#so many characters have survived worse and i personally believe that any favourite character of mine should have 9 lives like a cat | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tomorrow-and-tomorrows · 3 years

Text

SNK 139.5: Towards the Final Pages with no Final Answers

The final pages of the updated ending are bold, but I think ultimately more evocative than the original preliminary ending.

Even after the intensely polarized reader reception that took issue with the lack of storytelling precision and clarity when it was most needed, SNK chose to end with a decisively ambiguous symbol. In literature, a symbol is something that clearly means something -- but with the most "literary" symbols, their meaning cannot be absolutely defined; any attempted answer as to what a symbol represents has no finality or certainty, and interpretation will remain ever open to debate. A symbol both invites and resists interpretation.

Naturally, the immediate response to the symbolic tree on the final page is to try answering the invitation to the question, "What does it mean?"

One prominent answer I've seen is that it symbolizes the continuation of the cycle of war and violence either because a) of the symbolic parallel to Ymir or b) on a more literal level, that it implies the actual potential revival of new era of Titans. A reasonable interpretation either way, but also, I think, an incomplete one.

The first reason for this is that "the endless cycle of war" was already clearly and powerful represented in the preceding panels:

The cycle of war was already continuing in the decades or centuries before the child arrived at the tree. A culminating image symbolizing the persistence or resurgence of an era of war as the final panel would thus arguably be redundant and unnecessary.

Furthermore, the chapter is entitled "Toward the Tree on That Hill." If the tree were simply a symbol of war, by implication the chapter could equally be called 'toward the endless cycle of war'. But such a relentlessly bleak and tonally flat ending sentiment would be firmly incongruous with the story's recurrent conviction in the equal cruelty and beauty of the world -- a conviction that I believe it has been faithful to all the way to its end.

The Long Defeat

But while on this topic of war, let's linger a moment on the "cruelty" side and the consequence of this wordless construction and subsequent destruction of a city -- the most bold and possibly controversial additional panels that are also my personal favourite additions.

One objection that has emerged against this brief sequence of Paradis' apparent destruction is that it renders the entire story to be "pointless". Eren's 80% Rumbling, Armin's diplomatic peace talks between the remnants of the Allied Nations and Paradis, and before that, the proposal of the 50-year plan and Zeke's euthanasia plan... everything, to the very beginning to the Survey Corps' dreams of some kind of freedom; was it all for nothing? All that striving, that hope, that final promise bestowed upon Armin: was it all a pointless story? Even more radically, is the story suggesting that Eren might as well have continued the Rumbling to 100% of the earth? Was Zeke's euthanasia plan the cruel but correct choice all along? What was the point of rejecting the 50-year plan if that had a greater chance of success at preventing this outcome?

I think Isayama suddenly pulling back to such a long-term view of history to the scale of decades or even centuries into the future calls for a reorientation in attitude towards exactly what kind of story we have been reading. Yes, if the metric is Paradis' survival, maybe it was indeed all "pointless". But that's also to say that, on the broadest scale, SNK is a story about futility, that it is a deliberate representation of the struggle to make one's actions historically meaningful.

In the long view of history, all the events, from Grisha running beyond the wall to see the airships and the first breaking of Wall Maria to Erwin's sacrifices, Paradis' discovery of the outside world, and finally to the Battle of Heaven and Earth, it would all merely be a handful of chapters in the history textbooks of the future. A future in which war and geopolitical conflict will continue even without Titans. That does not mean that all paths to the future are equal -- the 50-year plan would not have put an end to Titans, and Zeke's euthanasia plan distorts utilitarian ethics into just another form of oppression; there are better and worse decisions that lead to more and less degrees of suffering, but no decision can ever be the final one.

The additional panels remind us that in history, there never exists a singular "Final Solution". The reason there are readers who vehemently support Eren to have flattened 100% of the world, and the reason the Paradisians supported the oppressive, authoritarian, proto-fascist Jaegar Faction under Floch and even after the Rumbling, is that because they want to believe that a Final Solution to end conflict exists and will work. They resist the fundamental uncertainty and complexity of the situation, instead preferring a singular, unified, and coherent Answer to Paradis' struggle to survive. I'm reminded of the scholar Erich Auerbach's theorization of why fascism appealed to many people during periods of political and social crisis, change, and uncertainty. Writing in exile after fleeing Nazi Germany, he observed that:

"The temptation to entrust oneself to a sect which solved all problems with a single formula, whose power of suggestion imposed solidarity, and which ostracized everything which would not fit in and submit - this temptation was so great that, with many people, fascism hardly had to employ force when the time came for it to spread through the countries of old European culture." (from Mimesis p. 550)

This acutely describes the Jaegar Faction's rise to power and continued dominance in Paradis. But their promise of unity, of a single formula to wipe out the rest of the world either literally through the Rumbling, or to dominate them with military force, is a false one. Even if Eren had Rumbled 100% of the world instead of 80%, history would still go on. The external threat of the world may have been eliminated, but internal conflict and violence would still continue onward throughout the generations born on top of the blood of the rest of the world. Needless to say, out of all the options, Eren's 80% Rumbling is the very epitome of perpetuating the cycle of violence as it creates tens of thousands of war orphans like Eren once was, and it would justify employing violence for one's own self-interest to an extreme degree. For the generations to come that would valourize Eren as a hero, it would set a dangerous precedent for what degree of destruction is acceptable for self-defence -- nothing short of the attempt to flatten the entire world. It is no surprise that Paradis would meet a violent end when its founding one-party rule of the Jaegar Faction has their roots in such unapologetically bloody foundations.

Neither the 80% Rumbling nor the militaristic, ultra-nationalistic Jaegar faction that come to govern Paradis are glamourized as the "correct" solution to ensuring Paradis' future. (This can also put to rest any accusations of SNK's ending as "fascist" or "imperialist" propaganda, since the island's modern nation that they founded ends in war. All nations must fall eventually, but not all do in such blatant destruction). Importantly, neither is Armin's diplomatic mission naively idealized as that which permanently achieves world peace. No singular or unifying formula can work because reality is complicated. Entrusting oneself to seemingly simple Answers is simply insufficient, even if they are ideals of peaceful negotiation; that method may work given the right conditions, but the world will always eventually complicate its feasibility.

After all in the real world, there's the absurd irony that some in the West had called the First World War "The War to End all Wars". These days, WWI is merely one long chapter in our textbooks just a few pages away from the even longer chapter of the Second World War that is followed by all the rest of the conflicts that have followed since then even with the establishment of diplomatic organizations like the United Nations. In this sense, showing Paradis' eventual downfall is perhaps the only way to end such a series that is so concerned with history, from King Fritz's tribal expansion into empire, the rise and fall of Marleyan ascendency, and finally of the survival and apparent shattering of Paradis.

From its beginning to its end, SNK has poignantly evoked J.R.R. Tolkien's conception of history as The Long Defeat. In one character's words, "together through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat". That is to say, "no victory is complete, that evil rises again, and that even victory brings loss".

No heroes, only humans

Eren's desperate, fatalistic resignation to committing the Rumbling, along with the characters' rejection of all the rest of the earlier plans to ensure Paradis a future, are merely the actions of human beings to that began with the need to find not even necessarily a Final Answer, but at least an acceptable and feasible one for the time being. But the characterization of Eren's confusion, childishness, and regret in the final chapter is startlingly real in how it demonstrates how, all along, we have been dealing not with grand heroes, but simply people who have no answers at all. SNK has always been about failures - and often ironic failures; it has always been a story about painful and frequently futile struggle.

People make mistakes, they can be short-sighted, selfish, biased, immature, petty, and irrational, and I think the ending follows through with depicting the consequences of that.

Erwin's self-sacrifice before being able to reach the basement (and his regression to a childhood state in the moments before his death), Kenny's futile chasing after that universal compassion he had seen in Uri, Shadis never being acknowledged by history despite his final heroic action, and so on -- these stories of ironic, futile failures are still meaningful in their mere striving. Eren's ending and Paradis' demise despite Armin's endeavour to ensure them a peaceful future are entirely consistent with this.

SNK certainly follows the shounen trope in which young individuals are bestowed great power and correspondingly great responsibility, and must then reconcile the burden of possessing that greatness on which the fate of the world depends. Yet it is equally defined by its representation of the state that us normal human beings confront everyday: the struggle against the apparent powerlessness to enact any meaningful or lasting change at all. Simultaneously, this helpless state does not exempt us from the responsibility to act in whatever small capacity we are able to resist oppression, ideological extremism, and the perpetuation of violence.

Towards That Symbol

That was a rather long but vital digression about the additional "construction and destruction" pages. To return to the issue of the symbolism in the final panel, here I will turn from seemingly affirming the tree as symbolizing the cycle of violence, towards what I think is the greater complexity of what the tree might "actually" symbolize.

As I've said above, I don't believe that the final chapter title is synonymous with 'toward the endless cycle of war'. In tone, theme, and characterization, SNK has always been defined by the tension between cruelty and beauty, the will to violence and the underlying desire for peace, and the rest of the contradictory impulses that all simultaneously coexist. The end of SNK as a whole commits to a similar lack of closure, ambiguity, and interpretive openness.

So far I have rambled on about only a view of the perpetual "cruelty" of history. Where, then, is the "beauty"?

In short, the "tree = cycle of violence" interpretation is obviously based on how that this tree recalls the original tree in which the spine creature, as the source of the power of the Titans, resided. But it's worth first considering, what exactly is this creature? We seem to get our answer in the chapter that most precisely crystallizes the dual "cruelty and beauty" of the world:

The spine creature might be said to be life itself. Or more specifically, the will of life to perpetuate itself, for no reason at all but for the fleeting moments in which we feel distinctly glad to have existed in the world.

The creature at the source of the Titans, and in extension the Titans themselves, is neither inherently a positive or negative, "good" or "evil", creative or destructive force. It's both and all of those at once. As with any power, the Titans were merely a tool that was put to use to oppressive ends.

So as I now suggest that the tree at the end is symbolically a "Tree of Life", I don't at all mean "life" in the typically celebratory or optimistic sense: rather, I mean it in the ambiguous, ambivalent, uncertain, and complex sense that has been evoked throughout the above discussion of the inevitable continuation of war.

The title "Toward The Tree on That Hill" is derived from its associations with Eren and Mikasa, but more specifically of course, from Armin's affirmation of existence. However, the tree as a symbol of existential affirmation is undercut with the revelation that, despite Armin's diplomatic mediation between the Allied Nations and Paradis, the island nation never escapes war just as no nation in the history of the earth has ever fully escaped war.

The image of Armin running toward that life-affirming tree by the end becomes twisted and complicated, as the image of the anonymous child approaching the Tree of Life evokes both awe at its beauty and grandeur, and a deep dread at the foreboding of its cyclical return to Ymir's tree that signalled the beginning of a bloody era.

And I think that is precisely it: Life is not some idealized, beautiful vision that we always want to run toward; it is also ironic, complicated, and dreadful. It is ambivalent. Like a literary symbol, the meaning of life cannot be pinned down absolutely. The tree therefore becomes itself a symbol of uncertainty, of an open future that is cyclical both in its beauty and war.

As a final observation, it is surely no coincidence that, the small, black, birdlike silhouettes of the war planes destroying the city from the sky is replaced by the similarly small black silhouettes of birds in the final panel.

If the birds represent freedom from war, the irony is that the immediately surrounding land appears to be one completely empty of people save for the exploring child; it is a freedom attained only without people's presence. Yet at the same time, a child from some existing civilization has reached it; perhaps it is freedom that they have reached, perhaps it is something else that they see in the tree. What is it that they were looking for? What does the tree and its history represent for the child, and what does it mean for their future? Alternatively, does the child-in-the-forest imagery negatively recall the warning that the world is one huge forest of predator and prey that we need to protect children from entering?

Rather than providing answers, this tree embodies all of the potential questions, and all of the potential answers. These possibilities will unfold themselves into an uncertain future beyond the chapters of history that Eren, Armin, Mikasa, Zeke, Erwin, and all the rest of the characters were part of and left their mark on; and whatever future this child will witness or create, it will similarly be one of the struggle against futility, as the journey begins anew with each generation in every new era. Neither - or both - hopeful or despairing, the final image of this tree, just like life itself, contains those innumerable irresolvable tensions as it gestures towards all possibilities, both oppressive and free.

#snk 139 #snk ending #snk extra pages #snk meta #snk #snk spoilers #brain dump #this is a pretty personal interpretation so if there are any logical inconsistencies i don't know what to do with them #yes the execution of the final arc/chapter is flawed but it's still very conceptually interesting #i still have my disappointments but overall i've made my peace with it #translating my tangled thoughts into words however imperfectly: i think that's what freedom is all about #snk manga #aot #aot 139 #aot ending

229 notes · View notes

shatteredatthealtarofwinchester · 3 years

Text

Umm, wait. It's more a 15x20 rant than an analysis. I'll call it... a ranalysis. 😏

I just saw J*reds last online panel again, where he called the finale "magical full circle storytelling". 15x20 is his "favourite episode ever" because he "is a fan of good storytelling". Uh-huh... Okay. So the following just was built on pure rage. This makes it more of a rant than an analysis. As usual. You guys know me.

Well. There are various possibilities here, Jared. Possibility A is, you are lying, what I do not believe. To lie that obvious you have to be a talented actor, which you are not. Possibility B is, you really think that way. You believe, the finale was "magical full circle storytelling" and you actually loved it, it was indeed your favourite episode. This again brings me to the only conclusion: You have no fucking idea about good storytelling, not even decent storytelling.

Lets look at every single ending, shall we?

Dean. We all know you think Deans death was a "success story." You think that Dean "ultimately gave his life for his number one on planet." I am sitting here, laughing in pain. First of all, let me say that Dean didn't died for Sam, Jared. He didn't took a bullet for Sam or sacrificed himself or whatsoever. He died in the most ridiculous accident I've ever seen. But lets go back to the very start.

Dean’s childhood was highly abusive. Dean was 4 years old when he saw his mother burning alive and learned that monsters are real. In that age he developed PTSD and stopped talking. Dean had a childhood with a father that was an alcoholic and physically and mentally abusive, who had believed that Dean had a “killer instinct". When Dean was about 6 years old, John forced him into a nurturing role for Sam. In the same age Dean was forced into the soldiers role as well when John taught him how to shoot and hunt. Dean had to obey orders without questioning. If he acted “out of line,” (aka something John didn’t like) John chewed him out or left them alone. Dean was trained to be Daddy’s blunt instrument. Dean gave up his own life to keep Sam safe, because he had no other choice. More than a brother Dean had to be a father and a mother to Sam. He suppressed everything, every psychological pain, every emotion, he just lived to protect Sam and to obey as Johns blunt soldier. Short: Dean gave up HIMSELF for Sam and John. Not because Dean wanted to, because he was forced into it! Dean hated himself, he was suicidal. He was convinced he isn’t worthy of anything, especially not being loved. Dean never had a life for his own, never had a choice, never had a chance, never had own original thoughts, never felt safe or loved. He was used to being left. He felt like he was nothing. Worthless. He was dead inside. Broken. You get what I mean, Jared? Since you own a mental health campaign, you should. And guess what Dean did? He kept fighting. Despite everything, he kept fighting. And his mindset slowly changed. He understood that his father was an abusive bastard, he unterstood that he was forced into a life he never wanted. He understood that he is more than that, that he is not like John. He changed. He opened up. He even wanted to retire. And now it gets interesting, because something happened that REALLY is the start of magical full circle storytelling. Something in Deans mind clicked while Cas' confession. His confession was fundamental to Dean to finally accept his own goodness and the value of his life and love, of his identity. It was the moment of breaking free of the structure that had controlled and corrupted him his entire life. It was the only way out of his abusive and traumatizing cage to experience something for his own the very first time. For the first time in his life he had a chance. A choice. The start of his very own life. Free will, baby! Well, no. Because exactly in that moment he stumbled into a nail and died. Do you even realize how dumb this is? Do you even realize what you did? Wait, it gets worse. Yeah, that's possible, even if you dont believe it. In heaven he goes right back to the life he has spent his whole journey learning to free himself from: Left only with the persons he had been forced, time and time again, to sacrifice his identity, goals, and soul for. None of the family, support, or love, nothing he has built or chosen for himself remains. This is not magical full circle storytelling, Jared. This is abysmal pointless butchering. This has NOTHING, not a single percent of magical or good storytelling! YOU call that magical? YOU call that a success? Seriously, what shit are you on? If it would've been full circle storytelling, there is not one single fucking possibility that Dean would've died in the end. I don't know whats going on in your twisted brain, but Deans death never was and never will be a success. To make it magical full circle storytelling, he MUST have been the one who survives and overcomes his trauma (and raise a certain someone from perdition.)

Sam. He's actually the one who kinda got the best ending, huh? I mean, it was fucking horrific, but it was the best if you compare it to the others. When Sam was young, he wanted a normal life far away from hunting, while the truth is, Sam always was more like John than Dean ever will be. Over time his mindset clearly changed. He even said: "When Dean came to get me at school, I told myself, one last job, you know, (...) it was always one more job and then I was gonna go back to law and to my life. I guess, I really understand now that THIS is my life. And I love it." Sam couldn't imagine a normal life anymore. He had the chances for that and he declined. He loved hunting. He loved working and making progress with the BMOL, he very much enjoyed being a MOL and even took the lead often. I can clearly picture Sam as the lead of a rebuilt version of the MOL, that would've made sense. What did Sam get? Right, the ending he didn't wanted anymore, but since we yeet every single development of every single character out of the window, Sam has to be Season 1 Sam again, BUT with a fancy party wig! And there he is! And what a happy life he lives, exactly what he wanted, woohoo! So much joy, so much fun! Oh look, there is BlurryWife™, who Jared made sure is not Eileen, because “Dean wouldn’t want Sam to be with Eileen”. But wait, didn't Dean wanted Sam to be with Eileen? Didn't Dean literally said: "If it was to work, Eileen, you know... She gets it, she gets us, she gets the life. You could do worse. And she could certainly do better, like SO much better. I'm happy for you, Sammy." Yeah, NO. This was just a writing AND acting AND producing mistake and had no matter at all. *cough* So... As you can see, magical storytelling strikes again. I can feel the magic, I can feel the full circle, it's... Amazing...

Castiel. Castiels story was magical, it was mindblowing. I've never in my entire life seen such a meaningful and deep storyline and I mean this. It's fucking massive. There is this blunt angel soldier, one of the post powerful forces, who was built to blindly obey, who lived for aeons of years, who wasn't supposed to feel anything, but he fell for a broken, suicidal, abused human who never felt loved or worthy the very moment he touched him. He fell so hard he rebelled against his own race, against his own family, against everything he had without any safety. He was the ONLY one in Chuck-knows-how-many universes who GREW outside of Chucks CONTROL! His love was so fucking massive, it couldn't be controlled by the God who built every-fucking-thing. Chuck built millions(?) of parallel universes, heaven, hell, life, death, purgatory, the empty, he created every single being, the light, darkness, every single angel, demon, leviathan, monster, animal, plant, sea, blade of grass, every centimeter of mountains, the four seasons, emotions, what the fuck ever. Everything you can ever think of, Chuck created it. And he controlled it. In every single one of his fucking millions of universes. But not Castiel.This is actually not possible. You can't outrun god. You can't outrun the one who creates, writes and controlles everything. But Cas did. Out of love. And not only that, you also imply that what happened between Dean and Cas was the only thing that was real. Everything else was corrupted, controlled, manipulated, written by Chuck. But what happened between Dean and Cas, he couldn't affect.

