#the main character shares my name. I have a deeply personal attachment okay | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

vaguely-concerned · 3 years

Text

The Mandalorian Chapter 13 rewatch thoughts; the reduced salt edition

or at least I’m trying to be more constructive with the salt in this one let’s goooo

- god I miss the armourer so much. look at how fucking cool she looks, this is the mando design I hunger for so deeply, WHY would you give me boob plates back instead haha

- I will say with the way it’s presented this place feels way too small to be called a city lol (and I think that limited scale hurts how much I’m willing to accept the magistrate as a credible opponent to go toe to toe with ahsoka freaking tano. maybe if we’d seen directly the extent of the magistrate’s power and influence and not just the burned out wasteland that power leaves behind I’d be more on board with it. canonically she’s clearly been extremely rich and influential on a galactic scale, while the aesthetic filoni takes from samurai movies in this has a lot more to do with local warlords and smaller stakes. this is not the only time the adherence to that aesthetic without adapting it for the emotional story at hand or giving it a spin for novelty hurts the episode #hot take. it’s empty homage without quite understanding why the moments you’re emulating work so well in the context of the story they serve.)

this might be because how it’s filmed makes it seem like there’s just one big main street towards the magistrate’s palace, it’s implied to be quite a bit bigger from the establishing shot as the crest comes flying in?

- LOVE the implication that din lets baby play with the silver ball pretty freely while they’re on the ship but sets the (completely sensible tbh) boundary that he can’t bring it with him somewhere outside where he might lose it for good. that seems like reasonable dad-ing, din, well done.

anyway my heart is hurting because that silver ball is like a comfort item for the kid and it’s pretty clear from the very start that he has some kind of understanding of what might happen on this planet and so does NOT want to go out there, but also... that thing is narratively introduced as the baby’s way of saying ‘dad, don’t forget me, don’t go’. it’s what made din go back for him the first time, and that’s a connotation it still has both in the audience’s mind and for the characters. and I need to go cry in a corner for a while be right back

- not for nothing but in this scene of the baby being faced with din and a jedi standing side by side as if to present a choice, din literally has the sun right behind his head like some kind of fucking halo

gee I wonder what the baby’s choice is going to be fsadfjkhasdkjfhs. (he! loves! his dad! so much!!!!!!!)

- I wish they’d done more with the bored punch clock villain, hey-I’m-just-here-for-the-paycheck-man vibe of the guard captain guy and maybe given his nonchalance a bit of a darkly comedic tint, I think it would’ve made a better moment when he’s facing off with din towards the end if he had more... character. make him a bit more of a dark mirror of the soulless gun for hire people have seen din as in the past (and as the magistrate seems to now), do something interesting here. maybe even make it more of a mexican standoff with him holding a gun on an innocent or something so there’s something here for din to lose, it still does the western thing and lets you have that ramping tension you need for when you cut between the sword duel and this. hell, have him actually give up and walk away to show that he doesn’t fucking care about any of this, he did evil for money without any driving passion or conviction behind it, and let din decide if he’ll let him walk away scot free or not after what he’s been part of, that’s a neat subversion of the trope as well! as it stands it’s just so... empty

- baby says ‘mada! mada!’ again when they try to approach the vendor who appears to be serving foodstuffs! so maybe a word he has for food or maybe something like ‘lady person!’? (he says it when frog lady is gone on the ice planet and also as she’s walking into the razor crest for the first time. he did seem more interested in the eggs at that point, sooo lol)

din reacts to him speaking too, he glances down at him <3<3<3

- the baby seems to sense ‘ooof this is scary, time to hide’ on his own before they go into the magistrate’s place, din doesn’t appear to signal anything to him

- there’s a lot of deliberate silence in this episode, but the sound design that gets space away from the music somehow isn’t as immersive to me as it usually is on this show? I have no idea why, though

- ‘a jedi plagues me’ is somehow so fucking funny to me. the tl;dr for a lot of star wars villains through the ages

it also still cracks me up that din is immediately like ‘ma’am you can’t afford me’ fsdhfaskf

- I’m so happy din talks to and reassures the baby when he puts him down in these situations now, I remember being SO SAD when he didn’t back in chapter 7. he’s learning all the time!

- I think we should all be very happy this fight is cut off almost as soon as it begins, because I’m pretty sure ahsoka could kick din’s ass real bad and that would be terrible because I love him (listen din definitely has his moments, but up against a force user for the first time and said force user being one of the most powerful and battle-experienced jedi alive? probably not huh, if he survives that it’s on pure fatherly love and desperation and nothing else)

- this seems to be the baby asking ahsoka to carry him back to be with din (mando certainly seems to be what they’re ‘talking’ about right before) and it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen

din’s fingers are also doing the nervous curl-uncurl thing as she puts the baby down, and it remains the sweetest goddamn character tic, he’s adorable

in the long pause after he tells her “he needs your help” he’s sitting SO TENSELY, it’s only when she at least promises to test the kid that he relaxes a bit

baby (well, grogu, but he’s also baby) recognizes yoda’s name and seems to almost ask ahsoka ‘yoda is here???’, and her blink in response is like ‘no, I’m sorry’

- I still deeply dislike how it’s actually done in the episode, it’s so clunky and it annoys me on a craft level, but I do like the overarching thematic narrative of both mando and the baby being on this journey towards specificity and remembering themselves, of reclaiming the particular nuances of an identity that make up a self after a series of traumas have stripped it away from them. at the start of the show neither of them has a name (and din doesn’t even have a face) and they’re basically presented as broad archetypes, The Mandalorian and The Child. and now we’re slowly unearthing things that make them this specific child, grogu, this specific mandalorian, din djarin. it’s rediscovering parts of yourself you might have thought lost as you heal from trauma and I do like that very much, it’s touching and the emotional throughline this show should never lose sight of

- oooooh no baby glances over at din when she asks him to push the stone back ;______________; it’s so awful because you can just tell... he understands that if he does this thing din might leave, but also people have clearly tricked him into using the Force before and given him this traumatized kneejerk association that if he uses it where people can see him Bad things might happen

oh okay so I think din just subtly misunderstands the baby’s appeal to him here, he thinks that look towards him means ‘dad help I don’t understand what’s being asked of me’. I guess he doesn’t have any way of knowing how complicated the baby’s past is with this yet, it’s a good try

- I’ve seen people take ‘he understands’ as baby understanding everything that’s said to him all the time, which is patently not true haha. he understands quite a lot, in the way toddlers actually understand quite a lot of what’s going on around them, even a bit of words spoken to them before they’re especially verbal themselves, but he clearly mixes up his colours still sooo

I also suspect he’s played this game before -- surely that must be one of the most obvious activities the jedi would do with the smallest children, playing Force catch basically? but he still doesn’t trust it, or her. (on the other hand he does trust that din would never hurt or trick him. help me I’m drowning in my own tears)

- personally and from anything else in this show I don’t think din would be this impatient with the baby after hearing, less than half a minute before, that he’s terrified

but hey I’m not the man in the cowboy hat what do I know (yes I’m bitter characterization matters okay lol)

- it’s both funny and so sweet that the same music plays during this father and son playing catch scene as when baby lifted that mudhorn fkdfha

- for my money din reacts exactly perfectly to grogu finally Force pulling the ball -- he’s excited and happy, signalling that this thing doesn’t have to be scary and dangerous and that when shared with the right people it can be a good joyous thing, he moves over to the baby so they can share in this victory and attune, and crucially he doesn’t demand more afterwards, which the baby must have gotten before from some of the assholes who’ve been experimenting on him. it’s just the celebration and satisfaction of having done the thing without demands or threats or any ulterior motives. HIM!!! DAD!!!!

tattoo this straight onto my heart... the way baby cheerfully offers it back to din... sdkjafhksdfhsakdjf

- din breaths out roughly and unevenly through his nose almost like it’s been punched out of him and starts fiddling with the silver ball (which is still his primary tell for anxiety/stress!) when ahsoka says “he’s formed a strong attachment to you” :) listen if I have to know that all of you fuckers are going down with me

- see the thing is... if you don’t know who ahsoka is in pretty deep detail, you might take her at face value here instead of understanding that she’s actually projecting her own feelings and traumas onto this. if you absolutely have to use this character for this part of the show you have to set her up better specifically so someone who’s never seen a single episode of clone wars can grasp the basics of where she is emotionally and what her motives are, so that her role in this story makes sense. as it is it’s sort of a compromise between pleasing old fans (who can do quite a bit of inferring to figure it out) and approaching audiences who don’t know anything, and it falls flat

(for the purposes of this show I aggressively do not care where thrawn is, and so I’m just annoyed when we find out what this was actually all for haha)

- still feel reluctant to discuss too much about ahsoka because of the whole... situation with dawson, but I do like that she lets one of the guards leave after disarming him because he’s cowering and giving up, and that she still has her padawan braid wound into her belt. also I think the effects on her and her outfit are completely fine, my problems with her this episode are all writing craft and real life stuff

- when you get first the jet pack sound, then din coming down kicking that dude in the face, then the mando flute kicking in as he lands properly... the only time the action in this episode made me go ‘fuck YEEEAAAAH’ it’s awesome

- again, just like with the idea of having a samurai/ronin movie standoff and a western standoff at the same time: having the scene be mostly silent except for the almost musical sounds of the light sabers hitting the beskar spear is such a cool concept, and it does not work in action. I don’t know enough about filmmaking to tell you why it doesn’t, but it doesn’t.

there’s also something about... the ahsoka vs. morgan scene apes the deliberately staged, ritualized, exaggerated almost like how you’d perform it in live theatre aspect of the duels in the genre, but in an empty way? why are they acting like this, what’s their relationship to each other, what’s their individual code of honour that makes them let the other person slowly theatrically disrobe before going for them? just plucking the aesthetics out of a tradition and plopping them down in your own thing without thinking about the whys or original context of it leaves it without meaning

(also let morgan express something of her own character other than I Am Evil rather than having ahsoka drop the entire exposition on her. maybe you could have her snarl some illuminating lines while they’re fighting so you get the feeling of the bitterness and brokenness that has fuelled her and burned the woods of this whole planet. in some ways she’s not that unlike din and ahsoka, she lost everything in the clone wars too and was motivated very differently by it than they were, play that up so the situation’s relevant to our protagonists! I’m sorry for all this nitpicking but I HAVE to figure out how this could have been done better for my own sake haha)

- ooooooh the way din says “I can’t accept” when offered the spear is in fact almost an exact echo of when the armourer offers him the signet in chapter 3! I thought it sounded familiar, it’s delivered in such a similar way. huh. din has some Feelings about earning things and when he hasn’t earned something, doesn’t he

- din also cares A LOT about not breaking his word, to the point of being willing to stoop to some quite dishonest methods to avoid giving his word in the first place, and I find it utterly delightful

- baby closing his eyes again after din wakes him like he’s thinking ‘maybe if I don’t wake up dad won’t go’ or even ‘at least this way I won’t know it happened until later, when it’s over’... pure emotional torture :) thank god din’s entire soul is clearly howling in protest and he took the slightest chance ahsoka gave him to not actually go through with it

- so this is the second time we get someone telling din he’s like grogu’s father. well, the armourer gives it more like a command/almost a religious obligation, ‘until it is of age or reunited with its kind you are as its father’, ahsoka is stating what’s obvious at this point but says ‘you are like a father to him’... maybe they’re doing a rule of threes thing and the last time it’s ‘you are his father’ and it sticks?

- anyway din cradling the baby so close to his chest with both arms all the time instead of the more practical way he carries him around in the crook of his arm sometimes... my suffering is deep and endless

#star wars #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian meta

58 notes · View notes

alexanderlee1012 · 4 years

Text

Reflections on Mulan

It took me a long time to cherish my Taiwanese-American heritage. Growing up in the United States, it wasn’t a facet of my identity that I attached any importance to. As a child, I even actively denied that part of me. Whenever my family went out to eat Chinese food, I threw a temper tantrum and would only eat if we stopped by fast food first. I didn’t bother speaking Chinese; I replied to my Mom’s Mandarin in English and I consistently repeated the entry level class for my Saturday Chinese-school until I was not compelled to go anymore. The only attempt to understand the vast history and traditions of my culture was acknowledging the bare minimum to profit off of the New Years.

While there are many reasons for my delayed acceptance of my culture and identity, the portrayal of Asians in Western Society was definitely a significant factor. Similar to many young children, I was deeply impacted by television and movies. My weeks were organized by TV show airtimes and the few times I was able to go to the movies were momentous occasions. I idolized the heroes on screen, wishing to become just like them. However, what I saw on the screen never closely resembled me. Almost all Western media featured white protagonists, and in the few moments there was somebody of Chinese descent, they were essentially a one-dimensional caricature that was completely unrelatable (for men, choose either kung fu master or a super nerd, and for women, choose an exotic hypersexualized love interest or submissive wallflower). Many values are actively defined and imprinted at a societal level, and this one was no different. The messaging from Hollywood was loud and clear: there is nothing valuable about being Asian American; this culture only deserves to be simplified to basic tropes.

To my delight, as my own relationship with my culture deepened and flourished over the decades, it seemed that the media’s portrayal of Asians were finally evolving as well. First starting on the fringes, with Asian-American content creators using new platforms such as YouTube to reach directly to their audience, then slowly creeping into the mainstream, with sitcoms and major blockbuster films. Finally, Asian-Americans can be cast as characters that were complex and interesting. Their only defining feature wasn’t just that they were Asian! Similar to white actors and actresses, it was just another part of their identity. Witnessing Asians star in these multifaceted roles has been amazing given how the landscape was just a few years prior.

I also understand that at the end of the day media is a business, and for this movement to not be temporary, Asians need to throw their full support when these things happen. Personally, I watched Crazy Rich Asians four times (two times in theaters, once on a plane, and then renting again at home to show my mom), and I’ve been subscribed to Wong Fu’s Patreon ever since I’ve learned of it. So of course, given this momentous live-action remaking of Mulan, I’ve been at the edge of my seat, excited and ready to support.

Especially given the cultural phenomenon that was Black Panther, I was ecstatic that Disney was going to take on Mulan again. While many were bemoaning the exclusion of Mushu, Shang and those classic songs, I actually grew more excited since the director stated that she made those decisions to be more faithful to the original legend. The anticipation kept growing and growing as the pandemic forcibly pushed back the release again and again. Until finally, this past Friday’s release on Disney+, where I eagerly paid the additional $30 premium access to be among the first to support the movie.

My disappointment was immeasurable.

While there are many major flaws to dive deep into regarding this movie (especially the superpowers that weaken the narrative of a woman fighting to be seen as an equal in a patriarchal society), I wanted to spend some time to speak on some smaller details that yanked me out of the immersion by how grossly misrepresented it was. In life, it’s the small actions that build up to communicate your intent. Love is shown by showing care and consistency in the tiniest of details; however, in this case, the small details accumulated to disrespect and disregard instead. These cultural details clearly didn’t matter to the people designing this film.

Warning slight spoilers ahead, but nothing too major if you’re familiar with the story.

The villagers from Mulan’s hometown all lived together in a Tulou (土樓), a circular earthen hut that can house many families. However these buildings are a facet of the Hakka people living in Fujian originating from the 12th century. Mulan’s story takes place in the Northern Wei Dynasty; which occurs during 386 to 534 AD and is, as the name describes, in the northern part of China. Not only is it geographically inaccurate, but there is a time difference of 600+ years there! That would be akin to placing a modern skyscraper penthouse into the Renaissance.

As someone who is learning more about Chinese tea to connect to their culture, the teapot used during the matchmaking scene was equally jarring. The teapot was a Yokode kyusu, a teapot that has a side handle 90 degrees from the sprout. While Japanese tea culture was originally imported from China during the Song Dynasty, the cultures have significantly diverged. Each has their unique vessels, tools, and processing techniques worthy of celebrating (matcha vs pu’er, sencha vs oolong, yokode kyusu vs yixing). However, maybe to the creators of this movie, east Asian culture is just all the same to them.

The phoenix was a central character in the movie, and to the chagrin of many fans of the original, Mushu’s replacement. As the Hua family’s ancestral guardian spirit, it provided a nice symbolism for Mulan, as her character’s male persona dies and she is reborn as Hua Mulan. What is egregious is that Phoenixes are not even an animal within Chinese folklore, that’s a Western (Greek) myth! While some may point out that there is a Chinese mythical bird called the Fenghuang (鳳凰), these are immortal birds that only choose to visit regions when there is peace and prosperity. What it definitely is NOT is a reincarnating bird leading warriors into the heat of battle. Sure, Fenghuang are genderfluid and that does match Mulan, but why was the only emphasized trait of the bird the aspect from Greek lore? Why bother taking out Mushu to be closer to the original if it’s replacement is a Western myth?

Finally, I have to bring up the obvious change in accents that happened when Mulan changed from a kid to an adult. Why cast a child actor with an American accent if the main character has a Chinese accent? There is no way that any other movie with a 200M+ budget would have allowed a white child actor to speak with an American accent, to then change it to a British accent when that character grew up and not even acknowledge it. Are we just supposed to be okay with it since they’re at least both Chinese looking?

No movie will ever be picture perfect in representing any culture, trade-offs are inevitable. However, I can’t see how those choices above added anything. Why would you make the villagers live in a Tulou? Was it critical to the plot? Every other Mulan adaptation is fine without a Greek Phoenix, why make it so necessary to this re-telling? Those small details exposed the attitude that I was all too familiar with growing up: who cares about representing actual Chinese culture?

After watching that movie, it felt as if the creative process was a room of white people gathered together, cherry-picking what fit their own narrative, sprinkling some Asian artifacts throughout, shrugging and saying to each other “That’s Chinese-y right? Good enough for me!” Imagine my lack of surprise when I checked to see that none of the screenwriters, producers or director had an Asian background. Chinese culture is the longest continuing culture in the world. It deserves to be shared for what it is (warts and all), not to be trivialized into a simplified palette that’s easiest to digest. Chinese representation in Western media should be about collaborating with us as peers, not to be used as a tool to extract the growing affluence of the Chinese and it’s diaspora.

I so badly wanted this to be a celebration, but now it’s a lose-lose situation. I wouldn’t want the younger version of me to watch this. It would have pushed me further away from my culture; I would either not relate to the characters alluding to “honor” every other sentence, or I would see that my culture isn’t worth even having just one person in this $200M major blockbuster film correct the gross cultural inaccuracies. On the other hand, I also don’t want critics to point at bad numbers and proclaim that Asian representation isn’t worth the investment.

I just wish for us to be portrayed as who we truly are.

#mulan #disney #asian representation #anti mulan 2020 #mulan 2020 #disney mulan

24 notes · View notes

ohemgeeitscoley · 4 years

Text

Ben Solo is the recently assigned editor for Rey Johnson’s book about star-crossed lovers in space when the world is turned upside down and stay home orders are issued. Ben and Rey begin working together over Zoom and their relationship grows.

Or, an and they were zoomates fic.

Based on this Tumblr post.

The one I have been waiting for (Part One of Two)

Fandom: Star Wars

Pairing: Rey/Ben Solo (Reylo)

Note: This was going to be a really, really short one shot. It turned into a 12k two-shot. Whoops. This is pure fluff.

As always, the biggest thank you to @andyouweremine for being the world’s best beta and friend. Seriously, thank you for all of your cheerleading and input and for convincing me that one more scene never hurt anyone. You’re the absolute best.

Read below or on AO3.

From: Leia Organa-Solo <[email protected]> To: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> Subject: Quarantine assignments

Ben,

Unfortunately with everything going on right now, I've decided that we are going to close the office and have everyone work from home. I know you were looking forward to the big welcome lunch I had planned. Hopefully we will be able to reschedule in a few weeks once the risk of spreading COVID-19 lessens.

In the meantime, I am going to assign you to Rey Johnson. She is working on a new novel with a goal of having the first draft submitted by May 30. I'm attaching her contact information and what she has sent over so far. Please coordinate with Rey to schedule an introduction meeting.

Warm regards,

Mom

Leia Organa-Solo CEO Rebel Publishing, LLC

From: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> To: Leia Organa-Solo <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Quarantine assignments

Leia:

I am deeply saddened that the welcome lunch you coordinated over my many, many vocal objections to has been cancelled. I suppose we will have to plan another inner-office get together wherein I can find a way to embarrass and let you down. I'm greatly looking forward to the opportunity.

On that note, was it really necessary to use my full name in my email address? Was Ben already taken? I am fairly certain as my mother you are aware that you are the only person who ever calls me Benjamin. Would it be possible to have IT change this before tomorrow?

I think closing the office is the right decision. Social distancing is quite important now more than ever. I'm assuming this means that Saturday dinners will also be postponed?

I'll look over what you sent and reach out to Ms. Johnson. I'm looking forward to working with her.

Sincerely,

Ben Solo Editor Rebel Publishing, LLC

From: Leia Organa-Solo <[email protected]> To: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Quarantine assignments

Benjamin:

I distinctly remember writing Benjamin down on your birth certificate. I'm unaware of any name change order being in your personnel file. The email stays.

The lunch has not been cancelled, it has been postponed. Despite your assertions, you will not embarrass or let me down in any get together. However, I make no such promises. Seeing as how I'll be trapped at home with your father for the foreseeable future, maybe I'll finally have time to find some of those old pictures of you. I've been meaning to redecorate my office.

It does appear that Saturday dinners will need to be postponed. However, I am working with Chewie and Luke to see if we can perhaps get them set up to attend virtual dinners. I'll keep you updated.

