the amount of tears I just shed in front of my entire family in the last episode of part 2 is crazy.
They were just sitting there like, you good? It's fiction as I'm sobbing my eyes out.
Anyway.
I have many thoughts. So many. And I lowkey want to make a separate post for each of them.
But for now I do want to leave some of my impressions about the finale: (spoilers ahead obviously)
I thought it was pretty well done. I expected to be a bit more shocked about the whole Jin Buyeon is Jin Seol-ran plotline but it honestly made sense to me and I feel like it was actually foreshadowed pretty well for the most part, even in season 1.
Also they definitely got me good with the deaths of Park Jin, Maidservant Kim, and Jin Hogyeong (if that's how you spell her name). Like that's when I started crying tbh. (I could care less about Mama Jin tbh, she sucks, but that deserves its own post). And I'm glad that them actually being alive didn't feel like a cop out to me. They established early on that Jin Seol-ran knew what would happen and used that to their advantage so it was believable and didn't feel like a Deus Ex Machina move for them to be saved. Well, maybe one of them should have died (cough–Mama Jin–cough). But it's fine.
I do feel like the last two episodes were kind of rushed though. I don't know if they had budgeting constraints or if Netflix didn't give them more than ten episodes, but I think that they should have had at least 12. Two more episodes would have allowed for more expansion on the climax and allowed them to up the drama more, which I think would have done well for the series over all, and would have been a better payoff.
I think the time could have been used well to flesh out some of the side characters arcs more. I feel like Danggu and Jin Choyeon were kind of pushed off to the side this season, and especially in the latter half, but I would have liked to see more of them and their relationships not only with each other but with Jang Uk and Naksu/Jin Buyeon.
For all intents and purposes, Naksu/Jin Buyeon lived as Jin Choyeon's sister for three years, and we can see that despite everything that happened three years prior, Choyeon did treat her as her sister even knowing the soul was Naksu's and cared about her. I think that could've and should've been expanded upon, her choosing to care about Naksu/Jin Buyeon or how that came to be. Also, after Naksu regained her memory AND found out Jin Mu had been for sure controlling her at the end of Part 1, I would have loved to see the conversation between her and Choyeon about what she did, an apology and an explanation that she would never have done that if she were sane of mind. What I said about Choyeon applies to Naksu as well because she lived three years as Choyeon's sister, and we can tell she cares about her, so I would have loved to see more of her feelings towards her, especially upon remembering all that had transpired in part 1.
When it comes to Danggu, I mean, he's one of Uk's best friends, and he was left out of the loop a lot when it came to anything Naksu-related. I would have liked him to find out or for Uk to tell him at some point and see how he makes peace with that. Because Danggu and Mudeok were friends in part 1 and he supported her (erroneously) in her supposed romance with Seo Yul. But then she killed his fiance's father and tried to attack him. I can't imagine the sense of betrayal he felt, but also finding out that it wasn't her fault and how he could come to terms with that would have been great to see. I also think his whole experience/trauma from part 1 was kind of glossed over. Like his main thing this season was his broken heart after Choyeon didn't end up marrying him, and I think that was making his feelings a bit too one-dimensional there. They do talk about how he feels slightly uncomfortable/doesn't know what to do with Jang Uk at the beginning of the show, but once Seo Yul comes back, that's kind of forgotten about and the three of them just start hanging out again no problem. I would've like to see a bit more about him struggling with becoming Leader of Songrim as well and how he adapted to that amidst his heartbreak for both his love and his friend who he doesn't even know how to act around anymore, and even towards Naksu/Mudeok who kind of ruined his future and that of his best friend but also being intuitive enough (because he is and he has one of the best hearts we've seen in the show) to realize that there's more to the story than her just going on a murder spree.
I've seen some talk about people saying they didn't like the actress for season 2 as much as season 1 (forgive me, I forgot their names), but I think both brought something good to the table.
Season 1 actress for Mudeok was really good. Her facial expressions were spot on and her chemistry with Lee Jaewook and the other cast members was really good. I think she definitely had great stage presence and made the show popular in the first place. I just don't agree that season 2 actress was worse.
I think season 2 actress definitely put in the work and embodied who Naksu/Jin Buyeon was for the majority of the series. There were times where she made expressions that perfectly resembled/echoed Naksu/Mudeok's that really got me like yes they are the same person even if she doesn't remember. She may have been cuter than we were used to with out sharp-tongued and emotion-resistant Mudeok, but I think Naksu needed that. As Mudeok and before then she didn't have the luxury to be more emotional and girly, it's only now in this body that she does, and I'm glad she had the opportunity to express that side of herself that had never seen the light of day.
We did get a glimpse of that side of her at the end of part 1 where she's playing around with makeup and what might make her look pretty, and it really spoke to all that she had missed out on and had to give up in order to survive. So yeah despite all the angst, I'm glad Naksu/Jin Buyeon had that opportunity through season 2 actress who played it really well while keeping in line with the essence of Naksu/Mudeok.
This whole thing about Naksu being the shadow to Jang Uk's light and if light exists then it needs a shadow broke my heart you guys, it was so perfect. And the fact that they were each other's light and shadow at different points but were also wholly necessary to each other in that was beautiful. I want to talk more about this in a separate post, so I'll table this metaphor for now.
Shout out to Crown Prince Go Won, a great character this whole season in terms of both comedic relief and massive character growth. So good.
Uk's arc was fantastic too but again want to save that for a full post.
Those are my out of order first thoughts about part 2, but I have SO MUCH MORE to discuss, so I will come back for sure. I just needed to scream to the world for a bit (virtually of course).
Question though for all of you more knowledgeable in the k-drama world: is there going to be a season 3?
#alchemy of souls#alchemy of souls part 2#alchemy of souls light and shadow#Jang Uk#Naksu#Mudeok#Cho Yeong#Jin Buyeon#park dang gu#Seo Yul#jin cho yeon#kdrama#Finale thoughts#Meena's posts
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So hear me out
I don't like that Bi-Han is perceived as an evil character (although I know he is probably designed to be evil). That's why I have a hobby of making up excuses for his bad actions and decisions
Please do not take this post 100% seriously, I understand clearly that I'm probably wrong (or the creators haven't thought over the character so deeply for it to be true for that matter). I just love Bi-Han and think he deserves better than to be a villain in every timeline
This is part 1
Bi-Han's ideas on the clan development are actually not that bad in the beginning. I mean, when they discuss it before the meeting with Liu Kang and before the invasion on the castle. His ambitions are really strong and all he wants, in my opinion, is to participate in making decisions, not to serve and obey. He says they could help to rule, not to rule on their own. Also he doesn't argue with their father's principles, he said that the principles should guide them, not that Lin Kuei should ignore them. I don't see anything bad in his desire to have more power and more respect for the clan. Even I felt bad when either Kuai Liang or Tomas said that they served not ruled. Lin Kuei had been working for Liu Kang for hundreds of years and although they had a loud name of 'Earthrealm protectors', they had to do not a very respectful job. We know that it used to be a very peaceful timeline before Shang Tsung intervened. And as Bi-Han, who was the clan's Grandmaster, supposedly the busiest person in the whole clan, participated in every Earthrealm's champions' trainings, we can assume that it was the most interesting event in their task list. Which, imho, is pretty small for the Grandmaster of a great and respectable clan. They even were not taken to the tournament itself! And I suppose they were never chosen to be its champions either. In the castle, after defeating Ermac, I believe, Bi-Han mentioned that he'd missed a real kombat. So while Liu Kang had a lot of issues to solve on his own, Lin Kuei were supposed to protect the Earthrealm from dangers which didn't exist, thanks to Liu Kang. It's actually a very common situation: when you don't see the person's potential and you don't help them to fulfill it, the chance to lose the person's interest or loyalty is extremely high. Tbh, it seems very weird for me that Liu Kang didn't think of anything to keep Bi-Han loyal. I mean, he put Shang Tsung and Quan Chi into such circumstances so they couldn't gain or even desire power without somebody's help. And Bi-Han? He wanted more power even before Shang Tsungs's intervention affected him. Liu Kang pretended he didn't notice? Or he just didn't care? Or why else he decided to keep someone like Bi-Han in charge of a powerful clan? There is a theory that he gave Hanzo's power away to Kuai Liang because he thought Kuai could handle it better and avoid destructions caused by Hanzo's anger. And if that's so, why would he do nothing about Bi-Han? He wanted to give him another chance like he did with Shao? Okay, he couldn't watch Shao all the time as they were in different realms. But Bi-Han literally worked for him!! And he didn't notice anything wrong and demanding attention? Either we don't know something yet or Liu Kang really doesn't care enough for Bi-Han. And if that's so, it shouldn't be surprising that Bi-Han would leave his side one day.