Seeing Cas standing there, crying, confessing his love to Dean actually even makes me think that Dean made Cas human. Dean completed Cas. Cas didn't simply said "I love you", he actually said "In all existing universes, in all millions, all aeons of years, you are my only happiness." And Cas completed Dean. He freed Dean. While Dean was used to being left, was used to feeling worthless and unlovable, Cas saw Dean exactly the way he is and chose to stay. With every obstacle, every difficulty he loved him even more and yes, freed him from the abusive structure that had controlled and corrupted him his entire life. Something that no one else could, not his parents, not Amara, not God, not even Sam. Beautiful, isn't it? Unique. Mindblowing. Pure. You enjoyed it? Let's fuck this up in 3...2...1...

Castiels story ended exactly the same way it started. A blunt angel who doesn't care about people and feelings, blindly carrying out instructions from a new God, obeying heaven. No progress. They threw away 12 years of character development and managed to give him the same stupid and senseless ending like they did with Dean. Dean died and Cas... Wasn't there?! WHAT!? There is no single fucking way Cas wouldn't save Dean or wouldn't be there when Dean enters heaven! There. Is. No. Fucking. Way! The way they represented Cas in the end doesn't only imply that Dean isn't important to Cas anymore, he even ended up exactly the same way as if Season 4-15 wouldn't have happened. The ending is exactly the same! He's with God in heaven, supporting him with instructions, not caring about anything else.

Okay, I got it. Summarizing you can say: Jareds "magical full circle storytelling" is to yeet 95% of the past 15 years. No other characters matter, the story itself doesn't matter, every single characters development doesn't matter, it even doesn't matter what the brothers really want, they don't get it anyway.

Okay. But that's not all. As if this wasn't bad enough, they didn't just butchered ... EVERYTHING, they also salted and burnt every single Mantra they ever stood for. I'll make these short, I promise!

Team Free Will. *snort* Dean couldn't escape his fate, he always believed he'll die on a hunt as Daddys blunt instrument and he did. He kept fighting to die exactly the way he felt he was "supposed to". Message? No matter how hard you keep fighting, no matter how long you'll keep it up, you can't escape your fate. Sam couldn't change his fate, he ended how he started. Cas couldn't change his fate, he ended how he started, same for Jack, he ended how he was supposed to. YEET THE FREE WILL, NONE OF THEM CAN CHANGE ANYTHING!

Family don't end with blood. The biggest lie that has ever been told. Do I even have to explain that? No need, right? Don't make me wanna throw up again, please. We all know that 15x20 blasted "Family don't end with blood" in millions of pieces.

Always keep fighting. THE AUDACITY to praise that while Dean is dying! After everything Dean has dealt with, It makes me wanna scream. Dean kept fighting, he always kept fighting, no matter how hard it was, no matter what forced him to his knees, he stood up again, and if he wasn't able to stand up, he crawled. He kept fighting no matter what, despite everything. His mindset changed. He wanted to live, he wanted to experience things, feelings and people differently or even for the first time. He changed. He wanted to retire, toes in the sand. He knew he earned it. Thats why he kept fighting. For what? To die the very first moment he had a free will. To die the very first moment he had a choice, had a life to build for himself. Always keep fighting, but the moment you come close to what you want, what you fought for, you die. It's been more than 3 months and I am having tears in my eyes while typing this. As for Dean, no matter how hard you fight, no matter how long you fight, you don't reach what you deserve anyway. Give up. As for Sam, AKF leeds to Emptiness. Grief. Psychological Trauma. Mental illness. Absolutely nothing worth fighting for.

I wanna go cry now, bye.

#jensen ackles #misha collins #j*red p*dalecki #spn #spnfandom #supernatural #spnfamily #dean winchester #castiel #destiel #deancas #dean #cas

349 notes · View notes

dongofthewolf · 3 years

Text

Slowly Learning That Life Is Okay

Abby Anderson x Fem!Blind!Reader

Sweet sweet fluff about fear of intimacy where Abby rescues the reader and they unexpectedly become closer.

Requested by @rianncreates

Warnings: swearing, fluff, minor violence(?), cute gay shit :)

A/N: I am not visually impaired but I really tried my best to write a character whose lack of sight doesn't define them. I wanted to portray how our differences don't define us; we're all connected in a way (as cheesy as it may sound), and it makes me sad to see small things like not being able to hear/see divide us.

Ever since you were a kid, people have always had a hard time looking you in the eyes. Due to your condition, they appeared hazy and almost grey; something that made a lot of people uncomfortable. In fact, most people don’t even know it, but you can actually tell when someone is turning away so they don’t have to face you. There’s a certain recognizable sound when someone purposely looks away to avoid affording you the basic decency of eye contact, and it’s dehumanizing as fuck. It didn’t matter that you weren’t completely blind, it was enough that you were still alienated from the rest of the world. They didn’t see you as a person, to them you were your blindness–it defined you. It’s the reason people were afraid to interact with you, why kids were always so cruel to you, and why you always kept people at an arm's-length. That is, until you met Abby.

Abby was unlike anyone you had ever met; she was the first person who saw you—truly saw you. While most people knew her to be Isaac’s top scar killer, you knew her as the girl who tended to your wounds after she found you patrolling the city. She was the smell of pine and fresh rain that filled your senses, and her voice was like a soothing ailment when she calmly reassured you that everything would be fine.

In the WLF infirmary, Abby never left your side. It’s not like your injuries were super severe or anything, but she stayed with you regardless. She wrapped your arms with fresh bandages when they needed changing, and got you desserts from the cafeteria using her connections to Isaac. After a few days, you quickly learned that the two of you had a lot in common and soon she was visiting you almost every day.

It’d been a month now and you’ve officially made the WLF stadium your new home. You and Abby were sitting in your room while she read to you with that same lovely voice. It had become a habit now; Abby had read to you in the infirmary, and ever since then she's been coming over so she can share all her favourite books with you. She was just starting a new chapter when you interrupted her. “Abby?”

Abby instantly stopped reading, and you could feel the bed shift as she sat up to face you. “What’s up?”

“Can I ask you something?” You were nervous. Although she had been nothing but kind to you, you didn’t want to ruin what happened to be the closest friendship you’ve had in a really long time.

You could hear her smiling as she answered. “Anything.”

You hesitated; you’d never normally do this with anyone else, but you trusted Abby. As you sat there contemplating your next words, Abby gently took your hand before continuing with that same reassuring tone she had used when you guys first met. “Hey, you know you can always talk to me right?”

Her hands were so warm. It was such a small detail that most people probably wouldn’t notice, but for some reason it was all you could think about in that moment. They were rough and calloused from years of combat but whenever she touched you, it was delicate and light. It was as if she was afraid that she would hurt you, even though you knew she never would. God, why can’t you think straight while she’s holding your hand like that? Fuck, it shouldn’t be that hard.

You struggled to get the words out, like something in your chest was weighing you down. “I just… I don't want things to change.”

“Hey, nothing you say could ever push me away. Okay?” Abby was softly caressing the top of your hand with hers as she set the book aside.

“I was wondering if I could…” Fuck, how were you supposed to say this? You paused trying to decide how to word it, but it still came out wrong. “feel your face?”

Abby didn’t respond, and if she hadn’t been holding your hand then, you would’ve thought she had left. After waiting for what felt like a whole five minutes (but was probably closer to thirty seconds) you were starting to get nervous. “Abby? You still there?”

Your voice must have snapped her out of it because she responded immediately. “Yeah, sorry I just… I was expecting something a lot worse. Like you murdered some kittens or something.”

You giggled at the sincerity in her voice, relief flooding through you. “Kittens? God Abby who the fuck do you think I am?”

“I don’t know! I thought you were admitting some deep dark secret.” Abby nervously laughed along with you, her hand never leaving yours.

As you both settled down, Abby shakily brought your hand to her cheek, silently signalling to you that it was okay. You hesitantly caressed it, softly stroking the lines of her cheekbones with a smile on your face. Your hand then slowly moved up towards her forehead, your fingers tracing the scar above her eyebrow. The scar was thin like from a blade or a scrap piece of metal, and you couldn’t help but wonder how she had gotten the scar–wondered how many scars she had gotten after years of fighting in that senseless war.

You’d never say it out loud because the WLF had saved your life, but the war with the Seraphites was unnecessary and quite frankly, useless. All of the so-called “sacrifices” being made for the sake of some fucking land was just stupid and greedy.

You weren’t really a religious person–especially considering the whirlwind of shit you’ve been through–but if this whole virus was a result of some higher being thrusting humans into extinction? You couldn’t blame them. All these survivors were granted a second chance to better themselves, thousands of people by some miracle had survived the outbreak, only for them to revert back to the same tired, old ideology of war and power. You supposed that even after all these years, humans never really change.

Your fingers moved slowly back down, passing the bridge of her nose and her Cupid’s bow before reaching her lips. They were soft and parted slightly when you reached for them, but she still didn’t move.

Abby stayed incredibly still as you took your time feeling her face, exploring every crevice—every detail of her subtle features. You could feel a stray strand of hair hanging next to her face, so you lightly brushed it behind her ear before bringing your hands back down to rest on your lap. But before you could fully pull away, your hand brushed up against something rigid and stiff. It took you a moment before you realized that you were touching her huge bicep, and you were astonished at her strength. It also took you a minute before you realized that you were literally feeling up her muscles, causing a sudden heat to rush towards your cheeks as you quickly retrieved your hands.

“Oh um… sorry I didn’t mean to- I mean I didn’t realize-” You tried to get the words out but you couldn’t. “Fuck this is awkward.”

Abby chuckled watching you get all flustered from touching her arms, and then out of nowhere it slipped out. “God you’re adorable.”

Then there was a pause, you weren’t sure you had heard her correctly but from the way her laughing suddenly came to a halt, you were sure she had just said what you thought she did.

“Uh, shit. I should… I should go.” Abby began standing up but before she could, you reached out and grabbed her arm. You pulled her towards you again, tracing your hand back towards her cheek as you gently cupped the side of her face with your palm.

“Don’t go.” Abby’s cheeks grew warm under your touch. You wanted more than anything to tell her how you feel–how you’ve felt for her since the moment you two had first met.

After spending so much of your life consumed by this irrational fear of abandonment and intimacy, you had let someone in. You lowered the barrier that you had spent so long building because of her. And of course it was easy to assume that you liked Abby just because she was one of the only people you hung out with, but it wasn’t like that. Abby wasn’t like the rest of your friends or family because she was never overbearing; most people were quick to treat you like a child or some helpless creature, but she never did. She gave you space when you needed it, but she also never made you feel lonely. Her presence was calming and comforting. Abby gave so much and expected nothing in return.

The possibility that your feelings for her were reciprocated made your heart flutter, but it was also really scary. This was entirely new territory; relationships were never a priority for you by any means, especially since survival has always been your prime concern. But now that you’ve found asylum here with the WLF—with Abby, you were safe. You were free to live, free to enjoy the prospect of a somewhat normal life, and you better believe you were going to take full advantage of this newfound normalcy.

You leaned in towards Abby, your foreheads touching and your lips just millimeters apart. As you placed both of your hands on her cheeks, Abby stayed impossibly still as her nose softly grazed yours. Abby’s hands landed on top of yours as she held them against her face, securing them there like she was afraid you would leave.

Then–as if it wasn’t the most terrifying thing ever–you kissed her. It was delicate and gentle, and you nearly cried because of how perfect it was. And although you had just felt her lips with your fingers, nothing compared to how they felt against yours. They were so soft you wanted to melt into them, and in that moment you nearly did. Your body involuntarily leaned into her, your arms falling against her broad shoulders in an effort to support yourself, before slowly moving to wrap around the back of her neck, pulling her even closer. All that built up tension from weeks of spending nearly every day together suddenly dissipated the moment you closed that gap, and those tears that had previously threatened to fall suddenly did. Small teardrops fell from both your eyes and wet your cheeks, causing Abby to pull back slightly as she wiped them with the pads of her thumbs. “What’s wrong?”

You gave her a small smile as you chuckled slightly. “Nothing, I just… I really like you Abby.”

As soon as the words fell out, Abby laughed softly before embracing you for a kiss once again. When the two of you finally pulled apart Abby spoke again with that same heavenly voice of hers. “I really like you too Y/N”

#abby anderson x reader #abby anderson imagine #the last of us imagine #request #abby anderson #abby tlou #fluff #fxf #tlou #tlou2 #the last of us #the last of us part 2 #me simping for abby's arms #yes i quoted take on me #and what about it

212 notes · View notes

hyperbali · 3 years

Text

Agatha Harkness Was Right, And Here’s Why

Alright. Finally had to sit down and write my way out of this quiet, internal temper tantrum, and a few people were interested in seeing what I had to say, so I present to you:

Agatha Harkness Was Right, And Here’s Why

Disclaimer: MASSIVE spoilers for the entirety of WandaVision, and I am not nice about it.

I’ll start off by saying that, for all its foibles, WandaVision was genuinely a good example of a property within the MCU/Disney umbrella that stepped out of the usual ‘good guys fight bad guys action extravaganza’ in a way that pushed the envelope. The pseudo-horror aspect of the first few episodes is something I would really love to see engaged with on a more thoughtful basis in future projects.

I would say that it proved to be more than a vehicle to promote toys, but… well…

Yeah. Anyway.

I’ll assume that you watched WandaVision if you’re reading this, but quick recap: In the aftermath of ‘the Blip,’ Wanda is left broken and alone with no one in her corner. Her biggest mentor willingly abandoned his team to get his own ‘happy’ ending (do not get me started on Steve, that’s a document in and of itself), her other biggest mentor is probably off enjoying his family while ignoring the incredibly racist killing spree he’s been on for the past five years, and her lover is dead. When she goes to claim the body, she’s told nuh-uh, that’s government property, please leave.

So she goes to a plot of land in the middle of some nowhere town in New Jersey, which Vision apparently bought despite the fact they were living a pretty decently comfortable life in Scotland, where she looks at the deed that Vision drew a heart on and wrote ‘To Grow Old In’. Very sweet. Kind of weird, considering nothing of this caliber had ever been suggested for either of their characters and they’d been actively running from specifically the U.S. authorities? But sweet.

She has a breakdown and, in her grief, contains the entire town of Westview and all 3,892 of the people in it in her own personal paradise, where nothing bad ever happens beyond sitcom hijinks, no one dies, and every problem is tied up and neatly dealt with by the end of an ‘episode’. Except we learn that this is only paradise to Wanda, who apparently shares the aspect of having to relate everything to her favourite pop culture with Tony, because everyone else in Westview is more or less being psychologically tortured by the incredible amount of pain she’s in, forced to be puppeted actors to make her happy.

Bear in mind, Westview might have been bigger at some point - we have no idea how many people survived the Blip, or how many have been brought back to life within the past few weeks of the current setting. Either way, this is a town that has already dealt with a lot of trauma being dragged into yet another awful, much more specific kind of emotional damage, thanks to ‘the heroes’. Nice.

Agatha Harkness, a witch who’s been up to who-knows-what in the 340 years since she drained the coven that tried to kill her for getting a little too ambitious into jerky, feels the massive expenditure of magical power and decides to investigate. All the while, she carefully uses her own magic to try and peek into Wanda’s psyche, her motivations, all while keeping up appearances and not letting slip that anything is amiss.

I’ll point out that she’s no saint here, either - she specifically keeps one Westview resident at her mercy, and knows what’s happening to the rest of them, but doesn’t attempt to stop it. I’ll chalk that up to her pragmatism; their ‘sacrifice’ was fine to her as long as she could figure out how Wanda could have done something so unheard of in terms of power.

What we come to learn over the course of the show is that, given everything that happened, Wanda didn’t mean to take over an entire town and tool it into her own personal slice of heaven. She very quickly became aware of it; we know that she knows it’s her own personal bubble as soon as episode three, when she’s confronting Monica about how the latter could possibly know about Ultron. Wanda is made further aware of how much damage this is inflicting on others in episode five, when Vision himself tells her that these people are scared. But still, she has everything handled! It’s okay! The outside world is worse, trust her!

Her handling of the question, ‘where are all the children of Westview,’ is one that bears some thinking - and, y’know, kind of more than a little concern. They’re allowed to walk around as part of the ‘Halloween special,’ but as Vision walks further and further out towards the edges of town where Wanda doesn’t have as much full control, people are just frozen in place, or conducting the same few seconds of action over and over. And fully aware of being trapped.

How are they being sustained? Eating, sleeping? If someone isn’t part of her storyline, is she just locking them down into a coma? What made Wanda decide that keeping the children ‘out of the way’ was somehow kinder than involving them, especially given her later argument that she’s been trying to keep the entire town safe and happy?

The fact of the matter is, she only actually starts to feel remorse for any of this after she’s confronted with the fact that, after weeks of being at her mercy, the townspeople of Westview would rather be dead than endure another moment of having to play nice for her enjoyment. She finally opens the ‘bubble’ to let them out - which leads to the ‘epic’ finale of three different entities trying to take down Wanda and her happy family: the S.W.O.R.D. military led by Hayward, the White Vision, and Agatha.

Winding back to how we got here: after Agatha uses her own trapped resident, Ralph Bohner (who, given his casting and the props in place during the last episode, I’m willing to bet is actually the missing witness protection person Jimmy was looking for) in an attempt to lure out Wanda’s reasoning - and fails - she’s pretty much done pretending. She tricks Wanda into her basement, nullifies her powers, and makes her face her own past to get to the truth of the matter.

Not going to lie, favourite moment of the show. Kathryn Hahn killed Agatha’s slightly-amused-slightly-irritated observations about Wanda’s coping mechanisms, and the whole arrangement was extremely meta. I would have paid real money dollars to see her do the same thing to the likes of Tony, Strange, and Loki. Hell, even just having her meet the rest of the Avengers? Augh. If wishes were fishes.

When Agatha comes to the conclusion that Wanda is the vaunted, nigh-indestructible force of nature that she’s literally spent her entire life reading about is the ultimate source of chaos magic and will likely bring about the end of the world, she’s pretty understandably taken aback. To that matter, the fact that Wanda… has very little control over any of it, and is using what she does understand to play housemaker? After how long Agatha has spent learning control, hiding in plain sight, just to be child’s play compared to what Wanda has at her fingertips? I’d be pretty pissed off, too!

The way that WandaVision handled both of the major ‘fights’ - Vision versus White Vision ending in philosophy, and Wanda ending up beating Agatha at her own game of deception - is excellent. A little grating that they had to go with the beat down angle before they got there, but this is MCU; punches and thrown cars had to get shoved in somewhere. And, given that this series very much played with the idea of grey morality, I was sort of hopeful that Agatha would end up in a not-quite stalemate arrangement with Wanda. She’s not as powerful as the Scarlet Witch, but she has the know-how that Wanda sorely lacks; in recompense for her own deeds, she would be able to teach what she knows while also kind of scheming on her own time.

Y’know, like what they did with rehabilitating Loki?

Except that Wanda, who has just gone through the entire rigamarole of coming to terms with the fact that she trapped thousands of people into a nightmare scenario against their will, rendering them helpless to her mercy… traps Agatha into a nightmare scenario against her will, rendering her helpless to Wanda’s mercy.

That moment actually shook me. Oh, my god. We’re supposed to still look at Wanda as a good guy after this?

This isn’t even covering the incredibly awful confrontation with her and Vision where she tries to gaslight him into believing that everything is A-OK, or the fact that the person she gets most violent with (apart from Agatha) is Monica Rambeau, a black woman who spends most of the show bending over backwards trying to say that what Wanda is doing is understandable, justified, and just needs a gentle touch to be dealt with.