Warm regards,

Mom

Leia Organa-Solo CEO Rebel Publishing, LLC

-----

Ben sighed, pushing his hands under his glasses as he rubbed at the corners of his eyes. It wasn’t that he necessarily thought that agreeing to go work at his mom’s publishing company was going to be the easiest of transitions, but he also hadn’t been prepared for his name to be on the list of things they would argue about.

It only made sense, then, that it was one of the first things.

He considered sending another email, pushing the issue. But he knew better than to think it was an argument he was going to win. And, honestly, he was hopeful that if he didn’t respond maybe she’d never again think about coordinating, or asking him to coordinate, a virtual Saturday dinner.

Instead, Ben opened the contact card his mom had sent for Rey, and got to work.

From: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> To: Rey Johnson <[email protected]> Subject: Introduction Meeting

Good evening Ms. Johnson:

I’m the assigned editor for your next book. Leia has already provided your initial pitch, character sketches, and outline. However, I usually prefer to talk with an author prior to reading these materials. I have found in the past that going into these conversations without any preconceived ideas based on the initial workups leads to a more organic understanding of the material. As such, I’d love to have the chance to talk with you about your book prior to looking over the material.

Given the increased concerns of spreading the virus, Leia has closed the office and has asked that we conduct all of our work from home. Please let me know what your availability is tomorrow or the next day so that I can coordinate the conference. I am just transitioning to Rebel Publishing, so my calendar is currently fairly open.

Of course, if you’d rather me read through the materials and start the process that way, just let me know.

I look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Ben Solo Editor Rebel Publishing, LLC

From: Rey Johnson <[email protected]> To: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Introduction Meeting

Mr. Solo,

Leia let me know today that we would be working together. I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts. I’d love the opportunity to talk with you prior to you reviewing the materials that have been previously sent. This is a different approach than my previous editors have taken, but I am intrigued by your theory.

With that said, given the recent orders to stay home, my schedule is very flexible. I usually try to block out specific times to focus on writing so that I can turn off notifications and limit distractions. With the times I had previously blocked out for tomorrow, I could make an 11:00 am work? If that doesn’t work, just let me know what does and I’m sure I’ll be able to make that work.

I look forward to meeting with you.

Sincerely,

Rey Johnson

-----

Rey was the first one in the Zoom meeting the next morning. She fidgeted with her web camera, adjusting the angle until the image on the screen blocked out most of her messy apartment. She spent a few minutes pushing things out of the way before sitting back down and waiting for Ben to appear.

She glanced down at the clock on her computer screen, sighing at the time. The meeting wasn’t supposed to start for another five minutes. Being early had never been one of her defining characteristics, but she also hadn’t had any real human interaction in days.

The day the stay home order had been issued by the Governor, Rey had planned on meeting up with Poe and Finn for drinks. They had been on her for days to avoid slipping into a writer isolation. Poe had a lot of experience in knowing just how easily Rey could spiral when she was writing, hiding away from the world for days at a time. It had always just been easier for Rey to stay in when she was writing. Easier to stay focused on what kept her paid and fed and a roof over her head.

She didn’t have to worry about getting too distracted and forgetting where she left off or what she had planned for another scene if she just stayed home. Poe liked to remind her that she was ridiculous and that going out also was what provided her with actual inspiration to write.

There was a balance, she was sure. She just hadn’t achieved it yet. Then the stay home issue was ordered and Rey found herself wishing that she had listened to Poe sooner.

Not that was going to tell him that.

The computer dinged when Ben joined the meeting room. The image was fuzzy at first, Rey could really only make out that he had dark hair and rather broad shoulders. In fact, he looked rather… large, his body taking up most of the space that she could see. The image cleared and Rey took in the rest of his features, the sharp nose and pouty lips.

He was definitely attractive. Which was not what she needed to be thinking about at the moment.

“Good morning, Mr. Solo,” Rey said, smiling politely as she held her hand up in a tiny, awkward wave.

“I would say Mr. Solo is my father,” he responded, shaking his head slightly. “But he also hates being called that.”

“Right, so, Benjamin then?”

“No, no, no, no,” Ben grimaced, as if the word personally offended him. “Ben. Just Ben.”

“Okay, just Ben,” Rey laughed softly. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Ms. John-”

“Rey,” she interrupted him with a grin.

“Well, Rey, tell me about your book.”

Rey took a deep breath before, running her teeth over her bottom lip before she began. She started by attempting to introduce the main characters, Kira and Kylo, and their backstories, but she was easily distracted with certain points of plot that felt so imperative to interrupt and explain.

By the time she finished, she wasn't really sure what information she had shared or left out. But she was fairly positive that she had failed to hit all of the main plot points.

Rey waited for Ben to say something. She knew that he had told her that he found it beneficial to hear about the story in an organic way, but the longer the silence stretched, the more she wished she had spent more time preparing last night to explain to him the story and the characters in at least a logical way.

“So they are connected?” He finally asked. “What was the word you used?”

“A dyad,” Rey answered. “Soulmates, really.”

“Star-crossed lovers fighting on opposite sides of a galactic war," Ben paused, jotting something down on a piece of paper next to his computer. "Doomed from the start?"

"Hardly," Rey snorted. "It won't be easy, but I fully plan on a happily ever after ending for them."

"Really?" Ben seemed surprised. "That's unusual for star-crossed couples."

"Your words," Rey reminded him, "I said they were soulmates."

"That you did," Ben conceded. "I just assumed since they are fighting for different things that one would fall."

"But they aren't."

"What?"

"Fighting for different things," Rey clarified. "It seems that way, at first. But really, they are both fighting for a place in the world. For a family. For a balance that they are being told can't exist."

"It sounds like quite a world," Ben noted. "I'm excited to see you build it."

"Yeah," Rey looked away from the screen, staring at the knick knacks that filled up the shelf across from her. "It's a little scary actually, creating a world this complex."

"That's what I'm here for."

"Right," Rey smiled at him. "Well, I'm glad I have you."

Rey thought that maybe Ben was blushing, even though logically she knew that it was more likely just a shadow or reflection from his computer. Either way, she liked the way it made him look.

"So, same time next week?" Ben asked. "I'll go over everything Leia sent me. Now that I know what I'm getting into, I think my notes will be a lot better."

"Yeah, same time next week," Rey glanced down at the notes on her desk. "Should I send you things throughout the week as I'm working? Or save it for next week?"

"For now I say save it for next week. I have a lot of material to get started with."

"Sounds good."

"It was nice meeting you, Rey." Ben held one hand up in an awkward wave.

"Yeah, you too, Ben."

-----

From: Rey Johnson <[email protected]> To: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> Subject: Earlier meeting?

Hi Ben:

I know that we have a meeting scheduled in four days, but I was just wondering if you might be available earlier than that? I’m having a bit of difficulty with the corner I think I’ve written myself into, and I am hoping that a fresh pair of eyes might help me find my way out. I understand if you want to keep the meeting as scheduled, I know you haven’t had a lot of time to go through the materials that had already been submitted, but I’d really appreciate any insight.

I hope you are staying inside and staying healthy!

-Rey.

------

Rey groaned, rereading the email she had sent Ben. It wasn’t necessarily a bad email, it was actually lightyears better than the first draft she had written at 2 am. Which went something like ‘Hi Ben, as it turns out despite my years of believing otherwise, I need human interaction and your face is the only face I’ve seen in a week and I’m slowly losing my mind. I sang to my plants. I’ve never written this much in my life, I’ve started reading the dialogue out loud because I’m no longer sure what human conversations sound like. So, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could we move up our meeting? I’m a little worried I’m becoming an insane person. I swear I’m not normally this weird. Quarantine life.’

She, thankfully, pressed the delete button instead of the send button. The other three drafts were slightly more professional, but all with the same undertone of her being slightly desperate for any conversation that didn’t involve her voicing both sides. She had tried facetiming Poe, but he and Finn had been keeping each other plenty busy. Which really, she should have expected.

Logically she knew that she could reach out to either one of them anyways, or Rose, or any of her other friends and just tell them that she was potentially on the verge of a self-isolation mental breakdown and they would be there for her.

But that was a showing of vulnerability that despite years of therapy Rey wasn’t comfortable with demonstrating. And so she emailed Ben instead.

It wasn’t like it was a complete lie. She had written more than usual and she was at a point in the story that she would appreciate some feedback at this point.

Kira and Kylo were at a turning point in the story. Their connection had been steadily growing stronger and more frequent, forcing them to face each other. Now was the time for them to come together and join each other or for them to pull away and keep fighting against each other.

It wasn't a terrible idea for her to get some feedback and opinions before moving forward full speed. Her reaching out to Ben for an earlier meeting had nothing to do with her ever increasing thoughts about how he was rather attractive and his smile was rather enticing and that she wanted to see it again.

At least, she was fairly confident that wasn’t the main reason.

She glanced at the sent email one last time before closing out of her email tab. Only fifteen minutes had passed since she sent the email and she already felt regret settling over her nerves.

It was going to be a long day waiting for him to reply.

-----

In hindsight, Ben probably should have found it strange that he had not received a single company email in over 24 hours. Especially since Leia had a habit of sending him personal messages to his work email. Despite him reminding her numerous times that she had his personal email, and his cell phone, and, really, at least four other ways of contacting him.

A part of him knew that Leia did it because she genuinely enjoyed reminding herself that he came back to her company, that he came home. He also knew her well enough to know that the larger reason was because she also genuinely enjoyed annoying him. And Leia had to know that he would find knowing that her personal assistant had access to all of her emails about whether or not he was interested in attending a virtual dinner, if he had enough food in his apartment or if he would like her to make an instacart order for him, and that Han had been cleaning out the garage to make more room for his ‘quarantine projects’ and found boxes of his old toys and baby blankets and she was just wondering if he perhaps wanted her to bring the belongings home so that he could come get them, you know, for the future.

So, he should have known that something wasn’t working, but he had been distracted going through Rey’s materials, making notes of his questions and of his proposed edits. She was a fantastic writer. The world she had built was fresh and lively, jumping off of the pages in clear images and descriptions. She had provided extremely detailed character sketches for most of the characters, but he hadn’t found that he had to read through them or refer to them to understand any of the characters or to analyze any of the choices the characters had made simply because she wrote them so well.

It was very impressive.

He had finished going through the materials that Leia had sent him in two days. He was working his way through them again, going slower and providing more detailed notes and able to ask more pointed questions given the knowledge of where the story was heading. Still, he found himself wishing that he had told Rey to send over more work.

He noticed his phone light up on the corner of his couch. He picked it up, glancing at the message icon showing that he had four messages from his mother and… 48 unread emails.

Mom: Servers are back up at the office.

Mom: Sorry for the onslaught of emails you are probably going to start getting in five minutes.

Mom: I didn’t realize at first that they weren’t going through.

Mom: It’s possible 75% of them could have been text messages.

Ben: The server was down at the office?

Mom: You didn’t notice that you have received no emails in the last day?

Ben: I guess not.

Mom: That’s an unusual thing for you to not notice.

Mom: What have you been doing?

Ben: Going through the materials you sent over for Rey’s book.

Mom: Ah.

Mom: That makes sense then.

Ben sighed, closing the messaging app to start going through the emails from his mother.

They were exactly what he had expected them to be. A few emails from HR and IT that were sent company wide about how to submit hours when working from home, a reminder to sign up for direct deposit if you hadn’t already, and a few guided walkthroughs on common computer and technology issues. His mother’s emails focused more on whether or not he had all of the ingredients for the Risotto she wanted to make for dinner on Saturday. Followed by an email with the receipt. And another email that went to him, Luke, and Chewie, wondering why it was too much to ask them all to make the same meal as her so that the virtual dinner felt like an actual dinner and not a happenstance of people meeting at the same time.

He almost missed the email from Rey.

-----

From: Benjamin Solo <[email protected]> To: Rey Johnson <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Earlier meeting?

Dear Rey,

I’m truly sorry for my delay in responding to your email. I was just informed that the server at the office went down, which affected our email host and I am just now getting this message.

I would love to go over this with you sooner than we had planned. I have already reviewed the materials you had previously sent, so I believe I will be of much more use in hopefully helping you figure out where you want to go next. I do find it hard to believe that you’ve written yourself into a corner, you seem to have a great grasp on the characters and the story you want to tell.

I’d hate for any future requests to be severely delayed due to technological issues beyond our control. My cell phone number is 917-555-3298.

I am available whenever. I suppose that’s the upside to a quarantine.

I look forward to receiving the materials and discussing them with you.

Ben

Benjamin Solo Editor Rebel Publishing, LLC

-----

Ben: I think it’s abusing your power as owner of a company to go through and change your employee’s email signatures without consent.

Mom: I have no idea what you are talking about.

Mom: Benjamin

------

929-555-4593: Hi Ben. This is Rey. I just got your email and figured I’d send you a message so you have my number. I sent over what I’ve been working on. I’m also free whenever. So, just tell me when and I’ll be there.

Rey Johnson: Thanks again for agreeing to meet up with me earlier than planned. I appreciate it.

-------

Rey threw on a blazer over the red tank top she had been wearing for the last two days when she got the Zoom invite from Ben. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror to the side of her desk, double checking to make sure she didn’t have dried mascara on her cheeks and that her hair looked moderately presentable.

She clicked on the link in the email and---

Ben wore glasses. Ben wore glasses and Rey was not at all prepared for how he looked wearing them. Really, it didn’t seem quite fair that something as innocuous as glasses managed to make him go skyrocketing up from ‘fairly attractive’ to ‘how inappropriate would it be to initiate sexting with her new editor that she had maybe spent a grand total of twenty minutes communicating with’ in her mind.

Rey really, really needed the stay home order lifted. Clearly, she was worse off than she thought.

“Hey,” Ben greeted her. “How are you surviving the stay home order?”

“Oh great. Some might even say I’ve been thriving,” Rey rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she laughed. “At least I’ve been able to get a lot of writing done.”

“I would say,” Ben ran his hand through his hair, and Rey could hear him clicking open something on his computer. “I’m not going to lie, I’ve only skimmed through everything you sent over today. So, depending on what has you stuck, I’m not positive this will be a very productive meeting.”

“The part I think I’m stuck at?” Rey opened the word document on her computer, her eyes narrowing in confusion. “You mean it isn’t obvious?”

“I guess, no?” Ben responded, and Rey can tell from the way he’s focusing on his computer screen that he must be going through the document again. “I just assumed you were stuck on what to do after Kira took Kylo’s hand? But that didn’t make much sense either because you have such a clear plan for the story.”

“Kira doesn’t take Kylo’s hand.”

Ben glanced up to the camera, his mouth slightly open. “What?”

“Kira doesn’t take Kylo’s hand,” Rey repeated, lifting her shoulders in a small shrug. “At least not yet.”

“What do you mean she doesn’t take his hand yet?” Ben asked, and Rey has to bite down on her lip to keep herself from laughing at how insulted he sounded. “You’ve spent the last eight chapters building their relationship for her to take his hand.”

“That doesn’t mean that this is the right moment,” Rey pointed out. “I’m not sure it’s the right moment.”

“Okay,” Ben leaned back in his chair, lifting his hands to rest behind his head. “I guess I’m going to need you to explain to me what you think the right moment will be then.”

“That might take awhile,” Rey admitted. “I don’t know that I even know the answer to that.”

“That’s okay,” Ben said with an encouraging smile. “I have plenty of time.”

-----

They ended up talking for over two hours. By the end of the call, Rey at least had a better idea of the different paths she could take Kira and Kylo down. Even if she still didn't know which one she would choose.

But they also talked about other things besides the book and Rey's struggles with where the characters should go. Rey discovered that Ben was also sheltering in place by himself. She was pretty amused when Ben didn’t immediately end the video call when she started discussing the finer points of being ordered to stay in, like what Netflix show he was binge watching and whether or not he had enough toilet paper to last.

She was oddly unsurprised when he refused to discuss his toilet paper situation with her and when he said that he didn’t watch a lot of TV and wasn’t planning on binge watching anything. Rey gave him a week before he caved on that.

It was nice.

Rey’s mood had significantly improved half way through the conversation. She had forgotten just how wonderful it was to talk to someone else. It also didn’t hurt that Ben Solo wasn’t exactly hard to look at for two hours. It wasn't even the obvious physical features that Rey found herself thinking about hours later, although she was certainly going to be thinking about them for a while. But Ben had a certain way of moving and mannerisms that only added to them.

Getting to know someone over a video call was interesting. Rey kept waiting for the normal wave of must look away to hit her like it would if they had been face to face. Staring at someone the entire time you were together wasn't normal.

If they had been in person, Rey would have felt uncomfortable with the amount of time she had spent just staring at him. Noticing the way his hands dwarfed the size of his coffee cup and the way he talked with his hands when he was particularly passionate about whatever he was saying.

She particularly liked how his face was open when she said something he disagreed with, the way he would narrow his eyes and shake his head, but waited until she was done to raise his counterpoints. There was something about the way that he was just himself that was refreshing.

He listened intently, scribbling down notes when she talked about the story. Even when she started mentioning shows that he should watch, if he were to get really desperate, and he pretended to be uninterested, Rey was fairly positive she saw him write them down as well.

They set up another meeting in two days, and Rey was determined to have at least made a decision on whether or not Kira was going to take Kylo’s hand by then. She had to admit that Ben had made a convincing argument as to why it was the right moment for the characters to move forward together.

Rey sat down at her writing desk, opening up the current version of her project, and began writing.

#reylo #reylo fanfic #reylo fanfiction #reylo fic #reylo au #and they were zoommates #my fic

41 notes · View notes

merakiaes · 3 years

Note

Hello ^^ I’d like to request a ship with male characters from Marvel, Witcher and Peaky Blinders pls.

I’m a female scorpio, I value quality time but also enjoy having time to myself, I’m an introvert but once you get to know me I’m more conversational. I don’t like just giving away info about me and it takes me a long time to build up trust. I love reading and comfort things like listening to music. I tend to worry a lot and am a rather impatient person. I don’t want children later on, I’m fine with being a cool aunt and having a bunch of dog children instead ^^ I value intelligence and loyalty but also willpower. I like to listen to sadish songs even when I’m happy. I hate weirdly textured foods XD I’m a feminist and an agnostic. I’m interested in acquiring random knowledge and want to have a giant home library one day. My love languages are quality time and acts of service. I’m a bit hesitant when it comes to physical contact at first but the more comfy I get with the person the more comfy I get with it. I hope there are at least some things to go off of, I’m terrible at putting my thoughts into writing 🥴

MARVEL

I ship you with Stephen Strange!

Like you, Stephen is also someone who enjoys being alone. It’s important to him to be able to take some time to himself and not be attached at the hip with his significant other twenty-four-seven. However, he is also one to value some quality time which, for the two of you, wouldn’t have to be any more adventurous than sitting in the same room reading your separate books. He definitely wouldn’t mind physical contact, but it’s also not something that he absolutely needs to survive, so again, he wouldn’t mind letting you set the pace.

Some might say that he’s an introvert like you are, while others would argue that he’s an extrovert. Personally, I think he’s an ambivert – that is to say, he’s both an extrovert and introvert, while simultaneously being neither. He doesn’t mind conversing with people he’s tolerable of about subjects he’s interested in, but he doesn’t mind sitting in silence, either.

With that said, he wouldn’t mind in the slightest that you’re introverted and guarded. He wouldn’t pressure you or try to dig into who you are and try to figure you out all at once. He’s just a very patient man in general and would know that, when the time is right for you, you’d open up to him a little at a time.

Stephen is, like you, a very big reader and also very fond of actively and frequently acquiring new knowledge so that’s just another thing you have in common. With his own collection of books, you’d just never run out of things to read and learn about and he wouldn’t be opposed, whatsoever, to the idea of you building your own giant home library.

Like you, I honestly don’t see him wanting children. He doesn’t seem like the type to have loads of pets, either, but he’s not impossible. Some good persuasion on your part might just sway his opinion on the matter.

His patience also makes you a great match in that you have very little patience of your own. While you’re an impatient worrier, he’s, as everyone knows at this point, very collected, patient, and composed, so he’d be more than capable of calming you down in stressful situations.

You say that you value intelligence, loyalty, and willpower, and I don’t see anyone better fit for you than Stephen Strange. You’d just make a great match!

THE WITCHER

I ship you with Geralt!

Just like with Stephen, you and Geralt share a lot of qualities.

He has more than a few skeletons in his closet and isn’t very fond of spilling his life story to people, not even people he deeply cares about. If you want to know something about him or his past, you really have to put in the work for it, he really has to trust you and it has to be his decision, and his alone, to tell you. So being guarded and hesitant of trusting people is not something you’re alone in, and because he knows what it’s like, he would be very understanding and unbothered of you needing time to trust and open yourself up to him.

As we know, Witchers can’t have children so the fact that you don’t want any would not put any strain on your relationship. On the other hand, though, Geralt loves the company of animals so having lots of pets wouldn’t be a problem.

He’s extremely loyal and intolerant of injustice, intelligent and has a will-power like no other. He values his alone-time, as well, and also just silence in general, so he would appreciate that your main interests (reading and learning) are such calm and silent ones. That would make quality time for you a lot easier since he’s not a very big talker. Some short, loving sentences every once in a while would be more than enough. Quality over quantity.

Being intimate is obviously, as shown in both the show, video games and books, something he’s not opposed to. BUT, I feel like being intimate through physical contact with a serious significant other wouldn’t be the most important thing if his other part had little to no interest in physical contact. Having an emotional and sentimental connection strong enough to form a serious relationship would be more than enough intimacy for him since that on its own is more than he’s used to, so no matter how much he might enjoy being physically intimate, he would never push a serious partner to do anything they didn’t want to.

PEAKY BLINDERS

I ship you with Tommy Shelby!