Bi-Han's attitude towards Tomas is rude and unacceptable, Tomas doesn't deserve it from the perspective we see. The most obvious reason - Tomas doesn't share Lin Kuei blood and makes him unworthy for Bi-Han. What if it's more complicated that just that? There are some hints in the game that Bi-Han has daddy issues. Johnny Cage presumes that during one of the intros (it was something like 'Your daddy issues are even stronger than mine'). And his whole bossy, 'Obey-Your-Grandmaster'-like attitude also may indicate that. Kuai Liang and Tomas respect their father a lot and Bi-Han obviously doesn't. I mean, I feel some respect there, which I cannot explain rn, but anyway there is not enough of it. I don't think this attitude came out of nowhere. Bi-Han is the eldest so he was most likely to become the Lin Kuei Grandmaster after their father. So the father could treat him differently from the younger brothers. Even if he sought peace, it didn't mean he was an excellent dad figure. Maybe he pushed Bi-Han too hard whereas Kuai Liang and Tomas got much more freedom and less trainings. Bi-Han could envy them. Of course, he didn't hate Kuai Liang as he was his little brother no matter what. But Tomas came out of nowhere and got love from Bi-Han's parents, his father especially, which Bi-Han didn't receive himself. It was his love! Why would some stranger come into his family and steal love that should have been Bi-Han's? Why was this 'nobody' treated better than their son and brother? An offended kid usually cannot understand other kid's struggles so as long as Tomas took something, which as Bi-Han believed belonged to him, he wouldn't consider that Tomas was an orphan. Nobody could understand Bi-Han's struggles, why would he try to understand others'? Maybe the father even mentioned something about Tomas not being the original Lin Kuei - for example, answering Bi-Han's question why couldn't Tomas become the Grandmaster, the father would say that. And little Bi-Han learnt that as a reason to hate Tomas and not to accept him as a part of the family. None of that is an actual excuse for Bi-Han, he should've visited therapist or something. But I doubt assassins, especially in MK, know what psychological help is, so there's not an option. Especially for Bi-Han, he is super cold and closed. And this also may have been formed thanks to the father's upbringing.
As I've already started on the father... Let's go to Bi-Han's confession that he let their father die. It's hard to speculate on the topic as we don't know what kind of accident had happened. But we'll try without it. I think the detail that he let him die, not killed him, does matter. I still suppose that the father used to abuse Bi-Han. Imagine the person, who has been bullying you for your whole life, happens to be on the verge of death and you're the only one who can save them. Of course there are people who would save the person no matter what. But a lot of them would think if the person deserved to die and they couldn't help but rely on the their own experience. The father's death would finally give Bi-Han the freedom, he would get rid of the chains of his father's control, he would become the master on his own and not only he could manage his life for the first time, he could manage other people too. People who used to lack power are most likely to worship power in the future. A bonus to this thought: the father could get killed because of his clan politics. Not to let this happen to himself Bi-Han got so obsessed with changing the rules. There's an upcoming question - why didn't he tell Kuai Liang and Tomas? Maybe there was something else he didn't want to share with them. Maybe for their own protection. Which, shall I remind, is just a theory.
To be continued in the next post...
#mortal kombat#mortal kombat 1#mk1#mk1 2023#mk1 spoilers#bi han#sub zero#mk sub zero#kuai liang#tomas vrbada#mk scorpion#mk smoke#lin kuei
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welcome to: rizz's extensive uksies notes, which will discuss differences in characterization, sure, but also more important things like staging, scenic and dance changes, and directorial choices (i do talk about the principal characters at the bottom so i'll forgive you for skipping down there if you wanna). i haven't looked at anyone else's posts since i didn't want them to influence my thoughts, but i'll be whipping out the third-of-the-way-through stage management degree for this shit so buckle up. spoilers/major reveals will be in this post, and this post (among all the others relating to major reveals/moments in this version) will be tagged with #newsies spoilers!!!
lets get into it, starting with the reason this show was able to be as much of an experience as it was: the space.
i think it's very important context to this version of newsies that the troubadour theater, previously, had been housing an immersive peaky blinders (popular tv show) experience. this review gives a pretty good idea of what immersive theater is, and it is... a big feat. it's more of an experience than theater, and that same goal was at the heart of the way newsies is done, too, which worked so well. both are historical fictions and are based on real things that happened, which makes it kind of easier to involve an audience imo and lets them believe what's going on.
the stage is a sort of round thrust-style in the shape of what i'm guessing is a flash/flashbulb in reference to obviously the pics we have of the strike and how "big photos attract readers" (aka the audience in this case :)). as yall know from the photos its got the same tower/skeletal setup as bway...to an extent. for bway, that's tbh all they have, but by losing the proscenium stage and moving into a space with so much more free reign, there didn't have to be one big scenic element, and it didn't have to be the only thing to steal the show. like the "big moment" for bway is when the three towers track forward in once and for all, and there's like....at least three different moments just like that in uksies and they don't even need the towers for any of them! because they didn't rely on one thing, they did so many things, and they did them everywhere. to the walls, to the aisles, to the landings, to the air, this show made sure it used every definition of the word 'space' to its fullest. initially it sounds distracting, but making sure they're all around us and making sure that ensemble characters are able to be on their own without the principals near them really humanizes the ensemble as a group of real kids who fr went on strike. i'll come back to humanizing stuff in a bit, but since we've been talking about the theater space, lemme talk abt these scenic elements because damn...
there was a slide jack used a couple times through a hatch door to escape the delanceys thru (with a little >:) wave) and escape the strikebreakers
there were mini trap doors in the stage where items were stored and revealed, and they kind of looked like the grates that sidewalks have/used to have for like rain to drain into in cities <3
there was a rope jack used to swing through and kick a strikebreaker in the face!
the penthouse actually felt like a home rather than literally just a bare bway balcony lmao, like they had mini portraits sticking to a skeletal roof-like overhang that jack probably built on his own, his art was much more obvious and hung up and personalized.
the cart with all the papers on it actually got to be used in staging in really fun ways- it was both chariot and podium for jack and crutchie mainly but they like rode around in it it was cool
medda has a huge lit-up sign for her theater instead of like. an overhang or whatever it is for bway, which is the upgrade she deserves <3
the children's crusade banner wasn't a projection, it actually dropped as a huge literal banner from one of the line sets and jack stood as a shadow behind it with a fist raised >:)
the tables for king of new york weren't the longer bigger ones from bway, it was like actual restaurant-style table for two's like in 92sies!! and they were on wheels, so they had table-ography– this was also possible due to how much more depth, physically, the stage had, like they wouldn't have had room on a proscenium. davey was pushing les around on a table and the kid was just flying around it was super cute and rly well done
speaking of 92sies, remember at the end of their king of new york when the one newsie grabs the ceiling fan and spins around? yeah, uksies does that with these huge practical lights that fly down from above- newsies get to not only hang off of them and do some acrobatics, but they can spin on them, and they not only go insanely fast, but they also are able to go higher the faster they go. seriously one of the most insane displays i've seen in a staged musical of all things, like it felt like a show and not just a musical.
