#the whole 'deliberately hurting someone you love bc it will save their life' thing is SUCH A TROPE in a non-platonic context I wanna SCREAM | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cinnamonest · 3 years

Text

Rewriting my Diluc housewife thoughts but I saved it in my notes this time, but I made it infinitely more sexist than it already was before bc 1) I was in the kink mood and 2) the spirits of writing gods possessed my body and told me that is the way all Diluc content should be, so, this is major 1950s-ish housewifey horrendously misogynistic shit, you've been warned. Like, even *I* looked back over this and was like "wow this is vile" which is kinda saying something for me so, putting the nastier parts under cut for the sake of my followers' eyes ----------- I was thinking about the post a while back about Diluc reforming a criminal darling - a thief around Mondstadt that's been on a crime spree and of course he catches wind of that and goes to defeat the perpetrator (surprisingly very easy? How is a thief this weak?) and haul the bastard off to jail except... What's this? Said criminal is actually just some girl and not a gross ugly bastard?? This changes things. Clearly, this was not an intentional act of malice or greed, but rather, he, master of criminal psychology™, rationalizes that the world is far too cruel for unwifed girls that have no one to depend on, a cold terrible place, so you must have been driven to these actions out of desperation. You had no provider, no caretaker, which are needs. How could you possibly be expected to provide a means of living for yourself?? This is just the consequences of the unfairness of the world. However, things all work out in the end. You need to be taken care of and restrained from these self-destructive choices by force (since you cannot recognize how bad it is, not that you're expected to, it's natural that you have poor perception, that's why you need a man to make choices for you), and he needs a wife. This solution benefits all parties.

He is, however, a rather dense man, and doesn't really think to like, tell you that. Or tell you anything. He's too lost in thought in his planning -- gonna get you new clothes to replace your ragged ones, gonna have to rearrange the guard schedule so they can watch the house better, all that -- and just kinda slings you up and over his shoulder without a word. Ignores you kicking and hitting because it doesn't really hurt or anything, you're too weak for that. Just says he’ll explain in detail later, but don’t worry, you’re not going to jail. He’s just taking you home. This is better, he says. Stop struggling so much, what, you want to go to jail? No? Then be still. And you don't recognize that it's good for you yet, but again, that's expected. In a better time or society, you would have been married off sooner, and prevented from ever falling victim to your own decision making to begin with, but the world isn't perfect and you can be forgiven for it. You're not responsible for your own actions since you can't comprehend them. It's frustrating and he sighs a bit over it, but that's just the way things are. You'll be happy in the long run, even if it takes a while, you're naturally programmed for a better lifestyle he has in mind. And, really, he's glad you weren't married off, because if you were then he never would have had you, so even though it was technically unideal, the stars align and the universe works out things perfectly. It's all the more of a sign that this was fate and you were made for him. The issue is that a hardened criminal darling is... Not the ideal candidate for a housewife. To some extent, he's right that the criminal underworld hardens a person, you can't survive in that realm if you're submissive or weak willed. And criminal darling certainly is not. Loud mouthed, opinionated, argumentative, bad attitude, defiant and aggressive and very much unafraid. A complete loose cannon. All very unfavorable traits. Worst of all, very much unaccepting of and ungrateful for the privilege of a second chance and being graciously granted the opportunity for a better life. Lots of bad behaviors.

The cursing is a problem. It's not very... Wife-like. Gives off a bad image, you know. Especially since said cursing is usually directed at him at a very loud volume with a snarl and getting all up in his face to tell him he's fucking insane and a bastard. To be honest, the worst part isn't the words themselves, it's the fact that you are so unafraid to be defiant and so fiery that is the primary issue. You disobey very deliberately. Little acts of pettiness. Being mean to the maids who are so graciously trying to teach you how to cook (at his direction), since you had no idea how to (and nearly burned his house down as a result). The first time you were mean and bitter and that's how you learned they report back to him about how you behaved. It did not go over well.

Intentionally burning food. Once you somehow found a bottle in a cabinet somewhere in the mansion and put rat poison in his food, made him sick. Muttering a sarcastic whoops and shoving a vase off to crash and shatter on the floor. Early on you refused to wear all the nice dresses you were generously given and even tried to go through his clothes to find something to wear, which was kinda cute since it was way too big, but still. You mutter and grumble under your breath every time you're given a command. The most important thing is sex, though. You know, your job. One of your only real responsibilities. He has a very stressful job. It's only reasonable that he can expect to come home to his sweet, loving little wife with open arms and equally open legs. You've probably fucked around a bit right? For money, for favors, for intel, you get the idea, lots of ties to criminal gangs to earn their trust. So, if you do it for something so insignificant, how much more does he deserve it for taking care of you fully? You should -- and you will, with time -- drop to your knees the second he walks through the door. But instead, sigh, you fight and whimper and cover your face in shame after you spasm and cum, and worst of all, you actively try not to cum. You shouldn't feel ashamed of that, it's good, he says. Sure, you may not be officially married (since the laws of Mondstadt unfortunately require that whole "consent" thing for both parties, ugh), but, he's basically your husband right? So, it's perfectly normal, you're supposed to cum for him. Maybe once you're all knocked up you'll be even hornier, and less shameful. He actually wasn't expecting you to be this bad. Incredibly stubborn and prideful. Literally the exact opposite traits of a good wife, you know, submissive and humble and obedient. He kinda thought that it was like... automatic. That once he just kinda shoved you in the right environment, it would be like flipping a switch right? Apparently not. But no matter. It can be changed, with effort and time. You're worth it. See, you're not supposed to backtalk him, you're supposed to smile and do what you're told without question. You're supposed to submit and obey, and instead you seem hellbent on pissing him off out of spite - and frankly, you're doing a good job of achieving that. Every time you defy him it sparks an irritation he can't describe, worse than he'd normally get from just being snarled at by anyone - no, something about being disrespected by someone he feels is beneath him makes him much, much angrier than it would be if it were, say, one of the business partners who get snappy and argumentative very frequently. He could break you and it would be easy, don't you know that? You stomp and you hit him and you yell, but clearly you process that you have to look up to look him in the eye, you have to realize how much smaller you are. You hit him even though you have to know by now he'll just grab your wrists, and like always you'll be unable to even hope of pulling out of his grip, the strength difference between you two is so great. There's no way you don't realize all that, yet you continue to behave the way you do. The inferiority is so blatantly obvious, but you act as if it's not. He spends a lot of time contemplating the source of this, the cause of your behavior, it occupies his thoughts. It's like... You resent him for something. Could it possibly be kidnapping you and keeping you as a glorified sex slave? No, no, that's not it. It's something else, yes. Are you just bitter about being inferior in, you know, every conceivable way? Is that it? The criminality for you was compensation to make you feel powerful, perhaps. You have a complex. You resent him not for anything he's done, but because you know he's stronger and smarter and generally superior to you. You don't want to accept it. You're prideful when you shouldn't be. You're supposed to be humble and content with your inferiority. Yeah, that's it. You just have a negative perception of the lifestyle you're supposed to have. Maybe some event in your life or someone else warped your view of things. You don't realize how happy you'd be if you just accepted it. Yes, if you submitted to it, if you swallowed your pride and actually accepted your place, you'd find you would be very happy, you just don't know that. Or maybe, your brain can't grasp something like that. After all, that's the reason you're supposed to be the submissive party of the two of you, you're not as bright or perceptive (says the densest man alive). You have to be... Led. Guided. So he says it. He is, again, a dense man. He does not really think about the fact that perhaps blatantly confronting you with the epiphany he thinks he's had and specifically using the words inferior and weak and small is probably not going to make you very happy. You get bitchy and bratty and try to hit him and he sighs because, see, this is exactly what he's talking about. You reacting the way you did only confirms you do have a complex, he says. So, how could he go about... reconditioning? He is not the most creative man, but thankfully it's a rather easy problem to solve. If you're reminded of a reality often enough, you have to accept it. For starters, using physical strength against you. Maybe that will metaphorically open your eyes. Holds you down in place when you're hitting him like you do, firmly bending you over a counter or whatever and just holding you in place. Come on, try to get up, try to push him off. You snarl and claw at the marble and push will all your strength, but he doesn't budge, not until you politely apologize and ask him to let you up. If you're being difficult and not going where he tells you to, well, he can just sling you up over his shoulder and carry you. If you're fighting being fucked he can just flip you over and press your face into the mattress and hold you still, and you can't help but take the brutal reality that you're basically a ragdoll to him, that is, physically overpowering you doesn't even require trying. It helps to knock you down a peg, remind you of your place and maybe get you to swallow that pride a bit. The orgasms and fucking have a similar effect -- every time you can't help but feel like he has a power over you. And really, he kinda does. Every time you lay there still panting and shivering in aftershock, the shame comes swarming in, all the obscene noises you made and the way you came undone under the person that treats you like property. Even if the rational part of you knows better, you can't help but feel like in a way it's like you let him win, allowed yourself to more or less prove him right. Maybe you'll learn better if you're in more humiliating positions. Stuck getting rammed from behind, hand forcing your face down and ass up. Actually correcting bad behaviors requires more direct approaches, so he takes the... Old fashioned route. After all, it's pretty much guaranteed to work. You don't listen to words, you don't listen to reason, but you'll certainly listen to handprints and belt welts on your ass. It's the first time you really, truly break, and that brings him a lot of satisfaction. The first time you really cry and whimper and beg and apologize so profusely it feels like you mean it for once. Granted, for a while you just persist in your bad behaviors and even try to run when you see him sigh and take the belt off, but you never get far. And, most notably, you actually fix your behaviors, with enough reminders. At one point, the next time you start being bad and get to bitching and snarling and putting up a fight, you catch the look on his face and, for once, you shut your mouth and look down and mumble an apology by default. See, you're learning. Speaking of, you still have that major issue with backtalking him. You're supposed to submit to him and acknowledge his authority over you. So he gets firm. Grabs you by the jaw and forces you to look him in the eye and reminds you that you will *not* get an attitude with him. You *will* show some respect. You say yes sir and no sir and do what you're told. And if you forget, he can give you a reminder, if you want that. But you shake your head with fear in your eyes, say you don't want that. It makes you mad. You want to lash back, but you swallow your pride and mutter a fine - before realizing the mistake, violating the rule you were just reminded of. You stammer out a yes sir but it's already too late. He has to control himself too, not let his anger get the better of him. He speaks in a way that isn't snarling and mean, but rather firm, cold, a flat tone that asserts dominance and demands respect. But... still wants you to like him. So he has to be nice, too. After all, you'll learn better if you're rewarded for being good, right? So you can get little rewards. Words of affirmation. A pat to the head. He'll buy you something you want, let you drink a bit (since, as a thief, of course, you had a problem with that before you came home, but that had to be corrected too, since drunkenness isn't very befitting). And sooner or later he does have a really good little wife. He's proud of you. You smile and obey commands without complaining. He can come home every day, and rather than hearing a long report from the staff about how much trouble you caused that day, instead you have food and smiles and sweet affection waiting on him, you hug him when he walks through the door. You're polite and sweet to the various business partners and guests that come through -- you don't speak to them without permission though, of course, and you look down at the ground so you don't make eye contact with another man. People say he's lucky and how they wish they had a wife that was so outwardly affectionate to them as you are to him, always clinging to him physically. And you don't complain or every object to anything, you just smile and say yes and do it. It makes him happy in a weird way he can't quite articulate. A warm swell of pride, a feeling of success. You have vague memories of a time when you were breaking into houses just to scrape by, not knowing when you'd eat next, not knowing where you'd sleep. It's kind of a fuzzy memory now. You don't have to worry about those things anymore, and you're a lot happier this way.