He’s definitely the kind of person who finds intimacy in knowing his partner’s deepest, darkest secrets and emotions, but he’s very patient in the area and would be okay with it taking the time it must. He would be in no rush, especially since it takes some work to get a peek into his thoughts, as well, seeing as he’s extremely guarded and naturally suspicious, himself.

He definitely loves physical contact, as well, but as we’ve learned through the show, he’s extremely patient when it comes to love. He would let you set the pace and happily accept you when you felt ready.

He’d love his children if he had any but ultimately, he would probably only have children I order to please his partner. He most likely wouldn’t bring the idea up, himself, so the thought of not having kids is not a thought that keeps him up at night.

He’s a man who would much rather focus on making a name for himself in the world of business and politics than be constantly occupied with a family so if he had kids, there would’ve been a pretty big risk of them not getting to spend as much time with him as a child should with their father, so just having a wife and pets would be more than sufficient for him. Especially since, blatantly, he likes animals a whole lot more than he does people. He has more than enough nieces and nephews and he’d have no problem settling to watch you with them instead of having a child of your own.

He prefers sad songs over happy songs, too, because the sadness he’ll feel when listening to sad songs is much stronger than the happiness he feels when listening to cheery songs. To him, that’s a good thing, because even if the feeling in question is a bad one, the strongest possible is the best as it hinders him the most from feeling nothing at all.

Everyone knows how much loyalty means to Tommy and the rest of the Shelby clan, and it’s no secret that he’s an intelligent and driven man. Nothing can make him stop fighting for his business and family.

3 notes · View notes

zen3to5 · 4 years

Text

J/H 4-04: Hyde Goes Cruisin’

Okay, time for a page-one rewrite!

Some of you could probably guess that this episode would be on the list for a rewrite project like this. And I actually think it's been changed enough that the original title doesn't fit anymore. So, instead of "Hyde Gets the Girl," you have "Hyde Goes Cruisin'." We assume that 4-03, "Pinciotti vs. Forman," remains the same.

A few scenes here adapt material, not only from scenes cut from other rewritten scripts, but also the characters from the old That '70s Show website. My understanding is that those were treated as semi-official, so I figured they were fair game.

FF.Net AO3

---

SHOW TITLE INT. FORMAN BASEMENT - DAY A slow afternoon. HYDE sits in his chair, ERIC sits on one end of the couch, and FEZ on the other. The boys are watching HOLLYWOOD SQUARES, though only Fez seems invested. FEZ: Elke Sommer to block. Elke Sommer to block. (it doesn’t work) Oh, you stupid son of a bitch! ERIC: (sighs) Donna loved Hollywood Squares. HYDE: Ah, Forman. Come on, man. Give it a rest, huh? So you’re single now. That’s a good thing! Now you’re like me, man. You’re free to be with lots of subpar, somewhat sleazy chicks. It’s Christmas, baby! FEZ: Oh, you disguise your heart, Hyde, but I know you need love. HYDE: Why’s that? FEZ: (beat) ‘Cause I need it. ERIC: (to Hyde) No, he’s right, man. I mean, Donna and I might have broken up, but you liked Jackie and you never even had her. You’re telling me that doesn’t hurt? HYDE: Come on, Forman. You didn’t think that was serious, did you? I was just settin’ up for the biggest burn ever on Kelso. ERIC: You got them back together. HYDE: (shrugs) Know when to fold ‘em, man. (stands) Now, hey – this Friday night, you’re coming out cruisin’ for chicks with me in the El Camino. Of course, if we meet anyone hot, I’m taking her, but I’m sure we can find you a girl just this side of gross. He claps Eric on the shoulder and exits through the basement door. ERIC: (to Fez) No. I don’t care what he says. That unholy little demon crush Hyde had on Jackie, that was real, and it hurts him that she’s back with Kelso. And just once, I wish we could catch him with his guard down about it, so we could make fun of him. We’d be all, “hey, Hyde...” He gestures wildly, looking for the right insult. ERIC (cont’d): “You really liked a girl and you blew it! Yeah, burn! Welcome to Hell!” (beat) Oh, God, I’m in Hell! He throws his head back and moans as Fez turns back to the TV.

MAIN CREDITS BUMPER INT. FORMAN KITCHEN - DAY Early afternoon. Friday has come. KITTY sits at the kitchen table, going through one of many catalogues she has out. They all concern interior design. RED enters from the living room, sees Kitty reading. RED: What’s all this? KITTY: Hmm? Oh, well, I’ve been taking so much work for the church home with me, I’m thinking of turning one of the empty rooms we have into a workspace. RED: (beat) When you say “empty rooms,” are you counting my garage? KITTY: No. RED: Sounds great. I’ll find you a good, cheap contractor. KITTY: Oh, no, no, no, no. This is something I want to handle myself. RED: This is gonna be expensive, isn’t it? KITTY: Maybe. RED: Don’t you like anything cheap? KITTY: I like you. She smiles up at him. Red rolls his eyes and heads to the fridge for a beer. Eric enters from the basement and heads for the patio door. ERIC: Hey. Hyde and I are going tonight. KITTY: Oh, good. I asked Jackie over for some decorating help, so it’ll be nice for Steven to have something to do on a Friday night without his girlfriend. ERIC: Mom, we keep telling you, Jackie is not... He recognizes the opening for a burn, and he takes it. ERIC (cont’d): ... Ever going to pass up a chance to share her knowledge of interior design, and if that means giving up a date night – well then, that’s just a sacrifice Hyde will have to make. Kitty chuckles and smiles at him. He grins back and heads out the patio door. CUT TO: EXT. HUB PARKING LOT – DAY Most of the lot is taken up by a promotional booth and table for WFPP, and a white-and-green Volkswagen Samba. MAX stands by the table with a clipboard in hand. DONNA and her co-worker MELISSA man the booth, its speakers blaring out rock music. KELSO and BOB circle admiringly around the Samba as a few other interested parties place hands on it. KELSO: Oh, man! (to Bob) Oh, I hope I win this van! I really need a place to do it with Jackie. He grins and turns back to the Samba, oblivious to Bob’s discomfort. At the booth, Melissa nudges Donna with her elbow. MELISSA: Check out that idiot’s ‘fro. She points to Bob and chuckles. DONNA: That’s my dad. MELISSA: Oh! Uh... DONNA: No... okay, yeah, you’re right. They laugh as Max crosses over to the crowd around the van. MAX: Okay, listen up, everybody. Welcome to the WFPP Hand 2 Van giveaway. The rules are simple: you place one hand on the van. If you remove your hand for any reason, you’re out. Last person to remove his hand wins the van. Those interested, including Bob and Kelso, place a hand on the Samba. MAX (cont’d): Any questions? One DUPE raises his hand – the hand he had on the van. MAX (cont’d): You’re out. The dupe slinks away. MAX (cont’d): Any other questions? A disreputable-looking character with a bad moustache approaches – DANIEL. DANIEL: Don’t start without me, Max. MAX: Oh, God. Slowly, confidently, Daniel makes his way around the van until he stands across from Kelso and Bob. DANIEL: Hello. My name is Daniel, and I have won every WFPP contest since the Weber Gas Grill Trampoline Bounce of 1972. I am unbeatable. So, the choice is yours: joy or despair... pleasure or pain... He slips a glove onto his right hand and holds it up. DANIEL (cont’d): Life or death. He slaps his hand down on the Samba. DANIEL (cont’d): I am Daniel! And I cannot be beaten. He is determined, Bob is unnerved, and Kelso is giddy and slightly impressed. BUMPER EXT. ROAD – EVENING The El Camino is parked on the street in-between the Forman and Pinciotti homes. Hyde is at the wheel, Eric sits in the passenger’s seat, and Fez is wedged into the space in between. HYDE: Alright, boys, let’s hit the road. He starts up the car. FEZ: Hyde, when we cruise a girl, how long do we have to talk to them before they will french us? HYDE: That depends on what kind of girl you’re cruising for. Which is why I suggest you aim low. Real low. ERIC: Well, I’m already at the bottom of a black pit of despair, so I think I’m about as low as I can get. HYDE: (to Eric) Hey, none of that mopey crap, all right? (to Fez) And you, don’t come on all needy. You gotta be aloof. FEZ: (beat) Did you just call me a loof? Because if so, I will have to kick you in your nads. HYDE: No, man – aloof. Distant. Zen. FEZ: (beat) Well, that’s not what “loof” means in my language. HYDE: Look, I don’t care what you think it means, that’s what it means here. Now, come on – let’s ride. He shifts out of park, Fez turns on the radio, and off they go. CUT TO: MONTAGE, moving from evening to night. Set to “We Gotta Get You A Woman” by Todd Rundgren. Beginning on a side shot of the El Camino pulling up to a light. Hyde, Eric and Fez look out the passenger window, grinning and nodding at what they see. And what they see is, in succession: A) A SHORT-HAIRED BLONDE with pouty lips. BLONDE: I’m on my way to Bible study. You in? B) AN OLDER WOMAN. OLDER WOMAN: You with the curly hair – I think I used to date your dad. Isn’t that a turn-on? C) A LONG-HAIRED PRISSY GIRL. PRISSY: I don’t know... I usually only date guys who aren’t as good-looking as me. Otherwise, I’d never date. D) AN INTENSE GIRL. INTENSE GIRL: My boyfriend’s in jail, so I guess I could fool around. (beat) Wait... I think he just busted out... E) A BIG-TOOTHED REDHEAD. REDHEAD: You know, I’m workin’ the pedals here with just one real leg. Wanna guess which one it is? F) A MOUSY BRUNETTE, too paralyzed with fear to say anything. She giggles nervously and speeds off. END MONTAGE. It’s now dark outside. The El Camino idles in a parking space. Hyde is chill, but Eric and Fez both look disturbed. ERIC: Well, that was all... deeply unsettling. FEZ: (to Hyde) How many women who do not cause nightmares do you get in this way? HYDE: I’d say it averages out to nine chicks a month. Subtract the six who turn out psycho, the two who get too attached, and the one that ditches ya. ERIC: (beat) That comes to zero women. HYDE: (shrugs) Hey, I’ve still got the El Camino. He pats the dashboard as he brings his car into park. ERIC: I don’t know, Hyde. Does a car and nine no-gos a month really fill the void left by a certain tiny cheerleader? One shrill of voice and intolerable for the sane among us, but with a certain naïve charm that some curly-haired rebels just can’t resist? HYDE: Does a Vista Cruiser and a bitchy attitude make up for running off the hottest redhead in Wisconsin? He exits the car, leaving Eric to consider that. Fez leans forward to look out the still-open driver’s door and call after Hyde: FEZ: This is not over, Johnny Cool! (to Eric) Boy, what a loof. CUT TO: INT. FORMAN KITCHEN – NIGHT Kitty and her catalogues have moved over to the stovetop. She stands over it with JACKIE at her side. Red sits at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich. KITTY: Thank you for helping me figure out what to do with my new workspace, Jackie. I’m sure you’d rather be out with your boyfriend on a Friday night, but - JACKIE: Oh, please. I needed a reason to get away tonight. I couldn’t take another second of hearing how we’ll be “hittin’ the road with his new wheels.” KITTY: (shakes head) Oh, don’t get me started on men and cars, we will be here all night. She laughs and opens up one of the catalogues. KITTY (cont’d): Now, most of what I do at the church is helping plan events and fundraisers, so I just need a nice little space to set up a desk and hunker down with the paperwork. Jackie nods agreeably. She picks up a catalogue and flips through it. At a certain page, she gasps and holds it up for Kitty to see. JACKIE: What about this? The Le Palais Bulles look. Pierre Cardin built his house like this on the French Riviera. Ocean view, bean bags for furniture, and the whole house is shaped like a bubble. KITTY: (beat) Okay, um... my house is shaped like a... like a house. A bean bag is not a desk. And we don’t have an ocean view. We don’t even have a Lake Michigan view. (laughs) Jackie considers this, turns back to the catalogue. JACKIE: Ooh, you could model your workspace after Priscilla Presley’s home. She’s got this giant gold chess set that shows off that she’s rich, but she’s also got those crochet patterns old ladies like. That’d be perfect for you, Mrs. Forman! She beams and bobs on her feet. Kitty gives her a fixed smile, glances around her to Red. He grins back. RED: How’s doing it yourself working out? He takes a big bite of her sandwich as Jackie calls Kitty’s attention to another design. BUMPER EXT. HUB PARKING LOT - NIGHT The Hand 2 Van contest goes on. A few have dropped out, but Bob, Kelso, and Daniel remain. Donna crosses to Bob and passes a tin and a pick to his free hand. DONNA: Here, Dad. Some mints and your Afro pick. BOB: Oh, thank God, Donna. My hair was starting to look silly. Donna smiles, gives Kelso a friendly jab on the shoulder, and heads back to the booth. Daniel follows her with his eyes the whole way. DANIEL: Hey, check out the redhead. BOB: That redhead is my baby girl, Donna. I’m her dad. DANIEL: I want Donna to call me “daddy.” Kelso’s jaw drops as Bob trembles with rage. Finally, he can’t take it anymore – he takes his hand off the van and advances on Daniel. BOB: That’s it! Max hurries over from the table. MAX: Ah, Bob! You took your hand off the van – you lose! Max shakes his head and walks away. Bob glares at Daniel. BOB: This isn’t over. DANIEL: It is for you. Now, get out of here. He nods his head toward the street. Bob stares him down for a moment, then slinks off to Max’s table. Daniel slides along the van to get right up in a grinning Kelso’s face. DANIEL (cont’d): And so begins the battle of wits. KELSO: Oh, man. I’ve never been good at wits. DANIEL: (flat) Really? BUMPER MUSIC NOTE: “Rockaway Beach by the Ramones. INT. HUB - NIGHT Between it being Friday night and the giveaway going on outside, the Hub is happening – lots of teens, and lots of them girls. “Rockaway Beach” plays on the jukebox. Donna and Melissa chat near the window, and a tall, stout, badly-dressed and poorly groomed girl with glasses struts the floor – at last, we meet BIG RHONDA. Hyde, Eric, and Fez enter. Donna crosses to them. DONNA: Hey, guys. What’s going on? HYDE: Quick pit stop. DONNA: Cool. There’s a keg behind the radio booth and the guy watching it isn’t checking I.D.s. The boys all nod and mosey on into the Hub. Hyde and Eric stop to talk to a DARK-HAIRED GIRL and her friends, but Fez’s eye lands on Big Rhonda, near the pinball machine. He crosses over to her. FEZ: So, you are the notorious Big Rhonda? RHONDA: Yep. That’s my name. You must be that little foreign cocoa puff. Fez nods, looks Rhonda over. She gives him a friendly slug on the shoulder. RHONDA (cont’d): Hey, wanna join me in hittin’ that keg outside? First one to down five cups buys me a hot dog. Fez raises his eyebrows, intrigued. He allows Rhonda to lead him outside. Near the bathroom door, Hyde and Eric chat up the dark-haired girl, who leans against the wall. DARK-HAIRED GIRL: It’s not like head cheerleader’s always the most talented, but in my case, it’s true. Neither of the boys has an answer to that. The girl leaves them to re-join her friends. ERIC: (to Hyde) God, would you look at her? Small, dark, and shallow. Hey, just your type, Hyde. HYDE: Looks like your type’s being picked up. He points over Eric’s shoulder. Eric looks, sees Donna chatting with a good-looking guy. Deflated, Eric sighs, wanders over to a round table and leans against it. He doesn’t even notice the cute girl, KATIE, sitting there. She looks up at him and smiles. KATIE: Hey. Eric doesn’t respond. KATIE (cont’d): So... that Hand 2 Van contest, huh? ERIC: Yuh-huh. KATIE: And the words kind of sound alike, so that’s always fun. ERIC: Look – no offense, but I’m really not in the mood for talking. I just broke up with my girlfriend, so… KATIE: Aww... you poor thing. She puts a hand on his arm. KATIE (cont’d): You know, you have these sad lips that are just so hot. ERIC: (beat) Really? He pulls up a chair and sits across from Katie. FADE TO BLACK COMMERCIAL BUMPER INT. HUB – NIGHT Picking up right where we left off. “Come On, Come On” by Cheap Trick now plays on the jukebox. Hyde chats with Melissa near the counter. Eric is still at the table with Katie. Fez and Rhonda have come back in from the keg and stand near the pinball machine. RHONDA: This summer, I’m going to visit my aunt in Mississippi. FEZ: Oh, you’re going away? That is sad. RHONDA: Hey, you should come with me, chocolate milk! She slaps him on the chest and downs what’s left of the beer in her cup. At their table, Katie pulls her seat in closer to Eric, so that they’re right next to each other. KATIE: When I looked up and saw you, I saw a guy who was wounded. The guy who sits in the dark, waiting for the light to find him again. At that moment, Donna comes in from the contest. She sees Eric and Katie, and Eric sees her. ERIC: (to Katie) If only I could find this light you speak of, then maybe – just maybe – my pain might go away. KATIE: Would it help if I held you? ERIC: I doubt it. (beat) But let’s try, Katie. They hug. ERIC (cont’d): Yeah, lower – yeah. Donna remains by the door, fuming. Hyde takes a sip from his red cup and looks Melissa over. HYDE: So, what do you do for fun? MELISSA: We’re in Wisconsin. So, nothing. HYDE: So you wouldn’t want to do something some time? MELISSA: Sorry. I did something last night, and I already made plans for some time. She moves around him, brushing his shoulder with hers as she walks, and heads outside. Fez and Rhonda have taken over an empty table. Fez stands on it and raises his red beer cup high. He’s not exactly steady on his feet. FEZ: A toast: to all my good friends. I will miss you when I blow out of this burg with the beautiful Big Rhonda. He actually picks up some applause. FEZ (cont’d): Now, it’s off to Mississiphylis! He downs the rest of his beer. He slips off the table and is caught bridal-style by Rhonda. CUT TO: EXT. HUB PARKING LOT – NIGHT On goes the contest. Kelso and Daniel are all that’s left. Bob comes around the van with a coffee cup, hands it to Kelso. BOB: Here, Kelso. Thought you might need some coffee to keep you going. He exits, shooting Daniel a dirty look as he does so. Kelso quickly downs his coffee. DANIEL: (to Kelso) Hey, you know what would be fun? Seeing which one of us could drink the most coffee, huh? Kelso laughs and nods. DANIEL (cont’d): Oh, no. You’ll just lose. KELSO: No, I would not. I could so beat you! DANIEL: Well, I doubt that. KELSO: Oh, you’re goin’ down! TIME LAPSE Moments later. Kelso drains a cup of coffee and throws it down in triumph. KELSO: That’s my six to your one! DANIEL: Yeah, you really whipped me. Kelso, you ever been to Niagara Falls? KELSO: Uh-uh. DANIEL: Don’t you like the soothing sound of water? KELSO: Yeah, I guess. DANIEL: You ever sat beside a babbling brook, listening to the beautiful, steady stream of water? KELSO: Well, I – okay, I don’t know if you realize this, but all this talk about water’s really making me have to go pee. DANIEL: Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. Yeah, I can see that “urine” a lot of pain. KELSO: Yeah, well, you better shut up, ‘cause you’re gonna have to go too. DANIEL: That’s where you’re wrong: I am going. He pulls up his pant leg, revealing a thermos strapped to his ankle with a tube stretching up into his pants. CUT TO: INT. FORMAN KITCHEN - NIGHT The decorating continues, and not well. Red is still at the kitchen table, now reading a newspaper. Kitty leans on the stovetop, trying to keep calm. Jackie is the only one still upbeat as she keeps flipping through catalogues. JACKIE: Ooh, what about this one, Mrs. Forman? (shows Kitty) Barbara Streisand has a big desk next to the antique armchair. And just look at that chandelier. KITTY: (beat) A chandelier? What am I going to do with a chandelier? There are two rooms in this house that I could use as a workspace, and neither one is even tall enough for a chandelier! JACKIE: Okay, I’m sensing you’re not in love with the chandelier. (flips through catalogue) Oh, but Lee Raziwill has this gorgeous - Kitty takes the catalogue from Jackie and shuts it. KITTY: Okay, okay – I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll just bring in a contractor to set up my workspace. RED: And there it is. He folds up his newspaper and checks his watch. RED (cont’d): And hey, it didn’t even take as long as I thought. He grins at a pouting Kitty, stands, and exits into the living room. KITTY: Oh, well. Thank you anyway, Jackie, for all the help you were... you were trying to give. Tell you what – the night’s still young. Why don’t you go see if you can catch up with your boyfriend? JACKIE: Yeah, I should probably check on Michael, see how that radio giveaway’s going. KITTY: (beat) Michael? Honey, you mean Steven. JACKIE: No, I mean Michael. KITTY: But I thought you were going to check on your boyfriend. JACKIE: Yeah... Michael is my boyfriend. We got back together weeks ago. Steven’s the one who made sure we made things up. Kitty jaw goes slack as she stares at Jackie. KITTY: You’re back together with Michael? All the time you kids spend in my house, and no one tells me anything! She shakes her head and throws up her hands. CUT TO: INT. HUB - NIGHT The jukebox now plays “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” by the Electric Light Orchestra. While Eric and Katie continue to chat (and Donna continues to fume), Hyde leads Fez by the shoulder toward the door, just of out earshot of Rhonda, who is scarfing down hot dogs at a table near the pinball. FEZ: I know I just met her, Hyde, but I love her. She is sturdy. I want to climb her. HYDE: Man, you are desperate to give it away. FEZ: Yes. Yes I am. HYDE: Okay, Fez, time for a little advice. First: if a chick outweighs you by thirty pounds, you’re in for trouble. FEZ: Oh, I’ll put on weight. I’ll bridge the gap. HYDE: And that brings me to my second point: when used separately, chicks and booze are a lot of fun. But mix ‘em up, and you end spending your summer ass-deep in a swamp down south in Dixie. Fez looks down in thought as Hyde pats him on the back. Eric and Katie have moved into the booth seat. Eric briefly glances at Donna as Katie rubs his back. ERIC: (to Katie) If you really think that putting my head on your lap will make me feel better... I mean, I guess I should try. He adjusts himself so that he can lie down in the booth seat with his head in Katie’s lap. DONNA: All right, that’s it. (to Katie) Excuse me? Hi. I have some information - Eric shoots upright. ERIC: (to Katie) No, don’t listen to what she’s... I’m... she’s the one who hurt me! DONNA: Uh-huh. Yeah. He dumped me. KATIE: (gasps) You dumped her? ERIC: Well, I had to. She wouldn’t... she wouldn’t take my ring. KATIE: (to Donna) You wouldn’t take his ring? DONNA: This is none of your business! (to Eric) And you are a sad little man. Katie looks at Eric with much less sympathy, and he squirms uncomfortably in his seat. CUT TO: EXT. HUB PARKING LOT - NIGHT A short time later. The contest is still ongoing between Kelso and Daniel. Max and Bob still man the table, while Donna and Melissa watch from the booth. But there’s a new presence in the lot: Jackie is at Kelso’s side, talking. JACKIE: Michael, this is so much nicer than your old van. I mean, this pea-soup green is – ugh – but with a little paint job - KELSO: You mean, like a mural, or like the Mystery Machine? Either way, I’m there! JACKIE: (nods) Yeah, you could have an eagle, soaring majestically over the clouds, or a wild stallion charging through the desert. KELSO: I bet ya Fez would like that one! But it might give him some ideas... He and Jackie both wince at what kind of “ideas” he’s talking about. KELSO (cont’d): Oh, what about one of those wizards surrounded by fire? Daniel leans his head against the van. The conversation’s getting to him. JACKIE: No, wait Michael, I’ve got it. The mural should be about – me! DANIEL: Oh, my God. KELSO: (to Jackie) Yeah, I could totally see you airbrushed on the side of the new Shaggin’ Wagon! Would you wanna be in your black dress or your new bikini? JACKIE: Why are those my only choices? I have so many mural-worthy outfits to choose from. KELSO: I guess that’s true. Like your lavender top with the dark gold scarf for winter. JACKIE: Or my bottleneck paired with my red beret. KELSO: Or your cheerleading uniform. JACKIE: Or my - DANIEL: Oh, my God! He turns to face them. DANIEL (cont’d): I can’t take it anymore! (mocking) “What should we paint the van? Shouldn’t it be me? What should I wear?” He lets go of the van with both hands to grab Jackie and cover her mouth. DANIEL (cont’d): SHUT UP! But that’s Max’s cue. With a portable transmitter and microphone on him, he jumps up and crosses to the van. MAX: And we finally have a winner! Daniel, in shock, releases Jackie, while Kelso hops up and down, still not letting go of the van. Donna and Melissa cross to Bob, and they all applaud. KELSO: I did it! Oh, my God, I won! (to Daniel) Who’s the best? I’m the best! Loser! DANIEL: I’m not a loser, okay? I win everything. I don’t lose, I win! Because I’m a winner! He slowly slinks away, calling back as he exits: DANIEL (cont’d): I’m a winner! With him gone, Max adjusts the transmitter and crosses to Kelso and Jackie. MAX: So, Michael Kelso, tell Wisconsin how it feels to be WFPP’s new Hand 2 Van winner. He holds out the microphone for Kelso, who leans in. KELSO: Well, I guess I have to say it like this, Max: if this van’s a-rockin’, we’re in there doing it. JACKIE: Michael! KELSO: Oh, I’m sorry. I’m doing it with Jackie Burkhart! Max, Bob, Donna, and Melissa all shake their heads as Jackie slaps Kelso in the chest. CUT TO: INT. FORMAN KITCHEN – NIGHT A short time later. Kitty is still up, back at the kitchen table with her catalogues. A portable radio, shut off, is on the table too. Eric and Hyde enter through the patio door. KITTY: Hello, boys. Eric keeps walking, all the way to the basement, but Hyde stops at the kitchen table. HYDE: Hey, Mrs. Forman. What are you doing up so late? KITTY: Oh, just getting a few things together to show the contractor. (taps the catalogue page) You know, I do like this wallpaper Lee Radziwill used here. Guess Jackie had the right idea after all. (laughs) HYDE: You had Jackie over? KITTY: Uh-huh. HYDE: (looks left and right) She still around? KITTY: No, she went to go check on Michael. (taps radio) He just won the van giveaway. They cut the broadcast when Jackie started yelling at him for... well, for saying what they’d be doing in the van. HYDE: Huh. He leans on the back of a chair as he looks off into space. Kitty looks up at him in sympathy, pats his hand. KITTY: That was a very selfless thing you did, getting them back together. I can only imagine how hard that was for you. Hyde stirs; he realizes his guard’s down. KITTY (cont’d): It didn’t really sink in until now, did it? HYDE: What? No! Come on, man, that’s – pfft! Like I care. He shrugs, jabs at the air. Kitty sees through the display. She stands, brings Hyde’s head down for a kiss on the cheek, and pats him on the shoulder before exiting into the living room. Once she’s gone, Hyde takes his sunglasses off. He runs a hand down his face and stares off again. Eric comes running back in from the basement. ERIC: Oh, YES! Burn, baby, burn! He points and snickers as Hyde scowls. FADE TO BLACK CREDITS INT. HUB – NIGHT The crowd has finally thinned out. It’s now just Rhonda, Fez, and Donna at a round table. FEZ: (to Rhonda) Rhonda, I cannot go to Mississippi. RHONDA: (tearing up) So, you’re not coming? FEZ: I’m sorry. But maybe we can go to the movies sometime. RHONDA: And make out in the theater? Yeah! Call me. She kisses Fez on the cheek and struts out the door. DONNA: (to Fez) Good God, sober up, man. FEZ: Oh, screw it, Donna. Fez likes them big, Fez likes them small, Fez likes them all. Donna laughs and claps him on the arm. END.