The abundance of scenic and spatial elements leaves a director/choreograoher (because this guy was both, and it is visceral even in the scenes that he's both and it's perfect) with so many options, and fuckin man, did this guy absolutely use all of them to the fullest. i hadn't realized how like....recycled the blocking had been through bway and also touring, because idt they're allowed to really change it. but guys. we'd been watching the same exact movements for years, and NOW THEY'RE ALL NEW!! everything they do, each location of the stage people move to is all different than we've ever seen as a fandom, which is major, because staging is a storytelling device– since if it wasn't, we wouldn't have it. where people are in a space, where people are in relation to others in a space is also huge. the other main thing again is that it isnt a proscenium stage, so it's much easier not to stage people "in a line". think back to the livesies staging for right before the world will know when jack is telling davey about "if your father had a union". picture where they are on the stage in relation to the cart w all the newsies. its in a fucking line, bro.
this show? abused depth beautifully. the stage pictures were extremely memorable, so choreographed, and set the dynamics for scenes so effortlessly. davey is way downstage when jack's trying to convince him to join the strike, so we can see his exact thought process before the final "i guess...you do, mr. president". (speaking of, ryan kopel is genuinely the first davey to actually make that line a weirdly emotional journey?? like davey takes so long to finally say it, like he's getting over the stakes and letting jack's words sit before finally, yes, agreeing.) or when jack has his pre-seize the day monologue (of which i might make an entire post for for personal reasons and i'll link it here if i do), the three scabs are center stage, arranged in this triangle with their backs to each other and their heads down so jack gets to circle them while addressing the stage at large- it just looks so intentional and frankly very pretty to watch since they're all dancers and their posture is so clean. even something to believe in's scene staging is more dynamic because the towers themselves aren't even in a line- they're angled downstage, so even when jack and kath are high up on a more skinny platform there's still depth and an upstage and downstage they can travel on!! it's so thought through. i'll also make a post about more individual moments, but a lot of people have done that so im making the more important post first lmao.
the staging ofc was very intentional, but the transitions were also...like seriously integral to the narrative. idk if you guys know this or not but transitions can make or fuckin break a moment fr and some directors fucking suck at them LMAO but wow. these? the newsies taking on katherine's platform with the same "mornin' miss" air to their movements and kath saying a small 'thank you' to them before she sits for watch what happens, versus the transition into the bottom line where newsies push pulitzer's platform on with heads and backs bowed down, pushing slower, with more effort, like it looks painful when they push on his platform. newsies lifting medda's footlights and sort of "working at the theater" with their movements mirroring dramatic vaudevillian theatre. it was all so fluid and nearly all of it was done by the newsies and none of it was really...hidden, either, and seeing them literally "work" onstage cemented them as "the working boys of the city" really specifically, and in a very special way. like yeah, the invisible workforce, of course they're doing the transitions. beautiful, a+.
among other added elements were the new orchestrations. newsies has never sounded like this before, even excluding the new music they added. there was more base, guitar, and drums, and the tinny trumpet was much more subdued which felt more...realized and less disney, which is for me always welcomed lol. honestly it made the music sound less disney as a whole. very grounded sound overall- ALSO the sound design was so fucking excellent like you walk into the theater and it's the sounds of the city in 1899 and it's so cool...but! yes! there was new music because guess fucking what: every single dance break was extended. every single one. they all of course had new choreo (finallyfinallyfinallyfinally) but also literal new parts to the dance breaks. each by like 3-5 mins. cemented this as a show more so than only a musical which i fucking adored. in a diff post i'll go through each song (though it might. be after i see it again) and talk about the extensions because just....come on director/choreographer!! yes!!
rounding out this post specifically, im gonna nail down some characters and relationships, since honestly they were very different than we've seen before, but there's merit to all of them for real, and i appreciate a shift from how we're used to interpreting them, and honestly i hope it changes our characterizations as a fandom and adds more depth/possibilities!
starting with the romantic hero of the year, jack kelly.
he is distinctly a romantic hero in this- not in the perceived lovesick/floaty way. he's a very raw version of himself, and he's almost a loose canon (until he's forced not to be via blackmail). he's staged very intimately with others when talking one-on-one, which i know is a usual jack trait, but at michael's jack's core is "come on, look at me." every moment with those he loves is personal to him, is treasured and valued. a baseline example is crutchie, of course, who he says "look at me" to in the prologue after crutchie gets discouraged with himself. they aren't staged outward toward the audience, because jack doesn't let it– he is in line with crutchie, really looking at him, and making sure crutchie's looking back. he does this with the scabs too, except he gets to move around them because of how that trio is staged (my god that scene looks and is so beautiful..fuck).
but i think this is very exemplified with davey, actually, because what i love about michael's jack is that the emotions he wears on his sleeve aren't only ones of love- it's all passion, which includes anger. jack and davey do not get along initially. the exchange of "well if he's the best then what's he want with me" is kind of charged, which is exciting- davey really is just there for his family, he doesn't need eyes on him, and he wants to shut it down....but it's shutting it down via undermining jack, which is made clear by jack's reaction that that isn't something that happens around here. "cause you got a little brother" really feels like an 'i don't need you,' in how it's said, and any back and forth they have through that scene is an interesting animosity... which changes the moment davey and les are in danger, when snyder appears and they run (they run SO MUCH in this show oh my god, they run everywhere across everything and up and down), and once they run to the theater and jack gets them out of that situation and davey is seriously like. 'who the fuck was that guy, we had to go through that bc of you, that wasn't okay', and the way jack explains who snyder was...for the first time, jack doesnt match davey's animosity and instead just explains, in lieu/as an apology, the details on who snyder is and to steer clear of him. and instead of saying "right" as davey normally does, he says "thanks for the advice", with the staging squared and head-on to jack. and it isnt sarcastic, it's just genuine, and from that moment on, davey gets the "look at me" treatment. and jack even holds the back of davey's head during i think seize the day and lets his hand slide down his shoulder to daveys chest and daveys hand is on jack's shoulder and they're staged square and not outward like the moment is just for them.
jack's emotions are more visceral than they've been, he's very hot-blooded and it just makes everything hit more. the fucking seize the day monologue. poc fans we finally won. michael took so much time with it, making sure each line was heard and intentional and the audience was doing that thing they do at more serious straight plays with the little "mmhs" when they agree with something and like. he just made sure it was taken so seriously, same with the something to believe in scene. "what is this.. about, for you?" just the way michael structures jack's word is so smart and emotional. he also has this sort of break in his speaking voice that reminded me of jerjor actually, but it obv is just the way he acts and a choice for jack, this cracking of the self when he's vulnerable with someone at the expense of himself.
lemme say that again. this jack's voice literally has an emotional crack in it when speaking vulnerably at the expense of himself, which is SO FUCKIGN SPECIFIC GOD I LOVE HIM FSKDFJSDJ FUCK. it's genius. he does it with katherine during "i ain't stupid, i know that... girls like you, don't end up with.. guys like me." oh my god the FUCKING NOISE THE AUDIENCE MADE. oh it was heartbreaking, like it was genuinely crushing. made me tear up for sure, for obvious reasons lmao. michael is the jack i've always wanted- a little vain (he admires himself in a hand mirror during carrying the banner<3), absolutely turbulent, and painfully, horribly aware of his own stakes in this all. and black LMAO I WONNNNNN HAHAH I WON!!
speaking on crutchie next because he is the narrative of this production.
the fandom has sort of strayed away from the jack+crutchie team and fallen into this jack+race team, and this production makes damn sure that doesn't happen. it is so jack and crutchie, all the way, to the end of the fucking line. he is with jack, central, through all of act one's staging and major numbers- by jack's side for carrying the banner, with him on the cart when it spins around center and moves around the stage for world will know, he leads the newsies up to the world's door to make way for jack, les, and davey to enter it, he's included in seize the day choreo moments, he cries out for jack to get away ("jackie, run! run!!" im. i am. a mess) at the end of the brawl when he knows he's in a situation he can't get out of.
he also has this hug with jack and race when he returns from the refuge that nearly made me yell out loud LMAO (me and @roideny grabbing hold of each other in the theater and all), and the three of them have a personal spot of the stage together looking over the paper when davey makes his first appearance- crutchie is just staged very intentionally near anyone with leadership, cementing him as a leader and is certainly no longer jack's kid-brother anymore. any infantilization is really worked on getting completely gone in this production, the effort is apparent likely especially bc the actor (matthew duckett!! sweetheart supreme!!) is disabled himself!
