#i love when things conflict without cancelling each other out

[crumbleclub]

Conflicting dynamics between Michael and his siblings are so intriguing. I feel like a lot of people slant strongly one way or the other– he's either protrayed as a good brother who's been thrust into a parental role and does everything for his siblings, or as a complete monster of a kid who spends all of his spare time tormenting his little brother– but it's more interesting to me when it's both.

The Michael who cruelly locks his brother in a room surrounded by the things he fears most and the Michael who tries to redirect his father's abuse away from Evan and towards himself are the same person.

The Michael who did his sister's hair every morning is the same Michael who tore apart her toys when he was angry with her, and both parts of him were there when he found himself crying in her room at the realization she was never coming home.

On top of that, they probably had a lot of very normal moments, too. They played outside together in the summer and tried to pawn their chores off on each other. There was one song they all liked when it came on the radio, and they made fun of the adults they knew when nobody else was around. None of them knew how to talk about their feelings, but, when one of them had been having a really rough time, they'd find that the breakfast Mikey made the next morning was their favorite, or Evan's favorite show had been put on even when Elizabeth had the remote, or an anonymous party had left a really cool rock on Michael's bedside table.

It must have been strange from the younger kids' perspectives, especially Evan's. Your brother keeps making you cry on purpose, and he's so, so mean, for no reason at all, but you know the bruise under his eye had been meant for you.

#i love when things conflict without cancelling each other out #the rights don't undo the wrongs but the wrongs don't mean that the kindness meant nothing either #and as much as it would hurt mike to realize there's a lot of parallels between him and william here #mike hurts his siblings on purpose but lets himself get hurt for their sake because he loves them #where william hurts his kids without giving it much thought at all #but he still wants to love them. he's pretty sure that he doesn't but he still wishes that he did #shakes the concept by the shoulders. i love when everything is true at once #fnaf #michael afton #cc afton #evan afton #elizabeth afton #mike's actual writing #cw neglect #cw abuse #afton siblings

[sambhavami]

So, I'm going to rant a bit about Krishna and Arjun now.

**Just a note: this is based on my personal interpretations of MB/SB/HV, none of which I have access to right now, so I might misremember some facts. Thank you!

So, in my understanding, Krishna and Arjun were both very lonely people. Both of them were stripped from their childhood homes and families, and forced to grow up amidst hostility and constant conflict, when they met after Draupadi's swayamvar, they instantly latch on to each other. I mean, yes, both Krishna and Arjun had brothers who went through the same kind of issues, but at some point, you encounter a boundary with your immediate family, such that you can't really tell them everything that you're feeling. A friend peering in from outside is a much 'safer' choice. I'd imagine it's roughly the same kind of thought process that makes people talk about their personal struggles anonymously on social media instead of with their families.

In this process, they both also become extremely possessive of each other. For Arjun, we see this when he sheds all his inhibitions at Kurukshetra not when he hears the Geeta, but rather when Krishna gets wounded the first time. That's when the Kaurava side finds out exactly how dangerous Arjuna can be. And that's when Krishna is barely scratched by an arrow, and thankfully we never find out what Arjun would have done if Krishna actually got hurt. Arjun was fighting only half-heartedly in the beginning, but once Krishna is targeted he becomes fiercer, now actually concentrating on the battle, and then finally when Krishna almost murders Bheeshma, that's when Arjun becomes fully activated, so to speak. Also, he would've totally murdered Shishupal during the rajasuya (to hell with the 100 offences), if not for Krishna stopping him...this is a rare kind of aggression for Arjun which he doesn't show even in the dice hall!

Krishna, on the other hand, shows his devotion in a slightly different way. So, for most of MB we see that he is partial to Arjuna, and he never really hides it. He gets Subhadra married to Arjuna, takes him on picnics on Kailash and shows him Vaikuntha just for fun. Moreover, he technically didn't need to participate in Kurukshetra. With Subhadra married to Arjun and Lakshamana married to Shamba, he could've easily cited an algebraic cancellation and got out of the whole mess like most of the other Yadavas. But he chooses to go to Matsya, and moreover offers to part himself from his beloved, personally trained army! I mean it was kind of genius to bait Duryodhan into thinking he won that bargain (if Shakuni mama was there, he would've definitely chosen Krishna, and immediately have him thrown in a dungeon and use him as a hostage to force the Pandavas into surrendering)!

Krishna is not just partial to Arjuna, but he is downright desperate to protect him from anything and everything. From personally waiting on Arjuna in Dwarka during happier times, to breaking every moral code he's ever stood for during the war, Krishna's love for Arjuna outshines every other horrible thing that happens. 

Krishna is quite open about his decision to get Arjuna out of the dharma-yudhha mess alive. In fact, he makes it clear to Draupadi herself that if it came down to choosing between Draupadi and Arjun, Krishna would choose Arjun always, without a second thought. We see this in action when he offers to have Draupadi marry Karna in exchange for his support to Pandavas, thereby averting the whole war. We see how Krishna doesn't care how many people he has to sacrifice (Abhimanyu, Ghatotkach, upa-Pandavas, his Narayani sena, Parikshit, and borderline forcing Shikhandi to detransition, although the source/validity of this I can't quite remember right now), how many times he has to endure the Vaishnavastra, how many times he has to make Yudhishthir lie, how many times he has to forget his vows, how many times he has to make literal celestial bodies bow to his will, all of it is taken in stride just so Arjun lives to see another sunrise. At one point, I do feel he stops caring about preserving Arjun's feelings through this (point: sacrificing his kids) and just making sure he's alive, no matter how broken or hopeless. It's almost as if Krishna's just on auto-pilot the whole time.

His whole life, Krishna asks Arjun for just one thing, which is to get the citizens of Dwarka out of the island/coastline alive before the tsunami hits. Even that, Arjuna is informed of only after Krishna is no longer on the earth. And Arjuna also is ironically one of the only people (except maybe Nand-Yashoda, Radha and gopas/gopis) to never ask Krishna for a favour! No matter how tough their life got, Arjun never asked Krishna for anything for himself. I can imagine how Krishna, the human god, would constantly be bombarded with prayers and requests literally wherever he went, so I can see why people like Arjuna would be somewhat of a relief. Even during Geeta, Arjun is like, "I can't do this!" and not "You can't make me do this!" And Krishna likewise is not like, "You have to do this!" He's just like, "You can do this, but only if you believe you can!" Krishna basically goes over all the pros and cons of the available choices but ultimately leaves the final decision to Arjun.

#krishna #arjuna #hindu mythology #mahabharat #krishnablr #krishna and arjun #ramblings

[doctornolonger]

People are sometimes surprised when I mention that the unproduced story I regret the most isn't any of the many cancelled FP projects but Steven Hall's Fifty-Fifty, which would have wrapped up some of Big Finish's best character arcs with a conflict between the Seventh and Eighth Doctors at "the moment where 7 went bad".

It would have been the retroactive pinnacle of Wilderness Years, taking its two Doctors with such different characterizations and pitting them against each other. It also … doesn't make a ton of sense. Even taking into account the timey-wimey memory effects of a multi-Doctor event, how could such a dramatic character arc for the Seventh Doctor possibly come and go without the Eighth Doctor – his future self – having any idea?

This question keeps coming up in Doctor Who, and every time the answer feels contrived. Steven Hall would have solved it for Fifty-Fifty by introducing a "Temporal Wish" that allows parts of history to be rewritten without timeline damage. Elsewhere, Big Finish has resorted to hand-waving: every story where characters meet out-of-order has to involve an ad hoc disguise, a memory wipe, or a promise from one of the characters that next time they'll pretend not to have met (🥴). And don't even get me started on "season 6b"!

In what Ingiga cleverly calls Doctor Who: The Return, RTD faced the same question. What if we had more Tenth Doctor stories, not squeezed into any of the well-trodden gaps in his timeline but set after The End of Time – genuinely new stories, taking the character places that it never would've made sense for him to go (such as therapy)?

RTD answered this question twice. Once the regular way, the ad hoc way: David Tennant's contrived return at the end of The Power of the Doctor. And then, emboldened by the Power of the Showrunner, he solved it again – and he solved it for every story, now and forever.

I think down the timeline, they all separated. They all went like that. All the Doctors came back to life with their individual TARDISes. The gift of the Toymaker. And they're all out there traveling around in what I'm calling the Doctorverse. It's the Doctorverse. And I want to create a future in which Sylvester McCoy, he can survive and have an adventure. Because one of the things about The Star Beast is, to get you back and Catherine, we had to jump through so many hoops. Which is great story, but it's like, why can't you just arrive and step out the TARDIS? […] Because this is exactly what Big Finish does. It's exactly what everyone does in their imagination. […] It's time to just kind of open it up and say, they're all out there now.

Or as he put it a different time,

Doctors galore, with infinite possibilities. All Doctors exist. All stories are true.

Gig's latest piece rightly dismisses the "Flowchart" theory of bigeneration, but frankly, I think the fiddly stuff about "fix" vs "fixed" etc. is a red herring. The simple fact is that if Fourteen's post-Giggle memories flow backwards into Fifteen – if Seven's post-TV Movie memories flow backwards into Eight – bigeneration wouldn't solve the Fifty-Fifty problem.

Yes, RTD tries to have his cake and eat it too. In the dream logic of The Giggle, "emotional healing" is a mysterious essence that can be transferred through time independently of memories, just as incinerated roads can magically heal themselves in The Star Beast. But in terms of what RTD's trying to accomplish, in terms of what bigeneration is, I think it's okay to take him at his word.

Speaking of words, the leak called it "bi-regeneration", and even after the episode aired, much of the internet followed suit. But that's not what it's called. It's just bigeneration: not a type of regeneration, an alternative. And indeed, now we have this option – now we have Fourteen, not just Ten – why would we ever go back to playing the timeline-squeezing game? If Big Finish officially untethered itself from the past Doctors' timelines and, say, freed Eight from his interminable death march – would anyone miss it?

Lawrence Miles certainly didn't think so when he advocated a similar untethering 24 years ago.

When you watched Doctor Who as a kid, it kind of lost some of its edge from the start, because you knew for a fact how things were going to turn out. […] I've always felt that the Missing Adventures… or PDAs, or whatever you want to call them… have got a similar problem. The Doctor can't die [or go to therapy – n8.] We know the future, it's not even an issue. That was why I did what I did in Interference. Even if they don't like it, I hope people realize there's a purpose behind it all. It's suppose to justify the existence of the PDAs. From that point on, you can never be sure what the outcome's going to be.

