#it's hard finding people who look like they can be related to anya so i hope this works!!!!

[jennyslcte]

ANYTA TAYLOR-JOY FAMILY TEMPLATE ( requested by anonymous ) 

FATHER: Benedict Cumberbatch (could play around 45-54)

MOTHER: Uma Thurman (could play around 45-53)

DAUGHTER: Anya Taylor-Joy (could play 22-26)

BROTHER: George MacKay (could play 25-30)

BROTHER: Asa Butterfield (could play 21-25)

AUNT: Naomi Watts (could play 46-53)

UNCLE: Ethan Hawke (could play 45-54)

COUSIN: Maya Hawke (could play 19-23)

#family template #fc help #fc help. #could be related #fc #fcs #rph #ANON I HOPE U LIKE THIS!!!!!! #it's hard finding people who look like they can be related to anya so i hope this works!!!!

[chaoticstarlightwonderland]

Spy x Family Naegiri + Izuru Kamukura AU

Kyoko Kirigiri as the spy suddenly tasked with making a family appear out of thin air. As a young girl, her father died in the early bombings and her mother, fearing for Kyoko’s safety, sent her on a train to her estranged grandfather. Said grandfather was the leader of an intelligence agency and from then on Kyoko was trained in all things related to spying. Even after her grandfather’s death she still continued with this career, believing that it was her duty to give other people a peaceful lifestyle that she will never be able to truly understand.

Makoto Naegi as the assassin who needed to swallow his moral quandaries to look after his sister. As he has gotten older he felt like he couldn’t leave because a lot of his targets were dangerous people. The current peace is so fragile, he wants to do everything he can so that more people can have hope for the future.

But who would their telepathic child be? I know Shuichi is often depicted as a naegiri baby but I don’t think he is chaotic enough to get into the same shenanigans that Anya does. What character would purposefully cause so much chaos for their own amusement?

Izuru (Kamukura) the young telepath who is desperate for anything to escape the eternal boredom. Everyone’s thoughts are so predictable. Even going to the outside world quickly become boring for the young boy.

Izuru is definitely smarter than Anya in canon, but not as smart as he is in DR. He is good at the sciences, the technical stuff and the hard rules the language and arts, but he is so apathetic that he struggles with emotional nuances in all these subjects. Perhaps the reason why scientists thought he was a failure is because Izuru didn’t care enough about what people thought and the results of the tests.

Whether he escaped or was kicked out, Izuru survives using his telepathy. He decides to use a different name to cover his tracks, calling himself “Hajime” when other people ask. Through all this, nothing reduces his boredom and he never tries to bond with anyone. He gets adopted for his intelligence and kicked out for his creepiness 4 times.

Then one day Kyoko arrives at his orphanage, and Izuru reads the most interesting mind he has ever encountered, the mind of a spy. Surely if there are any people in the world that could keep Izuru entertained, it would be the thrilling, dangerous life of a secret agent. Izuru also supposed they have something in common since Izuru created the “Hajime” identity.

The two have a different bond than Loid and Anya initially. Kyoko and Izuru initially find a decent rapport due to their naturally stoic and analytical personalities. Their first roadblock is when Kyoko has to get Izuru to do something he is not interested in (Such as studying subjects he is not interested in or befriending kids/targets). Kyoko realises the two haven’t actually been acting like parent and child before then. Kyoko buys parenting books for research and realises that Izuru’s behaviour may be a trauma response for his past. Izuru experiences an unknown emotion having an adult not throw him out when he’s being difficult. Also, Kyoko understands Izuru more than other cuz she herself can be very detached to individual problems. For Kyoko it’s due to her upbringing and because she is usually busy focusing on the bigger national issues.

In comes Makoto who takes Yor’s role as the “emotionally intelligent parent” in the family. Izuru immediately wants this harmless-looking deadly assassin under his roof, and tries to set the two adults up. Unlike Anya who sings about she wants a mama, Izuru is probably like “Hello, my mother is a single woman who is considered attractive by many people. How would you like to snatch her up before the rest of the competition.” Complete deadpan 5 year old here. Makoto and Kyoko are very shocked, but they do end up talking and eventually settle into the arrangement they do in canon.

Here Makoto acts as a stronger emotional glue to Kyoko and Izuru as the two are too stoic to develop a proper bond on their own. Makoto is also very caring towards Izuru and tries to be supportive when he knows that Izuru struggles with emotions, either his own or other people. Izuru is a soo a bit shocked by this because before he was always demonised for supposedly having no emotions but Makoto accepts Izuru just the way he is. I think Izuru quickly becomes attached even if the boy can’t explain way, and Makoto is happy to have such a cute stepson.

As for how Makoto covers his assassin skill, unlike Yor with clumsy lies, Makoto has a “talent” for disguising attacks and assassin skills as dumb luck sometimes good sometimes bad. You know that martial art that is based on the fighter being drunk while doing it? Well Makoto is similar except it’s not drunkenness but clumsiness that Makoto uses. Partly out of practice to disguise his skills, and partly due to Makoto-brand luck, it often looks like he slipped and accidentally hit someone so hard they passed out. Or he slipped, tumbled down a hill and landed on the bad guy. Kyoko never gets suspicious because Makoto’s klutziness is so extreme it can’t be faked. Surely.

Like the original all 3 grow to become a family, even if they don’t realise it for a long while. Perhaps the character who ends up with the most change by the end is Izuru turned Hajime.

I see Izuru’s in this AU like this:

In danganronpa, a boy named Hajime turns into lab creation Izuru Kamukura.

In this world, a lab creation called Izuru becomes a boy named Hajime.

#sorry I don’t know how coherent this is I’m just about to go to bed #danganronpa #spy x family #danganronpa au #spy x family au #naegiri #naegiri parenting #makoto naegi #kyoko kirigiri #izuru kamukura #hajime hinata #sort of #my post #naegiri spy x family au #izuru kamukura project #danganronpa trigger happy havoc #danganronpa 1 #danganronpa 2 #danganronpa spoilers #spy x family spoilers #spyxfamily #spy family

[connoisseursdecomfort]

A character study - on Twilight, love, and denial

I was thinking how Operation Strix is probably the best way to get Twilight to accept that he could have normal emotions and human connections again, and therefore is really the best thing that has happened in his life.

It’s not because no one has loved and cared for him after he became Twilight. It’s just, he has been in so much pain. It’s hard to imagine how he lived for a decade where nothing is real. All he had is pain and that one hope that the war might stop one day. I don’t think he has ever felt safe enough to love and be loved since he lost everything in war.

Now, I’m not saying it’s a good way for parents to do, but he kinda reminds me of how parents would put food children don’t like, like veggies, into minced meat or something like that so they would eat it, and hopefully they would grow to like it. Twilight is that kid. He is a workaholic who’s not looking for love. He only wants to work. And Operation Strix is the meat to lure him in. 

(Manga spoilers ahead)

There is that one panel in [redacted]’s arc that probably showed you how difficult his life was after losing his mother. “He lived like a rat.” He wasn’t this beloved child who could find comfort in his mother’s arms anymore. He was thrown into this cruel world. Then he joined the army, and in the army he was recruited. 

It is highly possible he has never dated anyone before he became Twilight. He was too preoccupied by hate. And then he became a spy in hope to reverse his own bad decisions, or even, the bad decisions both Ostania and Westalis made that had led to all the tragedies he suffered. 

He has been Twilight for over a decade. All the people and things he has really loved before he became Twilight is gone. Every romantic relationship he’s had ever since he become Twilight is an illusion. He operates under aliases after aliases until one day he forgot his own name. He dated several women when he’s on his missions, but it’s very likely he only sees them as work-related. And he is a workaholic. He doesn’t necessarily like what he’s doing - he only likes the fact that he’s working for the greater good. So we often see how he sees work - his only goal is to make it simple and get it over with. It is kinda safe to assume that he never had emotional attachments that are real and tangible other than the love he received from his mother and his friends. Those are the only kinds of emotional attachment he has ever come to know. His previous experiences with women are most likely unpleasant - in previous missions, if he’s forced to resort to honey trapping, most probably the best scenario is that he dates a terrible woman (aka Karen) so he doesn't walk away with too much guilt - he does show a teeny bit of regret for betraying his target’s trust.

That is why you could not win Twilight over if you present yourself as a love interest. Nightfall would still not win his heart even if she gets to be Twilight’s wife, because her priority would always to be Twilight’s wife first, then Anya’s mother. From his past experience, romantic love = mission = means to an end = lies and cover-ups = breakups. With all the missions he has to complete and the traumatic past, it’s hard to imagine he would be that eager to find love.

So Yor comes in in a peculiar way. Is Yor related to work? Yes, but also quite far removed from it. It is truly the perfect setting for Twilight. She’s not his target so he doesn’t need to become anyone for her, and it is not even necessary for her to become his work partner so with her he can literally let her be and doesn’t need to worry about reports and coordinations and strategies. She is that rare breed in his life - I saw it somewhere that she is more like his roommate. She could help feed the cat Anya but that’s not really her responsibility. And Yor is just this nice roommate he doesn’t need to worry about - she always seems happy to help but she also keeps a respectable distance. She chose to become more of a mother to Anya, but she didn’t use Anya to get closer to Twilight. Most of the time, when Twilight’s there with Anya, it would be Twilight watching TV and doing homework with her. Yor doesn’t butt in. And Yor probably has the personality so blunt and gullible he wouldn’t see her as someone threatening - she doesn’t remind him of work at all. She reminds him of home. And this all happens in a place he deliberately makes to be as homely (as he sees it) and safe (for a spy) as possible.

But that is still not why he caught feelings. It’s just how he could get relaxed enough to “slip”. He starts to catch feelings because he could see and feel the love Yor radiates as a mother for Anya. That is something he is able to connect, and that is something he knows is real. That allows him to see beyond the mission and start to see Yor as who she really is. He relates to her. We always focus on how Yor thinks he understands her, but we know he sees him in her too. He sees someone who is eager to protect and willing to sacrifice for people she loves and cares about. And he sees that she has secrets, and how the secrets burden her, so he hopes she can make friends and share the burden with others, even if it's not him. He admires her strength and feels her pain. And she is able to soothe him. She makes him feel better about the situation and even himself when his spy mind is going overload. She sees him as this tired man and tries hard to make his life easier. She doesn’t always succeed but he certainly appreciates it. In turn, he tries to go on dates with her to cheer her up.

You see, it doesn't matter if he knows he’s falling in love or not. It is possibly a good thing that he thought Yor had rejected him. The more he is able to lie to himself, or the deeper he is in denial, the deeper he allows himself to fall into love. If you don’t shove love in his face, his brain would not go “honey trapping? spy? work? mission?” and he would continue to turn a blind eye on everything so he can continue to keep his guard down. He is that frog in the boiling frog except he doesn’t jump out because he lies to himself that the water is not hot at all. Because poor froggy has been left in the cold for too long. He misses the warmth. 

#spy x family #loid forger #Yor Forger #twiyor

[lpham2525]

A League of Their Own

Spy x Family Analysis:  

How Yor sees Loid vs. How everyone else sees Loid  

or  

Why Yor is a unique match for Loid 

TLDR: Yor values Loid for the person he is, not for his social desirability. 

I was reading a post about how some people think that Loid is out of Yor’s league and someone responded that it was Yor who was out of Loid’s league (I can no longer find this post so if you know it, please notify me).  

However, I think their relationship lies on a level much deeper than that.  

Most people appear to like Loid because he fits many labels of social desirability. However, Yor doesn’t see him that way. She values and appreciates him for the emotional things he does and not for his looks, talents, or skills.  

Let’s take the example of physical attractiveness. In the course of the story, while many have commented on Loid’s good looks, Yor has only gone so far as to call him “cute”, and that was only when she perceived him as getting emotional for the sake of Anya.  

The first time was during the Welcome Ceremony at Eden when Loid is counting on Anya to make friends and help his mission be a success. There, she comments on how cute he is when he is worked up over Anya.  

The second time was during the Penguin Park mission when Loid recounted how he tried so hard to win the Name All the Penguins contest so he could get the giant stuffed penguin for Anya.  

Granted, in both scenes, Yor misinterprets what’s really going on (only Loid and Anya really know), but since she perceives these instances as Loid as caring deeply for Anya, those are the times she sees him as cute.  

It can even be argued that her use of the word “cute” could be interpreted as she thinks his actions or expressions are adorable rather than hot/sexy/handsome or some other term relating to physical attractiveness. 

Contrast the way Yor perceives Loid to the way Becky sees Loid or the way Fiona sees Twilight.  

Upon seeing a photo of Loid for the first time, Becky calls Loid “dreamy” and develops a crush on him purely based on the fact that he’s good-looking. She doesn’t bother to learn much else about him: his personality, his likes and dislikes, his character, etc. However, this can be understood from the point of view that she’s a six-year-old child with a crush on an adult so it’s not too surprising that her attraction to him is shallow.  

To analyze a different dynamic, Fiona knows Twilight/Loid better than most characters in the story, is genuinely in love with him, and acknowledges it to herself. However, she loves him in a possessive, self-serving kind of way. She wants him all for herself, of course, but to the point where she doesn’t care about what HE wants or what would be good for him. Fiona is so certain she’s the only match for Twilight that she doesn’t think of any other outcome than the two of them ending up together. She even goes so far as to having passing thoughts of killing any woman fawning over him. 

On the other hand, Yor has Loid’s interests and happiness in mind. Yes, she is shown to be jealous when she suspects Loid of wanting to replace her with Fiona, but at least when these suspicions first took hold, she planned to step down gracefully and let the two of them be together. She even rehearsed in her mind how she was going to tell Loid that she wanted him to find happiness, something that Fiona does not do. Of course, we all know how it plays out in the end, but it’s worth noting that, at the very least, Yor had it cross her mind that Loid’s happiness was important, more important than maintaining their marriage of convenience.  

Back to the topic of social desirability. What are some of the ways people describe Loid?  

Let’s use Yuri as an example. He uses the following words for Loid (albeit while he was drunk): a little good at cooking, tall, handsome, considerate, a doctor. 

Meanwhile, here’s how the staff at Berlint General Hospital describe Loid: popular, adorable, patients seem to love you.

But what if that was all taken away? What if Loid lost his looks? His charm? His sharp intellect? His popular appeal? His many talents and skills?  

Would people still love him? Maybe. Maybe not.  

Would Yor still value him? I’d answer with a resounding YES.  

Do you know why? Because she never lists any of these things as the reason why she values him. 

 This is not to say that Yor is completely oblivious to Loid’s appeal. I think she is somewhat aware that other people see him this way, but the way she sees him dives much deeper than that. Her appreciation and admiration of Loid comes from the emotional work he does: how he cares for Anya, how he works hard at becoming a better parent, how he is open to new ideas and perspectives, how he encourages Yor to be herself AND be a part of the Forger family.  

That is what makes Yor a unique match for him. Because even if Loid were stripped of every socially desirable label, Yor would still see a man doing his best to be a good father and a good husband. She would see the person under all of the layers that Loid piles on and that others ascribe to him, and that is what touches her (figuratively speaking, of course).  

Maybe it reminds her of how hard she worked to provide for Yuri. Or maybe it’s because Loid is the first adult to accept her immediately and without judgment. Or maybe it’s something else entirely, something that Yor herself does not yet recognize and can’t quite name.  

In any case, you can still argue about whether Loid is out of Yor’s league or Yor is out of Loid’s league, but I would argue that they are in a league of their own. I think the fact that Yor sees Loid as a caring person, and not as a personification of checkmarks on some “ideal husband” list, is why they work so well together. That is why, of all the crazy matches that could have happened, they found each other and chose each other and belong together, leagues notwithstanding.  

I rest my case, Your Honour.  

#spy x family #yor forger #loid forger #loid x yor #spy x family rambling analysis

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 142 Rundown

Spy X Family: It’s the ‘Anya is bad at everything’ episode, I mean it’s not surprising, she’s only six and probably even younger than that since she padded her resume to get shacked up with Loid in the first place but she’s kind of ridiculously bad at school for a telepath and can’t do sports or concentrate on anything for more than five seconds, so yeah, accurate kid behavior. She says she’s been reading peoples’ minds on tests but doesn’t know who’s actually good at what subjects and everyone sounds confident in their heads I guess so she gets ridiculously bad grades, you’d think she’d at least get a high D based on simple probability like I don’t think Eden has kids that are just complete shit at everything. Though Loid puts a pin in her ideas to cheat since if she suddenly gets good it’ll hurt her popularity which is pretty bad given Becky’s the only one that actually likes her atm. Loid decides to get her some community service to pad her resume which you usually don’t have to do until junior high but I guess it’s fine, they volunteer as a hospital and Anya’s so bad at everything they get kicked out and speaking as someone that fucked up a lot of community service in high school that’s REALLY hard to do. Still Anya hears a kid thinking they’re going to die while they’re drowning with a broken leg and runs off to go help him. Loid’s technically the one that saves him but Anya does get some credit for effort and honestly for risking Loid catching on to her telepathy like even if she doesn’t actually do that much she does a good job putting herself out there and gets her first Gym Badge as a reward (Anya got the Boulderbadge! Doot de doot!) Because Anya’s the youngest person to get a badge this early… basically ever, she becomes a minor celebrity at school but just like Loid said it also leads to jealousy from her classmates though when people start claiming she rigged or bribed someone to get it, Damian sticks up for her… well he sticks up for the school saying that they don’t go to some shitty public school where you can just buy glory (I’m assuming he’s tried) but it ends up getting everyone to shut up about Anya. Becky mentions that kids usually get rewards for big accomplishments like this which idk I think that’s some kind of rich person thing, me and everyone I know just got to keep going on for not fucking up but okay. So she decides she wants a dog because Damian has a dog and if they become dog friends then World Peace or something. Meanwhile a dog that’s used for bomb threats already has visions of the Forgers in his head so I guess this is some kind of Ein Data Dog shenanigans so sure.

Inuyasha: This is one of those episodes that feels like filler but is actually almost entirely canon. Hakudoshi’s still running around cutting off demon heads so he can look into their hearts as they die and see into the afterlife and also the Board guy from the filler episode with the mind control crowns is back for like five minutes before Entei launches him across the sky Team Rocket style again. One of these headless demons is the father of Kanta, a baby otter demon who has retrieved his father’s head and is hoping if he just sticks it back on quick enough his father will live. Shippo, being someone who knows what it’s like to have some bishonen asshole kill your dad for a stupid reason, instantly relates to this and agrees to help. The group track down the body but only after a bunch of villagers have stabbed it and it’s crawled to Sesshomaru with its last ounce of strength. Tenseiga’s telling Sesshomaru ‘hey asshole, care for once in your life I promise there’s something in it for you’ but he’s not budging. Shippo begs Sesshomaru to use the Tenseiga on Kanta’s dad and he absolutely does not care. It’s a rare Shippo/Sesshomaru interaction which I just find kind of funny because in the Inuyasha fighting game Shippo’s basically a joke character and Sesshomaru actually is the final boss of his story mode (which ends up being all a dream). Inuyasha who’s probably still more than a little salty about Sesshomaru just standing there watching Kikyo die is like ‘sorry Shippo, Sesshomaru doesn’t help people, he probably doesn’t even have it in him to care to use Tenseiga’ and Sesshomaru’s like ‘you’re god damn right, I give negative fucks’ but a little more prodding from Tenseiga and the inherent primal desire to prove your younger brother wrong that exists in all older siblings eventually wins him over. He uses the Tenseiga in front of Inuyasha’s group for the first time and resurrects the Otter Dad who then tells everyone about the Afterlife and it rings more than a few bells as Sesshomaru, Inuyasha and Kagome have all been there before (and Inuyasha and Kagome in particular are gonna be spending like 15 years there in Yashahime so better get comfortable) it’s the grave of Inuyasha’s dad which seems kinda funny like you just put your fucking grave/corpse in the afterlife and make it insanely hard for your sons to visit you but then again he also put his sword inside his own corpse so idk what he was thinking. Shippo gets flashbacks about his dad and gets fatherly headpats and the satisfaction of saving a child from being adopted by a D&D party of scoundrels like he was and now Inuyasha’s group and Sesshomaru know where Hakudoshi is headed they just need to get there.