another really key thing about this crutchie is how loud he is, in every way he possible could be. his color palette is the most stark right along with jack's, he's wearing overalls which no other newsie has, his speaking voice is almost abrasive- it's not rough, per say, but it's sort of coarse and nasally (he's so new yorker and im in love w it), and very distinct. he's also taller than jack (michael my beloved is 5'9", furthering my jack is 5'9" agenda) and like... most of the other newsies tbh.
this production does not give you a choice but to notice him, does not give you a choice but to look at him, does not allow you to ignore crutchie in any way. it's visually and audibly impossible, and that is spectacularly intentional.
he is also like... sunshiney in a rough-around-the-edges way, in a this-is-all-i-have way. he's so himself, he's abrasive and almost snide in how he talks. very self-aware, but choosing actively to be brighter about it even though you can tell his situation weighs on him. crutchie is genuinely so dynamic in this show and he's amazing to watch, and he is finally, finally, truly shown as equal to the rest of the newsies, and certainly to jack.
this is so specific but the "we have the right to starve, let's just get our papers" line is so decisive of him. like i'm realizing that that line hasn't given him power before, but it does in this show- he can raise a definitive solution to the group without being jack, and i.. don't think anyone else does this, at all, when they're discussing the strike. it's just crutchie who states what he believes they should do. like. that's never been emphasized before thats so fucking cool for him idk
alright davey time woooooo
davey is the king of defensiveness in this and i genuinely fucking love that choice for him. because he is trying to find a 'way out' within the text but also metaphorically within the story before world will know. so like– this production had davey try and contradict every time someone comments on what davey says. he'll start to say "i didn't say-" "that's not what i-" "i didn't mean-" before cutting back into the script's dialogue again, which is SO fascinating. since initially, davey is trying to separate himself from the newsies, so he uses ad-libs like that to break away, but then after world will know, those same ad-libs are used inversely it felt like, like he'd say something in a way that didn't quite fit and he'd try to rephrase so that it did? very interesting to watch.
he also was very nervous to speak in his first appearance when getting his papers, like he was very nervous about speaking in front of wiesel. this davey had sort of trouble finding words in a timely manner, but what he always has are the right ones, which was a good dynamic for he and jack. he does know what to say, and what he says is intentional, he just isn't great at saying it until act two which is so. cool. even in act 2 at the rally he's still finding his footing, and then when he's at pulitzer's office with jack and spot, he's in his own. he's nearly flippant about his words, since he's found his confidence in them through jack uplifting them the whole show. it almost..... like he and jack kind of have a mentor-y relationship? jack really feels like he does show davey the ropes (despite how biting the "well my father taught us [indicating that jack shouldn't lie so easily in front of les] not to lie" is), and davey learns from jack while jack learns from davey.
speaking of les though wow is mans protective as fuck. his arms are always around this kid, he rests his chin on his head really casually and les is so easy with it too like yeah they're brothers asf. and their moments in king of new york are so precious, and they have the center table together at the start of act two.
speaking of act two! can't talk about davey without discussing wwh reprise :). the way he talks to jack in this scene is so confident that jack's "have they busted up your brains or something" feels like it's more about that- davey hasn't spoken against jack since before world will know, and jack isn't used to the dynamic davey is trying to establish. he's so persistent, and urgent, and like... in it. "won the battle, jackie think about it" like this davey wants to win. at every single turn in this show, davey wants what he believes to win. he will speak against anyone, he will try and change his words' meaning ("that's not what i mean-"), and he will persuade whoever just so that he can win. he feels so competitive and it shines in different ways and everything he says really is so argumentative. maybe he's a little quieter, his voice is shyer, but davey isn't shy, and that's made clear. also ryan kopel hugged me at the stage door and i love him and he's so fucking sweet wowowow
ok katherine and we'RE DONE i promise.
staging made absolutely sure to ground her. she was watching a lot of the scenes she wasn't in, like she appeared during world will know in one of the aisles- felt very much like those moments in 92sies when we'd just see denton around takin notes, which i loved. showed her as a very active journalist. she also like... spoke like an american newscaster?? like she had a News voice lowkey? which was a fun choice.
her scene with jack when she's asking him questions is so serious for her and i love it, it really makes sure that she cares about what she's writing and who she's writing for. jack's "we both got a lot riding on you" takes her downstage as her desk gets set up, and we get to see jack's words weigh on her which is fuckin nice as hell.. like she just felt more grounded than she's been. she still got to be bubbly, but she was more aware of the situation than like... kara lindsay's katherine. she knew the stakes for the newsies i feel like, which is why the name reveal was more intense and the STBI pre-scene was... the best i've seen. she was embarrassed at herself for lying to jack- not telling him everything, and when she defends it she knows it's weak and doesn't try to back it up.. i just appreciate it bc that scene normally feels so superficial despite its context and what they're talking about, but kath and jack really did everything they could to save that scene's writing... they reeeeally fuckin tried LMAO. this katherine was more willing to put herself in the action for sure
her back and forth with jack in jacobi's was so fun, and the defining line of their arc through the show was definitely "this is entertaining...so far." because it's fun to flirt, until it isn't, and someone you care about his ruining his name at the city-wide rally, or revealed to be the daughter of the man sending cops to beat kids into submission. whew. they're really good together.
very quickly: THIS PULITZER IS >>>>>. HE IS SO GOOD. I CANT LIE LMAOOO HE'S SO EVIL I HATE HIM!! and MEDDA WAS SO. that's jack's mom. she also really does serve independence, and i love it so much.
anyway thanks for reading this far guys LMAO i now this is so extensive and i didn't even talk about the ensemble fr... but that's for the second viewing. the direction this production underwent took major precedence, since it's so different and so much more fleshed out.
hope this gave a clear picture on the vibe of the show and the principal characters/relationships!! more to come asf!!!
#newsies spoilers#WHEW OK WE DID IT for now#newsies#uksies#newsies uk#west endsies#britsies#analysis#newsies design#fizz freaks#jack kelly#crutchie morris#davey jacobs#katherine pulitzer#medda larkin
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i was watching a video on plagarism in cosplay and the girl making the video managed to put into words something that i've kind of struggled with and tbh am still struggling to adapt to my "field" but. it bugs me so i want to try. also i should say this wicked isn't a problem it has happened to me all of Twice (one from each end) but someone finally summarized why it felt the way it did.
basically, a couple times people have commented on a fic of mine likening it to another that exists. sometimes these are innocuous and even lead me to people with similar headcanons and interpretations of the character as me. sometimes i don't like the other fic so it feels less flattering, but it's by no fault of how the comment itself is written. i've actually written a comment similar to this once and hope it didn't come across as naggy, but i found out someone else used the same prompt as me for catradora, so i basically left a comment about how funny it was that two people saw that inspiration source and went "ah yes, this could be catradora." it was supposed to be a "like sees like" kind of salute (as well as an acknowledgement that i hadn't seen their fic before as i don't go in the tags often), but i've since gotten comments that i think are trying to at least toe the line of doing the same thing and felt off (bitter, self-promotey, whatever) to me, so i retroactively worry about how they felt about it.
but really this post is about the time i had someone say "is this fic actually inspired by [other fic]" and it was 1) something i'd never heard of and 2) insulting.
so why is it insulting, what did the video finally put into words for me?
when someone accuses you of copying, using/having the same idea as someone else, etc, it is insulting the creative process and labor it took to make it. It's saying that you didn't/couldn't come up with that yourself, that you didn't develop and nurture it and plan out all the impacts this event/plot/au etc would have on the characters; that any time and effort and love you put into it never actually existed because you just stole it from someone else. it's essentially accusing you of being chatgpt, putting someone else's hard work in as input and cranking something cheap and less valuable out instead. they don't care about the work you put in anymore.
like, when i did the bachelorette au, it was straight up inspired by one that existed and i openly sourced that because it deserved it, but even then i still spent hours reading recaps of the show, previously had an interest in the franchise from podcasts, went and read interviews to get an idea of the general timelines, etc. I put a lot of work - my work, unique work, creative work - into crafting an au that, in reality, only shares the phrase "bachelorette au" with the initial source of inspiration (again, a source i love and am happy to credit anyway). if someone else wants to write a cosplay au for catradora, even if they think to do it because they read mine, as long as they're not copying the plot, backstory, etc, i think that would be super cool! honestly, i'd be flattered to be an inspiration source for that, just like i'm flattered when someone takes on one of my headcanons. it's just the basics of how creativity works. no idea, no matter how much it may feel like it, comes from nowhere. you start watching a vintage car tiktok and it puts you on a train of thoughts that eventually leads you to "lol but adora bent over the hood of her broken down car" and then you build that out until it is its own world with plot, backstory, and characters who have been tweaked by living in this different environment.