That could be its own document, too - how Monica, much as she’s incredible and definitely looks to be a really exciting addition to the MCU roster, more or less gets used as the Good One to absolve and enable Wanda’s actions. One of her last lines to Wanda, after seeing how the people of Westview (rightfully) look at Wanda like she’s monstrous, is “they’ll never know what you sacrificed.”

Sacrificed what? The fake husband and fake kids she made out of her own compulsion to pretend that everything is okay? None of that would have existed if she’d been given the proper resources to actually cope with how much loss she’s had to deal with. None of that would have existed if she hadn’t caused this problem in the first place.

In the end, Wanda flies off in her fancy new gear before the FBI shows up, avoiding any real consequences to her actions - which has pretty much been the running theme of her character ever since she was introduced to the MCU in Age of Ultron. The worst kind of direct consequence she’s ever gotten was being grounded to her room for a while, then kept in the Raft for, like, maybe a day - and both times, she was broken out post-haste.

Meanwhile, she worsened the issues in Sokovia (which, I will say upfront, was Tony’s fault to begin with), unleashed the Hulk on Johannesburg, got a pretty significant amount of civilians killed as bystanders in Lagos (hey, how come Wanda keeps turning a lot of black people into casualties?), and stood back in Wakanda to let their people try to fight off Thanos from getting to Vision until it was clear that there was no other option than for her to get involved.

Great Power Comes With No Responsibility At All, Actually.

Wanda, in the several years she has maintained her identity as an Avenger, has proven time and time again that she takes on innumerable risks without any full understanding of what they mean, allows others to take on the brunt of the fallout for her, and looks sad until she’s forgiven and moves on to the next problem. She has no business casually throwing around the kind of power that being the Scarlet Witch entails, not until she’s actually made any kind of headway into making reparations for what she’s done and tried, really tried, to get a handle on what she’s capable of.

Which she’s apparently doing in the last post-credits scene, astral reading the literal Book of the Damned on her lonesome in the mountains, but… without anyone to guide her, or give her any kind of boundary?

[I ran out of images I could post, but you know exactly what image I am referring to here]

Agatha Harkness was right. And that should terrify everybody that has to deal with Wanda in the future.

(P.S. Do we know if she actually even killed that dog? We never see her holding anything but a blanket, and characters go in and out of that show all the time. Granted, she wasn’t great with the cicada-turned-bird... hmm.)

Additional Notes:

“Well, you’re a Tony Stan, of course you think Wanda’s a villain”

I like Tony because he’s such an awful mess, and the narrative isn’t exactly kind about telling him what a piece of shit he can be! He reaped a lot of problems, created practically half the villains in the MCU, and ended up dying a martyred hero. Thanks to being the tent pole by which this franchise hoisted itself into a cultural powerhouse, he will always be their golden savior. If you want to read about how he’s the true villain of this entire affair, feel free to look up any number of takedown pieces about him that are out there. He’s a dick. I will never “uwu sad baby who did nothing wrong ever 🥺” him the way people do about Wanda.

“Why are you so pressed about this”

Because something as good in concept as WandaVision could and should have been about anyone other than the whitewashed, antisemitic take on Wanda Maximoff that MCU brought upon us. They put crucifixes on her wall in Civil War, for fuck’s sake!

“Weren’t you mad about them not including Aaron Taylor-Johnson”

At this point, I am almost kind of relieved the real Pietro wasn’t resurrected for this, because god knows they probably would have killed him all over again just to inflict that much more pain on his sister.

“Anything else you’d like to tell us, turbo nerd”

This was literally itching at me all weekend to write, so it’s more or less just to get it off my chest. If you powered your way through it, uh… thanks? Sorry if I yucked your yums, but I tried to be as clear with the disclaimer as I could. 🤷‍♂️

#blah blah #long post #marvel #mcu #wandavision #wandavision spoilers #wandavision critical #anti wanda maximoff

81 notes · View notes

mc-critical · 3 years

Note

Hello, I just found your blog and I like it very much, it’s very interesting to read!!!. My question is : what is your opinion on Ahmed and Kosem’s relationship? Do you think he truly loves her? What do you think about him seeing other women? And what do you think about his relationship with these women (Mahfiruz, Katerina, Gulbahar and Yasemin).

Thank you for liking my stuff!

I think that, just like Süleiman, Ahmet loves Kösem in his own way. It's not as toxic or problematic or often questionable writing-wise as Süleiman's love for Hürrem, but it still has both its ups and downs that make it interesting to explore.

Ahmet and Kösem is perhaps the love story where the writers made the most effort to mask the possible worse aspects of. It could even be considered actually romantic at points, with their amazing first scenes in the gardens and the amazing chemistry of Ekin Koç and Anastasia Tsilimpou, the beginning sense of wonder and "mystery" it started out with.... when she first met him, Anastasia didn't know he was the sultan and put all her trust in him - a certainly good first impression. Ahmet himself is also very far from Süleiman's direct endeavors and tests of loyalty, he tries his best to be respectful in his own way, despite that he fails to do that a bunch of times. That's why it's easy to miss the darker aspects of the relationship at first and it could be perceived as probably the only thing in the franchise that is remotely close to a "fairytale" of sorts.

However, when the curtains start to fall slowly, but surely, we come to realize that while, say, Hürrem learns to want what Süleiman wants, to be fully loyal to him and to cave to his demands just like he often caves to her own, Ahmet and Kösem as characters have entirely different values and needs throughout their whole relationship. The fact that Ahmet wanted Anastasia because of a picture, without him having ever met her, is incredibly telling: he has created an ideal of her in his own head from the start and he wants to consistently maintain it. When he's with her, it's as if he's living his own dream, his own perfect world that has place only for him and that young girl. (that's why the garden is so symbolic: Ahmet calls it a place of solitude, only for himself almost immediately after the audience is introduced to it; also that line from him: "The world is on one side, Kösem - on the other." - quoting by memory again, but the meaning is the same) Their world views gained from their past and present environments begin to clash from the moment she finds out he's a Sultan - she wants to desperately go back to her family, both because all of them are still alive and her free spirit that cannot bear to live in this golden cage. Ahmet doesn't let her go also because he lacks the understanding of this desire: he has grown in the strict Ottoman system and having people like Anastasia stay in the harem forever is something he finds perfectly natural; for him it's unthinkable to stand against it. But despite of that "minor offense", Ahmet's idea of Anastasia's "purity" and "perfection" was working for awhile, with her seeming to meet his expectations and slowly warm up to him. But the real truth is way stronger than your own made-up lies. Anastasia's pleas to let her go only get stronger until they reach their climax with her attempt to escape. And you know what? If it weren't for her contrived, yet convenient excuse to come back to him, he would've lost her. Helplessly, in a blink of an eye, he would've lost her, due to what she sees as sheer ignorance from his part. And when she gains her own bit of agency later in the season and becomes Kösem, when she develops and realizes the actual stakes of the game, beginning to play it herself due to survival by default and the will for revenge, Ahmet's "perfect picture" breaks apart and that apparently hurt him so much, he stayed mad at her for quite some time. This wasn't the person he knew and loved anymore, this was an entirely new, reborn woman. He didn't seem to love and respect her for the virtues she actually possessed, but for those that he had imagined her to always have in his head. That is another, more "subtle" level of toxicity than with Hürrem and Süleiman, but it's still toxicity, that's why this relationship is far from healthy and the "beautiful, but quirky" dynamic it sets the impression of.

Kösem's view of Ahmet is very interesting and complex, writing-wise. I actually don't think she grew to love him as much. The place she forcibly got in made her feel very limited by him mostly, since he was the reason she was here in the first place and he was calling the shots in terms of her future (whether she would visit her family or not?). What made her become a bit affectionate wasn't fully him himself, but rather the oh-so-prominent theme of adaption in the harem. She wanted to escape so desperately, but there were so many happenings and situations during the time she was in the harem that just demanded for her to get used to everything. So when Iskender gave her the chance to escape, she as become used to the harem's environment so much, she felt unsure of herself outside of it. Her return was out of necessity rather than love and even her standing up to the people when Ahmet was sick was done out of necessity, too (like I elaborated in another ask about Kösem). I'm not saying that she didn't feel any affection whatsoever, but the affection she felt for him was easy to let go of (E25: "Today I didn't marry only Sultan Ahmet, I married the country!"), because I don't think Ahmet did his best efforts to understand her and I don't think Kösem felt completely comfortable around him, all that contrasted with Kemankeş in S02, who according to her, understands her better than anyone ever could.

Ahmet loves Kösem, because even after his perfect picture with her was broken and his anger and denial and refusal to accept it passed, he did try to make things better. What I loved most about his dynamic with Kösem, is his open honesty with her that continued till the end. There have been scenes where they seemed like true companions, especially their beginning one in E21 with all the kids gathered around them. I loved that despite of his mistakes, he did try to set things right. There was this sudden protectiveness that activated in him when Kösem told him the truth about the death of his father and why she acted the way she did and that could mean she now became something of a "cinnamon roll he just protect" and that is certainly a flawed mindset to have in many aspects, but that showed he could actually care for her beyond his idealistic perspective of her.

Am I okay with Ahmet having other women? Honestly, I'm glad that MCK lowered the concubine arcs to a minimum and with the way they did it, it doesn't offend me as much. I would even love some of them to be more developed for a change, because they did turn out to be solely drama tools, thanks to their lesser episodes and MCK's different themes as a whole, that basically did their purpose and left, instead of stretch out and outstay their welcome and that is just the other extreme in a bad disguise.

I won't talk about the relationship he had with his other women as much, because they just aren't fleshed out. I would've liked to see more of Ahmet and Mahfiruze: I believe he was way more decent with her than say, Süleiman was with Mahidevran, and their scenes weren't half bad. Too bad that would've demanded Mahfiruze herself to be fleshed out more as a character and the writers to give her more of a place in the narrative. Katerina was present only for an episode (or was it two episodes?) and we don't have as much conclusions to drive here. We only have his mild infatuation with her and... that's it? We have no idea what Katerina actually felt or how their dynamic would play out in the long run. We can only speculate. Gülbahar, by contrast, also had the least screentime of all his women who have comparatively minimal screentime, but her exploration in S02 helps us gain a better idea of how it went between them. I have the impression that she was the least favourite concubine of Ahmet's, ever. She did succeed to get pregnant and have a child, but it probably was a one and done thing and she didn't seem to get any other grasp of manly affection since then. Which is why, along with them taking away Bayezid from her by exiling her, she was so focused on scheming for one particular goal and this became what defined her. But then again, that is still a speculation in my part. Now, with Yasemin we have much more on-screen chemistry and interaction: that relationship felt very similar with what Süleiman thought of Firuze - infatuation, massive infatuation, but still not love, because just like Firuze, Yasemin also gave him poison and we don't know how much the poison affected his psyche, along with the sickness it brought upon him. These relationships have the opposite problem MC's concubine arcs had: these women were all unfavored or favored very temporarily in the span of an episode or two, which made them very stale and lacking in material.

Lastly, while MCK in its entirety, isn't very big on love stories, Kösem and Ahmet's relationship still had an evolution throughout S01, even if that evolution was more "condensed" than the others similar to it. It still remains the most fleshed out love story in the show, along with Kösem and Kemankeş's, and it was a very important part of the story that helped shape much of the narrative that succeeds it.

#magnificent century #magnificent century kosem #magnificent century kösem #magnificent century: kösem #sultan ahmed #kosem sultan #kösem sultan #ask #elenahoward

34 notes · View notes

shijiujun · 4 years

Note

“you know you’re singing to your headphones out loud, right” au for moshang plz sqh singing modern songs that mbj doesn't know and being hella confused 🥺

Featuring karaoke-loving Shang Qinghua who gets a bit too drunk at a Cang Qiong mountain gathering, and he goes all out.

Or when Mobei Jun wonders why Shang Qinghua is singing about another man called Liang Shan Bo.

---

Sometimes, he thinks about his old life before he ever had the misfortune of landing in a world of his own creation, with an annoying gaming AI system of sorts hounding his every move (in the beginning) or turning up at the most inopportune times just when he thinks it’s finally gone and left him alone (more recently).

Shang Qinghua remembers not having many friends when he was still Shang Qinghua, when ‘向天打飞机 Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky’ was still merely his writing Weibo account moniker and when he had millions of people looking up to him for his crucial contributions in writing this amazing story about his son Luo Binghe and the way he overcame all odds to become a success with a harem of gorgeous women at his feet (damn you, Peerless Cucumber bro!).

Back in those days, he lived off cup noodles and instant coffee. If he didn’t have to leave the house, Shang Qinghua would simply curl up in front of his laptop, either writing for his novel or watching shows (clears his throat) - actual shows! Chinese period dramas were his favourite, where a skilled and intelligent consort in the harem would outwit all the other women to be with her one true love, the Emperor, who falls irrevocably in love with her.

And when he got bored, he switched from the laptop to his television to engage in his second most favourite hobby - Chinese karaoke. Going out to a karaoke bar would require some level of socializing, and also a few friends so he gets more bang out of his buck from what he pays for the room, but at home?

With advanced technology and a tiny ass microphone in either shining gold or silver, Shang Qinghua’s home entertainment system was his very own personal karaoke room, His tiny mic even had that echo-y effect on.

Shang Qinghua has a thing for classic Chinese songs - ‘The New Butterfly Dream’, ‘Liang Shan Bo and Juliet’, The Moon Represents My Heart‘ - and contemporary karaoke must-haves, like Wang Fei. For an embarrassing few days, the Chinese version of Baby Shark was a veritable earworm as well.

After transmigrating into his own story set in ancient times, where he lives without technology, Shang Qinghua would be lying if he said he didn’t miss the Internet. Laptops would be incredibly handy, and so would switches for lights, definitely indoor plumbing for toilets, and induction stoves. Phones too, that would be nice, rather than having to ‘send word’ with letters.

Of course, there is no karaoke bar or machine for him.

Not all is bad though. At least he transmigrated to Shang Qinghua in this world as a baby, so it’s not as if he was surviving on Internet and technology one day and left to do everything manually the next day since someone was always taking care of him. Peerless Cucumber bro, of course, wasn’t as lucky, but the man has definitely taken to this world (and his son!!) like a fish to water.

And as for himself, Shang Qinghua does not need to envy Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe either, because somehow, he has gotten the man of his dreams too, even if said man was a little cruel and rude to him in the beginning.

He has the love of his life (coughs coughs) and they’re stuck in this world for the rest of his life. What more is there to want? Not to mention how his cup of instant noodles betrayed him at the last moment, resulting in his death! It is slightly safer, ironically, to be in this world instead.

All is good except... well...

===

Shen Qingqiu marvels at the sight before him, torn between wanting to step in to stop Shang Qinghua, or watch this farce unfold.

He sometimes forgets where he, or where Shang Qinghua, who has been in this world longer than he, came from. They don’t always talk about the past when they meet, and aside from the occasional meetups, Shen Yuan is a part of him that doesn’t surface, not when he is with Luo Binghe.

Shang Qinghua, on the other hand, grew up here, and aside from referring to Shen Qingqiu by his Weibo account name, he seems otherwise well-adjusted, no hint of modern online writer Shang Qinghua in sight. It doesn’t feel as if he misses their original world either.

This evening, however, memories of modern times slap him in the face, quite literally.

“Shizun!” Luo Binghe calls, frantic, tugging him back into his embrace out of Shang Qinghua’s way. Once Shen Qingqiu is safe in his arms, his eyes narrow at the bumbling, drunk idiot causing a scene in the dinner hall, “Shang Qinghua...”

Shang Qinghua stops where he is, and then before any one can stop him, he picks up a pair of chopsticks, brings it to his mouth, and begins bellowing his way through-

-Jay Chou’s Hair Like Snow.

“Shizun, are you alright?” Luo Binghe fusses, his hands coming up to cup Shen Qingqiu’s face when his Shizun doesn’t so much as respond to him. “Were you hurt? Did he hurt you? How’re you feeling? We’ll go back home now-”

“What is he singing?” Qi Qingqi frowns in disgust.

They all wince when Shang Qinghua attempts to hit a high note, but fails miserably.

Fuck me, Shen Qingqiu thinks, his eyes impossibly wide, who knew Airplane bro was such a karaoke fanatic?

“... maybe he is possessed by a malevolent spirit? Or perhaps this is an unidentified curse?” asks Ming Fan.

“Or is this some new form of cultivation?” asks Ning Yingying, curious.

Yue Qingyuan, seated at the front of the dining hall, cannot help but be concerned for him as well. “Shall we call Mu-shidi to take a look at him-”

They’ve gathered for their annual meeting - a condition that Yue Qingyuan has set in place a few years ago after Luo Binghe ‘stole’ (married!) him away from Cang Qiong Peak - and although Shang Qinghua said he didn’t mind that Mobei Jun was unable to accompany him today, he spent most of the dinner drinking alcohol while in a melancholic state instead.

Who knew that Shang Qinghua was a singing drunk?!

Hence their current predicament.

At the Sect Master’s words, Shang Qinghua suddenly turns around and looks at Shen Qingqiu. HIccuping twice, he then beams, “Cucumber-”

Shen Qingqiu has never moved that fast in his life. Within a fraction of a second, he has his hand pressed over Shang Qinghua’s mouth, holding onto him from the back.

“Cucumber?” everyone choruses in confusion.

“I believe your Shang-shishu has had a little too much to drink,” Shen Qingqiu clears his throat, nodding at everyone else. “We should... send him back to Mobei. Isn’t that right, Binghe?”

His disciple, his husband, still has on an affronted, murderous look for how Shang Qinghua almost brained Shen Qingqiu with his flailing arms in his drunken fit. The moment Shen Qingqiu asks, however, his expression morphs into something so soft and full of love that everyone who sees it chokes.

“Of course,” Luo Binghe smiles, devotion apparent in his eyes. “Anything Shizun wants.”

===

The words that are tumbling out of Shang Qinghua’s mouth are entirely incomprehensible, and so are the tunes he’s humming into his ear.

Mobei Jun thought he had gotten used to Shang Qinghua’s eccentric mannerisms, and also thought he knew everything about his husband, so many years later. Shang Qinghua is mumbling Chinese alright, but none of the characters put together make any sense.

Who is Liang Shan Bo? And who the hell is Juliet?!

His mood taking a turn for the worse, Mobei Jun hoists Shang Qinghua up further on his back.

After getting so drunk, the idiot had the gall to demand for a piggy-back from the throne room to their bedroom. Mobei Jun has never once suffered such indignity in his years of living. A bridal carry? Of course, anytime. A piggy-back? As if he was some beast to be tamed?

Well this definitely has to be a first.

While he was stewing in his thoughts, Shang Qinghua switches from that song to another one, and a stream of ‘du du du lu du lu’ emerges from his lips... AND something about... a sha yu? What the hell is that?!

Shang Qinghua lazily lifts his right hand as they approach their room, balls it into a fist and puts it to his mouth, as if he’s holding something, and whatever monstrosity Shang Qinghua is singing, his voice gets even louder.

Mobei Jun tosses Shang Qinghua off his back unceremoniously and onto the soft bed. Interrupted, Shang Qinghua blinks, his vision blurry, and is about to catch his breath and start singing again when his husband climbs in after him. Trapping Shang Qinghua with his entire weight, Mobei Jun seals his lips with a kiss.

“... My king...” Shang Qinghua murmurs in a daze, when Mobei Jun pulls back a few minutes later, his breaths coming out as short, harsh pants. “My king...”

“That’s right,” he says with a glower. “I’m your Da Wang, your husband.”

Mobei Jun doesn’t know who Liang Shan Bo is, but he’s going to make sure no other man’s name ever leaves Shang Qinghua’s lips again when they’re together.

And when his husband finally sobers up, he’s going to have a lot to answer for.