#this is vile im sorry #tw: ff #tw: misogyny #.dl #yan.txt #q

283 notes · View notes

tequiladimples · 3 years

Note

I hope this doesn't come off as rude, but I saw that you dislike when collision is branded het cause you're not het, but no one's talking about you personally? like for me, I really like collision but I can understand the criticism in a way and that isn't an attack on you (or an attack at all lol). again hope I'm not rude but idk it seems unnecessary to get upset, it's better to take it as constructive criticism

sigh i don't think ur rude but it simply isn't constructive.

look i’ll talk abt this one more time n then i Beg we can put it to rest! (this is gna be a lot of word vomit but if i'm elaborative now i hope i won't have to talk abt this ever again)

i’m deeply insecure abt many aspects of collision. i don’t really keep that a secret. i also know some ppl don't like fantasy, some ppl don't like the kinds of dynamics i like, some ppl don't vibe with my style of writing (hell, i barely vibe with my style of writing). those things are fine. i can't control that and i don't take that personally. the reason why this is the one critique i do take personally is because it genuinely presumes wrongful, harmful things about me and my values, especially when i've made deliberate efforts to avoid writing the exact flavor of fic they're accusing me of having written. just because people don’t mean for what they say to reflect back on me, doesn’t stop it from doing so.

the thing about calling something a “het fic” is that the term brings along certain connotations which i don’t stand by at all and feel deeply uncomfortable and distraught to possibly have created. i’ve gone over this godforsaken story again and again just to be absolutely sure i didn’t actually do so. when people say “het fic” they generally don’t mean “boy meets girl and they fall in love”, they mean “super rude and mean boy meets uptight virtuous girl and makes her fall in dependence with him through manipulation and treating her like shit until she behaves how he wants.” and that is straight up not the fic i wrote. i’m not stupid. i know the dynamic i went with is widely and easily misused and there’s a lot of fiction depicting really bad, uneven, unhealthy relationships through it. i knew this going in, and i’ve tried persistently to avoid making those same mistakes.

skipping over the fact that they’re both boys (bc duh)--harry doesn't exhibit any real manipulative power over louis. collision harry is a grumpy, fruity little nerd who happened upon a really unfortunate lot in life and managed to trick himself into believing he's evil for like half a second of the story and his resolves crumble like a danish pastry the moment he receives his first hug. he's kind of aloof and arrogant, and understandably hardened from his past, but he's not bad. he's just lost. that's the basis of his character arc. now on the other hand, louis has harry wrapped around his finger starting like chapter 4. harry’s the one who opens up emotionally first, harry’s the one desperately seeking louis’ approval and caring about his opinion, harry’s the one who makes himself vulnerable continuously throughout the entire story. the only time louis makes himself vulnerable on a comparable scale is during the smut scenes, and even then, harry is gentle and attentive and puts louis first. louis is less experienced than harry in that area, but he isn't scared or intimidated by harry, and he has full reigns of the progression and nature of their relationship as a whole. that’s kind of how it needs to go with tough x soft dynamics for the power balance to not feel uneven, and i wrote the story accordingly. if you then happen to still be so blindly determined to associate soft/small with weakness (and thereby uh, womanhood ig) that you still felt like louis had an inferior position to harry solely because he is indeed soft/small, that sounds quite frankly like a you problem.

now, the whole point of louis’ character is that he’s underestimated. sure, he’s naive and self-centered and sheltered from the real world--that’s the basis of his character arc. those things all change. but louis isn’t ever weak. like idk who apparently needs to hear this but you can be small and simultaneously not be a pushover. the two aren’t mutually exclusive. there isn’t a single time louis takes shit in this story, especially not from harry; he gives back as good as he gets every time. oh! and then he literally saves the entire universe and the execution of that whole thing was his idea alone. i tried really hard to underline how strong-willed and full of grit he is to contrast what others think of him. if you think he’s portrayed as a meek and frail damsel, you missed the point. once again, i feel like we circle back to this misconception of louis being kind of naive and physically small = louis being inferior = louis being female. just do some soul searching.

(i could also get into the fact that for a bunch of people who don’t know these boys personally (no matter how much we like to think we do), this fandom is weirdly opinionated about characterization. especially regarding sexual stuff. i know creating a version for ourselves of who we think these boys are based on things we recognize in ourselves or things we find endearing is part of the comfort with loving them. but that doesn’t really equate to actually knowing them, and besides, this is fan fiction; no one’s opting to write a biography, anyway. being experimental and explorative and putting different aspects of their personalities in different lightings is what makes fic fun. if someone’s writing harmful or one-dimensional characters, that’s one thing, and preferences is again whatever floats your boat. but the “out of character” argument feels mostly really strange to me. this is a bit of a tangent, though.)

lastly, the thing is that i will and i do take it personally if someone insinuates that a character--a gay character--that i, a lesbian, construed is a secret vessel for expressing heterosexual attraction. if someone calls louis a “self-insert”, that does reflect back on me. and to elaborate on that--i don’t particularly love to bring it up, but it's quite disheartening to pour personal PTSD experiences into a character and rly put effort into doing it right and justice and underline growth and healing, just to find out people disregard all that completely in favor of declaring that my self-projection lies in the attraction to a man--which is to say, the one thing i couldn’t possibly feel more estranged from. it's so incredibly tactless. i feel thoroughly whiny at this point but how is that not supposed to make me a little sad?

anyway. none of this is to say that you can’t dislike or critique collision. you can. sometimes ppl don’t like things. but i hope i’m clear about where i’m coming from with my discomfort now. people’s preferences and dislikes are indeed not mine to be hurt by, but these things are. this definitely got unnecessarily long and i probably look like i take myself unbearably seriously (i promise i don’t), so i’m sorry. but at least i've said everything now, and if i encounter this sort of rhetoric in the future, i have something to redirect people to. also anon, none of this is directly pointed at you, i know you mean well. take care <3

#look away this is so long #also @ my non fic mutuals scroll past it pls #it’s not that deep i’m just tired #ask

28 notes · View notes

fansofvow · 3 years

Text

im here to clear up some things.

edit: just scroll to the bottom for the tl;dr cause this is a lot but i think its necessary so it doesnt seem half assed or glossed over.

if you can’t tell by the perpetual lowercase here, its mod galen! i figured i should address the drama coming on here from a different perspective. no, this isn’t mod atlas dumping all her problems on me, she’s already tried talking abt it herself - its me deciding to speak up on my own accord after seeing the shitfest my dash has become.

keep in mind - i will be happy to discuss any of this with you guys civilly, but im not going to be kind to nasty anon hate. dm us, or just send us a polite ask, and we can sort things out! if we’ve done something ignorant, i promise you we will educate ourselves and apologise sincerely.

the galen thing

first and foremost - i saw some people saying its sus that i, an nb mod, was added to the blog right after the galen debacle. it was not to save face or hide behind me! ironically, the reason i got added now of all times was because mod atlas and i were discussing what was going on, i gave my thoughts on the matter, she asked me if id be interested in being a mod!

mod atlas then thanked me for my insight and educated her on the issue and figured it would be a good idea to actually have someone in the lgbt+ community on the blog - that way, these silly ignorant mistakes will not happen again. i wont let it happen. not to mention she’s getting pretty busy in her personal life so she thought itd be a good idea to bring someone else on board.

i believe that people can learn from their mistakes - i was also hurt by that misgendering galen post. i bitched about it too. but i saw that everyone involved apologised, genuinely didn’t mean it, and promised to do better. and i’ll hold them to that! but im not gonna start talking trash abt them on other peoples blogs just bc they made a rly ignorant post. if you’re cis, i really don’t want you speaking up on this matter anymore. its not your fight. youre not in the position to forgive nor condemn any of these people. trans folk, im not going to tell you that anyone deserves your forgiveness, that’s up to you, but what they do deserve is your decent respect. unless they say theyre blatantly against trans people - aka make a deliberately transphobic statement rather than one made out of pure ignorance - in that case, all bets are off lmfao. i dont take that shit lightly and ill come for you too.

to the person who made the misgendering galen post - you know who you are, i dont want to send you any more hate than you’ve already been getting so im not going to @ you, but please. reupload your apology about the post, cause i scrolled through your blog for ages and didn’t find it - if i didn’t see it reblogged on this blog, i wouldn’t have known you apologised. i wouldn’t have felt like your blog is a safe space for nonbinary folk. its important you own up to mistakes and keep the apology there.

the nahara thing

look. im poc. im also straight up sick and tired of lovestruck’s mistreatment of dark-skinned characters, especially black characters (why do half of them look like recoloured white people....?) like nahara. its important for our representation that she does well! that way, we can get more diverse li’s on our roster in the future instead of every skinny white person getting the spotlight and 9238428903 seasons. (i love you onyx and juliette, but what the fuck.)

that being said - i dont think what mod atlas said was that bad, especially considering it wasn’t here on fansofvow, the only thing reblogged onto here being her english lesson on galen’s route with a relieved comment abt how thats a series started right.

please understand - we’ve been afraid of the new characters’ routes ever since the strike. a lot of writers left, a lot are likely to be leaving, and we’re concerned about the status of the app. this wasn’t to shoot down nahara, but out of pure relief that we’re not seeing a downwards spike in the writing quality post-strike.

that being said - if you think nahara’s route is well written, and great - thats awesome! please give her all the love for us, cause we do want her to do well. she’s just not our cup of tea. can we please respect that instead of slamming this blog’s name? nahara is still doing well, im seeing hype for her everywhere- one or two negative opinions wont change that. we’re not even going to a leave a review in-app, which is the most important form of community feedback to lovestruck.

the posts have been deleted. please, give it a rest. keep loving nahara. quit the drama.

the nikolai’s route in school thing

all the students that saw the screenshots were 18+, and none of the examples were sexual in nature. teenagers get shown romeo and juliet in school, a play ending in a double suicide, but showing adults a few lines of good writing from a 17+ app is bad? its not like she showed them a scene from a straight up porno, its just a story that happens to have sexual themes in it. its up to the students whether they read the whole story or not, and they’re mature enough to handle it. that’s all im going to say abt the matter, cause im no teacher,

and lastly...

i see a lot of people saying that we, fansofvow, need to “set an example” cause we think we’re a “fandom leader” or somehow think we’re on some high horse cause of clout? i have no idea where this started because ik for a fact mod atlas has never referred to herself as a “fandom leader” or anything like that, and guys, we’re not that up ourselves. we don’t even have tons of followers! we’re just doing our thing to support VOW. please don’t put words in our mouths.

with all that out of the way, i hope we can move on and make the community a happier place for everyone.

-mod galen

tl;dr: people make ignorant mistakes sometimes. mod atlas has apologised for reblogging the post abt misgendering galen, wants nahara to do well, only showed non-sexual writing examples of nikolai to 18+ students and never called herself a “fandom leader.”

#long post #mod galen #discourse #pls let this be the only time we have to use that tag

20 notes · View notes

rjhpandapaws · 3 years

Note

Orignal Work, Reed900, Murder Case - Man and Woman, YK Model Found, Truama, Nicholas, Case Closed, To Be Decommissioned, Taken In By Pair, Recovery

//Feelings. This may get its own full length work at some point bc I loved writing it //Cw for homicide, child trauma and the things that come with that, and a graphic-ish depiction of violence.

This case was one that neither Gavin or Richard had seen before. Normally something like this would be handled by Hank and Connor but they were working a high profile serial killer case and couldn’t spare the time or manpower which left the other human android detective duo. Gavin was looking over the crime scene as Richard scanned it looking for evidence. He was about to interface with the deactivated YK500 model but as soon as he touched the smaller android the little boy’s eyes fluttered open and locked on Richard wide and full of panic. One eye was a deep forest green and the other was shut off from damage. He squeezed Richard’s arm tight enough that if it had been Gavin it would have bruised. Richard let the skin on his arm fall away and called for Gavin as the interface started. “Gavin, we’ve got a survivor in here!” He called before he allowed the interface, the last thing he heard before he was pulled under was Gavin’s rushed footsteps coming into the room.

YK500 531-213-41 Designation: Nicholas is requesting contact: Y/N Y Interface initiated

Nicholas: are my parents okay? Richard: We have people helping them Richard: Can you tell me what happened here?

He felt echoes of Nicholas’s panic as the memories travelled through the interface. He had seen the whole thing, and screamed so the killer had gone for him next, they were human by the looks of it and the fact that the blood left at the crime scene was red. They cut the interface soon after and Richard let go of Nicholas, but the child model was still clinging to him. When Richard was fully aware of himself again he motioned Gavin over, he was better with kids. “This is my friend Gavin, he’s also a detective he’s gonna ask you some questions while I check on your parents.” The child model turned his head so he could see Gavin, he gave the detective a once over before moving to cling to the human detective. Richard looked at Gavin, “I don’t know that he can speak so let him interface with your work tablet or phone please.” Gavin nodded and Richard headed back to the main crime scene.

He scanned it for more evidence now that the cursory scan was over and they had found Nicholas, he wanted to go over the crime scene with a fine toothed comb to find everything he could. He sampled evidence, scanned the room again, and ran reconstructions. He came away with three DNA profiles, two belonging to the victims and the third from their biological son who was in his thirties, the same man from Nicholas’s memory.. He was returning to Gavin when he heard the detective yelled. “Get some fucking techs in here! Nick is crashing!” Gavin’s voice shook, he was angry and was fighting off tears. Richard ran the rest of the way. He skidded to a halt in front of the YK model. “Gavin, if we get asked about this, it’s for the case. Nicholas is living evidence okay.” Gavin was rightfully confused. Richard kneeled down and forced an interface with Nicholas.