Yu Yu Hakusho: This episode’s a lot of waffling so I don’t know how much I’ll have to say about it but the basic idea is Yusuke is going to let Sensui kill him to let Kuwabara go Super Saiyan and most of the episode is everyone crying about this, like seeing the relationship from Kuwabara’s perspective and hearing him say he doesn’t know who he is without Yusuke is neat but it doesn’t give me a lot to discuss. They do talk about how the point of sealing them in Prismo was so that they couldn’t run away because Kurama and Hiei are crafty enough to hide out for a while and stage a counterattack while demons start wrecking shit so they could come back in like a couple months with a training arc being all La Resistance and be a problem but they aren’t worried that even the four of them put together could stop Sensui. Yusuke tells Sensui to just fucking do it already and Sensui’s kinda like ‘wait this kinda sucks’ because he wanted his viewpoint challenged more but now he’s sure he’s right and won’t be talk no jutsu’d out of it and Yusuke can’t punch it out of him so he’s just gonna poke him to death. Kuwabara summons his Super Dimension Sword and cuts through Prismo just in time to see Yusuke get struck down and we go on for a while about how Yusuke is definitely absolutely totally dead, then again this show didn’t even have the balls to let GENKAI stay dead so I doubt Yusuke’s second death will stick any better than his first one.

Jujutsu Kaisen: Kento and Mahito continue their fight and they don’t outright say it but what I THINK is happening here is that Kento gets super strong during the time of day which coincides with his fraction powers which also lines up with doing overtime in a 9-5 which is pretty funny. He’s able to flatten Mahito but the guy just pulls a T1000 and escapes. Meanwhile Yuji meets up with Junpei and luckily hit it off thanks to Junpei being a film nut and Yuji having spent the past few weeks strapped into a chair watching movies clockwork orange style with a boxing Hello Kitty doll, which is a nice bit of continuity. Because Yuji is an adorable nerd and Junpei’s like a day or two away from becoming a domestic terrorist and doesn’t have friends, Junpei’s mom invites Yuji over for dinner and they hang out and make bad movie references. They talk a bit and since murder’s been on Junpei’s mind lately and he knows Yuji’s a Jujutsu Sorcerer thanks to Mahito telling him to get chummy with any he meets, he asks if Yuji’s ever killed anyone. He says no because technically the zombie mooks were already dead and everything else was on Sukuna even if you’re not being racist about Cursed Spirits not counting. Yuji says he wants to preserve his own version of the value he places on human life and the type of deaths he wants to ensure for people he cares about and even if it was someone evil, killing someone would devalue his perception of life and bleed into how he feels about the lives of who he cares about which I suppose is as good a reason as any for the weird ‘nobody kill anybody unless you have plausible deniability’ that shonen protagonists have for some reason. This reasoning resonates with Junpei and he vows to not kill anyone either… and five minutes later his mom finds a Sukuna finger and dies and he’s officially an emo domestic terrorist. Mahito tells him it’s probably someone who took out a hit on him even though 99% of people probably don’t even know that’s a thing, like at first I thought they were gonna try and pin this on Yuji put they jump right to this asshole dude at school so I guess Yuji’s just too much of a cinnamon roll for Junpei to even think that. Mahito even talks about letting the finger go and I’m not sure if he means he planted it or if he’s just allowing Jujutsu High to have it because his plan is to let Junpei and Yuji fight and have that force Yuji to give Sukuna enough power to take over permanently. Kento confronts Yuji and tells him that it’s not bad that he doesn’t want to kill people but that innocence means he can’t take him to go murder the head honchos even if it means he has to sit on the sidelines and watch his partner die. Junpei had Curse powers now and is getting ready to beat the shit out of School Douche and kill everyone but Yuji busts into Mahito’s ‘weak people only’ barrier and is ready to stop him.

Chainsaw Man: So Aki sticks his head in the Future Devil’s chest vagina so it can tell his fortune and the Devil’s like ‘oh bro, you are gonna have the WORST DEATH, like I’mma give you basically a free ride just because I wanna be there to see it’ and since Aki is Sasuke he’s fine with this. Power and Denji also complete their off-screen training and are supposedly stronger, dunno if they got new powers or if they’re just able to use any two brain cells they can rub together now. Makima pays a visit to the Yakuza to get the names of their former members who made contracts with the Gun Devil who is apparently just running a black market gun smuggling operation at this point but she gets some pushback about how the Yakuza maintain a balance of power as a necessary evil which is really not an argument you should be making to Makima of all people, she’s Mrs. Necessary Evil, she’s been lying to everyone’s face about her motives and is still in power because no one can get a read on her and she can do anything which she proves by rocking up to the Yakuza’s casting couch with a sack of eyeballs which apparently they somehow took out of the Yakuza’s family members without killing them, point being she can now use her Death Note powers on like, the majority of Katana Man and Snake Girl’s mooks. Also the bad guys have some leftover zombies from the Zombie Devil shit in episode one but they’re basically just fodder to keep the other Public Security Devils they introduce at bay but the Angel Devil’s the only one in they opening so I’m assuming they’re the only one that’s immediately relevant (also their introductions use Fiend and Devil interchangeably but I know those are separate things so I’m not sure if some are Devils and some are Fiends but just letting you know the vocabulary is kind of unclear). The main group decide to split up and search for Katana Man and Snake Girl and Aki finds Snake Girl first who has her devil puke up Himeno’s Ghost Devil which is kind of a jip like Himeno had to give up her whole body to even summon it and her eye to use just one arm but I guess Snake Girl was in an advantageous bargaining position given it was INSIDE HER SNAKE, but you’d think the GHOST Devil couldn’t be trapped inside things but what would I know. Anyway, Ghost Devil chokes out Aki, the end.

Ranking of Kings: Daida’s stuck in the sunken place and is left to reflect on what a dick he’s been to Bojji and how his teachers tried to hammer into him how people with disabilities have their own kind of strength from learning to live with them and carrying on that he as a privileged ableist asshole never learned but he didn’t understand until just now. He then finds a reflection of a young Miranjo who’s had her hands cut off and her face deformed by vengeful villagers who blame her for a calamity and despite still being a minor asshole about it, Daida does the right thing and protects her. Meanwhile in the Underworld, Desha has found the rat-eating guy from last time’s stinger has pulled an Impel Down prison break and brought five other notorious criminals with him to go take down Daida!Bosse so Desha’s like ‘okay let’s go save them and take over their kingdom while we’re in the neighborhood’ and the soldiers take Bojji with them on their way back to the kingdom without telling him about that last part. But yeah apparently Miranjo’s some kind of homunculus or something because she’s gone from being a deformed child to a living woman that can kind of awkwardly function to being trapped in a mirror only able to astral project into a puppet so idk what her deal is. But right now Hilling is with Shield guy, and her group and Bojji are both separately on their way back to the castle and Sword Guy and Kirito Henchman are training and waiting while Spear Guy’s simping for Miranjo and Snake Guy is… idk, dying in a cave I think and Daida!Bosse has like five swords pressed into his neck and is still like ‘No sir, not getting out of this chair’ even though he objectively has the strength to flatten them all. So many people in this series act in ways that make no sense and I assume it’ll all get explained but it’s frustrating to watch in the moment.

Vinland Saga: Thorkell’s men are still transporting Canute to hold him for ransom and get into a fun Jesus vs Thor who would win debate and I don’t know when Death Battle will get around to that one. They get jumped by a squad of Ragnar’s men who come to save him and they try the Usopp BS of ‘oh I control thousands of men’ when they have like a fifth of that and they’re mowed down like crazy anyway. Thorkell actually gives Canute back to them so they have no excuse for holding back Ragnar wants to dip the fuck out of English dodge but Thorkell calls them pussies and the men are attacking and getting murdered so quick. Meanwhile Askeladd’s playing both sides and starting a forest fire to cause confusion and whittle down the numbers of both forces. It’s also time for plan ‘Throw Thorfinn in and hope shit works out’ aka Askeladd’s favorite fucking plan and have him run in and grab Canute and run out. Thorfin rides in on a flaming horse and manages to get Canute fairly safely but runs into Thorkell who wants to fight and is just BARELY turned off from it by the fucking flaming hellscape around them killing his murderboner a bit but on his way out he’s like ‘oh bee tee dubs I knew your dad, we fought together in the cold open’ and now Thorfinn has a measuring stick to throw at his inferiority complex. They get Canute back to Asekladd and Ragnar’s like “Askeladd you are in HUGE trouble for doing it this way but you’re literally our only option so we’ll let it slide for now’ Askeladd asks Canute to take off his helmet and to absolutely no one’s surprise watching, he’s extremely bishie like if you were watching this up to this point and didn’t expect him to take off the helmet and be Milliardo Peacecraft under there idk what to tell you.

#ooc #Toonami #Custom Toonami Block #Spy X Family #Inuyasha #Yu Yu Hakusho #Jujutsu Kaisen #Chainsaw Man #Ranking of Kings #Vinland Saga

[thenewbuzwuzz]

For the ask game... Xander/Anya, Buffy/Angel?

Thank you very much for asking! <3 I thought I'd have time to answer this sooner, yet here we are -- but I've had fun mulling it over during the week.

Xander/Anya

I ship it, though I'm not super invested in it. They can be really sweet and fun. They have their issues, but who doesn't.

   What made you ship it?

I always thought they were pretty entertaining, I guess. Or, I am interested in Anya, and Anya has some incredible scenes that happen to be related to Xander.

   What are your favorite things about the ship?

I like that they're down-to-earth and easygoing compared to some other major canon ships. The show allows them to have a relationship that isn't a huge deal, a big dramatic love story, at least for a while. I like that they're allowed in canon to have fun in bed, creatively even, and it's not implied that they're evil people for it.

I adore the way Anya confronts her humanity through/because of this relationship. I like that being in a relationship with Anya helps Xander grow too.

In fic, the ship can be moving and heartbreaking and, on the flip side, there's staggering comedic potential. It has the range.

   Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I don't think either one of them was ready to get married in season 6, even if there had been no Xander-impersonating demon at the wedding? Um, not sure that was an unpopular one, let me try again.

While Xander does sometimes get snarky and patronizing about Anya's ex-demon peculiarities, I think it's understandable (in moderation!) -- nobody's patience and kindess is infinite in real life, and it’s not like his parents set a good example of what a healthy relationship looks like. Overall, it must have been helpful for Anya to get some cues from him about human life (why Anya was written as so clueless about human life is another can of worms).

Leaving Anya at the altar was obviously badly executed, terribly timed, and painful for everyone involved, but maybe a little better than going ahead with the wedding and THEN having second thoughts or huge unspoken issues.

Also, I’ve said this before, but I thought Anya's suggestion to have fun with two Xanders before merging them at the end of "The Replacement" was perfectly reasonable (though it doesn't matter, because the Xanders were uncomfortable with it).

Buffy/Angel

Okay. This one's interesting. I almost ship it. That is, I would NOT say I ship it, but... *shoves multiple poems under the bed* look, it's not like I've ever felt compelled to seek out fic about them or anything... *dedicated rec list spills out of my pocket* shit, I can explain.

I used to ship Bangel because it was the major ship that canon put in front of me and, let's face it, I'm a sucker for a good bout of miserable pining. I listened to that one playlist by @womanaction A Number of Times. :)

   Why don’t you ship it?

I stopped shipping it after I saw "I Will Remember You", where Angel had a chance to be with Buffy and decided against it. I'm not saying characters have to be an item in canon in order for me to be interested in them, but that's when I had a change of heart.

I've an uneasy attitude towards Angel in particular. He has qualities that I consider flaws in myself. This can make him interesting and relatable to me, but also hard to tolerate in larger quantities.

I've been around Spuffy shippers a lot, and they have pointed out to me all the drawbacks of Bangel multiple times. I'm sure this skews my perception somewhat. I'm not sure I want to rehash any of that here.

   What would have made you like it?

On the other hand, hearing people bash Bangel makes me feel like NOT outright hating the ship is cool and rebellious and mature of me as a Spuffy shipper. So in a way, the ship squabbles make me like Bangel a bit more out of spite.

I know that Angel's happiness curse is only ambiguously tied to sex, but I think there's some chance I would find Bangel enormously interesting and cute if Angel and Buffy decided to have a romantic relationship without sex. I think I might have imprinted on them for ace reasons if I’d seen this happen at the right time.

Alternatively, and this is more of a fic thing than a canon wish, *opens AO3* okay, genuine question, why are there so few Bangel stories in the Orgasm Delay/Denial tag? Buffy and Angel could have some creative fun without, ah, Angel's perfect happiness -- but of course, this is based on the simplified interpretation of perfect happiness as a pleasure moment.

I think I might also really enjoy a Buffy x Angel dynamic where they had, contrary to Spike's speech, become friends. Where the will-they-or-won't-they was no longer on the table, the way Xander gets over his romantic feelings for Buffy and keeps helping and supporting her afterwards. I might be even more into it if Angel still had a thing for Buffy but resolved to not make it her problem and channeled it into helping her unconditionally.

Ironically, I like the ship more when Angel is soulless and evil. I don't think Buffy and Angelus should, like, DATE, but I think the Angelus of BtVS s2 still has some semblance of romantic feelings for Buffy (not something we'd call love, I suppose). And he is suuuuuper messed up and conflicted about it, being a control freak whose identity depends on not pursuing this impulse. His struggles with his pesky crush are both rather relatable and enormously entertaining to me.

In theory, I might like Bangel more in the later seasons or post-series, but in practice that's when Spike is in the picture, and I have a preference.

I do like Buffy and Angel as part of a Spuffgel OT3.

I'm sure that, like with most ships ever, fic brings out the best and most fun qualities of Bangel and softens or averts its problems. There might be iterations of the ship out there that would grab my interest.

   Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

Season 2 from Surprise/Innocence onwards is exquisite drama. It wouldn't be the same without Buffy's feelings for Angel.

I think it's great that Buffy inspired Angel to strive to be better and he became someone she would be proud of, overall.

Buffy wanted to have smoochies and go on cute little dates with her vampire boyfriend, and I'm glad she could. Their ice skating date in particular was adorable.

And I wish the Bangel side of the fandom nothing but the best. I want Bangel fans to thrive and have fun, like all other fans. :)

---

(If you send me a ship, I'll answer three questions based on if I ship it or not.)

#btvs

[100hearteyes]

Part 2 of Clarke And Lexa Make a Porno, because why the fuck not.

Part 1.

"No. Absolutely not."

Anya's wolfish grin is no good omen. Lexa feels a sense of dread wash over her and tries in vain to assuage her nerves by holding her friend's gaze. Anya wouldn't look this sure if she didn't have some card up her sleeve.

Lexa throws a furtive glance around, checks that her co-workers are still focused on the German porn telenovela. It's only when she's sure that the action on-screen will keep them rooted for a while that she turns back to Anya, trying but failing to meet her eyes.

She overcompensates with another glance around the room and a low hiss. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but am I not too," she licks her lips, gathering the courage, "'vanilla' to do it?"

Anya shrugs like it's a no-brainer; crosses her arms and props her booted feet on Lexa's desk. "That's exactly the point. You're a lesbian Disney princess. Pretty sure if you started singing the whole fucking fauna of Capitola would follow you around."

Lexa levels Anya with a glare and tries to push her feet off the desk, to no avail.

(Seriously, what's it worth being editor if she can't even have her subjects' respect? She wishes this job was less about the headaches and more about the self-indulgent moments of microscopic tyranny.)

The feet might not budge, but Anya will. Lexa is sure of it. She draws herself taller and tucks on her most authoritative scowl. "I won't do it."

Anya plucks an imaginary cigarette from her mouth and throws it away without a care in the world. She reaches behind her and drags forth a heavy wooden box, filled to the brim with—

"My vinyls."

Lexa is in a daze.

She thought she'd lost all her vinyls to time and moving. She mourned each one of them for at least a year, cried many a night away clutching her record player to dear life, lamenting their shared loss.

They had a real connection.

But it turns out her vinyls weren't lost after all, and her tears were for naught. They were safe all along, albeit in different hands, and she'd known nothing of it, like a mother who lets her children wander about without aim nor authority.

How can she ever have kids if she can't even take care of her prized vinyls?

Lexa feels a prick of self-righteous indignation at the betrayal and puffs out her chest. "Why do you have all my vinyls?"

"I think you mean all my vinyls," Anya corrects with a lazy flurry of one hand towards the box.

"You don't even own a record player."

"How the fuck would you know?"

Lexa raises an eyebrow at her friend. "I come over all the time?"

"I could hide it while you're there."

"And then you'd never find it again, because that's what happens every time you try to hide something from me."

Anya shrugs and watches as Lexa picks one of the vinyls and turns it over in her hands, reading the track list on the back with the reverence one would a millennium-old parchment. Then she looks up at Anya with a stern glare.

"Over half of these were stolen from my house."

Anya shrugs again with infuriating nonchalance and Lexa wishes she had a pencil nearby just so she could snap it in two with one hand. Or stab one of Anya's eyes with it.

"Maybe I just rescued them from the actual malefactor," drawls Anya.

"We both know the real culprit sits across from me and has been wearing the same socks for the past three weeks."

Nailed it.

When she looks at her friend, however, all she sees is that same old resting bitch face that never seems to go away.

"Wow, Lexa," Anya deadpans. "Now you've really hurt my feelings."

Sometimes, Lexa wonders if Anya really has a rock where her heart should be. A supernatural, blood-pumping rock, of course, but a rock nonetheless. Or, maybe, Anya is a psychopath. Maybe the blood money theory wasn't so far-fetched after all. That would explain the brazen lack of empathy for everyone else's feelings, most of all Lexa's. What does it say about Lexa that her one true friend is someone who sneezes literally every time Lexa says 'I love you'?

Not that Lexa says it a lot. Only once or twice every few years.

Just enough to have noticed the pattern.

"Are you really trying to blackmail me with vinyls?"

Anya fakes an affronted gasp, laying a hand on her heart. "Would I ever. Think of it as... an incentive."

Lexa really does love Anya, despite her friend's... unique demeanor. Anya helps her come out of her shell — by taking up all the space and forcing her out of her own metaphorical home — and every once in a while she likes to make sure Anya is aware of her gratitude. Sometimes, though, things get really fucking weird.

Lexa would still do anything for her best friend.

"Let's imagine, hypothetically - very hypothetically," she stresses, although Anya's burgeoning smirk tells Lexa she isn't so easily fooled, "that I agreed. What would happen next?"

Anya takes her feet off Lexa's desk and sits up straighter, perhaps aware of the importance of this moment. This, Lexa decides, will determine her answer.

"Well first, I'd have to get you a costar. Then we'd sign some legally binding shit, find a crew, and make the damn movie. Simple as that."

Anya leans forward, looking into her eyes. In Anya's, she sees honesty and a pressing need to reassure. It takes some of the pressure off her shoulders right away.

"Look, Lexa, you can say no. But your name won't be on anything related to the movie and I promise no one in this shitty town will ever find out you did this."

This is why Anya is Lexa's best friend. And it's why Lexa would do anything for her.

Even star in a porno.

"Okay."

Anya's inner smile must be really, really big, because Lexa knows how hard she tries to tamper its outward expression — and still her lips manage to lift into a grotesque grimace. Coming from Anya, it's the equivalent of a blissful grin.

"Okay?"

Lexa nods and closes her eyes, bracing herself for a bone-crushing hug. It never comes. When she opens her eyes, Anya's resting bitch face is back on.

"What, did you want a fucking hug?"

It's a blessing to have her rude friend back, Lexa guesses, because seeing Anya almost smile is fifty shades of unsettling. So she rolls her eyes and rolls with it.

Her next question demands her full focus, lest she makes an even bigger fool of herself than usual.

Lexa breathes in, makes sure all her co-workers are still otherwise entertained, breathes out. Smooths out a non-existent wrinkle in her pants, wets her lips for courage.

"Anyway," she treads with caution, "do you have someone in mind for the other main role?"

It's fitting that Harper McIntyre's hit song One More Betyreyal (one of her less inspired titles, if Lexa may say so) starts playing in that moment, for the look in Anya's eyes speaks of nothing but danger. Lexa wonders how much planning went into this conversation, so Anya could plan all her gut punches in advance.

"Clarke Griffin."

No. No. Anyone but her.

Clarke Griffin is the new recruit, although Lexa hardly understands how there can be someone new considering the station is broke and they’re already overstaffed — and none of them make nearly enough money for how much they laze around all day.

Clarke came from out of town with a fancy degree and was directly hired as an editor. She voices the early afternoon newscasts and Lexa curses the one-hour period during which she's forced to cohabitate with Clarke every day.