---

Songs Mentioned (YouTube Links in Comments):

The New Butterfly Dream 新鸳鸯蝴蝶梦－ A Chinese classic, sung by Huang An but done beautifully by legendary god of singing Fei Yu Qing and singing partner for the song A Yun Ga

Liang Shan Bo and Juliet 梁山伯与朱丽叶－ A Taiwanese contemporary classic of sorts by Genie Zhuo, most Chinese millennials would definitely have sang this at a karaoke once in their lives - Song is inspired by Liang Shan Bo and Zhu Ying Tai, the Chinese version of Romeo and Juliet to some extent - They both die in the end and become butterflies, so they’re also called the Butterfly Lovers.

The Moon Represents My Heart 月亮代表我的心－ ANOTHER CLASSIC CLASSIC!!!

Baby Shark (Chi. Ver) － ˆThe baby shark hype did move to China, and it’s pretty hilarious LMAO and in Chinese, shark is 鲨鱼 (sha yu) but I’m assuming that in this world, there isn’t a shark kind of animal of sorts? So Mobei Jun and everyone else except SQQ wouldn’t know what a shark is or looks like?!

Hair Like Snow 发如雪－ By Jay Chou, another classic that all Chinese millennials would have sang in a karaoke bar

Wang Fei 王妃－ Jam Hsiao’s version is known best, and it’s pretty epic, not that anyone can reach any of the high notes in the chorus, but does that stop us from trying?!! Hell no!!!

---

Notes: My first Moshang?!! That didn’t really have a lot of Moshang time?! But thanks anon, hope this sort of works?!

#svsss #scumbag villain #穿书自救指南 #渣反派自救系统 #scumbag system #moshang #bingqiu #mobei jun #shang qinghua #shen qingqiu #luo binghe #everyone else is somewhere there except my bb lqg #and anw karaoke sqh!!!!

156 notes · View notes

ephemeralnerd · 3 years

Text

Attack on Titan The Final Chapter: The “Good” Stuff

I read the typeset last night and slept on it.

This final chapter has just so much going on that I may write a different post for my critiques and then everything else that just made me go “huh?”.

But for now, let us focus on the positives.

1. I lucked out with my favourite characters.

My favourite character in SNK, as you may know, is Jean. I was hurt about the end of chapter 138 because I felt that he and Connie (and Gabi and Karina) were completely shafted with an insufficient send-off. So to see them both alive was all I really wanted, and I kind of felt it coming.

Connie has his mum back! The fact that she was still alive also hinted towards the titan powers becoming undone. Still, I’m happy that Connie has someone left.

Unfortunately if you’re a fan of one of the main characters, I think you’ve had it way worse, which is usually the opposite of how it should be, because main character “should” = more screen time + better development

2. Gabi and Falco with Uncles Levi and Onyankopon in London

This is cute. Onyankopon’s showing the others around the world they were always forbidden to see. Gabi and Falco have each other, everyone’s looking pretty fresh with those outfits, (seriously I love Gabi’s pantsuit) Levi survives and has someone to take care of him after all the fighting he did to ensure the survival of everyone else. I just wish Hanji was here

3. Eren was never free.

Eren being a slave to freedom is emblematic of one of the story’s main themes, succinctly put by Kenny as “everyone is drunk on something”.

Mikasa is drunk on her love for Eren, (and apparently Ymir is too for Karl Fritz, but more on That in another post) Erwin was drunk the truth of the outside world, Armin was drunk on the salty salty umi da.

So why would Eren be any different? While the execution has unequivocally been botched, it is not like this came out of nowhere.

Eren never grew past this mental state, of the child who wished for freedom. He has always been a selfish, yet sacrificial person, seen by wanting to join the corps in the first place. He steeled himself in the Reiss cave despite wanting to die, realising the responsibility he had and only he could have.

The responsibility just became too much for a kid.

Here are the ideologies that Isayama set out from the beginning:

that everyone is a slave to their desires

that mass violence is a cowardly route

and that the world’s problems can never be fixed.

Yes, if Eren destroyed the world and went back to his child (going along with that common theory for a sec) that would follow the ideology, because he became a slave to freedom and in that process a mass murderer. Only when nobody remains will there be peace.

But what I think Isayama is trying to say is that even that won’t work. Eren could never “win”. No matter how many time shenanigans occurred, no matter how far ahead Eren knew, he could never concoct the perfect plan because that is too much for a person to take.

Eren is just one kid. An immature kid who was crushed under the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Like I said, execution and logic leaves much to be desired (why did Eren have to kill Carla??) but I am happy about the thematic conclusion to Eren’s character.

4. Historia is... happy (?)

At least we see her smiling here, and her baby is so adorable. It’s no consolation for her being benched half the story just when her character was getting good, but I will take anything at this point.

5. Other cameos

Grouchy Flegel and Jaegerist Rico.

6. Concluding thoughts

I have many mixed feelings, and I’m definitely not alone in this. I believe this chapter changes the trajectory and meaning behind so many character arcs that happened or we expected to happen. it’s going to take a while to parse and think out but we’ll get good takes from it. Or at least interesting ones.

Discourse is the basis of fandom interaction, after all. I’ve been in the snk fandom since RTS in 2016 and have enjoyed discussion, for the most part. So here’s to more discussion, I suppose. SNK is one of those fandoms that I think will never die.

#snk #ephemeralnerd #snk 139 #snk manga spoilers #aot manga spoilers #snk spoilers #aot spoilers #ephemeta #complex feelings are complex #this took a weirdly sentimental turn

32 notes · View notes

neokad · 3 years

Text

Phantasy Star II - The 1989 JRPG that could

(This post is dedicated to @kuukigajan, my best friend, whom motivated me to post here again, so... I hope you'll enjoy this!)

This game. This freaking game.

I'm gonna say it right now: this post will contain massive spoilers about pretty much everything in Phantasy Star 2's story, so if you do plan on experiencing this game fresh, I strongly advise you to not read this post at all beyond the first paragraph, but... here's the gist of it: Phantasy Star II is one of the most important and groundbreaking JRPGs of its time, and I just did not believe this game was from 1989, at ALL. For that and a few other reasons, it has become one of my new favourite games of all time <3

In fact, I do want to start with the one big flaw of this adventure so that I can just gush about everything else that's brilliant about PSII. I have to be honest: the dungeon design in this game is horrible. Now to be fair, it does make the many places you visit more memorable, but well... there's a rumor floating around that an actual trainee made the layouts for the dungeons - and since this game was a bit rushed for the Genesis's launch, the devs just didn't have time to replace the... stuff he submitted. And let me tell you, this rumor makes sense: PSII's dungeons are too big, too maze-like, too confusing and also FILLED with strong enemies. And in a game where you don't get a way to save anywhere until the midway point, it can make your adventure very frustrating and potentially grindy because of that... Now I wouldn't say that PSII's nearly as bad in this area as say, the original version of Dragon Warrior or ironically the first Phantasy Star, but the dungeons can totally make you feel like the game's harder than it actually is, at least without a map.

Thankfully, you should never feel bad for using any maps or guides with this game! The execs at SEGA at the time made the very smart decision to include a walkthrough with each copy of the game, including maps, tips, secrets and more! Said guide does encourage youto not look at it as much as possible but... it's totally fair to just use this, without any shame!

And that is a great thing, because... with you armed with this piece of paper, Phantasy Star II can finally show you its actual brilliance.

The game's plot starts off a thousand years after the events of the first Phantasy Star game. Since Alis and her party defeated Dark Force, the inhabitants of the Algol solar system - and its three planets of Palma, Motavia and Dezolis - have enjoyed relative peace. However, at a (to my knowledge) unknown point in time, a computer entity known as Mother Brain has started imposing itself onto mostly Motavia. This, over time, has actually given many benefits to the region: the once deserted wasteland was given rain, water and crops, so that it could finally host viable, comfortable civilizations. The citizens that lived here could finally ditch their (arguably) nomadic, harsh lives in favor of comfort, pleasant weather and more. And most importantly, Mother Brain allowed its citizens, save for a few, to ditch their current jobs and live a life of laziness, without any obligations or pressure to do anything other than well, existence. This is reflected many times during the game through NPC dialogue, too!

It is on such a setting that our protagonist, Rolf, wakes up from a strange nightmare. In it, we see Alis batting Dark Force and struggling in doing so, but as soon as he realizes this, Rolf wakes up in cold sweat. He then proceeds to calm his nerves, realizing that no such dramatic events could possible happen to him - after all, he and many others have been under the universal protection and care of Mother Brain, whom at this point, has provided all of their needs for centuries. He then gets out of bed and goes to the central tower, where we works as an agent in case some things do go wrong.

And gone wrong things have! His superior informs him that biological monsters, which had been created and bred in the Mota biosystems laboratory, have gone rogue and infected the regions of Motavia at a rapid rate. Because of this, Rolf is asked to investigate the cause of this phenomenon. Once he gets home to prepare for his journey, he is ambushed by best girl Nei, who has been rescued by him many months ago from the clutches of a serial killer. She does not want to be left alone anymore, and since she is also worried for Rolf's sefety, asks him to accompany him on the mission. Naturally, Rolf accepts.

Here, I do want to bring up Nei in more detail! She's in fact, the first of PSII's brilliant story-gameplay interactions, and here's why! Nei is in fact, a crossbreed experiment between a human and an unknown animal with cat-like features, but here's the thing: this said experiment was a failure. Because of this, Nei is only one years old, and yet her physical and mental age are progressing way more rapidly than they should. And you can feel this effect on the game itself: she needs way less EXP than any other party member in the game to level up, and because of this she will skyrocket in levels way beyond the rest of your crew... with a catch. Because of the nature of the experiment, the genetic code inside of her is slowly being messed up and corrupted, which not only causes her level ups to be less valuable than anyone else's, but it also becomes an important plot point later... Unfortunately, despite her absolute cuteness, her status as a half-half made her a victim of bullying, racism and so much more, which is... pretty messed up to bring up at the time not gonna lie o_o

Starting up the journey, the party discovers that rogues have destroyed a neighboring city, and it just so happens that their base is situed at Shure, the first dungeon of the game . One assumption I like to make from this scene is that life has become so easy and careless on Motavia that people just went and did crime out of pure boredom, because life just wasn't thrilling enough anymore with Mother Brain doing everything it could for its inhabitants...

However, upon climbing said tower, Rolf and Nei find out multiple dead rogue bodies, whom have been presumably murdered by the many biomonsters roaming the place. They do, however, manage to find some dynamite and most importantly, a letter. This piece of paper informs our heroes that the daughter of a Darum, the very same person that tried to murder Nei months ago, is held captive in another tower, which explains why he turned to crime in the first place. They then decide to do the obvious, which is to rescue daughter Teim in her captivity location. Once they meet up with her, she explains her desire to talk to her father to set things straight and sway him from the life he's been getting into, as well as hide her from the surviving rogue members with the help of a veil. Our group manages to meet up with Darum, but... her daughter asks the party to stay put, as she does not want them to interfere with her as she explains things to her father. However, in the heat of the moment, she forgets to remove her veil, which causes Darum to not recognize her. In his confusion, he murders her own flesh and blood and sits there, stunned, as he watches the reason he caused many untold atrocities... wither away below him. Shocked and going insane by this situation, he sees no other way out... but to commit suicide with the help of a bomb.

It gets worse.

While this scene was tragic and brutal to say the least, it does allow Rolf to cross the previously guarded bridge where Darum was always located, which allows him to investigate his mission further.

I do want to make a sidenote here actually! Phantasy Star II does include eight playable characters, but unlike Rolf and Nei they do not join you at fixed intervals - instead, they will become available in your home town of Paseo once conditions are met. Sadly while they do have a recruitment quote, a few lines and a backstory, they do not have an impact on the main story in any way. This does blow as this means PSII does not have much in character development and interaction, but I did want to mention that there’s more to this game than just Rolf and Nei :P

Upon exploring the regions of Motavia, the party manages to make its way to the Biosystems lab, and what they find here is horrifying to say the least. The lab is in horrible shape, with cracked floors everywhere. On top of that, there is no one inside the lab anymore, it being completely deserted, save for some horrible-looking creatures being kept insides tubes, decorating the now sinister looking building... Because of this, Rolf deems it safe to pick up the recorder inside the lab, to analyze it and try to find out just what exactly went wrong - if anything at all - to hopefully figure out why the world has been sacked by biomonsters. And sure enough, the gang make its way back to Paseo. After handing over the recorder to the library located in Paseo’s Central Tower, it is now made clear: the biomonsters were caused by a large amount of energy used in a very short amount of time in those labs, causing them to mutate extremely rapidly. This had the predictable but unfortunate effect of ruining the natural order of the ecosystem, which is why these species are wrecking havoc without control. The librarian giving this information also makes the following connection: this outpour of energy must have come from Climatrol - another lab which regulates the weather of the terraformed planet so that it can sustain its new shape. Following this, Rolf and co. take a few steps to reach Climatrol - and I want to highlight a specific one!

The story somewhat pauses until then, but one of the dungeons you’ll go through is a garbage dump... and one of the treasures is a jet scooter you can use! Sounds cool, right? Well it is, but even such a cool object has been abandoned by the lazy society, since teleportation is much more convenient to them. I just thought it was a really neat detail, that’s all ^_^

Once making their way through the relatively normal Climatrol, something does wait for them at the top of the building... something... unsettling...

This is Neifirst. She was another failed experiment just like Nei, sharing the same biological data as her. However, unlike her sister, her creators tried to kill her on the spot due to her status. This made her enraged against the species that gave her life, and as an act of revenge, decided to unleash this bio catastrophy to slowly wipe us out. This is where another truth is revealed: Nei did not come with Rolf just to protect him, she actually wanted to put a stop to her sister, because while she did dislike being treated like a freak or a monster, she never wanted to hate her species as a whole... It remains that she still wants to stop her sister’s plans, and despite Rolf’s protests, the two engages in a fight. However, due to Neifirst being much stronger, Nei sustains heavy damage and is incapacitated. But, this is where the rest of the party comes in, and thus they finish the job and kill off Neifirst dead in her tracks, Rolf then quickly rushes in to his dear friend’s side, but as he does... it’s too late... Nei is dead.

This is yet another reason why Phantasy Star II is such an important game: it is, to my knowledge, the very first JRPG in which a major playable character dies permanently. Heck, Rolf even tries to bring her back through the local Clone Lab - because yes, citizens have access to eternal life by cloning their bodies until the end of time - but... since Nei’s genetic code was degenerating rapidly, they could not clone her body anymore. And, since Neifirst was also defeated, it is also impossible to get a fresh code back from anywhere in the world. Nei is dead. And you cannot do anything about it.

But don’t worry! It still gets worse!

But just as you’re about to find a way to fix this, it turns out that Climatrol has collapsed, which caused an immense flood all over the world. Since the government - and by extension, Mother Brain - isn’t happy about this, you are now considered a fugitive, a criminal. You are now the bad guy, and you are wanted for treason. 1989, anyone??

This is where the second brilliant story-gameplay integration of Phantasy Star II happens. Where until now you’ve only fought mutated monsters due to the outbreak, the government has now sent thousands of carious cyborgs and robots against you - and lo and behold, this is now the only thing you are fighting in both the overworld and dungeons, and the previous creatures are now nowhere to be seen. THAT’S REALLY SMART. Now sure, even if you are considered evil to many, you still task yourself with the task of unflooding the planet, and to do so you simply reactivate all four colored dams in the continent. However, upon reactivating the fourth one, your party is suddenly ambushed by a trio of robots sent by the cops, and this time? They succeed in capturing you. Your party is now sent in chains on a hovering satellite, as you are sentenced to slowly wither away and die in there without any trial of any sort, simply because you went against Mother Brain’s dear wishes...

But, something goes amiss. The sattelite starts to malfunction, and is now set to crash on one of the three planets of the Algol system. And despite you all trying to alter its course, it is too late. The satellite crashes onto Palma - the planet of the first Phantasy Star game - and it is gone.

That’s right! The planet in which many players took the time to save with Alis’s gang, to have a huge dungeon crawling adventure, the planet where you defeated Lassic in a glorious fashion. GONE. In only a few seconds. But... what about yourself? Well, you actually died! But a space pirate wandering close to the crash site pulled out your remains and cloned everyone’s body back to life... which makes you technically not yourself, and also dead, for the remainder of the game! ...May I remind you this game was developed in 1989?

Tyler the space pirate then escorts the zombie party back to Paseo, but not for long - you see, your commander, who hasn’t truly approved of Mother Brain’s actions against your group, allows you access to a spaceship. This is a big deal, because space travel as a whole has been banned ten years ago due to a major accident in which Rolf had lost his parents, and thus, the one stationed in Paseo is the last one remaining on the planet. But sure enough, Rolf takes the opportunity and travels to the ice planet of Dezolis, or Dezo.

And honestly? Even though this next part has nothing to do with the main story, it’s probably one of my favourites in the entire game. In this section, you simply must make your way through an abandoned space station, which has not seen use in years. At first, you’d think it was somewhat related to the spaceship incident, but as you explore this space station, you find a bunch of animals and newspapers lying around. You not only find some irrelevant ads about various products, but also news flash about a horrible gas spreading throughout the station, begging every inhabitant to evacuate immediately, which... definitively implies a very bleak fate to the place and its inhabitants o_o

And on top of this unsettling setting, this is the first time you get to hear “Silent Zone”, my favourite track in the game. While the rest of the soundtrack is very upbeat, catchy and all around excellent, this track in particular is very... sad, desolate, lonely, in spite of it being just as catchy! It all combines for a brilliant example of “show, don’t tell” that really sets the mood perfectly to me <3

Either way, upon exploring more of Dezo - a frigid wasteland with few inhabitants - the party gets to meet up with Noah, a party member from Phantasy Star I! After reawakening from a cryogenic sleep, he then reveals that unlike Paseo and Motavia, Dezo basically never submitted with Mother Brain’s control and benefits simply because they did not want to live a life without any struggles. Unfortunately, this is also where you learn that Paseo came to terms with this *after* being to MB’s whims and as such, you can connect the dots and realize that the satellite crash was no accident after all... it was all planned.

Noah, however, knows about how deeply MB has ruined everything for the inhabitants of Motavia and thus tasks Rolf with collecting eight legendary ancient weapons all throughout Dezo, located within some ruinous, empty, cold dungeons which make for stunning atmosphere and presence, believe me!

Once that’s done, he then entrusts Rolf with the ultimate Sword and, thanks to kinetic abilities, sends him and his troupe to the space station housing Mother Brain. And once there, for the first time in centuries, a human being has met with Mother Brain.

And of course, the computer scoffs at those rebelling against her. She laughs at how they think they’d want a life with struggles, wtihout comfort, without anyone providing their needs, when work and hardship seems so uninviting on a desert wasteland like Motavia, or a frigid hell like Dezo. And yet, after a (pretty difficult!) battle, you emerge victorious! Or do you?