Nobody picked up his suggestion back then, but then again, Miles lacked the Power of the Showrunner. If Tales of the TARDIS' therapeutic dreamscapes are any indication, it won't be long before other writers adopt RTD's in-vision musings as gospel.

So what will happen when Fourteen dies? Will he regenerate? Will he dissolve into sparkles, his ✨emotional healing✨ shooting back in time to become Fifteen? Or like the prior iteration of the "Tenth Doctor happy ending offshoot" idea, is he simply mortal now? The frank answer is that we'll probably never find out: that's simply not the kind of story that bigeneration is meant to tell.

Or maybe RTD's already told us. The quote earlier about "Doctors galore" came from the note accompanying his "Doctor Who and the Time War". That story shows us an Eighth Doctor who survived to the very last days of the Time War, with no War Doctor to be found; it's easy to imagine a bigeneration on Karn not unlike RTD's speculation that "Peter Davison once was left behind on the surface of Androzani and woke up and there was a TARDIS and he carried on having those adventures."

And in the story – released almost seven years after The Night of the Doctor showed us the birth of the War Doctor – Eight struggles, and he succumbs, and he regenerates … into Christopher Eccleston's Nine. Now there's a flowchart that I could get behind.

#bigeneration #the giggle #fourteenth doctor #fifteenth doctor #ingiga #gigawho #rtd 2.0 #doctor who the return #effortpost #doctor who and the time war #interference #fifty-fifty #50/50 #steven hall #seventh doctor #tales of the tardis

[formulaes5]

let me go (let me go down)

"I could totally suck you off right now," Seb slurs through the cotton wool in his mouth, grinning and dribbling blood from the corner of his mouth and down his chin, "I'm like a machine, Mark." “Oookay Sebster, let's get you tucked back into bed huh?” Or, Seb gets his wisdom teeth out and wakes up high off his ass on anaesthetic, absolutely determined to make it Mark's problem.

☆ 2k, T, ao3 ☆

Mark sat awkwardly next to the bed in a private hospital room, perched on the edge of a frightfully uncomfortable chair with a book balanced precariously on his knee, stuck into the important task of trying to work out what the hell to do with his legs. If he stretched them out he ran out of space, and if he crossed them over each other for too long it was uncomfortable and he would just have to switch anyway.

Seb’s mother had been meant to fly in from Germany to stay at Seb’s house in Switzerland with him for a few days while he recovered from having his wisdom teeth removed after months of “meaning to get around to it”, finally being convinced (read: forced) by the terrifying combined force of his mother and Mark to get it done in the winter break when he would have time to recover without interruption. Fortunately for Mark, she had cancelled her trip at the last moment due to unavoidable scheduling conflicts, leaving the sole responsibility of making sure Seb didn’t do anything too stupid or strenuous on Mark. For a variety of reasons, Mark was quite happy with this sudden change of plans; first and foremost being that he genuinely enjoyed looking after Seb. He enjoyed making Seb breakfast and washing his hair in the shower and waving farewell to hoodies that Seb had decided looked better on his side of the wardrobe, as well as all the other shit that was generally considered to be lame and soppy that Mark secretly loved with a passion. Sue him, he was still going to pull Seb’s chair out for him and tell him he looked beautiful. The second reason was that he rightfully found Sebastian’s mother to be slightly terrifying in the way that only the mother of your much younger boyfriend could be, and having her hovering over his shoulder watching him like a hawk would have inevitably come with the potential of making things incredibly stilted and awkward.

He looked over at the occupant of the only bed in the room. Seb was completely dead to the world, his blond hair laid out in a halo around his head on the pillow. Reaching out to gently stroke a lock of soft blond hair off Seb’s forehead, he smiled as Seb reacted subconsciously to the touch with a little snuffle. At the risk of sounding like a creep, Mark had always thought that Seb looked gorgeous in his sleep, one round cheek often squished into Mark’s chest and his lovely pink lips slightly parted. Due to his natural tendency to wake earlier than Seb – who had never woken up on time for anything in his life – he often got a front row seat to his adorable little snuffles and nonsensical mumbling, finding them to be rather unreasonably charming. 

Mark was probably going soft, he thought to himself as he watched his boyfriend sleep, but ultimately he couldn’t really bring himself to care. Not when he got to have Seb in exchange. Seb who was constantly burrowing his head into Mark’s chest in his sleep, Seb who was funny and sweet and caring, and only occasionally insane. Seb who was slowly opening his eyes, groaning as he came to.

“Hey there sweetheart, back with us?”

“Hwuaah??” Seb groaned eloquently, reaching up to rub blearily at his eyes, taking stock of the situation as his vision swam into clarity. He was in a hospital bed and his jaw hurt like a motherfucker. He felt dazed and confused and like his head was full of bees. He liked bees. “Did they take my teeth?” he asked worriedly. He was sure this was something to do with his teeth.

Mark huffed a laugh, “Yep, all gone now.” he replied, watching as Seb scrunched his face up adorably.

Seb looked up in confusion; Mark was here! Hang on… Why was Mark here? What possible reason could his Red Bull Racing teammate have to be in his hospital room waiting for him to wake up? Was Christian here too? Maybe Rocky or Britta? He had no fucking clue why they would be here, but surely if Mark was here then there was an increased likelihood of the others being here as well. He looked around the room for whoever Mark was calling sweetheart, only to come face to face with exactly nobody. They were the only people in the room, unless everybody was crowded behind the door off to the side that he was assuming was a bathroom. He eyed the door suspiciously, mentally picturing a gaggle of Red Bull employees piled into the bathroom in standard clown car fashion. He hoped Doctor Marko wasn’t there.

“Wer ist… Sweetheart?” he mumbled, not entirely sure what was going on but quite liking the idea that maybe it was him that Mark was calling sweetheart. A nice pipe dream if nothing else.

“That’d be you, mate.”

What? He was sweetheart? Were they together? Maybe he had forgotten something? He should probably check.

English, Seb thought to himself determinedly, “Whoah… are- are you… are we dating?”

“Yup,” replied mark, popping the P happily and wondering exactly how stupid the dental anaesthetic had made his boyfriend. 

Seb looks absolutely shocked, blue eyes opened wide, “Have… have we,” he trails off, blushing hard, “have we kissed?” 

“Yeah mate, once or twice” Mark laughs, really struggling to hold it together at this point. 

Seb is stunned. Speechless. He feels like he just won the fucking lottery. He also feels tired and disoriented and his jaw is aching something awful, but Mark Fucking Webber is sitting next to his hospital bed telling him that they’re dating. Seb is Elated. Somehow he had managed to bag Mark Webber. He had bagged Notorious Cheekbones and Jawline Guy, Mark Webber. He did that. Holy shit. 

“So I can just kiss you? Like in real life?” Seb is flabbergasted. “Oh mein gott…”

Mark sets his book aside and gets up from his awful chair bemusedly. If he’s totally honest, this is the funniest thing Seb has ever done and he’s loving every minute of it. He sits down on the bed, deciding to tactfully ignore the way Seb goes very quiet and attempts to check his breath by exhaling heavily into his hand, slightly impeded by the amount of blood soaked cotton wool shoved into his mouth. He leans over and places a gentle kiss high up on Seb’s bright red cheek, mindful of Seb’s very recent surgery and trying to avoid hurting him by accident.

Seb melts. 

After he recovers from the life changing occasion of getting a kiss from his boyfriend, he moves to sit up, trying to get a better view of Mark, more specifically to watch the muscles of his neck and the line of his jaw as he tilts his head back to take a drink of water. The way his adam’s apple bobs in his throat should probably be illegal, because in combination with his stubble, vaguely rumpled hair, and soft blue t-shirt, Seb is feeling things. 

“Wait…” All of a sudden he has an absolutely burning question to ask, and if it doesn’t get answered now, Seb doesn’t think that he should be liable for anything that happens as a result of his unsated curiosity.

Mark is already mentally preparing himself for something endearingly ridiculous or just downright stupid to come pouring out of Sebastian’s mouth. Whatever it is he’s sure it will be interesting at least. He decides to risk a reply. “Yeah?”

This should be good. He would totally be telling Jenson all about this.

Seb leans in closer, blushing beet red before managing to rush out, “do we… dowehavesex?” in a hissed whisper behind his hand, which was entirely unnecessary in a room with only two people in it, but Seb clearly wasn’t at a point of recovery where his critical thinking skills had kicked back in yet.

Mark is blushing now too as he responds in the affirmative, deciding maybe this particular aspect of the conversation could conveniently not make its way to Jenson, actually. This is one of the most ridiculous situations Mark has been in lately – perhaps even ever – but it’s nonetheless a great ego boost to have Seb loose lipped and blushing about their relationship. He’s always been confident that Seb found him attractive, but the way that he’s staring at him with barely concealed elation and wonder is a nice confirmation.

The positive response has kicked Sebastian’s flailing brain into overdrive, he’s actually dating his teammate, Mark Webber. Mark Webber who he had always had a big embarrassing crush on, and apparently they have sex, which is normal for a couple. Obviously. Of course they have sex. Is it good sex? Should he ask? No – obviously it’s good sex; Seb doesn’t have bad sex, he wouldn’t put up with anything less. He should do something cool, maybe say something, he thinks offhandedly. He should say something smooth to really make Mark like him, though surely Mark liked him if he was dating him. Seb thought he was pretty likeable, not to mention pretty cute. He decided that he was going to say something really smooth, just in case Mark needed some gentle encouragement. Just say something cool. Easy.

"I could totally suck you off right now," Seb slurred through the cotton wool in his mouth, grinning and dribbling blood from the corner of his mouth and down his chin, "I'm like a machine, Mark."

Mark has never had to fight so hard not to laugh in his entire fucking life. He’s definitely just snorted some water out of his nose in reaction to that awfully timed yet incredibly confident statement. Trust Seb to come out of wisdom teeth removal surgery and immediately start talking about sucking dick. He’s insatiable, the little monster. But he’s Mark’s little monster, so he should probably nip this one in the bud before it gets out of hand.

“Oookay Sebster, let's get you tucked back into bed huh?”

“No, I could!” Seb protests. 

Mark loses the battle with his own amusement and bursts out laughing. This was absolutely priceless. Seb, from where he’s sat in bed high on residual anaesthetic, doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.

“Why are you laughing at me Mark? I could totally suck your dick right now!” Seb boasts. He doesn’t understand why Mark is laughing, he was cool with that, right?

“Look Seb, as fetching as you look in your backless hospital gown right now, that is the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and you’ve had some fucking shockers.”

“Oh bitte Mark,” Seb whines, turning the full force of his big blue eyes onto Mark, “please?”