Apparently, Clarke had taken a liking to unnerving her, be it by smirking at her every time she catches Lexa staring or by making all sorts of inappropriate comments — to her ear. Lexa hates how much it affects her, but how can she possibly focus on reporting about Lionel "Real Sight" Foster swallowing his own wooden eye or how Jasper Jordan rescued his own private parts from the jaws of two slats of an unassuming park bench if someone keeps doing everything in their power to distract her?

Lexa has a theory (an iron-clad theory, if she may say so herself), and it's that Clarke is trying to get her fired so she can take her shift. It's the best shift of the day. There is no other possible explanation.

"You know what, I take it back. Now you need to convince two people to star in your porno."

"Oh, there's no need." Anya waves her argument away with staggering nonchalance. "Clarke's already said yes."

Wait, what? "But you told me we'd need to get me a costar."

Anya shrugs and Lexa is now seriously considering revisiting her psychopath theory. "I lied."

"You conniving, lying b—"

"Careful," Anya cuts in with a raised eyebrow. "I am under protection of the Capitola Astrologers Union."

"Of which you are president, treasurer, and the only legal member," Lexa reminds her. "And I think any upstanding judge would love to know how exactly every other name on the list has joined said union posthumously."

"I am an astrologer, Lexa. I can communicate with the dead. It's in my job description."

"It scares me that you're not even aware you're describing an entirely different profession."

Lexa sits back, staring at the ceiling (and the chewing gum Murphy glued there a year ago — he could've been an Olympic jumper if he committed to work the way he does to being an asshole), trying to come to terms with a single, harrowing probability: she's going to star in a porno with Clarke Griffin.

"l don't understand why it has to be Clarke."

Anya leans forward, propping her elbows on her knees, expression serious and ready to talk shop. The last time Lexa saw her like this was— actually, Lexa doesn't think she's ever seen Anya like this.

"Look, I've done some market analysis and most girl on girl pairings are a blonde and a brunette." Anya raises both her hands and starts counting off fingers, "Brittana, Petramos, Holstein, Wayhaught, Supercorp, Joanarty, Choni, the inaptly named Shoni, Deanoru, Dana and Alice, Bette and Tina, Catradora, Villaneve, Clexa—"

"What's Clexa?"

"I don't know, some chicks from this fucking terrible CW show."

"Do you like it?"

"Do I like what?"

"Clexa."

"Dude, I don't even know their fucking names!" Anya exclaims, exasperated. As if she's the victim here. "The only Clexa I ship is you and Blondie. Naked. On my porno. Clarke and Lexa. Clexa. Havin' very hot sexa."

"Smart," Lexa deadpans.

"I know."

"Why can't it be Niylah? She's blonde, too."

Anya's smirk is five hundred shades of gross. "I know you'd love to get up close and personal with Niylah's knick-knacks, but no."

Lexa decides to let the comment fly for the sake of her own sanity.

"Why Clarke, though?"

"Because you two have chemistry, you fucking dimwit."

Lexa snorts. Chemistry. Lexa has never heard of something so absurd. She and Clarke have as much chemistry as Harper McIntyre and any semblance of originality.

Which is to say, none at all.

"She makes very inappropriate comments," she argues instead, knowing full well that pressing on the topic of chemistry will only open way for some trademark crass joke from Anya.

"Yeah," her friend agrees, like it's obvious. "Because she knows you love them."

She most certainly does not.

"I most certainly do not."

"You do. Your freakishly tiny ears go red whenever she flirts with you. Your step falters when she makes one of those comments, for fuck's sake," Anya observes, pointing in Lexa's general direction, before leaving forward and laying a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you, my friend, are a walking lesbian cliché."

Lexa takes Anya's hand off her shoulder. "Can you please stop insulting my tragically conspicuous homosexuality?"

"Oh please," Anya scoffs. "I'm bisexual, I can say whatever I want."

"If my step actually faltered - which they don't - it would be because her comments are annoying, off-putting, unprofessional, inopportune, and... and inappropriate", she finishes lamely.

"And you fucking love them."

"I don't."

Anya leans back on her chair with an evil smirk, propping her feet on the table and crossing them at the ankles. Lexa tries to push them off to no avail.

"Legalities aside, it's very simple. Clarke has already said yes. I just recorded you saying yes."

Lexa sputters, "You what--"

"You're both legally bound now." Anya shrugs. "Look at it this way: it will be very educational. You'll finally learn how to make a girl come, and get paid for it. Sort of."

A beat of silence.

"Anya, are you aware that you say something at least vaguely criminal every five sentences? Something that could actually put you in prison?"

Anya clicks her tongue, sinking farther into her chair, and lowers her sunglasses to her eyes.

"I've got friends everywhere, Lex. Let's just say I've dipped more than my fingers in my fair share of pies, if you catch my drift." A second later, she lowers her sunglasses just enough to reveal her eyes. "That means my tongue. My tongue's been in a lot of pies, too."

Lexa doesn't doubt that for a second.

"What I need to know is," Anya adds, taking off her sunglasses and throwing them across the room, "will you dip your fingers in the porn pie?"

Like this conversation hasn't caused enough trauma for thirty lifetimes.

"If I say no, will you still give me back my vinyls?"

"Absolutely fucking not."

Lexa swallows, clenches her jaw, and thinks of all those lonely nights spent in the couch clutching her record player and sharing cookie dough ice cream with it, longing for long-gone times when she'd dance to the mellow voices of the likes Billy Ocean and Ella Fitzgerald.

"My answer is yes."

#that moodboard is way too serious for this lol #clexa #clexa au #clexa fic #clexa fanfiction #clexa fanfic #calmap #my fics #mine

[courtney-deserved-better]

whats ur writing schedule/process like! not in a “write faster” way, but i think once you mentioned writing in script form? and i like the way you wrote ur most recent fic! just curious bc ur works are just really good :)

this is a great question!!

if its not slippery slopes, ill usually get an idea for something and periodically jot down notes when they come to me until I feel like i have enough information to start writing (or if im just motivated), that's what i did for my horror challenge rewrite. and for stuff that's like... rewrites of an episode that aren't as character-focused as slippery slopes, i usually read the episode transcripts and try to replicate that total drama style with my own writing

for shorter oneshots, i usually just get a vague idea and run with it until i find a good ending spot, then i go back and clean it up a bit so the structure works

slippery slopes is an... interesting cycle. chapters are getting long enough that i cant just write them in one sitting any more (i think ch5 was the last chapter i did that for) and instead ill agonize over the beginning (always the hardest part to write for me) but once i get going with that i usually finish the chapter within a few days. then i reread the previous chapter to make sure it flows ok (and there aren't any contradictions) and then ill give myself a break where i dont do anything total drama related before coming back to edit and post. though before I do all that I type up notes and rough dialogue bits

and then once i post it it's like... a weight off my chest? like ive been purged or something?? idk its a weird sensation but im just like i Physically Cannot Write Anything For This Right Now and i don't start on the next chapter until that goes away. and then i either start the beginning and do nothing for a week before going back and finishing the chapter or i go into a manic state and write nonstop for a few days. right now i haven't reached a point where im ready to begin writing chapter 10 but i have a lot of notes for it.

(also as soon as i finish posting a chapter i try not to go on my laptop for like 12 hours so i don't obsessively refresh my email for comments. i love reading comments so much holy shit. please comment guys it makes fic authors feel so happy we will love you for it)

as for scripts: i am working on being a writer professionally, but specifically a playwright. writing in a script format comes more naturally to me than writing prose. funnily enough, i started posting fanfic just to practice my prose (and fix stuff in cobra kai that i didnt like) but things sort of... ended up here? idk man but im enjoying it.

right, so because writing in a script format is easier when im really struggling with a section in a fic ill usually scrap whatever i had and write it like a script, then translate that into prose. i was very excited to write the family videos for chapter 9 of slippery slopes, but i was Having Issues, so i redid it as a script and then rewrote that as prose. ill put the script version under the cut if you're interested in that.

but thank you so much for the question!! i do think my writing process is a bit unconventional but hey i think things are turning out well! if you have any more questions feel free to send them in!!

ok here is the last scene of ch 9 of slippery slopes in script format:

[SIERRA]

MOM: Hi honey! Omigosh this is so exciting! I bet you’re having such a great time! Especially since Chris is there! Is Chris watching this? Hi Chris! You know, I loooved you on that ice skating show. Your hair was fantastic! Well, it always is, haha. Do you really make your own hair gel? I’ve been trying to perfect the recipe but you’re just so hard to track down! Oh, you’re such a funny guy! I laughed sooo hard when you made all those jokes about marrying Chef.

Chef: hey!

Chris: ok just for the record, I wasn’t joking, we are married, Sierra tell your mom we’re married

Sierra: …can we just turn it off please

[COURTNEY]

DAD: Courtney, sayang, I know you’ve been going through a lot right now—

MOM: So you’d BETTER make it count. You’ve made it this far before, I want to see you getting all the way to the finale this time. And winning it. Enough moping about those hideous, good-for-nothing slackers! That’s what you get for hanging around freaks like them. You’re doing this for the million, now get the million. Is that clear?

ZARINA: And kick ass!

DAD: Zarina!

Video cuts out.

Alejandro: courtney you good?

Courtney: no, she’s right. Mama didn’t raise no quitter

Alejandro: [knows she’s still upset about duncan and gwen]

[ALEJANDRO]

MOM: Hola, Alejandro. We hope you are doing well, especially in such unsavory conditions. I’m glad to see you’ve made it to the final four— we expected nothing less, of course.

DAD: You have been utilizing your skills quite well. Though I wish you hadn’t been so… blatant about it. You’ll have to work twice as hard once this is over to convince people you’re trustworthy. But surely you were aware of that going into this… odd endeavor. That’s just politics. Reputation is everything.

JOSE: [snorts] Oh, and what a reputation you have, Al. I could easily compile hours of footage of your failures, but I, unlike you, do not waste my time on the frivolities of reality television. Though you always have been lacking in taste. Especially with that bratty girlfriend of yours— oh, my mistake, aren’t you dating the whiny weakling? It’s so hard to keep track! [laughs]

Alejandro: callate!

MOM: I’m sure Alejandro is just working an angle on them.

DAD: Whatever the case is, do not disappoint us.

[NOAH]

MOM: Hi Noah, I’m sorry, I don’t have time to record a full video, but I’m proud of you! Here are your sisters!

ISWARI: A million dollars? A million [bleep] dollars? Win it, Noah! Win it!

RUTH: Dude!! This is crazy! I know you can do this— good luck! Ark misses you! [holds up Ark who barks]

MARA: Are you insane? Why aren’t you dating Alejandro already?

Noah: shut up, mara, just because you can’t keep a boyfriend—

ANYA: Don’t let ‘em trick you! No mercy! Crush their skulls if you have to— no, wait, you’re not strong enough for that. We’ll get there!

LIYA: I say this as your sister, someone who loves you but is constantly annoyed by you— for someone who is quite literally a genius, you sure can be an idiot sometimes.

BALLARI: Okay, I literally have no idea how you’ve made it this far without an athletic bone in your body— are we sure you aren’t adopted? I’m kidding

ABS: You’re stubborn as hell when it comes to me, so you better be stubborn as hell when it comes to winning! And when you do win, get me a frozen yogurt machine, will you? I promise I won’t make you rock climb again!

JAEL: If you lose this, I’ll kill you with this racket. And then use your guts to make myself a new racket. So don’t fuck it up. Again.

Noah: [frozen, ashamed]

Sierra: well that was a mess

Courtney: ok show of hands, who felt better after hearing that? [no one raises hands]

Chris: yeah I was expecting this to be a lot more heartwarming…

Chef: chris just look at them. If they had stable home lives they wouldn’t be doing reality tv

Alejandro: can we please stop talking about this. Also aren’t you supposed to be flying the plane

Chef: oh fuck

Chris: yeah sure. I think im gonna call my mom

Everyone: …

Noah: ok so that was really shitty. Why dont we all go to first class and try and ignore our problems

Everyone: yeah ok sounds good

***

Courtney: so that sucked

Alejandro: at least your dad seems ok

Courtney: true. What are your guys dads like

Noah and Sierra: bold of you to assume I know my dad. Jinx

***

Alejandro: that last girl… you mentioned a sister who does tennis and hates you

Noah: yep

Alejandro: why?

Noah: none of your business. but… it is pretty justified

#slippery slopes #ask #anon #total drama #writing #fic #my fic

[spencstan]

Six of Crows re-read

(i also did this for the shadow and bone trilogy so read that if you want to)

spoiler alert obiously

i'm SO EXCITED FOR THIS this is my comfort book (with crooked kingdom of course)

JOOST HI

oo fun fact this was my first grishaverse book and i read it with no context whatsoever except that the mc is an emo boy and morally grey

so IMAGINE my pure confusion when JOOST appeared

i was like ?????? weird take on morally grey character but ok

joost trying to figure out how to flirt with a girl is a mood

anyone wanna teach us how to???

i kinda wanna skip this part so i can see the crows..

but i won't don't worry

(won't I?

"I think Yuri may be quarantined"

aaaand?

so are we you are not special

i feel like it's very important for me to mention that i read this book in spanish first

and then i got into the fandom and i was like who the fuck is the wraith? i only know El Espectro

Heartender who??? ooo you mean Cardio

Tidemakers? nope, i only know Maremotores

for real i was so confused i had to re-read it in english (not that i mind tho)

say whatever you want about the spanish version but we have to agree that this design is pretty af

another one yay: "Retvenko was a Squaller" vs. "Retvenk era un Impulsor"

(should i also say that in my pfd english version the book is 294 pages long and in my pdf spanish version its 532????) (i think it's because in the english one the speces are way less like the lines are so close together wtf

i've decided that i'm bored so i'll be skiping this chapter

anya is super badass tho

skdgfalsdgfliaysvfascvhjl yesssssss inej

Kaz Brekker didn't need a reason.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

KAZ

INEJ

I MISSED THEM

omg now i can picture amita and freddy SDJGKASKGLASG THIS IS AMAZING

we interrupt our regularly scheduled program to watch the shadow and bone trailer once again to hear freddy's beautiful voice

ok moving on!

now hear me out i'm giving you all permission to make fun of kaz for this one: Dirtyhands = Manos Sucias

hello i am Kaz Manos Sucias. nice to meet you!

AAAAA

AAAAAAAAAA

JESPER FAHEY

JESPER LOVE HI

SJDGHFKAHSGDLAJSDFSJ,AHFLHDSGF

I MISSED HIM OMG

OMG NOW I CAN PICTURE HIM AS KIT

can you tell jesper is one of my favourite characters?

i really love the fact that kaz is pissed about the murder of that ambassador ONLY because he can´t figure out how it happen

he´s such a nerd

i can't believe one of the firts things we hear jesper say is threathen to kill someone by writing "forgive me" with bullets

AND HE CALLS HIS GUNS "BABIES" OMG

picture saying hi baby and wylan thinkin he's talking to him but actually jesper's talking to one of his guns

Jesper rolled his eyes. "It's about sending a message. What's the point of a dead guy with forg written on his chest?."

"Compromise," Kaz said. "I'm sorry does the trick and uses fewer bullets."

ooo thank god we have kaz to come up with creative solutions /j /s

honestly i love how they talk about kaz's cane like it's the scariest weapon ever (which it kind of is)

nothing will ever disappoint me more than finding out that in english their gang name is "the Dregs". like i don't even know for sure what that means

in spanish is "Los Indeseables" (the undesirables?) which sounds a lot more badass

no hate tho i like the dregs

but i was confused af bc i expected it to be sometihng like "the undesirables" or"the unwanted" or whatever

and it said "the dregs"

which in the translator means something like shit or something

anways moving on:

If he'd (kaz) ever been a little boy

i love how lowkey all the crows think he was just born exactly like he is now

imagine a baby kaz all dressed in black and threatening people

cute

"No mourners," Jesper said as he tossed his rifle to Rotty

"No funerals," the rest of the Dregs murmured in reply. Among them, it passed for "good luck".

YES

YESSS

i wonder what wylan's doing right now :))

i can't wait for the next book where he has a pov

the first time i read this book i literally looked at the title of every chapter to see if he ever got one (i was disappointed to say the least :((((

Besides, she was the Wraith - the only law that applied to her was gravity, and some days she defied that, too.

ma'am

marry me please

i'm gonna cry so hard once the show is out and we get to see inej omg

me simp

That Kaz had chosen Jesper to be one of his seconds was no surprise. Twitchy as Jepser was, with or without his revolvers, he was at his best in a fight, and she knew he'd do anything for Kaz.

idk why but i just love it every time kaz implies or shows that he cares or trusts jesper

it makes me soft

But every one of Inej's senses told her that was not how this was going to play out. Her father would have said the shadows were about their business tonight. Something bad was going to happen here.

underrated saying from Inej's father right there

"I'm a business man," he told her."No more, no less"

"You're a thief, Kaz."

"Isn't that what I just said?"

i-

i see no lies here

not to be annoying but i hc jesper as adhd (i mean is pretty much as canon as wylan's dyslexia) so i'm gonna write here every time i see evidence :)

jesper with adhd part 1: impulsivity

Jesper snorted. "Stomach, spine. What's next, spleen?"

"Shut it" Oomen snarled. The rules of parley dictated that only the lieutenants could speak once negotiations had begun. Jesper mouthed "sorry" and elaboratedly pantomimed locking his lips shut.

he know he couldn't speak but couldn't stop himself from making a comment (i relate way too much to that lmao)

hoestly poor jesper he had to watch hid friend get shot and kaz do nothing about it

i would've been mad too

"I like it when men beg," she said. "But this isn't the time for it"

KAHGFAHLGSFGASFLGSAFS

this is one of the best quotes in the book by far

YASSS KAZ POV

Kaz could have tol Jesper that he knew he wasn't dirty, reminded him that he'd trusted him eough to make him his only real second in a fight that could have gone badly wrong tonight.

cute

but kaz is petty af

he didn't even have a reason not to tell jesper that!

i love that kaz knows inej is following him but doesn't say anything because he wants to wait until she's ready

i LOVE the scene where kaz in in the van eck mantion /srs

idk why but it's so good

And, of course, there was the mystery of Van Eck's son.

wonder what that could be!!! /s

He grinned at her (...)

"Hmm." she said noncommittally, pretending to examine one of her knives, determined to ignore that grin.

KANEJ YESS

HE'S BASICALLY SHOWERING IN FRONT OF HER OMG

this is so funny poor inej is getting flustered

"And I'll need Wylan waiting at the Crow Club tomorrow night."

YES WYLAN OMG

One minute he made her blush and the next he made her want to commit murder

happens to the best of us :/

"Please, my darling Inej. treasure of my heart won't you do me the honor of acquiring me a new hat?"

if kaz doesn't say this on the show we riot

agreed?

it's so amazing how nina found a way to use her powers to get money instead of having to like steal and murder like the rest in the gang

NINA'S POV YESSS HIII

nina and inej omg

their friendship is just perfect

POOR MATTHIAS HE HAS TO FIGHT THE WOLVES

i would straight up cry

Matthias was dreaming again. Dreaming of her

i'm gonna cry damn it

this is the enemies-to-lovers we all needed

jesper has adhd part 2:

"Jesper was supposed to wait until three bells." said the pale boy

"It is three bells, Kaz." replied a small girl (...)