After the victorious outcome, Noah senses some additional presences beyond Mother Brain’s spot, and urges the party to investigate. And then... I don’t think I’ll even explain it in words. Please watch what happens. It is disturbing.

youtube

Yeah. We, the humans, were destroying our planet, Earth. Thus, we escaped through this spaceship to avoid extinction, and found the Algo system. It then, to our species, only seemed logical with so few numbers, to instead slowly weaken the population of all three planets with Mother Brain, making it then easy (although a very long process) to get rid of the population and start anew, even if it meant genocide. What I love about this twist ending is not only how it’s presented: the creepy music, the way you did *not* expect it at all, the number of humans on the screen at once, and so on... but also, how you don’t even know for sure how it ends. You don’t know if Rolf, Rudo, Amy, Kain, Hugh, Shir, Anna... if any of them survived. But it looks grim. It looks like we lost. And it looks like everyone we fought and tried to save... will rot until the final days anyway... Phantasy Star II... is important. Sure, I could talk about how the game is challenging due to how both your party members AND the enemies are very capable in battle or the stellar, catchy, memorable soundtrack... but its story... is stunning. In 1989, we were still used to princesses being saved by armored heroes from dark dragons. We were used to things going all well in the end. But in 1989, Phantasy Star II taught us many things that would become staples in the future of JRPGs: Yes, your cherished ones may die with you not being able to do anything about it No, you may not be able to save everyone you’d like to. Yes, your actions might make things worse for yourself and everyone else. No, things aren’t quite as black or white as they seem. And no, you might not always win. Phantasy Star II is a masterpiece. It’s a bit hard to approach this game today, but with a guide, this game is a must play. It’s unique. It’s ambitious. It’s chilling. And I adore this game to pieces. Thank you for reading, somehow <3

#long post #phantasy star ii #phantasy star #jrpg #sega genesis

26 notes · View notes

skrivarmelodi · 3 years

Text

Now AOT is over...

So, I read the final chapter of Attack On Titan and there are a lot of thoughts and feelings. But overall I'm pleased with the whole story and the ending. I trusted Isayama and he didn't disappoint me.

There are certain things I'd like to go into detail about Levi, Ymir, Mikasa, Eren etc and certain moments during the story.

So if anyone cares here we go. (warning, this got long and contains spoilers for chapter 139 and obviouisly the whole story!)

First, Ymir Fritz, Eren, and Mikasa.

The more we got to know Ymir, the more we knew about her circumstances and how it all started, the more I asked myself, why she doesn’t simply stop all of the misery, if she can and, obviously, has the power to do so (chapter 122).

I thought, perhaps, because she loves King Fritz so much, after all, she sacrificed herself in order to protect him (which I didn’t like at all, because he was a shitty person). But then I wasn't sure if Isayama would use 'love' in such a way. He did and it's nothing new but it's something we can all understand. Love is good, but it can also be something bad, something toxic, and Ymir was most likely a slave of her own feelings because she didn't know better. Her life was miserable until she got the power to become a Titan and gave birth to the daughters of the king. But as you can see, at the beginning of chapter 122 she watches a couple getting married and that was what she wanted too. To be loved. This was the love she knew and the love she protected and believed that was true love (most likely) because she didn't know a different kind of love.

When Eren told her, that she can decide and asked her to give him the power he needs, it didn’t sit well with me. I guess because I never connected Eren to have any romantic feelings (though I guessed so much when it comes to Mikasa and he simply wanted to be cool or something). But AOT in itself doesn’t display love in the way we usually see, that became very clear to me with each new chapter. And love is not the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about AOT.

Now about Eren.

Oh boy, look at that. When Eren slowly became the villain I liked the idea but at the same time I was questioning it. It simply made no sense to me why he would want to kill everyone and yet care so deeply about his friends. Also, Isayama is not that sort of person to let his characters act out of character. Whatever the characters I agreed with it because that was how Isayama created them. That's why, when it came out that Eren was able to see the past, present, and future, I thought he probably saw a way to stop all of this and protect his friends. Isayama played us good, when Eren was rude towards Mikasa and Armin and then the rumbling came, but I constantly thought 'No, there must be more to it'. And yeah, Eren saw a possible future because everything was unclear to him and he grabbed that chance and took it.

Remember in the first season, when Eren, Levi, and Levi's squad were fighting against the female titan and that Eren has to decide what he should do and what not? That he has to accept the consequences? Yeah, Eren did that and he knew it was bad but it was the way he believed in and saw, even if it meant to kill 80% of humanity (what the...) and sacrifice his own life. I don't see Eren as a hero nor as a villain. But he definitely acted on his own free will and accepted the consequences.

Now about Mikasa.

Well, I'll be honest, I was never a fan of Mikasa. I didn't like how she was solely focused on Eren and didn't seem to have her own goals that were not connected to Eren. I simply didn't like that and Eren wasn't my favourite either, but I love their development. The moment I started to feel sorry for her was when Eren said he hated her. You see, I get it, I understand why Mikasa is the way she is and I'm simply no fan of this 'I do everything for you, fuck everyone else' especially not in a world like AOT, I also understand the Ackermann Bond (I ship Eruri after all). So I was really pissed at Eren to stomp on her feelings like that because, no matter how much I like or dislike a person, you don't treat them the way Eren did (also toward Armin). From that moment on, I enjoyed her development and when she cut off Eren's head I was sad and happy for her.

So, in many ways, Mikasa is like Ymir, or rather, Ymir is like Mikasa, but on a whole different level. Mikasa, who devoted herself to Eren, just like Ymir did to King Fritz, saw that what he was doing was wrong and she decided to stop him. She loves him still, of course, but she was able to do what Ymir couldn't and she did it for the greater good. Because there is more than Eren, there are more people who deserve to live. I did like that and also that her action was the eye-opener for Ymir. It doesn't change the way Mikasa feels about Eren, and that's okay, but she was willing to kill the person she loves more than anything because it was the right thing to do. Ymir simply couldn't do what Mikasa did because she didn't know better.

About Levi, Erwin's death, Armin saving humanity, Berthold wasn't supposed to die, and just some thoughts about AOT in general.

Now, I do ship Levi and Erwin together and I was sure Levi would die and meet Erwin in the afterlife and then Isayama would out them (haha). But I'm just happy that Levi survived and is now the adopted uncle of Gabi and Falco. He's my favorite character and a lot of things would have ended badly without him. For me, he and Erwin and their squad represented not only a strong force and saviours but also how you probably have to be in order to survive/handle a world like AOT.

So I was shocked, at first, when Levi saw Erwin and the others because I thought he would die, but when the tear ran down his cheek, I could feel how everything fell of his shoulders. Levi never cried, never had time to mourn his comrades because he understood the world they were living in and that he needed to keep on moving. I never considered him as someone cold because he clearly wasn't. But he also never cried and seeing that... finally. And I'm sure he cried some more after everything. I thought he would cry (he was close to though and perhaps did when he was alone) when Erwin died because that fucking broke him.

Their relationship fascinated me even before I started to ship them but it broke my fucking heart when Erwin died too.

And here we come to the part about Armin and Bertholg.

I was so pissed that Armin survived and even more when things just became worse. I thought, in AOT, you can't solve everything through talking. It worked during certain critical moments, yes, but it simply isn't the main key for everything when it comes to the world of AOT.

So, I never understood why Armin had to survive and not Erwin and it became more and more confusing for me as the story continued because Armin, clearly, is not Erwin and he doesn't have what Erwin has. I don't know if things would have been better with Erwin being in charge, but he would have definitely done something while Armin didn't know what to do. Sure, he is younger than Erwin, doesn't have the experience as Erwin does and in his core he is very different, and that's totally fine. Armin is fine the way he is, but during the story. I constantly found myself thinking: 'With Erwin and his mind, we wouldn't be in such a situation'. I once read somewhere that Levi and Erwin are too smart to be fooled by, for example, Yelena. I can't help but agree.

And today, when I read the final chapter and Eren said 'Berthold wasn't supposed to die on that day' and also, that he couldn't see the past and future as separated paths but everything at once I thought, that this is Isayama giving us his version but there are also many many other ways this story could go. Which is, for me, such a sweet and grateful message. We are free to choose our path (fanfiction/fanart etc) and to create a different story, but this AOT version is his version and how he imagined it, or rather, how Eren saw one possible happy end.

I'm still certain with Erwin around things would have been different, better even, but I understand Eren too. I guess, he didn't only choose Armin because he knew things would have a happy ending for his friends. He also choose Armin because of personal feelings. I wonder what would have happened if Berthold survived, was there also a happy end but without Armin? And perhaps without the rumbling? I think it's nice that Isayama did this and that he, basically, points at a different way but it's up to us.

Now, the rumbling is over and so is the power of the titans and in such a world, someone like Armin is the right person to be in. Now it's all about talking, having a proper conversation, creating relationships through words. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Erwin would have been able to do that as well, but Armin is much more diplomatic than Erwin because he doesn't want to fight or kill, it's really the last option for him. Erwin on the other hand wouldn't hesitate, and someone like him was important for the world before the rumbling was over.

Now some general thoughts about AOT now that it's over.

Okay, so, I watched tons of Anime when I was a teenager and the best thing for me was Death Note. But after Death Note I found nothing that really interested me and a lot of weird stuff. I don't know, it simply wasn't for me. However, I continued reading my yaoi Mangas and even studied Japanese for a year. Then, I did hear about Attack on Titan but I was so used to shitty Anime that I thought it would be shitty too (the next best thing I found was Yuri on Ice). However, a friend of mine gave me the first season and I thought, well, why not. I was so wrong and through AOT I found my way back to Anime.

It's not just the story, not just the art-style I like, it's Isayama and his brain I enjoy so much. I'm a very logical person and I like it when stories and things make sense and are connected from the beginning till the end and when it never feels forced but natural, true, loyal to the characters and the world they created. I don't know how he does it but I'm so grateful for AOT and that he decided to share this amazing story with us (even though it was fucking painful and my poor Levi). It's really been a while for me to find a story that caught me like Death Note did many years ago.

So, ありがとう、Isayama-San!

But I'd love to know more about the Ackermans and Levi and perhaps we'll get a book like Answers etc later. That would be great.

#attack on titan #snk #shingeki no kyojin #eruri #Levi ackerman #Erwin Smith #ch139 spoilers #mikasa ackerman #eren jaeger

25 notes · View notes

pi-creates · 3 years

Text

Top 5 Aasim Moments

Is anyone surprised that when CJ asked if people wanted to collaborate on a Top 5 post about a character that I’d choose my favourite pyro?

This was quite fun to talk about and I know everyone else who collaborated on this idea shared the sentiment. If you wanna check out some other lists:

@stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale talks about Louis @kaylee-wolf talks about James @taurusicorn2400 talks about Violet @akemi-rose578 talks about Ruby

Though in all seriousness, Aasim is probably one of my favourite characters from the whole series, and I feel like even as a side-character he has some very good moments that reflect well on who he is as a person. And while most of what we see are only small details, I like what those little details could mean if they were expanded upon.

So yeah, here are my personal Top 5 Aasim Moments from the Final Season.

5. “Aasim was the third.”

“Aasim said you knew how to survive. He could just tell that the school would be safer with you there. I voted for you because I liked you, but his reason, it was better.”

This is one of those things that I think sums up a lot about what kind of person Aasim is. He is thinking about the big picture and the long term consequences from a logical standpoint rather than a purely emotional one. Violet and Tenn have more emotional reasons for wanting Clementine and AJ to stay – and that is all fine and dandy, but I personally like the distinction that Tenn makes which implies that Aasim is trying to consider the future of everyone at the school.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been really nice to him or horrible, he sees Clementine and AJ as people they need to keep around if there’s some guy in the woods who has already taken some of the kids from the school before. It is simply a smarter move to keep the people who know how to survive close by when there may be an impending danger creeping around.

And I think it’s also really telling that he’s only known Clementine and AJ for a few days at the time of the vote, and he’s already gotten a read on their skills. It seems a little counter-intuitive given his sometimes awkward social abilities, but he’s clearly observant and using those observations to inform his decision making.

Plus on a personal level, I like that this shows Aasim as like a middle ground between Violet and Louis. Violet seems to vote in terms of Marlon deserving punishment, and therefore AJ did nothing wrong and shouldn’t receive any repercussions for his actions - whereas Louis just lost his friend and knows that AJ is a threat, and he’s voting from an emotional standpoint where he’s hurt and isn’t focusing on the future because of it.

I find both those mentalities realistic and in-character, but too extreme - Aasim is upset by the death of his friends, he acknowledges that Marlon had made some bad decisions, but he still votes for the pair to stay. He feels like the only character who is listening to the explanations and processing things clearly.

Overall, I really like the way that Tenn tells us about this moment – I just wish that maybe this revelation came earlier in the plot so that we could potentially bring up the discussion with Aasim and thank him, or hear more of his thoughts overall.

4. Going hunting for rabbits

The only pure, one-on-one interaction you can have with Aasim. And I just wish there were more moments like this.

I like that Aasim will ask Clementine if she’s a good shot – and he will take her word for it and let her help without any undercurrent of doubt. And if you do well, he’s quick to say that it’s thanks to you that they’ll end up with more rabbits than expected today.

It’s just nice, ya know? It’s an acknowledgement that we are making an effort and it is appreciated.

And it once again gives you more insight into his priorities – he cares about the group and is hoping that Clem shares his mentality of prioritising the group’s wellbeing and survival first. That she is ok with putting the work in to make sure that they not only get through today, but tomorrow and the next.

Perhaps this is all down to personal preference – but in this series I really really like meeting characters with that mentality. There are too many groups that we meet who don’t have long-term plans, or their plan is essentially to make it up as they go along, take what they need and screw the consequences.

Forward thinking is a really good quality to have in the environment they’re all stuck in, and this scene cements that. I just wish there were more scenes where I could reciprocate having this mentality and potentially find a way to corroborate ideas on where the school is heading.

3. Standing up for Clementine and AJ during the Marlon drama

This is technically spread out between two parts – how Aasim deals with the twin revelation, and also how he deals with the aftermath of AJ shooting Marlon.

It is a very tense situation, emotions are running high, everyone has just learned some unhappy secrets, they are trying to process that Brody has just died, and a gun is being passed around like a hot potato and pointed everywhere. A lot of the kids are confused and unsure if what they’re hearing is truth or lie.

And naturally, since Marlon doesn’t want the truth to come out like that, he isn’t trying to clear things up. If he doesn’t let Clem explain either and simply paints her as the threat and the liar then it is easier for him to gloss over the details. And in reality, no one wants to believe someone they trusted would hide something so heavy from them – and some people would rather continue to trust them because that feels better. That makes us feel like we haven’t been betrayed.

But Aasim doesn’t do that. He wants to hear the story, and he makes sure he shuts Marlon down in his attempts to stop Clementine from explaining herself. Keep in mind, this is also at a time when Marlon has the gun, and is threatening to shoot Clem if she doesn’t shut up. To speak up at all in this moment is dangerous, especially when you are siding against the person with the gun.

I know that the main point of this scene is to appeal to either Louis or Violet – but we shouldn’t forget that we didn’t need to appeal to Aasim for him to stand up for you in his own way. He does that for himself because it’s the right thing to do – you let people explain themselves when something happens. He might not get in the middle of the fight like Louis or Violet, but I still appreciate that he picks up that something is wrong and gives Clem the opportunity to speak up.

Yet of course, we know what happens at the end of that episode regardless of how we play this final scene.

Marlon gets shot. AJ doesn’t understand why everyone is angry. Violet pulls her cleaver out and tells Clem and AJ to go inside, while pretty much everyone else is stuck somewhere between wanting to punch someone and bursting into tears.

While everyone is stuck in this limbo of anger and sadness, Clem leads AJ back towards the dorms. And Mitch isn’t pleased in the slightest and pulls his little knife on the duo. And this is the second time in this whole drama that Aasim steps in to deescalate.

If you choose the silent option [...] or let the timer run out on this choice, Aasim will tell Mitch off, telling him to stop and that what he is doing isn’t helping.

It’s a little thing, but if people have seen me comment on argumentative scenes in these game, I don’t like when characters don’t know how to deescalate. So having a character blatantly point out how fighting fire with fire sometimes just causes a bigger fire and burns everyone – yeah, I appreciate that. Any character who deescalates is a good thing in this series.

2. Watching out for his friends on the boat

Imagine being on that boat, being scared and hearing your friends in clear distress, when suddenly someone appears to break you out – and instead of simply saying “great, get me the hell outta here”, Aasim and Omar wait for Clem to attend to Louis/Violet first.

They know that the highest priority at that moment isn’t them, it’s their friend who has received more direct attention from Lilly.

But then of course things get worse and Clem gets caught too. And Regardless of who is captured, the first thing Clementine hears when trying to find an escape is Aasim asking her if she’s alright. Thanks for checking in, Aasim, that’s a good friend move there.

And that’s his whole thing with the boat – he is watching out for everyone else there. He watches out for Clem who just got there, and in the escape from the boat he is either being the shoulder for Omar to lean on, or he beelines over to Louis to support him after his ordeals from being captured.

He just... aaah, he’s being a good friend and trying to help. It isn’t self-preservation that drives his actions, it’s the preservation of the group as a whole. After everything that happened on that boat, I don’t think we could blame the characters if they wanted to hightail it out of there without thinking. Aasim doesn’t forget about his friends in spite of how scared he tells us he is. How can I see this and not think he’s just an incredible friend to have in the apocalypse?

1. Protecting Willy from the raiders

This is another point with two parts.

The first part is obvious – Mitch has just been stabbed in the throat, and Willy is prepared to run out there into the thick of things. It is only Aasim being quick to grab a hold of him that stops the boy from meeting a similar fate.

And it’s awful to think about – Mitch was a friend to both of them, they’re both probably shocked, hurting, and they don’t have the time to do anything about it. They can’t save him, it’s too late, and they can’t mourn him or do anything. Somehow, Aasim can at least keep his head clear enough to stop Willy from getting himself hurt too. And I can’t help but feel how bad that must hurt emotionally too, to be forced to hold everything back because you have to prioritise everything else over your friend who is dying.

Yet they don’t break. They keep moving. It takes a lot of inner strength to not crumble, and these two manage.

But then there is the second part to this point – and hear me out, we’re entering speculation territory.

The raid continues, and the kids carry on with their plan and fall-back to the admin building. They set off their traps, end up stuck up stairs, and Abel decides to throw a molotov towards them. In the next moment Clem and AJ go into the headmaster’s office, and Aasim and Willy turn and move somewhere down the hallway.

We don’t see either of them again until Clem is outside and given the choice to save Louis or Violet. And when we do see them, it’s seeing Aasim unconscious in the back of the cart, and then Willy suddenly appears behind Clem as he exits the admin building.

…

How?

Aasim and Willy were together when we last saw them, and yet somehow Aasim got caught and Willy stayed in the admin building somewhere?

It doesn’t make sense to me. Aasim had been shown as the one who would be less likely to get caught out of the pair. And surely if they managed to get Aasim they should have been able to more easily get Willy too, right? So why didn’t they?

The most logical answer I can come up is that Aasim got caught while attempting to keep Willy hidden from the other raiders. Whether he was playing distraction and got caught in that task, or if he simply didn’t have time to hide/run after Willy got somewhere safe, in either case I feel like that’s a huge risk to take to save someone else.

But he does that, and I think it’s an incredibly selfless move to make. And I really do believe he will do that - I believe he cares enough to go the extra mile to keep his friends safe.

And I want the details. I love everything that is implied in these moments, but I want those details solidified.

That is the thing about me adoring Aasim as a character - there’s less concrete information to latch onto, but what is there is good.

Are there any other things I missed that you guys love? Let me know - always happy to talk about the pyro.

#twdg #twdg s4 #twdg talk #twdg t5f #twdg aasim

23 notes · View notes

silverbastardgoldenfool · 3 years

Text

Realm of the Quarantine Reread End-of-Book Questionnaire: Assassin’s Quest

Any differences between your first/previous reading experience and this one?

Keep in mind I’m writing this months after finishing the book lol (it’s mental illness innit). I have LOTS of notes to go off but yeah, things aren’t as fresh in my mind overall. With that said the biggest difference I can think of between my first and second experience with AQ is my feelings towards Kettricken. I think the first time around reading you know that Fitz is an unreliable narrator but you are still limited by his viewpoint so you can get a bit trapped seeing things the way he does. For this reason, I think I pretty much just forgave Kettricken when he did on my first read, whereas on this read I was like……. Waiting for her to actually apologise and show some sympathy towards Fitz and it just…. Never happened.