Richard: Don’t be afraid, I am going to back up your memories okay Nicholas: I don’t want to go! I want to stay until my mom and dad get back! Richard: Let me do this okay? You’ll be taken care of I promise. He felt Nicholas hesitate for a moment before he gave Richard access to his memories. He was as gentle as possible as he took them, saving them to a locked file simply titled ‘nick’. The techs arrived a short time before he finished and Gavin kept them at bay with the evidence argument. Richard pulled away once he was done and they took his place. They didn’t have anything else they could do here. They did have a suspect by the name of Jacob Hall to track down. Richard was working on getting the warrant for his arrest, using some of Nicholas’s memories and the evidence from the crime scene. the fact that a child’s life was on the line expedited the process. When he received the warrant he emailed it to Gavin, and worked on tracking down Jacob’s last known address. Gavin let him work in silence, but he could see something was eating at him Richard could tell. Normally he would wait for Gavin to say what was bothering him, but the android had a feeling he already knew. “He’s going to be okay Gavin, I have a back up of his memories so even if the technicians can’t get him back online we can find another model to upload him to.” He heard Gavin sigh. “That’s not the point Rich, he’s only hanging on because he thinks he’ll get to see his parents again.” Gavin said quietly, his voice was quiet and unsteady, “There is no one left here to look after him. Would it really be worth it to wake him at all?” “We’re here aren’t we?” Richard asked, “We could always look after him.” “Richard, Nicholas is a whole ass child, he is going to stay a whole ass child unless he decides he wants to be part of the Growing Up program,” Gavin sounded like he was making plans, like he was considering it, “He’s gonna be shut down if no body claims him. I couldn’t let that happen.” “Take a left up here detective.” Richard interrupted. “Raising a kid isn’t like taking care of a cat.” Gavin sighed, “What if he hates us?” “I don’t think he will.” Richard reassured as he placed a steady hand over Gavin’s on the steering wheel. “If we get in trouble for this I’m blaming you.” Richard nodded, before something caught his eye out his window, “Gavin I need you to either slow down or pull over.” “What?” Gavin was snapped out of his thoughts by Richard unbuckling and reaching for the door, “Richard we are going 50!” “That’s why I need you to slow down detective, I saw the suspect, I will send you my location when I have him apprehended.” Richard replied opening his door. “Richard what the fuck!” Was all Richard heard as he rolled out of the car, when he came to a stop, he stood and followed the suspect. When he was close enough he announced his presence, “Detroit Police, I would like to speak with you for a moment.” Jacob broke into a run, so did Richard. The android had an easier time navigating the terrain than the human did and soon had him in cuffs. He pinged Gavin and the detective showed up a short time later serving the warrant and read him his rights.

The interrogation was a struggle for them both, Gavin was livid and let it show, and Richard was struggling not to do the same. He was supposed to be the reasonable one, he was the android but, this was something else. None of them had done anything wrong. Gavin was getting close to his breaking point, child cases were hard for any detective, but they hit a little too close to home for both Gavin and Hank. Jacob was also spitting a lot of android remarks that were getting under Gavin’s skin. About a year and a half ago he had shared those sentiments. “Detective, why don’t you take a break, go catch your breath.” Gavin looked like he wanted to argue, but it seemed to dawn on him that this wasn’t a suggestion, “Get yourself some coffee. I could use some thirium while your there.” “Alright,” Gavin responded as he got up to leave, “If you need me I’ll be on the other side of the glass.” He was almost to the door when Jacob piped off again, “So you let it order you around then? Some detective you are.” Gavin turned to start a fight and Richard stopped him by grabbing his shoulders and blocking the detective’s path with his body, “Gavin, it’s not worth it, go catch your breath.” The android whispered. Gavin wilted a little but left the interrogation room to go take a breather. Richard turned and took the seat across from Jacob at the table and gave a sinister grin, “I know you don’t like androids, and that works fine for me because I don’t like most humans. Here’s the thing though; I’m not the one of us that is going to need to leave the room to maintain bodily function, I can sit here until you decide to talk. So we can talk about why you decided to kill your parents and adopted younger brother, or we can have the world’s longest staring contest.” “It wasn’t my brother.” Jacob said curtly after Richard had finished. “I moved out and they replaced me with a robot child so they could still feel useful.” Richard grit his teeth, “So you killed them? Why not steal Nicholas?” He hated suggesting that, “Why did it have to be murder?” “They replaced me!” Jacob shouted, “I left for college, to pursue dreams of my own and they just buy another kid! One that won’t grow up, never rebel, never disobey, and never leave. Why bother with your independent human son when you have a little play thing that would never grow up?” “So you murdered your parents and little brother, because you were jealous?” Richard asked again, deliberately using the title for Nicholas, because as long as Jacob was mad he would talk. “That little scrap heap wasn’t my brother, it was my replacement!” He snapped, “They all had it coming, but especially that little toy.” Richard leaned forward, he could feel the confession coming. “I knew where he was the whole time you know.” Jacob said with a sinister smile, “There’s this table in the entry where with a cabinet under it in the entry way, I used to hide there too. I let him see what I did to my parents as i took them from him. Let him see what I was going to do to him. Show him what he had caused.” Jacob paused, he didn’t seem to realize he was referring to Nicholas by male pronouns and Richard wasn’t about to tell him. “Then he had to fucking scream. Someone heard him so i had to be quick, I couldn’t to what I wanted to so I just beat his head against the stairs until he shut off. He was crying the whole time, like it actually hurt him. Like he could feel it.” Richard felt sick, which was quite a feat considering as he didn’t have any organs. Rage boiled beneath the surface, but he kept his temperament in check, “You are aware that legally speaking androids are people right? Despite what your personal opinion might dictate. So if Nicholas cannot be saved you are going to be booked on three counts of first degree murder.” Richard stood and nodded toward the two way mirror, “Thank you for the full confession though, it makes our job a lot easier.” Jacob was still puttering with anger as Richard left. Gavin met him in the hall and looked at him with concern. “Your LED is red.” He answered Richard’s unspoken question, “Turned as soon as you left the room.” Richard took the offered bottle of thirium and opened it, “Fifty stab wounds between the two of them all because they wanted another kid. He beat Nicholas’s head against the stairs until he went into emergency shut down and just left him there.” This was Richard’s first case involving a child, and he was starting to see why the other officers hated them so much. They hurt.

Three days later they got the call about Nicholas, he was fully repaired and ready for his memories to be reuploaded. If nobody claimed him after the trial he would be decommissioned. They were ready, they had papers for temporary custody of him while they waited on the adoption papers to come through. They went to the android hospital. Nicholas was in a bed and in stasis. His synthskin was on and he looked peaceful like this. Now that parts of his face were not chipped off and missing. Richard approached the bed and let the skin of his hand fall away. He apologized to the quiet room before he started the memory transfer. When it completed Nicholas woke himself up screaming and Richard was quick to try and soothe him. They were still connected so he send waves of calm and comfort over the link until the fearful pained cry settled onto sniffles and sobs. He sat on the bed and hugged the child model to him. “They aren’t coming back are they?” Nicholas asked once he was able to speak, “Humans don’t get to come back.” Nicholas sniffled again and his breathing stuttered before he spoke again, “You are going to have me talk at the trial and then I am going to be shut down because no one wants a damaged kid.” Gavin spoke before Richard did, “Remember what I said to you on the couch kiddo? That I wasn’t gonna let anyone else hurt you. That means Cyberlife too. Richard and I signed some papers so you can come stay with us after this.” Nicholas turned to look at Gavin, and Richard noticed their eyes were pretty close in color, “Do you promise?” “I cross my heart.” He came to sit on the other side of Nicholas. “You’ll be here for a couple more days, so they can make sure that you’re alright, and then on Friday we’ll be able to bring you home with us.” Nicholas seemed happy with that and relaxed between the two of them. They visited him every day until Friday. They took that day off and took Nicholas home in the morning and stayed with him as he roamed the house. The weekend went by without too much trouble. The weeks leading up to the trial were a little rough. Nicholas would have panic attacks if he was left alone, so one of them would have to call off to stay home with him, and if that didn’t work he would come to the station with them. The trail was thankfully short but it was hard on Nicholas. Hearing that he was the cause of his parents death in Jacob’s eyes dug up things that the little android had kept buried, and it took months to get him to open up again.

It was two years later when he came to Gavin and Richard and asked to be put in the Growing Up program, he wanted to experience life to the fullest. He had said they were his family, and for the first time since he had deviated, Richard cried. They all had, but it was a sure sign that things were looking up. It would be a rough road ahead, agreeing to grow up wasn’t going to fix anything, but he wanted to be come a man that his mom and dad would have been proud of. He didn’t quite see Gavin and Ricard as parents, but they were his family and he loved them.

#anon shenanigans #Canonverse short #'short'#dbh reed900 #gavin reed #d:bh nines #YK500 #ask panda #ask event #80 follower ask event!!!#80 followers!!!

9 notes · View notes

kittybellestark · 4 years

Text

Okay I think Time Can Heal All, But Maybe Not This has been out long enough that I can actually talk about it

If you haven’t read TCHABMNT yet there’s gonna be some spoilers but you can find it here

EDIT: I forgot to talk about May bc I did this at night when I was really tired and my brain just wanted to talk about Peter ig, that is my absolute bad so I added that in everything else is the same tho

So obvs y’all know I had troubles with getting it published here and there’s still been some struggles but I wanna actually talk about the story.

So I started writing it a few months ago but only got 7 paragraphs in before not knowing where to bring the story. Originally the line “And Peter is terrified” was supposed to end that paragraph.

After that the fic was going to be all fluff and Harley and Tony trying to reassure Peter that his insecurities aren’t going to come to fruition.

But then I had a bad day. And the story had been sitting in my drafts forever. So I figured out how to continue the story.

Make Peter feel alone.

I had to keep the snap canon because otherwise there’s be no other plausible way for all of Peter’s family to just ditch him and for Flash and Peter to become friends.

I had to make it so that everyone in Peter’s life moved on without him.

So May moved to Italy and has a boyfriend who Peter assumes will be her husband by the time he’s 20, she has her dream job and is doing what she loves.

She moved out to Italy to forget Peter. It was for selfish reasons, she lost everything in her life, her husband, his family (Peter’s parents), her parents had died years prior and now Peter is also dead. She’s left alone and she doesn’t know what to do. So May moves to Italy to forget Peter and forget the pain and grief she feels. She doesn’t want to remember him.

By trying to forget she finds a new life. She’s a version of who Peter could have become. May is alone with no one, left behind in a world that lost everything. She has a new family and she can’t give it all up to move half way across the world. May would be uprooting her whole family. She moved on from Peter. Tried her hardest to forget him.

May wants to have a relationship with Peter, she just mentally cannot handle having him back in her life because then that opens up the possibility of Ben being back in her life, or her parents, or Peter’s parents even. By acknowledging that Peter is back for more than a phone call or a FaceTime it’ll send her spiraling. May has crafted this reality for herself and it is safe and she cannot give it up.

She loves Peter, of course she does, but having him back will only hurt her more.

I still think it’s canon, in this story, that Tony reversed what Thanos did for Peter. And I couldn’t just kill Tony off either because that wouldn’t really be as painful as Peter just not having contact with him after everything.

It’s not because Tony just forgot Peter existed that they don’t really talk at the beginning. Obviously the affect of snapping left Tony seriously injuries and I referenced that in the story, “…Tony needed a lot more attention after the snap due to his injuries…” so Peter doesn’t really have the full idea of what his injuries are like, but I imagine pretty horrible, which would mean that Pepper wouldn’t be able to move him very soon.

Not to mention Morgan, who is born post snap and now the world had doubled in population and suddenly her father is so badly injuries he can’t be moved. That’s traumatizing on a child of her age, and then try and move her into the city?? That’s going to cause lasting affects on her mental health so of course the Starks are going to do what they can for Peter, but they have some really big things they need to deal with too.

But the Starks did move back into the city for him, it’s just a little late, because Peter is now going away for school. It’s not that they didn’t put an effort in to be with him, it’s just that they were spread thin between the Tony’s recovery, having Morgan cope, the company, what’s left of the avengers, trying and get themselves back to the city and being in the midst of what is probably an economic crisis.

When Peter turns 22 there’s a line “Just some empty seats and empty promises,” which isn’t much to go on, but a little bit later when Peter is thirty I wrote that Tony also has an 8 year old son. So Tony and Pepper were supposed to go to Peter’s MIT graduation, but she went into labour and they couldn’t go. It’s such a small little thing that’d be easily missed, but I wanted to sprinkle in that Tony and Pepper were trying to make an effort with Peter at least. But then they have another kid and being parents is hard enough, but now two kids? That’s hard, they’re going to forgot to prioritize Peter, especially when he hasn’t been a priority yet.

I felt it was important to give Peter someone though. Which is why Peter and Flash are friends through the story. It’s unlikely, and it wouldn’t have happened had they not been left behind. In the beginning I had wanted to have Flash and Peter get together romantically at some point, but that felt like a cop out, and too predictable. Which is why Flash ended up with Peter’s P.A, Gwen (yes Gwen Stacy). Having Flash move on with his life could either give Peter the idea that he could have what Flash has, because they’ve been in the same boat forever, or it could lead him to think that he’s incapable of having a life like that.

I had originally written that Peter tells Flash about Spider-Man, about how he can’t put on his suit without getting really bad flashbacks and panic attacks about what happened. But I didn’t want to turn this story to be about Spider-Man, because it’s not. This isn’t about Spider-Man’s struggles to get the suit back on and save people, this is about Peter’s struggles with mental health and his addiction. In my head Peter told Flash when they were still in high school, sitting on the bleachers in the evening, drinking a bottle of whiskey that Flash stole from his Dad’s liquor cabinet, which would also be the beginning to Peter’s alcoholism. But I ultimately didn’t feel like it was necessary to add to the story. It is something I’m willing to write out in the future though.

It felt really important for me to make everything in the story connect with each other. Peter goes to school at MIT, which is in Boston, where Ned lived when he was an adult (and we know that’s also where Tony went to school), and Peter is in California when he meets Harley again, where MJ went to school (Tony also previously lived in Cali). Everything needed to be connected to the life Peter lost. Which is also why there are so many similarities in Peter’s life now and Tony’s life before he settled down.