This was fucking hilarious, thought Mark as he gently pressed at Seb’s chest, trying to encourage him to lie back down. He had gone into this knowing that anaesthetic could sometimes make people say things they normally wouldn’t. He could certainly attest to having been a bit strange when he got his out, but that had manifested as him repeatedly telling his older sister that he loved her as she helped him into the backseat of the car, not professing his dick sucking skills for the world to hear, thank God for small mercies.

“C’mon Seb, lie back down,” Mark encouraged, really hoping that the nurse wouldn’t choose this moment to come bustling into the room to check on her patient. “Attaboy.”

“Spoilsport,” Seb huffed from the bed, having lost his battle with gravity and Mark, as well as the separate, but equally important battle he had been fighting with tiredness. He was determined to grumble about it nevertheless. He continued to make his displeasure known, insisting repeatedly “I’m not even tired, actually,” and “You’re no fun”. The message was only slightly undermined by the multiple yawns Seb was letting loose, as well as the soft smile on his face as he gazed up at Mark with wonder in his eyes.

Mark picked Seb’s hand up gently from on top of the hospital blanket, stroking his thumb across his knuckles a few times before moving his head downward to place a kiss on the back of it, Seb practically purring in response.

“I s’pose we can pencil it in for two weeks from now if you really insist on scheduling it though.”

“Shut up.”

“Love you too Sweetheart, sleep well now.”

#sebmark #martian #f1 rpf #ao3 #my fics #rpf #fic: let me go (let me go down)

[microwave-core]

The Leon Post

It’s my lesbianism and I get to pick the fictional man to obsess over

I don’t know where to start so I guess I’ll just throw whatever at the wall and see what sticks. Not that I don’t normally do that, but like, more than usual.

Simplest thing that comes to mind: Leon is tired. This man does his best to be a good influence, telling everyone to get a good eight hours of sleep each night. Meanwhile, he only gets about four or five hours on a good day. He’s busy so he goes to bed late, takes forever to actually fall asleep, and then wakes up early. He’s good at dealing with the lack of sleep, at least.

Or he usually is anyway. Every now and then, that sleep deficit catches up with him, leading to him conking out for about eighteen hours straight. The first time it happened, everyone was worried out of their minds because it was three in the afternoon and no one had heard anything from him. Eventually, they just had to send Raihan to his apartment to make sure he wasn’t dead or something.

Being bad at directions is a given, but my opinions on this are… conflicted. In general, he just has bad coordination (dyspraxic Leon is near and dear to my heart), so he does just get lost. That being said, I also think that Leon purposefully gets lost at times just to get a moment to himself. He doesn’t do it often, but sometimes he just needs a second to breathe.

Speaking of naturally getting lost, when that happens he kinda just wanders around until he sees someone he knows or, by sheer luck, ends up where he needs to be. If it takes too long for one of those two things to happen, he’ll resort to texting Raihan or Sonia, or anyone else that would be close by, really.

He loves his friends. He tells them that all the time. That’s it. That’s all I have to say about this. He would do literally anything to help those he cares about, and he goes out of his way to make sure they know that.

HOWEVER. Leon himself is absolutely terrible at reaching out for help. He’s supposed to be the best of the best, he’s not supposed to have problems or issues. So, he just bottles everything up, does his best to work things out by himself, and hopes that things don’t overflow at a bad time. Even when it’s obvious something is wrong, he will take forever to admit it. These things have to be pried out of him.

The whole Eternatus situation weighs heavy on him for several reasons, mainly because he wasn’t able to protect Hop and his friend, but also because it made a lot of people realize “oh, Leon has problems and really needs help” and he hates that. Again, he will deny needing help for as long as he can before caving. Deep down, he feels like asking for help makes him a burden on others, and no amount of reassurance will make him think otherwise.

Speaking on a lighter note, Hop. If there’s one thing I like more than Leon, it’s Leon and Hop. The Postwick bros are incredibly close, even if Leon can’t be physically around all that often. He calls home several times a week, talking to Hop and mum and his grandparents (and Purrloin), just checking in to make sure everything’s okay. He tries to visit whenever possible, but things get canceled often because his schedule suddenly fills up, and even when he makes it home he isn’t around for long.

But when he gets the time to actually stay for a day or two, without any league interruptions? He spends all day with his family. He plays around with Hop and Wooloo, and helps out with farm work, and helps his mum make dinner and deals with the dishes afterwards. He gives Purrloin plenty of scritches and tells all kinds of stories to his grandparents. He’ll even check in with Sonia and Magnolia if he gets the chance. It’s not much, but Leon takes what he can get. Also sends money home all the time.

And on the topic of family, Leon and Iris are cousins. I know that one screenshot of Masters where Iris says that they’re related is edited and not real, but they’re cousins. Canon is my bitch and it bends to my whims. And while we’re at it, he and Hop are descendants of Laventon. 

And because I’m already bending the canon because I said so, Leon and Sonia are still close friends. At least once a week, they get on a call for about 2-3 hours just to chat and catch up (and complain). Childhood friends from small towns are just built differently. I won’t dump all of my thoughts on this right now, but I will at least say that the two definitely grew up getting lost in the forest and hitting each other with sticks.

Let’s break more into the territory of friends/coworkers, gonna start quick firing some of these. He relates to Milo, country boy solidarity. Has high respect for Kabu and looked up to him during his gym challenge. Acts like an older brother to Bea and Allister. Get along fine with Opal, but neither of them can get a good read on the other. Also gets along fine with Gordie. Meloney reminds him of his mum. Oleana still kinda scares him. His feelings towards Rose are complicated.

Going in longer with some because I have more to say. Nessa is within his closer friend group, but she’s, like, a double friend of a friend. They’re both friends with Raihan and Sonia, so they end up hanging around each other pretty often as a result. She hates the cape.

Pretty good friends with Piers because big brother solidarity. They’re obviously pretty different people, but the kind of different that mesh well together. They organized a play-date for Hop and Marnie when they were much younger. Marnie bit Hop. Hop cried. Neither of them remember this. Leon also just likes his music.

Obviously, he’s close with Raihan because they’re rivals and all. They trash talk each other constantly, but there’s no hard feelings and it’s mostly just for show anyways. He tries more than anyone to break down Leon’s walls and help him with his issues, although the effort normally goes nowhere…

But Leon’s closest friend of all is, of course, Charizard. They’ve been together since the start, after all. Their dynamic is closer to that of brothers who annoy each other at times, unlike most of his other pokemon, where he’s more parental. Tends to drag Leon by his cape when he takes a wrong turn, and is also prone to begging for food. He always sleeps on the bed.

Okay, talking some more about his other pokemon. In general, he lets them roam around his apartment when at home. They’re well behaved for the most part. 

Dragapult likes to hide in the shadows and creep through walls, so it’s a good thing that Leon doesn’t get startled easily. Both Dreepy like to float around together and are usually tethered to Leon. Haxorus is a big ol’ baby who likes to be held, and she also likes to sleep on the bed. Aegislash likes to people watch and is also highly curious. 

Whichever starter ends up raising, he will baby, even when they’re fully evolved. He raises all his pokemon with tender love and care. But they won’t be his true baby, that’s Haxorus.

Leon loves his job, even if the constant excitement of battle and roaring crowds drain him, and he loves Wyndon dearly, but he can’t help but yearn for a simpler life, sometimes. He loves the charm of small, sleepy towns and the mundane, stability they bring. He just misses home.

SO, he planned on moving back to Postwick or even Wedgehurst if he were to ever lose  the champion title. Of course, that didn’t happen, because Rose did a little fuck up and turned himself into the police, so he was basically pushed into becoming the chairman in his place. It’s not what he planned, it wasn’t ideal, but he was happy for a change of pace, at least.

But I don’t think he would hold the chairman’s seat forever. I think he’d eventually step down, happy to let someone else take over in his stead and do Galar and her people good. And what do I think he’d do? Set up a bakery. That’s right, I just made you read everything before this just to read my Leon is a Baker Propaganda. 

Leon loves to bake. He didn’t pick up his mum’s cooking skills, but he’s got her baking skills on lock. Whenever he has an off day (or just can’t sleep at night), he’ll whip something up just for the hell of it. That being said, he doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, so he normally gives the baked goods to his family or friends. He has texted people at 3am asking if they wanted a loaf of pumpkin bread and refused to elaborate. 

Let me tell you, if you’ve never really made headcanons for characters before, sometimes you conjure one up that just, like, festers. It just keeps growing as you put more and more thought into it. That’s what baker Leon is to me, because now all I want is for him to step down as the chairman and open a quaint little baker in Wedgehurst, spending the rest of his days in peace.

It’s such a funny image, too. Imagine walking into a bakery in a small town and the owner was one of the strongest champions the world had ever seen, and he ends up being one of the sweetest people you’ve ever met. Then he sells you a loaf of bread, and it’s out of this world. Incredible. Anyways, sorry for cringe posting, let’s move on.

Leon doesn’t have too many hobbies because work and training takes up so much of his time, but he does spend a good deal of time working out. It’s good stress relief for him, an outlet to blow off some steam. It also gives his team a break, which they more than deserve. In general, he is pretty damn strong. He’s not on par with Milo or anything, but he can pretty easily move, like, furniture and whatnot. He can easily pick up all of his pokemon and cradle them like babies, no sweat. 

I like to think that Mustard’s Dojo doesn’t just teach pokemon battles, but also, like, regular fighting. I choose to believe that Leon’s been taught to throw a punch. Probably owns a punching bag and gets some pretty good use out of it.

He also likes to read. He has plenty of books at home in Postwick, and even more within his own apartment. When he has a slow day and his social battery is completely drained, He’ll curl up on the couch and read something. Fast reader, too, the kind that can get through a pretty thick book in a day if he finds it interesting enough. Fantasy is his favorite genre. He’s also smarter than people give him credit for.

Always wanted to play an instrument when he was younger, but didn’t have the time. He tries to pick the guitar up after becoming chairman, but it takes him a while to get the hang of it because he’s not the most dexterous. When he’s more skilled, he totally jams with Piers.

His apartment doesn’t have a ton of decoration. It’s not a male living space or anything, his mum raised him right, but it’s not super interesting. Except for the hats. My god, the hats. He has at least an entire wall covered in them, not counting the one’s stationed in Postwick, and he just keeps collecting. He also really likes collecting patches. 

Not very good at video games. Never has been, and probably never will be, but he does like playing them with other people. He’s naturally competitive, but he’s also a good sport, so he won’t complain when he loses. He typically prefers co-op, though. I think he would really like Pikmin. I’m not projecting, he told me himself.