Like, don’t get me wrong, I still love Kettricken as a character and I fully recognise that she has been traumatised. I don’t expect her to be nice or act rationally, and in the case of being willing to take Nettle for the crown… It’s cold but she’s doing what she feels she has to. My issue is - do what you have to, but don’t expect Fitz to understand or forgive you (same with Starling). But I think what bothered me the most was how Kettricken would constantly confide in Fitz and break down to him and he was always there to let her do so, yet she NEVER gives Fitz the chance to do the same. The one time he does “open up” in a sense is when she forces him to air out his traumas in front of everyone, and she didn’t show him any sympathy for what he’d been through then or later. She has been through hell, absolutely, but while her plight may not have been any better than Fitz’s it certainly wasn’t any worse. She pretty much had two modes in this book: completely cold or a crying wreck - but she was only ever crying for herself. She lets Fitz console her but she never consoles him. Again, this is a result of her own trauma and I don’t expect her to act any differently, but it just reaffirmed for me that while she and Fitz care for each other deeply it is not an equal relationship. Fitz feels an obligation to serve her and she - knowingly or not - takes advantage of that. Like, after realising that this is their dynamic it is so obvious that the same is true in Royal Assassin as well, and it will be interesting to see how it changes (or doesn’t) in Tawny Man as I don’t remember it well enough to say.

Must reiterate: Kettricken is still a great character and I still have a lot of respect for her, unfortunately she just falls into the overfull camp of people who love Fitz but have an unhealthy power dynamic with him.

The other big difference I noticed was that the Verity stuff just wasn’t as devastating this time. Not because it was any less sad but it just didn’t tear out my heart like it did the first time. That’s not a fault with the writing at all, I think it’s just the fact that, knowing what would happen to Verity and that we wouldn’t see the real Verity again, I kind of already let go of him at the end of Royal Assassin.

Something you can’t believe you forgot

I guess more of a misinterpretation/wishful thinking but like, realising that there is no passage explicitly stating that Fitz and the Fool were actually spooning in the mountains murdered me and spat on my corpse.

Oh also!!! Fitz yeeting himself out the window at Tradeford castle jskaskjf

Favourite character introduction moments/scenes

I love Kettle in general and the way we’re introduced to her as a cranky old lady sets her up perfectly

Favourite character arcs

Man they’re all so fucking sad lol but I guess the Fool? He goes from thinking Fitz is dead and his purpose failed to reuniting with Fitz, their relationship growing into something really real for the first time, and actually completing his mission - at least for now lol. This book is really the first time you get to see the Fool be properly vulnerable. Even when he was getting beaten up by Regal’s guards he always had his veneer of snark and superiority to hide behind - and I doubt when he went through his sicknesses at Buckkeep he would have revealed his weakness to anyone in order to be helped. But in the mountains he lets so much of that facade of the King’s Fool fall away - at least when it’s just him and Fitz. When he and Fitz meet again he lets Fitz see his grief and pain and hopelessness and joy as the Fool looks after Fitz, and then later when it’s the Fool who needs looking after he lets Fitz look after him. When was the last time the Fool had anyone really care for him like that, ya know? Had someone protect him purely out of love? Ouch dude!!!!

Also he gets to kiss Fitz at the end so good for him!!!!!!!!!! Be gay ride dragons!!

Favourite quote/s

“I would kill Regal. It only seemed fair. He had killed me first.”

“I had looked into the heart of my enemy. I still could not comprehend him.”

“The more I drank, the less tolerable my situation seemed. And the more intolerable I became to my friends.”

“I had never thought to be disdained by a tree.”

“The Fool, the Fool, only the Fool. I sought for him. I almost found him. Oh, he was passing strange, and surpassing strange. He darted and eluded me, like a bright gold carp in a weedy pool, like the motes that dance before one’s eyes after being dazzled by the sun. As well to clutch at the moon’s reflection in a still midnight pond as to seek a grip on that bright mind. I knew his beauty and his power in the briefest flashes of insight. In a moment I understood and marvelled at all that he was, and in the next I had forgotten that understanding.”

“When you can either laugh or cry, you might as well laugh.” - the Fool

Favourite relationships

Fitzandthefoolfitzandthefoolfitzandthefoolbahslbghabfhalgngjba

Also fitz and nighteyes (speaking of which, Nighteyes’ arc in this book is also fascinating and surprisingly complex) and Fitz/Nighteyes/Fool mwah magnifico chef’s kiss

Favourite setting

Kelsingra baybeyyy. I remember the first time reading this having no fucking clue what was happening in that chapter but I guess it was the gay agenda all along

Favourite chapter

It’s gotta be the chapter where Fitz and the Fool reunite, right? Catch me just gradually losing my grip on reality with every lingering stare

Most loved character

Foooooooooool

Most hated character

Ya know, for a minute I was actually wondering if I would like Starling this time round but yeah no lol. She was actually okay for a while but as soon as she sold Fitz/Nettle out she became The Worst, just as I remembered her. It’s not even because she betrays Fitz but because, like Kettricken, she expects Fitz to forgive her for it, to the point of running to tattle to the queen because Fitz isn’t giving her enough attention (I’m also not impressed with Kettricken for actually getting involved instead of just telling her to grow up). Not to mention her constantly misgendering/gendering (??) the Fool or just assuming the Fool’s gender and loudly fucking proclaiming it to everybody is just truly fucking disgusting. Like I cannot even explain how furious I was reading her incessantly using she/her pronouns for the Fool despite no confirmation that her theory is right or that the Fool is comfortable with this and despite EVERYONE ELSE using he/him pronouns. God I’m mad now lol. She just acts like a spoilt brat and it makes my blood boil. But that’s probably because I have known many people like this so… Good character writing lol congrats

Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimised by Robin Hobb (most heartbreaking and/or visceral moments)

The whole first chapter/s are just so heavy and carry on that gut wrenching feeling from the end of Royal Assassin. Fitz just has no real desire to live and watching him systematically severing the last few ties he has to his human life is just so sad.

Even though I wasn’t as attached to Verity this time, his goodbye to Fitz still made me cry

As did Fitz giving Kettle her skill back

Verity using Fitz’s body to have sex with Kettricken really got to me this time, mostly because I either didn’t notice the first time or had forgotten just how much it affects Fitz. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to acknowledge Dutiful as his son when the event that brought that fact into being was so fucked up and traumatic. It’s really upsetting.

Burrich saying he almost took Fitz to Chivalry and he should have never let the Farseers take Fitz just …… breaks my heart. Just seeing Burrich so raw like that in general is so unusual it really takes you aback.

Details, observations, spoilery notes made with the benefit of the full picture

Strap in lads this part is lonnnngggggggg

Is it bad to immediately want to cry just from seeing “Sandsedge” on the map and thinking of Sandsedge brandy

I never really thought about how poor Hap didn’t get the real Fitz all those years and how their relationship could have been if Fitz hadn’t been partially forged

Pls I have no idea why but to picture someone as emotionally repressed as Fitz actually sitting down and writing about his life makes me want to fucking cryyyyeeeee

Fitz in the prologue talks about needing a purpose as something to distract himself from sinking [into his chronic pain, mental illness and addiction] and boy howdy if that ain’t relatable. As someone with mental illness and chronic pain Fitz is just painfully relatable way too often.

“I have never forgiven myself the triumph I ceded him when I took poison and died.” Fitz :(((( my guy :((((((( forgive yourself for surviving however you could baby!!!!!

This book mentions Bingtown providing slaves to Chalced

It’s so funny to me when people expect Fitz to have social skills as if he didn’t literally live as a fucking wolf for weeks at a time. It’s a miracle he bloody speaks

The state Fitz is in at the beginning of this book was literally Burrich’s greatest fear for him, yet Burrich doesn’t just say I told you so and leave. He stays, is patient and even optimistic.

“He (Burrich) is not bigger than I.” Why does this feel so wrong lol??? I just can’t picture Fitz as bigger than Burrich

“When you were younger and not supposed to go into taverns without me…” So it’s fine if the child goes into taverns and gets drunk as long as you’re also there. Got it, Burrich.

Fitz calling Chade “the grey one” wow get rekd old man river

Seeing Chade and Burrich interact is so bizarre

Fitz is still having seizures at the beginning of this book! I had forgotten that

God okay so idk if I can articulate this point super well but the whole thing of Fitz going through this extensive abuse and then essentially becoming an animal feels like a metaphor for the way your brain’s “higher” needs and functions just shut off sometimes under certain levels of stress. Like in order to cope with the trauma you don’t think about concepts, or long-term goals, or other people. You just take care of your basic needs - food, sleep, shelter, water - long enough that you start to feel safe and secure again, at which point your brain can open up a bit more and allow you to really think again; to want again, to plan again etc. Like obviously literally becoming an animal is a heightened version of reality, but the functionality of it is the same; our wounds and our fear stop us from fully embodying ourselves.

Burrich be like, Fitz was getting way too dependent on drugs before all this so let’s steer clear of those. :) LET’S GET HIM ABSOLUTELY SHITFACED INSTEAD

I love how Fitz has his own unique relationship with Lacey and she’s not just Patience’s servant in his mind

Fitz talking about how even his memories from before his time in the dungeons are soiled by his trauma :( baby boy

Dude it’s so rich Chade lecturing Fitz about not making a life for himself, having friends or just chilling out like???? WHO TRAINED HIM TO BE AN ASSASSIN CHADE?? Like I get your point but what the hell kind of life did you think he was gonna have? Who ever took the time to teach him the importance of making connections with people for their own sake, and when would he have ever had the time anyway? I think Chade himself doesn’t actually know what he expects from Fitz.

Fitz saying he’s bad at making decisions because he’s never actually been allowed to make any is literally a point I’ve made lol. This is what happens when you teach teenagers how to murder in lieu of any basic life skills.

Burrich + Chiv were luv at first sight. No I will not elaborate.

“We kept you a boy, looked after you too much.” Huh??????? Fitz was never fucking sheltered lol. He didn’t have autonomy. There’s a difference.

I’m so fucking glad Fitz hugged Burrich before he left and that they actually left off on okay-ish terms. I didn’t remember that and it vaguely dulls the blow of knowing we don’t see Burrich again til Fool’s Fate (and that he thinks Fitz is dead the entire time between now and then).

“If I shaved my hair back from my brow” bitch disgusting

“Honey was the older of the two women. Perhaps my age.” jskfjnajgbl my guy those aren’t women then those are children!!!!!! U freak

I was wondering for ages why Fitz doesn’t mention the Fool like literally at all bc that’s so unusual right? Even in Assassin’s Apprentice he thinks of him when he goes to Moonseye and just in general the Fool usually enters Fitz’s thoughts pretty frequently. So why now, when Fitz doesn’t even know if the Fool is okay, is he just not thinking about him? And then I realised that that is exactly why. Because the only two people from his old life he doesn’t think about are the two people whose fates he knows nothing of: Kettricken and the Fool. So he can let his mind wander to think what Patience and Lacey might be up to at Buckkeep, or who Molly is with or whatever, because he knows they are all safe. But in such a fragile state I don’t think he can bring himself to really wonder whether Kettricken and the Fool made it to their destination - he probably doesn’t really believe they could have, and that is far too painful a road to go down when you are trying not to think at all.

I know the first act of this book is slow and that bothers some people, but I think it is so necessary, not only for Fitz’s arc but also because it really demonstrates just how severe the situation has gotten with the red ships and forged ones AND it shows just how destructive a king Regal is. Without this perspective it would probably be much harder to buy that the extreme measures taken at the end of the book are really worth the sacrifice.

Fitz is Demisexual, Exhibit A: when Honey is coming onto him, all he can think about is Molly.

Fitz is so scared of the Forged ones :( his trauma affects everything. He has no faith in himself and less heart for the violence than ever.

Speaking of trauma metaphors: the way Fitz tends to drift off into the wit or Skill after a traumatic experience is… pretty much just dissociation but magique

I forgot that witted folk can apparently communicate with each other mentally, not just with animals

“Her head was the size of a bushel basket.” Ah, yes, a bushel basket, a thing whose size we are all intimately familiar with.

Fitz finally finds others like him and even then he is not fully accepted. Told he is doing the wit wrong. Othered by the Others. It’s the queer experience innit.

Also forgot that apparently the forged are attracted to the wit as well as the Skill?

“I wondered if I had as many wolf mannerisms as they had halk and bear.” Yeah no probably not you only bloody LIVED as a wolf, Fitz.

Okay I know it doesn’t need saying but Patience is just so fucking cool!!!!!

Jesus fucking christ, Fitz skilling out to Molly when he knows Will knows he’s alive and is looking for him is just… so dumb. So so dumb. I know he’s just fixating on her because he’s miserable and she’s like this unsullied thing he had before everything went wrong but holy moly is it frustrating

Not to mention he doesn’t connect the dots between the fact that Burrich went to “help a friend” and every time he reaches out for Molly he sees Burrich sajkdbshkhja dude

Nighteyes leaving just goes to show that Fitz cannot rely solely on Nighteyes for companionship. No matter how innately the same they are they are equally as innately different. Fitz needs Nighteyes but he shouldn’t have JUST Nighteyes (which is why he, Nighteyes and the Fool are the holy trinity). When Nighteyes leaves, Fitz is in way too fragile a state to be left alone, but Nighteyes cannot think of the future or what might happen. All he knows is he’ll be back at some point and that’s all that matters.

“My anger fed my competence” whatever you need to tell yourself sweetie

I think I had blocked out the fact the Regal was keeping animals trapped in filthy cages so they could ravage people in the king’s circle uggggghhhhhhhhh I hate him

Fitz is down on himself saying that without Shrewd’s largesse, Chade’s information and Verity’s protection his idea of himself has been stripped away and that he’s not actually competent etc. but like. This is an extreme situation!! You’re literally alone in the wilderness with nothing and no one!! Who would thrive in this situation? And nobody gets by without help anyway! The people in our lives do define us to an extent. You don’t have to be able to stand 100% on your own at all times with zero resources to be considered capable. It’s human to depend on others. Yes I am chiding myself as much as Fitz here :))))

Burrich’s earring is the repressed gay earring. No I will not elaborate.

Fitz refusing to sell Burrich’s earring is frustrating yet something I would 100% do lol

Direct from my notes: Celery hiding out in caves?? Bad bitch

“I felt I was within the flames looking deeply into the Fool’s eyes” um okay gay

It’s actually surprising that Fitz admits he would not have gone after Molly even if he had known she was pregnant when she left. On one hand so self aware yet this doesn’t stop him from completely idealising their relationship.

And then you have Molly who says he was supposed to come after her “so she could forgive him”, that he was supposed to be the one to light the candles for her childbirth etc. The fact that she in any way thought he was mature enough to be a father just shows how little they really knew each other.

Burrich treating Molly like a horse while delivering Nettle is way funnier than it has a right to be jskakjasd makes me think of Dwight treating Phyllis’ back injury in The Office lol

The first thing Burrich notices about Nettle is that she has Chivalry’s brow are you fucking kidding me. Gay!

Fitz is Demisexual, Exhibit B: He had no interest in Tassin whatsoever until she literally started kissing him. At this point his body reacted, which is normal, but as soon as he got a second to actually think about it he stopped, because for him it would not be satisfying to sleep with someone he didn’t have feelings for.

“It seemed to take years for the dried beans and lentils to soften.” Okay mood

I love how Fitz just assumes Molly will take him back. “I have a woman and child awaiting me.” Says who bitch?

Small ferret? More like big legend

Ya know, we give Fitz so much shit but honestly with so much physical, mental and emotional stress on this journey how can we expect his mental faculties to be at 100%? I wouldn’t be making good decisions either, in fact I would be long dead.

Starling telling Nik that the earring once belonged to Chivalry is truly a smooth brain move

“Do not fear, little brother, I am here to take care of you again.” Words can’t explain how much I love Nighteyes and how often his dialogue makes me smile :’)

It’s so cute how Nighteyes is worried about Molly and Nettle until he knows that Burrich is taking care of them

It’s really interesting when Fitz claims “I’d rather be with Molly even if it meant rocking a crying baby in the middle of the night” because, well, he’s literally made other claims to the contrary, saying he wouldn’t have gone with her even if he’d known she was pregnant. Because at the end of the day as much as Fitz is compelled by others to do work for the greater good, I think deep down a lot of the time it is what he would do anyway. Like I really don’t think he could actually enjoy being with Molly knowing that the world is burning down around them. He would want to get out there and help somehow; not only to secure their own future but to reduce other people’s suffering as well. He’s an empathetic boy even though he’d like to be selfish.

Every time Fitz calls Molly his wife I lose ten years off my life

Again, I understand why he’s thinking like this, but Fitz’s ownership of Molly is just so uncomfortable. The fact that he can’t imagine her not having a place ready and waiting for him in her life when he returns just illustrates that she is not a fully realised person to him. She is just a comforting idea.

Oh yes, it was definitely Starling’s “pillowtalk” that got you captured and not the fact that you fit the exact description of the witted bastard right down to having Chivalry’s earring and a whole ass wolf

Somehow forgot that Jhaampe is basically a city of tents with only a few permanent buildings and people constantly coming and going

Fitz’s first words to the Fool are “I’ve come to you.” I’m gonna fucking die

Literally every single word from the moment Fitz realises it’s the Fool and starts describing him is a full body assault and personal attack I am seeking reparations

God the tenderness, the angst, the relief……… shall i pass away

“I doubted he was much taller, but his body was no longer a child’s.” My dude this is a gay awakening if I ever saw one

Fitz be like *spends 87 pages describing the Fool in painstaking detail* anyway I love being a heterosexual male

I’ve heard ppl cite Fitz’s descriptions of Kettricken as evidence of a crush (hard disagree) but literally nothingggggg even comes close to the way he describes the Fool. Not just this once but over and over again it’s insane.

“Talk fell off between us. The bottle of brandy was empty. We were reduced to silence, staring at one another drunkenly.” skjakfnajghajgnaLNGJ is it gay to silently gaze into thine homie’s eyes

The Fool protecting Fitz from everyone - especially Starling - in Jhaampe is often hilarious and always heartwarming

Realising Fitz was skinny enough for the Fool to lift on his own ahhh no wonder he said the famous “When I recall how beautiful you were” line, Fitz is a total wreck

I love that the Fool actually gives Chade shit for his plan to take Nettle. I love him.

“Too few folk cared for me. I could not hate a single one of them.” Oh, Fitz :(

I always wonder how the Fool really feels about Molly. Is he jealous? Does he compare himself to this woman Fitz idolises and he doesn’t know? Does he know that Fitz is barking up the wrong tree or is he stuck thinking Molly must really be Fitz’s soulmate since he won’t shut up about how much he loves her and can’t wait to get back to her? He just never really lets on how it makes him feel when Fitz has relationships with women. We know Fitz gets jealous of the Fool (for litch rally like no reason lol), so with the Fool being much more honest with himself/in general about his love for Fitz and having much more legitimate reason to be jealous, is he? Or is it just something he’s made his peace with, that these women give Fitz something that he cannot? Is he okay with that cos he has to be or does he have a different, less monogamous view of love and relationships (he does have three parents after all). I dunnoooo dude I just have so many questions. Like obviously - OBVIOUSLY - if Fitz and the Fool didn’t have romantic feelings for each other before, there is no doubting that romantic feelings appeared the moment Fitz appeared in the Fool’s hut. Fitz won’t admit that but mere chapters later the Fool is talking about how he loves Fitz in every way so like. He knows. So how does he feel when Fitz is calling out for Molly in his sleep, or openly speaking of seeking her out when all this is over, and lying to the Fool to protect Molly and his daughter. Really makes u think!!!!