Tony went to MIT, well now so does Peter. Tony is an alcoholic with preference for whiskey? Yeah, Peter too. Tony is pretty much alone except for Rhodey? Peter is also alone, but he has Flash. Tony had suicidal and self-destructive tendencies? Peter has only tried killing himself multiple times. By making Peter into a version of Tony, it brings a reference to SM:HC, where Peter says after the ferry boat accident, “I just wanted to be like you” and Tony responds “And I wanted you to be better.” Peter is Tony, he’s just found fame and fortune at a different time, runs his own company and makes ground-breaking research that will help the world.

It’s why Peter is so hurt when he’s called (look a SM:FFH reference) “The Next Tony Stark.” He already is Tony Stark, except he doesn’t have the happiness or the family Tony currently has. Peter just has Flash and his assistant Gwen (just like young Tony only had Rhodey and Pepper). Peter being a version of Tony Stark, he can’t really see an escape. He is so horribly hurt and the only way he can see there being peace in his life is if he isn’t alive. Which is why he continues to try and kill himself.

I didn’t want Peter to die though, I wanted him to find something that would make life tolerable. Which is why I reintroduced Harley. Peter tries to ignore Harley, pretend he doesn’t recognize him, because Peter doesn’t want to remember his past and who he was and what he lost anymore. Harley being there is such a big reminder of who he used to be and who he wants to be, that Peter wants Harley to go away. He doesn’t acknowledge that he knows Harley, even when Harley all but says ‘I’m Harley Keener’ to Peter. At this point in the story Peter made up his mind that he is going to die. There was no other option, but then this beacon of hope shows up and Peter doesn’t want it anymore.

I think by reintroducing Harley it was important to never say that Peter and Harley end up together or that they’re still in contact. I left that pretty open ended because Harley just swooped in at the last second and stopped Peter from killing himself. Peter’s recovery is clearly not an easy one because that was when Peter is 30 and it’s only when Peter turns 32 that he’s one month sober. It was important that you don’t know who is Peter’s family. Because maybe it’s not the Starks or MJ and Ned or Harley or May. Maybe Peter moved on from his past they way they all had and has finally made peace with life, or maybe Peter’s past is now in his life again and he’s happy because he has what he always missed.

Everything in this story was so deliberate and there’s so much that I did that’s just these small little things and I love it so much. I think it was important to see Peter struggle with life and death and his mental illnesses.

So yeah, I’m completely in love with this story and if you guys have any questions about it please send me some asks and I’ll totally answer them, I’m just not over this story yet and I really want to talk about it some more !!

12 notes · View notes

desolationlovers · 3 years

Text

oh yall thought i was done x posting? lol. kamui character rant under the cut

the thing about kamui is i dont know that hes a very deep character??atleast not how clamp has written him and esp not in the manga.

he spends a lot of the manga being confused and often manipulated. and hes really just a kid.

his first big character arc is debastardization basically. when hes introduced hes a TOTAL asshole (the anime added scenes to make him more of a dick at the start but also has a bit of an explaination? ill get to it). hes shown as very rude to everyone around him, yelling at people to get out of his way or get lost, including his previous friends. hes also shown to have absolutely no care for his surrondings and regularly fights and uses his powers in places where bystanders could be injured and leaving roads bridges or nearby buildings in ruins. when confronted about the latter by hinotos knight (his name is saiki) he straight up says he doesnt care if anyone gets hurt. which i mean ok nothing wrong with a character being an asshole. the extreme in your face way kotori and fuuma describe kamui as a kid being very shy and Very quiet and gentle makes this characterization confusing but hey people can change i guess. the confusing part is that as kamui slowly beings to let his guard down he says that the big reason he was so standoffish especially wrt kotori and fuuma was because he wanted to keep them at a distance so they wouldnt get involved with all the end of the world stuff. which makes sense obviously! kamui was absolutely aware of how dangerous it might get. his entire plan was to get the shinken (the sacred sword) and bail because he didnt want any part of any of it. what i dont get is why he was totally cool with bystanders being injured or killed. during his fight with saiki they were in a neighborhood! on people roofs and shit!! saiki is the one to lead them to an abandoned construction site so no one gets caught in the crossfire. and kamui almost kills saiki!!! which i will let slide a bit because kamui was being followed and had been attacked by spells literally that morning. but later on he apologizes to saiki but never explained his reasoning why he didnt care about destroying peoples houses??? and its never brought up again?????? also theres a scene added to the anime where he kicks the shit out of kotori and fuumas dad??? because he wouldnt give kamui the sword?? bro thats ur best friends dad you jackass!!!!!

in the anime they added flashbacks for the time after he moved away from tokyo which i think make his whole character make much more sense. when he first moves and goes to a new school he accidentally uses his powers and makes everyone afraid of him. fast forward past elementary school to high? school? its unclear. at school hes a lazy slacker that never goes to class and never talks to anyone, big ol loner. he sees that a local gang has been stealing kids money and beating them up. so he decides to put on a tough guy persona and confront the gang telling them to knock it off and scaring them shitless with some fun ass kicking psychokenesis. now i am SO on board with this addition. kamui being ostrisized for being weird and scary when hes already a super shy kid, so he embraces this scary intimidating image and tries using it for good because hes still ultimately kind hearted. he gets too absorbed in this tough guy persona that he loses touch with the original purpose of it and just uses it as a shield because he himself is afraid and confused. and maybe even hiding behind it because hes so afraid of having this huge destiny that he doesnt know if he can live up to and how can someone who decides the fate of the world be just some quiet oversensitive guy.

except all of that is my own speculation and analysis because they really do not go into ANY detail about this. i wouldnt say its to the point where it feels like they just flipped a switch and hes nice now but it def feels like that. and it annoys me because after he kind of apologizes for being a dick it doesnt really get brought up again?? i think he broods over it once or twice. but i would have really liked to see flashes of it coming back in high stress situations or something? he has a lot of points of grief and depression but its always meloncholic rather than angry and it really makes him feel like two different characters i wish it was way more of a mix.

anger would also be good with the whole overarching theme of trying to break out of the path destined for you. its constantly said that theres only one future by the dreamgazers although hinoto wants to change it. its supposed destined that kamui will lose and earth will be destroyed. anger but more importantly PASSION is whats needed break out of what has been preordained and to carve your own path. passion is also whats needed for the main part of the second half of kamuis character arc, figuring out what it is he REALLY wants. what his true wish is.

i also think anger could have been a good inverse to the deliberate mirroring of kamuis character and subarus character. subaru really represents despair and being completely swallowed by grief. his story is that the man he fell in love with (named seishiro) was just manipulating him for fun and is actually an emotionless assassian. subaru is so destroyed by this realization he goes into a depression and because of this is unable to save his sister being killed by seishiro. his goal is literally to be enough of a nusance to seishiro that hell kill him. literally he wants to be acknowledged as important enough to bother killing. its pointed out often how subaru and kamui are so similar, with how fuuma killed kotori, and how theyre both kindhearted ro a fault. its an intentional reflection. subaru even pulls kamui out of a similar depressive state after kotori dies. he and kamui have a whole heart to heart about how some peoples happiness can look pitiful to others and how hes going to fufill his goals even when other people are worried for him. and most importantly about how not everyone can be happy with an outcome. i think it would have been really good for subaru to represent someone overcome with depression about how awful the world is and paralyzed with that sadness and kamui would be the rightous anger and compassion needed to actually change the world. “lets this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair” you know? it would have been a really good parallel considering part of x’s themes are literally about having compassion for humanity. but that reading possibly shoots itself in the foot because the language used wrt the two possible futures are things to stay as they are or for a “revolution” to occur, meaning killing everyone to let the earth heal. so ideas of change are insinuated to be connected with the seven angels and genocide. which uh. not going to get into that.

i do like when he starts going to the clamp school he goes back to being shy and quiet and kind of gets pushed around by people with more force of personality. very fun uncomfortably relatable. its ok man im extremely passive too.

anyway final thoughts kamui needs more passion. clamp give me the rights. also let subaru and kamui hang out and have a brotherly bond. no creepy shit. just subaru being an akward older brother that knows what kamuis going thru and gives bad advice bc he has god awful coping mechanisms.

side note we arent ever told about his likes/dislikes hobby or anything of that nature. the blankest of slates. so my city now. i think hes into obscure indie music and has thousands of hours in various life sim games like animal crossing and stardew valley.

#lees posts #forgot to post this last night #clamp posting

3 notes · View notes

lovelylogans · 4 years

Note

1, 4, 11 & 17?

writer’s ask meme (what do you mean i’m procrastinating writing)

1. describe the plot of your current WIPs in a single sentence each.

this is without my word docs, google drive notes, or random notes in my notes app.

are_you_sure_about_that.gif

so i’m going to narrow it down to “stuff that can be published relatively soon”

luxury of stars (working title): logan really needs some hugs, patton tries his best to give them to him, and slowburn ensues (if it sounds familiar, i’ve teased this one before; it was going to be my big bang fic before i dropped the challenge this year, partially bc of wyliwf and partially bc this thing is going to be A Monster)

untitled prompt fic: analogical “the guy who didn’t like musicals” au

and the world makes sense a little more: my take on that whole when-you-meet-your-soulmate-you-develop-the-ability-to-see-color au, though it isn’t quite as clear-cut as all that; prinxiety-centric, title from “red” by carrie manolakos

burn another page: high school dorks logan and virgil attend a punk concert, and patton saves them when a mosh pit goes wrong (based on my first punk concert experience actually)

sideshire files specific area:

the black parade: virgil’s reaction to the mcr reunion within the wyliwf!verse

the (potential) stepmother: a stranger walks into patton’s office and tells him a number of secrets, and patton really tries his best to keep them all.

rivalry: how deceit and logan became better friends

with all your heart: patton graduates from community college and everyone cries

graduate/valedictorian: logan graduates from high school and everyone cries (still deliberating if i want this to be a multichap or not, hence the multiple titles)

love light gleams: it’s logan’s first christmas, and virgil doesn’t want to let them spend it alone; the trouble is, virgil’s family is a lot less subtle about it than he is. (hopefully, i’ll post this on christmas!)

4: what are some of your favorite tropes?

friends to lovers, childhood friends to lovers, “oh no there’s only one bed,” fake dating, slowburns, magic aus, coffeshop aus, domestic fluff in general, hurt/comfort, reincarnation aus, probably tons more that i’m forgetting

11: share the last paragraph you wrote.

from the (potential) stepmother:

“hey,” patton says.

“uh,” virgil says. “i’m on my way home, is everything okay?”

“um, no, no, not really,” patton babbles. “i’m in litchfield.”

a long pause. then:

“you’re what,” virgil says.

“i’m in litchfield,” patton repeats. “i’m filling up my car with gas, because i’ve been driving for, like, ever, so i needed to make a stop in litchfield, and also i kept overthinking while i was driving and i needed to get someone else’s opinion and i needed to take a breather because if i didn’t i was gonna lose it even more than i’ve already lost it, so. litchfield.”

(i know this is more than a paragraph but i thought the added lines above added a bit of context)

17: how far along are you in your current WIP? how long have you been working on it?

see above list of wips and that i cannot focus on one at a time to save my goddamn life; the one i’ve been working on longest is, i’d say, luxury of stars? i started working on it to the point that it’s the second-oldest draft in my tumblr files. i can’t pin down an exact starting date but i’d definitely say…. early 2018? march of 2018, maybe?

(went back and edited bc i just now realized that it’s asking how far along i am) i sketched out 10 chapters, though i’m thinking i’m gonna go back and divide that up even more; i’m writing it a smidge out of order, so i’d say i’m about.... hm, 3-4 chapters in? and it’s apparently 68,975 words right now.

or, at least, let me put it this way. you know how i thought wyliwf was going to be a bullet-list fic, and it ended up 150k words?

this is the one i thought was going to be 150k words.

#ask #me #anonymous

7 notes · View notes

chasholidays · 5 years

Note

Hi! Thanks for doing this again, I hope you have a fun time with it!!!

Set in the same universe as this fill, bc they worked together and why not?

Quite by accident, and without putting any deliberate effort in whatsoever, John Murphy becomes an upstanding citizen who is considered a good prospect for marriage by respectable parents all over the town, which is so unthinkable that he doesn’t even realize it’s happening until it’s too late.

Murphy has always been fortune-adjacent without ever being particularly fortunate himself. His parents worked for Lord Jacob and Lady Abigail Griffin, who had been excellent employers, but they were, at the end of the day, employers. When Murphy’s parents died, they didn’t turn him out, but they weren’t his new family. He just started working for them.

But he and Clarke had always gotten along. She was a year younger than he was, bright and shrewd, and without any other children her age to play with, she was happy to spend time with him.

When she befriended Bellamy Blake, humble tailor, Murphy had known something was going on, but he didn’t mention it. When Bellamy suddenly became much less humble, Clarke recommended he hire Murphy, and that was when Murphy’s fortune began to take off. As Bellamy’s first employee and business manager, he’s not on the same level of wealth as Clarke, or even Bellamy himself, but he’s much better off than he ever expected to be.

Which is why he is, somehow, one of the most eligible bachelors in town.

“I didn’t know the town was that desperate,” he tells Clarke, dry, when she informs him of this fact.

“Bellamy’s a good connection now,” she points out. “He’s my husband, you’re his right-hand man. Getting close to you would get a family close to us, and all of our stars are on the rise.”