anyway, i know i've been incredibly unconcise but it boils down to creativity being a lot of effort and it doesn't feel good when people claim you didn't put in all that effort ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ man this post could have been so much shorter. should i edit it. aw fuck i have to be at work at nine tomorrow. yeah no lmao
#mylife#also im still not 100% sure who that anon thought was plagiarising me but i think i Might know and tbh im more flattered than anything so X#because you know what? it felt like them taking inspiration from me & wanting more of what i started. and that's cool#being accused of never having that creativity in the first place isn't
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OUGHHH sorry to be on anon, I need to make a proper tumblr to talk to people in hermitblr but currently I only have a sideblog and am not gonna expose my ten year old main aklsdjhfdklas, but I am the author of the romeo and juliet au tysm you made my heart grow warm and fuzzy and then explode I've never seen my fic mentioned out in te wild before <33333
to fuel ur theatre au brainworms, in the romeo and juliet au: mercutio is bdubs + benvolio is cleo, and jimmy and joel are sampson and gregory (two capulets from the start of the play they're such dumbasses my absolute beloveds), so we've got the design philosophy of the montagues and the capulets mirroring the aesthetics of the family and the bad boysss. (I never came up with a design for bad boy!Ren when he steps in as Tybalt instead of Grian during show week but I feel it's not too hard to imagine hehe)
but also (separately from that au, because I saw other talk of the life series and theatre and plays on ur blog) I constantly think about the life series as a greek tragedy, specifically in relation to the purpose of the series' inevitable tragedy being catharsis for the watchers (with the watchers also being literally the viewers). we love to see them suffer!!! but there's also a bunch of politics surrounding greek tragedies that Plato and Aristotle had discourse about that you can rope into it and tldr; my understanding is catharsis was Aristotle's answer to Plato's concern that tragedies' emotive affect could encourage rebellion against the state, with Aristotle saying that instead the cycle of pity and fear and eventual catharsis felt by the audience has a "purifying" effect that's like an emotional release from those emotions instead. Then with the extra layer of lore the fandom has surrounding Grian running away from the watchers, if Grian designs the life games, to the end of sating the watchers' need to emotionally feed (thank you Martyn for that piece of lore I'm stealing it jkfhdsk), the purpose of the games could be the cleansing of the watchers' discomfort with him running away and being a player and maintaining the status quo where Grian is actually the one in control !!!! even if he makes himself suffer. also different characters "curses" as their harmatia!! And, if we interpret the watchers as a fictional force AND the viewers simultaneously, then the chorus could absolutely be watchers who are vocal in the fandom - removed from the "players" (and OH how I love the dual meaning of minecraft players and players as in actors) but providing additional commentary and insight into what's happening that further feeds the emotional experience of the audience !!
alsooooo if you don't know the show "& Juliet" scar and grian are ALSO romeo and juliet in that to me, it's their last life/early double life era </3
theatre theatre theatre theatre theatre theatre theatre theatre
YOOOOOOOOO HELLO OP YOUR FIC IS AMAZING AND IM GLAD I COULD REC IT BC IT DESERVES RECOGNIZED!!!!! Also all of this is AMAZING im so obsessed with bdubs being mercutio and cleo being benvolio. Thats incredible like HELLO????? based choices tbh thats so fun
Also super obsessed with the meta of plays feeding into the watcher canon (and im STILL not over martyn somehow accidentally canonizing a key element of my au, this is insane, i came up with the idea for watchers feeding on player emotions in SEPTEMBER OF LAST YEAR), thats so fucking neat, i love a good tragedy OUGHHHHH its so compelling.
Also no worries about being on anon!!!! I did that too before i finally cleaned up my main blog so all the posts were privated, and then changed my url to match this one so ppl would recognize me WHEEEEEZE. Smth that helped me was tagging my own sideblog in anon asks i sent, so ppl would know it was me, and i'd get the notif when it got answered. Ofc you might not be comfortable linking your sideblog, but if you ever made one you wanted to sign off with, thats the option i used for a while before using mass post editor to private my entire main blog!!!!
theatre theatre theatre!!! Your ideas are SO pog and cool my dude feel free to ramble to me any time :]
#shouting speaks#asks#scarian#hermitcraft#3rd life#WATCHERS AS GREEK CHORUS.... WHAT IF I WENT INSANE /POS#long post#txt
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sorry to ask you to ‘diagnose’ me, but lately ive been finding that i really really heavily relate to a lot of pwNPDs posts. ive also noticed thought patterns i have with my non-system splitting (thoughts go from ‘i am the most victimized person ever in the world’ to ‘i am the most horrible abuser that ever existed’).
i wanted to ask how you got diagnosed/started seeking information on NPD. i want to perhaps bring these thought patterns up the my therapist, but im unsure how to (esp since she has used the term “narcisstic abuse” in reference to experiences ive had)
any advice?
thank you for your patience, my life is very busy these days and i dont have a whole lot of time for tumblr, but i dont want you to think this is unimportant to me.
to be clear, im self diagnosed, and not planning on seeking a professional diagnosis, so i can only really walk you through doing your own research and self reflection and tips i can imagine would be helpful for seeking a diagnosis if you choose to do so. im aware my choice is somewhat controversial, and i would be happy to list out all my reasoning in a separate post, but i feel like that would be really fucking long (and kind of bitter tbh) and this is already gonna be a doozy. my main point is that if youre going to self diagnose, itll take a lot of research and thought; and if youre going to seek a prof diagnosis, itll take research and thought as well but youll also need to take into account the trustworthiness of whoever you turn to for help. if you go the prof dx route, i wish you nothing but the best of luck.
but onto my own process.
first, the DSM-5. a free PDF of the entire thing can be found here. make sure to read over the first part defining personality disorders as a whole, as well as the section on narcissistic personality disorder ofc, AND the disorders that it can often be mistaken for, which are listed under "Differential Diagnosis". take note of any that it seems you might fit the criteria for instead, or in addition. remember that NPD can be comorbid with many other conditions, as long as it isnt directly negating the diagnosis, such as narcissistic traits only being during episodes of mania.
please note though that the DSM-5 is still written from an outsider perspective. while it is ultimately the outline for a diagnosis, its not exempt from framing us in a negative light. for example - my lack of empathy isnt the result of any "unwillingness", i literally just have a lower capacity to empathize with others than the average person does. i can fake it, most of the time, but i cant force the real thing.
the DSM-5 also focuses mainly on pwNPD who are more outwardly grandiose, while ignoring those of us who dont present that way. for the most part im not a very "arrogant, haughty" person because ive learned thats not how i get my needs met. i may sometimes accidentally sound patronizing without realizing it, or i might unmask in safe environments and let myself be healthily arrogant (like playfully boasting and half-joking about everyone loving me), but on the whole i avoid it because in my experience, people like me better when im humble. even if im often arrogant internally, i filter myself. im not particularly grandiose now, but i used to be even less so - i was more of what gets referred to as a vulnerable narcissist, displaying (very often excessive by the standards of social acceptability, but still usually genuine) emotional vulnerability to others in the hopes of getting comfort and attention, and often placing myself into the "inferior" social rung that i believed everyone else wrongly saw me as because i felt that if i tried to take the "superior" position i "rightfully deserved" i would be hated for it. now i would say im in between grandiose and vulnerable, but still not as grandiose as whats described in the DSM-5.
also, consider the ways the criteria might apply in ways that may differ from whats described, or what immediately comes to mind. the "Diagnostic Features" section describes pretty specific scenarios, and i know i personally sometimes struggle to think beyond the examples im given. are the "special people" you associate with morally or creatively or spiritually special? do you exhibit entitlement by not doing assignments and being surprised by the consequences, or by expecting someone else in the household to handle the chores because youre busy, without considering that theyre busy too, maybe even busier? does your need for admiration apply to art you create, jokes you tell, facts you share?