#z's fics #that 70s show #zenmasters #jackie x hyde #zen3to5 #fan fiction #fan script

6 notes · View notes

bugaboosandbees · 5 years

Text

Rally to the Queen

Okay. I know that I shouldn’t be starting anything else new, and I definitely won’t start actually writing this until I finish with my Reine Ruse AU, but I ended up getting so attached to my Bee!Kagami design (and so salty about Onichan!Kagami) that I ended up with a whole slew of headcanons about a post-Riposte Bee!Kagami Kagaminette AU.

I call it Rally to the Queen.

Here’s what goes down.

This takes place immediately after Riposte.

Marinette still feels really bad about judging the point wrong. She talks to Adrien to ask how Kagami is doing. He says that he thinks that she’s okay now, but Kagami was totally exhibiting some behaviors that he recognized as the son of a largely absent parent with absurd standards. He doesn’t have the time he’d like to have to check in on Kagami, so he also tells Marinette that it sounded like Kagami was under a lot of pressure at home and was afraid of her mother judging her for losing the fight.

Marinette, of course, feels terrible and her patented Dupain-Cheng-family we-must-adopt-everyone genes kick in, so she decides to track down Kagami’s home address to apologize formally and to make sure that Kagami’s mom knows what really went down.

When she gets there, she’s flustered and awkward as usual but good-hearted and although Kagami’s mom initially is not thrilled about the weird intrusion, she doesn’t hate Marinette.

Since she’s there, she and Kagami end up chatting either that day or some other time. Marinette mentions that she’s looking forward to trying out for the fencing team again the following year to learn aside Adrien and Kagami.

Kagami realizes that she took the only spot on the team. She’s not the sort to feel bad about this and wouldn’t normally, but Marinette was being so kind and she’d actually tried to stand up to her mother for her, so she offers to give her fencing lessons. (Maybe she covers it up as extra practice for her as she’s not really much of a touchy-feely person.)

Anyway, Marinette starts going to Kagami’s house once a week for fencing practice. She always brings fresh baked goods. I don’t think Kagami has many friends, especially with how intense we’ve seen her family to be and being so new to Paris, so she might not really know how to deal with Marinette’s brand of friendship at first.

They become really good friends. I actually think they really would if they spent any sort of time together in canon without misunderstandings and Adrien and sometimes somewhat suspect writing in the way. They are both determined, powerful young women with hearts of steel and an unstoppable drive towards something that they’re very passionate about. They’re both straightforward and value honesty and dislike liars. They would be an UNSTOPPABLE team.

I don’t think Sapotis happens in this AU. There’s no salt against Alya here, but I think it would be reasonable for Marinette avoid giving a miraculous to her best friend no matter how much she’d like to share being superheroes with her. This is because Alya is shown in season one especially to be very adamant about revealing Ladybug’s identity. This was even the main goal of her akumatized form, Lady Wifi. Marinette loves Alya deeply, but I think that there would be reasonable doubt there about whether or not Alya would be able to keep her own secret or if she would use her position as a sometimes-superhero to discover more about Ladybug. We’ve seen in canon that Marinette obviously hates lying to her best friend, so I think it’s reasonable to think that she wouldn’t manufacture a situation where she had to do so even more.

Also, even though Anasai technically took place before Queen’s Battle, just go with me here and assume it didn’t and that Style Queen was the first akuma that Ladybug needed help with. We know that she picked the Bee miraculous in Style Queen and, as Marinette is good friends with Kagami already in this AU, she definitely sees how much this miraculous would play to her friend’s strengths. They also fence together all the time, so Marinette knows how Kagami fights and wouldn’t have to learn a new teammate’s style in the middle of an already complicated fight. Since Kagami isn’t Alya, she wouldn’t already be at the Effiel tower and wouldn’t be turned to glitter by Style Queen, so Marinette would be able to safely get the Bee miraculous to her.

Ladybug and Mitsubachi are a deadly combination. Style Queen never stood a chance. Everything goes pretty smoothly and Ladybug is able to get the Bee miraculous back from Kagami without incident. (That being said, Marinette is a flustered bi mess and totally fumbled once or twice in the fight because damn, Kagami makes a deadly and attractive superhero.)

And because I’m a sucker for redeeming Chloe I am physically incapable of leaving her out of this AU. Oops, lol. Without Queen Bee, the Queen’s Battle arc would definitely have some pretty substantial changes. Chloe’s mom would still be being pretty awful and Chloe wouldn’t have gotten her hands on the Bee miraculous. She’d still have to be upset enough to get akumatized over her mom (so Gabe wouldn’t give up being Hawkmoth (also, he’d have only just learned that the Guardian was in Paris so that might be another incentive)) but she wouldn’t become Queen Wasp because she was never Queen Bee in the first place.

Instead, she becomes a different sort of version of @imthepunchlord ‘s Princess Amour akumanette concept. She just really wants to be loved. Maybe instead of having a Chat Noir “knight” as the akumanette had, some ladybug merch of her’s would hold the akuma and turn into a version of Ladybug that would help and protect and validate Chloe as her knight. After LB beats this akuma, she has an honest talk with Chloe that night because she could see that Chloe was really struggling and, despite their very checkered past couldn’t help but wanting to help.

Ladybug gives Chloe some advice and Chloe does her level best to live up to it in her day to day life. It’s a long hard road and it doesn’t come easily, but every once in awhile Ladybug will drop by and knowing that her heroine is proud of her gives Chloe the push she needs to change for the better.

I should also mention that I’m switching the places of the fox and peacock miraculouses in this AU. If we’re still working with the headcanon that Mr. and Mrs. Agreste used the miraculouses that Gabe has, it makes sense that they’d have the butterfly because everything we’ve been lead to believe indicates that it was a good fit for Mrs. Agreste. That being said, what we know of the Peacock makes no effing sense for Gabe. He’s creative, crafty, and not above playing dirty. That man is a fox through and through, you can’t change my mind. Therefore, Fu has the peacock and the fox is the damaged miraculous sitting in the Agreste safe.

This is relevant, I promise.

So, Ladybug and Chat Noir have worked with Mitsubachi quite a few times. She fits pretty effortlessly into the team dynamic but is definitely with Ladybug in taking the job super seriously and not always being down with Chat’s attitude.

Kagami and Marinette are still hanging out. Kagami is falling for Marinette and Marinette is falling for Kagami, but Marinette had confided in Kagami earlier about her crush on Adrien, so Kagami thinks that Mari is still in love with Adrien and Marinette doesn’t think Kagami would be interested in her, so there’s an awful lot of mutual pining going on.

Hawkmoth is escalating and Fu approves of Kagami after testing her himself, so she gets the Bee miraculous on a permanent basis.

With the extra help, it’s a while before Ladybug’s lucky charm calls for another hero, but, when it does, she needs the peacock. Maybe she was going for Alya with this one, but, being the Ladyblogger, Alya has already gotten herself into the conflict and trapped by the akuma. As she’s looking around, Ladybug spots (lol, get it?) Chloe trying to get Sabrina and some other people to safety, consequently getting trapped or something. She goes to save Chloe, and when Chloe thanks her, she starts to wonder. Chloe has taken a good, hard look at herself and really improved in the past few months. She’s not perfect yet, but no one is. And, you know what? Getting the Ladybug miraculous went a long way towards making her a better Marinette. Mind made up, she offers the Peacock to Chloe and a new hero appears. (I’m thinking of naming Chloe’s peacock form Tirisi or Vindex -- Greek or Latin for (roughly) defender/protector/champion. See my rant on why the peacock miraculous’ powers make sense for my reasoning.)

Chloe gives the miraculous back when Ladybug asks and keeps working to improve herself so that her heroine might someday trust her again. (She loved being able to have the power and agency to connect with and help others -- she really loved feeling strong enough to save others and is starting to feel more confident that she can save herself.) She doesn’t spill her identity and becomes a reliable second-string hero when Ladybug’s lucky charm demands her presence.

Eventually turtle!Sabrina will also come into this AU because she really, really deserves her own character development. (And @mystery-vixen ‘ s design and art and @pyrepyro ‘s art for Turtle!Sabrina is the cutest shit I’ve ever seen in my life.) Maybe it’s some sort of Anasasi situation where Chloe’s in trouble and Sabrina is doing her level best to rescue her as a civilian, idk. (For turtle!Sabrina I was thinking Bouclier or Jadeite, unless you guys have ideas?)

Anyway, eventually, everyone has their miraculouses permanently. (This probably happens after Gabe and Natalie break out the fox.) Endgame is Kagaminette and Chlobrina, two sets of deadly wlw protecting Paris along with the bi disaster Chat Noir who is 100% willing to THROW THE FUCK DOWN with anyone who doesn’t respect the ladies of the superhero team. Chat Noir totally gets along with the whole squad, by the way. Between the four of them, the ladies are great friends and life coaches to our cat boi and help him work through what unhealthy attitudes he has in a respectful and caring way. They adopt him and are always hugging Chat or even just lightly resting a hand on his shoulder since they discovered he was touch-starved. (Especially Ladybug and Tirisi. All four would cut a bitch for that boy, but they’re the most touchy-feely.)

(Eventually snake!Luka joins the squad and he and Chat Noir get together and it’s just a giant group of badass queer superheroes kicking ass and protecting Paris.)

They eventually beat Hawkmoth and Adrien and Luka become the next Guardians (They’d do a great job, fight me). Marinette and Kagami are too busy for that anyway. They got married and Marinette started the world’s most successful fashion line while Kagami set some sort of ridiculous record for the number of gold medals a single person can win in fencing. Chloe and Sabrina get married and (because of Chloe) end up adopting a ridiculous amount of kids that they care for and love unconditionally.

Happily Ever After and The End. :)

Thanks for listening to my rant!

184 notes · View notes

that-sarcastic-writer · 5 years

Text

So here's a little rant

I absolutely love that in the once upon a time fandom there's these types of fans, the ones that ship captain swan with a burning passion and shit on others if they don't ship it or ship Killian or Emma with someone else. And then there's the fans that absolutely despise captain swan. They either hate them together or they just bluntly hate Emma.

Here's the thing, first of all, I like captain swan. I think the fact that Killian was willing to change and do everything possible to prove himself to her was sweet. And while I do see that Emma did kinda use him and toyed with him a bit in season 3, I feel like she then realized she actually cared for him like he cared for her. I feel like once they actually got together in season 4 their relationship was really cute. Like they really cared for each other. They were there for each other. They never did anything that deeply hurt the other or betrayed each other. And in a way, they were each other's second chance at true love. Killian even said that Emma was the first person he actually fell in love with after Milah (he didn't exactly say that but when they were sharing secrets back in season 3a he meant it that way) And that Emma was his happy ending. Here we can see that Killian was a lot more emotionally attached to Emma than she was to him. It was always that way but that doesn't mean she didn't love him just as much. Which I feel like is a lot of people's complaint.

Still, just because I like them together doesn't mean I bluntly hate anyone who doesn't think that way. Nor am I gonna hate on other ships like swanfire. Just because oh captain swan is everything doesn't I'm gonna hate on Neal. But that's beside the point.

Now on the other side of the spectrum. People that absolutely hate Captain Swan and Emma. (I only say Emma because I haven't seen a single person that specifically hates Killian) From what I've noticed because I just started season 5, people say Emma was really selfish after getting together with Killian. Like she solely based her existence on Killian and she basically became a bad mom because she was too focused on Killian. Now, I know I can't really talk cause I haven't seen those parts most people talk about (Season 5 and 6), but I feel like the fact that she focused on Killlan and loved him too doesn't make her a bad mom. She just found love so she focused on him too.

People also make the argument that she was a bad mom period. And in a way she was, but so was regina. Emma did abandon Henry but it wasn't because she didn't want him but because she knew she wouldn't give him a good life. She didn't know how to take care of someone when she didn't know how to take care of herself. And yes, she did just come into Henry's life and tried to take him away from regina. And that was just wrong. Regina was Henry's legal mom and she raised him. But Emma just wanted the best for him and all throughout season 1 all she heard from henry was how horrible regina was and how much he hated her. So any normal person would be concerned her child's wellbeing. The execution was bad, but she also had a bad start with Regina. And again, shes human, shes not perfect. So when people compare her to regina and say she was a bad mom, you should probably look at things from her perspective. And also realize that Regina was a horrible human being (in season 1 and a little bit of season 2 but she was trying in season 2) so in a way, Regina was no better or no worse than Emma. (Yes I did just compare them but I was just trying to prove my point)

People also say because she has a man she only cares about him and fuck everyone else because I have a man now. I honestly can't really talk over her attitude in season 5 and 6, cause I haven't seen it. But from I've noticed, people claim that because of Killian, she stopped taking care of Henry. And like, how? Just because she also focused on Killian she no longer takes care of her son? Who is old enough to take of himself and also has another mom. Yeah, I think just because she did things for Killian at the expense of Henry it doesn't mean she was a bad mom, it just means that she cared about Killian enough to do so.

Another thing I noticed people shit on Emma for is how selfish she is. Yes, I'm aware she is a selfish person. Like, she really is. Eventually she gets better at that, she sacrifices herself for the wellbeing of others every once in a while. But like, she's still a bit selfish, but that's okay. That's what makes her her. Everyone is that show is a bit selfish for the people they love. But just because Emma does something selfish doesn't mean we can jump on the hate Emma bandwagon. Which a lot people do. Like a lot of people hate on her just because she's Emma. Which is messed up because she has a lot of good aspects to her. Sure, she's a very flawed character but in reality they all are. You honestly can't name a single character on that show that is perfect and isn't selfish. Not even Snow or Charming who are supposed to be like so perfect.

I'm sure this whatever argument is now over. Mainly cause the show is over so people aren't as into the fandom anymore because I still kinda see this on Instagram a lot. But I thought I'd give my intake on it. It's never okay to hate on other people for shipping or not shipping characters. And it's also not okay to blindly shit on a character just because (and in this case I mean main characters like Emma, Regina, Killian etc. Not villains that are specifically written so that you hate them) When we all know that in is this show, most characters are flawed and have things to hate on them for. Not just Emma, they all do. It's okay to not like a character, in any show, there's at least one main/frequent character we don't like. But it's never okay to actively hate on that character and the people that actually like that character. That's all I have to say. Thank you for coming for my ted talk

#killian jones #captain hook #captain swan #cs #emma swan #evil queen #regina mills #once upon a time #oncers #ouat #rant over #rant #blog post #ouat fandom

15 notes · View notes

cruzrogue · 5 years

Text

Enter My World

Previously chapter1

Intro: This came to me after seeing the train wreck of what Robert Queen has done. Two powerful families of Starling/Star City have failed so many people including themselves. Anyways I decided to write a piece that is like Bizzaro World where The Merlyns and Queens didn’t screw everything up and actually were pillars of the community, and omg good parents past and future.

Chapter 2

The long L-shaped hallway off the antique main staircase carries the sound of heavy footsteps heading to a particular room. Heavy in the sense that the man walking hurriedly across a very exorbitant rug his wife had just had installed days ago to check on why his youngest ran into their home sobbing. His bubbling happy little girl crying is unthinkable. Last time she was known to do this broke his and Rebecca’s hearts as they had to tell her in different ways that she is a blessing to them and no matter what they were all a family.

The large oak door separates them and he can’t tell by standing on this side if she is still crying. He’ll have to cross the threshold into a very young feminine room that actually speaks of science fiction and her love of animation. Oh, he has seen one to many cartoons with her seated against his side as she giddily talks about as many characters in detail that always seem to be never-ending and he makes sure to invest time to learn about each little character that brings out a spark of light. He finds between both of his children he is well versed in modern day kid related pop culture. As a man who holds the classic works dear to his own upbringing, he loves sharing anything his kids will ramble on about. Coming home from a corporate world it brings a warmth to his whole being that he has two children he adores and a wife he loves that are also happy to see him. Life is good. Now it’s time to make his ball of sunshine break a smile as he takes his fatherly duties to include.