“Great. You couldn’t have thought of that before you got married?”

She rolls her eyes. “So, I shouldn’t have married the man I love to keep you from becoming richer and more successful?”

When she puts it like that, he does sound kind of unreasonable. “I don’t want anyone trying to marry me.”

“No?”

“What, I’m supposed to?”

“Plenty of men want to get married. And you’d have your pick of rich wives who could help you rise in society, if you wanted. More options are always good,” she adds.

“Yeah, because you had your choice of every rich guy in the country and went with a tailor you found on the street.”

She knows him well enough to not take it as a slight against herself or her husband. Bellamy is a tailor she found on the street. That’s part of his appeal. “I looked at every rich guy in the country and realized I didn’t want any of them.”

“Romantic.”

“If you don’t want to marry, don’t marry,” she says, with a fluid shrug of her shoulders. “But think about what you might want in a wife and let me know. I’ll see if I can find it for you.”

“So what, now that you’re settled, you think it’s time to get me married?”

She starts counting off on her fingers. “I’m married, Bellamy’s married, Raven’s married, Miller and Monty are settled. You’re the last person on my list.”

“Lucky me.” But she’s coming from a good place, and it’s not as if she’s wrong. If he wants to marry, now is the time, before Clarke and Bellamy screw up and get disowned or something. If he plays his cards right, he could be set for life.

It’s just that Murphy’s never been that sold on marriage, as a general concept. He gets the advantages, especially for men, having someone to take care of the house and manage daily affairs, but he doesn’t need that. He can manage his own affairs, and if he wants a housekeeper, he’ll hire one. He doesn’t want children, and he’s not longing for companionship, romantic, sexual, or otherwise.

“No one’s going to trap me into a compromising position and marry me, right?” he asks.

Clarke pauses for longer than he feels entirely comfortable with. “Not that you can’t get out of.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning if you get caught in a compromising position with someone you don’t want to marry, we can probably get you out of it.”

“You’re not blowing me away with confidence here.”

“If you get someone pregnant, there’s not a lot we can do,” she says, with the kind of flat honesty he appreciates and expects from her. “If you get caught in a broom closet with a girl, that’s fine.”

“Trust me, I’m not going to get anyone pregnant.” He sighs. “I’m not making any promises, okay? But if you find someone you think I should marry, yeah. You can let me know.”

Her smile does not inspire any kind of confidence in him that this was the right thing to say. “Perfect. I’ll keep you posted.”

“You definitely have no one to blame but yourself for this.”

Murphy takes a petulant sip of his punch, watching the crowd of people dancing and chatting with Raven and Miller. Ever since he and Clarke talked about his potential marriage, he’s been dragged to a ball every week, danced with enough young ladies he’s lost track, and is getting less and less interested in marrying anyone by the second.

“I think I can blame Clarke.”

Miller scowls, glaring at his own punch. “I’m blaming you. I don’t have enough excuses to get out of this.”

“Get in an accident,” Raven says, tapping her leg with her cane. “It’s an excuse not to dance for the rest of your life.”

“I might need one.”

“You aren’t thinking about a marriage of convenience?” she asks, sounding interested. “Clarke’s got to know someone who never wants to be with a man. You and Monty could make an arrangement with another couple.”

“Saving that for a last resort,” says Miller. “Well, right before I break my leg.”

“So what’s your excuse, Murphy?” Raven asks. “Why don’t you want to get married?”

“Why do I need an excuse? I think I need a good reason to get married, not a good reason not to. It’s a pain to get out of it.”

“Yeah, I can’t argue with that. Still, it’s not bad, if you find someone you like.”

Which really is the problem, right there. Murphy likes his friends, most of the time, but he’s not sure he likes any of them enough for the level commitment a marriage would require. And they’re the people he likes the most. You still couldn’t pay him enough to marry Clarke.

You could pay plenty of these women enough to marry him, and that’s just depressing. Murphy’s not going to be a good husband, and plenty of them must know that.

“That’s what I’m seeing,” he says, finishing his drink. “So far? I don’t like anyone.”

“Yeah, that sounds like you.”

“What would a wife for Murphy even look like?” Miller asks, sounding thoughtful. “You really think there’s some upper-class lady who would be happy with him?”

“I wasn’t really picturing him happy.”

“Gee, thanks,” says Murphy. “Why would I ever want to be happy?”

“You’re not happy now,” says Raven, not unreasonably. “If you think marriage is going to fix all your problems, you’re thinking about marriage wrong. It’s not going to change your whole life. You need to find someone who fits into your life already and makes it better, even with all you–” She looks down at the leg, which he knows still hurts her. “Realities.”

It’s a shocking amount of sentiment, especially from Raven, and it leaves both Murphy and Miller gaping. Miller recovers first. “Wow, marriage has really made you go soft.”

“Imagine what it would do to Murphy.”

Miller shudders. “Don’t make me think about it.” He drains his punch. “All right, I better dance at least one. If I see anyone good, I’ll send them your way.”

For a moment, Murphy and Raven lean against the wall in silence, but he has to ask, “You don’t really think I’m going to find someone here, do I?”

“Which part should I not think?” He cocks his head, and she clarifies, “Finding someone, or finding someone here?”

“Here. You don’t think any of these girls really want to marry me, do you? The ones looking for a fortune?”

“I wouldn’t have,” she says, sounding thoughtful. “Not before I met Clarke. But just because these girls’ parents want them to marry a rich guy, it doesn’t mean they aren’t interesting. One of them might surprise you.”

“Miller’s right, you did go soft.”

“I could still kick your ass. Soft heart, broken leg, and all.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “No question.”

“I wouldn’t take that if I were you.”

Murphy glances over, sees a woman next to him at the refreshment table, a glint in her eye as she smiles at him. It’s the glint that gets him, more than the prettiness of her features.

“Excuse me?”

She leans in, close enough that her words are private. “I tried those earlier, you should learn from my mistake.”

He laughs, surprised. There’s no one around who might be offended by their gossiping about the food, but he drops his own voice too. “What’s wrong with them?”

“Undercooked and overseasoned.”

“Thanks for the warning.” She moves down the line and he follows her, studying her as surreptitiously as he can manage. She has dark hair and dark eyes, her figure nice enough under a dress which is, to his fairly informed eye, a few seasons old and not tailored to her. She doesn’t look that much younger than he is, so she’s probably been out for a while, still looking for a husband. “Anything you can recommend?” he asks. He can be friendly.

“These hand pies are quite good,” she says, taking one. “You’re Mr. Murphy, aren’t you?”

“Just Murphy is fine. How did you know?”

“You’re the focal point of this entire event,” she says, an amused note in her voice. “Didn’t you know?”

“I was hoping I wasn’t.”

He had thought he might prefer afternoon tea to a ball, in terms of socialization exercises, and while he appreciates not being expected to dance, he’s not much for small talk either.

“Did Lady Clarke not tell you?”

“She’s selective about how she presents information.” He wets his lips. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Emori.”

“Given or surname?”

“Given. I don’t like my surname much.”

It’s an interesting statement, but he knows plenty of rich ladies who don’t like ceremony much. If she gives out her surname, people will call her that. “How do you know Lady Clarke?”

“The same way everyone does.”

“But I haven’t met you before.”

“You’re very popular. It’s hard to get your attention.”

“So you’re warning me off bad food?”

She smiles, not the typical kind of smile from a girl who wants to impress him. It’s sharper, more wry. “I consider it a public service. If you’ll excuse me.”

She ducks away with a smile, going to talk to Harper, apparently unconcerned with Murphy or anything he’s doing. It shouldn’t bother him–it’s not like he cares if she likes him–but it does nag at him. The whole encounter felt deliberate, like she was doing it on purpose, the first step in a very long plan to–

Marry him, probably. What else would she want?

That feeling alone should be enough to get her off his mind, but even knowing it was a trick, he can’t stop wondering about her. How did she know this would make him curious? Was she sure this would work on him, or did she just get lucky?

“That was a bust,” Bellamy remarks, when the gathering is done and everyone has left. “Right?” he adds, looking to Murphy.

“The food wasn’t bad. Except the scones, I heard they were undercooked.”

Clarke sighs. “It’s always something. You didn’t meet anyone?”

“What do you know about a woman named Emori?”

“Not much.” She shrugs. “An orphan, I think? But her parents left her with a decent dowry. We haven’t talked much. You liked her?”

It feels like too much of an admission, especially now. If he tells Clarke he liked her, Clarke will run with it. It’ll be a thing. Emori will probably find out, and maybe she’ll think she doesn’t have to do the rest of the steps of the plan. He’s kind of curious where it goes from here.

“She’s the one who said the scones were undercooked. So I don’t know if you want to just take her word for it.”

Clarke doesn’t look particularly fooled by the deflection, so Murphy turns his attention to Bellamy.

“Other than the food, yeah. Definitely a bust.”

Bellamy’s not buying it either, of course. They’re both too smart to swallow so lazy an excuse.

But they’re also not ready to push him. He was betting on that too.

So Bellamy says, “Definitely,” and the conversation moves on, but at the back of his mind, Murphy is still thinking about Emori, and he’s pretty sure everyone knows it.

Whatever she’s doing, it’s definitely working. Murphy can’t even be mad.

Once he’s been introduced to Emori, he can’t stop noticing her. He can’t tell if she’d always been around and he just missed her or if this really is a new thing, if she was out of town and only just returned, if she only just decided he was worth looking for. If it’s all some master plan to win him over, once she heard that conventional methods weren’t working.

And then he feels like a self-centered dick who let all this stupid eligible bachelor shit go to his head, because the world does not actually revolve around him, and Emori probably makes her decisions based on more than a long game to trick him into marriage.

“You like her,” Raven surmises.

“She doesn’t even talk to me, I barely know her.”

“So you’re offended she’s not talking to you when you’re the most important single man in the city?” Monty asks. Murphy thought he might be more sympathetic than his partner, but he doesn’t seem to think the situation is serious enough to warrant sympathy.

Then again, if Murphy wanted sympathy, he should have made friendships that weren’t based around mockery and brutal honesty.

“She did talk to me. I’m not saying it is a scheme, just that I don’t get her. Everyone knows the whole point of all this shit is to get married, and she’s not even trying, so why does she come? It’s not like it’s fun.”

“I’m not trying to get married and I keep coming,” Monty points out. “It’s so I can tell my parents I’m trying.”

“She’s barely trying. And Clarke said she was an orphan.”

“If you want to talk to her, talk to her,” says Raven. “If you’re just upset that she doesn’t seem interested enough, stop being an asshole and move on.”

“I’m not being an asshole,” he mutters, reflexive, but she is right. Raven usually is.

“I’m going to go talk to her,” Monty declares.

“What?”

“I’m curious,” he says. “Come on.”

“Why am I coming?”

“Because I don’t know who she is.”

She’s talking to Echo when they find her, wearing the same dress Murphy saw her in before. She’s still lovely, and her eye still has that glint in it that makes Murphy want to talk to her more.

It might be a good idea to just lean into it.

“Mr. Murphy,” says Emori, dropping a curtsy.

“Murphy,” says Echo, curt as always. He does like her. “Monty. What do you want?”

“I haven’t been introduced to Miss–” Monty starts, and she smiles.

“Just Emori, thank you.”

“And I’m just Monty. Echo, would you care to dance?”

She sizes him up, and then Murphy, and shrugs. “Sure, why not. Don’t step on my feet.”

Emori gives Murphy a sidelong glance. “So, it’s working?”

“What is?”

“Ignoring you.”

“I knew you were doing that on purpose!” he bursts out, and she smirks.

“Don’t let it go to your head, I ignore lots of men.”

“Because you aren’t interested in talking to them?”

“Because I’ve found men find it irritating.”

“Yeah, we deserve that.” He clears his throat. “Look, I’m not very good at this whole–social graces thing.”

“I noticed.”

“You want to dance or not?”

“Do you dance?” she asks, looking him up and down in a pointed way.

“Not very well.”

“Neither do I,” she says, uncrossing her arms to show him her left hand. It’s a little warped, a birth deformity, most likely, and he recognizes the challenge in her eyes as she watches his reaction.

“I don’t see what that has to do with dancing,” he says. “My feet are the problem.”

She lets out a very unladylike snort of laughter. “Some gentlemen don’t like holding my hand very much.”

“I’m not a gentleman,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

After he’s seen her hand and (apparently) not reacted incorrectly, Murphy starts to interact more with Emori. They dance at least one dance at every party, and he starts to see her on the street, in passing, and he’ll even call on her sometimes, when he’s in the neighborhood.

He may go out of his way to be in her neighborhood, too.

It’s not that he loves her, or even that he wants to marry her. He just still can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to her, that there’s still something he’s missing. He wants to figure her out, and he doesn’t know how.

Bellamy’s the one to finally take him aside and ask, “Have you ever actually been interested in anyone before?”

“What?”

He drums his fingers on the counter. “You keep saying you don’t want to marry her, but I’m not sure why not. You like her, you want to get to know her better, are you sure you’re not falling for her?”

“I’m suspicious of her.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “You can’t stop thinking about her.”

“Wondering what she’s really doing.”