TLDR for those last four paragraphs: the DSM-5 is absolutely the starting place for research, but doesnt encompass the entirety of the narcissistic experience. which is where the next step comes in -
keep researching. this step is... very, very difficult. the sad truth is youll mostly see articles about how horrible narcissists apparently are. youve probably already seen much of this and im sorry. theres not really any way to avoid it, because even resources that can offer actual help tend to have at least a degree of disdain for us. ive seen some pwNPD recommend the works of dr daniel fox, such as his worksheets available for free online, and if they might be helpful i encourage you to utilize those; however even his youtube channel is incredibly villainizing, at least based on the thumbnails (I Am Not Clicking On That Shit) so i really cant take him seriously and wont be giving him any of my money. please just be cautious wading through everything and remember that, whether you have NPD or just narcissistic traits, you arent the monster these people want to frame you as.
i wish i could remember every article that helped me along the way, but the biggest one i always recommend to ANYONE who wants to learn more about NPD is the one ill link here, Narcissus And The Daffodils. the authors use the checklist linked here to go into detail describing the spectrum of narcissistic experiences. the checklist is built using the DSM-5 criteria, essentially reworded, restructured, and added to in order to offer a more thorough understanding of NPD.* the authors elaborate on the checklist to explain how those criteria tie in with the experiences described.
*while the checklist is described as a potential tool for self diagnosis, i firmly believe it cant be your only resource to do so, and im unsure if that was the intention of the creators, who do openly state that they arent professionals. however, i still consider this a very helpful resource.
as an additional note: NatD touches on three different forms of empathy, emotional, cognitive, and compassionate. after doing a lot of research on the subject, my conclusion is that nobody can fucking agree on how to categorize and label different forms of empathy, but the categorization is still helpful for me and many others. basically, whats being said is helpful, just prepare to be confused if you try to research further because that model of empathy isnt the only one out there.
beyond that, you kind of just have to keep on trucking. sift through the bullshit. use your critical thinking skills, consider what info might actually be helpful and what might just be hateful and able to be disregarded. try to keep seeking out pwNPD, but also be cautious that even some pwNPD arent going to give the best info (r/NPD sucks ass and so does the associated discord holy fuuuuuuuuuck, absolutely toxic community and also not very queer friendly). and you mentioned relating to posts made by pwNPD, so it sounds like youve already been seeking out communities, and hopefully youve been finding good ones! im certain other pwNPD have more resources than what im able to offer as well.
TLDR for the past five paragraphs: research research research, keep your wits about you, think for yourself, seek out healthy communities, and dont let the shitheads get you down.
this will also take a lot of self reflection. you need to consider how your symptoms affect your daily life, your interpersonal relationships, your private moments. can you pinpoint when this started; was it sudden, or have these traits been building up over time? what might have caused all of this, what did your youth look like, what does your life look like now? how have you been praised? how have you been hurt? what were your parents or guardians like?
professionals arent 100% certain of what causes NPD, but there are patterns - genetics, upbringing, trauma. look at your roots just as much as your branches, so to speak. some pwNPD were praised too much as a child, made to feel more important than others. some had their needs neglected. some experienced both. im sure there are other factors im forgetting to list, so again, go listen to other pwNPD and see if anything they say clicks with you. ill use myself as an example below for the sake of explaining one of many many ways NPD can develop, but thatll touch on childhood emotional abuse and trauma, without going into too much detail. if thats still upsetting to read about, feel free to skip the next paragraph.
growing up i was both put on a pedestal for my achievements and talents (like getting good grades or being cute) and devalued for anything that was inconvenient or undesirable (like being easily scared or making mistakes), so i learned subconsciously that i was somehow innately superior to my peers but also that my superiority was conditional and i was innately flawed. i moved houses constantly, so i didnt get to learn how to develop lasting friendships, and my detachment made it far too easy for me to see people as temporary sources of attention and entertainment and not much else, easy to discard without any trouble once our time was up. even once my family settled down in my teen years, they still maintained an idea that i was better than my friends. my mother in particular was manipulative, so i learned to be manipulative too - i became calculated in how i spoke and behaved, tugged at heartstrings, and outright lied countless times, all as a survival mechanism as it became harder and harder to meet the expectations placed on me. i couldnt depend on the same easiness of childhood i had grown up with, especially with other obstacles like schizophrenia in the way of my grades, but i hadnt been taught how to work for success and didnt have the support to succeed, i just felt entitled to it, it felt like something innate to me. and while all these family and school troubles were happening, and eventually work troubles, i had my trust broken many times by many people (often BECAUSE my drive for attention led me to stick around awful people and put up with hurtful behavior), and this reinforced my misanthropic idea that i must be better than other people, but that i have to prove im not below them.
aside from just shamelessly liking to talk about myself - im sure i can be honest with you here lmao - im saying all this to illustrate a very important aspect of my self diagnosis process. i am able to pinpoint a VAST array of experiences from my youth, including plenty that i didnt even mention here, which contributed to the development of my symptoms and influence my current day behavior and psyche.
which means, going back to the tree analogy, i can connect my roots to my branches. i can recognize the symptoms i experience, the branches, and i can trace back down to the experiences that led to those symptoms, the roots. that helped me to better rule out other possible causes for those symptoms - i dont experience low empathy solely because of my autism, even if that is a factor, but specific events in my life further lowered my empathetic ability beyond what it potentially could have been. i dont feel superior as a symptom of mania, both because its a constant feeling and because i can explain how that feeling was instilled in me.
dont feel bad if you cant pinpoint everything like this. like i said, it takes a lot of self reflection, and if theres trauma involved, itll probably be a painful process. its ongoing too, there are still moments that i suddenly make a connection between a branch and a root. and mental illnesses as a whole are complex, because the brain is complex, and life is complex. and, again, genetics are believed to be a factor, so it could be possible that if you have NPD, you may have had a lot fewer developmental experiences that led into it, but experts just really arent 100% sure about all the facts. all i can tell you is my own experience.
and of course, i know ive already said it plenty of times, but focus on those branches too. really really consider how your symptoms impact you and how well they may line up with NPD or potentially something else. i know that i have full certainty in my self diagnosis, but i know that wont be the case for everyone and even with your own personal certainty, you might still want a professional diagnosis. again, if you choose to seek that, i wish you only the best and i hope youre treated with nothing but the highest respect and dignity.
so my tips for that prof dx as someone without one. first and foremost in this section: gonna have to say your current therapist is a no-go. its not impossible to change someones mind about narcissistic abuse, but its also sadly not all that likely on your own, and more importantly it isnt your job when youre just trying to get help for a potential disorder. there are websites where you can search for specialists (dont use psychologytoday), but i know when i tried on a site i sadly forget the name of, i didnt get any results, so i dont know how many options are out there and listed on these sites.
your next option is probably word of mouth. reaching out to NPD communities, asking who can be trusted. but, given how small the community is, and that you dont want to doxx yourself and might not feel safe asking people you know irl, thatll probably be difficult too. there may be listings somewhere by pwNPD, but im unaware of any.
i think the next best option is just to reach out to therapists in your area, or just as far as youre willing/able to travel, or as far as theyll take telehealth appointments - and ask them some questions. do some doctor shopping. this is an important decision and you need to know you can trust the person youll be opening up to. i would start by simply asking if they treat people with narcissistic personality disorder. some therapists may simply not have the expertise to offer such treatment, while others may actively refuse to do so, but either way, you want that yes/no answer. if they do treat pwNPD, you can continue to ask questions about their goals in treating pwNPD, the processes they use, their success rates with these patients.
i would be cautious in asking any questions that might even POSSIBLY come off as accusatory. directly asking a therapists opinions on narcissistic abuse may result in them slotting you into the "victim complex" role, or them feeling like theyre being put on the defense, even if they dont hold those beliefs. even those who dont see us fully as villains can still see us poorly. try to ask questions that are more common to what anyone would ask while researching a therapist, and take note of anything that seems off, or of if they seem particularly safe and affirming.
also!! please consider your insurance, if you have it! all my recent doctors have been referrals from other doctors, but in the past ive had to go on the site for my insurance and find a list of doctors who would take it. alternatively, you could ask upfront if they take your insurance.
beyond all this, i dont think theres any other advice i can give you. so ill give the floor to anyone who might have anything else to add, any resources, articles, websites, therapists, advice, words of encouragement, polite corrections to anything i might have gotten wrong.
if you read this far, thank you for your time, and thank you for trusting me to offer my help. i hope i could steer you in the right direction, because the sea is fucking rough out there. whether its NPD or something else youre struggling with, im happy to help you out, even if it takes me some time to reply. and once more for good measure: i wish you the best of luck, dignity, and care.