"Since when is Jesper punctual?" the boy complained with a glance at his watch

the time blindness come one

(btw i love the fact that kaz plans around jesper's time blindness instead of like threatening him to be on time)

i really love how every one feels the need to take the time to say/think that the masks are ugly

its so unnecessary lmao

yessss inej is a badass that kills monster we stan

and matthias is lowkey impressed lmao

as he should

"Thank you, Jesper," said Nina

"You're very welcome, gorgeous. See, Kaz? That's how the civilised folk do"

THESE TWO OMG

JESPER IS THE LOML

INEJ OMG LOOK:

She stepped aside as if she's known he was coming, languidly hooking her heel behind his ankle. Matthias let out a loud grunt as he landed on the stones

(...) "Clumsy, this one," the bronze girl said impassively.

i-

that's what happen when you underestimate her bitch

AAAAAAA

PEOPLE

PEOPLE

TIME TO FREAK OUT

WYLAN IS HERE

AND HE'S DOODLING STOP IT'S SO CUTE

ok jesper has adhd part 3 i think:

"Just how crazy is he?" asked Jesper, fingers drumming on the pearl handles of his revolvers.

ok first of all: stimming

second of all: hyperactivity

i rest my case

ok 2 or 3 things here

"I believe you know Nina," Brekker continued. "The lovely girl freeing you is Inej. (...) and this is Wylan, the best demolitions expert in the Barrel"

"Raske is better," Inej said

The boy looked up, ruddy gold hair flopping in his eyes, and spoke for the first time. "He's not better. He's reckless"

"He knows his trade"

"So do I"

ok 1: kaz calling inej lovely omg kanej

2: YES WYLAN STANDING UP FOR HIMSELF

2.5: kaz calling him the best cute af

3: honestly why do people think wylan is like an innocent soft boy or whatever. he's in a room full of murderers and thieves and the first thing he does is correct them and stand up for himself

like i wish i could do that

i would be crying like a bitch

AAAAAAAA

"Meet Wylan Van Eck"

KHDSGFALSGFIASGFAL

HI WYLAN BABY

YESSS JESPER'S POV NOW

I'M SO HAPPY also look at this it's the first thing in his pov

Jesper stared at Wylan

do i sense some wesper?????

ok everyone is being so mean to him right now

they are aclling him useless and an idiot and other shit

poor boy honestly he had to deal with this + taking part of a heist he is definetly not ready for + he has to hide the fact that he can't write or read

it so distrubing that kaz is literally the nicest one to wylan right now

"See that? Hidden depths." (...)"He's good enough at demo, and he's got a fine hand for sketching, thanks to all those pricey tutors."

(...)

"There you have it," Kaz said to Jesper. "Marketable skills. Wylan is watching you, Helvar"

GET READY

ARE Y'ALL READY?

OK THEN:

"Scheming face," Jesper whispered to Inej.

She nodded. "Definetly."

THEIR FRIENDSHIP OMG

AND THIS QUOTE

I NEED IT ON THE SHOW THEY BETTER GIVE IT TO US

"Who's Mark" damn wylan (but pretty good comeback to jesper tho)

"What's the easiest way to steal a man's wallet?

"Knife to the throat?" asked Inej.

"Gun to the back?" said Jesper.

"Poison in his cup?" suggested Nina.

"You're all horrible," said Matthias.

tag yourself i'm jesper

KJSFGAL kaz just told wylan to tell him everything he know about his dad's company

and he said he doesn't know and kaz was like "and you never looked trough his documents????

AND THEN HE GOT SAD AND SAID HE HADN'T (and kaz believed him this is sad)

AND NOW JESPER CALLED HIIM USELESS

ok you know i love you jes but if you keep this up

idk i can't do anything you're a sharpshooter

but stiiiiiil

LMAO MATTHIAS ACTUALLY THOUGHT HE COULD BEAT KAZ

nice try

demjin

*insert spongebob voice* demjin

WE'RE GONNA TAKE A MOMENT NOW TO APPRECIATE INEJ GAHFA

BECAUSE KAZ DOESN'T

The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.

*ugly crying*

Many boys will bring you flowers. But some day you'll meet a boy who will learn your favourite flower, your favourite song, your favourite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.

*uglier crying*

TANTE HELLEN IF YOU DON'T GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE

SOMEONE PLEASE STAB HER FOR ME

jesper has adhd part ?? (i have dyscalculia you can't expect me to remember the number):

That sound - the swift, shocking report of gunfire - called the scattered, irascible, permanently seeking part of his mind into focus like nothing else.

do i really need to explain this?

ok just in case.. an adhd brain doesn't actually have a deficit of attention(the name just sucks) it's problem with controling that attention. the brain is always looking for new sources of dopamine which is why it shifts its focus so much

i love that jes thinks of matthias as "tha giant"

like sir

have you seen yourself?

you're tall af

HE GOT SHOT

WHY DID I FORGET JESPER GETS SHOT IN THE LEG HERE

"Close your eyes!"

"You can't kiss me from down there, Wylan"

"Just do it!"

i love the energy BUT NOW IT'S NOT THE TIME JES

YESS WYLAN SHOW THEM THEY WERE WRONG CALLING YOU USELESS

inej just stabed some guy int the d

good for her!

KAZ YESSSS HI

AWWW SHE'S WORRIED HE DOESN'T HAVE HIS CANE

KANEJ FOR LIFE

oh no wylan got shot too???? (just barely but stilllll por baby)

my Wraith omggg

ok 3 things about this:

Without another word, he tipped Oomen into the sea.

"No!" Wylan shouted, leaning over the railing, his face pale, stunned eyes tracking Oomen in the waves. (...)

Jesper set his hand on Wylan's shoulder. "Let it go."

"It's not right-"

"Wylan," Jesper said, giving him a little shake."Maybe your tutors didn't cover this lesson, but you do not argue with a man covered in blook and a knife up his sleeve"

1. wesper yasssss

2. wylan just argued with a mant hat had just tacken the eye out of someone. he literally called him out for being an asshole. like damn wylan is brave af i love him

3. do you think seeing kaz trow the guy out of the boat reminded wylan of when the same thing happened to him???? this makes me sad

he's brave and a good person and i just-

"Man with a knife, remember?" he said over his shoulder.

"Man with a gun!" Jesper called after him

this had no right being so funny

AND THEN KAZ GAVE HIM THE MIDDLE FINGER STOP I CAN'T

nina is the biggest kanej shiper no one can tell me i'm wrong

unrelated but if jesper had gone to the Little Palace and had studied there with nina they 100% would've had a crush on Zoya and bonded over it

like you can't tell me those two bisexual disaster wouldn't be absolutely in love with Zoya

jesper has adhd part ??:

Jesper scrubbed the back of his neck, touched his hands to his gunds, returned to his neck. He always seemed to be in motions

hyperactivity right there

and restlessness

"Do you know the best way to find Grisha who don't want to be found?" (...)

"Seems to be if they don't want to be found, you should just let them be" (jesper says this)

this conversation must be so stressful to him omg

LMAO JESPER CUT MATTHIAS HAIR THIS IS SO FUNNY

AND HE SHAVED HIM

ok you all know i love all of them but they can be sooo stupid

like wylan wrote no names on the drawing and he's excuse is that he doesn't know fjerdan?

AND THAT'S NOT EVEN TRUE he literally said he learned school fjerdan which means he should know how to write it too (we know why he can't but the tohers don't)

and even then like the excuse doesn't make any sense. why would having the original name be usefull if no one can fucking read it????

the worst part tho? NO ONE QUESTIONED HIM

THEY WERE LIKE "yup makes sense" AND WENT ON WITH THEIR DAY

i wondered how they didn't figure wylan's secret sooner but now i now

it's because theya re idiots

"I'm just doing my job. Stop glaring at me"

wylan baby let's not make the gigant mad

Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. "Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I'm going to get Wylan's ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost."

Brekker's lips quirked. "I'll just hire Matthias ghost to kick your ghost's ass."

"My ghost won't associate with your ghost," Matthias said primply, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.

i had to put this here i don't want to get murdered by the fandom

jesper, inej and nina have the BEST friendship

I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE JES AND INEJ TOGETHER ON NETFLIX

"I know some people don't understand, but Kaz told me ... he said it was my choice, that he wouldn't be the one to mark me again."

i love this because it happen when they had just met

he did it because he understands her trauma and he respects her not because he loves her (i doubt he did at the time)

Kaz had been impressed with the sketches. (...)

"Just learn to take a compliment. Kaz doesn't hand them out often."

I'M SO PROUD OF WYLAN

and yess kaz only compliments wylan (and inej but that's sarcastic so it doesn't count) because he's a proud dad

"And you don't belong here, either."

"I beg your pardon, merchiling?"

"We don't need a sharpshooter for Kaz's plan, so what's your job - other than stalking around making everyone angsty?"

He shrugged. "Kaz trusts me."

Wylan snorted and picked up his pen. "Sure about that?"

DAMN WYLAN DESTROYED HIM

also

"If you aren't born with every advantage, you learn to take your chances."

"I wasn't-" Wylan left off and set down his pen. (...)

aww cute neurodivergent boyfriends bonding

Wylan had turned back to his work, his disappointment obvious. For some reason, Jesper felt disappointed, too.

ajgflasjgfjagslfiuusgflgdfsgdflasdgfsd

wesper

aww jes checks on inej every morning and every night i love him

"Thank you for keeping me in this world when fate seemed determined to drag me to the next. I owe you a life debt."

Nina blushed deeply. "I was teasing, Inej"

LJFGALKGFALGA another cute friendship right there

(and i can see why people ship them romantically)

STOP INEJ AND JES ARE BONDING SO MUCH (page 127 so i can go back and read it lmao)

Van Eck writes to Wylan every week, and Wylan doesn't even open the letters

"They just said the same thing again and again: If you're reading this, the you know how much I wish to have you home. Or I pray that you read these words and think of all you've left behind."

should i kill him? anyone want to join me?

Inej bumped her shoulder against his."Then at least we're both the same kind of stupid." (...)

"You're too good for him, you know?"

"I know. So are you"

jes and her bonding over their stupid crush on a white boy

Because I've been looking for an excuse to talk to you for two days.

jfsfdajdhmgkfutdjrgsg ok i can't blame them for having a crush on him anymore

this chapter is full of kanej i love it

"What do you want, then"

You, Inej. You forever.

jksdgfoagsdfgsdgfklasgdflaghsldfgksdgfkahgsdfghjlkf

kaz's backstory makes me sad

"When we get our money, you can burn kruge to keep you warm," said Kaz. (...)

"I´m gonna pay someone to burn my kruge for me."

Kaz fell into step beside him. "Why don't you pay someone else to pay someone to burn your kruge for you? That's what big players do."

"You know what the really big bosses do? They pay someone to pay someone ...". Their voices trailed off as they tomped ahead, and Matthias and the others followed.

JES AND KAZ HAVE THE BEST CONVERSATIONS

i can't believe we get to see nina and matthias meet and their whole backstory in less than a month omg

"It's not natural for women to fight."

"It's not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet there you stand."

QUEEN

YOU TELL HIM

oh no the dead grisha

this part breaks my heart every time

"Do you have a different name for killing when you wear a uniform to do it?"

.....i'm just gonna leave this quote right here

anyways acab

stop nina tried to kill the survivor so they wouldn't suffer but she couldn't do it

and jesper did it for her without hesitation i wanna cry

and inej didn't want to do it either i want to hug them

"Because our crime is existing. Our crime is what we are"

..........

i'm gonna leave this here again

do with it what you will

"Don't mock what you don't understand."

"My mockery offends you? My people would welcome you laughter in place of this barbarity"

i- this conversation is so important

AAAAA JES AND WY ARE A GREAT TEAM I LOVE THEM

WYLAN TROWS BOMBS TOGIVE JESPER TIME TO GET READY TO SHOOT

INEJ AND KAZ ARE A GREAT TEAM TOO

THEY LITERALLY DID THE SCENE LIKE IN THE AVENGERS (but without the shield WHICH MAKES IT BETTER)

Jesper shouldered his rifle. "Wylan earned his keep."

Wylan gave a little jump at the sound of his name. "I did?"

YES BABY YOU DID GREAT

kaz getting self-conscious for his hair is pure comedy

but nina how can you say that have you see his hair on the show???? it's perfect

"Remeber our friend Mark?"

HELP I CAN'T

"Any other impossible feats you'd like us to accomplish?"

The bearest smile flikered over Kaz's lips. "I'll make you a list."

once again jesper and kaz being besties

unrelated but nikolai and jesper would love each other

the amount of sass they have between them it's unparalleled

"Mmm," Inej murmured, taking a sip from her mug. "Maybe you're just not enough."

DAMN

ma'am marry me please

kaz fainted damn poor boy

unrelated unce again but this is so much betetr than shadow and bone

like you can tell leigh improved so much

her characters are better and their arcs are better developed

the writing itself it's better

or maybe i'm just biased because i love soc so much but i think she definetly improved

INEJ IS TRYING TO GIVE HIM SPACE EVEN WHEN SHE'S TRAPPED AND LOCKED ON THE WAGON

I JUST - THEY KNOW EACH OTHER SO MUCH

Though he'd trusted her with his life countless times, it felt much more frightening to trust her with his shame.

Inej had once offered to teach him how to fall. "The trick is not getting knocked down," he'd told her with a laugh. "No, Kaz," she's said, "the trick is in getting back up"

inej is smart af

Kaz was usually unshakeable during a job, but now he was on edge, and Jesper didn't know why. Part of him wanted to ask, though he knew that was the stupid part, the hopeful farmboy who picked the worst possible person to care about, who searched for signs in things that he knew deep down meant nothing - when kaz chose him for a job, when Kaz played along with one of his jokes. He could have kicked himself. He's finally seen the infamous Kaz Brekker without a stich of clothing, and he'd been too worried about ending up on a pike to pay proper attention.

ok i got a couple of things to say about this part

first of all it makes me so sad that jes cares so much for someone who dosn't deserve him. because no hate to kaz but they would never work as a couple and kaz already treats him like shit most of the time

i think this part shows who a lot about who jesper really is. a boy that grew up having to hide parts of himself, who thinks he's worth nothing but it's smart and capable, who's loyal and brave and caring but doesn't even know it himself. he's someone who feels he doesn't deserve good things and thinks he's not good enough, and that's why he unds up in all the wrong places with the wrong people. he left uni bc he fell in with the gangs, because he didn't think he was smart enough or even prepared to be in studying in the university. jesper is constantly hiding behind a mask or running from things because he's scared of not being enough

an kaz is everything jes in a way wishes he could be. kaz is secure in himself (at least on the outside), he's stable, he's smart, he's "unshakeable". and most of all, he doesn't care about others (we know that's not true but that's how he presents himself)

and that's the thing that causes jesper all his problems. because he's insecure because he thinks he's not good enough for the poeple or things he cares about. and he's always trying to do what's best for his loved ones: he went to the ice court to pay his debt for his father, he follows kaz everywhere beacause he cares about him, he offered to read to wylan (knowing it wouldn't be easy for him to be still that long).

and yeah it often doesn't work out becuase he's messy and he has problems but he tries. and he hates that. he hates that he cares so much about people because at the end of the day, that's what makes him feel like he's not good enough

one more thing and i'm done i promise

unpopular opinion but i love that leigh made jesper have a crush on kaz. 1 beacuse it's refreshing to see someone not get otgether with his first crush. and 2 because i love that it shows that we sometimes get attached to people that are not good for us, but that we can learn to move on. jesper ended with wylan who respects him and values him, unlike kaz

ok i'm sorry that was probably all bs

oo one more thing, jesper definetly has rsd (rejection sensitive disphoria), which is something most poeple with adhd have

"My father used to take me everywhere with him"

this is so sad. bc they probably had a good relationship when he was little. and then they figured he coudln't read and now his father treats him like shit

it's even worse than if he haf been horrible from the beginning because wylan knows he can be a good father. and so he thinks it's his fault and he deserves to be treated like that. i hate van eck

"You're cuter when you're smart"

(...)

"Definitely cuter when you're smart"

wesper yesssss

i love them so much

ok but why do people think jesper is stupid. like the boy just made a bunch of criminals pass out by mixing some chemicals

and he was going to the university at like 15

AAAAND NOW THEY KNOW HE'S A FABRIKATOR

amazing plot twist

also:

Wylan coughed. Flirting with him might actually be more fun that annoying him, but it was a close call.

oooo come on jesper we all know you just love getitng him to blush

and you love him

who said that? definitely not me, nope

awwww jesper misses being around animals that's cute

imagine him coming home to wylan one day with a puppy because he just couldn't resist

cute

Better terrible truths than kind lies

just leaving here more of inej's wisdom

ok this may be a reach but jesper has adhd part ???

Yellow Protocol? Red Protocol? He couldn't remember which was which. (...)

"The alarm was Yellow Protocol, a sector disturbance."

Jesper pushed at his temples. "I don't remember what that means"

a bad working memory? sounds familiar

kaz loves puzzles

it's canon

"I love puzzles. Trickery is just my native tongue."

this part where wylan and jesper see the banner made with grisha's kefta kills me every time

I would have worn purple, Jesper thought, if I'd joined the Second Army. (...) He'd beenwilling, even eager to risk capture and execution as a thief and hired gun. Why was it worse to think about being hunted as a Grisha?

this makes me want to cry so much

another thing super sad: the fact that since his father is Kaelish and had some supersititons towards grisha, jesper grew up wondering if his own father was scared of him. he had to hide his powers and he was almost taught to be afraid of them

"Is it safe to leave them, you know-"

"Alive? I'm not big on killing unconscious men."

"We could wake them up"

WYLAN

NO

damn the boy needs therapy

it's amazing how nothing went like they planned

not a single thing

PEOPLE GET READY

ARE YOU READY?

NEITHER AM I BUT WHO CARES

"What do you like?"

"Music. Numbers. Equations. They are not like words. They...they don't get mixed up."

ok dude the clues are right there he's basically saying it

"If only you could talk to girls in equations."

There was a long silence, and then, eyes trained on the notch they'd created in the link, Wylan said, "Just girls?"

Jesper restrained a grin. "No. Not just girls." It really was a shame they were all probably going to die tonight.

wylan really said a straight man?? couldn't be me

this is the definition of bi panic "jesper restrained a grin" bitch we saw that

btw i love the slow burn

like they hint something here but they don't actually start liking each other until much later and they don't get together until almost the end of ck

i also love that the fact that they both like guys is like out in the open now. bc i'm not a fan of when queer characters have a crush and there's the whole thing of "are they queer too or not?"

like they both know htey are queer. but they don't get together right away bc they have to start liking each other before. they don't get together bc they are the only queer mlm characters

matthias fake betrayal killed me

i tought it was real

I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept fom this oath.

this is just-

also foreshadowing?

YAYY KUWEI HI

There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.

She's laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and got drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.

if i ever have a s/o and they don't tell me this at least once i don't want it

He needed to tell her... what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn't pull himslef together into some smeblance of a man for her

THIS

THIS IS LOVE RIGHT THERE

they are the only straight couple that matters

everyone else go home

Wylan had scratches all over his cheeks and neck. He was beaming. Inej grabbed his hands and sqeezed.

so cute omg

"You can explain why our illustrious Shu scientist looks like one of Wylan's school pals along the way"

KAZ

i mean it's true but you didn't have to say it

KAZ IS SMILING OMG

EVERYONE FREAK OUT WITH ME

HE'S "grinning like and idiot" STOP I LOVE HIM

"We are all someone's mosnter, Nina"

"I will have you without armour, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all"

this part breaks my heart and i love it

"Stay," she oanted. Tears leaked from her eyes. "Stay till the end"

"And after," he said. "And always."

i just- helnik is perfect

AWWW JESPER MISSES WYLAN

my daily dosis of wesper :)

ok but in like 2 pages jesper tought of wylan like 10 times bc he's sad wy isn't with him

Jesper scanned the empty deck. He's assumed Wylan would come up to see them off. (...)

Jesper knew he was being selfish and stupid, but some petty part of him wondered if Wylan had deliberately kept away from him on the journey back. Maybe now that the job was complete and he was on his way to his share of the haul, Wylan was done slumming with criminals.

*charles boyle's insinuating voice* and why do you care so much???

btw YOU ARE WRONG. HE'S LITERALLY GOING OUT OF HIS WAY TO BE WITH YOU EVEN THOUGH HE CAN'T SPEAK

this scene where we find out the truth about wylan hurts so much but it's one of my favourites idk why

I LOVE THAT EVERYONE IS AS MAD AS I AM ABOUT THE LETTERS NOW

"Your're a fool," Jesper snarled. "He smarter than most of us put together, and he deserves a better father than you."

YES TELL HIM

the fact that wylan just heard him say that omg

"Deserved" amended Van Eck. He blew the whislte twice.

SOMEONE BETTER GRAB ME BEFORE I KILL HIM MYSLEF

THAT IDIOT

I HATE HIM SO MUCH

I'M GONNA CRY CAN SOMEONE KILL HIM FOR ME

Jesper screamed in rage and raised his guns.

YES EXACLTY WHAT I MEANT

JUST KILL HIM RIGHT NOW

"I'm not big on bludding, am I Inej?"

"Not as a rule"

Van Eck's lip curled. "And why is that?"

"Because he'd rather cheat," said the boy who was not Kuwei Yul-Bo in perfect, unaccented Kerch.