Behind a door, Felicity smashes her face deeper into the pillow not caring of anything as her tears are absorbed by the soft material. Her heart heavy, she doesn’t want to feel the anguish that a stupid boy is causing. She said her peace and knows there is nothing else she can do. He’s too dumb to see. She shouldn’t have kissed him maybe she’s the real dumb one. Now she’s lost Oliver, her Vernnie, well her Vern. Even now she thinks that is a stupid nickname that only she used. He’s never corrected her and even shared a personal nickname with her and she’s never been one to like pet names but coming from him it was special. Now that is all gone. She’d never hear it again.

She doesn’t notice the door opening and surely not the dip on her bed but when a large hand stirs her from her loud sobs peaking to already guess it is her father who she passed on her gloomy run to her bedroom to happily shut the door to her existence.

Muffling out “…Me alone…”

“I’m sorry sweetie but I can’t understand you muffling into the pillow.”

She rises enough to grumble. It makes him chuckle which only adds to her frustrations. “Dad, I want to be alone.” She then plops back onto her now dampened pillow. She hears a hum but he doesn’t leave as he now begins rubbing her back.

“A new component for your computers came in.”

She sighs inaudibility onto her pillow but her dad isn’t going to get the picture. He is so obtuse at times. He really is a family-oriented man. How she guesses tragedy changed him to making sure everything he considers important always knows he is there. She should be glad but right now self-pity is the highlight and it’s for a party of only one.

“I don’t care.”

That gets a reaction. “Don’t care?” She can hear her dad make a grumble sound of displeasure. “Since when? You’re my electronic bunny who has always been excited for these things. It’s something you carried from before this household was blessed with your presence.”

She moves her face to look at his. “Dad!” She blinks a few times as she shakes her head at him. “Don’t you think you’re being a little melodramatic?”

“Me? Dramatic?”

“You make it seem I was the best thing…” He stops her as his arms easily move her into a sitting position as her little limbs are over his lap and make it more comfortable to talk and look at the tear-soaked girl who has his heart.

“I need you to listen, you are one of the best things that has ever graced my life. You are my daughter. No matter what is happening in your life I want you to know your mother and I love you very much.”

She can’t look away even though she feels small. Being in his strong arms in a position that has her eyes in sync with his. “I know.”

“You can talk to me about anything.”

“Ah dad.”

“Really Felicity, I still remember the day you came home from school crying because some mean kids said that you weren’t a Merlyn. You kept that to yourself allowed it to fester. Not knowing what made you withdraw it hurt your mom and I deeply. To hear it from another person that you thought once we tired of you, we would send you away. How could we ever do such a thing?”

That makes her tears fall uncontrollably. It was Oliver who tattletale on her. She told him that in despair and he couldn’t let her think that she was just a filler and had the courage to tell her father how she felt. At first, she felt horrified that he did that but he told her she would do the same. They looked out for one another. Another reason that her heart hurts. He won’t be there for her no more.

She hears her dad say words of comfort. Words to open dialogue but she is so distraught. She really wants to wallow in this pain for a while. Even so she says in-between sobs, “I’m sorry daddy.”

“Oh, my ball of wonder. You’ll don’t ever need to apologize to me. I’m your dad. I’m here for you. Please tell me what’s wrong?” With her trying to not cry the effort very much appreciated by him. He could leave her to cry some more but that really isn’t their way. If he of her mother can be there, that is where they’ll be.

Because he brought up the first moment, he found her like this even back then before a young boy he also considers to be a son told him why she was so distressed he tells her, “I will always honor your parents. They saved my soul. Their most cherish gift is you.”

After a hiccup she adds wondering about her real parents, “I still miss them.”

“I know sweetie. We’ll miss them together.”

His own eyes become glossy as he remembers that moment that moment the ball of events started and reshaped his life. Malcolm Merlyn will never forget that message left on his phone after his wife was shot. Her words still haunt him but then he heard other voices comforting her telling her that help was on the way. Applying pressure to her wound. Being there for her. He will never forget meeting the heroes that saved his wife. Noah and Donna who were instrumental angels in keeping Rebecca alive. Their own anguish of leaving a family courtroom as divorcees to leading in saving a woman they didn’t know but helped just the same.

In a sitting area at a busy hospital he hugged them even offered a monetary award and they just were gracious that they could help and told the man they needed to pick up their daughter so unbeknownst to him as the they went on their way that their lives would be cut short. In leaving Starling City with a daughter that he wasn’t privy in meeting. Just to find that they were in a horrible car crash that the emergency personnel had to use the jaws of life to pull a little girl from the car. She was alive but now an orphan.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Somewhere in the same capacity of time the news that Rebecca wouldn’t be able to have another child if she one day desired to. Their personal doctor looking over the chart again and with them looking at the man who would shed some light if she indeed could not have another child, she desperately didn’t know she wanted. They had an adorable little boy already. All this time in a hospital checking her wounds with the possibility that the damage due to scar tissue were permanent it held a finite time that any possibility of adding another little one to the family being lost. Holding out her hand as her husband laid a kiss to her palm as the doctor turned now towards them.

“Mrs. Merlyn, Mr. Merlyn. I am truly sorry to inform you both that there is severe damage to carry a child to full term.”

“What does that mean? Full term?”

“The chances are there that the embryo could attach to the womb but after so many weeks’ complications would start to arise. The fetus wouldn’t make it in the third trimester.”

Rebecca wanting to leave so she could cry but stuck in a hospital bed it had him stand up and thank the doctor so the man would leave them be.

Moments later as her sobs took hold, he had to remind her and himself that they had one child at home who they loved with all their hearts. “We have Tommy.”

Rebecca knows this but her baby isn’t a baby no longer. “He isn’t a little baby no more.”

“Rebecca you’ve never cared to have another. I know Tommy is turning ten but he’ll always be your baby boy.”

“I know Malcolm; it is just hard to think that the possibility is taken from us. If, we chose not to have another child it would be our choice but this…”

“I’m just blessed that I didn’t lose you. Now that’ll be something I couldn’t fathom. I love you.”

“I love you too. You also don’t need to promise to cut down on work, I know I married a workaholic.” She kisses him.

“Maybe not but I know I have a family and that should be my priority. I’m so sorry my love. No company in this world measures up to you. I love you so much.”

“Dad? Are you okay?”

Malcolm shakes his head as the last thought was of how he wanted to be a better husband and father. He can’t believe his mind wandered to the past as he is holding a girl who brought hope and healing. That his family grew by one more and even within tragedy there is some good. He hears his daughter now beginning to worry for him. Yes, he is a blessed man to have such a family.

“I’m fine sweetheart. Just recalling the time frame before your sunshine made us all complete.”

“Dad! Please!”

“I know… Too much right?” He smiles as he can be a little dramatic at times.

“I’m going to be okay daddy; you don’t have to worry about me.”

“I will always worry.” He brings her close to kiss her forehead. “It’s a dad thing.”

“I’ll be okay, I promise.”

“You aren’t going to share why you’re so sad? You do know you can talk to me about anything!”

Feeling better with how her dad is just being himself. A worry hog. That maybe spilling a little bit and getting his input could make her feel better. It always does.

“I kissed a boy.” There she said it.

“Oh.”

He doesn’t really know how to counter other than showing some surprise. A part of him cringing thinking he had a few more years. He thought Tommy was going to be the first one to have him and his wife really worry about. Got to give it to his daughter for she is an overachiever. Now he will never get any sleep. He doesn’t say any typical dad stuff he waits to see why she is in her room crying and as the dad who asks the obvious. “He didn’t like it?”

She shakes her head no.

“He didn’t like it?”

“It was barely a second but he doesn’t want me in his life anymore. He said so. Daddy I really like him.” It already has her tearing up. “I know I’m just a stupid kid.” With that she loses it and begins to cry to the point of hiccups.

“Hey, hey you are not stupid.” His voice firm which gets her attention it’s the tone he has when either Tommy or herself do something foolish and somehow they always fear his reprimand. As loving as he can be, he also can be stern. Living without TV privileges or that one time where she wasn’t able to participate in a science fair because of dying her brother’s hair blue. No amount of begging or pouting helped it actually could increase the punishment. So, hearing her dad use his no-nonsense voice she listened. “You are a genius. Do you know what your mother would say if she were here?”

“No. She’d probably just try to coax me to tell her who and why he doesn’t like me.”

Malcolm thought of asking but figured it be best not to know who broke his baby’s heart. He knows his baby will break hearts as well. No, his duty as her father is to help her stand back up after a session of licking her wounds.

“Well then I guess I’ll say what I think she’ll jester on saying…” He winks at her. “Ice cream. I think some mint chocolate before dinner is to be had and then if we need to cry at least our belly be full of deliciousness of gooey happiness.” He sees her crack a smile. Yes, seeing a smile grace her face is all he ever needs. “Come on. I’ll semi race you.”

“Semi?”

“Yes. No running in the house.” He already has her over his shoulders and he can hear her laughing as she tells him she’s a big girl and he declares, “Yes my ball of sunshine.” Her sadness put on hold as the father and daughter duo are heard laughing as they head down the hall.

tagging: @1106angel @memcjo @keabbs @lovelifelovebooks

#Enter My World #felicity smoak #oliver queen #olicity #tommy merlyn #Merlyn family #the queens

11 notes · View notes

ckret2 · 6 years

Text

You'd Be Amazed At The Cultural Divides That Develop After Four Million Years of War

... by Fall Out Boy

Prompt: @tfspeedwriting: Prompt 1: A character outstays their welcome and Prompt 5: Write a story with two main characters and tell in two parts - from first one character’s POV and then the other. Writing two prompts was accidental, I swear Continuity: IDW Pairing: one-sided oblivious & unrequited Starscream/Wheeljack Wordcount: 2000-ish? Notes: If anybody out there has any more Starjack fics with Starscream unrequitedly pining for Wheeljack... hit me up. Need me some Screamer pain. Summary: Wheeljack thinks Starscream is interrupting his day off to demand a tour of his current projects. Starscream thinks he's taking Wheeljack on a date. Neither one bothers to clarify.

Double doors slammed open with a grandly declared "So!"

Wheeljack started, dropping his wrench, and almost swore. Frag. Starscream. Wheeljack wasn't expecting Starscream. Why would he expect Starscream to barge into his personal lab?

Okay, maybe he should have been expecting Starscream.

Yesterday Starscream had said, idly, that he ought to drop by Wheeljack's lab soon—not the lab space he shared with several others at the capitol, but his private lab, his off-duty lab—and see what he was up to when he wasn't working the space bridge. Wheeljack had said, sure, he probably should come by and see. He'd half meant it—he was working on things that could eventually be useful to Cybertron—but Wheeljack hadn't thought Starscream meant it. Much less that he meant it so soon, and without warning or invitation.

Wheeljack had thought promising to come by had been more or less a politician's promise—something he said to make one of his citizens think he gave half a slag about what was going on with him, with no intent of following up on it.

Wheeljack should have expected Starscream to mean it. Wheeljack could name a new governing law of probability after their illustrious leader. Starscream's Law: if given the choice between doing and not doing one thing, regardless of whether or not Starscream says he'll do it, the one he actually ends up doing is either 1) the option most surprising, or 2) the option most inconvenient, whichever value is greater. Usually both. This? Was both surprising and inconvenient. Very inconvenient.

Wheeljack set down his current project and turned to face Starscream. "Can I help you?"

"I certainly hope so! I came all the way across Iacon on the expectation that you could, after all."

Wheeljack didn't think he'd be getting to pick his project back up again for a while. Duty ever calls. "With what?"

"Well—" Starscream gestured down the length of the lab, with the type of overdramatic flourish he usually reserved for speeches where he was referring to the great people of Cybertron, or our friends and allies among the stars, or such things. Big, sweeping, and all-encompassing. "A tour, ideally. You said that you'd show me your lab, after all. You implied that you had some things I'd quite like to see."

Had Wheeljack implied that? He didn't think he'd gone anywhere near that far. One last longing look at his discarded project, and he got to his feet. "Yeah, yeah—sure. Of course." Fine. This was an inevitability, after all. Eventually he'd be trying to show Starscream all this. Why not now?

Starscream waited for Wheeljack to cross the lab to him (the lab was an odd, long shape, with a door at the far end; the easiest thing Wheeljack could find to rent in this part of town that he could modify to meet his safety standards) with a hand on one cocked hip, the very picture of arrogant impatience. "This really is out of the way, you know," Starscream said, as though Wheeljack had personally and deliberately made his life harder by choosing where to put his lab. "You're practically out in the Decepticon slums. I've offered you lab space in Metroplex's cephalocomplex, it's where you do all your other work."

"Yeah, well—thank you for the offer—but this place is for my non-governmental works," Wheeljack said. "I don't want politics leaking into my personal projects." He gave Starscream a very pointed look.

"Why—" Starscream turned back to the doors, as if checking he hadn't left them ajar to let a draft in, and then turned back to Wheeljack. "Surely you don't think I'm going to let any politics sneak in?" He tapped the top of his head, "See, I even left my crown at home. This tour is all about you."

"Uh-huh." Sure it was.

So. What did Starscream want, really? Maybe it really was a tour—but if it was only a tour, then he wouldn't have crossed the city, unannounced, without so much as a warning, much less an appointment. He'd probably wanted to catch Wheeljack off guard—that was the sort of thing Starscream did. Why? To intimidate him—to remind him that he knew where he kept his private lab and that he could and would invite himself in at any time? To try to catch him with some subversive projects laying out? (Joke was on him; Wheeljack wasn't working on any subversive projects.)

"So." Starscream hopped up to sit on the nearest lab table, crossing one leg over the other, like he thought he owned the place and could plant himself anywhere he liked. "What's the first stop on this grand tour?"

Wheeljack crossed his arms. "Well, let's start with lab safety."

Starscream's optics flickered in disbelief. "'Lab safety'?" He scoffed. "Really? We're beginning with the basics?"

"I think we should. It's important stuff—you know, things like, 'Don't sit your skidplate on strange tables in strange labs if you don't know what might have been spilled on them.'"

Starscream bolted up like somebody had set off a firecracker under his seat. "Lab safety. Got it."

The tour dragged on for an excruciating two hours. Wheeljack had thought he could've kept it to fifteen minutes. He could have just swept Starscream through an overview of his current major works—among other things: a small engine that didn't do anything but spin a fan, which he was using to study some Camien designs for more efficient energon-to-electricity conversion for inanimate machines; a tiny explosion powered by Ore-1 that he was planning to set off next week that had been popping in and out of existence in one corner for the past four weeks; a prototype for a shield that could absorb laser fire and use it to charge—

"Well, originally it was going to charge another laser," Wheeljack said, lifting the shield-generating forearm brace with the gun attached—the project he'd been working on when Starscream had barged in. "But that seemed kind of—I don't know, eventually you just get two guys shooting back and forth at each other forever, you know?"

Starscream—who, to see the project up close, was leaning as far over Wheeljack's lab table as he could without actually violating Wheeljack's for-Primussake-stop-touching-all-my-tables rule—said, "What about a sword? Some kind of energy sword."

And this was why a fifteen minute tour had taken two hours. Because Starscream would not stop asking questions and making suggestions. Every one-sentence explanation was dragged out with incessant questions for clarification into a ten-paragraph explanation, which was followed—at Starscream's insistence—by a two-sentence-quickly-turned-five-paragraph explanation of the potential practical applications for some project, even when he had no practical applications yet, and then Starscream started throwing recommendations at him—for how he should proceed, for what tweaks he should add, for ways it could be applied—and then Wheeljack had to patiently explain that most of them wouldn't work, and then Starscream asked why. At this point, Wheeljack had an entirely new theory for what it was Starscream wanted here, a theory that had shot quickly to the top of his list: he was trying to distract Wheeljack while something Starscream desperately wanted to keep hidden from him was going on somewhere else in the building. Wheeljack was going to be spending the next few days sniffing for any lingering signs that Rattrap had been nearby.

This was the last suggestion Wheeljack was willing to take. He was tired of this and tired of humoring Starscream. "I'm not making a sword," Wheeljack said tersely.

"But you coul—"

"I could, but I'm not going to. The energy expended by constantly extending a sword would rapidly use up any energy absorbed by the shield. Unless the shield is taking a constant stream of shots, the sword'll immediately splutter and die." He was talking fast, impatiently, and at this point he didn't care how impatient he sounded—he'd never requested suggestions in the first place. "I'm deciding what's going into the project, and—and it's not up for official review! It's my project!"

Wheeljack knew he sounded petulant. But it worked; Starscream straightened up immediately. "Of course. Far be it from me to try to barge in on your little project." ("Ha!" Wheeljack scoffed.) "I only meant—" Starscream didn't finish the statement. What? Out of explanations? Not going to try to claim he was being helpful when they both knew full well that that wasn't why he was here?

Because that sure as hell wasn't why Starscream was here.

"I think that's enough of a tour for today. The next time you want to see my lab, schedule a meeting. And I'd deeply appreciate it if it isn't scheduled on one of my few days off."

Starscream opened his mouth, shut it, and nodded dumbly.

"Thanks." He looked down at his shield. Energy sword. Pfft. Stupid.

Starscream looked lost for a moment—wasn't expecting Wheeljack to not take his pestering? even he had his limits—but then rallied, chest puffed up again. "Well. Then. I suppose I'll see you—whenever I next visit the space bridge. Or you come to my office, whichever—"

"You don't need me to show you where the door is."

Starscream laughed humorlessly. "No. You don't."

Wheeljack didn't look up from the shield project as Starscream walked to the other end of the lab. He heard the doors open, but not shut. "I'll leave you to the rest of your day off, then."

"Goodbye, Starscream."

The doors shut.

Starscream leaned against Wheeljack's lab doors, staring at his feet.

His spark was spinning like a top, too fast and teetering, sending static anxiety down his arms. His fingertips tapped nervously against Wheeljack's door—quietly, quietly. He didn't want Wheeljack to hear him and know he hadn't left yet.

But he couldn't bring himself to leave yet. He couldn't move. His fuel tank was twisted up like a crumpled engex can with the bottom punched out. He regretted convincing Bumblebee to leave him the hell alone while he was visiting Wheeljack—he hadn't expected to come out of the experience this… lost.

Collect yourself, Starscream. That's what you do. That's who you are—you're collected. You don't need Bumblebee; talking to him is only talking to yourself. So go on. Talk to yourself. Work through this.

Okay. Working through this. That… Okay. That—didn't go well. So. What… what had he done wrong, exactly?

True, Starscream hadn't gone on a date in… yikes. Okay. Longer than he wanted to think about. Fair. He was rusty. Rusty and—

And not very popular.

But he'd done everything right, hadn't he? He'd informed Wheeljack of his interest in spending time with him outside of work. He'd made a point of proposing a place that Wheeljack knew better than Starscream–he'd practically handed him power over their interaction. That was as non-threatening as he could make a date offer. That was—that was laying himself down at Wheeljack's feet. And Wheeljack had okayed it.

Starscream had showed up on a day that both he and Wheeljack had off (Starscream had had to give himself a day off just for this) and immediately made it clear that this was not a work thing. He'd shown interest in Wheeljack's non-work projects. Abundant, detailed interest. He had flirted his spark out. He had spent the last two hours preening and posing and showing off while he asked Wheeljack about his projects. He hadn't talked about himself once.

Wheeljack hadn't asked him about himself, once. That should have been Starscream's first clue that the interest wasn't reciprocal, shouldn't it?

But why? What had he done wrong? He'd thought the date was going great, but—

Maybe he was misreading this. Maybe this wasn't how Autobots did dates. Or how grounders did dates. Or—or how scientists did dates?

But no. No, Starscream had—he'd said he should come over to see Wheeljack's projects, and Wheeljack had agreed. He wouldn't have done that—not on his private projects—if he hadn't known Starscream was proposing a date. Why else would he have welcomed Starscream showing up in his own lab?

Right?

Which meant the problem was Starscream. Wheeljack had agreed to the date—he'd agreed to give Starscream a shot to prove himself—and… Starscream blew it. He didn't prove himself. He'd bored Wheeljack. He wasn't interesting enough. He wasn't interested enough. Who knew what? It could have been any of a hundred factors.

Starscream shouldn't have expected anything else. There was only so far he should have expected Wheeljack to be willing to be kind to him.

Hmph. It would have been nicer if Wheeljack hadn't been so kind to him. Wouldn't it? At least then Starscream could have sealed his armor against him from the start, the way he did with everyone else. But nooo, no, Wheeljack just had to—had to listen to Starscream, had to—respect him, to give him a chance. Had to coax Starscream into peeling up a corner of his armor and letting Wheeljack slide underneath. Where it hurt when he finally rejected Starscream.

Not that it was Wheeljack's fault, was it. No, Starscream was the one who'd let that armor peel up. Starscream was the one who gave Wheeljack room to hurt him. Starscream was the one who'd taken the chance Wheeljack had given him, and—and failed to live up to it, somehow.

Don't let people get close, Starscream. You know that. They're only going to let you down. You're only going to let them down.

He sighed in irritation at himself, pushed himself off of Wheeljack's doors, and trudged for the exit.

If you want a tiny fic/story, buy me a coffee and leave a prompt in the comments!

(Feel free to reblog/add comments)

#starscream #wheeljack #starjack #transformers #maccadam #my writing #tfspeedwriting #fanfic

33 notes · View notes

aros001 · 3 years

Text

First time read through light novel vol. 15. Random thoughts.