#asks#advice#teefiesworld#also ill put this in the tags since the post is mainly addressing diagnosis and research#but like. id kind of had NPD on the back of my mind for A While before actually researching it#like ''hmmm maybe i should look into that. nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh''#''why do i struggle so much to consider others? why do i detach so easily? why do i obsess over praise? oh well nbd lol''#and i didnt give it much thought bc i didnt present very grandiosely#until eventually it gnawed at my brain enough that i researched vulnerable narcissism and had an entire breakdown of my self perception#over the course of. idk however long it took me to come to terms with my narcissism#its so funny bc i think people see treating NPD as involving a decrease in grandiosity#but for me i had to learn to INCREASE my grandiosity bc i was suppressing it so hard it was detrimental to me#all about striking that balance#not to say ive like. cured myself or whatever. but im absolutely way healthier than i used to be#bc i learned to identify those branches and roots and started adjusting my behavior#idk im ramblingggg but you asked about how i started seeking info and like#i dunno it was just kinda. i couldnt keep ignoring my symptoms and started with vulnerable narcissism and the DSM-5 and on from there iirc#btw imagine im telling you all this in like the corner of a cafe over some hot drinks n pastries or what have you. my digital treat to u
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Something you posted a while back has really stayed with me and i cant stop thinking about it. Its the idea that most people have this idea that Paul can't say no? Like i don't believe it but in the case the small chance that he did say 'no i don't like you like that' to John in India so many people have this idea that he's totally in the wrong for that? that he had to say yes and its so strange to me? and its actually so upsetting tbh and that's me not me being a no.1 Paul fan that twink deserves death more often than not or to be put in his place even now as an old bingo granny, id take the thickener out of his soup if i could but i really think it relates back to a lot of the feminisation/misogynistic attention he gets. Especially that one quote by certified Beatles writer that describes HDYS as something a scorned lover would write to show he would never be rejected again and its like ??? Paul is allowed to say no? hes very much allowed to not want a relationship? he's allowed to reject it and again its a roundabout way of misogyny with the idea when a woman rejects someone oh she'll be sorry because he'll spend the rest of his time saying mean things about her to everyone who will listen, and just how much she's in the wrong for not wanting/liking them like that, how she is such a bad person because she made him sink that low and do something he later 'regrets'. It's just really strange and sad to me cause again i don't think thats what happened but it the reaction that John was allowed to scream and be angry about it, he was allowed to write piece after piece especially 71 John he was allowed to be angry (and he was yeah) but Paul is never really allowed that same treatment? and even now he gets the treatment of ex-wife who really broke his now dead husbands heart and has to spend the rest of his life 'fixing' that. You can even see it a bit with the way they talk about George and Pauls relationship too the way they use constant femanising language in a derogatory way (bossy, irrational, controlling) to show just how much Paul isn't allowed to be angry and upset the same way they are he has to deal with it
i mean i don't think there was any rejection in india to speak of so this is purely hypothetical nonsense to me anyway, but yeah, i do think it's a silly way to look at it.
i think there's an argument to made like: john and paul's relationship had this weird romantic element to it already, and paul saying no is him kind of leading john on but refusing to ackowledge the truth of what they are - which would be frustrating from john's pov, i get that. the thing about that is that it's not something anyone on tumblr.com/dashboard actually knows for a fact, it's just emotional conjecture a bunch of people decided to project on. which is why the whole paul rejection theory irritates me so much. like yeah! he actually can say no, if that is what he felt! he's not required to be in love with john just because we all want him to be! (not to mention, that if there was a situation where he did reject john, i do not think that's the kind of thing he'd do lightly and without guilt, regardless of any added guilt john would make him feel by being mad about it). it's just a very unkind and reductive way to look at the very real love that DID exist between them, romantic or not. they cared about each other so much. it would be a cruel way for john to treat paul, and it's a cruel way to read into paul's treatment of john.
and i think the other side of it is that a lot of paul's sense of anger and his own feelings of rejection during that whole mess gets overshadowed in the john/paul/yoko triangle. paul was quieter about his anger because john already chose to be with yoko and he didn't feel he had a right to fight that. and the fandom cannot talk about it because half the time it's tied up in the very real mysogyny yoko faced as the face of The Thing That Broke Up The Beatles (even if she isn't), so paul's anger just kind of goes unacknowledged here in relation to john's.
#asks#i kinda disagree with you in that i think paul WAS allowed to be angry but he simply chose not to be (publicly)#but the media loves a catfight. if paul wanted to bitch about john i'm sure there would be plenty of coverage to spur him on.#but i agree that people here talk about it in weird ways#fortunately none of this is real because rejection in india didn't even happen :)
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HI HELLO, I FELT BAD CONTINUING THE CONVO IN THE POST BUT OOOOOHHOO YOU ARE NOT THE ONLY ONE FEELING UNWELL ABOUT TSUNA HOPE. I AM INSANE ABOUT HIM.
FIRST OF ALL, I checked the link you sent and oh my god SAME "The Truth Revealed" is an INSANE CHAPTER TO ME. Tbh Future arc is one of my favorite arcs in KHR all together. I don't think I ever recovered from Tsuna waking up in a fucking coffin. Like I think that irreversibly altered my brain chemistry I havent been the same. My brains been spinning since i saw that. To find out that TYL Tsuna planned it in the Truth Revealed??? Like WHO is TYL TSUNA. WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM. Like you pointed out that Lal yelled out at Tsuna wasnt like that, but to find out he was?? oh my GOD. Like it makes me wonder how much stress TYL Tsuna was under or how he came to the point that he felt like this was the only solution they could pull off. I think there's an addition that Irie did say that Byakuran would've found a way to bring the younger gang to the future anyway must have absolutely added to TYL Tsuna's stress and desire to get his younger self ready before Byakuran decided it was time before he was. Like I need to know IS HE HAPPY LIKE YOU SAID. I HOPE THIS MAN FINDS PEACE GOD KNOWS HE DESERVES IT. This is more of a headcanon than any solidified proof, just a GUT feeling. But I have to feel as if TYL Tsuna's actions being so... like that had to do with TYL Reborn's death. We know that they're close and Rainbow arc shows us that Tsuna would lift the entire world on his back if it saved Reborn. I can't help but theorize the mental state TYL Tsuna was in, after losing Reborn. Seeing how..hotheaded Tsuna can get about Reborn in Rainbow Arc and how he willingly goes to the Inheritance Ceremony for Yamamoto.. I can see him conjuring a plan like this to fuck the shit out of Byakuran post Reborn death, or even just for the possibility of getting Reborn back. But this is just a headcanon again. Either way?? Im FOAMING at the mouth with you.
As for the rest of our discussion, first of all I lost my shit when you sent the manga panel of Reborn looking shocked but holy shit i didnt connect those dots that Reborn was ?? shocked?? that Tsuna was going along with it. And that its coming from a place of anger and vengeance from Tsuna, which isn't usual for him but fuck they attacked his family. As you mentioned, they crossed that firm line drawn in the sand and Tsuna was going for their throat this time bc how dare they? When, in Tsuna's eyes, Yamamoto was done NOTHING wrong to his attacker. As for Tsuna becoming Vongola Decimo and how he would've been shackled, this is actually something we discussed in our server as well. The conclusion I ended up coming with is that in the end it didn't matter to Tsuna. He was seeing red. He was furious. He was willing to sacrifice everything, even his own freedom from the Mafia to avenge Yamamoto. It's either that he was so blinded by rage that he didn't consider the consequences of his actions, or even worse he was willing to take up the mantle of Vongola Decimo if it meant catching the person who did this to Yamamoto. For Yamamoto's sake, he would be Vongola Decimo. AND THAT IDEA??? OOOHHHH. UGHHHH. THERES SO MUCH TO TSUNAS CHARACTER AND IT DRIVES ME MAD BC HE SEEMS SO SIMPLE AT FIRST LOOK. AND IM??? IM AAAAH YKNOW??