Massive nerd. He would absolutely love DnD if he ever had the time to play. When he and Sonia were younger, they’d reenact all kinds of fairytale and mythological scenes that they memorized by heart. It was pretty hard to do with only two people, but they made do. When Hop got a bit older, they involved him, too.

I don’t know if this makes sense, but he feels like “the generational gap between me and my friends who are of the same age” when it comes to his relationship with Raihan, and also Nessa and Sonia to a lesser extent. Which is not to say that he’s out of touch. Sorry if this didn’t make sense I just needed to write it out.

His alcohol tolerance is pretty high. He’s Galarian, after all. Doesn’t drink all that often, much less get drunk, but when he does he gets very touchy. He’s already a pretty affectionate guy by default, but when he’s drunk he’ll practically drape over the nearest person. Terrible with hangovers, but he at least gets some halfway decent sleep when he eventually passes out.

Also as a Galarian, he is a tea drinker, but he also drinks coffee. Coffee is his drink of choice in the morning, tea is his go to later in the day. He would probably drink his coffee black, because he doesn’t really care for sweet things, and I think he would like ginger tea. I’m not sure if I really feel that way or if I just have ginger tea on the mind because of the sheer amount of ginger I have in Sleep, but, uh, you didn’t ask. 

Okay, more romantic things. His love language is physical touch and quality time. He’s naturally a touchy-feely person. He often places a hand on another's shoulder, gives out the best hugs, and is a huge cuddle bug. His free time is pretty scarce, so he revels in what time he has to be around his loved ones.

When I put him in the wife guy (affectionate) section on my wife alignment chart, I knew what I was doing. Mans absolutely adores his partner. Just like Cynthia, he would totally be like “I love my girlfriend/boyfriend with my whole heart and soul” in interviews, and everyone makes posts like “get you a man who loves you as much as Champion Leon loves his partner”. Also, bi king.

He’s vocal about his love, but he also goes to great lengths to keep his love life private. He doesn’t get much privacy, and would prefer to keep the press out of his more intimate life if at all possible.

His favorite pet name is pumpkin. 

Lowkey repressed. He didn’t get into many relationships during his teen years because he wasn’t really allowed to explore parts of himself due to being champion, so he’s not very experienced. Tries his best, though.

Listen, Leon is literally THE quintessential pokemon protagonist. He comes from a home with an absent father whose absence is never brought up, goes on a journey at the age of ten with a very traditional starter, blows everyone out of the water and is a cut above the rest due to being a freakishly good protege, and becomes the champion.

BUT THEN he has to deal with the fallout that comes with becoming the champion at such a young age. His formative years were on display for everyone to see, wasn’t really allowed to be a kid or grow up at his own pace, and couldn’t be around his family or childhood friend as much as he would have wanted to be.

And ultimately, the only person that could stand up to him, the one to dethrone him, is another protagonist, the only other person viewed as a freakishly good protege who just seems to be a cut above everyone else. And when he loses, he just… accepts it. He moves on, and seems happier in doing so. Fucking king behavior..

#pokemon leon #champion leon #pokemon swsh #hello wizard leon enjoyers #and also the lesbians who like leon i know you are out there #and other enthusiasts #okay it was only five pages but that's not bad for being made in a short amount of time #it's very rambly #but i guess that's on brand #i've never been a self-shipper #but when i love a character enough i basically hand craft them a wife #this is the highest honor i can bestow upon you *hands you a woman* #nothing against self-shipping though #i have a ton of respect for y'all your dedication is UNREAL #also i hope whoever made WEBP a very happy why #hmm twilight wings pretty

[hekateinhell]

Do you think Marius actually loved Armand? I'm so conflicted on how to feel about it.

Yeah, I mean, I think he very explicitly does!

Their reunion in QotD:

Centuries ago in a palazzo in Venice, he [Marius] had tried to capture in imperishable pigment the quality of this love. What had been its lesson? That in all the world no two souls contain the same secret, the same gift of devotion or abandon; that in a common child, a wounded child, he had found a blending of sadness and simple grace that would forever break his heart? This one [Armand] had understood him! This one had loved him as no other ever had. Through his tears he saw no recrimination for the grand experiment that had gone wrong. He saw the face that he had painted, now darkened slightly with the thing we naively call wisdom; and he saw the same love he had counted upon so totally in those lost nights.

"I love you," Marius whispered suddenly, passionately as a mortal man might. "I have always loved you. I wish that I could believe in anything other than love at this moment; but I can't."

Armand's turning scene as told through Marius's memories:

At last, he obeyed me, and suddenly with all his force he drew on the blood. Had he not tasted it enough to crave it? And now it came without measure, and he was passionate for it, and I closed my eyes, and felt an exquisite sweetness that I had not known since the long ago night when I had given my blood to my blessed Zenobia to make her all the more strong.

"Be my child, Amadeo," I whispered in this sweetness. "Be my child forever," I said. "Have I ever loved anyone more than you?"

I crushed him in my warm embrace, "Amadeo, my love," I whispered, and it seemed the long centuries I had endured had been but preparation for this. Old images came to me, bits and pieces of dreams. Nothing was substantial but Amadeo. And Amadeo was here. And so we went to our separate sleep, and as I closed my eyes I feared only one thing in the whole world - that this bliss should not last. ~ Marius, B&G

Following Armand's suicide attempt:

It was then that Marius came. He was trembling. "Unburnt, whole," he whispered. "My son."

He had that wretched neglected old gray cloak over his shoulders, but I didn't notice then. He embraced me at once, which forced my girl and my boy to step away. They didn't go far, however. I think they were reassured when they saw me put my arms around him and kiss him several times on the face and mouth, as we had always done so many years ago. He was so splendid, so softly full of love. ~ Armand, TVA

I'm not sure if there's anything more specific you had in mind? There's so many kinds of love: familial/paternal love, romantic love, platonic love, etc, and in VC one doesn't necessarily cancel out the other. It depends on how you want to read it I guess, but to me the love is always there — for better or worse, they all love each other very much and that's kind of the point! ♥️

#armand/marius #armand #marius de romanus #vc #quotes #you ask and hekate answers

[ididntwanttohavetohauntyou]

#SAVE WARRIOR NUN

Avatrice is the best intentional slowburn wlw ship out there (you can’t change my mind). I will fight for them and Warrior Nun always for several reasons:

1) this representation is the kind we’ve been missing for decades (at the very least)

2) the team behind the show has shown that they’re willing to fight with us

3) this fandom is willing to take the time to fight passionately without blaming anyone but the people actually responsible - the network that didn’t promote the show and cancelled it despite good numbers

4) this show helped so many people (especially people like me who have struggled to reconcile their religion and their sexuality)

5) this show is female led and tells a story where the main storyline isn’t the women fighting for leadership positions or being catty unnecessarily

6) I love found family stories bc so many people can relate to them. We all find people who complete us and have our back no matter what and they aren’t always the people society says should do that

7) this show is genuinely just good. I’m studying film/communications rn and this show has all the components of the best ensemble shows:

a) strong and diverse characters who are not one dimensional or stereotypical (diverse in terms of race but also much more: personality, aspirations, paradigms, backgrounds, etc.)

b) conflict within the main group but also outside of it that play off of each other without being the same thing

c) major character development that is logical and well paced

d) realistic dialogue. It’s scripted but the jokes land when they’re supposed to and fall flat when they’re supposed to

e) the relationships (romantic and otherwise) are realistically complex and fluctuate

f) relatable characters and storylines (Ava exploring her newfound freedom recklessly, the girls all struggling with loss and change and Ava’s attempts to fit into that puzzle without replacing Shannon, Bea’s struggle with her sexuality, Camila’s need to prove herself and show her growth, Lilith’s thirst for validation, Mother Superion’s closed off nature because of loss, Mary’s stubborn fearlessness, Jillian’s loss of her son not once but twice, etc.)

g) natural chemistry between actors that shows onscreen

This show has done what so many have found impossible; It has balanced dozens of categories of expectations - that so many shows and movies don’t even attempt - and it has executed them all flawlessly.

I would like to thank the cast and crew for their amazing work. From one filmmaker/actor to many many more: thank you. This isn’t easy, but you did it, and you’re willing to do it again for us.

#i will never shut up about this #I will memorize every episode #I will sear it into my eyelids #I will play it in the background always #I will make all my friends watch it #and rewatch it #I love this fandom cast and crew so much #and I hope for all our sakes that it gets renewed or taken up by another platform #also sorry about the really long post #warrior nun #save warrior nun #avatrice #simon barry #kristina tonteri young #kty #alba baptista

[little-puku]

Sugi's Family!

more info under the read more because I explain some other stuff

It took me quite some time because I have been busy but here they are! tried to put as little as possible to resume the whole data without trowing spoilers haha

   ︶ּ⏝ׅ︶ Dera ︶ׁׅ⏝ּ︶

Dera, is the mother, She works as a Museum tour Guide in the Johto region, she also work in the The Ruins of Alph, Johto's Bell towers and other curious sites as a tour guide. Sometimes she helps her husband with research but she loves to listen his Random facts about multiples things he has found out on his research that she can include as a "fun little trivia" on her guides.

She and her husband Wilbur meet on Kanto when she was working on the Pewter Museum of Science, Wilbur was trying to gather more info about his Thesis to become a professor both fall in love and later on moved to Johto

︶ּ⏝ׅ︶ Wilbur ︶ׁׅ⏝ּ︶

Wilbur, is the father, He is a Professor, his main expertise been the understanding of Unowns. He come from Kalos, a romantic soul. Wilbur has a passion for research but sometimes gets carried away when it comes to it, getting a little obsessed about it, but Dera helps him to takes breaks. He asked his wife to marry him with a Omanyte

He has mixed feelings about Victor, Sugi's ex partner, respect due to been a great researcher but disliking him for ignoring the fact his daughter, and his supposed "love partner" has been missing and looking like he doesn't care. He has notice Victor has started to become quite obsessed about the Paradox Pokémon...

︶ּ⏝ׅ︶ Victor ︶ׁׅ⏝ּ︶

Victor, Sugi's ex partner. He comes from the Paldea region. He started as a respectable researcher been one of the assistance of Professor Turo and Sada, loving the idea to create a santuary for the Paradox Pokémon. After the accident of Professor Sada... devastated that the investigation was canceled and all the researcher team were distributed to new jobs and new positions. Victor moved to Johto and started helping Professor Elm.

He meet a heartbroken Sugi, trying to distract her from the bad news that her "best friend" Ingo was no longer talking to her due to unknown reasons, he introduced her to what he used to work before even tho both were interested to the idea of Paradox Pokémon and the reintroduction of old species they were far too dangerous for Sugi and how this will affect the Pokémon and the environment.