No waiting! Door's open! Car's ready! Let's go!

Oh, and just as an added note, I have not yet watched any of the second half of season 2. I wanted to wait until after I'd read this volume, which I believe is the first time I've ever avoided watching episodes of a TV series so that I wouldn't be spoiled on what happens in the book it's based on.

The greatest asset they had—Garfiel—was almost certainly already engaging the main threat—Elsa. Both possessed superhuman strength, so they could be considered evenly matched—or at least, Subaru hoped so. He couldn’t be certain.

It does occur to me that Subaru probably wouldn't be the best for judging people's relative power levels. He's met plenty of powerful people in this world; Elsa, Reinhard, Puck, Julius, Petelgeuse, Roswaal, Garfiel, etc. But the thing is they all completely dwarf him in power, to the point that on an even playing field he wouldn't even be able to put up a fight. Yes, Garfiel could be an even match for Elsa...but I could also see Subaru thinking the same about Frederica and she was way outmatched by Elsa. All Subaru was going off of was that Frederica was stronger than him in a way he could never naturally obtain himself and so is Elsa, so he immediately conflates the two in his mind as equal strength, simply because he's so low all the bars above him look like they're overlapping.

“Truly...it would have been better if Betty were simply a book.”

Unable to indulge in even fleeting fantasy, Beatrice confessed her sad, painful wish.

If only she could be a doll without a heart, a storybook unshaken by the passage of time, then she wouldn’t have to suffer.

Ironically, though books themselves can't suffer, they can certainly cause suffering, both in the meta sense with what Re:Zero puts its characters through and the audience along with it, and the literal sense with how the books of knowledge and their prophecies are ruining Beatrice and Roswaal's lives but they can't bring themselves to give them up.

“Even if it’s only within Roswaal’s book of knowledge, the fact that Betty has been recorded... Does that mean Mother has not forgotten about her daughter, I wonder?”

Though there's something to be said about those who wrote the books too causing the suffering. Again, both meta and literal.

“O-of course I thought about it! Betty tried checking if there was anything on these blank pages again and again...but nothing ever changed!”

“That’s why you’re an idiot! What about trying to heat them to see if anything was written in invisible ink?! These days, no one falls for that trick anymore, even when it’s a novelty New Year’s card! Consider some more possibilities, would you?!”

...

“Like what if your mother messed up and gave you the wrong book by mistake?!”

“Huh...?”

The latest theory Subaru proposed was so haphazard that Beatrice didn’t even know how to respond. That surprise quickly gave way to anger as Beatrice’s ire only grew.

“Do you intend to insult Mother, I wonder?! Mother would never make such a stupid mista—”

“Can you say for sure it absolutely couldn’t happen? You don’t have even the slightest doubt? Are you so certain the only possible explanation is that your mother deliberately handed her own daughter a book with nothing but blank pages?”

Subaru used fallacies and questionable logic to massage and obfuscate the truth.

Subaru's become kind of an expert on dragging people down to his level, hasn't he? Rem, Roswaal, Emilia, Garfiel. Now Beatrice. Also, he just keeps digging himself deeper against Echidna. First he rejects her in favor of Satella, then vandalizes her tomb by carving love letters into its walls, then he makes out with Emilia inside her tomb, and now his basically insulting her intelligence to her daughter. If they ever meet again I suspect Echidna might just try and drown Subaru in her tea instead of offering him any.

“M-Mother surely would never make such a mistake. I-is that not obvious, I wonder? This is Mother we’re talking about! Would you doubt your own mother’s words?!”

“Of course I would! The times I can trust her don’t come along all that often! My mom’s the same person who heard a report about a satellite falling into ‘the atmosphere’ and somehow thought it was ‘Aichi Prefecture.’ I stopped believing any news that came from her mouth after that! It’d be mega-embarrassing if I spread around something that stupid again!”

It was impossible to forget how he’d been mocked by his classmates and neighbors for taking that story seriously and sharing it with everyone. To top it all off, the original culprit herself forgot she had started the whole thing and even asked him, Why on earth did you tell people that?

I kind of love this, especially after Subaru's trial showed just how loving, kind, and supportive Subaru's parents are. This series makes a point of saying that good doesn't mean perfect, and that's okay. People are naturally going to have flaws and shortcomings and that there's nothing wrong with that, so long as those flaws aren't toxic or harmful to others or themselves. Nothing about Subaru's mom being an idiot who too quickly buys into click-bait sensationalist news keeps her from being the woman who saw him off to school and was supportive even after his long absences.

Emilia's Unknowable Present trial, getting to live a life with Fortuna and Geuse like Pandora and Regulus never came to their village, reminds me a lot of what the Black Mercy plant showed Superman when it got attached him, namely getting to live a life in a world where Krypton never exploded and thus he was raised by his birth parents and even started a family himself on Krypton. The plant feeds you a hallucination of your heart's deepest desire as it in turn feeds on you, and the only way to escape it is to basically give up everything you've ever wanted. For Clark, that was his son, who was as real to him as his actual child could be.

Interestingly, though the story is similar with both Emilia and Superman rejecting the fake world in favor of the real one, the state they're left in afterwards is very different. For Emilia, her resolve is strengthened and her feelings for everyone still frozen have only grown deeper, while for Superman he flies into a rage at the villain who put him under the Black Mercy, and once that fades he's just left with sorrow over what he lost. I suppose a cause for big difference is that Emilia can, in theory, get back at least some of what she's lost. Not Fortuna and Geuse because, well, they're kind of dead, but the other villagers she can save from the ice. Emilia's escape from the fake world wasn't just accepting what she'd lost but also a push for her to stop hiding behind the protections of everyone in her life, including her own, and actually face the world. She has a goal she can work towards to find strength in. For Superman it was meant to be just a straight tragedy.

“—Why do you desire a future that will hurt you so much?”

“I don’t want to be hurt. I’m searching for a future where I don’t have to be hurt, where I don’t have to run, hide, or push things away, where I can hold hands with others.”

“And the wounds you suffer? The pain? What you have lost will never return. Will you search for such a thing even so?”

“ ___”

Even Emilia had thought of what it would be like to have no one think of her as detestable. Many times over, she’d wanted to cast all the pain and suffering by the wayside.

The earnestness in Archi’s words gently and deeply touched upon scars that covered Emilia’s weak heart.

“...I want people to think I look cool.”

...

“I want to be like Mom, who I look up to so much. I want to be gentle and strong, like Geuse. I want to be like Granny Tanse and the others, who were never mean to me even once. I want to be like Archi, who smiled to the very, very end so that I wouldn’t get scared.”

“___ ”

“I want to be like Puck, who kept protecting me so I wouldn’t be alone. I want to be like Ram, who wants to work harder than anyone else for the person she holds dearest. I want to be like Otto, doing his utmost for the sake of his friend. I want to be like Garfiel, who refuses to speak one timid word or complaint.”

“Emilia...”

“And I want to be like Subaru, who suffers and gets all beat up, who’s always reckless—who told me he loves me.”

I say it almost every volume but I'm loving the parallels between Emilia and Subaru. They don't want to be in pain, they don't want to suffer. They just want to be loved. They want to feel important and valued by those they love. They want to live up to the coolness and strength of everyone around them. Heck, Emilia seems to model herself after Fortuna about as much as Subaru seems to model himself after his dad. Both really are their parents' child (even if Fortuna is Emilia's aunt).

Even just her thanking Echidna like Subaru did for showing her the trial's world and giving her some closure she never could have had otherwise. Though Echidna's reaction is quite a bit more hostile than it was to Subaru.

The way to end the Trial was for Emilia to find herself and seek out a way to acknowledge, accept, and understand that self.

I'm curious if that is the general theme for the 2nd trial or if it's just specific to Emilia, because what we saw of Subaru's unknowable present, though he lost the right to face any more of the challenges, could certainly fit that description depending on how you view it. Emilia acknowledges, accepts, and understands herself by finally seeing herself as she is in the present and no longer turning away from her own reflection, while Subaru acknowledges, accepts, and understands himself by finally seeing the value in his own life beyond being a chip he can cash-in for RBD.

I am curious if there's any meaning to the differences in how Subaru and Emilia go through their trials though. Emilia's 2nd trial is like Subaru's 1st, where she's actually living and interacting with the world the trial created, with her memories of the real world needing to come back to her, while her 1st trial is like his 2nd, looking in on the world the trial creates only as an observer and unable to interact with anything.

Of course, it did not even think of defying the orders of its master. But it would obey those orders and nothing else. It simply owed a debt to the master, who had liberated it from the Curse of the Horn. Accordingly, it had listened to her request.

Hm. Now that's a curious bit of thought from the Giltirau. It's been established that demon beasts will obey whoever cuts off its horn. I'd always just assumed there was no choice in the matter. So is this just what the beast thinks is the case and it's deluding itself or under some kind of mind control, or is this genuinely how the beasts think and it obeys the cutter in order to pay them back for freeing them from the horn? If it's the latter, why is the horn a curse then?

“Eat the power of science, baby—Dust Explosion!”

Science, bitch!

The candle remained on the floor, showing no further sign of change. The one who had thrown it was frozen in place and sounded like there’d been a miscalculation.

Opp. Never mind. Subaru should have taken a lesson from Goblin Slayer. That man knows how to cause a dust explosion.

You know, one spoiler I got for this volume was that the mansion would catch on fire. I thought it'd be some way Subaru would be trying to free Beatrice from the library and the book of knowledge. I didn't think it'd be because of Otto accidentally burning the place down by using too much oil to kill a lion. Poor guy is going to be back to square one after this, if not horribly under debt. He only came along in the first place to try and sell his wares to Roswaal. If he burns down the clown's home he'll be lucky if Roswaal just declares them as even.

The Trials first showed a past linked to one’s greatest regret; then they showed a present that did not and could not exist; last, the challenger was shown a future she would inevitably have to confront head-on. These were the entirety of the Trials the tomb had prepared for her.

Yeah, I'm not going to lie, I couldn't make heads or tails of anything Emilia saw in "Face the calamity to come". I get the message and why she's able to pass but the descriptions were way too vague for me to get even hints of what was to come in this potential futures. Even looking it up didn't help much. All I've got for certain is Emilia telling someone she was once close to how much she hates them.

Of course, I am now wondering what Subaru's third trial would have been, had he not lost his qualification.

So the woman in the coffin looks like Echidna but isn't Echidna, at least from Emilia's POV. I've got three theories as to what that could mean:

This could be a case like how Satella and the Witch of Envy are technically two different people due to a split personality and thus Echidna and the Witch of Greed are two different people.

It is not Echidna's complete soul that was bound to the tomb. We know the soul transfer was an experiment that failed due to it not working out the way she wanted, so perhaps some parts of Echidna were lost in the transfer. Or we're going with Horcrux rules here and the Echidna in the trials is only a piece of her soul.

It was never Echidna who was giving the trials and having the tea parties but rather someone/something else assuming her form.

Then, as Emilia raced out of the tomb—

“—Eh?”

—the skin-stabbing cold and the ferociously blowing snow covering the Sanctuary made Emilia let out a white breath.

Aw, f**k.

“You ain’t immortal. It’s that ya won’t die till someone kills ya, right? Ain’t that right, vampire?”

“...You knew.”

“I had a hunch. Me, I loved readin’ books since waaaay back. I knew there were special sorts like that. Didn’t think I’d meet one right after leavin’ home, though.”

Oh! That explains a lot about Elsa, actually.

Elsa's story about growing up an orphan in the cold, being nearly (and thankfully only nearly) raped by a man she tried to rob, killing him and then finally feeling warmth from his blood and insides reminds me of a pitch I'd heard for a movie about Dracula's origins. After becoming the first vampire Dracula would take revenge on all those who had wrong him in his tortured life and the audience would feel sympathy for him...but only for a moment. Because whatever justice or righteous vengeance that might have been had is quickly overshadowed by the realization of the monster that has been unleashed upon the world.

“—I’m gonna kill ya, Elsa Gramhilde.”

“—It is because you will kill me that you are my first love, Garfiel Tinzel.”

Yeesh. They not on complete opposite ends of the spectrum but it's still hard to imagine a contrast more different than Elsa and Ram. Heck of a love triangle for Garfiel.

And of all the ways for Elsa to finally be slain, I can't say being crushed underneath a giant hippo thrown by a teenage man-tiger was one I expected.

“I’m impressed by how meticulous you are. How and when did you cast that spell on Lia...?”

“Spell...? Great Spirit, to what do you refer...?”

“Well, just listen. It got really hard to come out of my icon ever since we returned from the royal capital. If that was all, I would’ve pegged it as some kind of scheme by the Witch Cult group that attacked the village and the mansion, but I was stuck in there even after reaching the Sanctuary. So the spell had to come not from an enemy but from one of our own.”

...

“Fortunately, Lady Emilia was in low spirits from her argument with young Subaru. A little sabotage of your pact with Lady Emilia before departing for the Sanctuary was a trifling affair.”

“On the other hand, a pact between spirit and spirit mage is sacred... It’s not something that can be toyed with from the outside.”

“Even so, I have lived with Beatrice for quite a long time, you seeee. For better or worse, creating loopholes in predetermined things is a specialty of mine—though that girl is too obstinate for such things.”

Okay then. So while Puck definitely isn't a good father overall, it actually wasn't that he was refusing to come out when Emilia needed him. Roswaal used a spell to make sure that he couldn't, which makes sense given his big scheme, shown in a past loop, was to isolate Emilia from everyone and break her mentally.

“Love me? What are you saying?! You hate me. I am the man you hate. To you, I am a man linked to the cause of your homeland’s destruction. Surely, the truth is that you hate me enough to kill me!”

“In the beginning, it was so, but now it is not. Now Ram loves you.”

“That is absurd...! Who—who, I ask, would believe in such cheap emotions?!”

I'm not quite sure how to feel about this, and it's not because of any shipping reasons because I don't really have anyone I ship with Ram. Obviously I knew she had an attraction, I'm just wondering what it was that caused the change in Ram's feelings and what caused her to fall in love. With Subaru for Emilia and Rem for him we see how those feelings were sparked and even Garfiel for Ram has reasons that are simple attraction but easy enough to understand. So what was it for Ram?

“To Ram, this is...the root of all evil.”

Roswaal’s face went pale as he raced over to Ram. Smiling faintly at his action, Ram did not hesitate—she hurled the book of knowledge into the green flame still clinging to a fallen tree.

Sometimes the conditions for victory have little to do with actually winning the physical fight.

“No matter how far you go, you’re still human—you’ll never be like that devil.”

As the spirit flew off, his voice became distant, and his presence vanished, leaving behind only a soft glow.

What remained was the scattering snow and a girl carried by a devil—Nay, there was only a clown.

He was a wretched fool who had tried to become a devil and failed.

That is a really good line. I'm assuming the devil in question is Hector, given he's called the Devil of Melancholy. It is an interesting concept, trying to act like/resemble something you fear and horribly humbled you in the past.

“I won’t let anyone say it’s fine. As long as we’re alive, there’ll be none of this it’s fine stuff—that’s why I don’t want to give up on anyone, not anymore!”

She stood up. That instant, Emilia whirled around, thrusting her arm toward the forest behind her.

She froze to the bone the demon beast leaping toward her, enveloping it in blustering snow and glacial cold.

The creature she had caught was white, small enough to fit in her palm.

However, this was a ferocious being with gleaming red eyes.

—It had arrived. The demon beast known as the Great Rabbit had finally come.

Well....that definitely qualifies as a badass moment for Emilia. I remember when I first started reading the LNs I was worried I might have an unintentional bias against Emilia since, while I liked her fine in the anime, I liked Rem and her pairing with Subaru a lot more. Thankfully the books have really done a great job with Emilia, especially in her character development. I said back during the royal selection that LN Emilia definitely feels like she has more fire to her than her anime counterpart, at least in season 1. I don't think I ever would have expected her to yell at Roswaal the way she does here, and with it still being in character as she's doing it because she's worried about him and Ram.

Puck was a Great Spirit with origins identical to Beatrice’s. However, unlike how she lived according to the will of Echidna the Witch since days long past, he had started a new life long before the birth of the Sanctuary, and she had not seen him since.

Does that mean Puck has a witch as his "mother" too?

But what she found surprising was that he knew of Beatrice’s talents yet did not desire them in any way. Indeed, when he came to ask about curses, it was Beatrice, and not the archive of forbidden books, he came to consult.

The boy harbored no interest in the knowledge left in her care or Beatrice’s power whatsoever.

It's kind of funny how Subaru's ignorance and cluelessness have been both his greatest strength and biggest shortcoming since coming to this world. It wasn't even a thought in his head to consult the books for answers to his problems...probably in part to the fact that Subaru can't read this world's language. His logic was more than likely "Books might have the answer to my problem Beatrice has read a bunch of books. I should ask Beatrice for help!"

—She felt like she had reduced herself to a frivolous and very cheap clown.

Roswaal: "Achoo!"

For as Subaru ran through the inferno, swearing he would bring the girl with him, he was enveloped by an incredibly dense black miasma, almost like a cloak of shadow that shielded him.

Is this because of the Unseen Hands witch factor he got from killing Petelgeuse? Because the black miasma instantly make me think what happens when he tries to tell people about RBD and thus makes me think it's some protection the Witch of Envy is giving him.

A figure dressed in black emerged from the flames: a black-haired woman holding a black blade in her hand.

“Elsa...?”

OH COME ON!

“You’re not Elsa anymore, are you?”

When Subaru posed the question, Elsa—nay, the thing that had been Elsa—turned its empty black eyes toward him. There was no glint of life within them, only bottomless darkness. Subaru was peering into an abyss.

An empty body, a departed soul, and obsession incarnate. Driven by inexhaustible bloodlust, it dragged its smashed lower body along as it crawled toward Subaru through the raging fires.

This was far beyond an unnatural vitality that kept death at bay. The power had become nothing but a curse.

Just like Subaru’s Return by Death, it was nothing save a curse, a yoke placed upon her very life.

I've said it before, I like that dark magic in Re:Zero's world isn't just "spooky evil bad stuff" magic but rather DARK magic. Unnaturally and feels like it should not exist in the world. Elsa's a vampire but usually being a vampire in most stories tends to just equate to drinking blood, strong, and being hard to kill. Here, being a vampire makes Elsa truly seem like some unholy monster. Something truly undead. She's not a vampire because she was bitten by Dracula but rather she's a vampire in that she's a curse upon the world.

I really like how Subaru finally wins Beatrice over, and it's consistent with how he typically tends to make progress, by just being honest with people. He knows Beatrice doesn't need him and that he doesn't have anything to really offer her. So he simply tells her that he needs her and that he wants her around. He could lie or assume and just say he's the person she's waited 400 years for, but instead his words put the choice more in her hands. He's not going to set her free, she has to choose that freedom for herself.

Also, if Subaru's lifespan is just a blip in comparison to hers, what does Beatrice have to lose? If it's a waste of time, well then it's basically just a minute of her time being wasted, all things considered.

“—You wanted someone to take you outside! Isn’t that why you always sat in front of the door?!”

With a decisive sound, that world finally met its end.

The girl’s lonely cage, that solitary world known as the archive of forbidden books, was engulfed by flames and vanished.

But just before that happened, there was a sound.

—The sound of a single tome falling to the archive’s floor.

I HAVE WAITED SO LONG FOR THIS MOMENT!!!

—So began the pair’s first battle, one of the many, many times Beatrice the spirit and her contractor, Subaru Natsuki, would fight hand in hand.

I'm just imagining Subaru shoving Beatrice into Julius' face to brag about her.

Subaru: "You can keep your six little spirits, Julius! I got the best one of all right here!"

Beatrice: "Kindly keep Betty out of this dong measuring contest."

Once they gather the Great Rabbit's copies all in one place I thought they were going to either burn or freeze them all, but sending the Great Rabbit into another dimension was probably the better idea. If Beatrice's theory is right and the rabbit can only create a finite number of itself, even if it can spawn up to that number and infinite amount of times, then even if they failed to get all the copies, say one or two, then the remaining ones would be far less dangerous, since it can't spawn new copies as they all would still technically exist.

“I think you should say something to the one who worked the hardest.”

Subaru couldn’t help but give a short sigh when he saw her childish, cheek-puffing gesture. Then—

“Waaah!”

—sweeping an arm under her, he hoisted up her light body.

Ignoring her cutesy, plaintive cry, Subaru continued to embrace the girl as he twirled around on the spot.

“You did awesome! That’s my Beako! I love you!”

“W-wait a—! That’s not... W-would you let go, I wonder?! Betty is not...!”

“Good girl, good girl! You’re so, so cute! You’re wonderful, Beako! You’re the best, Beako! Beako forever!”

Aww. Subaru's such a good dad.

Given that Roswaal is indeed the original Roswaal, student of Echidna, having lived on into the present day by transferring his soul into the bodies of those in his direct family line, what age is the child when he transfers his soul into them? Is that like a Tanya situation, where Roswaal remembers everything from his old life but has to restart each time as a baby? Or is this like a rite of passage for the men in Roswaal's line and they take on the burden of the original's soul once they come of a certain age? It's difficult to say which is worse.

“It’s just—I think we need to have a proper talk about the baby in my belly!”

“...Excuse me?”

“I don’t know if it will be a boy or a girl, but we need to give it all the love and attention it needs! Still, I don’t know anything about these things... That’s why I have to discuss it with the child’s father...”

...

“Emilia-tan, you know babies aren’t delivered by birds or harvested from cabbage patches, right?”

“But babies are made when a man and a woman kiss, aren’t they?”