[follow up to this post]
the future arc isn't personally my favorite, but i totally get the people for whom it is. the writing for it is really solid and really steps up from what we had so far, and i DO love so much that first part of the arc up to the end of the merone base raid.
you know, at times like this i wish i'd remember what my reaction was to it the first time i read it too, but my memory is shit lol. but i don't need to to agree it was so iconic and insane of amano to make tsuna appear in the future in a coffin. like not only it's the first thing we learn about the future, but also the first thing we learn about his future. that ten years later he's dead. absolute fucking power move from amano, like hello??
but also, while we're on the subject... this literally just came to me so idk if i'm going to be articulate about this lol, but i think there's something to be said about how the first thing we learn about tyl tsuna is that he's dead. and then he stays dead throughout the arc, mentioned and talked about, judged and defended, praised and blamed, but it all happens through other people. everything we learn about him, every choice (or lack thereof) and decision attributed to him, every glimpse into his personality and what kind of man he was, we learn all of it it through someone else's words. through someone else's eyes, and tho we're given no reason to doubt they're saying the truth, they can only be biased as they say it. like, amano could have made him appear through flashbacks, but she didn't. she gave him no physical appearance, no face, no voice. and then when she does do that (tho even then she still gives him no face), he only talks about his present self. has only words for him. and idk what is there to say about all that, but i know it's relevant to the themes of the future arc.
I think there's an addition that Irie did say that Byakuran would've found a way to bring the younger gang to the future anyway must have absolutely added to TYL Tsuna's stress and desire to get his younger self ready before Byakuran decided it was time before he was.
you're right! i tend to overlook that bit of information, but it is canon that either way, the present 10th gen would have found themselves in the future. so for tsuna to decide he'll be the one to make it happen and have control over it instead of byakuran, was of course the right choice to make. the safest one, both for them and their present selves. as well as the kindest one, because of course, tsuna didn't just bring them to the future to leave them to die in it, the way byakuran would have done. he came up with a plan to make sure they were ready to face the future like you said, and would be strong enough to see it through. and the plan was still harsh and painful and arguably cruel on them, but it still was kindness from tsuna at the same time. consideration for the situation he had no choice but to get them involved in. it was him taking responsibility for it and sparing them the worse of it as much as he could and as much as realistically possible. and maybe it made little difference, but it's still more than byakuran would have allowed them for sure, and it did play a non-negligible part in them not only surviving the future, but coming out on top of it.
you know... for some reason i've always thought tsuna was level-headed when he agreed to go along with the plan. like of course his hands were being forced as he was backed against a corner, facing a hopeless and desperate situation, but in my head he still had himself together somehow. sat and considered the pros and cons of the plan with a cool head, before deciding it was worth the gamble.
but like. knowing tsuna, it's much more likely he hadn't, you're right. that he was standing on the brink, and maybe had already fallen from it. i mean, yamamoto's dad got killed, his parents were unaccounted for, vongola's hq fell and vongola was hunted, namimori was invaded and every people there connected to him hunted too, forcing kyoko and haru to be on the run, with lambo and i-pin after them to keep them safe when they were just fifteen but still forced to take part in a literal war. tsuna had already lost so much by that point, while still being at risk of losing much more. and at the same time, he had already lost the worst thing he could lose, because of course, there's also reborn. reborn who also died, who also got killed when he's the one person who's always been by his side, who's always been his rock and anchor, who's always known how to give him strength again when his own failed him. and MY gut feeling headcanon is that reborn died not too long before tsuna put the plan in motion. maybe even died only just a couple of days before that, and that was the last straw, the deciding factor that made tsuna go along with the plan.
so like. maybe tsuna was heartbroken and crestfallen when he made that decision. maybe it was an entirely emotional one, one he made out of spite and vindictive feelings for byakuran like you said. out of fear he'll end up with nothing more left to lose, and out of his guilt for letting things come to that point and not being in a position--not having the power to make things right again. a decision he made out of his grief and the desperate hope he could get back everything he lost. the hope he could get reborn back. and okay, consider this, but independently of whether it was the right thing to do or of the chances of the plan to be successful, maybe he simply agreed to it too out of the certainty it's what present tsuna would have done too. that it's what he'd have wanted too, that he would have taken any chance that might bring reborn back to him. because it's reborn. oh i'm soo normal about this and their bond.
For Yamamoto's sake, he would be Vongola Decimo.
YOU CANT JUST SAY THAT TO ME LIKE I HAVENT THE SOFTEST SPOT FOR YAMS AND TSUNA. oh my god. oh my god??? for yamamoto's sake... for yamamoto. and i mean, i know tsuna would have done the exact same thing for any of his other guardians, but that amano chose to go along with yams instead of any other guardian... like again, i do very much believe tsuna would have reacted the same way were it anyone else, but at the same time i really do very much believe the fact it was yamamoto played a part in his anger and resolve to avenge him. i really can't explain it, but like. it's yamamoto, you know?
NO I KNOW!!!! tsuna is... he's so easy to overlook and deem unworthy of a second glance, but if you DO look back at him, and then really look at him, you can't stop and can't look away. and the longer you look, the more there is to look at. which is even more insane because at his core tsuna still is truly, really just some guy. he's just a complex character in very simple ways i guess??
anyway yeah, i need to LIE DOWN now, thanks.
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for the bingo- how about garmadon and/or misako? as an observer their whole thing is kinda interesting
OH I'LL DO BOTH ALRIGHT
i am so insane about garmadon. haha insanely NORMAL!!! not really. i think about him all the time. his father gave him a name that literally means armageddon. he was bitten by a snake and cursed to become evil because of its venom when he was a small child. YET HE'S THOUSANDS OF YEARS OLD. he held out for THOUSANDS OF YEARS until the venom fully took him, which couldn't have been over ten years before the main series started. in the spinjitzu brother books he's constantly telling wu that he's fine and doesn't need fixing, but secretly doubts himself and worries about what he could become. AND THEN HE SAW HIS FUTURE REFLECTION OUGHDHSHFDS. then there's sensei g and then he dies and then he gets resurrected but lacks memories and compassion and has to go on a journey of gaining those feelings back. NSAJFN SO SO NORMAL ABOUT GARMADON. this could've been it's own post tbh but oh well onto misako!!!
misako is so good in my head but she could be great if the WRITERS ACTUALLY CARED ABOUT HER RAHHHHH. i will admit when i started coming back to the fandom i was in this annoying phase that was like "oh misako's the WORST MOTHER EVER i HATE her so much blah blah blah" because i saw similar takes and then i found this animatic and i was like "oh. oh i get it now"
i want to know more about her so bad. i want to know about her family (like her parents and stuff. wtf happened to them), how she met wu and garmadon, a whole in depth look into her character and how she feels about everything that's happened. imagine meeting a man who's going to turn evil but you fall in love with him anyways. you get married. you have a child. but the minute you look down at him, you know he's going to have to grow up and face his father. you lose your husband. you force yourself to leave your son. you put him in a boarding school for bad boys with the slim hope that it can somehow sway the odds. then you dedicate years of your life to try and find another way. imagine how all that felt for her. imagine her low points with all that. ninjago writers you fumbled the bag SO BADLY WITH MISAKO. i guess i'll have to take matters into my own hands. it's okay misako, the writers and a good chunk of the fandom may hate you but i'm kissing you on the forehead and tucking you into bed at night for a good rest because you deserve it. smooch
#both these things could've been their own posts but i have to fulfill the ask#also i love garmasako. once again the writers will ignore it so i'll have to make up my own stuff#picking apart that relationship and studying them under a microscope#misako montgomery garmadon#misako#ninjago misako#garmadon#lord garmadon#emperor garmadon#sensei garmadon#ninjago garmadon#ninjago#lego ninjago#blorbo bingo#8-void#ask game
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