Sugi and Victor slowly started to develop feelings for each other but Sugi still having feelings for Ingo, she decide to continue knowing she needed to move on on her life even if it pain her knowing that the love of her life will never be reciprocated (but she was mistaken, Ingo loved her but he was missing...)

After some time Sugi got pregnant feeling confused and conflicted about this she still decide to continue her life and have the baby but Victor didnt feel the same... he had other things in mind he slowly started to push her away and focusing more and more on his research, talking her down and disagreed and discussing with her more and more not caring about the her or the baby but more about the research he needed to continue

Victor continue his research in secret returning to Paldea from time to time and entering the Area Zero without permission... Victor slowly becoming more and more obsessed over the past and the future, the Paradox Pokémon, Space Time Rifts, Time travel, etc. Victor losing part of himself every time he spend more time on the Great Crater of Paldea, it seems something in there was affecting him, but he didnt care he needed answers even if it cost him everything he has.

︶ּ⏝ׅ︶ Nary ︶ׁׅ⏝ּ︶

The daughter of Victor and Sugi, she is a baby, not much info about her other than even tho she is Victor's Biological daughter, Nary is more found of Ingo since he was more into her life as a father figure than Victor

︶ּ⏝ׅ︶ Sugi ︶ׁׅ⏝ּ︶

i have made post about her over here!

︶ּ⏝ׅ︶ Kaede ︶ׁׅ⏝ּ︶

Sugi's older brother. A romantic soul like his father, but a little bit more clueless when it comes to actually understanding his feeling and realizing someone else does have feelings for him. He gets flustered very easily and is flirty without realizing due to him always seen beauty in everything. His family been very supportive of his artistic career, he is bad at pokemon battles even tho Sugi has trained his Pokémon to defend him for dangerous situations but he still will try to fight you if you are been a little jerk. Supporting Sugi about her love for Ingo due to how "gentleman" Ingo has always been to his sister even tho they only talk and send each other present on letters

When Sugi disappeared he entered a very depressive state losing his will to actually continue painting and giving up his career, getting more emotional than before and been the main suspect when she was missing and not feeding up the rumors about him "making her disappear" he removed himself from the public eye.

Not losing hope to find his sister one day, even tho his parents tried to reassure him to continue even if it hurted... none of them ever give up hope specially Kaede reaching every little detail where she could be, leaving him with the theory that Sugi probably "Run away with Ingo to a different region due to her been pregnant by him!!" he was infuriated by this (he got everything mistaken actually due to some letters he found of her and Ingo, and her dairy he was desesperantes been this the first clue) When he was called by Cynthia about info where they are Kaede mistook emmet for Ingo and started a discussion that didnt end up well (from a Pokémon battle to fist figthing... Kaede was the one who starting it... Emmet was just annoyed and confused so he had to defend himself from the accusation)

#pokemon #pokemon art #pokemon oc #pokemon trainer card #pokémon #trainer oc #papa ingo au #found family au #trainer sugi #Dera #Wilbur #Victor #Kaede #Nary

[marcspectrr]

@luke-o-lophus I hope you don't mind a mini moonlayl brain dump brought about by your lovely addition (this got a little lengthy so I'm putting it here instead lol)

This!! I absolutely love this and my brain kind of exploded as I read it. I think the most meaningful layer of Marc and Layla's relationship is the respect they have for each other. It's so mutual and reciprocated in every scene they have together, in the slower ones but especially in their fight scenes!

In the slower moments, it's when they're on the boat in ep 3, Layla offers her hands for comfort. Later, Marc offers his hands for support. When they're trying to piece together the cartonnage, Layla suggests Marc give Steven control. In the tomb, Marc accepts her anger maybe a bit too much since he's already got plenty. These all show the respect these two have for each other -- nothing is forced.

Now with the fight scenes, I think it's definitely understated how well they work together and respect is what pulls their strings. They trust and rely on each other just as much after Layla becomes Taweret's avatar as before, which I love a stupid amount. In a way, it shows how Marc sees Layla in this type of setting -- just as capable with her powers as without. And it shows that Layla views Marc as an equal, no matter the extension of his strength and whether it equates to hers or not. And that's thoroughly beautiful imo.

(They know when to rely on each other and how to adapt and respond while on their own. Marc listened when Layla told him to back down as soon as they were caught in the glass pyramid. Layla knew running up to Moon Knight in that moment meant protection inside the cape. As soon as she took out the guy in the pyramid, she immediately moves to go help Marc. As soon as she's in the line of fire again, Marc runs to toss her (I mean literally toss her) out of harms way, right before offering her his arms for support. And in ep 6, there's a bunch of maneuvers and instances where their rhythm really comes through, both together and independently. They both go up against Harrow a handful of times, but notably Marc knew to focus on Harrow individually in the end after he shot at the van because Layla was there to help the people.)

Both are the kinds of respect I feel they've nurtured as they learned each other. Their nuances and facets and moments of weakness and moments of strength always informing what to give to each other. It's unconscious, most times, and comes with so much ease. Marc sees this woman, who's just as strong as she is compassionate and it's all in that first glance he gets of her he sees this, the second one in which he's crushed with the realization that he's profoundly and perfectly and utterly screwed. Layla sees this man, who has just as many good intentions as he has walls, who's as guarded as he is caring and it soon becomes a little hard to ignore, how what they've started is beginning to feel a lot like love.

Now. I've seen the argument of Marc's actions towards Layla showing a level of disrespect and being unforgivable and irredeemable, etc., and to be fair, it's a pretty harmful take, not to mention an ignorant one. It's an argument that completely disregards Marc's struggle with his mental illness and the unrelenting grip it has on his life/relationships. It's quite literally the whole point of the show. Marc isn't happy with his actions towards Layla, and while this does not condone them in any way, it certainly illustrates the severity of his disorder. It shows the complexities and the extent of it through the conflict it causes in his marriage, one of the more real-world situations that is touched on in the show. It's not meant to be clean or black and white, it's meant to be a bit messy and ugly. Despite his connection with Layla being one of the better things in his life, being with her doesn't cancel out his struggles, they're still very much there and are perhaps even magnified at times, sadly enough. It just further depicts how his disorder manipulates even the good things he has, a very real thing that happens that shouldn't inevitably give rise to an end to those good things.

He still fights for her and she still fights for him, and if anyone deserves good things it's these two.

#moon knight #marc spector #layla el faouly #marc spector x layla el faouly #marc/layla #moonlayl #marclayla #moonscarab #am i even cohesive when talking about them in my head its just keysmashing and heart emojis #i like how my brain read 'it might be small' and went 'well i must think about it for hours then' ahdjfk #i really cant even keep my thoughts straight on them anymore all i know is i love them your honor #and all i wanna do it talk about them #screaming into the void i know #moon knight meta #mk meta

[jonahh]

i loveeee jonah and i can’t rly think of a good question for u?? maybe like how did u feel abt the amy jonah breakup proposal scene in s6? i know it was sorta unpopular in the fandom as forced but i thought it was very sympathetic and understandable on both sides tbh

narratively speaking superstore actually hit the jackpot by getting canceled when it did, because if that had been the last we see of amy i don't think they could have salvaged it—or it would have been very difficult to, at least. i definitely had my doubts on a larger scale about superstore without america, and i still don't know that amy moving to california was the smartest plot move, but they weren't expecting to lose a lead and you work with what you have i guess

that being said! given that this was the in-universe route they chose, i do think that they pulled it off in a way that felt true to the characters. it's definitely brutal to watch, but it makes sense. of course amy is hesitant to make such a big, official step. even though it's jonah, and he's been around for a long time, and their relationship is great, she's been through this before and it completely derailed her from what she originally wanted in life. and so in her mind, there's always room for things to go wrong—whether that's in an immediate and catastrophic way or a slower, boiling-frog stagnation way. because of her circumstances, it's important to her that she have an easy escape route if that were to happen.

there's also the issue of the timing. i think that, if the circumstances were different and this didn't come up at the time of the move, it would feel less claustrophobic for her. but it's sort of an insane and tumultuous period, and adding yet another life-altering decision to the mix was definitely. not great.

jonah's view is completely different here. he pretty much sees them as already-married at this point, so it doesn't feel as daunting for him. this is where i do start to feel a little conflicted, so bear with me. on the one hand i do think he should have known better than to think this wouldn't be an added stressor for amy. like, obviously he's aware of her past, and the baggage/trauma she has regarding marriage. he's not adam, of course he's not adam, but who's to say he wouldn't fall into the same rut? he has a string of abandoned jobs behind him, and frankly not a whole lot of prospects. adam has a string of abandoned hobbies. amy's always been the one to take on the role of "adult" and frankly, as much as she (and i) love jonah, the relationship doesn't...look all that different. yes, true love, etc but she has kids and so she has to look at it from a practical as well as a romantic perspective.

the thing is, while he went about it in a way that was a little thoughtless and insane, jonah's also not in the wrong for wanting something more. i mean, the dude is moving across the country for her. they HAVE been together for several years, and they've known each other for several years before that. they are, functionally, a family, so it makes sense that he would want to make that official. and as solid as the relationship is, he just needs to know that she won't pull the rug out from under him suddenly—marriage seems like the most natural way to prove the stability of the relationship and soothe his neuroses. plus, in his mind, there's absolutely no chance he's going to be the one to leave. she's the reason he's stuck around for so many years, after all. but she has no way of fully understanding that without literally being in his head.

seeing him stand up for himself and set that boundary is cathartic. watching amy have to deal with the ultimatum is heartbreaking. marriage means two different things to these characters, and that's what makes the breakup so potent.

#fictionandmusic #also they both acted their ASSES off in this scene ben especially #however again. if they hadn't ended it after s6 it wouldn't have been a satisfying ending for them. the context is essential #.txt #nbc superstore #superstore #jonah x amy #jonah simms #amy sosa

[yougoadedme]

Vague references to leaks for 4x09 and 4x10 below the cut! But this is mainly waxing about the differences between what fic gives us vs. what the show is trying to do, from the perspective of someone who's excited about where S5 will go from here.

For starters, I'm quite ok with where S4 ends and I'm excited to see where they take this family's journey next. I love that this is not a linear story, but one with ups and downs and learnings and heartache and mending all along the way — and the thing underpinning it all being what these people mean to each other. As Harvey has said, we're not where we're going to end up.