“You’re not willing to admit that you’re interested in her, and you’re afraid she’s not interested in you. I get it, trust me,” he adds, with half a smile. “I still can’t believe Clarke wanted to marry me. And you don’t have to ask her. But you should be honest about how you feel and what you want.”

“Probably, yeah.” He scowls at nothing in particular. “I want to know more about her. Understand her.”

“What if you find out she wants to marry you?”

“I’d be kind of disappointed.”

His eyebrows go up. “Why?”

“I was hoping there was more to her than that.”

“Maybe she wants to marry you because she likes you. And if she just needs a good marriage and thinks you’d be one, would that be so bad? There’s nothing wrong with a woman wanting to make a good marriage.”

“There’s something wrong with them thinking I’m the good marriage,” Murphy snaps, and Bellamy’s expression softens.

“You could be a fine husband to someone. A fine husband to her. And maybe the fact that she’s acting how she is means she knows how to be a find wife to you too.”

“Maybe,” he says, but he can’t really bring himself to believe it.

Which means that, if he’s honest, discovering she’s stealing from him is a huge relief.

She’s been to visit him a handful of times, the same as he’s visited her. It’s always been ordinary and completely proper, and he always enjoyed having her stop by. He’d hoped he’d see more of her, but was not expecting to see her in the middle of the night when he was looking for some water.

“That’s not actually valuable,” he tells her, and she freezes, just for a second, before she straightens and smiles. She’s dressed in plain, dark clothing, trousers and a shirt, like a man might wear, with her dark hair pulled back.

As always, she’s lovely. Moreso, even. She looks so much more comfortable like this.

“No?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It looks like a family heirloom.”

“You thought my family had heirlooms? I’m starting to see what you saw in me.”

Her smile falters. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’m not from some rich, noble family with a long history of owning useless shit. Everything in here is mine, and I got it cheap so I could save most of my money to live on.”

“Not how the most marriageable bachelor in the town is supposed to be living,” she observes. Her tone is light, but she looks tense. Understandably so, since she was caught in his home, trying to rob him, but he’s not actually upset.

“I still don’t get it,” he admits. “You thought this was the best way to get close to me? And that I was the best person for you to try to rip off?”

“I can’t tell which one you find more offensive.”

“Not offensive, confusing. I get it,” he adds. “I was pretty sure I was going to be out on the streets after my parents died, I was ready to steal as much as I could from the Griffins before I left.”

“You’re not Lord Henry Murphy of the Polis Murphys,” says Emori, slowly.

“Who?”

She slumps back against the wall with a defeated sigh. “I heard a Murphy was making waves in the town, I knew Lord Henry had moved recently, I assumed–”

“You were trying to rob the wrong person?”

She shoots a glare at him. “How was I supposed to know you were the wrong person? You’re rich and the most eligible bachelor in town. It’s certainly not for your glowing personality.”

He laughs, and she relaxes a little. “So, your dowry isn’t as good as I’ve heard it is?”

“I have no dowry, not any family.” Her voice is too sharp. “I’m not orphaned, my parents simply decided their fortunes would be better off without a daughter with flaws like mine.”

“Assholes,” he says, before he can think better of it, but she smiles. “So, what do you need the money for?”

“The same thing everyone needs money for. Food, shelter, and to keep it out of the hands of people I don’t like.”

“If you’d disappeared at the same time I lost a bunch of my stuff, I would have known it was you.”

She shrugs, easy, with a smile playing on her lips like she’s still not telling him something. Of course, she’ll probably be gone in the morning, now that he’s found her out.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just get married?” he asks.

“Maybe for you. Some of us aren’t spoiled for choice.”

“I meant me,” he says. She frowns, which means he has the chance to get out of the offer, but he finds he doesn’t really want to. The missing piece is that she’s some sort of con woman, and she was acting the way she had been as part of a plot to get his attention, gain his trust, and rob him. Now that he knows that, he can put together the rest of her actions, and he likes her.

Likes her better, even. That’s probably something to worry about. But if his family disowned him for a birth defect and he couldn’t make a good match or find a good job, he’d probably be fleecing rich people too.

And everyone does keep telling him he doesn’t have to marry a proper lady, just someone who fits into his life.

“I’m not that rich,” he says. “I’ve got a job and my boss likes me and pays me well. His wife is rich, I know some powerful people. I’m not a lord, but if you just want a husband who’ll treat you right and make sure you’ve got a good life, I’m your man.”

“You want to marry me,” she says, sounding vaguely stunned.

“Why not?”

“You found me in your house, in the middle of the night, trying to steal from you.”

“Yeah, so you clearly need money. Marriage seems like an easier, safer way to get it than stealing from people, and this way you can stick around instead of leaving town.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“I get married and everyone stops asking me when it’s going to happen. I’m not worried about marrying some lady I’ve got nothing in common with, and as long as I give you food, shelter, and money that could have gone to assholes instead, you’re happy, right?”

“Not very romantic of you.”

“I found you in my house in the middle of the night trying to steal from me,” he points out. “How much romance are you looking for?” But he does want her to marry him, so he makes himself add, “Look, this whole marriage thing? I wasn’t doing that well with it.”

She smirks. “I heard.”

“You’re the only person I met I could actually think about marrying. Stealing and all.”

“You have very peculiar taste in women, H–” She frowns. “I don’t even know your given name.”

“John,” he says. “But no one calls me that.”

“You have very peculiar taste in women, John Murphy,” she says, ignoring him.

“Is that a yes?”

“If it’s not, are you going to call the police?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a maybe.” She leans up and kisses him on the cheek. “I’ll see you later, John.”

“See you,” he echoes, and just like that, she’s gone.

A week later, Murphy goes downstairs in the morning and finds the figurine Emori was looking at gone, and his heart sinks. He hadn’t really thought she’d marry him, but he thought he had a few more weeks of hoping, of not being sure.

“Joke’s on you,” he mutters. “It really is worthless.”

It’s only then that he notices the piece of paper left in its place, a note written in a neat, unfamiliar hand.

Dear John,

If you want this back, come to St. Michael’s Church tomorrow at three o'clock. Otherwise, I’m selling it for however much I can get.

-E

P.S. Wear something nice. It IS your wedding.

Murphy grins, whistles a little as he goes into the kitchen to find something for breakfast.

Maybe marriage won’t be so bad.

#romansuzume

53 notes · View notes

thegeminisage · 6 years

Note

What other characters (of DBH) you think people should appreciate more and why? I love read your opinions❤

omg anon pls thats so sweet

(if anybody wasn’t here for the last ask the first character was north & there’s a follow-up here)

alright just a “””quick””” (lol as if) little thing for each one bc it’s getting late & you’ve already been waiting on this for like an hour at the time i started typing. it’s probably gonna be long as fuck but the tl;dr is at the bottom

LUTHER:

they did luther so dirty…it was like david cage was playing “racist trope bingo” for his entire debut chapter…and then on top of that all he cares about is kara & alice, these two near-strangers, and it’s real easy to get him killed for them. in fact, in an ending where kara sacrifices herself at the border, she tells alice that luther will get her across the border, and after that, rose will take care of her. UM WHAT? don’t call ur PSN trophy “happy family” and then try to erase luther like that!! what does luther want? what are his hopes and dreams, his fears? nobody ever bothers to ask bc they’re too busy making ralph alice’s dad. and it’s not that i don’t like ralph - i do! but he threatened alice with a knife TWICE. after her previous dad’s bullshit, that’s the last thing she needs!!

here’s my take on luther: he says that what his life was before kara & alice doesn’t matter, and that’s because david cage doesn’t care about him. but imagine instead that luther remembers what he did (was forced to do) before he broke his programming. our luther is sweet and gentle and good, but zlatko forced him to use his strength as a weapon for LITERALLY tearing people apart. don’t you think luther regrets that? don’t you think he wishes he could take it back? perhaps his even temper and loving heart is a RESULT of those early memories: he’s seen the worst sides of anger and callousness, he’s had to be complicit in it. my feeling is that he never ever wants to be complicit in something like that again…it feels weird when he picks up a gun in the game because i think he would be even more of a staunch pacifist than josh?? i feel like even when luther does get annoyed or angry he’s so afraid of the harm he’s capable of doing he doesn’t even really let himself feel it And That’s Sad. he should be able to get annoyed at like a broken coffee maker or some shit without illogically worrying it will result in someone’s maiming or death?? maybe he is So Ready to throw himself on a grenade for kara and alice because yes, he does love them, but also he feels he has to redeem himself somehow, yk? he has to be willing to do absolutely WHATEVER it takes to be Good

they didn’t give luther any depth…he never got to speak to zlatko’s captives and apologize, he never got to express a feeling about kara potentially burning down the whole fucking nightmare house (with living androids inside, i might add) - would he have wished to save those androids? would he be glad their suffering was over? would he have motherfucking hearts in his eyes for kara single-handedly destroying his own personal hell? he deviated for alice, it was alice that made him say “ok, doing this to kids is where i literally can’t take it anymore” - don’t you think he’d be so retroactively terrified of all the terrible things that could have happened to her?

like i truly don’t get why people make ralph alice’s dad when luther loves her so fucking much he’d bring her the moon if she asked - he’s the only person who loves her just as selflessly and unconditionally as kara does. she accepted him and wanted him to say goodnight their very first night together…as soon as he resisted his programming, she stopped being afraid of him, and it must be so amazing for him to finally have people around who don’t either fear him or try to control him…whether u ship him with kara or not (i do, everyone should - it’s one thing to HC kara as gay but i side-eye people who don’t wanna ship luther with anybody) you know he’s gotta cherish them so much

AMANDA:

ok look i know amanda is the antag to connor’s story but honestly she’s metal as FUCK. i was so fucking floored to not only learn the garden isn’t a garden but that amanda isn’t amanda…my first playthrough i was letting connor be just a lil bit deviant but whenever amanda would ask about it i would panic and lie…now i know it doesnt matter what you can say and you can be blatantly deviant right in front of her and she’s like ok Whatever BUT i was deeply shook to realize all my lying to her all along hadn’t meant a thing…she did in fact KNOW i was lying because she wasn’t real, she was living in connor’s brain and she could see all that shit he was doing

and also?? like, imagine you were made out of a dead person’s face and voice. we don’t know if amanda has a body, we don’t know if kamski actually liked what he created or thought it was creepy (like imagine if he and amanda were close and then she died…it’d be weird to see her like that), we don’t know if amanda CAN deviate like the androids…she’s living this half life potentially stuck in some garden and just doing what her program says like everybody else. but even though machines get all the sympathy in this game i very rarely ever see people stop and go “dude, is she ok…is someone controlling her can we help her” - amanda’s a lot like connor, she’s hunting down deviants but she’s not a human and she’s not alive yet so who’s pulling her strings?? can they be cut???

JOSH:

i’ll be honest i haven’t figured out what Angle i like best for josh the way i’ve got one for luther and north but he has such strong convictions i feel like they would have to stem from some past experience. everybody’s always arguing about simon vs north that nobody stops to give josh the attention he deserves…he’s part of the fantastic 4 too!! who is josh? what does he want? what is he afraid of? does he refuse to be violent for reasons like luther - did he hurt someone, deliberately or accidentally? (to a lesser extent, a pacifist markus who shoved leo can also follow this pattern - he gave into violence and thought he’d killed carl’s son, so he swore to do no more violence after that.) or: did he see someone else get hurt/get hurt himself? i know the backstory they give him in the gallery but tbh it’s very similar and not stand-out from most of the rest of the stuff we hear…

like, what made josh deviate? we literally never find out. i think it would be interesting tho if instead of just being the victim of violence, he was ordered to DO violence, and refused - maybe that’s why he got hurt. but i think his relationship WITH violence could be a complex thing for anyone who wanted to tackle it. we know why north prefers violence, why does josh detest it? (similarly, why does simon prefer safety over either approach? - but fandom gives him a lot of love and attention and tries to explain this, and nobody tries to explain it for josh.)

KARA & ALICE:

like…to a small extent…i know they’re main characters but i could write an essay just on why they didn’t get a fair shake either - constant victims of assault, little depth, kara got to choose what happened to her but not what kind of person she was gonna be like markus & connor, significantly less playtime than markus & connor, had NO influence on the big macro plot like markus & connor, i could go on…but definitely the worst for me is that everything about kara that made us love her (from the short), was ERASED - david took her memories and never made the slightest move towards kara wanting them back, or her being able to get them back. she’s six years old and he took all of her history from her, all of her agency!! i feel like translated into fic they can both become very flat - all kara cares about is protecting alice, and alice is constantly scared or hurt or needing to be taken care of, like a baby doll. granted that’s not actually far from the game’s canon, but it could have been MORE. kara had six entire years of experiences before she met alice - what makes alice special? who is kara without alice?

i really wish we had been able to take a personality route with kara - her main superpower seems to be empathy and getting people on her side (ralph, jerrys, zlatko’s creatures), but she can also wave around a gun at anybody who gets near her baby. it would have been really interesting to explore two sides of that - to have a kara who is 1000% Done and ready for wholesale murder if it means surviving vs having a kara who can bring out the best in anyone, even if they seem like bad people at first. (imagine the influence you could have over alice - she would learn to be wary of strangers or be warm to them.) but instead the narrative is wishy-washy; you can’t teach alice anything, and in fact she serves as kara’s moral compass instead of the other way around - you wind up doing things like comforting the guy who broke kara multiple times and waving a gun at ralph (who like, shouldn’t have done that, but also isn’t 100% in control of his own facualities all the time). it would have been really interesting to see kara be able to influence her own fate more as well - the camp sections are shitty and should not exist but like maybe a kara who had spent the whole game yelling at everyone with a gun would have the ability unlocked to then rally the people inside, and who cared what connor and markus were doing, you know?

but david doesn’t know how to write women so that’s not what we got - kara carried that entire franchise into reality and he totally screwed her over!!