Fitz reuniting with Sooty and going to see her every day in Jhaampe is so cuuuute and made me so happy. Sooty is a good girl :’)

Fitz be like *leans against the table where the Fool is carving and watches his fingers at work like a true repressed gay*

Verity is literally so strong???? He submerged himself in skill and was able to pull himself back from the stream can u imagine? Go off king!

Bro I literally can’t with the Fool mentioning Jofron so casually and Fitz immediately thinking wow oh my god they’re definitely fucking oh my god the Fool has a girlfriend - Fitz sweetie calm down

I love how Fitz and the Fool just naturally walk together :))) and Nighteyes babysitting Kettle is so cute

Molly never once says that she misses Fitz. She says she always expected him to do the right thing, to come after her and not leave her alone with a child. But she doesn’t look back on their time together fondly or have much positive to say about him as a person. And all that is fair, but it’s also just… Not really the behaviour of someone who’s been separated from their soulmate. It’s more just someone who’s been left in a shitty position by someone they cared about but hardly knew.

Fitz asking the Fool what is between him and Starling when they’re literally just being civil is sooooo fucking funny. Not everyone finds the Fool as irresistible as you do, Fitz.

The Fool just casually finding a pretext to call Fitz the light of his life

Fitz telling Kettricken firmly that he will not travel if the Fool is ill is one of the only times he ever puts his foot down with her GEE I WONDER WHY

I’ve said it before I’ll say it again…… there really do be something about the way Fitz can’t meet the Fool’s eyes………. It’s not like they’re weird and colourless anymore like they used to be!!!

The Fool already talking about Clerres in this book!

Fitz and the Fool and Nighteyes playing in the stream is too fucking pure omg, it’s what they deserve

And then Starling has to bloody ruin it bc she’s homophobique

But seriously, Fitz actually lets go for the first time in ages and has a nice evening only for Starling to go tattling to Kettricken, and Kettricken having the gall to confront Fitz about it. And then Fitz solves the problem by saying he doesn’t disdain her when like!! He has every right to!!!! She sold him out, sold his daughter out. She never even apologised but instead has just been totally petty and self-righteous and stirring up trouble amongst the group. She hasn’t earned or even asked for his forgiveness. So fitting that she’s the one constantly judging Fitz for his relationship with Lord Golden in Tawny Man lol, she just cannot let Fitz and the Fool be the queer icons they are!!!

Verrrrrrrrrrry interesting that Fitz only “suddenly missed the human warmth and comfort” of Starling taking his arm or sleeping against him literally IMMEDIATELY after the plumbing and love confrontation with the Fool. I mean he has been doing all of those things with the Fool (sleeping together, walking arm in arm etc.) so it’s not about human touch at all, it’s about convincing himself that a WOMAN’S touch is somehow inherently different.

He does the same thing with Starling as with Kettricken. She technically apologises but it’s not sincere and that’s not why he forgives her. Same as Kettricken, she tells her sob story and he can’t hold onto his anger. It makes sense, but it’s just very toxic. It would be nice if at least one person would really recognise how much they’ve hurt Fitz and really, genuinely want to atone for it, or apologise without expecting forgiveness. The onus should not be on Fitz to forgive Starling but on Starling to grow up and not need Fitz to like her in order to remain civil and do what they have to. Also “I do not find your wit bond offensive” has the same energy as someone telling you out of nowhere like “It’s fine that you’re gay :)” like wow thank u?? lol

Fitz is Demisexual, Exhibit C: “I wanted her with a desperation that had nothing to do with love, and even, I believe, little to do with lust.”

“By his love he is betrayed, and his love betrayed also.” So fate agrees with me, Fitz and the Fool are in love? :)

Anytime the potential that Fitz might have to choose between Molly and Nighteyes I lose brain cells. That’s ur brother Fitz!!! It’s not even a choice!! How dare u

It’s just sooooo intentionally laid out for us in this book that Fitz’s relationship with Molly really wasn’t good or healthy and that his fixation on it is misguided, and I think that’s why I struggled sooooo hard with the ending of Fool’s Fate, because it kind of implied the exact opposite. I’m hoping on this reread I will pick up on it being laid out as a result of Fitz getting his memories/teen feelings back rather than it just feeling like a lowkey retcon, but I guess we’ll see lol

“I felt I was a bit in love with him, you know. That sort of lift to the heart.” the confirmation that the Fool KNOWS HOW IT FEELS TO BE IN LOVE sends me deep into the swamps goodbyeeeeeeeeeeee

“The one who loves him best will betray him most foully.” So fate agrees, the Fool loves Fitz best :)

“You do love me! … Before, it was words. I always feared it was born out of pity.” Godddddd Foooooooooool!!!!!!!!!!!

Everything about Fitz, the Fool and Nighteyes meeting in the skill for the first time is just truly perfect iconic unparalleled.

Fitz’s love for Verity hurts my heart so much. Just think of the relationship they could have had if they weren’t stupid royals.

Kettle’s whole speech about Fitz and Molly… Just yes to every word.

Look I’m just gonna say it… The way Burrich reacts to Molly’s advances … like I know it’s probably not intentional but it just reads as very much fitting in with my headcanon that he is gay. As soon as she makes it clear she wants to sleep with him he like leaps across the room lol. I do believe he cares for her and loves her in his way, but it does feel mostly like he’ll just do whatever he needs to to care for her and the baby. Sowwy

I wonder why the Fool wasn’t as affected by his giving up of memories to Girl-on-a-Dragon?? Or was he, and he just gets them back before we see him again in Tawny Man?

“Take my hurt that I never knew my father, take my hours of staring up at his portrait when the great hall was empty and I could do so alone.” um this is so fucking sad

It was the Fool who sent Starling to find Fitz after Verity uses his body and again I have to ask, wtf is going on in your mind, Fool!

Fitz is Demisexual, Exhibit D: Even once he actually sleeps with Starling he has no enthusiasm about it, he just kind of goes along with it, likely to prove to himself that he has really let go of his past/Molly.

I always wonder why the Fool leaves now. Is it because he thinks their work is done and doesn’t want to risk messing things up by hanging around his catalyst like at the end of Tawny Man? Does he intend to come back and find Fitz again but get sidetracked by a lead or a new dream? Like it’s just weird because at first he was like “Prophet and Catalyst stick together” and was gonna stay with Fitz - or was that just an excuse because he was obsessed with Girl-on-a-Dragon? Fool u spicy lil enigma

It’s blood and the wit that wakes the stone dragons so does that mean King Wisdom was witted? Or is that obvious lol

Fitz isn’t even bothered by the Fool’s kiss, just shocked. I am looking.

Patience shouting orders at Verity-as-Dragon is beautiful ksjjk

Of courrrrrssse Burrich names his first son Chivalry

In the epilogue, the Fool is the only one Fitz actually says he misses. Exquisite.

I know some people have an issue with Regal’s death but personally I find it delicious

Okay that’s all (I say as if this wasn’t 139841989 pages long). See y’all in 92 years when my sister finally starts reading Liveship!

#realm of the elderlings #realm of the quarantine #assassin's quest #long post #fitz and the fool #Fitzchivalry Farseer #rote #ehhh idk what else to tag lol #if u read all this congrats and i'm sorry

30 notes · View notes

meichenxi · 4 years

Text

Benefits of watching target language media without subtitles!

Or: why watching media without subtitles is not limited to advanced learners, and why you should incorporate it into your routine!

SO this is prompted by a personal anecdote: Yesterday I watched an episode of my favourite show (the untamed, go and watch it, heathens, it's gay and pretty and has beautiful sword fights and necromancers and revenge and insane character development and), and rather than keeping the subtitles on, I rather dubiously turned them off.

So no subs in Chinese or English.

And lo and behold - I could understand most things! Not everything, especially not specialised vocab or formal speech, but enough (with good knowledge of the plot already) to comfortably follow most conversations. Yeah, this was a surprise.

Watching media in your target language without subtitles is something that a lot of people think is restricted to advanced learners - learners at the stage where they can understand almost everything wihh subtitles in the target language (henceforth TL) itself, and is just used to train listening practice.

If you wait until you're at that stage to incorporate this into your language learning routine, though, you're missing out. And here's why.

Firstly, personal-situation specific: I usually learn best via reading, but my Chinese reading ability is much worse than my listening ability (immersion yay), and so turning on the Chinese subs just makes me annoyed and frustrated because I can't follow them quickly enough. I realise that for many people this may be the opposite way around, but for heritage speakers of languages that use an unfamiliar alphabet, or those (like me) who are not heritage speakers but because of various factors have had intense spoken immersion and little formal education (and thus some - SOME - of the same difficulties), subtitles can be a hindrance rather than a help. There are many posts targeting improving listening skills, but not so many looking at it the other way around, so it's important to remember such learners exist.

I found to my surprise that I picked up significantly more vocab with the subs off than with them on. Firstly, if you know the general plot and know enough to pick up the outline of the conversation, you contextualise any word automatically at the same time as using the context to provide clues for what the word could be - the example sentence defines the word, and the word comes automatically with an example sentence, which cements it in your memory far better than if you heard it in isolation. This fits nicely into the functionalist approach to language learning (which systems like Glossika try to utilise to varying degrees of success), where vocabulary and different variations and pronunciations of different words serve as individual instantiations of a particular token - in this case, it could be the vocabulary word itself, but that's not all the information you're getting. You're also getting instantiations of the actual SOUNDS of the language, as well as the grammar.

You're picking up information on the permittable pronunciation of certain phonemes and phonological patterns, to inform your brain how much variation is acceptable within native speech. So for example the finals <n> and <ng> in pinyin are notoriously difficult in Mandarin, with some native speakers doing away with it altogether. What the input tells you is how much like an /n/ the <ng> is allowed to sound whilst still being perceived as an <ng> by speakers - and thus what the range of permissable differences is, that you, as a non native speaker, can play with.

As I've already written about, one of my first hills to die on is the tone/intonation interplay. And listening to audio without subs is fantastic for teaching you how intonation works not only on an emotional level, but also how it helps people understand sentence structure - it teaches you which parts of an utterance to pay attention to. Even if you don't understand the word itself, you will gradually learn what is the focus point of the sentence and what is peripheral information. Why is this particularly effective without subtitles? Especially in languages that have differing sentence structure (like Chinese in longer sentences), you need to rely on the intonation to guide you towards finding the focal point of the sentence. With subtitles, you get lazy and you don't utilise your ear in the same way. And again, again, you're drumming these patterns into your head. Frequency = success!

Thirdly, by training your ear to listen for intonation, you are necessarily listening for grammar patterns that give you a clue about who is playing what role in the sentence. Our brains are fundamentally lazy (effecient)- they only pay attention to what is necessary to complete the task. Have you seen that video where you are asked to count how many times a basketball is passed? And then at the end they ask you if you noticed the bear? There is a lot of linguistic debate about what role exactly attention plays in the process of language learning, but for our purposes it suffices to say that both actively noticing a pattern and hearing it confirmed again and again when you are not specifically looking for it help us hugely when it comes to not only memorising, but also internalising, that grammatical pattern.

Going back to the attention thing, let's talk about another problem no subs solves: if you are reading subtitles in your native language (and even more so in your TL), you are much less likely to bring the full force of your listening abilities into play. Why? Well, because the answer is right there in front of you. Listening without subs forces you to use context, social cues like smiles or frowns, as well as supra segmental factors like tone of voice or volume, to determine what exactly is being said - in other words, the same social interaction and outside stimulus that many functional linguists believe is absolutely critical to the development of the language faculty in children. Of course, you're not actually interacted with the media, but being actively forced to pay attention to these things makes it a much more holistic process. Suddenly, your brain is fired up: it needs to pay attention to everything in order to understand. In other words, the vocabulary and grammar and intonation you're hearing has suddenly become relevant.

And what happens when it's relevant? We learn it - sometimes without even knowing that's what's happening.

For all of these reasons, then, whatever your level, I'd suggest listening and watching media in your target language without subtitles. The expectations you have at each level, from beginner to advanced, should not, however, be the same. Unless you find incredibly good targeted media, or the language is sufficiently similar to one you know, you're unlikely to understand even what's going on when you first start out.

That's ok. Your brain is processing things - it's learning how to recognise nouns, verbs, questions, declarative sentences, the way the language expresses surprise or fear or love. It's learning that some phonetic distinctions that you don't have in your native language are important in your TL. It's heading patterns of vocabulary and grammar and phonology again and again and again. Don't expect to understand everything - but try copying it, out loud, if you can. It will help you get an ear for word boundaries, which is crucial for parsing the boundless speech-stream that's suddenly presented to you.

If you're at an intermediate level, enjoy spotting common verbs and watching the action, even if you don't know 100% what's going on. Even more than the beginner level, you're getting used to the speed of the language and its rhythms, as well as challenging yourself to understand more.

If you're at an advanced level, this is perfect for you. You'll understand more than you suspect. And if you don't, who cares, it's meant to be difficult. I never would have thought that I could understand and comfortably enjoy most of an episode of my show. And there were certainly conversations where I was totally lost!! But that's ok. You don't need 95% comprehension to survive - 50%, while incredibly frustrating, is good enough - as long as it's the right 50%! All you need is one key word - especially if you're watching media you're familiar with, which I recommend - and then click! You've got it.

加油！

#langblr #mandarin #chinese #chinese studyblr #studyblr #langblr study tips #study tips #learning languages #languages #chinese langblr #linguistics #lingblr #second language acquisition #learning second language #the untamed

93 notes · View notes

noaltbruh · 3 years

Text

Bucci gang and Christmas time!

Do I know we're in the middle of Summer? Yes.

Is that going to stop me from writing headcanons about my favourite characters celebrating my favourite Holiday? No.

(Just a side note: most of the headcanons I write take place in an 'Everyone survives universe', keep this particularly in mind while reading this post)

Enjoy! 🎄

Giorno! 🐞

-Giorno has never celebrated Christian once in his entire life. To be honest...He almost feels a sense of spite thinking about this Holiday, because his parents used to neglect him even more during this time of the year. They would spend entire days out, going party with their friends, buying presents for other people, and wouldn't bother in the slightest to decorate the house with a single light

-For a long time, all he could think about when this festivity came into his mind was the dull plate of cold food his parents would leave him to heat in the microwave, but that wasn't nearly as freezing as the feeling of sorrow that filled his heart. He would sit by the window, watching other people having fun together, while he was all alone in that gloomy, small apartment.

-Can you even imagine how he felt when he first celebrated Christmas with the gang?

-He failed to understand why pretty much everyone was so exited, most of them weren't even Christian. He thought he didn't even deserve to participate, not after all the 'morally questionable' things he does as the Don of Passione

-But it didn't take much for the gang to realize how Giorno felt about Christmas, and they were determined to prove him that he had gotten the wrong idea about this Holiday

-When he noticed that he others were trying to drag him in the 'Christmas spirit', he immediately protested, claiming that he had too many errands to attend to

-Needless to say, they didn't buy it

-Eventually, he gave up, accepting to give this festivity a chance, if that would have made them happy. After all, they've been trying so hard to lift his spirit, he would have felt ungrateful rejecting them even now

-He helped with the preparations in any way he could, from decorating the house to buying gifts for everyone.

-What he hadn't realized, is how much effort and care he was putting in everything he was doing. It wasn't something he agreed to solely to please them, he was genuinely enjoying it, he wanted to be a part of this, even though he failed to fully understand it.

-His favourite part was filling the house and the back garden with lights and any other sort of decorations: candles, wreaths, festoons, music boxes, or just other ornaments in general

-When the 25th of December finally arrived, Giorno was ecstatic. Seeing his entire family having so much fun together, opening presents, admiring the lights, watching cheesy Christmas movies while wrapped up in warm blankets, it felt so...Simple, but so reassuring, he couldn't even put into words how he felt

-His favourite present was a huge encyclopedia about nature. He always reads it before going to bed, it helps him fall asleep faster and more peacefully

-Like I mentioned in my previous post, I think Giorno really likes anything that tastes even slightly sweet, so he absolutely adores Christmas treats! Pandori, panettoni, tronchetti, hot chocolate...He loves all of them!

-He can't deny that he felt really bad when they had to take off all the decorations, and while he wouldn't openly say it, he wishes for Christmas to come back again as soon as possible

Bruno! 🤐

-Bruno is the second most exited in the gang for Christmas! (Can you already tell who's the first? :) ) He's the only one, however, that cares about the religious aspect of it, which is particularly important in a country like Italy.

-It's his favourite Holiday, and it was considered the most important festivity in his family, since all of his relatives were Christians. Besides, he had always been personally attached to it, as it was one of the very few times where he could see his mom, which used to spoil him in whatever way she could

-He goes to Church either very early on Christmas Morning, while everyone is still asleep, or at exactly midnight between the 24th and the 25th. Most of the people that go at times like these are old grannies, but Bruno doesn't care, he thinks it's cute actually ^^

-As he was raised in a relatively humble environment, having the chance to celebrate Christmas in quite the...Extravagant way, after joining Passione, almost felt out of place for him

-That doesn't mean, however, that he doesn't care about the 'materialistic' part of the Festivity, because he sees it as a way to rest his head for a while and spend some quality time with the ones he cares about

-His role as the mom of the group is also remarkably present during the preparations. Bruno is the one that mostly takes care of cooking for everyone, and he enjoys it a lot! His favourite part is preparing sweets of any kind, because they allow him to experiment a lot and always try new recipes

-Every member of the gang has to participate in one way or another to the preparations, and Bruno is the one that coordinates the whole thing

-Bucciarati always gets everyone the best presents. He starts thinking about what to get for them a month before the others, so that he never finds himself in a rush and can take all the time he needs to find the perfect gift

-He also LOVES making and receiving hand-made presents, he can feel all the effort and love that was put into them, and it just feels more thoughtful than something that was bought, no matter how expensive it may have been

-Bruno is that sort of person that prefers to spend Christmas without doing anything particularly exciting, just enjoying the calm and warm atmosphere that fills the house

-However, Bucciarati also loves to go for a long walk down the streets, admiring the lights all around the town, bringing along anyone in the gang that wishes to join him

Mista! 🔫

-While the manga states that Mista believes in a 'God', I don't think he believes in Jesus, Holy Mary, and the rest. He used to go to Church when he was little, but mostly because his parents forced him to, he didn't actually care

-Because of this, he sees Christmas as a materialistic Festivity, but that doesn't mean he's not excited for it. He thinks that it's the perfect excuse for everyone to just chill for a little while and have fun

-Unlike Bruno and Giorno, who prefer to just relax at home without doing anything that requires a lot of energy, Mista is always looking forward to something exiting to do during this time of the year

-Do you want an example? Ice skating! This boy is incredibly good at skating, and he constantly flexes on the entire gang how good he is

-He's that type of person that forgets to buy presents for the gang, and only remembers at the last minute. He's lost count of how many times he had to fight with another costumer because they wanted to buy the same thing, and there was only one left

-Once, a dude was so insistent that he had to pull out his gun to scare him away. Guess what? It worked. Nobody in that shop ever dared to argue with him again

-"Get your damn hands off this videogame, I have a seventeen years old little brother that won't talk to me for two weeks if I don't buy this for him!"