Now, fic. Fix-it fic is popular for ongoing shows at least in part because of the uncertainty of canon. Things happen at the end of seasons that turn the story on its head by design, and that's hard to digest when you're looking for resolution rather than a thousand more unknowns. People want resolution, we want things to be tied up, we want everyone to be ok and we need it to happen as soon as possible. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, and fic does its duty so well to deliver on those things. We find it hard to conceive of where these canon arcs could go if they didn't immediately wrap up where we wanted them to, so that we can enjoy the safety of a conflict-free world for our blorbos to do cute stuff like go to the beach, etc.

But! Fix-it fics do exactly the opposite of what an ongoing series is trying to achieve. A fix-it fic is trying to, well, fix it! And an ongoing series is trying to achieve ongoing conflict. That's true for a number of reasons, including story ones (conflict is an essential component of story, a story can't be ongoing without conflict) and business ones (neatly wrapping a season, a possibly even the entire show's narrative, in a finale episode is a recipe to get your shit cancelled). But at the end of the day, so long as the show is going to have further seasons, the types of wrap-ups that feel oh so satisfying in a fic simply can't happen in any season finale. Not only will they most likely leave plot threads and emotional arcs hanging, they introduce a swath of new ones! All this, to continue exploring the nooks and crannies of the characters, relationships, and themes.

I say this partly for expectation management. A lot of fan theories for how some of S4's threads might have instead wrapped up in a satisfying way, Nandermo or Colin&Laszlo or otherwise, are by no means incorrect. If S4 was the final season of wwdits, we most likely would have seen a lot of them play out on screen. But that's not what happened, and that's on purpose. The show intends to continue to knead and explore everything S4 put on the table in S5, rather than close all of those capital P Problems in order to play in a perfect-world sandbox next season — like a one-shot fic might.

We care about these characters and what happens to them. That's why there's a fan urge to cut off uncertainty by pulling the plug on conflict at the earliest juncture. That's why many fics, fluff especially, are so short. It's not a story, it's a scenario (and scenarios I greedily slurp up, don't get me wrong, fluff sustains me because I need those sweet and cute situations). But for a fluff one-shot to be a story, it would need conflict, it would need for things to go wrong so that the final act can pull it back together. Even rom com movies, designed to be funny and sweet indulgences, stick hard to this rule. And even fics with plot, save for some really gorgeous novel length ones out there in this fandom (kisses you and kisses you), we're working with a much tinier narrative window than the wwdits canon is. The show has to figure out how to pace itself through what is an undetermined period of time due to show seasons are greenlit by networks, which is much harder. It means they have to make hard choices about what emotional threads they are going to resolve and which they need to sustain, if the show itself is to be sustained (looking at you, Nandor and Guillermo conflict & romantic tension. Looking at you, Laszlo and Colin). Without those conflicts, without things going wrong, there is no show, the story has ended before it could fully blossom. I say this knowing people wanted the Nandermo arc to wrap up in 3x10, before all of their fantastic development in S4!

Anyway. Final point. Big thing about conflict: it leads to development. Deepening. Ultimate solidification of the themes once all is resolved eventually.

#wwdits leaks #wwdits spoilers #wwdits #what we do in the shadows #nandermo

[bluelightning16]

Hello! I had asked for your JadeSil headcanons and I really liked your point of view, I think it matches their canon personalities a lot! Jade taking an interest in Silver until Jade sees him as more than a friend and Silver not realizing Jade's true feelings until someone tells him. Well, I'm still hungry for more JadeSil headcanons, it's a ship that I love because they're two of my fave characters and their dynamic seems interesting and fun to explore. So can I ask for some more headcanons please?

Of course!  I'm so happy you enjoyed my previous headcanons!  Jade and Silver are some of my favorite characters as well, especially Silver... if my blog hasn’t already made that abundantly clear, haha...

Alright, so.  I think that the two of them get pretty serious as a couple rather quickly.  This means that showing each other their respective childhood homes and meeting their families occurs early on.  Luckily, with the portal magic they have, they’re able to take these little trips over one of NRC’s long weekends.  At first, Jade is a bit nervous to have Silver visit the Coral Sea, as that requires him revealing his true form—but to his infinite relief, his boyfriend seems awfully calm about the entire thing.  In all actuality, Silver is quite moved by this show of trust and vulnerability, and assures Jade that he’s beautiful no matter what form he takes.  Meeting Jade’s parents goes over just as smoothly—though they’re somewhat distant and seem apprehensive about what Silver hopes to gain from their relationship, with his natural charm and Floyd’s support, it remains a polite, surface-level affair and no issues are raised.

Having a formal get together with Silver’s family, on the other hand, is pure insanity.  During their trip to Briar Valley, they aren’t allowed a single moment of peace.  Somehow, it has become Lilia and Malleus’ personal mission to tell Jade every single embarrassing detail about Silver’s childhood that they can think of, which he enjoys immensely.  Meanwhile, Sebek is convinced that Jade is only there to steal all of Malleus’ secrets for future leverage, and follows them around everywhere.  This annoys Silver to no end—and it only gets worse.  Much to his absolute horror, Lilia insists on cooking dinner for the five of them, and even Malleus is powerless to stop him.  Thankfully, Jade has an impenetrable poker face and even manages a bit of practiced flattery; by the end of the night, he’s won the Diasomnia gang over completely (except Sebek, but there’s a grudging acknowledgment there).  Silver later takes him out on another dinner date to apologize for the damage done to his digestive system.

Speaking of which, I think that their dates are pretty lowkey.  In addition to keeping each other company during meals, studying, work, etc. and hiking together, they will do things like watching the sunset/sunrise, strolling through the garden, and stargazing.  On more than one occasion, Silver tries to teach Jade how to ride a horse, while Jade enlists his help with tending to his mushroom terrarium.  And, very rarely, Jade will find his boyfriend napping in some secluded location and join him in resting.  When Silver wakes up, he’ll smile and nestle closer, admiring the rare sight of Jade without any of his guards up.

Okay, switching gears now... Like I stated in my other post, I think that Jade and Silver would be relatively unproblematic together.  However, this doesn’t mean that there’s no fights between them whatsoever.  I believe that their rare conflicts would center around the impact of their jobs on their relationship—specifically as it pertains to Silver and Malleus.  Guarding someone takes up quite a lot of time and Jade, being slightly possessive, can sometimes feel neglected in the face of his boyfriend’s sense of duty, especially when there’s another man involved.  Though I don’t think Silver would ever cancel on plans for work, it’s the constant need to reject Jade’s proposed dates that irks him so, especially with another man involved.  And Silver’s not without his grievances either: catching wind of his boyfriend’s secretive business ventures from absolute strangers often leaves him feeling hurt and upset at the other.  In order to resolve these problems, the two of them must take the time to sit down and explicitly communicate with each other.

First of all, to address Jade’s jealousy, Silver has to recognize how it appears that he’s been prioritizing Malleus over him.  Luckily, once he does, there’s a simple enough fix—with the help of Lilia and Malleus, who readily agree with his decisions, they negotiate a work schedule for him that accommodates more of his social life; in turn, Jade promises to be more patient and understanding in the future.  However, I believe that Silver’s problems with Jade’s work would still remain a point of contention for a little while longer.  While Jade’s secrecy comes from a place of wanting to protect his boyfriend from the darker aspects of his job—in which clients often get violent and take whatever means necessary to exact revenge—rather than some manipulative ploy, Silver certainly doesn’t see it that way.  Because Jade won’t display his emotions, he can’t comprehend just how afraid the boy is to lose him over the less savory side of his personality... something that Jade struggles to admit even to himself.  It takes a bit of waiting for Jade to gather the courage to explain to Silver the true motives behind his actions, and a bit more for Silver to come to terms with this is a profession he isn’t willing to give up.  In the end, they must reach a mutual understanding of how Jade will keep his relationship and work life separate while Silver won’t interfere so long as he isn’t doing anything blatantly illegal or hurting himself.

Traveling in the same vein of thought about how everything isn’t always sunshine and rainbows... I think that the two of them have somewhat warped or unconventional views on relationships.  In the game, Jade and Floyd have hinted at coming from a family involved in some sort of shady activity... which has lead to the popular theory that their parents are fish mafioso.  This doesn’t necessarily indicate that they make an unhealthy pairing, per se, but I think it’s safe to assume that such a background does have some sort of noticeable effect on their bond; perhaps it manifests itself in an extreme level of overprotectiveness of each other, or perhaps they hardly interact at all.  Personally, I can see it going either way—and perhaps even both.  On the other hand, Silver has no basis for what a romantic relationship should look like whatsoever, as he’s never had anyone to show him such.  This means that he isn’t aware of how expressive he should be and what boundaries need to be drawn.  In a stroke of good fortune, however, neither are inherently bad people, so all it takes is a bit more of an effort to maintain a happy medium, along with a bit of input from some willing friends.

Alright, now onto some AU territory...!  I don't know if it's just me, but I think that this pairing would work so well in a historical setting.  Jade could be one of Prince Rielle’s advisors (along with Azul) whose work includes dealing with some of the more... questionable matters for the royal family, while Silver is, of course, one of Prince Malleus’ most trusted knights.  They meet when the two heirs decide to meet up one day to discuss an alliance between their respective countries.  As in canon, Jade finds Silver amusing at first and soon, they’re somehow always bumping into each other inside and outside of court.  However, as negotiations unexpectedly fall through, they quickly find themselves on opposite sides of the battlefield...

I also think that if placed in a modern-day college AU, Jade would fit perfectly as a TA, a position he earned thanks to his outstanding grades and performance in class from the previous year.  On the first day of the course, the student sleeping smack dab in the middle of the front row immediately catches his eye.  He recognizes him as Silver, their college’s infamously unintentional problem child.  Once realizing that the boy is quickly falling behind, courtesy of his unfortunate medical condition, he offers to tutor him on the side—this soon transforms into regular old coffee shop dates where studying is completely forgotten...

And, because I’m a total sucker for stories with darker themes and content, here’s a cliche zombie apocalypse AU for you: Prior to the outbreak of the virus, Jade worked as a renowned pharmacist for a major pharmaceutical company, while Silver was employed at a local security firm.  However, after one of Jade’s former coworkers fucks things up royally and their city is thrown into utter chaos, the two crash into each other while on the run.  Jade is heading for his company’s southern headquarters—where zombies still haven’t completely overrun things, as heat speeds up their decay—in order to aid them in the search for a cure; Silver, meanwhile, is heading for his family, who had been vacationing in the same general area.  Since their interests align, the two decide to pair up and fight against the rapidly mounting odds, during which they discover that they can really only trust each other...

...Okay, and I’ll stop things here before I start taking on more fanfic projects than I already have.  If anyone wants to actually write something based on these little tidbits, please send me a link!  I need to quench my thirst for JadeSil, as the brainrot never ends...