...

Given Emilia’s mindset at the moment, Subaru’s words were tantamount to saying he wanted to have lots and lots of children with her. Certainly, there was a part of him that did wish for that, but his top priority was setting Emilia straight.

“C-curse you, Puck...!!”

Subaru directed an angry murmur toward the absent kitty spirit, who continued to sleep deep inside the magic crystal.

—In the back of his mind, he felt like he could see the kitty spirit putting a paw on his head and sticking his tongue out with a thbpttt.

That is just bad parenting right there. Even if Emilia's mentally 14 her body is still physically 18 and would be dealing with at least the aftermath of puberty, if not puberty itself. Regardless of whether she should or shouldn't have sex it's still something she should know about, especially in a world like Re:Zero's where life expectancy probably isn't that high and thus it'd be more common for people to get married and have children at younger ages than in ours.

Also, I'm just kind of amused that in Rising of the Shield Hero, Raphtalia thinking pregnancy was caused by kissing was an anime-only thing, as in the LNs she was well aware of what sex was. Now I'm just going to be expecting Re:Zero to do the opposite and have anime Emilia know what sex is.

“Even if you’re not at full health, you just stood back and watched while people settled things with Roswaal. I was sure you’d flip out seeing him get smacked around that much.”

“What a foolish thing to say... Even Ram does not think Master Roswaal is someone who is never mistaken. If being punched is the natural course of events, he must accept what he deserves. But Ram is free to treat him with great gentleness after the fact. To not comprehend such a thing is the height of foolishness.”

Well, at least Ram's not blind to Roswaal's faults or unreasonably loyal.

“...This is your mother, right?”

“More importantly, this is Echidna, Subaru. Not the ‘Witch of Greed’ you are familiar with.”

Subaru echoed a question first hailed by Emilia, wondering about the two different Echidnas. At present, neither she nor Subaru had found a suitable answer to what that actually meant.

More fuel to the first two theories I had.

So the condition of Subaru's pact with Beatrice is that he can't form contracts with other spirits, and she used up all the mana she had stored up over 400 years to kill the Great Rabbit, meaning she can't do anything like their big battle again. Subaru's gate is completely collapsed, meaning he can't use magic at all, and just keeping Beatrice out during the day consumes all the mana he has. ...Fair enough. It does fit with how Subaru wins each arc, by drawing every sword he has to use and just barely winning despite what he loses in the process. Heck, he still is somewhat in the green here with what he's gained, given he has Garfiel on his side now. And I still feel like Subaru is going to brag about Beatrice to Julius. It also goes along with Beatrice's thoughts of how she and Subaru interacted in arc 2 anyway. He wasn't there for the knowledge or power in her possession. He came there simply for Beatrice. Everything from their pact to her knowledge and powers was simply an afterthought, if even a thought in his head to begin with.

“Emilia—I am your knight and yours alone.”

“—Yes.”

When Emilia responded to the words he spoke, an irresistible wave of emotions brought tears to her eyes.

Yet, even then, Emilia somehow managed to maintain her composure as she gently brought down the sword she had raised. She returned to Subaru, who continued to kneel, the symbol of a knight’s pride.

Reverently accepting it with both hands, he returned the sword to its scabbard.

Completing the ritual, Subaru looked up. With Emilia nodding in assent, he stood on the spot.

And then—

“Emilia-tan, it’s a bit late to mention this, but you look cute and superhot in that outfit.”

“Idiot.”

—with the solemn atmosphere of the ceremony shattered, Emilia stuck out her tongue at him with a reddened face.

My feelings for the Subarem ship haven't lessened but this arc has definitely raised the Subamilia ship up for me, and I didn't even dislike it before. I really did just need them to communicate and have more honest back and forths and this arc really managed to develop that nicely for them. I can buy that these are two people who will eventually have a romantic relationship.

“Mentally speaking, Anne and Emilia are not as far apart as some might think. If anything, Anne puts on greater airs than Lady Emilia. She might very well be the more mature of the two.”

“I’m still holding a grudge against her for planting the idea in Emilia-tan’s head that babies are made by kissing.”

Yeah, I'm still gonna blame Puck for not setting her straight on that.

“And now that you have rejected the path of the Sage and chosen the path of the Fool, I will never allow you to compromise. Is this not natural? It is you who wished for this.”

With Subaru unable to speak a word, Roswaal took a step forward, closing the distance between them. Then, reaching out with a hand, he grasped Subaru’s shoulder, gently pulled his face close, and whispered into Subaru’s ear.

“—Hereafter, if you lose someone around you who you should have protected, I will swiftly burn the remaining others away without hesitation and, with the cursed seal, become ash myself.”

“—?!”

“You have decided to shoulder all. You must not abandon anything. I will not allow a lost world to continue into the future. I reject your compromise—now that I have lost the book of knowledge, I have only you to guide me to Teacher, young Subaru. You and the path you walk.”

Jeez, Roswaal is such a good villain. Yes, he'll work with the hero and he'll do it willingly and genuinely...but that doesn't make him any less dangerous than before. If Subaru falters or fails, Roswaal will push him into using RBD to do things over. And there's little doubt he will, since we've seen him in a few loops already in this arc perfectly content with dying or throwing everything and everyone away when a plan didn't work out, either because he knew Subaru would loop and another life would be better...or simply because continuing on in a world where his plan failed wouldn't be worth anything. It's a good little wrench to throw into the story now that Subaru is going to try to rely on RBD less, and it's a good way of showing Roswaal has not magically changed 100% from who he's been throughout the story and that even bound by a curse he can still do a lot of damage.

The girl walked forward, her long pink hair swaying as she murmured to herself.

The Witch had been released unto the world once more.

...That's probably not good. If I'm reading this right, Echidna, or at least the not-Echidna of the tomb trials, has come back from the dead by way of soul-transfer into the body of one of the Ryuzus.

I cannot state enough how happy I am for this volume to come out and for this arc, that I did really enjoy, to come to an end. Not only was I not letting myself watch the anime until I got this but I wasn't going to let myself start on the web novels either until I finished reading this arc in the LNs. Since vol. 16 doesn't come out until the near end of June and there's no f**king way I'm waiting that long again, I think at some point I'll just start on arc 5 in the WNs and go all the way until wherever it is in the present because I NEED TO KNOW!!! Might even do random thoughts on both the WNs and LNs, which would be kind of interesting. The only comparisons I've been able to do before is the LNs to the anime. I've heard the LNs are pretty faithful to the WNs but I have heard of some differences, like Puck not being in the battle between Ram and Roswaal (and just Puck being a bit more of a prick in general in the WNs).

Original Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Re_Zero/comments/m64crq/novels_first_time_read_through_light_novel_vol_15/

#re:zero #random thoughts #reddit repost

1 note · View note

a-lilacsong · 4 years

Text

Little Black Dress

On April Fool's Day of 2020, I posted this Fanfiction onto the EOA Discord server under the gauze that it was a summary of an upcoming episode. We were all very anxious for any news about future episodes, and I was able to fool some people with this. I wrote this before “Crash Course” came out so all the “main plot things” that happened in this were just me guessing and making jokes about what could possibly happen. Originally I thought of just doing a little description, but pretty soon it turned into an entire plot summary. I just thought of all the things that would be cool to see in the show, as well as some things in my personal life, and wrote it all on April Fool's Day itself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Here's the introduction I did for it, straight from the server itself:] Hey guys I just found this full on plot summary of the Elena of Avalor episode that comes after Crash Course! So don't read this Unless you are ready to get spoiled big time!

Ready for spoilers? Okay, here we go! The episode is titled “Little Black Dress” Mini description is: “Elena and Naomi have to find a way to stop Elena’s new dress colour and power, Meanwhile Gabe, and Mateo try to stop Ash, with help from an unlikely ally.”

That description makes it sound really good but wait, I have the whole plot summary so here you go: [Synopsis under the cut]

It starts off at the castle, we see Elena, reading a book in her room. Naomi comes in and asks what book she is reading while also making the bed, since now Naomi's technically out of an official job so she's been trying a lot of stuff around the palace to see what job sticks. We even get a little montage of this. It turns out Elena is reading a book that Naomi recommended to her and is almost finished, Naomi is happy to hear that, and decides to leave Elena in peace until she's finished reading.

But just as she's about to leave the room she hears Elena's scream and she runs back into the room to find that Elena's dress has turned black! All of the light seems like it's being sucked out of the room while a feeling of the deepest despair comes over them, but Naomi is able to make it across the room and sing a bit of love always to Elena, which gets her back to normal. Then Naomi asks Elena what happened, why did the dress change colour like that?

Elena takes a deep breath and explains to Naomi that the book ended on a cliffhanger, why had she not told her that this book ended on such a big cliffhanger! Naomi tells her that she'd read the book so long ago, she had sort of forgotten the weight of the cliffhanger at the end. Naomi tells her that she had once checked before if there was a sequel to this book, and there wasn't, but she's pretty sure that the author is planning one. Elena retains her composure, but you can tell she is still deeply disturbed. But it's time for the Grand Council meeting now, so she goes to the Grand Council room. Cut to the Grand council meeting, Doña Paloma and Julio are already there, arguing over kingdom finances, when Elena comes in and apologizes for being late. Her grandparents start to fill her in on what has been happening in the meeting when Doña interrupts them. She tells Elena how they've been arguing over whether to spend tax money on relief to chocolate farmers who are having trouble with a fungus that's been growing on the chocolate trees making them less productive. She believes the farmers should spend their own money on anti-fungus measures for the trees but Julio disagrees, so what does she think they should do?

But Elena's dress turns black, almost all the light gets sucked out of the room and strong winds begin to blow, everyone gets under the table. Her grandparents are able to calm her down and ask her what happened. She explains about the new dress colour and that the mention of fungus reminded her of how that book ended with half the characters getting possessed by an evil mushroom that was bent on taking over the world, and not knowing would happen next was filling her with suspense and dread. Julio recommends that she go find the author of the book and ask them how it ends. Elena thinks that's a great idea and decides to do that with Naomi.

Just as she's leaving the grand Council room she bumps into Mateo and Gabe, they tell her that they have some important security matters they need to share with the Grand Council, so they can get the green light to go ahead with their defeating-evil plans. “Just do whatever you must!” She tells Mateo and Gabe before leaving with Naomi to go find the author. They take this to mean they can do ANYTHING they feel they need too.

We follow Gabe and Mateo down to the dungeon where they go to Carla’s cell. She's petting the dog and looking out the window when she hears them come in. She turns and is quite surprised to see them. They tell her that they are planning an important mission that will stop Ash, and her gang, but they need her help to pull it off. She tells them that she will only help them if they de-stone Victor. They agree that they will do that once the mission is completed, as long as she doesn't double-cross them. Carla says they have a deal, and asks them what the plan is.

Gabe explains to her that the guards have sightings of Ash’s gang on the coast of Avalor in a certain village, which means that there is only one place they could be going… “Los Diamante!” finished Carla. It was one of the most famous card game playing houses and music lounges in the entire Everealm. It was run by a gang of criminals and Malvagos led by El Destello. They are so powerful that during Shuriki’s rain they were still able to operate, because they could destroy any Royal Guards or other threats to the place.

It would be a disaster if Ash got them as allies, so Gabe and Mateo decided they would try to convince El Destello to join the good guy side (or at least not join Ash). But they knew they wouldn't last five minutes in that place without a criminal who could help guide them through it, and that's why they needed Carla.

Carla told them that her father had told her all about this place before, and that the place had a strict dress code they would need to follow before they got there (“They don’t let Guards or nerds in there” she said). The dress code was formal suits and dresses. So they got changed and then rode some Jaquins to Los Diamante, and went inside.

The place was very ritzy, and it still had that Avaloran style architecture to it. There were guys playing Go Fish at the tables, people ordering drinks from the counter, and a big stage where an Avaloran-style jazz band is playing. Everyone had a Churro in their mouth. Mateo went to the drink counter and ordered an apple juice, but the guy behind the counter said they didn't have any, but they did have tomato juice, and chocolate milk. Mateo realized they were in the deep end now.

Suddenly Ash, Esteban, and Chatana walk in, all of them dressed up in super fancy outfits. Ash walked up to one of the burly looking criminals standing by the door and asked to see El Destello, so she could give him an offer he couldn't refuse. He said that she would have to wait half an hour for him to finish with his accountant upstairs before he could see anyone.

Carla, Gabe, and Mateo (who had hidden under a table when those three came in), heard all of this and knew they needed to come up with a plan to stop this.

Meanwhile, Elena and Naomi were in the middle of town looking through the town records, to see if they could find the author's name and address. One of the clerks at the building asked them what they were doing and they explained to her their situation. She said she knew where the author lived (whose name was Q.W. Southland) and gave them her address, but told them that the author was planning on leaving Avalor for Norberg today, so they better hurry.

They both ran to the author's house, but they saw that they were too late, a carriage was already leaving the house with Southland inside! Elena refused to give up, so she and Naomi hopped into an empty cart, and attached a large sheet to it like a sail. Elena mustered up her feelings and the strong winds blew, blowing their cart towards the carriage. The carriage sped up in reaction to this, and now they were in a full-on chase scene, zooming through the streets of the city towards the port. Finally, the carriage stopped right before it fell into the water but Elena's cart fell into the water and she and Naomi had to swim back to shore. They were just in time to reach Southland before she got on the ship.

Elena begged to know the rest of the story, but Southland explained to her that she wasn't going to tell any of her readers anything about the next book until it was published, even if they were a princess. Elena would have to wait another eight months like everyone else.

Elena and Naomi were deeply saddened. Elena said that she wished there was at least something she could have to keep her occupied until the next book came out. Naomi looks like she has a moment of inspiration, and tells Elena that she needs to get home and that she should go back to the palace and wait for her there. Elena is confused by this, but sees her friend’s enthusiasm and agrees.

Meanwhile in Los Diamante, El Destello had finally finished with his upstairs business and had come down to the lounge. Ash walked over to him and began to tell him about who she was and about her plans for the most powerful group of dark wizards ever. Suddenly Carla jumped out and interrupted her, she told El Destello that she heard he liked music (why else would you keep a music lounge open during Shiriki’s rain?) and that she was a great singer and dancer.

Carla said that she and her team (Mateo and Gabe) would challenge Ash and her team to a music contest, and that whoever lost wouldn't be able to get help from El Destello or his gang. El Destello thought that sounded like a great idea and agreed. Ash, still surprised by this turn of events, wasn't going to back down from a challenge and also agreed.

So the music contest began. Ash and Chatana sang a Peggy Lee-style song called “Touch of a Feather'' with Esteban playing guitar to back them up. It's lyrics show that it's a really good villain song, referencing Ash’s ambition and Chatana’s yearning for a world she can control. It went off without a hitch, except for when Chatana did a spin and her wings knocked Ash, and Esteban off the stage at the end of it.

Carla sang a Nancy Sinatra-style song called “These Violet Times” with Mateo and Gabe singing backup (Gabe also had a trumpet solo at one point). The lyrics reflect Carla’s feelings about her past and hopes for her future (They also make some not-so-passive-aggressive jabs at Ash).

El Destello said both songs were good, but there was only one winner. He beckoned Ash and her team over to him. Ash smiled, said she was glad to have won, and asked if this meant that he would accept their deal of a partnership?

He told her no, she had not won. He just summoned them over to tell them that they had five minutes to leave before his gang would throw them out. Ash was shocked, Esteban then teleported them out of there before Ash had a chance to do something violent.

El Destello congratulated team Carla on the win. Mateo asked if this meant he would never colaberbate with Ash, and he said “Of course and that from now on whenever they came back to Los Diamante, drinks were on the house.”

Gabe and Mateo were happy that the mission had gone so successfully, and thanked Carla for her help. She asked if this meant that they would free Victor now, and they said yes. “What are we waiting for” yelled Carla as she grabbed them by the hands and dragged them out to the Jaquins, to get them back to the Palace as fast as they could.

Back at the Palace, Elena is sitting in her room tuning her guitar when Naomi walks in with a bundle of scrolls and papers in her hands. She tells Elena when she had finished that book a long time ago, she had been destroyed by the cliffhanger ending as well. So she had written a whole bunch of fanfiction about what could happen next. Then, with all the crazy stuff that's happened in the last few months she forgot about it. She said it's not as good as another book but at least they have it. Elena smiled and said that it's just as good as another book, but then she asked Naomi, “You did complete these right? They don't end on cliffhangers too, do they?”

“No,” Naomi said with a smile “I made sure of that.”

The episode ends with Gabe, Mateo and Carla in the palace garden. Mateo is holding a small vial which he then hands it to Carla, saying she should do the honour. She runs over to Victor and says: “Finally you can be free, Papa!” She holds the potion above his head and pours it on him. And just as the potion touches his forehead- the credits cut in and you have to wait until next episode to see what happens next.

So that definitely sounds like an episode I would want to see, if only it were real… Happy April Fool's Day everyone!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[And now for a bit of a retrospective on that piece. Reading this again really takes me back. Back then I was so worried about Carla and Victor, sometimes I wondered if they'd even get a redemption arc at all. But as the moral of this episode goes “Fanfiction and other fans make you feel less bad about waiting for new content.” And writing this did make me feel a little bit better about everything.

Oh yes who can forget the “ what if black is an emotion colour” theory. most people were taking that to really angsty places, but I decided to do something a little closer to home for me. There was a certain book series [Wings of Fire] that I had in mind writing the plot with Elena. Because I really did feel those emotions when it left off on a cliffhanger. And that was kind of the same with the show as well.

I always liked it and shows and movies where they have parodies of 1930s gangster movies, so I decided to do a kid-friendly parody version of that. I always love the fancy outfits the characters have in those. I realized that churros look like cigars from a distance, so that's why I mentioned that. I was also really hoping for another villain song, and for Carla to confront her mom. So I just fused the two together.

In my mind when I was writing this I imagined that Pili and Tziloco were in another section of Los Diamante, that was meant for Animal Companions, waiting for the rest of Team Ash to finish. And at one point they play some kind of card game against the Jaquins. But I didn't know where I could smoothly fit that into the summary, so I left it out.

Also I just want to explain the title, I decided on it because 1, Elena's dress turns black in this. And 2, a little black dress is a term that's often used for describing simple, yet fancy dresses that some women wear, and that would be fitting for the other plot of this story. So it's sort of a pun!]

#Elena of Avalor #My Fanfiction #My Writing #april fools 2020 #Now that the finale has come out my plan is to just post all the things I haven't posted to Tumblr yet and then make some new stuff #Princess Elena #Naomi Turner #Ash Delgado #Esteban Flores #Chatana #Gabe Nunez #Mateo de Alva #Carla Delgado #April Fools #2020-08-24 #My Post

0 notes

theheightofdishonor · 6 years

Text

Jason Grace in TLO (ok i tried)

I swear, I was going to write a meta on Jason Grace, on how he’s perceived to be vs how he actually is and all that. Trying to pinpoint why exactly Jason in canon is a boring character. No offense, but for the most part, it’s more fandom than the actual books themselves that lead to a person to liking Jason as a character. Now, i’m not trying to say it’s like that for everyone, just that it seems to be true for a lot of people from what I've seen.

Anyway, I started reading the Lost Hero again, to really get that feel for him because I haven’t actually reread the HoO in a while and god, the books infuriate the crap out of me. I don’t remember being this frustrated with it before. I actually like the Lost Hero as a book. But this time, it annoyed me so much I literally couldn’t get through the book or focus enough to stay unbiased as I observed Jason throughout the book.

30 pages in, 30 pages and Jason’s still stumbling around. Now I understand the amnesia thing and he’s trying to figure everything out but there’s not a single instant where he’s solid about anything-except his minute jealousy/hatred of Dylan. I don’t understand why i’m supposed to like his character. Jason’s supposed to be a Roman, he’s supposed to be to Camp Jupiter what Percy is to Camp Half-blood. They’re supposed to be each other’s foils and I can’t see it. Except for his Latin knowledge and stuff, there’s nothing, nothing Roman about Jason at all. He’s been at Camp Jupiter for 12 years from what his SPQR tattoos tell us, far longer than Percy’s been at Camp Half-blood. Yet, how is it that I can’t see a single instance that would prove to me that this kid could stand Lupa’s training and make it to Camp Jupiter?

And we all know the seen in TLO where he’s all ‘I’m the son of Jupiter! I’m a child of Rome, etc’. The speech he gives to Porphyrion, the one that he rattles off like ‘he’s said them many times before’. Nothing in this book shows me that Jason Grace is the type of person to have rattled of his many titles/accomplishments well enough that it would come instinctively out of his mouth.

We don’t need a Roman that doesn’t really fit in, yet is respected, that’s what Frank ends up becoming. I want a Roman that is more, well, Roman. He doesn’t have to be full out Reyna about it but like enough to rival Percy’s Greekness should be good.

And for all this ‘Jason’s a natural leader!’ crap, he doesn’t have that confidence that comes with leadership. And yeah, you can make a shit ton of excuse but the thing is, Jason’s a son of Jupiter, he’s used to being looked up to for this kinda shit and it should be just as instinctual for him to act confident as it is for him to rattle of those names or speak Latin. He has this thing for emotionally closing himself off (that makes complete sense, btw and oh look, also adds another similarity between him and Percy) yet even that doesn’t kick in here. Romans are all about not showing weakness. I know that the point is that he’s supposed to be un-Roman enough to accept/like going over to the Greeks. (Rick FAILED trying to do the opposite by making Percy ‘want’ to go to/prefer Camp Jupiter because his loyalty to Camp Half-blood’s already been too well established and the whole thing ended up coming off as shabby and badly carried out) The problem with Jason is that we don’t see that he’s Roman to begin with. in SoN, Percy’s obviously not Roman, he doesn’t fit in. From the way he thinks to how he fights, he’s Greek. The same can’t be said for Jason. Despite his talk later on, we don’t ever actually see Jason being super attached to Camp Jupiter and it makes me wonder why he was the one send over.