THIS WAS PERFECT

THE BEST WAY TO REVEAL THAT

(...), and Jesper flinched

baby he recognized wylan's voice

The Shu boy held out a hand. "Pay up, Kaz"

BITCH THIS IS AMAZING

THIS BOY MADE A BET WITH A CRIMINAL THAT HIS OWN FATHER WAS GOING TO TRY TO KILL HIM

AND HE WON THE BET

A nearly perfect replica of Kuwei Yul-Bo stood before them, but he had Wylan's voice, his mannerisms, and - though Kaz could see the fear and hurt in his golden eyes - Wylan's surprising courage, too.

i love it when they compliment him

my boy deserves all the compliments ever

AND KAZ IS PROUD OF HIS SON WE ALL KNOW THIS

Wylan cuold draw a perfectt elevation. He's made a drill that could cut throu Grisha glass from parts of a gate and scavenged bits of jewellery. So what if he couldn't read

this is taking me to some real places

i may cry you've been warned

WYLAN DIDN'T CARE THAT HE MAY BE STUCKED LOOKING LIKE KUWEI

this is making me cry

"A fool would have been waiting to be smashed to bits on that ship. And as for "traitor", you've called me worse in the last few minutes alone."

EXACTLY

YOU TELL HIM WYLAN

Instead, in that moment of threat, when he should have thought only of the fight, he looked at Inej.

BABY

i would've done the same tho she's pretty

amita is sooo pretty i'm gonna die when the show comes out

Jesper was staring at Wylan, his eyes roving over the black hair, the golden eyes. "Why?" he said at last. "Why would you do this?"

nothing to say here except: wesper

You... how many times was it you standing beside me on the deck at night when I tought it was Kuwei?"

"Every time."

i want to cry so bad

"Why does it matter?"

"I don't know!" Jesper said angrily. "Maybe I liked your stupid face."

a very staright and platonic thing to say of course

i know jes we all liked his stupid face

"Jesper made a mistake," said Wylan. "A stupid mistake, but he didn't set out to betray anyone."

YES WYLAN DEFEND YOUR BOYFRIEND

And maybe he'd kept him in the dark about Wyllan because he wanted to punish him a little

even kaz know they like each other come on

Jesper sat with elbows on knees, head in hands. Wylan deside him wearing th face of a stranger.

wylan give him a hug fro me please

he needs it

"Scheming face," murmured Jesper.

"Definitely," agreed Wylan.

i miss inej already

And I'm going to get my girl. Inej could never be his, not really, but he would find a way to give her the freedom he´d promised her so long ago.

i'm ugly crying and so what?

and now we're done....

i want to read this book again omg this is unhealthy

#shadow and bone #s&b #six of crows #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #kaz brekker #grishaverse #inej gahfa #matthias helvar #nina zenik #freddy carter #kit young #amita suman #soc #helnik #kanej #wesper

[tillthelandslide]

Photographer : Henry Cavill Fake Instagram

Author’s note: Hi everyone. Hope you enjoy another fake instagram post. I really do enjoy making this so keep sending me requests, this one wasn’t a request but my own idea, I’m slowly working my way through some different careers so people can relate more to each one if they see their career being represented. Unfortunately, Tumblr on my phone keeps messing up, I usually like to include emojis here and there because to me it feels more real but it wouldn’t let me.

Anyway hope you enjoy - L

Tagged: @harrysthiccthighss @thereisa8ella @magdelen69​ (if you want to be tagged in my post please message me :)

yourname_photography:

yourname_photography had an amazing day shooting with @henrycavill such a pleasure working with you love.

Liked by henrycavill and 1,891,201 others

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fan2 your photography is so good

  ↳ yourname_photography aw thanks love

  ↳ fan3 honestly one of the best photographers out there atm

henrycavill thanks for the amazing day, I had such a nice time, you are so talented

  ↳ yourname_photography oh hush sir, was a joy working with you, you make my job very easy, lets just put it that way

henryfan “love” are they dating or not, we need answers

  ↳ ynfan she’s british, she calls everyone love, but if they were then we should all be happy for them, they don’t owe us answers

henrycavill:

henrycavill it is always such a joy when I get to work with amazingly talented people like @yourname_photography. So lucky to have you in my life, let alone get the opportunity to work together

Photo by @yourname_photography

Liked by yourname_photography, GQ and 991,892 others

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yourname_photography oh hush, you’re the talented one in this relationship kind sir

  ↳ henrycavill <3

  ↳ fan5 relationship? are they dating?

  ↳ fan6 think they’re just friends but I’m happy for them if they are dating

anyachalotra so talented, these are epic

  ↳ henrycavill she sure is

  ↳ yourname_photography thank you Anya

freyaallan:

freyaallan I had such a nice time shooting today with @yourname_photography. Thank you to @henrycavill for making it happen, now I understand why you love her so much. And thank you y/n for making me look so beautiful, think these photos are the best I have ever recieved from a photoshoot.

Photo by @yourname_photography

Liked by yourname_photography, henrycavill and 431,839 others

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fan3 “now I understand why you love her so much” ?? omg they are dating

  ↳ freyaallan I meant he loves working with her and loves the photos she produces, she is one of his favourite photographers

  ↳ fan2 good save

yourname_photography you were beautiful all on your own, needed no help from me miss. It was such a joy working with you, for sure have to do it again sometime

  ↳ freyaallan oh hush! and i’d love that

henrycavill glad you both had such a good time on set, i have always loved y/ns work, she has such a keen eye for this stuff

  ↳ fan2 this post is basically become them trying to convice us all that y/n and henry aren’t dating when we all know they are. good attempts though

photographydaily these photos are clean af

celebrumourmagazine:

celebrumourmagazine Famous Actor Henry Cavill and the photographer Y/n are now rumoured to be dating. The pair have had many photoshoots together and have a history of confusing fans with their comments on each others posts. But what is really tipping people off is a quote from Freya Allan, Cavill’s co-star in the Netflix show; The Witcher, where she said “I had such a nice time shooting today with @yourname_photography. Thank you to @henrycavill for making it happen, now I understand why you love her so much”. Allan then tried to cover her tracks by commenting on how y/n is one of Henry’s favourite photographers. Cavill too posted “I have always loved Y/ns work, she has such a keen eye for this stuff”. Seems fishy to me, wonder if we will get an explanatio soon. C’mon we deserve it.

Photo by @yourname_photography

Liked by 267,092 people

fan3 the level of disrepect in this post is on a new level. 1. referring to Henry as famous and then not using the same terminology for yn who has worked with so many famous actors, musicians, polticians etc and is renowned for her amazing word. 2. “Cavill’s co-star” she’s her own person sis. 3. “we deserve it” no you don’t, you haven’t done anything to deserve anything from them

  ↳ yn-hen-fan thats the tea sis

geraltofriviafans ffs leave them alone. there is the little thing people like to have. its called privacy

celebrumourmagazine:

celebrumourmagazine Famous actor Henry Cavill and Photographer caught kissing on a boat whilst on vaccation with friends and family. We knew they were dating!

Liked by 393,209 people

View all 5,092 comments

fan5 annoying that they didn’t say anything we all would have been okay with it

  fan3 your comment perfectly shows how you wouldn’t have been okay with it. maybe they just wanted some privacy

  fan2 I just found out that this photo amongst a few others were leaked from their phones. Ffs why can’t people respect their privacy y’all wonder why they didn’t say anything; this is why

henrycavill:

henrycavill well the cats out of the bag... not the way we intended to tell you guys which is a shame. We are very sad that this is the way you all had to find out. With both of our jobs being very demanding (we love them nonetheless and are very grateful) we don’t often get to spend time with each other so wanted some time just to ourselves, we wanted to share this amazing relationship with all of our fans when were ready but unfortunately that opportunity was taken from us. We hope you can understand: you all are very important to the both of us and we truly did want to share this with you, but both got a bit too caught up with having each other to ourselves. These photos were taken by one of our mutual friends whilst we were on holiday and were leaked from our phones. I am so shocked that they even managed to do this but I will not let them get anymore attention than that.

To my love @yourname_photography: the last couple of months with you have been bliss, I found myself falling more in love with you everyday. Your dedication to your work is truly inspiring, how deeply you care for and love those around you is second to none, you have taught me so much about so many things but the main thing I will cherish is what you have taught me about myself; you have taught me to truly accept myself and have taught me to see myself the way you see me. I love you more than I can even begin to explain and I can’t wait for what’s to come. Having you to myself has been truly wonderful but sharing how amazing you are not only to me but all those around you is something I am going to enjoy. Everyone should know the amazing things you do not only in your photography career but in other aspects of your life <3

Liked by yourname_photography, anyachalotra, freyallan and 1,203,028 others

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yourname_photography this is too sweet Hen, I love you so much. The past couple of months with you have been absolute perfection and I will cherish them forever. You are by far the best thing that has ever happened to me and I am beyond lucky to have you and have had you to myself but I’m ready to share you and to share us with the world

  ↳ henrycavill lets do this shit

freyaallan I was worried that I was going to be the one to leak the news and although I’m annoyed it came out like this I’m glad it wasn’t me XD, wish you could have announced it on your own terms though. I’m beyond happy for the both of you

    ↳ yourname_photography the sweetest girl <3 I thought you recovered quite well in that post XD

anyachalotra the cutest couple of all time... there, i said it

   ↳ yourname_photography said it you did. we are beyond grateful for you and how supportive you were of us from the get go 

   ↳ henry cavill thank you anya, your support means the world to us

yourname_photograhy:

yourname_photography to my beloved Henry: the love you have shown me was one I didn’t believe in growing up, the kind of love I thought only excited in fairytales, books and movies. Boy oh boy was I wrong. The love you give is the kind of love everyone deserves, the kind where you give yourself to someone else fully without any selfishness or expectations. To most people you are Superman, Geralt, August Walker, Charles Brandon, Napoleon Solo and many others. But to me you are all those things and more. You are the guy that brings me my favourite soup when I’m sick, the guy that sits with me for hours trying to pick which photos from a shoot are the best, the guy that brings home lillies because you know they’re my favourite flower, the guy that sends me care packages when you are away, the guy that sends me goofy selfies of you and Kal, the guy that rubs my back and plays with my hair when I cant sleep, the guy that introduced me to my second family: the Cavill’s, the guy that works his god damn hardest everyday, the guy that puts in so much effort to raise awareness for endangered species and the fight that Durrell do, the guy that does so many amazing things yet expects nothing in return. You are the epic love of my life and I do not deserve you <3, you amazing, beautiful human, never change <3

Liked by henrycavill, anyachalotra, joeybateyofficial and 1,583,039 others

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fan6 HOW CAN ANYBODY NOT LIKE HER? THE WAY SHE TALKS ABOUT HIM, I MEAN UGHH SO FLOOFY

fan4 this post got more likes than henrys bc everyone realised they cant not like her

   ↳ henrycavill you made me cry ): now come give me kisses

   ↳ yourname_photography im coming, oops nearly tripped over kal

   ↳ fan 8 haha she’s commenting as she’s doing it how cute

joeybateyofficial all the haters be like “hmm, fuck” bc they realise there is -9182 reasons to hate you

   ↳ yourname_photography thanks for bringing the geralt comments here, someone had to do it :)

   ↳ joeybateyofficial it’s a honour :) happy for both of you... always knew he was a big soft... despite his rock hard abs

   ↳ yourname_photography spend a lot of time looking at my boyfriends rock hard abs much then? XD

   ↳ henrycavill not as much as you @yourname_photography, ayeee XD

#henry cavill fluff #henry cavill #henry cavill smut #henry #henry cavill angst #henry cavill imagine #henry cavill imagines #henry cavill fan fic #henry cavill fanfiction #geralt #geralt smut #geralt imagines #henry cavill fake instagram #henry cavill au meme #henry cavill geralt #henry cavill superman #geral of rivia #geralt fanfic #august walker smut #august walker imagine #henry cavill fics

[recentanimenews]

Spy x Family – 01 (First Impressions) – Toupees are a No-Go

The master spy Twilight never wanted a family. He’d sworn such emotional connections off when he decided to become a master spy. Connections would only slow him down or compromise him. But now his latest mission is to gather intel on a man who only attends school related social functions. So he crafts the name Loid Forger, gets an apartment, all-too-easily adopts a 4-to-6-year-old  girl named Anya, and begins to craft the illusion that he is a father.

As you’d expect, someone who’d sworn family off does not make the best dad out of the box, and he’s clearly thrown off by Anya’s chaotic behavior, so he raids the library for parenting books. But at the end of the day, he’s like every other new parent out there: on his own, and needing to stay on his toes. He’s now responsible for a life other than his own.

Little does he know that his secret about being a spy isn’t a secret, nor are any of his thoughts. That’s because Anya is an esper, able to effortlessly read his mind and those of anyone else she chooses. This is the result of shadowy human experimentation project from which she fled and has been in and out of foster families and orphanages ever since.

Anya’s built-in struggles with family stability create instant pathos and sympathy for her, on top of her being someone you want Loid to protect at all costs. That said, she really makes it harder than it needs to be by messing with Loid’s spy stuff while he’s out, and ends up getting kidnapped by the same people Loid worked with in his previous mission (I love their leader’s insistence politicians can pretend they’re not bald).

Loid is jumped by several thugs, but while it looks like he’s had his head stove in by a pipe, when he’s brought before the thugs’ boss, he’s not the man with the sack on his head; he switched himself out somewhere along the way. He rescues Anya in disguise and tells her to run to the nearest police station, as he’s decided his mission is to dangerous to involve a little girl. But after he deals with the boss, Anya is still there waiting for him, and makes it clear she wants to remain a family.

Loid relents, and then helps Anya study for the entrance exam needed to be accepted to the academy where his target’s kid also goes, thus giving him the access he needs. It’s a good thing he helped her memorize the answers, too, because none of the minds of the kids around her know them! When Loid finds her number on the board of accepted students, he can’t contain his genuine joy, and is suddenly hit by all the built-up exhaustion of the last few days.

He manages to get home and passes out on the couch. Anya gets the mail (telling the mailman “her mother doesn’t exist”) then sees Loid asleep and vulnerable, and decides to curl up under his arm, finally with a home and parent to her name after so much heartbreak and pain. When Loid wakes up to read the mail that arrived, he learns that having a daughter won’t be enough: he’ll need a wife in order to pass the second admission test. How hard could it be?

Spy x Family is a taut, brisk, and thoroughly charming and heartwarming story of a spy’s ice cold heart gradually melting in the presence of the world’s cutest telepathic orphan. Will he really abandon her like all those others once his mission is complete, or will the fake family he’s building (and will soon complete with a fake wife) convince him he can have “conventional happiness”?

By: braverade

#Anime #News #RABUJOI – An Anime Blog

[firemanwhenthefloodsrollback]

Who Saved The Day? Season 3

Evening all. I'm back with the third instalment of my series Who Saved The Day? looking at who, numerically, saved the day the most times in buffy the vampire slayer. At the end of season two we left the totals at:

Buffy: 23

Angel: 3

Giles: 3

Chris: 1

Kendra: 1

Sid: 1

Willow: 1

Xander: 1

as we go deeper through the seasons we'll be getting deeper, darker and more morally complex, becoming more and more of an ensemble show and introducing more characters so without further ado, let's see where we end up in season three.

1. Anne: Lily

Buffy literally brings hope and the idea of rebellion to Hell in this episode and teaches Lily that it's possible to keep living - she clearly does lots. But Lily gathers the strength to push Ken onto the concrete mid-speech and literally deprive the hell dimension of its demon. Four for you lily, you go lily.

2. Dead Man's Party: Buffy

Clearly, definitely Buffy. In the midst of being treated like crap, frankly, by the people who are meant to love her, Buffy still finds the time to put a shovel in the eyes of a mask demon.

3. Faith, Hope & Trick: Faith

Faith gets the point in her very first episode - I'd expect nothing less from you babe. Yes Buffy did a lot, and Faith is certainly emotionally all over the place, but she puts a large piece of architecture through Kakistos' chest.

4. Beauty And The Beasts: Angel

I'm far from an Angel stan but arriving looking more monster than man, saving the day when no one believed he still had it in him to even recognise buffy, then falling to his knees and calling her by her name is a hell of an ending.

5. Homecoming: Cordelia

Am I biased by wanting Cordelia to have this point? Yes, yes I am. But her speech to Lyle about why she's so threatening he needs to escape when Buffy is knocked out absolutely does save them and she deserves a hell of a lot for that.

6. Band Candy: Buffy

Buffy certainly burns that demon. This isn't an episode that makes me think of danger or fighting though, this is an episode that makes me think of Snyder partying at the bronze and Giles and Joyce having sex on the hood of a police car. So really they won. But technically Buffy incinerated someone.

7. Revelations: Buffy

Buffy and Faith work so well as a team here but only one person can have the point, and Buffy does a good job cutting off that arm. (Fun fact: this is the second episode where Buffy edges the point by stealing an arm!)

8. Lovers Walk: Oz

Oz? This isn't an episode in which the day got saved really, both because the villain was a drunk man feeling his feelings and because it didn't end great. But Oz finding Willow and Xander using his wolf senses probably counts?

9. The Wish: Giles

"Because it has to be." One of Giles' absolute finest moments, gives me such incredible chills.

10. Amends: Buffy

Really it's the deus ex machina of the snow and the powers that be that gets us out of this one, but every episode someone has to get the point, and Buffy's speech gets it.

11. Gingerbread: Buffy

Cordelia gets a lot of points here, but Buffy actually stabs the demon with a wooden stake that she is literally tied to so I couldn't deny Buffy.

12. Helpless: Buffy

Buffy has an awful lot of wins here - it is her show after all - but this is one of my all time favourites and a flawless reminder of why she's one of the all time great heroines. Outsmarting the vampire in her dungarees while terrified with no powers at all is why she is the love of my life.

13. The Zeppo: Xander

"I like the quiet." I know we all have a lot of feelings about Xander in the twenty first century - I do too - but there is no arguing with his speech at the end of the Zeppo.

14. Bad Girls: Buffy

Well she does electrocute that vampire. I think this is Buffy's second electrocution point of the show? It's not an episode that we come away from feeling like we won much though really is it

15. Consequences: Faith

It is firmly Faith that deserves the point by staking Mr Trick. of course, she does go on to make a lot of things much worse in like the next scene when she teams up with the mayor but that's not the point here in this episodes

16. Doppelgangland: Anya

I guess? She very much did cause this issue. But then she solved this issue. So sorta.

17. Enemies: Angel

A lot of people made a very good case for getting the point here. Giles makes the whole plan able to happen, Buffy and Angel actually do the plan, and Buffy fights Faith at the end. But I'm gonna say that as the entire plan hinged on Angel and he did the bulk of the acting job, and the whole thing hinged around him being the main plan guy, it's his point.

18. Earshot: Buffy

Xander discovers the lunch lady's evil plan, but then Buffy whacks her on the head, so it's Buffy's point.

19. Choices: Willow

This was a very ensemble episode and of all the episodes I've done so far, this very much made me feel like insisting on choosing one character per episode doesn't always work. But I had to pick one, and Willow escaped the room she was being held in to rip pages from the books of ascension. The evil beetles were kinda a team effort so I don't know who got the point for dealing with them?

20. The Prom: Buffy

Buffy dealt with the hellhounds and also with issues relating to the end of your first teenage relationship. A double win.

21. Graduation Day 1: Buffy

First parts of two parters are hard guys. Buffy stabs Faith so - I guess? It doesn't help much and it certainly doesn't save the day. But I committed to picking so ???

22. Graduation Day 2: Buffy

A much more straightforward equation. Explode the snake.

So in season 3 we had a much lower proportion of Buffy wins compared to the first few seasons but still, obviously, a lot - I think reflecting the show becoming more of an ensemble cast and letting supporting characters shine more. We also had our second arm-theft victory for Buffy, which is not a connection I would ever have made if I hadn't started writing this series of posts. Who knew. If you think I've got anything wrong please do let me know!

At the end of Season 3 our leaderboard is:

Buffy: 32

Angel: 5

Giles: 4

Faith: 2

Willow: 2

Xander: 2

Anya: 1

Chris: 1

Cordelia: 1

Kendra: 1

Lily: 1

Oz: 1

Sid: 1

If you'd like to read the rest of the series you can find them here!