Side note: I wasn’t sure how to insert this anywhere in my headcanons, but I find it so cute that both of them have jewelry-related names.

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst headcanons #ask response #silver twst #jade leech #jadesil #jade x silver #silver x jade

[fitzrove]

Hi, it's me again. Did the show do anything different in terms of Elisabeth's "character"? I loved those details for La Mort but it also feels like people aren't great at a balance between them and Elisabeth.

I fully admit that Elisabeth isn't my favourite character, and hence I haven't deep-dived into her characterisation in different productions the same way I have into Der Tod/La Mort, so I'll be much less eloquent when describing her. However, I really liked how they approached her character!

First of all, you should know that Bruxellons (a small production with no understudies for anyone) ran into some trouble right before the premiere, because Marie-Pierre de Brienne (principal Elisabeth who had rehearsed the role and already played it in the previews) couldn’t perform. They had to cancel three shows (incl. the original premiere) and were desperately looking for someone who could cover the role on extremely short notice. Enter Romina Palmeri, who agreed to do it on a Sunday night, had to fly in from another country, first rehearsed with the rest of the cast on Wednesday and was on stage for the premiere on Thursday. So four days of preparation in total. I was there at the premiere and she knocked it out of the park - you seriously couldn’t tell she came in on short notice.

I only got to see Romina’s performance, so this writeup will be based on her acting choices - don’t know if it was different with Marie-Pierre, who was fortunately able to return to the role after a week or so. (However, as the show’s run was extended because of the cancellations and MPdB wasn’t available for the new dates, Romina got to play the role again for the last few weeks of the show’s run, including the derniere.)

Elisabeth at Bruxellons

To me, what most characterises Elisabeth in this production is that she has some rebellious, strong-willed and spirited teenager energy throughout. She’s so lively and sweet at the beginning - in Wie Du, Max gives her a book as a parting gift, and she’s extremely excited about it; in Bad Ischl there’s a really funny moment where she slumps down on a chair without much care for ladylike manners and Ludovika struggles to get her (Sisi’s) hoop skirt to settle properly, it keeps flipping up.

At the risk of this turning into a Brussels Franz Josef appreciation post: god, he’s the best FJ to ever FJ. First time I’ve ever cared so deeply about the character. He’s perpetually anxious and conflicted over his duties and his wish to be gentle and good, and the reason he picks Sisi, to me, seems to be that it’s his one act of choosing his own happiness (acting according to his secret wish to be a compassionate free spirit) over the pressure he faces from his mother and the court around him, his one attempt at escaping the stifling social order he’s been raised to navigate within. Sisi seems to see this and Nichts ist schwer is so good because of it - they genuinely care for each other on a deeper level than “love at first sight”. FJ is so shy when he first takes Sisi’s hand and Sisi is happy to encourage him, and most of Nichts ist schwer has them stand together in a world of their own, happy. She loves him and thinks they can really make it work!!

And then it’s interrupted by Alle Fragen. Elisabeth seems a bit frightened by the ceremonial procession around her - well, I guess anyone would be with that organ music - and both her and FJ are equally anxious at being gawked at from all sides. When they stand together and family members come to congratulate them a few interesting things happen: Max reaches out to take Sisi's hand in his own and say something to her (maybe to plead with her or to offer words of encouragement) but Ludovika slaps it away; Sisi frightenedly reaches out to Helene but she (clearly bitter about Bad Ischl) recoils and bows to her with a cold smile instead, making it really clear that she's empress now and it makes her isolated. She seems devastated by this. So, along these lines, it really makes FJ’s refusal to side with her after/during Eine Kaiserin muss glänzen - even though he really wants to be free, but seeing the realities of the world around him, he feels like he can’t - feel like an even stronger betrayal.

Ich gehör nur mir has her take on a somewhat colder, more contemptuous and cynical attitude. It’s maybe even the beginning of her starting to harden herself to the world around her to survive. Of course, she’s still sweet and triumphant - but the way she turns her back at the audience and stares contemptuously at the giant anchor at the side of the stage (the only major, fixed setpiece) for the duration of the instrumental verse is very poignant. She’s turning her back on the power of the empire and choosing herself.

In Spiegel, she’s downright cold to Rudolf. She enters the stage only at the end of the song - Rudolf is too anxious about speaking to her to even approach her directly, he’s singing the song all alone and Elisabeth only walks in right before her lines happen, in her nightgown, reading a book. The line in the translation is “What are you doing here? What is it? You’re bothering me”. She doesn’t really struggle to make a choice between staying completely independent and helping Rudolf, just walks off after dismissing him. Of course, this makes Totenklage even more devastating - she’s very distraught - especially because the actor playing small Rudolf stands to the back of the stage during the number, listening to her, dressed in the veil of the dead.

Schleier fällt: She’s very happy about it, no undercurrent of sadness. She even jumps into La Mort’s arms when he picks her up.

Uhhh... what else? I feel like this will be a bit disappointing. Romina Palmeri is my favourite Elisabeth among all of the different productions for sure, but I still don’t have very deep analysis to give out :’D Mostly I think she’s really pretty and her acting is so good/the choices so interesting that for the first time I actually care about the character and her journey adhajdkjhaj (I’ve been known to skip Elisabeth’s songs, especially nichts nichts gar nichts, while watching bootlegs. Here I wasn’t the least bit bored, which is high praise!)

I actually recommend asking @szabadmadar about Sisi, they’re more well-versed in the character :D (Hope it’s okay to tag you!)

#elisabeth das musical #elisabeth #musicals #theatre #elisabeth bruxellons

[relatable-pictures-of-orko]

WHY LESSONS EXEMPLIFIES EVERYTHING WRONG WITH 200X

It’s sad, because it was my favourite episode as a kid. It was the only He-Man episode I had saved on my computer from age 12 to 19, when I finally rewatched it and fell back into the motu fandom. However, each time I watch it, I find another thing that holds it back. And now that I am slowly rewatching the show, I find these flaws are inherent to it as a whole, and plague the show.

EXHIBIT A: INABILITY TO FOLLOW THROUGH ON ESTABLISHED PLOT POINTS

In Lessons, the main plot is kicked off after Orko preforms a Classic Screwup and destroys billions of dollars worth of statues. Crucially shown is Duncan’s role in the disaster: Instead of thinking logically to try and find a way to safely get the levitating statue down, he simply grabs Orko’s arm to cancel the spell and is surprised when the statue falls and breaks.

And from here, we could get into a whole discussion on whether it makes this Duncan’s fault, or we could argue that it was still Orko’s fault for acting without permission in the first place, or then argue that it’s in fact Duncan’s fault after all for this or that or-

Regardless, it doesn’t really matter who’s fault it is.

What matters is that Duncan and Orko literally never interact again for the rest of the episode after this scene.

The episode establishes a conflict between two characters, and then fails to even acknowledge said conflict for the rest of the storyline. 

EXHIBIT B: A FUNDAMENTAL MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE ORIGINAL SHOW AND CHARACTER DYNAMICS

In most aspects, the episode follows a standard Orko Runaway Plot: Orko is sad and wants to leave, and characters convince him to stay. However, how this diverges from the Filmation show is the reason Orko is given to stay.

In Filmation, the Sorceress shows him his worth as a person. She shows the others looking for him, missing him, that there would be a significant impact if he was gone. Furthermore, it is made clear that it does not matter whether he is good at magic or not: He is family to the other characters, and they’ll love him regardless of any percieved use to the group. 

Lessons, meanwhile, takes a different approach. Orko is instead shown flashbacks of his past, to exposition to the audience his backstory. Among this is the main argument as to why he should stay: He cheered up the king when he was sad. 

So the lesson is this: It doesn’t matter if Orko is good at magic or not. As long as people can laugh at his failure, he has worth. 

The episode tries to backpedal on this in it’s moral segment, where Orko claims that your friends will like you even if you make mistakes. But that still does nothing to prove that “Who you are” is more than just the jester that makes you laugh. 

And in the episode itself, no one even notices Orko’s gone. It was pure chance that Skeletor just happened to target Grayskull while Orko was there. It almost seems like they were going out of their way to make it feel like no one truly cared about him. The only evidence we see against that is Adam being motivated to raise himself from an injury and fight again after being told that Orko was in danger. But that’s not something you really notice unless you pay attention to it, and it’s outweighed by everything else. 

EXHIBIT C: NOT LETTING CHARACTERS OTHER THAN HE MAN SAVE THE DAY

Uh oh! He-Man has been taken out of commission! Now only Orko can save the day! What will he do?

.... 

As it turns out, his actions consist soley of providing a brief distraction and then getting knocked out. 

But luckily, He-Man is conveniently back now! Good thing He-Man is always here to save the day!

...Huh? What did you say about Orko having a character arc?

So first off, it’s made very clear that Orko being written out of the climax is incredibly forced; Orko is dropped literally two feet and it somehow knocks him out for several minutes. Despite having shrugged off worse injuries before and after this, being very lightly tossed in this scenario is somehow just too much for his little body to handle and he simply must sit the rest of this fight out. 

Secondly, it’s ALSO incredibly obvious that the writers were mandated to include He-Man saving the day in every. single. episode. 

Now, it’s understandable. If you think about it, Filmation most likely had the same thing. But the reason it wasn’t quite so obvious in Filmation was because the writing was better at keeping He-Man distanced enough from the other character arcs enough so that the others still had a chance to shine. Take Dawn of Dragoon for example. Even though He-Man defeated Dragoon, Orko was still the one to revive Dree Elle and the others. Even though He-Man did a fight against a bad guy and won, Orko still fulfilled his character arc of the episode without much interference besides a brief pep talk.

However, 200X struggles to accomplish this same subtle workaround. Oftentimes, it’ll have He-Man either do Too Much, making the other characters feel like they aren’t contributing enough, or Finish the Job, making it feel like he did more purely on association that he did the last notable thing in the climax. 

Lessons is no different. Orko contributes nothing to the final battle of the episode. Even though the Sorceress claims that Orko is needed to fight against Skeletor and co, the average audience member simply does not get that impression because Orko contributed so little to that plot. 

I’m pretty sure the only one who has it worse off than Orko in this regard is Teela, considering how many times she had to be saved in the episodes specifically dedicated to showing how competent she could be. However, this happens to several other characters as well, like Buzz Off, Mekaneck, etc.  

I could go into a whole other rant about that, but this is an Orko blog so I’ll save you the off topic rambling. 