TL;DR

luther was forced to do terrible things and that could explain a lot of his behavior if anybody cared, nobody ever wonders if amanda is being forced to obey programming like the rest of the machines or if she’s ok, josh’s relationship with violence could be very complex and we don’t know his motivation for refusing to participate in it the way we know north’s for preferring it, and david can’t write women so he shafted kara so fucking bad and it is an honest to god shame

(dbh meta tag)

#dbh #dbh luther #dbh amanda #dbh kara #dbh josh #dbh alice #detroit become human #long post #liz answers asks #anonymous #sorry that took so long!! i had more feelings than i thought #THANK U FOR ASKING made my night #dbh meta #liz's dbh stuff #liz's meta

42 notes · View notes

lovexdejun · 6 years

Photo

🖤NCT Boyfriend Series🖤

- [😇] Jungwoo

>>pretty smutty but not actually smut?? >>this is so loOoOoOoOoOng i got way too carried away lol

•the 1st time i saw jungwoo i cried •he’s your next door neighbor all throughout high school •friends enough, but not really super close to him—like if you saw him out on the street, you’d say hi but wouldn’t start a conversation •you guys lose touch after high school bc you both moved out pretty quickly •it’s almost fate that you end up meeting again at the same college with the same major: theater •when he walks in to each of his morning classes and sees you hiding way back in the back, he almost laughs at the coincidence •practically fights to get to the seat next to yours in each class •which means three hours of jungwoo distracting you by means of flirting •you understand why he’s so attached to you tho; you two are at a new school in a whole different area, you feel secure actually knowing someone •you guys start talking+hanging out more outside of class •he shamelessly flirts with you constantly and you wonder why he’d never had a gf or bf in high school •*whispers* it was because he was too in love with you to see all the people who were actually into him •he’ll realize those feelings again and start trying to spend every waking moment with you •picking you up from your dorm before class •waiting for you after class to walk you home •randomly calling you or texting you when you’re out with friends •surprising you at your dorm in the middle of the night w takeout bc he knows you’ve been studying all day •it’s almost yandere, except he would never harm you or anyone around you, he would just cop a nasty attitude •as annoying as it can be, you’d miss his clinginess if you hadn’t seen him in a couple days •the two of you spend so much time together, and he looks at you with such admiration that people think you’re dating •there’s even this one time, you’re sitting on the bench at a doggy park when a few grandmothers walk by and literally ask you when the wedding is •and jungwoO JUST— “oh, soon.” •then he starts petting the puppy you had just been playing with like nothing happened •like jungwoo won’t deny it if his life depended on it, but he’d never deliberately confirm it either bc he’s not that crazy lol •except when it came to boys •they’d never approach you first because jungwoo is always stuck to your hip •not to mention the indifferent yet intimidating stare he’d give them when they were brave enough to hit on you •until this guy who was competent enough to realize jungwoo is harmless made it his mission to take you home w him •it took you half an hour of talking and eventually telling the guy you weren’t interested (you couldn’t figure out why for the life of you bc he was the whole package) to realize jungwoo had left your side •you search for him for a while only to find out he’d left the party entirely •when you don’t hear from him for almost a week, even after calling and texting him nonstop, you start to get worried—no, pissed •that’s how you realize your feelings for jungwoo •so you find yourself stomping across campus on the verge of angry tears and ready to give him a piece of your mind •banging on the door for five minutes does you no good, so you find the spare key above the door frame and break in because you know he’s always home on saturday nights if he’s not with you •as soon as you slam the door shut, you come face to face with jungwoo, who’s only in a towel, hair still dripping from a shower •instead of apologizing and getting flustered •you kinda just push his chest multiple times until he hits wall with a thud •you literally put the fear of god into that poor child with the way you’re yelling at him •one particularly hard poke at his bare chest makes him jump and suddenly he’s scrambling to push you off him •’yahyahyahyahyah’ is all that’s coming out of his mouth as you watch jungwoo trying to censor himself and pick up the towel he’d dropped at the same time •you can’t stop laughing while he scolds you •”my intention was to scare you jungwoo not give you a boner lol” •the two of you end up talking it out once jungwoo is dressed •you confess to him and he tells you he’s ‘loved you since hs freshman year you idiot’ •after that there’s no escaping him •i mean, your his gf so he doesn’t understand why you should ever be apart unless you absolutely have to be •you’ve grown so accustomed to him being obsessed with you that you don’t even notice his clinginess anymore •he wants everyone to know you’re dating •always making your heart melt with how cute he can act •plus he’s so pretty that it hurts •you’ll never understand how he can have a poker face literally 24/7 no matter the circumstance •likes cuddling you •likes you cuddling him/wrapping your arms around him more tho •disney movie binges •board games •failed cooking attempts that just end in you ordering takeout •it makes his feel some type of way when you whisper in his ears, even when you’re trying to be innocent •couch sex •bath sex •his favorite thing to do it watch you masturbate •but he could also finger you for hours without getting the least bit bored •he loVES body praise from you •or any kind of praise for that matter •bc he’s super conceited until he has his clothes off so this would just make him feel better •extremely into being overstimulated •cockwarming is a given •he likes as much skin/skin contact as possible •likes kissing the top of your head or the tip of your nose •melts when you kiss his cheeks •aLWAYS holding your hand or waist •loves you more than life itself and would actually do anything for you •literally anything •he’d go to parties with you even though he’s not a fan •you’d carry each other home and he’d hold your hair back while you threw up •even though he acts so cocky, he’s actually pretty unsure of himself and feels like he lacks quite a bit •you guys would be each other’s saving grace and personal cheerleaders •life would feel so much easier with him in it •and summertime would be super convenient since your parents live right next to each other •this is a relationship that no one outside of university saw coming but everyone needed •it would be a loyal and supportive relationship filled with endless embarrassing moments and unforgettable memories •i’d place jungwoo with the cute, soft, and opposites attract relationship lines

>>jungwoo was a pain to find bf pics for but writing for him was pretty easy.

A/N: i could really only depict jungwoo with scenarios instead of generalizations because he’s quite unique so i apologize that this was sooo long lol

nct | requests are always open!!

#nct boyfriend series #idol boyfriend series #nct boyfriend #nct reactions #nct scenarios #nct dream #nct u #nct 127 #nct #kpop reactions #kpop scenarios #kpop smut #nct smut #nct jungwoo #jungwoo

339 notes · View notes

moiraineswife · 6 years

Text

Autistic!Jasnah: Masterpost

Okaaay, so, as you might have guessed from the title, this post is a long list of reasons Jasnah Kholin is autistic af.

The short version: Jasnah is autistic because I, a Known Autism, say so. Have a nice day.

The long version (format): A long series of chronological quotes that all follow this pattern: Quote. *Insert ramble about why this is an Autistic Thing* *Possible and probable further ramble about why I’m emotional about that.

That’s literally it, people. Buckle up, I’ve picked through all three books (yes all three) to compose this post for y’all. It’s not going to be short.

To business:

The Way of Kings:

Jasnah glanced at Shallan, noting her, then returned to her conversation.

Introducing Jasnah ‘I don’t have time for social niceties I’m busy’ Kholin. From the first interaction she’s...Bad at interacting. Iconic.

“Then we shall do an evaluation. Answer truthfully and do not exaggerate, as I will soon discover your lies. Feign no false modesty, either. I haven’t the patience for a simperer.”

Jasnah is both blunt, direct, and honest in her speech as she is in her expectations from others. She doesn’t have the energy to deal with manipulation/lying/tarting up the truth to make it more socially acceptable bc she is a busy autistic lady with shit to do. (really, though, what she’s literally demanding here is the first rule of the autistic’s guide to easy conversation. Clear. Simple. To the point. To frills, no fuss.)

Jasnah didn’t argue further, and Shallan could see from her eyes that it was of no consequence to her if the king risked his life. The same apparently went for Shallan, for Jasnah didn’t order her away.

People do what people want to do and Jasnah doesn’t waste any time pretending she cares/that it matters to her for the sake of appearances. Again, this woman has a vendetta against typical social niceties and I love it.

“Now?” the king said, cradling his granddaughter. “But we are going to have a feast—”

“I appreciate the offer,” Jasnah said, “but I find myself with an abundance of everything but time.”

Do I need to point out the lack of social niceties again or are y’all sensing a pattern at this point? *King lovingly embraces his darling granddaughter that Jasnah just saved and orders a feast prepared in her honour* Jasnah: ‘Thanks but no I’m too busy to socialise.’

Jasnah was also a rationalist, a woman with the audacity to deny the existence of the Almighty himself based on her own reasoning. Jasnah would appreciate strength, but only if it was shaped by logic.

Jasnah feelings>>>>>>logic. This is a fairly common theme, of Jasnah being ruled less by emotions/sentiment/societal pressures/expectations and much more by logic/her own reasoning. She has her own way of looking at the world, her own rules for how it works, and she won’t be swayed by anyone else’s opinions on how she should feel/behave.

Jasnah turned to look out of the balcony into the dark space of the Veil. “I know what people say of me. I should hope that I am not as harsh as some say, though a woman could have far worse than a reputation for sternness. It can serve one well.”

Jasnah not being very self-aware in how people actually perceive her is also an autistic thing. Shallan notes several times that Jasnah is actually nowhere near as harsh/stern as she’s reputed to me, and, more importantly, she’s nowhere near as harsh/stern as she perceives herself to be. She also fails to note that Shallan actually enjoys the work/the challenge. This also implies that she takes what people say about her at face value and doesn’t have the necessary social skills to refute them.

Shallan tried to judge Jasnah’s mood, but the older woman’s emotions were impossible to read.

Again, this is a fairly common autistic trait. We struggle to read other people’s body language, but they often struggle to read ours as well. A part of this is probably Jasnah deliberately cultivating this kind of persona, but even so, she’s too unsure of how she comes across to have completely mastered this.

Jasnah carefully removed its contents, neatly lining up the brushes, pencils, pens, jar of lacquer, ink, and solvent. She placed the stacks of paper, the notebooks, and the finished pictures in a line.

Oh look, it’s one of the world’s biggest Autism Stereotypes (which I’m totally guilty of too): lining all the things up neatly, and making them Orderly.

At least with Jasnah one knew where one stood.

Jasnah of the straightforward, blunt honesty and ‘what you see is what you get’ strikes again.

When Jasnah was deeply immersed in one of her projects, she often ignored all else.

And here we see the Autistic Jasnah in her natural habitat: hyperfixating on her special interest.

The rest is under the cut for length!

Jasnah had elegant handwriting, of course—Jasnah rarely did anything without taking the time to perfect it.

Jasnah not doing anything unless it’s done Properly and Right according to her? Also Jasnah being indifferent towards things she hasn’t put any time into perfecting (such as drawing).

“I always forgive curiosity, Your Majesty,” Jasnah said. “It strikes me as one of the most genuine of emotions.”

Again, Jasnah encouraging/reacting positively to genuine/honest emotions because she doesn’t Understand the whole guile/lying/not being honest thing because honestly what is the point?

“Must someone, some unseen thing, declare what is right for it to be right? I believe that my own morality—which answers only to my heart—is more sure and true than the morality of those who do right only because they fear retribution.”

Honestly, just, this whole thing. For a start it’s a massive transgression of the Vorin social norms/expectations, especially for Jasnah as a prominent public figure as the sister to the king. For another it’s that internal rules thing again. Jasnah’s world operates according to Jasnah’s principles and Jasnah’s understanding of it, no-one else’s.

But Shallan had caught a handful of occasions, mostly when Jasnah had been distracted, and had apparently forgotten she wasn’t alone.

*Jasnah ignores social expectations so hard she literally forgets other people exist in the world* Also, again, the hyperfixation on special interest.

“And yet, those men are off the street. The people of this city are that much safer. The issue that Taravangian has been so worried about has been solved, and no more theatergoers will fall to those thugs. How many lives did I just save?”

“I know how many you just took,” Shallan said.

Jasnah has a habit of doing this, this very cold, calculated, logical and pragmatic way of seeing the world as well as morality. Shallan considers the lives taken, the emotional aspect of the moral dilemma, the horror of murder. Jasnah just sees it almost as statistics, as four lives taken to save many more. Shallan also focuses on the cold hard facts of ‘I know how many people you just killed’ while Jasnah is engaged in weighing up the probability of how many she just saved. (In theory, the thugs might never have attacked anyone again, so Jasnah might not have saved anyone by her actions, which I think is what Shallan is getting at here. But that’s just...A moot point as far as Jasnah is concerned)

This is also an example of her black and white thinking. There’s more net good in what she did than there is net bad. That’s where her questioning/reasoning stops because it makes sense to her. Shallan exists in the grey area, but I don’t think Jasnah even sees it in cases like this.