Intro post, Season 1, Season 2, Season 4, Season 5, Season 6, Season 7

#who saved the day series #buffy #btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #buffy meta #season three

[mewrising]

@pumpkin-bread - a happy birthday lair review for you! I could look through your lair ten times and find ten entirely different groups of dragons to review--it's so stunning and goodness, I cannot imagine the amount of effort it took for you to write all that lore. You continue to be one of my biggest inspirations in the FR community--it's not every day you see someone write lore for such a large lair! As someone who often feels lost amidst the sea of dragons they possess, it's so refreshing to know that, no, it isn't an impossible struggle to write lore for every single one. I take heart in knowing that, someday, I'll be able to fill my lair with amazing stories like you have. Now, I'm done being sappy--it's time to review some lore dragons! (pardon the lack of lair order in the review--my tabs went all wonky as I browsed XD )

Dorothy's lore is so creative and honestly kinda sad! This poor kid can't manage to get it all right--sure, his life now is better than it was when he was essentially a cash cow for his parents, but it still sucks a lot to be isolated from any sort of draconic affection. It seems some changes have happened to the Manor where he lives (is he truly alone now?)...I hope he'll eventually be able to find his ideal life through them.

Misto's lore is 10/10--what a fun concept! I feel so bad for this poor man...he just wants to make some dang coffee and his past simply won't leave him alone. His outfit totally gives coffeemaker vibes as well, and I love how well the mane matches his shirt and pants!

I don't know if I've ever mentioned to you how much I love Amberspire's lore so I just want to take Anya (who is stunning) as an example of why the Amberspire lore is so dang good. I love the concept of a seemingly "pure" and wealthy city hiding such a "dark" and corrupt social hierarchy. I can't imagine the sort of things Anya has seen and done over the course of her time as Pepper's right hand, and what sorts of strings the two of them pull in the background to keep the city running to specifications of its "true" rulers. It's so clear that your lair has a history to it--a history built on years of revision and tweaking. I love that there are generations of residents...that the old leader has retired to let a "puppet" heir take the her place. I'm too attached to my clan's leader to let the effects of time really have that kind of effect on my lore but, dang, reading Amberspire's story really makes me wish I would sometimes. I know this has nothing really to do with Anya but I just wanted to ramble, dangit XD

Malygos' lore is simple but so fun and fitting! The trope of a grumpy old mentor/healer is timeless and never ceases to appeal to me. He makes a great member of the guard, and his contributions are certainly quite vital to the runnings of such an advanced guard program! Lovely colors as well <3

Speaking of favorite tropes, I absolutely adore Penny the lighthearted mechanic! It's always good to see (read about?) people/dragons who take genuine joy in their work, and Penny is no exception. Such a fun persona! And, boy, do I relate with the idea of not knowing when to let a job be. Just like Penny, my friends have had to force me to leave my projects for long enough to stretch and have a meal XD

Golly, Lytra is stunning. I love the contrast of her dark accent with her bright colors! And that lore...bless her heart, I can't imagine what it would have been like for her first failure in the Shade-purging trade to be someone so close to her. I'm glad she's been able to move on somewhat through her travels and new experiences!

Ushi's colors intrigued me, and I found his lore quite delightful! The contrast between his role as a singer and his shy personality is so wonderful and I can totally picture him transitioning from singing his heart out to mumbling out words when asked a question.

I have a soft spot for dragons that stand in for beastclans and other non-dragon creatures, so I had to spotlight Haku in this little review! He's got such a fun and pleasant character, and I love the idea of a member of such a "bloodthirsty" species farming in peace. You always do such a good job of creating fun contrasts!

Embermere's colors are so gorgeous, and I love that he (essentially) gambled his success in life on shooting his shot--and it worked? He and Queen Requiem make an intriguing pair to be sure, and I love that their initial "spark" has now settled out into a genuinely loving relationship. (also, how wholesome is that origin story for him as an ~actual~ dragon (not his history, just how you got him)? the people of FR are their own special breed, I've gotta say ;o; )

Tombolo caught me eye right as I started my browse through your lair, and, reading his bio, I am just in awe of what a special dragon he is? As a relative newbie to FR, it's hard to imagine a time where triples didn't exist. The fact that he was the first ever triple marigold to exist on site is a tremendous feat! And his lore is wonderful as well--it continues that amazing sense of history in your lair. I can tell that his story has evolved right alongside the rest of your clan, and that will never stop being cool to me ;o;

....since when has there been an image limit on Tumblr posts??? this review isn't done (I've got exactly ten more dragons left to review lol) so be on the lookout for the second post!

#untagged #happy birthday fren <3

[that-shamrock-vibe]

Movie Review: The New Mutants (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the week following the movie first airing in the U.K, so if you haven’t yet seen The New Mutants do not read on until you have.

General Reaction:

A three year delay for the final instalment of a twenty-year franchise, was it ultimately worth it? Well as an X-Men fanatic I am always going to say yes, it wasn’t a swan song or a wrap up to the X-Men Cinematic Universe, far from as it was originally pitched as the start of a trilogy and does sew the seeds for that. However, while Dark Phoenix did feel like a sombre instalment not only for that “First Class” timeline but also the team movies as a whole, this had an air of sadness to it because this is the last time I will see anything X-Men related on the big screen for who knows how long.

In that sense, this was an emotional movie for me, more than just the fact that the emotion of fear is a running theme through the movie. However, in terms of my actual enjoyment of the movie, it was a very good movie for what it was.

When your very final movie is effectively an origin movie then there’s always going to be that sense of incompleteness, and what this movie teases both for these characters and who is the big bad behind all of this, it’s really frustrating to know it’s over before it truly starts.

With that in mind, The New Mutants is very slow to get started as there’s a lot of exposition and because it feels like it’s own branch of the X-Men Cinematic Franchise, similar to Deadpool, there is a level of “Beginner’s Guide to Mutants 101″ at play here with the explanation of what a Mutant is and when a young or “New Mutant” first discovers their powers that, to give this movie credit, I have never truly seen explored properly outside of the comics other than a quick explanation from Storm to Jubilee in the first episode of X-Men: The Animated Series.

It’s also disappointing to know that unlike X-Men: The Last Stand or Dark Phoenix, there isn’t a sense of finality for these characters as we have just been introduced to them. Outside of Sunspot who has briefly appeared in X-Men: Days of Future Past, this is the first cinematic appearance for all of these characters. The X-Men are briefly mentioned and Professor X is alluded to quite cleverly but every character outside of Sunspot is debuting here and to know they’re never going to be seen in this continuity again with a chance to develop is very sad.

In terms of the “horror” aspects of this movie I have to say this is very comic-book horror as in how Blade in the late 90s was horror. If you know the jump scares in this movie are coming then there are no jump scares, so basically if you’ve seen the trailers you know the jump scares.

As a horror movie, it felt very much like It-lite in terms of the theme of bringing nightmares into reality, only without the hard R-rating of the blood and gore because outside of one maybe two scenes there is nothing truly horrific to look at here.

There’s also a great parallel to the Gentlemen from Buffy the Vampire Slayer shown from their episode in this movie and the Smiley Men who are Illyana’s nightmare brought to life. They’re creepy like them but they’re not as sinister as them...and that is a great choice of wording considering who the big bad behind the scenes of this movie is.

As an X-Men movie, which is what this is as the New Mutants in the comics are basically younger versions of the X-Men, as I say the first half of this movie isn’t that power heavy but is about introducing and establishing this team, the second half/last third on the other hand is power heavy. Not exactly Days of Future Past or Apocalypse heavy but still heavy for the powers this group of Mutants have.

Overall generally as both an X-Men movie and a comic-book movie, this was really a great movie particularly for the first new movie I have seen since lockdown.

Characters:

So this breakdown will be easy as there’s only really six characters to talk about but I’m going to make it a seven-character breakdown as the looming presence in the shadows of this movie deserves their own section.

Illyana Rasputin:

Alright so it is somewhat difficult to say if Illyana is my favourite or if Rahne is my favourite but I ultimately landed on Illyana for first as Anya Taylor-Joy is really in the spotlight the entire way through this movie. Every time she’s in a scene she commands the attention, and all five of the New Mutants have solo scenes so for Illyana to stand out the most, this is why she is #1 for me.

I’m not entirely sure where this movie takes place in terms of the overall X-Men timeline...but considering it’s supposedly in the revised timeline and Colossus is a member of the X-Men in the late noughties/early 2010s, I imagine this is either around the same time or can even be modern day (2017 or 2020).

Anya Taylor-Joy is as suited to the role of Magik as Channing Tatum would have been as Gambit in my opinion. Not only does she have a reasonable Russian accent but she just simply looks like how Magik looks in the comics.

I loved the rebel teen angst she had all the way through from when we first meet her to the very end, not only is it fitting for the movie but in my opinion it’s fitting for the character. This is a girl that literally goes through some resemblance of hell and is effectively a serial killer so of course she is going to have this icy dark exterior.

In terms of powers, I am slightly disappointed she never fully armoured up, it was always just her left arm that she had armoured complete with Soulsword, whereas in the comics her main look is her entire body. I guess the argument could be made the majority of it is simply a uniform and her arm is the only part armoured but I would have liked to have at least seen her crown.

But Magik’s powers for me here are an interesting combination of Zatanna and Nightcrawler which is a very good combination. The scene where she first appears through limbo fighting the Smiley Men was very impressive.

I would have also enjoyed it if we had spent more time in Limbo, given that we always saw cameo flashes of it whenever she manifested a portal, but we never actually had a full scene of her in her “special place”.

Not being too familiar with the comics however, I am almost completely unaware of Lockheed as a character. My only prior knowledge is his appearance in Pryde of the X-Men as a pest and I have to say I much prefer him here. The animation of both Lockheed and the Demon Bear were stellar.

As I say, I feel we have only just scratched the surface with where this version of Magik could go. I doubt very much Kevin Feige would bring Anya Taylor-Joy back if/when he does bring the character into the MCU because he doesn’t like playing with used toys but if ever there was an exception I would hope it would be her.

Rahne Sinclair:

It is slightly obvious to think of when Maisie Williams was filming for this movie as her hair, unless it’s a wig, is in that “Arry” phase of her Game of Thrones tenure.

Because of the current entertainment climate and the non-starting stance this movie finds itself released in, I think the lesbian romance between Rahne and Dani is going to go unnoticed. But considering this is the first major LGBT romance in a comic-book property I feel this movie will be cheated out of that representation in favour of what is to eventually come from Marvel.

Outside of the romance, I feel Rahne’s story rooted in her religion and mutation was fantastic. I love me some werewolf action and I feel I saw enough actual wolf to satisfy Rahne spending most of her time in “halfway form” as the character has been known to do in the comics.

The fact her nightmare was that religious leader branding her as a werewolf and thereby a monster, not only was it believable given her character but also the parallels to devout religious views on homosexuality were subtle but there.

I do feel the character spent way too much time screaming towards the end of the movie. This girl is a werewolf but spent most of the final battle as the screaming protector of her unconscious lover, I mean she was I guess helpful in waking Dani back up but never truly let rip like I feel the character could have.

I’m not entirely sure if Williams has any Scottish heritage about her but the slipping in and out of the accent was slightly distracting at times. When she was able to be loud the accent was often broken but in her quieter moments or longer dialogue scenes you could hear it.

I do appreciate keeping the nationality of the character from the comics, considering the mess they made of Banshee and Moira MacTaggert, and I do understand having an at the time name talent like Maisie Williams in the role, but there are surely Scottish actresses out there and the casting pool wasn’t exactly high for this movie.

Dani:

The main character in this movie, or focal character I guess as it’s an ensemble movie, is either Illyana or Dani, but because we start with Dani and are introduced to the other characters through Dani I guess she is the focal character.

Again, I give credit to the movie for keeping the nationality of the characters from the comics, but while Anya Taylor-Joy and Maisie Williams border on appropriation as they are not Russian or Scottish themselves, although Anya is of Scottish Argentine descent, Blu Hunt is at least Native-American as Dani is. I think they come from different tribes but I don’t think people are going to focus too much on that technicality.

Similarly to all these characters I don’t really know much about Dani so have no frame of reference to compare her to. I remember she appeared in one episode of X-Men: Evolution and I know her powers involve dreams, which similarly to the majority of the characters in this movie lends itself beautifully to a horror movie, but that’s about it.

I felt her relationship with Rahne was genuine and her own “survivors guilt” over being the only member of her family still alive after the Demon Bear attack was well explained.

I just didn’t understand why it was decided that Reyes had to kill Dani because of the severity of her powers, maybe it was the unpredictability of her powers because their limitations are literally the power of imagination, but I thought Reyes was responsible for sorting out those capable of being killers...surely the power to bring nightmares to life as many times as it takes to kill the person qualifies?

With the Demon Bear being tamed at the end of the movie, I kind of don’t see anywhere for Dani to go if they did continue, she still has the power to solidify nightmares, and I guess she can always call on the Demon Bear, but unlike Rahne or Magik I do not see any further development for her.

Sam:

Sam Guthrie aka Cannonball was an interesting one for me as I knew the character and I knew the actor, but hadn’t properly seen either one fully explored before. I have not watched Stranger Things so do not really know Charlie Heaton’s acting potential...but what I do know is he is from Yorkshire and cannot really do a Kentucky accent.

As for the character of Cannonball, I thought that early scene of him strapping himself to that weight while zooming through the air to either test himself or hurt himself was really well realised. There wasn’t enough of him going full cannonball throughout the movie, mostly it just came across as a sort of super speed which in a way I guess it is but projecting that force-field while he is zooming about is what makes the power set unique.

Similarly to Dani he had guilt over his nightmare which was him causing a mining accident which killed his co-workers and dad, but unlike Dani who never really developed the thought of it being her fault for her family’s death because of her conjuring the Demon Bear, Sam did at least hold a lot of guilt over what had happened...despite his nightmare being probably the weakest as the main effect it had was totalling a washing machine.

I also didn’t understand the back-to-back scenes of Sam suggesting he was meant to be in the hospital and felt he had to be there, but then in the next scene him trying to walk out saying he doesn’t belong there. Maybe it was the editing but it just seemed like a complete 180 from scenes that were literally back-to-back.

Roberto:

As I said this is Sunspot’s second cinematic appearance and I guess in the revised timeline he has gone from being portrayed by Mexican actor Adan Canto to now Brazilian actor Henry Zaga.

I didn’t feel the boys in this movie had that much to do, with both Sam and Berto it did feel like them simply coming to terms with their powers. I did like how both had that fear of hurting people and both had to learn I guess to push past that fear.

With Berto’s fear though, I do feel his power first manifesting in conjunction to him reaching sexual maturity was very well explored, because of course the combination of testosterone and becoming a living solar flare are not exactly two things anyone wants to mix. So when the result is burning your girlfriend to a crisp it is going to shake you.

Outside of his powers though there wasn’t a lot to the character and it is hard to remember a good line that he or Sam had that weren’t douchey, but for what we got he was a good character.

Reyes:

Wow this woman deserved to be eaten by the Demon Bear, which by the way I found almost as humorous as Katie McGrath being carried away by a pterodactyl in Jurassic World.

But yes, this doctor was the “villain” of the movie as she was the agent of the big bad Essex Corporation in charge of determining the new mutants’ powers and whether or not they’re worth progressing to their facility.

Outside of that I didn’t really think much of her as a character, she wasn’t a sympathetic character, she wasn’t believing to be doing this for the benefit of these young mutants, she was simply following orders.

It’s a deviance from the comics where Reyes is a hero and member of the X-Men, whereas here she is far from it.

Alice Braga is also regionally appropriately cast as she is Brazilian whereas the character is Puerto Rican, although whenever she spoke I kept thinking about Gal Gadot a lot, even looks wise there are similarities.

Sinister:

Now let’s talk about the looming big bad who I imagine would have been the major big bad of this supposed trilogy. Despite the new mutants believing the facility to be owned and run by the X-Men, it is in fact run by the Essex Corporation...Essex as in Dr. Nathaniel Essex, a biologist obsessed with evolution who became the Mutate supervillain Mister Sinister.

I want to see Mister Sinister in a live-action movie so badly it’s unreal, they’ve done Apocalypse so why they can’t do Sinister I don’t know.

This isn’t the first time Sinister has been alluded to as the Essex Corporation was in an end credits scene of X-Men: Apocalypse that acquired samples of Wolverine’s blood presumably to create X-23, but because those events took place in the 80s and these events take place in somewhat modern day it’s hard to correlate the two.

Obviously we are no longer going to get X-Men movies in this universe and continuity, but with the seeds being sown for Sinister more than once now, the baton has been laid down for Feige to finally bring this villain to life.

Reccomendation:

If like me you are more or less interested in just completing the twenty-year franchise because you love these characters and any interpretation of them then this is the movie for you. However, don’t expect wall to wall action, and I would recommend not getting too attached to these characters. It’s too late for me with Illyana I already love her and already feel Anya Taylor-Joy has set a high bar for whoever plays Magik next.

But for me personally, this franchise has been my favourite movie franchise and my favourite property. Even the bad movies I can at least find something good about them regardless of if the overall movies have been good or not. But just to reiterate, I do feel this is one of the good movies.

In a ranking of the 13 movies (not counting Once Upon a Deadpool), this ranks somewhere between #6-8 for me.

Overall I rate the movie a solid 8/10, by no means the best or a perfect X-Men movie but by no means one of the worst. The movie benefits from new characters (aside from Sunspot) but suffers due to the inevitability of this being the definitive end for the current franchise.

So what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Movie Reviews as well as other posts.

#the new mutants #new mutants #x-men #x-universe #magik #wolfsbane #danielle moonstar #sunspot #cannonball #cecelia reyes #mister sinister #illyana rasputin #rahne sinclair #dani moonstar #roberto da costa #sam guthrie #nathaniel essex #anya taylor joy #maisie williams #charlie heaton #blu hunt #alice braga #henry zaga

[hoochy-coo]

I have a question for WS anon if they don't mind answering - I read somewhere that often celebs are not as rich as they appear to be. So, how common is it for celebs to exaggerate their wealth?

Celebs get a lot of free stuff from luxury brands and free services too. Moreover, a lot of celebs also get exclusive discounts from luxury brands if they're not given to them for free. Celebs definitely live a life of luxury and are able to afford way more than the common people. But there's a difference between Beyonce and let's say the Pretty Little Liars cast (I'm choosing celebs being talked about in your blog). There's a reason why celebs can afford to live in high end neighborhoods in LA but choose not to live in those gated communities. For some it may be a choice since a lot of celebs don't expect to live in the same house for the rest of their lives, but a gated community also spikes the price rates in the same neighborhood by a margin. Most celebs would be able to afford a first class ticket, but not all of them actually have the capacity to go on private jet every single time they travel. TL;DR celebs are rich but most of them just live off a luxurious facade and actually have a lifestyle more than they earn.

Is WS anon still around? I would like to ask her something not HO related. I'm big Lily Collins fan and to be honest her relationship with Charlie McDowell makes me cringe. He's known for being d**k and heard only bad things about him. Did you heard anything about this two?

Lily Collins was my upperclassman. A friend told me Lily isn't that bad but hearing her talk and most importantly complain, is very much akin to a nepotism child who has never struggled a day in her life. There were times their classmates wanted to tell her Phil Collins is famous but he isn't THAT relevant. Some other upperclassman have told me Lily always wanted to be a star and Audrey Hepburn but just doesn't have the work ethic or the talent for it.

Does WS anon have any tea on ATJ? or Olivia Rodrigo? I like them both a lot and always heard good things but recently I've been seeing people say that fame went over their heads and that they'rude and dismissive behind the scenes and tbh I don't know if I believe them cause the timing is sus iykwim

Do you mean Aaron Taylor Johnson or Anya Taylor Joy? But I'm guessing it's the latter? My dad worked on all of the Fox's X-Men franchise. Anya isn't exactly friendly but she's VERY professional and hard working and expects the same from other people. That was even before she's famous so she has always been like that. But people like her because she isn't unreasonable, she's just professional and serious on her craft. As for Olivia Rodrigo, I've heard mix things but even my friends agree she's way too young to be properly judged and she's probably just acting like a lot of people her age.

You people friends sound like judgmental as*hloes. shock horror some of us have oily skin and having pores and wrinkles is normal 😒.