The arc about choosing the other camp doesn’t make much sense to me with the two characters that Rick chooses. Yes, I can see why Percy of all people choosing the Roman Camp would mean something, but in-universe, Percy wouldn’t do that. It’s not believable enough. He may have been able to pull it off but Percy’s deeply rooted in camp and it’s just not played right. And Jason doesn’t come off as Roman enough for it to mean anything on his part. He has some emotional conflict regarding it later but it’s just a few thoughts and until that point, he’s never really shown attachment to the Roman camp or anything really to show that he was really influenced by the 12 fucking years he spent there. While that arc itself has some potential, it just doesn’t work.

Jason as a character doesn’t work for me. He’s so boring, so bland and it bores and infuriates me at the same time. Jason has so much potential. 12 years as a Roman, think of how that would affect him and his views on Camp Half-blood, more than ‘Greeks are so carefree!”. Think of the struggles he’d have wrestling with two vastly different mindsets, especially in TLO. He’s exposed to the Greek beliefs/world far earlier than Percy is to Roman. He’s latching on what they’re telling him because he hasn’t had time to really figure his beliefs and shit out for himself. The mental struggle that would cause later on as he starts to regain his instincts and previous mindset and finding his place in them? God, that could’ve been great. And way more of how his adventures in TLO affect how he sees his previous experiences at Camp Jupiter and flipped. Instead, we can’t pinpoint anything about his character. He’s kind, gentle and cute. Okay, what else? I want something more to his character than that. If you asked me to describe his character, I wouldn’t know how. There aren’t a lot of defining characteristics in his personality apart from the kind gentle thing and okay, maybe you could add that he’s a leader but on Jason, it’s more of a loose title he wears rather than a defining characteristic.

And his relationships as established in TLO. Okay, let’s talk about that. Jason’s two main relationships are with Leo and Piper.

With Piper, it’s more of a romantic sort. He sees her, knows they’re together, tries to get a feel for this girl and figure out what his feelings are towards her but assumes that if he does have them, they will definitely be on a romantic level. The thing with Jiper is that they could be great friends and we could see them bond as friends first and slowly reach the dating thing and you could argue that’s what Rick tries to do but it’s not well done. Jason’s thoughts on the subject don’t go far beyond ‘she’s cute, I wouldn’t mind dating her but I have a feeling I had some kinda thing going on w/ a girl back home’ while Piper can’t stop fixating on what she thought was a relationship with this guy and kinda just wants to get back there without redoing all the work which is admittedly understandable. They don’t really sit down and talk about this. They have moments but they don’t clear up what they think about each other and where they are with each other. And this is the most pushed, most shown dynamic between the trio of Jason, Leo, Piper. It leaves me dissatisfied and disinterested. The whole thing with Piper’s dad and that one other time they had a meaningful conversation was great but come on, that can’t be all they’re getting. We know they’ll end up together eventually, Jason mentions that he thinks she’s cute like on the second page but make it count.

This leads me to talk about Leo. Finally. Personally I think TLO is Leo’s book to shine. When I forced myself to read through the book for this reread, it confirmed Leo as my fav out of this trio (So far, this is before his character was reduced to the sum of his love interests) Now before I talk about Leo in regards to Jason, I wanted to note that Leo came off as extremely non-hetero to me, more than usual. He keeps focusing on girls-and in a horribly shallow way- almost obsessively. It’s like he’s consciously forcing himself to think about it either in order to avoid thinking about something else or to just convince himself that he should have his eye on a girl in a romantic nature at all times. It sounds a lot like I used to and just confirms ace!Leo.

Ok, now let’s actually talk about Jason and Leo. I hate it. Jason does this thing (less than Piper does but still) where he’s constantly wanting Leo out, there’s this general feeling that Leo is unwanted and only there to get in the way of Jason/Piper. Leo’s rarely deemed important enough to consider an equal, the honor goes to Piper. More often than not, he’s just there to be ‘annoying’. Though they keep talking and talking about how their great friendship, they never form one. Part of this is the fact that they don’t realize this is a problem that’s actually happening and part of it’s Jason and Piper’s unconscious attempts to put a distance there. I also feel like it acts to make Jason and Piper seem like an even stronger relationship in comparison to either of their dynamics with Leo but that could be just me. I’m not saying that Leo’s completely faultless here because he doesn’t do anything to resolve this though he constantly feels left out and like a third wheel despite his attempts to repress those feelings. Leo hides his pain with humor and as the story goes on, it feels as if he’s putting up more of a wall if anything because the he’s starting to feel hurt from the constant exclusion, enough that he can’t fully repress it. It sucks even more because if you think about it, they could be a great friendship. They both tend to repress their emotions, they don’t like sharing their personal feelings and thoughts with others, they’re a little slow to trust and that could help both of them, knowing someone who is like them and actively working together to get over/deal with those things together, a kin spirit in a way. Their surface differences would work to make it an even better relationship and we never see that.

Jason/Piper/Leo are meant to be like Percy/Hazel/Frank but in terms of bonds, the SoN trio is miles ahead of our TLO group. Jason’s relationships with Piper and Leo respectively are far more flimsy and ill-formed than Percy’s with Frank and Hazel. And this situation doesn’t give Percy the advantage because it has nothing to do with the audience being familiar with the character and everything to do with the author and how the story is set up/written. Where SoN is great in how it introduces new, likable characters, TLO almost completely fails. Now, it is partially that TLO has to work with three new characters while SoN only had two but that doesn’t excuse the vast differences in character quality.

Oh, before I end this post, I did want to talk Jason and Annabeth. One of my greater regrets, especially following the Mark of Athena and Annabeth’s distrust of Jason was that the relationship between the two didn’t ever go anywhere. Outside of a few moments, it was nonexistent. You’re telling me that TLO Jason would see this girl that should be familiar to him, if only because of her similarities to Reyna and not have an opinion on her above ‘she’s scary’? We know what his relationship was to be with Percy but Annabeth? I’d pay to see that; some kind of pivotal moment where her distrust of him leads somewhere or is played off or resolved or whatever. It could be one-sided or both with Jason being wary around this girl. And though Jason’s reformed to the Greek side, he’s apparently like still somewhat Roman? ( I don’t think he was really roman to begin with but whatevs) I wanna know though how a partial Roman/Greek would stand with Annabeth who out of the 7 is the only one that is completely unapologetically Greek; the only one who’s had as long of an experience at one camp as Jason has. Of course that would unsettle her a bit because she’s never wanted to be Roman and never will and she sees this guy who’s been going to one camp his entire life and you’re telling me she isn’t going to wonder how he could switch over so easily? AND, Annabeth not really liking Jason would def affect his relationship with Percy too. In short, those two could’ve been interesting. I’m not quite sure where I would’ve gone with it but it could’ve been interesting. And that’s all folks.

#jason grace meta #percy jackson #meta #TLO #the lost hero #piper mclean #leo valdez

7 notes · View notes

tonal-modulator · 5 years

Text

Meet the Character: Milia Nyrandil

Okay I’m finally posting anything about my characters-who-have-enough-backstory-to-be-considered-an-OC. They’re all going to be ESO characters so far (all 2-3 of them right now). I decided to just post the questions I’ve been using to get a sense of them.

So without further ado, this is Milia!

Apparently tumblr wants to renumber things, and I’m not going to go reformat the whole Word doc, so they’re all going to have to be question 1. It also didn’t save my nesting. RIP.

Name?

Milia Nyrandil

Nickname?

Mils

Class?

Dragonknight

Focus/role (e.g., magicka, stamina, tank, healer)?

Magicka

Race?

Dunmer

Age?

70-ish

Alliance?

Ebonheart Pact

How do they feel about/relate to their alliance?

Probably no strong opinion, basically that an alliance is better than being conquered.

Do they fight for their alliance in Cyrodiil? Why or why not?

No, I think she just has better things to do.

Are they more confident or nervous?

Confident

Are they more outgoing or reserved?

Outgoing

What are they like in their interactions with others (polite, rude, friendly, impatient, wary, distracted, etc.)?

Friendly, energetic but not bubbly, just like “Yeah I’ll totally go into this ruin and find your stuff!”

Where did they grow up?

Balmora, Vvardenfell, Morrowind

Is that the homeland of their race? How does that affect them?

Yes, and she feels connected to her culture.

How and why did they learn their primary skill set?

Growing up basically next door to a volcano, fire magic just seemed natural. And she has a tendency to charge into potentially dangerous situations or get right up on the enemy in a fight, and so it was important for her to learn defensive spells along with destruction.

Do they have any family? What is their relationship like?

I need to think more about this. I think she has both her parents and a younger brother. Everyone gets along fine; she left because she grew up and likes to explore.

Do they have a (primary) home?

I think the Ald Velothi house is where she primarily lives.

Do they share it with others? Are their roommates also adventurers?

She and Talvini are the only ones who primarily live there, but the rest of my toons also crash there on occasion, and she’s cool with that. It keeps things interesting.

Do they like having somewhere to return to, or do they prefer to always be on the move?

Both. A home provides a safety net, even if she doesn’t stay there for very long or very often.

Do they know any of your other characters? How do they relate to them?

She’s dating Talvini and they’re super tight. Otherwise, I think they’re all friends to some extent. They may not frequently be in the same place, and sometimes they have to communicate through Tythis, but she’s happy to trade pants with anyone.

Are they an active member of any guilds? How do they relate to their guilds and their guildmates?

I think she’s slightly involved with both the Mages Guild and Undaunted, but she’s not quite enough of a nerd to fit in with the Mages Guildies, and not quite loud enough to fit in with the Undaunted.

Do they frequent the guild hall?

Nah.

How do they feel about combat?

She’s definitely more fight than flight, and quick to reach for her staff in the face of danger. And on one hand, she gets a bit of an adrenaline rush from fighting, but also she kind of wishes people wouldn’t be so quick to aggro, because then they end up dead.

How do they feel about stealing?

She’s not really the sneaky type, and so tends to avoid it, but morally, ambivalent.

How do they feel about murder (i.e., outside of combat)?

Not a fan. It’s dishonorable and a waste of a person.

How do they feel about necromancy?

Gross, super disrespectful, defiles the ancestors.

Is it important to them to be powerful?

Enough to be independent, yes. But she doesn’t seek power for the sake of power.

(If they’ve played any of the main questline) How are they coping with having been killed?

It definitely messes with her. She values being able to defend herself, and it’s how she justifies travelling all over Tamriel on her own. To be dragged off and murdered without so much as the chance to put up a fight has shaken her deeply. But it is important to her to appear confident and strong, so she doesn’t talk about it. Instead, she acts more outgoing to almost “taunt” people into revealing themselves as friend or foe. But she is absolutely terrified that for all her training, she’ll be killed again by some unseen enemy, and this time for good.

Are they religious? What pantheon/practice, if any, do they follow?

Yes, the Tribunal

How do they relate to their religion and/or their gods?

She’s definitely loyal, but not in a way that necessarily looks super solemn-and-devout to an outside observer. And I’m sure she’ll swear by Vivec’s holy nose hairs on occasion. But also I think she either is or has considered becoming a Buoyant Armiger.

Is this the dominant religion where they grew up? If not, how did they come to it?

Yes.

If they worship multiple gods, do they have a patron or “main” god?

Vivec is her patron. She likes the warrior-poet duality and tries to emulate that in herself. (She’s not much of a poet, but she still has a side that appreciates aesthetics.)

How do they feel about the various deities/pantheons/practices in Tamriel other than their own?

She doesn’t pay much attention to them, but generally accepts the Dunmer/Tribunal view that the Daedra are outdated but also “better” than the Aedra, but that really neither the Daedra nor the Aedra are worthy of worship.

(If they’ve played any of the main questline) How do they feel about having to travel to and from Coldharbour?

She definitely has some misgivings about traveling to and from the plane controlled by one of the four corners of the House of Troubles, and especially worries that she’s Tower-of-Babel-ing a bit, considering that going to Coldharbour to end Daedric threats is kind of Sotha Sil’s domain. But she tells herself that if any of the Three had a problem with it, they would have just told her up front.

What kind of mount do they prefer?

Sometimes a guar, sometimes a horse with Dwemer armor.

What kind of pet do they prefer?

The prong-eared grimalkin.

Dunmer-specific questions

How do they feel about the Great Houses (as a system, not necessarily each one individually)?

She grew up with it and is generally cool with it. But she has a complicated relationship with the Morag Tong. She recognizes their importance in keeping the Houses from civil war. But as her own reputation grows, so does her fear that she will end up with a writ out on her. Given her probably-PTSD from the whole being murdered thing, she is absolutely terrified of that possibility.

Do they belong to a Great House? If so, which one?

Yes, House Redoran.

Were they born into it, or did they choose to join?

She was born into it.

What is their rank in the House? (Or, more generally, are they a high-ranking member or more common-level?)

Common, probably Hireling.

How do they feel about the other Houses?

Hlaalu and Telvanni have too much subterfuge and competition for her tastes. She also regards Telvanni and Dres with disdain because of their attachment to slavery. And Indoril feels like Redoran but More So, and she likes her current level of Redoran.

How do they feel about Ashlanders?

She’s largely cool with them and wishes the Houses would leave them alone, but she’s also a bit wary because of some significant ideological differences, and probably because of Tribunal propaganda.

If they grew up in Morrowind, how do they feel about outlanders?

Given how she loves exploring the world/continent and seeing everything that exists, I think diversity is genuinely exciting to her, so she very much welcomes outlanders.

If they have interacted with any of the Tribunal, how do they feel about it?

Yes, and she’s both nervous and awestruck every single time.

How do they regard them when interacting directly (e.g., with awe, respect, disdain)?

Definitely with great respect, although she also tries not to go over the top and embarrass herself.

#eso #milia #my ocs #tes

0 notes

repeatsfate · 7 years

Note

A, K, R!!

vidya games!

K – game you’re most looking forward to?

at the moment it’s super mario odyssey and pokemon ultra sun and moon! and, uh… my inner 12 year old is rearing her ugly head to force me to admit i’m also pretty hyped for sonic forces, oops. lOOK IT LOOKS FUN, OKAY…

i’m looking forward to fe musou too but also i’m pretty neutral on it– everything they’ve revealed has been super incredible so far and i’m looking forward to maining my birb, but i’m more interested in the confirmed fe16 and i’m looking forward to hearing more about that when the time comes.

R – most underrated game?

hmmmm… while xenoblade chronicles itself would certainly fit the bill despite shulk being a giant meme now, i think i’ll take it a step further and go on to say xenoblade chronicles x deserves a bit more love than it got–

despite the very real flaws with the game and some aspects of the story, a thing that draws me to it aside from the ‘if you can see it, you can go to it’ MASSIVE open world and setting on a foreign planet was just how human its supporting cast and even minor npcs are. the game does an excellent job of portraying raw humanity in both ends of the spectrum– where there are heroes, there are people even in man’s most desperate hour that took that second chance as an excuse to be horrible, horrible people. the encounter of alien life goes as swimmingly as you expect, with the remaining fragments of humanity split on how to deal with these new beings in their midst. some choose to try and form alliances and bonds, the others shun and fear the outsiders– many quests actually revolve around the racism in what’s supposed to be a safe haven for the aliens pledging themselves to humanity’s side. the conflict taking up the last leg of the game is one born of human grief and the sting of loss– and when you really get into the motivations behind it it’s so easy to understand why the person did what they did but also acknowledge yeah no you did bad buddy you gotta pay for it now. i just???? it’s so good????

the planet and creatures that make up the game’s setting are imaginative and beautiful, i honestly love just booting it up and wandering. sometimes it’s scary as all heck because OH GOD GIANT MONSTER OUT OF NOWHERE but also… that just adds to the immersion and feeling like you’re a tiny fish in a big, big sea… and when you’re strong enough to stand up to those monsters it’s the most satisfying thing in the world.

the musical direction is honestly up to taste- i personally adore xcx’s soundtrack, but those not a huge fan of hiroyuki sawano’s works might find it lacking. here’s a personal favourite!

point is, it’s super fun, i want to do an araceli run sometime if i can ever be arsed to go back on my wii u or it gets a switch port, and a verse would be fun to play around with… i’m not a huge jrpg person, but i really really like xcx. also, fans of matthew mercer– he’s in this one, too! he plays lao huang, one of my all time favourite characters tbh

point is it is flawed, yes, but it’s also a very solid jrpg that i had fun sinking hours into and i’d totally do so again

A – favourite game of all time?

my top fave game of all time? easy! it’s the legend of zelda: wind waker!

it wins in both nostalgia points and a critical eye as i’ve gotten older– as a little kid, it was the first game i ever actually beat all by myself! the gamecube was the first home console i ever got to own– for a while i lived with my granny, who wasn’t very big on gaming if that makes sense? and then after moving back in with my mom she got me one for christmas and a friend lent me wind waker after i tried playing it at his house and repeatedly got stuck in the forsaken fortress. the excitement of finally making it past that and seeing this big, bright, beautiful world and story unfold before me has stuck with me to this day?? idk how to explain it i just. wind waker was an important game in my childhood, and i’ve played through it a loooooot– mostly i’ve noticed it was during times of stress or particular loneliness. everyone has that one game that’s been there™ for them during times of duress, and wind waker has always been mine.

okay i’m read more-ing the rest of this because i… went on for a WHILE. which is also why i answered it last oops. tl;dr there are many reasons why i love this game and it’s still my fave even now that i’m nearly 23.

as an adult, i’ve found that from a technical standpoint the game holds up really well, too– even without the hd remake on the wii u wind waker is still a very beautiful, stylistic game; a major benefit to having taken the art in a more cartoony direction is that it prevents the game from aging too much; if you were to look at the vanilla gamecube edition now, it still holds up amazingly! (meanwhile, i find that while twilight princess is still lovely, the more realistic art direction tends to date it a little. i could look at the original and just know the era it was made in, whereas if i never saw wind waker before, i would question it.)

the textures are rather blurry, sure, but that was a product of the time– hypatia on tumblr actually produced a mod with hd textures for roms of the gamecube version– check out these comparasion shots of the then-work in progress mod versus the original textures… and then here’s a few polished shots of the mod with a few extra effects dolphin/ishiiruka can provide. in short, the original wind waker is a very, very beautiful game and age has done very little to tarnish that even with the remake’s updated graphics.

but obviously graphics don’t make or break a game, though proper presentation is important– wind waker’s story also resonates with me deeply in various aspects. as an older sister, the initial quest to set out and rescue your younger sibling in danger caught my attention and held it fast; they do a very good job of making you feel attached to aryll, and the scene where she is kidnapped always tugs at my heartstrings every time i see it. watching this young boy who lived the world’s most quiet little life on a tiny island suddenly get swept up into this grand, big adventure to rescue someone dear to him and becoming an actual hero – despite having no relation to oot link whatsoever! – is the quintessential coming of age story that most people can relate to, and watching that change as the game plays out is always really sweet???

it was nice watching link’s development through his little actions: the backing away from helmaroc king when he first storms the fortress and then confident staring it down the second time and then giving it what for– aside from ganondorf himself that’s my favourite boss in the game if only because of those moments of development. link’s not just some kid from outset in over his head anymore– he’s a hero who overcame the trials of the goddesses himself in the name of protecting his baby sister, and he will not fail again. and then, after he could easily just throw in the towel and take his sister home because he accomplished what he set out to do, link goes on and sees it through to the end anyways because restoring order to the world is the right thing to do– there’s no legacy of knights looming over his head like several of his other incarnations. there’s no grand kingdom, there are only desolate little islands. there’s a princess, but… he barely knows her. hell, she didn’t even know she was a princess until that moment.

the story also touches on themes of death and the ends of eras… but also ends on a note of hope and new beginnings– clinging to the past only leads to ruin, and we must create opportunities for ourselves and the world to grow. hyrule is actually completely washed away by the end, and ganondorf goes with it– unless we assume breath of the wild is in the adult timeline, that’s it. he’s gone FOREVER in the subsequent games, with bellum and malledeus taking his place as the main villain. the kingdom link and tetra found is called new hyrule, but that’s all they share in significance– it’s their own land, just like the king said. that final scene of wind waker with the king always got to me– that message of hope is so poignant and powerful, i just. i don’t know how to put it into words, but it’s a scene i love dearly.

then there’s the music and cast of characters, and even quests and gameplay? i know the sailing could get tedious but i always liked it; it was relaxing to me just watching the virtual waves and listening to that beautiful score?? the characters are all bright and unique and fun– they’ve got their own little lives and you can impact them in so many different ways and things definitely change once you do?? like starting windfall vs windfall after you do a few sidequests or even turn on the ferris wheel and lighthouse again feel so different? it’s a neat little detail i’ve always found!!

…i really need to stop rambling about wind waker now i actually dozed off a bit typing this post, oops.

#long post;#◈▏▐ ❛ ɪ ᴄᴀɴ'ᴛ sᴀᴛɪsғʏ ʏᴏᴜ / ʙᴇᴄᴀᴜsᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴀɴᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʀᴜᴛʜ. ❜ ― ( latrocinari )#◈▏▐ ❛ ᴄʜɪɪ ɪs sᴘᴇᴀᴋɪɴɢ. ❜ ― ( ooc )#◈▏▐ ❛ ᴡᴇ'ʀᴇ ɴᴏᴛ ᴅᴏɴᴇ ʏᴇᴛ. ❜ ― ( meme )

1 note · View note