-Aside from getting gifts for Narancia, Trish and the rest, he also gives something to each one of the sex pistols. It's mostly food, but they don't really seem to mind

-Even in this time of the year, Mista is still hot. While everyone is wearing sweaters, long trousers and coats, this madman is still wearing shorts. Trish constantly complains about it, saying that he's going to catch a bad cold, if not worse, if he keeps on dressing like this. He never actually listens to her though

-Like I mentioned early, everyone in the gang has to take care of the preparations in different ways. Mista, together with Fugo, has to buy all the ingredients Bruno needs. It may seem like an easy task, but it isn't; friendly reminder that they have to buy enough stuff for seven people, most of them with very different tastes

-He often gets fed up with waiting in line, and just takes everything he needs and leave without paying. Nobody has the courage to complain, they know better than messing around with a guy like that

-He will most likely steal some of Abbacchio's wine and get drunk. He usually doesn't like alcohol very much, but damn does Abba have good taste in wines

Narancia! 🍊

-You won't find anyone that loves Christmas more than this cute little bundle of sunshine!

-His mother always loved Christmas, and wanted her child to appreciate this Festivity as much as her. Since his parents weren't particularly rich, he always celebrated in a relatively simple way, but his mamma always managed to find a way to make every Christmas different and unique. His father never complained about Mela's excitement, but he barely ever participated in whatever the two of them were organizing. Still, Nari didn't mind, the woman's excitement and joy were successfully passed to her kid

-After she died, for a couple of years, he stopped celebrating Christmas. Not because he didn't want to, he just...Couldn't. His father and him were strangers at this point, and his 'friends' didn't care about it either, they actually thought that it was a stupid thing

-When he finally had the chance to celebrate again after joining Passione, Narancia swore that he wouldn't have let anything, and I say ANYTHING, stop him from enjoying every moment of this Holiday ever again

-Since there are a couple of 'Grinches' in the house, Narancia thinks it's his duty to cheer everyone up, showing them why he loves Christmas so much

-"Nobody's gonna be left out, nope, not on my watch! We're all gonna have a great time, whether you want it or not!"

-Nari already starts to get exited for this Festivity in the moment November arrives, there's nothing he looks forward to more, not even his birthday

-When Bruno finally mentions that it's time to start organizing everything, Narancia jumps from his seat, and it's one of the very few occasions where he listens carefully without spacing out

-Just like Giorno, this baby boy loves decorating the house, they make an awesome team together!

-"Giorno! Look look look...You gotta see this!" "What is it, Narancia?" "THIS SNOW GLOBE! ISN'T IT JUST SOOOOOOOO CUTE?" -"Hehe...I suppose so"

-You may think that, similar to Mista, he forgets to buy presents, but that's not the case! Narancia wants to surprise the entire gang with his awesome gifts, and when they think he can't find anything better...Boom! He slaps an even more amazing present in their faces (not literally, of course)

-Even though he can't cook, he's more than willing to help Bruno with decorating the sweets, filling them with frosting, cream, small fruits, chocolate chips...Anything Bucciarati says he can use, really

-He also loves to go admiring the lights with the latter, always pointing out everything he sees

-"GAAAAASP...AN ENTIRE TREE MADE OF LIGHTS? AM I DREAMING?" "I'd say it's real, would you like to take a picture next to it?" "Yes, please!"

-Every year he wishes for the city to finally be covered in snow, but sadly, when you live in a hot country like Italy, that's most likely going to remain a fantasy

-He really likes wearing those oversized, horrible Christmas-themed sweaters, and genuinely thinks they're cute. He hopes for someone to wear them with him, but nobody ever seems to accept

-He tried convincing Fugo once, it uhm...Didn't go too well. But one of these years, he's going to get Giorno to wear one, he's sure of it!

-Nari still believes in Santa, and Bruno will personally ari the crap out of anyone who dares to tell him that he's not real. He leaves some cookies and milk in front of the tree in the living room, saying that he's going to stay awake the entire night to finally see him. He always ends up falling asleep...So one of the members of the gang has to carry him over to bed

-During Christmas lunch, he will 100% sure overeat, to the point where he can barely stand up from the chair, but still denying verything and acting like his stomach isn't about to explode

Fugo! 🍓

-Similar to Giorno, Fugo doesn't have any particular happy memories of Christmas from his childhood

-His entire family used to reunite to celebrate together. At first sight, it seemed like nothing was wrong: everyone was having fun with their loved ones, but for Fugo...It just felt so fake

-He knew that in the moment his relatives left, his parents would have gone back to their strict and distant behavior. Even during this time of the year, they still pressured him, just in a softer way. They wouldn't let him rest until he finished all the homework his teachers gave for Christmas Holidays, they wouldn't let him play with his other cousins, saying that he was too mature, and the list went on

-The only thing that comforted him was his grandmother, whom the rest of the family only invited for pity. She was the only one that would actually give Fugo something a child would genuinely like, like a puzzle or a plushie

-He was the first member to join Bucciarati's squad, so I'm guessing that they must have spent one Christmas together, just the two of them

-At first, the blonde tried to convince Bruno to just leave him alone, inviting him to celebrate with his relatives, saying that he would have been okay on his own

-Obviously, a good mom would never leave his child, so he declined his propose. For some reason...The man's behavior reminded Fugo a lot of his grandmother, and that was the first Christmas this Strawberry boy cherished in his heart

-While they mostly kept it to something simple, when the others arrived things started to get more and more loud, especially with Narancia

-Even though he would rather just spend the day relaxing at home with something warm to drink, he always ends up being dragged into whatever Nari and Mista are planning on doing. He fell like...10 times when they went ice skating together

-Fugo still acts kinda moody towards this time of the year, as his pride is too high for him to admit that he likes something so 'sentimental'

-He's also super done with having to go shopping with Mista to buy groceries, but he has to help in one way or another

-"Alright...Mista, Fugo, you two will buy all the ingredients I'm going to need"

"Urgh...It's cold outside, and I don't want to wait in line...Do I really have to?"

"Oh? Would you rather setting up the decorations with Giorno and Narancia?"

Cut to Nari already covered in lights while giggling like a kid

"...Just give me the list already"

"Wow, rude"

-Speaking of which, Fugo's immune system is not uhm...The best, and this means that he's always super scared of catching a cold in this period. While he doesn't show it, it'd pain him a lot to ruin everyone else's fun with his sickness

-He constantly wears super heavy clothes, even when they're at home, with all the windows closed and the wood burning in the fire place

-He always looks like a potato sack in the photos, but that doesn't really bother him a lot

-He isn't very good when it comes to making presents. He tries, and remembers to buy them on time, but he's not a particularly creative boy. He's that kind of person that would mostly just buy clothes or relatively 'simple' things, not that I can really blame him...That's pretty much all he received when he was a child

Abbacchio! ⏮️

-Oh boy...OH BOY! The Grinch himself, the Christmas hunter, the gloomy Lord in person

-I like to think that Abbacchio was one of the very few very people in the gang that actually grew up with a loving family, so he was more than happy to celebrate Christmas when he was a child

-One year, his parents gave him a police officer hat as a present, and he refused to take it off for days, even though it was obviously too big for him

-This means that unlike Giorno and Fugo, whose reason for disliking Christmas goes back to this childhood, his hate towards it is much more recent and somewhat less 'justified'

-After the loss of his colleague, he became apathetic to almost everything around him, and this Holiday was not spared. It was quite the opposite, to be honest

-He can't stand the whole cheerful and happy atmosphere, he thinks it's suffocating and makes him sick. Plus, "having a bunch of brats jumping up and down, singing lame carols and decorating the house like it's some birthday party" doesn't help

-Despite Narancia's efforts, the only one who can really get him out of this mood (pun intended) is Bucciarati

-"Just stop it already, Bruno. Go have fun with the children, how many times do I have to tell you that I don't care about any of this?"

-"And how many times do I have to tell you that you're not going to get rid of me that easily?"

-"...Whatever"

-Honestly, what he likes the most about this festivity is that he has an excuse for getting drunk af without anyone complaining. He takes the fanciest and most expensive bottle of wine he has and drinks all of it in less than 10 minutes

-The gang even bets money on how long it's going to take him to finish the whole thing, either Mista or Narancia usually win, since the others tend to underestimate Abbacchio's alcoholic "abilities"

-He puts minimal effort, mostly just because he's forced to, in buying presents for the squad. He's also super biased and obviously plays favourites, even though he would never admit it

-He'd buy something super special for Bruno, try a bit harder to pick up something for Narancia and Trish and take the first thing he sees for Fugo and Mista. As for Giorno...He literally just buys some coal, writes 'Buon Natale' on a piece of paper and slaps it on the carbon

-He has a relatively simple job regarding the preparations for Holiday time, which is...

-"Very well, Abbacchio...You have to pick up the tree from the basement and bring it to the living room"

"Why me? That thing is so fu***ng heavy"

"Exactly, do you want somebody else to lift it up and break their spine? I'd rather not spend Christmas night at the hospital"

-"Sigh...Alright, just because YOU ask"

-Slowly, but surely, he's learning to love Christmas again, though he will still keep on acting grumpy and complain every time he has the chance to

Trish! 🎙

-This girl is ready to brighten up all the festivities! When it's time to have fun, Trish doesn't hesitate even for a moment!

-Similar to Narancia and Bruno, her mother couldn't afford anything super expensive or exciting during this time of the year (taking care of a child on your own is no easy job), but Trish never dared to complain. She was aware of the sacrifices her mother was making to make sure that her child had everything she needed, she wouldn't have thrown a tantrum for something superficial

-Donatella would always give her a new doll as a present, and she would play with it for entire hours without getting tired. Her favourite one was, of course, a blonde doll dressed up as a pop star

-Just like her daughter, she was extraordinarily good when it came to choosing what to wear, which means that when Trish entered her 'teen phase', the woman would gift her a dress instead. Needless to say, the girl loved it every time!

-Speaking of which, after becoming part of the gang, her favourite "Christmas activity", if it counts, was going shopping! I mean...Do you think a person like her would miss out on the Sales? Please

-She doesn't like going on his own though, and brings along somebody with her. That 'somebody's ends up being Mista most of the times, which is literally just DRAGGED out of his room to the shopping centre

-Trish is that sort of person (I mean...I don't know if that's a thing in other countries, but it's pretty much a meme here in Italy) who insists that she's on a diet even during the Holiday season, but every single time someone offers something to eat, she replies with "Whatever, I'll just start next week" or "I'll start after New Year".

-Before she knows, it's the 8th of January and she hasn't been on a diet even for a day.

-One day, she'd like to travel around the world and see how they celebrate this Festivity in other countries. As you can already tell, she valued the materialistic part of Christmas than the 'spiritual' one, and she knows that in a lot of places it isn't considered a religious Holiday in the first place

-One thing she dislikes is how she's forced to wear super heavy and long clothes, she hates them and insists that they make her look fat (which is absolutely not true)

-She LOVES taking pictures of everything! Food? Yes. Decorations? Yes. Gifts? Yes. Just photos in general where the seven of them are together? Y E S!

-Some of them try to run away when they realize that Trish is about to start a freaking photoshoot, but their struggles are always vain, especially since she has Bruno's support

-"Come oooooon, just one last picture!" "Trish, for the love of God, the lasagna is getting cold" "So what? Microwaves exist for a reason" "We are NOT going to ruin all this food by putting it in the Microwave!"

-Being the singer of the group, she takes any opportunity she has to sing a Christmas-themed song, both Carols and modern/pop songs like 'All I want for Christmas'. Half of the times she doesn't even understand the lyrics, but that's not going to stop her for sure

-She definitely doesn't forget to buy presents for the others. After she goes shopping so much, how could she? Most people think it's lame to receive a clothes as a present, but we're taking about Trish here!

-She knows very well how every member likes to dress, and she surely doesn't have problems with her budget. She will pick something for each one of her companions even better than what they would take for themselves

-Lastly, her 'task' is to decorate the tree, which is one of the longest assignments that also require a lot of attention and precision. Why, you may ask? Because that thing is freaking huge, that's why. Giorno and Narancia will probably help her out once they're done with their own decorations, the three of them have a lot of fun together!

11 notes · View notes

sheron-c · 4 years

Text

XiSang Fic Recs

I haven’t seen any rec lists floating about, so for the XiSang Week 2020 challenge - Day 7 - Free choice, I wanted to create a rec list of my personal favourites for Nie Huaisang/Lan Xichen ship. There’s actually a lot of stories that are great and I don’t want to duplicate the entire ship tag, so these are just the top 10 that I found super enjoyable: 1. My Heart is a Saber by peskyjellyfish (~11k)

Summary: Huaisang is on his way to Xinglu Ridge when he gets sidetracked. Rec: This is the fic that gave me everything I wanted to read about them post-canon. Nie Huaisang is angry and damaged, Lan Xichen is hurt and curious, and they find the kind of hope in despair that can only be found together. 2. come and find me (lying in the bed i made) by ImaginationCake @demonic-cultivar (~22k)

Summary: After Jin Guangyao dies, Nie Huaisang is ready to enjoy his life free from the burden of revenge plots and subterfuge. But his decisions have resulted in a deep guilt that he can't shake, and he struggles to stay afloat with no one left to support him. To top it off, he finds himself tangled up in politics that he really couldn't care less about.What he does care about is Lan Xichen's opinion of him, but Lan Xichen won't even look at him anymore. Nie Huaisang can only hope that his life doesn't get any worse. Rec: The fic that got me into this ship! ♡ I did of course come to AO3 looking for more NHS & LXC content immediately after watching the Untamed. After seeing that ending scene with their conversation on the Temple’s steps I wanted more, but I wasn’t sure it was a romantic ship for me until I read this story. It’s got everything, a kidnapping, a rescue and a bad case of feelings :D 3. A Skilled Tactician is the Jewel of a Kingdom by Hypatia3 (~50k, WIP) Summary: During the Sunshot Campaign, Nie Huaisang wants to help despite his terrible sword skills. But there are other things he's good at, and nobody can say his mind is weak. But nobody has to know.After all, he wants to go back to his life of general uselessness after the war is over, and Nie Mingjue would never allow it if he saw a single sign of competence from him.But this has consequences that he didn't expect. Rec: One of the absolute best stories in this fandom when it comes to Nie Huaisang’s characterization -- he’s clever and yet so very Huaisang, in such a believable way that *hands* I can’t explain how much satisfaction I get out of reading and rereading this story. Honourable mention: A Decisive Victory by Hypatia3 (~24k, WIP) Summary: When Jin Guangyao acts against the Nie Sect a little earlier, Nie Huaisang ends up in over his head as acting sect leader. But he has a responsibility and a duty to his sect. His brother is counting on him until he recovers.Or Nie Huaisang loses his temper, starts a war, and impresses a lot of people along the way. Rec: This is not marked XiSang, and is a divergence from the earlier Tactician story (around chapter 7) but it’s such fun to read and Huaisang’s interactions with Lan Xichen are top notch, so I can’t help mentioning it here.

4. from tomb to tomb by @the-pretzel (~16k)

Summary: It's a lot easier to get truth out of someone, even one with a very good reason to lie, when they're drunk. Or, five times Nie Huaisang was drunk and once it was Lan Xichen's turn instead. Rec: Written to capture moments over the years during the course of the show, as Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang dance around each other, this story is absolutely beautiful and vivid. I can still see the scenes of the story pop up in my head like drawings, of Lan Xichen walking in on semi-hungover Nie Huaisang and the sheer tension between them enough to keep you breathlessly reading.

Honourable mention: when i'm reborn by @the-pretzel (~1.1k)

Summary: Nie Huaisang's daemon settles the day he finds out what Jin Guangyao has done. (His Dark Materials fusion) Rec: A very short, very lovely daemon AU, which I’m definitely reading as XiSang :)

5. What I had to do by @ibijau (~20k) Summary: After three years in seclusion, Lan Xichen gets an unexpected guest he would rather have avoided. Yet when he learns that Nie Huaisang is dying from a curse, he is forced to confront his guilt toward Jin Guangyao's fate and the people his sworn brother hurt. Rec: I’d say this is a fandom classic, so you’ve probably read it already :D But, one of my favourite things about this story is the way it captures Nie Huaisang running away from emotions, and Lan Xichen being selfless when it comes to those he cares about. 6. gather jewels from graveyards by LuckyDiceKirby (~15k) Summary: Nie Huaisang stole happiness from Lan Xichen. He stole peace. If he could just see him, and see for himself exactly what he’s done, and know—that will be enough. Then he’ll be able to paint again, and his hands won’t shake as he does it, and he’ll remember why he ever in his life bothered to put brush to ink to paper. After all, a man should have to live with his mistakes. There is no other way to learn from them. His brother believed that. Rec: One of the first stories I read for this ship and so well done! This is one where Nie Huaisang feels very guilty, and who doesn’t enjoy reading that? Nie Huaisang comes to the Hanshi to make amends, and doesn’t go away when Lan Xichen won’t see him.

7. When the world is cold (I will feel a glow) by @marsdiogenes (~3k)

Summary: Xichen is trying very hard to get his crush to notice him, but gallery curator Nie Huaisang has a job to do and would appreciate it if Lan Xichen's beautiful face would stop for a moment so he can focus. Mingjue just wants to have a nice, quiet family dinner and for everyone to respect his efforts.

Rec: I don’t normally go for Modern AUs for this ship, but this was so fun and sexy! Also Nie Mingjue’s knowing reaction is :3 8. to embrace doubt by fensandmarshes, Fleetling, idendreams, medievalfantasyqueen, space_enjolras, sxnshot (blasphemyincarnate)

Summary: Five times people thought they understood Nie Huaisang + one time someone admitted they didn’t - a collaborative, semi-chronological character study of Nie Huaisang through other characters’ eyes. Rec: Okay, it’s technically not marked shippy, but you tell me that someone who thinks about Nie Huaisang the way Lan Xichen does in this story, in the chapter that’s from his pov can possibly not love him, and I won’t believe it. The lyrical prose is the best description in a paragraph I’ve ever read of Nie Huaisang.

9. Love of my life, I hate you by Ibijau (~126k) Summary: With Qishan Wen growing ever more powerful and menacing, QInghe Nie and Gusu Lan decide to cement a firm alliance between their sects through a marriage between their children. Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang are less than thrilled to learn this, but nobody is asking for their opinion anyway Rec: At first, I wasn’t sold on Lan Xichen being so thoughtless in his treatment of Nie Huaisang as a child and mostly wanted to smack him, but damn if the later events don’t make up for it, make him grow up, and turn the tables around. :D This story is utterly satisfying to read, like one of those novels that give your Id everything you want, eventually. I love slow burn and this is that in spades! So much fun, I’ve re-read parts of it multiple times already.

Honourable mention: Ibijau has so many interesting XiSang stories, like the one where Jin Rusong survives and Nie Huaisang ends up raising him (Second Chances For First Time Villains), and the one where Lan Wangji and Nie Huaisang, both in love with someone else, make a marriage match and solve crimes together ( We can light a match and burn it down), the god!LXC AU, and many others. Check them out! And finally,

10. Chapter 95: LXC finds out about JGY and tells NHS, from MDZS short fics by nirejseki ( @robininthelabyrinth) (~1k) Summary: In that AU where LXC pretends to be LWJ and discovers NMJ's head, what if he went on a quest to put the body of his old friend together and along the way accidentally ran into NHS who's on the same mission. And they realize the other knows! Rec: Nirejseki writes a lot of great Nie brothers content, and this is one short story that can arguably turn into XiSang in the future. The possibilities of this AU make it so exciting, I had to include it on the list even though NHS and LXC only talk and nothing else happens. ...Okay, that was more than ten fics here, but can you blame me? 😍 I love these two together. And with the XiSang week running we have so much new stuff!

#xisangweek2020 #xisang #nie huaisang #lan xichen #the untamed #mdzs #fic recs #favourite xisang fic recs #watch tumblr eat this post because external links lol #¯\_(ツ)_/¯

85 notes · View notes