I'm guessing this includes my friend? Yeah she can be an asshole no doubt about it, but like Jessie's friend she does that to people she's close with and gives us free skincare even. She's also like that with every celeb she meets anyway and share to us how she finds their skin. I haven't heard her comment on anyone whom (a) she's not close with or (b) a rich ass bitch whose source of income also relies on their looks and have all the resources for the best dermatologist and skincare. She can be lacking on the sensitivity side but I can't really consider her comments coming from malice rather than her obsession with skincare and dermatology.

- Worcestershire Sauce Anon

!!!

My friend has the same attitude as yours tbh! I don’t think she’s got had intentions but I get what you’re saying about the lack of sensitivity at times lmao

#WS

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG169 (nice)~

- So, no cookie for guessing Desolation with this one, but big kudos to those who guessed that the episode would be reminiscent of the Grenfell Tower fire. Oh boy, what a domain it was ;; Desolation episodes have always felt extremely cruel and this one went veeerrry harsh on the torture and despair, even before the physical pain of it (as Jon said, “Some fears don’t need to be intensified; only manifested”). I really felt the nightmare-logic in this one, the feeling of being trapped and discovering/realising the rules and parameters as they became relevant; a little scenario that felt repeated, again and again, beginning badly (home as a prison, a toxic place that one cannot help but love because it’s familiar and theirs) and only getting worse, with Sabina losing everything (parents, possessions, physical safety), while at the same time… everything was rooted in something very concrete, very logical, very relatable, laced with poverty and the loss of agency.

- The edge in Jon’s voice for this one was terrifying (and so was the soundscaping, expressing what was being said), and it seemed… on point for The Desolation. Jude directly called him out about the fact that he himself was enjoying the fear but, even before that, the way Jon narrated Sabina’s nightmare really hammered in the cruelty and sadistic glee of the domain feeding on her ;; The mentions of the “landlord” were especially chilling, given a rhythmic, almost casually fatalistic c’est-la-vie tone to the whole ordeal (… while no, clearly, it wasn’t, and even if the fire had been accidental, there should have been ways and options to make it out… but no, due to an accumulation of negligence/neglect turning into something criminal):

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: “But the door latch never really aligned properly, you see; the landlord always said he was going to get it fixed and… it refuses to open. […] The window frame never really opened properly, you see; the landlord always said he was going to get it fixed. […] But the fire escape was always really rusty, you see; the landlord always said he was going to replace it. […] Falling back into the inferno that is now her home, Sabina dashes over to the laughably small fire extinguisher the landlord begrudgingly provided; it is sputtering, and empty.”

(… Jon impersonating the parents’ screams sadly took me out of it on first listen, because the “We’re BURNING” immediately made me think of Jonny-playing-Galahad in HNOC’s “Hellfire” and the “We’re FALLING into the flames”, which was a bit of a mood-whiplash x”) It worked better on second listen, and again, WHAT is Jon currently feeding to the tape recorders…)

- Same as in other domains, memories were clearly rewritten or only made accessible to serve the dominant Fear at stake:

(MAG163) ARCHIVIST: “Next to him, Charlie saw Ryan, who he’d known since childhood – though the other details were hazy. Ryan gave him a thumbs-up and an encouraging smile – before his face exploded inwards to a sniper’s bullet, peppering the boat with shards of bone and gore.”

(MAG164) ARCHIVIST: “There was never a time before the disease, no matter what the old bastards tell you. It has always been in the village, always festered in the dark corners where nobody could stomach to check, where good neighbours wouldn’t dream to speculate.”

(MAG165) ARCHIVIST: “Its pace remaining as it ever was, it does not care for coming pains as you are torn. Doesn’t it know who you are? No…  And soon… neither will you. […] You will be someone again, someday. […] “I’m still Hannah!” you try to scream, but are you? No. Perhaps there’s some Veronica as fragments there, or Julian, or Anya, but… no. You feel the last of names and “who” you might have been be torn away and borne towards new bodies. New pages, blank; determined to be people.”

(MAG166) ARCHIVIST: “When had the crushing pressure in his chest become literal? When had the empty promise of the horizon finally vanished completely, replaced by the pitch darkness of this “forever wall of earth”? Sam did not know. Time had no meaning here. […] His existence was static, and eternal. Immutable. “Sleep” was only a memory, because even the prospect of unconsciousness might have made his present state slightly more bearable. Food as well, he knew, must be a thing, for he could feel the hunger, but his imagination failed to picture it. The only smell he knew was the damp, and the dirt.”

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: “How long as she lived here? How long have these cramped, dingy rooms in the back of this sprawling rundown tenement been the place her heart calls home? She cannot recall, but long enough for her to grow into love for it, to cherish every rusted appliance, every crumbling piece of plasterboard, every – flickering – lightbulb. […] Sabina cannot… picture their faces, but knows that should they wake to see the state of the place… their anger would be blistering. […] What floor was her flat on again? Surely, it can’t be this high. […] Limping and desperate, she turns to see her furniture in flames, the bookshelves full of memories, that she can’t quite place [STATIC RISES] but knows are precious to her, curl and float away as ash. The photos on the wall of her family whose faces seem indistinct but she knows that she loves, begin to blacken, as the glass pops out of the frame.”

For Sabina, memories were only useful to represent what she would lose. (;; It’s one of the things that still makes me the most uneasy with this season: the fact that regular people are deprived of who they used to be, the memories of who they were… while Jon&Martin are beaming with their Uniqueness. People are trapped in these nightmares but, by comparison, it feels a bit like they’re already “dead” and interchangeable, only allowed to remember things and be reshaped to better fear and feed the Powers…)

- I was wondering what would be the point of avatars in this new world (if they would still feed their patrons, or be absolutely superfluous, etc.). The fact that Jude’s death apparently didn’t perturb the Desolation domain very much tends to prove that they aren’t necessary, so it really seems like the keyword was what Oliver said last episode:

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “Sometimes, for some small variety, I will allow Danika to brush against another root: the final fate of someone she loves. […] And with each one, she knows her steps forward bring closer not only her own end, but all of theirs. Time walks forward with her, but she has not the strength to stop it. Her fate draws ever-nearer, filling me with the joy of watchful fear, but also my own concerns.”

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: It’s a maze in there, deliberately so. People running, desperately struggling for fire escapes only to find them blocked. … We won’t get lost, though. I know the route. […] “Do you smell smoke? Do you smell… the creeping ruin of a life, a stalking creature of unmaintained electricals, of cheap insulation, of cut-corners and missing fire alarms and unenforced safety regulations? Do you see it creeping under the door to your bedroom as you sleep, the burning coals of its eyes, regarding you in the supposed safety on your home; not indifferent, but hungry, eager to take everything from you, to burn down your life in any sense it can reach? Can you hear the crackling promise of kindled despair, that it whispers into your uneasy, dreaming ear?”

“Variety”? Creativity? Diversifying people’s suffering for the Powers’ enjoyment, and above all The Eye’s? I… wonder what that would mean regarding Jon, as The Eye’s favourite, right now… ;;

- I got genuinely surprised that Jon mentioned Arthur Nolan as still alive, because I thought he had been done for since March 2014 and the events recalled by Jordan Kennedy:

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: So. Now, Diego has taken over… Where does that leave you? ARTHUR: [SNORT] Slumlording over a nest. GERTRUDE: Oh. A nest of… what? ARTHUR: Found a mass of the Crawling Rot growing, a while back. Managed to get a hold of the property before it became too big. Gotta wait ‘til it blossoms before we can properly burn it. So until then… just playing landlord.

(MAG055) JORDAN: Time seemed to move slowly as he reached for the ashtray on the arm of the chair and picked up a pack of matches. He struck one and without even looking at me, he gently pressed the small flame to the centre of the scar. His flesh caught fire, immediately, the flames spreading across his body like rippling water. The armchair caught, then the floor, and then I was running out of the building before the rolling inferno could come at me as well.

(MAG169) MARTIN: Right… I just assumed this would be… Who was that landlord guy? ARCHIVIST: Arthur Nolan. He’s here, he has a… part of it, but it’s… huge. Bigger than you could believe. There’s so much fear in there…

It had felt odd to die from self-immolation, for a Desolation avatar, but we hadn’t seen him since then, and he had lived his time – given how Eugene Vanderstock was aware that he wouldn’t last forever (MAG139: “So, me? I was born in ‘36 – I know, I don’t look seventy. But burning the candle at all ends does have a few advantages. Until you burn out entirely, at least. It’s hard to say how much I’ve got left in me; how much longer my sacrifices can buy me. But when I go… you better believe I’m going big – and it is going to hurt.”), I had assumed that Arthur setting himself on fire was because his time has reached its limit and/or that his life had been tied to The Hive’s nest somehow by Gertrude, and that Jane becoming The Hive meant his final demise or something? But apparently, no, he was still around. I wonder what he was doing during the following four years? (If it was a matter of Desolation avatars respawning in the domain, I’d have expected for Agnes to be mentioned, but she wasn’t, so…)

- Speaking of Arthur, it’s hilarious how much this statement hammered in the confluence of Corruption/Desolation when it comes to one’s life crumbling, getting devastated:

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: “Maybe the dirt and grime builds up to such a degree that the stench begins to infect your soul, or an infestation of moths or ants or bed bugs stretches itself throughout the very structure of your home, until it feels like your skin is squirming with them. […] How long as she lived here? How long have these cramped, dingy rooms in the back of this sprawling rundown tenement been the place her heart calls home? She cannot recall, but long enough for her to grow into love for it, to cherish every rusted appliance, every crumbling piece of plasterboard, every – flickering – lightbulb. Even as the widening cracks and spreading mould fill her heart with dread, they gently, slowly, inch by inch, approach the mildewed room where her parents lie sleeping.”

… Given Arthur’s utter disdain for the idea that The Lightless Flame could be assimilated to anything Corruption-adjacent:

(MAG145) ARTHUR: Not like I can vent to the others about what a prat Diego is! Got a lot of funny ideas. Still calls The Lightless Flame “Asag”, like he was when he was first researching it. I just want to tell him to get over it – I mean, [FASTER AND FASTER] Asag was traditionally a force of destruction, sure, but as a church, we very much settled on burning in terms of the… face we worship, and some… fish-boiling Sumerian demon doesn’t really match up, does it?! Plus, there’s a lot of disease imagery with Asag that I’ll reckon is… way too close to Filth for my taste, but, but no, he read it in some ~ancient tome~, so that’s that– GERTRUDE: Well, I can’t say I– ARTHUR: –reckons he always knows best, ‘cause he’s read a few books, well. Big. Deal! Way I see it, if a writer can’t even save themselves, they probably don’t have a lot worth knowing! Find me one so-called “expert” on all of this who didn’t end up regretting all of it!

I hope your ego and convictions are shattering and that this is your personal hell, Arthur. Diego was RIGHT.

- Regarding Jon and Martin’s own domains, Jon raised the possibility that they were metaphorically trapped in their own quest, and it follows the comments about how they were outside of the box:

(MAG164) MARTIN: Are we safe, traveling like this? ARCHIVIST: Yes… Yes, sort of, we’re… I don’t know how to phrase it, we’re… something between a pilgrim and a moth. We can walk through these little worlds of terror, watching them; separate, and untouched. MARTIN: [NERVOUS CHUCKLING] That’s not as comforting as you might think. ARCHIVIST: I like it better than the alternative…!

(MAG165) MARTIN: But. You said we needed to go through these places. … Is that even going to work here? ARCHIVIST: Uh… [EXHALE] We need to go through them… metaphorically. MARTIN: Mm… ! ARCHIVIST: Psychologically, we need to… “experience” them. […] MARTIN: Jon, what are you talking about? NOT!SASHA: [FURIOUS SNARLS] ARCHIVIST: She can’t touch us. We’re so far beyond her now. NOT!SASHA: [FURIOUS SNARLS] ARCHIVIST: She’s just like everything else here, rules by The Eye.

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: Like I said, I can’t see the future. It wouldn’t free them, if that’s what you’re asking. “Free” doesn’t really exist in this place. MARTIN: Apart from us. ARCHIVIST: I suppose. I–in a sense, though… [CHUCKLING] how much of that is because we are trapped in our own quest to– MARTIN: Okay, let’s, let’s not dive into another… ontological debate right now, not here.

… and 1°) they’re still technically under The Eye – the whole world is its domain right now; 2°) Obligatory “WHAT IS MARTIN’S DOMAIN” (a fixed place? Web, Lonely? The Institute-Panopticon too? Jon as “the Archive”, having ~trapped~ Martin?), 3°) … big Oouft because if they were to consider their quest as the “domain” trapping them… a quest is made around a goal. Jon presented it as a “doomed quest” which was already worrisome, Oliver highlighted that the current system would ultimately collapse on its own, The Buried’s domain taunted its victims with constant hope, so… if the goal kept being unreachable, but still “almost” out of reach, Jon and Martin could be trapped a bit more literally than just on an ontological plane.

- ;w; Martin is afraid of fire…

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: … You said you were onboard. MARTIN: I was! I am; I just… thought… ARCHIVIST: It wouldn’t hurt? MARTIN: … That we’d be safe. ARCHIVIST: I never said– MARTIN: I know! I know, okay, I just… [SOMETHING SHATTERS] Look, I j–, I just don’t want to get burned, alright? It’s, it’s like my least favourite pain ever. ARCHIVIST: Is that… a joke? MARTIN: No, no! Okay? I… I legitimately hate burns, alright, they’re–they’re awful, and they scar horribly, and they just, it– It–it just makes me sick, I–I hate it. Hate it!

* Is it related to the fact that he had to care for his mom from a very young age, and that accidents happened…? That makes his decision to burn statements in MAG117-MAG118 even braver – fire that he could control on his terms, but still, in close proximity to him.

* … Actually, Elias implanting in his mind the truth of how his mother saw him, while Martin had just burned a few statements and was threatening to keep doing it, and when the smell of the fire might have still be floating around at that moment miiiight have added fuel (ha) to Martin’s own fear. Associating bad things and pain to fire.

* Wooft that he hates burns and what they leave, when he’s probably been walking kilometres holding Jon’s all-burned-to-fuck hand.

* YEAH ALSO, that line about how pain can leave a scar even if there is no physical mark to show for it? Is valid on its own but, given Martin’s past, resonates even more when keeping in mind his relationship with his mother and the way Elias inflicted his powers on him and Melanie (MAG118: “Do you want to know what she sees when she looks at you?”). It’s really not empty words, he knows from experience.

* … Same thing as the contrast between MAG117 (“This way I finally get to do something. It’s gonna hurt, but… I’m ready. And I want to. Also, I get to burn some stuff, so that cool!”) and MAG118 (“Don’t. burn. any more. statements.”) around fire: reality not as great as when plans were made, when it comes to the “smiting”, uh.

* … Obligatory “This Is How Web!Martin Can Still Win” since The Desolation and The Web were extremely at odds, and Martin… really was uncomfortable and panicking in this zone, when he had been keeping it together in previous ones (he got very afraid in the Slaughter’s, but it was the first and Martin was discovering the rules):

(MAG139, Eugene Vanderstock) “The compromise we came to… was Hill Top Road. We knew it was a stronghold of The Web, full of other children Agnes’s age. We would supervise from a distance, but were confident she would be in no danger. The Mother of Puppets has always suffered at our hand – all the manipulation and subtle venom in the world means nothing against a pure and unrestrained force of destruction and ruin.”

(Though to be fair: Martin presented himself as a “luxury smörgåsbord” for Fears in MAG117 since he was “just afraid all the time”, was always the Assistant Of Many Fears throughout the series, so it doesn’t have to be significatively a Web indicator – it’s mostly that, well, alright, so Martin can still feel specific, personal fears.)

- … And meanwhile: we went from Jon really casually forgetting that he was using his powers and knew more than he mundanely should have (the beginning of MAG167) to taking a moment to remember that Martin is not omniscient nor a mind-reader, not processing that pain (even temporary and without long-lasting damage) is a genuine factor, and admitting blankly that he’s feeding from this world, which, oops:

(MAG167) [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: Help us with what? MARTIN: ‘xcuse me? ARCHIVIST: Annabelle, help us with “what”? Our–our, our journey, killing Elias, vanishing the Entities – what? [FOOTSTEPS STOP] MARTIN: Please don’t do that. ARCHIVIST: Do what…? Oh! Oh. Right, I, I see, yes. [STATIC FADES] Well, I– … [FOOTSTEPS RESUME] Sorry. MARTIN: It doesn’t… feel great, having someone looking inside your head…! […] I mean, I don’t want to keep secrets from you, but– ARCHIVIST: You should at least… be able to. MARTIN: Basically, yeah…! ARCHIVIST: I–I suppose that’s fair. MARTIN: It’s just… It’s weird, knowing that you can… know literally everything I think and feel– ARCHIVIST: Right… MARTIN: –especially since you’re not exactly the most open of people. Emotionally, I mean.

(MAG169) MARTIN: … Seriously? You don’t– … It’s on fire, Jon, it’s– ARCHIVIST: Yeah, uh… MARTIN: It’s a burning building! ARCHIVIST: Yes, it is. MARTIN: That’s on fire! ARCHIVIST: Yes. MARTIN: … Right. You are aware that traditionally, wading into a flaming inferno is actually considered bad for your health? ARCHIVIST: Yes, Martin. It will be fine. MARTIN: Alright. I just wanted to check. So. Okay. We’re planning to go through… all this, so I’m guessing the fire can’t… actually burn us! Right? Jon? ARCHIVIST: Hum… MARTIN: … Jon? ARCHIVIST: Hum… Mm… MARTIN: Jon. ARCHIVIST: I–it’s complicated. MARTIN: Well, if you want me to go in there with you, then I suggest you find a way to make it simple. “Yes” or “no”, can that fire hurt us? ARCHIVIST: Define “hurt”. MARTIN: Will the fire feel hot to me? ARCHIVIST: Yes. MARTIN: Will it cause me lots of pain, if I touch it? ARCHIVIST: Yes, though not as much as– MARTIN: [SHAKILY BUT STRONG] Will it burn me alive, and kill me dead? ARCHIVIST: … No. It can’t do us any permanent harm; once we’re out, we’ll be fine. MARTIN: You are aware that intense pain can do you loads of harm, even if there’s no any physical injury! […] ARCHIVIST: I should have told you before, so… I leave the decision to you. You know my feelings on the matter. MARTIN: I do? ARCHIVIST: I… Oh, right. I–I want revenge on Jude Perry. I want to… “smite” her. Make her feel what… [SIGH] what all her victims have felt. But I’m not willing to force you to suffer for it. […] JUDE: Yeah, but you like seeing their pain, don’t you? Their fear? ARCHIVIST: … Yes.

His relation to pain is understandable as someone who got “used” to the concept of hurting himself by repeatedly getting harmed, getting marked, and accepting more injuries to reach his goals and protect/save people who were close to him (and it’s very ironic that Martin used to be portrayed as the one “always setting himself on fire to keep others warm” while Jon… selectively did and does that too). The fact he’s feeding from this world is not a new thing: Jonah had announced that Jon would be tailored for this world, Jon himself pointed it out in the trailer, Helen toyed with him by being implicit about it – what is new is the… reverence? with which Jon seemed to marvel at the Desolation domain, the glee during the statement, the deadpanness when Jude called him out on it. It felt like at the beginning of the season, Jon was expressing more guilt, more uneasiness when it came to his enjoyment of this world… and in this episode, those were absent. So is it that he’s gradually accepting it? Or that he was trying to make a point to Martin about himself, about the fact that he is also (objectively) a monster and needs Martin to keep him in check if he doesn’t want to turn out like the others? No idea, but I feel like something is happening and building up about it;;

(… Was Jon feeding from Martin, in the Desolation domain? Martin who was miserable and afraid, coughing and in pain?)

- I LOVED the effect of Jon being in his small “bubble” of pouring out the statement, only for Martin to fight his way to get him out of it:

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: “Limping and desperate, she turns to see her furniture in flames, the bookshelves full of memories, that she can’t quite place [STATIC RISES] but knows are precious to her, curl and float away as ash. The photos on the wall of her family–” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! [STATIC INCREASES] ARCHIVIST: “–whose faces seem indistinct but she knows–” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! ARCHIVIST: “–that she loves, begin to blacken, as the glass–” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon! [COUGHS] ARCHIVIST: “–pops out of the frame.” MARTIN: [MUFFLED, DISTANT] Jon, she’s here! ARCHIVIST: “Her home is being eaten alive by–” MARTIN: [CLOSER] Please come back! ARCHIVIST: “–this devouring Desolation–” MARTIN: JON! ARCHIVIST: “–and she–” [RESOUNDING SLAP] [STATIC FADES] MARTIN: She’s here! [COUGHS]

* … So, interestingly, Martin could actually get him out of it this time, while he had mentioned in MAG167 that he couldn’t stop Jon. Was it because the “statement” was different: given by the Desolation domain in this one vs. Jon giving a statement through his “knowing” in MAG167? Is it because Martin was outside of the statement mode, not listening to it (so able to break it, since he wasn’t enthralled by it)? Or is it because Martin has been becoming stronger by getting in contact with the domains? Or because he actually could have stopped Jon in MAG167… but didn’t, because he was curious, too, and preferred to think and say that he was entirely caught in the statement?