Anyways yeah this show is a mess

#motu #orko #masters of the universe #he man #motu 200x

[candlelightreader]

Wow ok I just read through some of what you said about Castle and I feel like we watched a completely different show. First of all, Andrew Marlowe created this series and made something amazing. It would not exist without him. Also, him and his wife Terri left in season 7. I believe this is because they did not like the direction the show was headed in- as in Nathan Fillion wanting to continue the show without Stana Katic. It was a love story and you can see in seasons 7/8 they are already preparing to kick her out. It would not have survived with out Kate/Stana so fans rallied to have the show cancelled. They were actually supposed to get married in season 6 but Nathan suggested the plot where he has the crash and goes missing (which I hated). As far as Kate show glimpses of different versions of herself, she is at work and being a professional, the glimpses we see of how she once was or who she can be is not unheard of. Everybody has contradicting traits and we are all hypocrites in some way. This show was very good at writing these characters realistically. And I thought the writers did amazing! Especially toward the end when Nathan and Stana didn’t want to even speak unless they were filming a scene, I thought they did a great job still giving us great stories and Caskett scenes. But I will say the first 5 seasons were my favorite. And honestly the show could totally be watched without the last season since season 7 ends without a cliff hanger. Season 8 pisses me off because I know what they’re doing. I cannot stand the fact that these people are supposed to be here to tell a story and yet they are more concerned with keeping Nathan happy since he pulls in a big audience. I get that that’s how it works but don’t destroy a beautiful story in the meantime. 😡

Trying to remember what I wrote and I think I had very conflicted views after my first watch that may have come across as heavily critical... Is that what you're referring to? Cause I actually loved the show. I just had a thought or 15 on elements I felt could've gone better. :)

I completely agree with your take and hated everything after the melodrama of the Great Disappearance. And Fillion was responsible? Of course. What a waste of time. And I only looked up the bts mess after I'd watched it (and after writing my rant) and feel so sad for Stana Katic and fans that things went down the way it did. Like with X-Files, I understand the leads would end up rubbing each other the wrong way after so long. I imagine they spent longer with each other than with their family or partners on such a show. But unlike with X-Files, Fillion had considerable power over her and used it? What seems to have happened to Katic is just tragic and I seem to have heard that Quinn (Alexis Castle) is alleged to have been of the opinion that since the show was 'Castle', anyone else was expendable (and one could read it as a jab at Katic, which fans seemed to have done). Another sad point.

I would have loved to see them explore their couple without trying to blow them up the minute they got together. Cause you're right. Caskett moment post S5 are really nice. I truly chuck that to the writing room not knowing how to write happy couples in dramas (and frankly this was also a comedy--dramedy?). It always seems weird to me that shows need to end once they get together, when there are entire shows build around couples which go on forever. Yes, those tend to be sitcoms, but they do indicate there is a formula to keeping a settled couple fresh, just as there is one to keeping the chase fresh. And as you say, anon, the first 5 seasons were really good (and I also love them) because the show was ultimately a love story.

Didn't know about the creators basically fleeing. I do like Nathan Fillion (or think I do) but the more I find out he worked on a lot of Joss Whedon projects, the more I'm disappointed. There is something to be said for the company you keep... Not alleging anything, but could speak to character.

I also keep reading a lot about how the souring between K and F may be because they dated early on, then cut it off, then she went back to her longtime ex (pre-F), etc. Whatever it is, seemed nasty and seems to have unfairly disadvantaged her professionally.

Anyway, I rambled. I think you were responding to me critiquing the lack of continuity. Everybody will have an opinion, I guess and that was my raw one. I loved this show and rewatched it again right away before it was removed from Prime (though second time around I deliberately skipped the start of S8 and ended up not finishing it the season). Shame they let it fall off a cliff after it did well so long. But even the best falter, eh?

#caskett #castle abc #richard castle #kate beckett #behind the scenes dramas ruin good shows and that is inevitable and sad #not the first show to have an unsatisfactory ending #but shout out to fans for having ralied and got us that epilogue instead of whatever they planned to do without Beckett in S9

[rosethornewrites]

Sunday & Monday T & G reading

The usual

Finished

Teen:

#WarPrizeJiSeason, by PorcupineGirl (13 chapters)

Originally a Twitter threadfic:

Wei Wuxian never made it out of the Burial Mounds, and eventually his family gave him up for dead. Then a mysterious immortal appeared, saving the cultivation world from Wen Ruohan without ever letting himself be seen.

After the war, the sects start making offerings to the Yiling Laozu, hoping to curry favor with this powerful immortal. Things spiral out of control when sects start offering up people—including Lan Wangji.

They don't start a sect on the Burial Mounds.

They don't!

Until they do.

The Certainty of the Answer, by Deastar

“Lan Zhan…” Wei Ying peers into Lan Wangji’s face with her big brown eyes and asks, in defiance of all evidence and logic, “You like Mianmian, don’t you?”

It is at this point that Lan Wangji, after more than a year of constant provocation, at last suffers some sort of frustration-induced mental breakdown and mashes her lips against Wei Ying’s. Events escalate from there; before they can get too carried away, though, Lan Wangji wrenches herself away. “We must wait,” she says, taking a deep, steadying breath. “I must ask Shufu for permission to marry.”

Look forward, the future looks back, by SerlinaBlack

A little drabble about Lan Wangji travelling back in time.

Exerpt:

"Hunguang jun! Look! If I put this character instead of the other one…" Wei Ying says again. Effervescent. A vein in Lan Wangji's temple throbs.

" Mn, Wei Ying is very clever." Says the Lan Wangji imposter. And Wei Ying. Blushes.

Lan Wangji turns around and walks away from there before he does something he regrets, like breaking his guqin, on the future Lan Wangji's head.

My Brother's Keeper - The Shadow Past, by ArchiveWriter (4th in a series, 9 chapters)

The conflicted relationship b/w WWX/Wei Ying and his Martial Younger Brother, JWY/Jiang Cheng, with a good helping of LWJ/Lan Zhan and a cameo smattering of Jin Ling and Lan Sizhui as friends. Lots of angst and conflict and I'm afraid no happy ending; I just can't see it for that particular brotherly relationship. This won't preclude them struggling to gain mutual understanding and coming to terms with the past and each other, but it's a hard fight and not a particular fruitful one. Lots of angst, dark Jiang Cheng, Lan Zhan's shadow self, Wei Ying wrapped in love.

(WWX POV) He could feel a sickening flash of something unnameable, and he knew his brother would catch it. Perhaps that was fine. It had to come out, like pus from a boil; it had to be lanced.

Out with the new, in with the old, by XxRainbowHeartxX

Wei Wuxian turns up at Cloud Recesses with a slight problem.

Hes been cursed.

Problem is, he has no idea what it does.

Until hes waking up in his old body.

Or: i suck at summaries. Wei wuxian gets cursed back into his old body.

General:

It began in the noodle store, by Jotem27

It all came back to the noodle store. Before the war and now after the war. Who would have thought, that a modest noodle store might change the dramatic story of Wei WuXian, Lan Wangji and Jiang Cheng?

Jiang Cheng remembered how his father took him and Wei Wuxian to the Zhang noodle house. It was widely known and famous to be the best noodle shop in Yunmeng. They where young, ten or eleven. The shop was small.

On top of the food was a nice yellow loquat. His father sent him to sit down at one of the tables and he was careful to reach the table without losing anything of his precious food. Then Wei Wuxian plopped down beside him. On his noodles was another loquat, a little bit bigger than his one. He was envious.

Still Waters, by PorcupineGirl (2 chapters)

There were never any rumors about Wei Wuxian's parentage, so Madam Yu never resented him. In fact, she arranged a marriage for him when he was young—to Lan Wangji.

When she meets the teenaged Lan Wangji, however, she knows immediately that this cold, heartless boy could never be a good match for her ward.

But when they try to cancel the betrothal, it does not go as expected.

Makeout! At The Library, by PorcupineGirl (2nd in a series)

Wei Wuxian has been betrothed to Lan Wangji since they were children, but the Cloud Recesses Guest Lectures is the first time they've actually met.

They didn't get along at first, but Wei Wuxian thought maybe he was growing on his future husband. Except said future husband has been ignoring him recently—and not in the fun way. So clearly he has no choice but to get himself assigned more rule-copying so he can get Lan Zhan alone in the library and find out what's going on.

It goes better than expected.

Unfinished

Teen:

Resentment, by nilykami

A minor sect tries to kidnap the Yiling Laozu from the Cloud Recesses. It goes as well as you might expect.

An arrow to the heart, by IsilmeLasgalen

If you try to kill someone make sure they are dead or it might actually make them stronger.

Wei Ying can take a lot as long as he knew his A Yuan and his Lan Zhan were safe and sound but they should have never, ever hurt his family.

General:

The Trouble with Espionage: A Treatise on the Role of Wit in Matchmaking by Grandmaster Lan Qiren, by stiltonbasket

Six months after the Sunshot Campaign, Lan Wangji visits Lotus Pier: ostensibly to celebrate Jiang Yanli's birthday, but with the hope of meeting and reconciling with his sworn zhiyin, Wei Wuxian.

Eager to see the happy couple married, Lan Qiren decides to try his hand at matchmaking.

Been There, Done That, by FlautistsandPeonies

My Prompt:

By some trick of fate, Wei WuXian is sent back to the beginning of the Sunshot Campaign at his time of death. Determined to save not only himself but also his family from the cultivation world’s mechanisms, he will have to throw himself into a world of lies, deceit, and politics once more. But first, he must win a war.

Lotus Remix, by TheAdelaideParade

As if Wei Wuxian didn't have enough problems when he came back from the dead, now he has to figure out just what is going on with Lan Zhan to make him go into seclusion. It looks like he'll have to tag along on this mystery if he wants to figure anything out. And just who is that Jiang disciple who keeps popping up everywhere?

Or, a canon AU in which someone else saved Wen Yuan before Lan Wangji could get to him.

Baby Whisperer Wei Wuxian, by Preludian_Staves

Thanks to his ability of soothing children everywhere he goes, Wei Wuxian accidentally acquires a child during the Cloud Recesses study arc and it changes things in how he interacts with the Lan Sect.

We've Been Sticking Around Since We Were Young, by weiyeyyyy

The Junior quartet traveled back to the past on an experiment gone wrong. They just wanted to turn back time to pass (cheat) on an exam! They did NOT want to time travel right into the middle of the Sunshot campaign! Why do they always seem to get themselves into trouble???

Ultimately using this chance to make things right and deciding to not let their beloved Senior Wei die and determined to have the Senior Wei x Hanguang-Jun ship sail earlier, the juniors decided to do everything they can!

#the untamed #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #cql #chen qing ling #untamed fanfiction