(* With MAG160, that’s the SECOND time Martin slapped Jon to “get him back” in some way. Gotta love how Jon shaking him off from The Lonely was by breaking out the violins and making an emotional confession and baring his soul to him vs. Martin, getting Jon back into focus by screaming and slapping him. Different kind of powers when there is an emergency.)

* … I’m very interested in the fact that the tape recorder was with Jon in that tiny statement bubble, while Martin was heard muffled from the outside. It wasn’t only Jon’s POV: it was, above all, the tape recorder’s, hearing the statement more distinctly than Martin. It illustrated the situation very well (Jon being unreachable and following the story, and the outside having trouble interacting with him), but I wonder what caused the bubble to exist in the first place: the Desolation domain contaminating Jon with his story? Beholding, focusing its attention on Jon because he was acting as a vessel while narrating Sabina’s story? Or the tape recorder, since Jon was feeding it?

- It’s noteworthy that so far, avatars have all been able to identify Jon as the one having provoked this apocalypse, and not “just” as an avatar beneficiating from it the most since The Eye is his patron:

(MAG164) HELEN: What would I have to gloat about? Much as I am delighted by this brave new world in which we find ourselves, I can take no credit for it. This was all… you!

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “This report is being sent to: [STATIC FADES] The Great Eye, that watches all who linger in terror, and gorges itself on the sufferings of those under its unrelenting, stuporous gaze! And its Archive, which draws knowledge of this suffering unto itself. […] Perhaps once it might have horrified me, or given me some sense of pursuing the ultimate release of the world that you have damned.”

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: Hello, Jude. JUDE: Fancy seeing you both here. To what, exactly, do I owe the pleasure, the honour, of being graced by the great and powerful Archivist, harbinger of this new world, and his, uh… valet…? […] Sure, I moan about The Eye, who doesn’t? But, we’ve won! Both of us. And… that’s great!

Seems like they got a special knowledge or are able to feel his status in the new world? It’s still cracking me up that nobody ever mentions Jonah and his participation, and that he’s absolutely irrelevant (while he was the one to scheme and pushe and engineer this apocalypse in the first place).

  - Gigantic dread as soon as Jon mentioned Jude, because y i k e s: technically, we heard about avatars who felt extremely ruthless and cruel, such as John Amherst or Arthur Nolan, but those had belonged more to Gertrude’s era. Jude Perry was the one who felt the most gratuitous and deliberate in her cruelty, in Jon’s era? And despite that, was mostly staying in her lane – Jon had to look her up to find her in MAG089, she never went after him? So the idea that he was trying to confront her and bringing Martin with him (… without warning him at first), that he sought her out and was planning to kill her, felt dangerous and worrisome.

  - Gotta love, about the “valet”-thing, how:

(MAG169) JUDE: Fancy seeing you both here. To what, exactly, do I owe the pleasure, the honour, of being graced by the great and powerful Archivist, harbinger of this new world, and his, uh… valet…?

* It’s payback for Jon’s “I just… er, you were a friend of Agnes Montague, correct?” (MAG089). Opposite of mlm/wlw solidarity.

* ONCE AGAIN, after Elias, after Peter, after maybe Helen currently?, it’s an avatar underestimating Martin on sight.

  - It felt to me like Jon was mostly seeking answers or a form of peace of mind than genuinely getting revenge, or helping Jude’s victims? He insisted on his questions all through their confrontation:

(MAG169) ARCHIVIST: I have a question for you. I’ve been wondering. MARTIN: [COUGHS] ARCHIVIST: Did you know what you were doing? JUDE: Excuse me? ARCHIVIST: When you burned me. Marked me with… Did you know it would lead to… all of this? [CRUMBLING] JUDE: You came all this way just to ask that? ARCHIVIST: Answer the question. MARTIN: [COUGHS] JUDE: If you want to know so badly, why don’t you just reach into my head and pull it out? ARCHIVIST: Because I want to hear you say it. Willingly. JUDE: What difference does it make if it’s– ARCHIVIST: Just answer the damn question…! JUDE: … No. I had no idea. ARCHIVIST: So why did you do it? JUDE: Why do you think? Because I wanted to hurt you. MARTIN: [COUGHS] JUDE: Because you were annoying, and I didn’t like you! So I hurt you. ARCHIVIST: And if you had? JUDE: But I didn’t. Look. I don’t care, okay? MARTIN: [COUGHS] JUDE: I just… I don’t. Raking over the past like it matters, like it means anything… The past is dead, Archivist; ashes in the wind. We’re – here – now. And that’s it! ARCHIVIST: … I suppose you’re right…!

And this time, it wasn’t a tug-o’-war of question/answer resulting in one’s death (Peter), or an impulsive murder (Not!Sasha). It was planned and controlled, and deliberate. And it didn’t feel good at all: it was really a horrible scene, with Martin coughing and coughing in the background (… and Jon not paying it any attention), the execution dragging out and taking time, because Jon was processing slowly and not… giving the final blow. I really wondered if he was going to just stop, or if it wouldn’t work, or if Martin would ask him to stop – but no, quite the contrary, it’s Martin who yelled for it to be done:

(MAG169) MARTIN: [COUGHS] [STATIC RISING: LOW AND SPIRALLING, PRESSURING] JUDE: Uh! Listen… Listen… [BREATHLESS CHUCKLING] You’re enjoying this, right? ‘Course you are! You want to use those powers of yours to hurt people, you want to murder everybody who can’t fight back at you now? I can help you…! [DIGITAL GLITCHING SOUNDS] MARTIN: Just DIE already!! JUDE: You’re… not… better… than… me! [SCREAMS] [DIGITAL BURSTING, RIPPING SOUNDS] [STATIC DECREASES AND FADES] MARTIN: [COUGH] [PANTING] Is it…? ARCHIVIST: It’s over. … She’s gone.

;; There was something very… child-like, in Martin’s scream? You know, the kind of absolute rejection because he’s hurt and because in his mind there is no other way than for the other person to disappear for him to feel good ever again? I hadn’t paid much attention with Not!Sasha, but technically, the distorted, glitching sounds before and during the ripping of both the Not!Them and Jude sounded very close to Peter’s own static (and Martin’s, when he disappeared in front of Georgie): is it possible that he might have contributed in both cases, or amplified it? Or was it “only” Jon all through it?

- There is something very fitting in the fate of avatars, lately: the Not!Them was forced to “know” the suffering of its victims before getting ripped away from existence; Oliver was not rejecting death and knew it would come from him at some point, and Jon fittingly decided to spare him (although he was aware of the irony); Helen-the-Distortion is an ambivalent case (Jon can threaten her, but they can talk, it’s a bit of an unstable relationship the balance of which could shift at any time); Jude was inflected the suffering of her victims (and desolated herself in a way). It’s kinda fitting, for The Stranger, The End, The Spiral and The Desolation? I wonder how much the Domains are influencing Jon’s behaviour towards their agents, regardless of his personal feelings about them…

- Regarding Jon&Martin, it’s really heartbreaking that they are trying to navigate around and with each other’s feelings, trying to find the “right” decision regarding choices and boundaries… and that it backfired so badly due to the circumstances and the fact that, right now, they can’t really make an ideal, non-harming decision:

(MAG169) MARTIN: Jon, is there another way? ARCHIVIST: I mean… sort of? M–maybe? [SILENCE] MARTIN: That turn…! You, you took a hard turn after the roots back there. I knew that was a thing! Why are we here? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] It’s just… [INHALE] When you said… [SIGH] MARTIN: Jon, why have you taken us here? ARCHIVIST: Jude Perry. … This is where Jude Perry rules. […] You said you were onboard. MARTIN: I was! I am; I just… thought… ARCHIVIST: It wouldn’t hurt? MARTIN: … That we’d be safe. ARCHIVIST: I never said– MARTIN: I know! I know, okay, I just… […] ARCHIVIST: … Alright. If you really don’t want to do this, we, we can go another way. MARTIN: Really…? ARCHIVIST: Really. My revenge… [SIGH] Well, let’s just say you’re more important. […] So are we going in, or not? MARTIN: You’re– … I, you’re asking me? ARCHIVIST: I should have told you before, so… I leave the decision to you. You know my feelings on the matter. MARTIN: I do? ARCHIVIST: I… Oh, right. I–I want revenge on Jude Perry. I want to… “smite” her. Make her feel what… [SIGH] what all her victims have felt. But I’m not willing to force you to suffer for it. MARTIN: Okay, so it’s… I have to choose, do I? ARCHIVIST: Or we could sit here. [SILENCE] [DISTANT SOUND OF SOMETHING COLLAPSING] MARTIN: … No. No, I–I’m not going to choose, I d–I don’t think that’s a fair decision to put on me. It’s your revenge; your choice, not mine. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … Fine. We go in. [DISTANT SOUND OF SOMETHING COLLAPSING] MARTIN: [SHAKY INHALE] Al–alright then…! ARCHIVIST: We’ll be fine. MARTIN: J– Lead the way. [BAG JOSTLING]

It was good of Jon to admit that he should ask Martin, and expressed reluctance at the idea of putting him in an uncomfortable position for his own revenge! It was good of Martin, to establish once again that he didn’t want to bear the burden of deciding for both of them (MAG154: “Don’t do this.” “Do what?” “Make it my decision.”), while it was explicitly about what Jon wanted! … But it also feels like Jon would have needed Martin to decide agree to go for him if the goal was for Jon to find some peace of mind with his revenge, and that Martin would have needed Jon to say that no, definitely not, his revenge wasn’t worth endangering and harming Martin.

(Though, I feel like Martin was the most hurt of them both, this time around ;; He sounded absolutely miserable at the end of the episode, and he had been the one to begrudgingly agree to follow Jon after making it clear that he wouldn’t like the experience… I’m really surprised that Jon stuck to the “revenge” concept while he knew what was at stake for Martin. Really hoping that they will talk about it soon ;;)

  - ;; Technically, Jude made a lot of valid points regarding Jon-as-an-avatar:

(MAG169) JUDE: You’re not scared, though, are you, Archivist? ARCHIVIST: … I can feel the pain of every person you have trapped here. My own isn’t all that different. JUDE: Yeah, but you like seeing their pain, don’t you? Their fear? ARCHIVIST: … Yes. JUDE: You and that stupid Eye, god, you make me sick! Lording it over everybody like you own the place? You’re just leeches, voyeurs, parasites on the real monsters. […] Oooh, I see! I get it. You finally get a sniff of power, and the first thing you do is try to settle some old scores. MARTIN: [LOUDER COUGHS] JUDE: Play the big man, get off on good old-fashioned petty revenge~! […] I’m happy in this world. I belong here. And so do you. MARTIN: [COUGHS] [STATIC RISING: LOW AND SPIRALLING, PRESSURING] JUDE: Uh! Listen… Listen… [BREATHLESS CHUCKLING] You’re enjoying this, right? ‘Course you are! You want to use those powers of yours to hurt people, you want to murder everybody who can’t fight back at you now? I can help you…! [DIGITAL GLITCHING SOUNDS] MARTIN: Just DIE already!! JUDE: You’re… not… better… than… me! [SCREAMS]

He presented it to Martin as “revenge”. He went out of his way to find Jude, first hiding it from Martin and then deliberately making the decision of going after her after he learned that Martin would be terrorised by the domain (but ready to follow him if Jon really wanted to go). Jude’s execution also exists in contrast to Oliver, whom Jon had decided to spare because he had “helped” him (… to wake up as an avatar), while knowing full well that Oliver had killed people too (MAG121) and that he was currently torturing victims in his domains (in creative, cruel ways for “VARIETY”…). Jude’s smiting didn’t feel like an application of justice, or as something fair; it just felt like personal retribution, because Jon has the power to do it. There is something reassuring in the fact that the whole scene didn’t bring any catharsis, felt so extremely anti-climatic and miserable (Martin was in pain and on the verge of tears, wanted to leave the place; Jon wasn’t triumphant), because Jon behaved as the plaintiff, the legislature, the judge and the executioner – it is terrifying in itself that he has the power to establish who would have the “right” to die or to keep torturing people following whether or not they’ve served his interests.

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: I just, I don’t think he’s… [SIGH] I don’t know, I don’t think he’s evil. MARTIN: Oh, yeah, sure, he’s probably a really kind, benevolent ruler of a hellish fear prison…! ARCHIVIST: It’s just… He helped me. Wh–when I was… He woke me up. […] But I’m not going to… seek him out. At the very least, he’s earned not having me hunt him down. MARTIN: Fine. I suppose that’s… reasonable. […] ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] No. If Oliver will not seek me out, then… I will leave him be. [TINY CHUCKLES] The avatar of Death… shall live. Martin’s going to be thrilled…! [SIGH]

(MAG169) MARTIN: [COUGH] [PANTING] Is it…? ARCHIVIST: It’s over. … She’s gone. MARTIN: [PAINED] The fires are still here. Doesn’t look like much has changed. ARCHIVIST: … No. I suppose not. [CRUMBLING SOUND] MARTIN: [SHAKILY] … Let’s just get out of here.

Jude was indeed that one avatar we wanted to see disappear (since the was gleeful about hurting, that she chose to get involved in the cult and didn’t join it to escape another horrible fate, that she admitted she didn’t regret this world nor the hurt she had to Jon himself); but her accusations had some truth in them precisely because Jon had just decided to spare Oliver given their own relationship – while Oliver, too, had admitted that he was torturing and enjoying people for the fun of it. Jon’s judgement… doesn’t work. And since nothing changed in the domain, it just proved that avatars themselves weren’t the real problem at the root – the Fear-system is still in place, still working, with or without them, still hurting and feeding from people.

(… And it also highlights that, indeed, right now, Jon is “made” for this world, as Jonah had hypothesised in MAG160. He’s been shown grieving the old world, being eaten by guilt, refusing to embrace the fact that the Fears around him feel “right” at the beginning of the season. But he’s currently feeding from this world and still enjoying victims’ pain on some level – what would happen, if Jon&Martin managed to successfully revert the world back in some way? Would Jon still be able to survive?)

- We’ll see if Jon and Martin talk about it soon, but it sure feels like a conversation regarding the “smiting” is needed. Martin seems to have experienced first-hand that it’s nnooooot as good in practice as in theory (he was miserable, in pain, coughing his lungs out, witnessed Jon choose to willingly bring him into a discomforting, potentially triggering place in the name of it), but I’m not sure it will be enough for him to reconsider the idea, or to point out that… he had been wrong about it, and that the logic of killing avatars as an easy, evident, helpful thing… is actually not that simple, since it didn’t change anything. (Probably because they have to aim higher.)

I’m really not sure about their future stances regarding other avatars, because, really, who could feel as “deserving” as Jude? Jon might want his rib back, but he technically gave it to Jared as part of an agreement (and Jared honoured his half of the deal!); Daisy would “at best” represent an attempt at mercy-killing if Jon were to try anything (and it certainly wouldn’t feel good); Julia&Trevor… indeed caused the chaos in MAG158, which also led to Daisy snapping, but would it be enough to want to “smite” them? (Meanwhile, if Jon meets Simon: same as Oliver, given his relationship to his patron, he would probably just embrace his own death.)

Plus, if Jude’s execution felt unsatisfying now, I really doubt that doing anything to Jonah would feel satisfying either? It… wouldn’t solve anything or fix the world back.

- I really wonder what’s happening in Jon’s head right now, if everything was a conscious decision that more or less backfired (ha), or if there are once again influences at stake… Did he really go after Jude because, like Martin suggested, Jon thought it could free or at least relieve the people imprisoned in that domain? Jon can’t see the future, but he could have “known” what had happened to the Not!Them’s carousel to get an indication of what happens in those cases; it… didn’t sound like a genuine reason. Same thing with the concept of revenge: Jon was scared of it just a few episodes ago (MAG166: “Because I’m ashamed, Martin. […] Yes! Ashamed of the fact that I… destroyed the world and have been rewarded for it; the fact that… I can walk safe through all this horror I’ve created like a fucking tourist, destroying whoever I please; the fact that I… enjoyed it, and… the fact that there are… so many others, that I still want to revenge myself on!”), and if it had been only about revenge, he wouldn’t have needed to ask Jude all these questions and to delay the moment when he would actually end her. Was it because he hoped that Jude would regret, would have behaved differently if she had known that it would lead to the apocalypse? Was it because he wanted to check with himself whether “smiting” her deliberately would feel good, fair and right? Was it because he thought that trusting Martin’s judgement and killing avatars would indeed be the best course of action? Was it because he wanted to prove a point to Martin – that he’s a monster too, and/or that killing doesn’t feel as great in practice as on the paper?

… His behaviour in this episode reminded me so much of MAG141, however, and how coldly rational he had sounded about what he was doing to Floyd, as if it was a logical and implacable course of action; so I can’t help but wonder if there is Eye-related influence at play. Pushing him to hurt other avatars for The Eye’s entertainment, to feed from the ones who are usually feared? For “variety”, too?

- … Regarding Jon’s powers, I had briefly wondered whether Jon was still able to compel, given what Oliver had mentioned, but mMMMmmm…

(MAG168) ARCHIVIST: “Please, Jon, do not interpret this report as a “plea for mercy” or a “call to action”. I would have offered it willingly, of course, but to do so is no longer an option. You cannot ask; you may only take.”

(MAG169) JUDE: You came all this way just to ask that? ARCHIVIST: Answer the question. MARTIN: [COUGHS] JUDE: If you want to know so badly, why don’t you just reach into my head and pull it out? ARCHIVIST: Because I want to hear you say it. Willingly. JUDE: What difference does it make if it’s– ARCHIVIST: Just answer the damn question…! JUDE: … No. I had no idea.

Since compelling Peter to death, Jon has never been shown forcing an answer out of someone again. He has been shown “knowing” things with alarming ability, being almost entirely omniscient at this point (MAG164: “Okay. So… how much can you see? What else do you know?” “Uh… Maybe everything…!”), whether it’s prompted by someone’s questions (as Martin demonstrated) or Jon just knowing things on his own accord. He has demonstrated a new way to deal with “statements”: getting filled with the Fears suffusing his surroundings, and having to “pour out” these statements into the tape recorder (MAG162: “This cabin. It’s not right. And, when I thought that, I–I felt… It, it all poured out of me down… into the tape.”). He has manifested his new Eye-related ability to turn the Feared into the Fearful, eradicating monsters and avatars (MAG166: “But The Eye still rules. All this fear is being performed for its benefit. And so, there are now exactly two roles available in this new world of ours: the watcher, and the watched. Subject, and object. Those who are feared, and those who are afraid. And Jon, well… he is part of The Eye; a very important part. And he’s able to, shall we say… shift its focus. Turn the one into the other.”). But compulsion as the act of asking a question and forcing an answer out of someone? Nothing since the beginning of the season. It might be nothing, but Oliver has always known so much about Jon and his situation, and Jude directly made a reference to that power when Jon didn’t use it, so… it could indeed be a thing.

(Or it’s also possible that, after Peter resisted compulsion to the point of dying, Jon fears that ability and what it could do, and purposefully stopped using it?)

MAG170’s title is… MmMMmm. If this an episode regarding a territory, I would say Spiral or Flesh (… and Jared in particular). It could also be about things outside of a domain, like what happened with “Curiosity” – and then, I’d see ways for it to be an outside POV (Jonah? Annabelle?) and/or other characters coming back (Georgie&Melanie? Basira? … stumbling upon/finding Daisy…?). And/or Martin talking about himself – we know so little about his pre-Archives life, I feel ;; (Same for Basira…) There could also be a way to connect with something mentioned about Agnes in MAG067…

(… It’s also making me think of Albrecht’s library / the Black Forest crypt and what Jonah did of the books…)

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