But it wasn’t the act itself so much as the cold callousness of it that bothered her.

This is an interesting one, and something I’ll talk about more a bit later, probably, but the way Jasnah comes across vs how she actually is. I totally get why Shallan views what she did as cold and callous, and in a way I suppose it was. It was fully planned and fully intentional. But I think for her it’s this kind of...separation between logic and sentiment. I think Jasnah feels very strongly and very deeply, but she doesn’t often display that to other people, and I also think she believes there’s a time and a place for that. Also, black and white thinking again. It comes off as cold to Shallan, but for Jasnah I think it feels more like common sense.

“You only needed to kill one of them.”

“No, I didn’t,” Jasnah said.

“Why? They would have been too frightened to do something like that again.”

“You don’t know that. I sincerely wanted those men gone. A careless barmaid walking home the wrong way cannot protect herself, but I can. And I will.”

Again, black and white thinking. (I’m also surprised this moment doesn’t generate more Discourse...Or maybe it does, I’ve just avoided it, either way) This is both a case for Jasnah not being able to predict people’s responses/behaviours, and also black and white thinking/internal rules at play. As far as she’s concerned those men are criminals. She has no assurances that they won’t hurt anyone else again. They’re already criminals, and there’s no chance for redemption or leeway, here. She’s made up her mind. They’re all criminals. They’re all dangerous. They all die.

Jasnah closed her eyes again, handing the brush toward Shallan. “Fifty strokes tonight, Shallan. It has been a fatiguing day.”

A)- routines the ‘tonight’ and the familiarity of this implies it’s something that happens every night. And the ‘fifty strokes’ is either another routine related thing, or an internal rule thing. Either way. Also this is probably a stim thing, since she’s using it to relax/de-stress.

Jasnah tapped her desktop with a fingernail.

Stimming.

“Brightness Jasnah does NOT like people entering her room. The maids have been told not to clean in there.” The king had promised that his maids were very carefully chosen, and there had never been issues of theft, but Jasnah still insisted that none enter her bedchamber.

Definitely, definitely, definitely an autistic thing. Issues with people entering Your Spaces or touching Your Things is a big autistic thing. (especially because the assurances about thieving don’t change her mind) Also the emphasis on not as in ‘this is a thing one absolutely does not do unless one wishes to die’.

“She’d believe me,” Shallan said. “She thinks she’s far more demanding than she is. Or…well, she is demanding. I just don’t mind as much as she thinks I do.”

Again, Jasnah taking what people say of her/how they say they perceive her at face value, and also lack of self-awareness in how people actually respond to her.

Jasnah regarded Shallan, face stiff, impassive. “I have been told that my tutelage is demanding, perhaps harsh. This is one reason why I often refuse to take wards.”

“I apologize for my weakness, Brightness,” Shallan said, looking down.

Jasnah seemed displeased. “I did not mean to suggest fault in you, child. I was attempting the opposite. Unfortunately I’m…unaccustomed to such behavior.”

Two things here: one, I’m like, 99% certain that Jasnah, who has been camped out at the hospital all this time waiting for Shallan to wake up is feeling anything but ‘impassive’ at this moment, in which case this is an example of her body language/facial expressions not matching up properly to her actual internal feelings, which is fairly common. And two: Jasnah’s apology being taken for a rebuttal and her obvious displeasure at it coming across that way when she literally intended the opposite (been there).

Also her general air of uncertainty/discomfort in this setting, which is one that’s obviously social/emotional. Also the fact that she pins her poor apology on lack of practice/familiarity with these kinds of interactions when, in theory, these kinds of things should come naturally to people. So like, lil bit of hinting/implication of scripting social things her, which I think her initial words reek of as well, as she’s said similar things before.

“You make it sound as if you were waiting out there.”

Jasnah didn’t reply.

“But your research!”

“Can be done in the hospital waiting chamber.” She hesitated. “It has been somewhat difficult for me to focus these last few days.”

“Jasnah! That’s quite nearly HUMAN of you!”

Again, a few things here, firstly that Jasnah is othered in a way by Shallan (and this isn’t the only time this happens, either) because of her lack of emotional response/social stuff. Secondly the fact that she’s clearly uncomfortable/struggles with this kind of conversation – the hesitation, the lack of responses are very much at odds with her usual composure and the way she has an answer for literally everything.

Words of Radiance:

She was all too glad to be leaving the stuffy room, which stank of too many perfumes mingling.

Prologue and we’ve already got Jasnah experiencing sensory issues in a crowded room with lots of perfume. What a way to kick things off.

“Many people consider that sort of thing enjoyable.”

“Many people, unfortunately, are idiots.”

Her father smiled. “Is it terribly difficult for you?” he asked softly. “Living with the rest of us, suffering our average wits and simple thoughts? Is it lonely to be so singular in your brilliance, Jasnah?”

A)- Jasnah obviously not enjoying social events/parties (she literally spends all of this one...contemplating the assassination she’s plotting. Like. Mood.)

B)- Gavilar’s comment is...Strangely sad, I think?? And perhaps a bit too on point. (This is very much just my reading of things but)...I don’t know. I see Jasnah trying to make a little quip/a joke here and it being misinterpreted because of her tone. And then, again, there’s that idea of othering that came up at the end of TWOK.

But I think the ‘is it lonely to be so singular in your brilliance?’ I think that....A huge part of that ‘brilliance’ comes from a mixture of Jasnah’s autistic traits: her special interest/her focus in them/her dedication to pursuing them...but also that sense of being other. Of not fitting in. The rest of “us” she doesn’t belong, she doesn’t fit.

And I think this idea of their ‘simple thoughts’ as opposed to Jasnah’s brilliant ones is a little like what we see with Renarin in Oathbringer, where Adolin explains that he isn’t trying to be lofty and brilliant, people sometimes just have difficulty following him. And I think this is what’s happening with Jasnah here (and in other places, she frequently talks about the difficulty she has in teaching, and how her methods are too intense and involved)

And also I think that....The saddest bit about this is that I think she was....Trying to joke here? Trying to fit in with those ordinary people, ‘the rest of us’, and just making a sarcastic joke on the back of her father’s comment about most people enjoying parties and she just sort of ‘well, most people are idiots aren’t they?’ And that’s what prompts this little moment here. So even when she’s trying to fit, and trying to belong, she’s still cast as the outcast, and misunderstood, and othered and it Hurts Me.

I, she thought, need to write this experience down.

She would do so, then analyze and consider. Later.

She literally topples into another world, effectively, and is just like ‘hm, I should make some notes on this and analyse them’. And. Yep. This is how she processes the world. By making sense of it, by treating everything according to Jasnah’s rules: it gets written down. It gets analysed. It gets understood. Bam.

Jasnah ignored the eyes of the sailors. It wasn’t that she didn’t notice men. Jasnah noticed everything and everyone. She simply didn’t seem to care, one way or another, how men perceived her.

Jasnah ‘I don’t have time for social expectations’ Kholin strikes again. Jasnah also just doesn’t care how anyone perceives her, social norms and expectations can go fuck themselves .

Jasnah grimaced at the thought. Shallan was always surprised to see visible emotion from her. Emotion was something relatable, something human—and Shallan’s mental image of Jasnah Kholin was of someone almost divine.

Again, the othering idea, as well as visible emotion being startling, as she’s typically so withdrawn/closed off/difficult to read. Yes friend, u guessed it, this is Peak Autism. Also the specific word in it being ‘relatable’ again marks that difference between Jasnah and...Everyone else. Again she’s different, again she doesn’t quite fit.

Jasnah relaxed visibly. “Yes, well, it did seem a workable solution. I had wondered, however, if you’d be offended.”

“Why on the winds would I be offended?”

“Because of the restriction of freedom implicit in a marriage,” Jasnah said.

Again, Jasnah misreading things/not being able to anticipate how people are going to react to different things. Also her view of marriage as ‘restricting’ says a lot about how she sees it/probably relationships in general.

Power is an illusion of perception.”

Shallan frowned.

“Don’t mistake me,” Jasnah continued. “Some kinds of power are real—power to command armies, power to Soulcast. These come into play far less often than you would think. On an individual basis, in most interactions, this thing we call power—authority—exists only as it is perceived.

“You say I have wealth. This is true, but you have also seen that I do not often use it. You say I have authority as the sister of a king. I do. And yet, the men of this ship would treat me exactly the same way if I were a beggar who had convinced them I was the sister to a king. In that case, my authority is not a real thing. It is mere vapors—an illusion. I can create that illusion for them, as can you.”

This right here is Jasnah explaining passing, without ever using the word ‘passing’. This is how Jasnah sees social interactions. They’re all illusions, they’re all, effectively, lies. They aren’t real to her. How people perceive others isn’t something that she can fit into her box of neat facts and logic. It’s this ever changing, insubstantial thing, ‘mere vapours’. And though she’s talking here about power and authority, the basic principle applies to literally every single social interaction ever. Aka: the secret behind how Jasnah Kholin (somehow) managed to convince ppl she’s allistic.

The orders of knights were a construct, just as all society is a construct, used by men to define and explain. Not every man who wields a spear is a soldier, and not every woman who makes bread is a baker. And yet weapons, or baking, become the hallmarks of certain professions.”

Actual footage of Jasnah Kholin going to war against social constructs and their flimsiness.

It was a picture of Jasnah, drawn by Shallan herself. Shallan had given it to the woman after being accepted as her ward. She’d assumed Jasnah had thrown it away—the woman had little fondness for visual arts, which she considered a frivolity.

Instead, she’d kept it here with her most precious things.

This is one of my favourite Underrated Jasnah Moments tbh because it says so much about her with such a simple gesture. We’ve established from the past book and a half that Jasnah is pretty bad when it comes to social interactions, and she’s even worse when it comes to displaying her emotions. But she’s not emotionless. She, personally, doesn’t see the value in visual arts, and hasn’t dedicated any time to it herself. Yet she keeps the gift that Shallan gives her. She understands how important this is to Shallan, and she quite literally treasures the art that Shallan gives her, and keeps it with her precious research/notes (and, like, Symbolism with her keeping her sentimental gifts and logic fuelled research in the same place/with the same level of importance/value, except one is hidden, and one is displayed)

And, like, Shall literally assumes Jasnah had just thrown away the picture?? And instead she’s got it kept safe with her most treasured possessions? Like??? The TL;DR version of this point is that Jasnah is horrendous at displaying her emotions/showing people how she feels about them/what they mean to her, but she feels things, goddammit. And now so am I.

What of this Sadeas? she thought, flipping to a page in the notebook. It listed him as conniving and dangerous, but noted that both he and his wife were sharp of wit. A man of intelligence might listen to Shallan’s arguments and understand them.

Aladar was listed as another highprince that Jasnah respected. Powerful, known for his brilliant political maneuvers. He was also fond of games of chance. Perhaps he would risk an expedition to find Urithiru, if Shallan highlighted the potential riches to be found.

Hatham was listed as a man of delicate politics and careful planning. Another potential ally. Jasnah didn’t think much of Thanadal, Bethab, or Sebarial. The first she called oily, the second a dullard, and the third outrageously rude.

She studied them and their motivations for some time.

Right. Now. Correct my autistic ass if I’m wrong, here, but I’m like 89% certain that ‘taking notes on the basic personalities/literally studying the people around you and making notes on the way they behave so you can actually understand them’ is not a typical allistic thing to do.

Shallan turned back toward him. That pride in his voice didn’t at all match what Jasnah had written of the man.

Jasnah can literally predict the oncoming apocalypse by the power of research, can she pin down some basic Facts about the people she’s observing around her? Nope. I wonder why.

“She wouldn’t let me be a mother to her, Dalinar,” Navani said, staring into the distance. “Do you know that? It was almost like . . . like once Jasnah climbed into adolescence, she no longer needed a mother. I would try to get close to her, and there was this coldness, like even being near me reminded her that she had once been a child. What happened to my little girl, so full of questions?”

Two things: one, this is probably (agonisingly) relating to whatever trauma Jasnah experienced as a child and I’ve got Painful Emotions about it. Secondly, Jasnah being very mature for her age/shucking Navani’s influence because it wasn’t what she thought she needed/wanted is, like, not exactly the most tactful/self-aware/socially conscious thing in the entire universe.

“You’re still human,” Shallan said, reaching across, putting her hand on Navani’s knee. “We can’t all be emotionless chunks of rock like Jasnah.”

Navani smiled. “She sometimes had the empathy of a corpse, didn’t she?”

Oh look, it’s canon low!empathy Jasnah: from the words of her own mother no less.

(Also, small note here, as a low!empathy autistic myself: I really love the way Jasnah is written because it complements my own understanding of empathy which is...Fairly complicated. Jasnah isn’t just like none and done here. It’s not that she just doesn’t feel empathy so she doesn’t care? She isn’t characterised as this brutal, unfeeling, robotic ice queen. There are a lot of nuances and complexities here as to how she relates to those around her and I love it.

She obviously loves her family very deeply, and is driven to protect and help them (in a very practical, logical way I might add. Which is typically how I relate to care/love as well. You want a shoulder to cry on? I’m going to sit there awkwardly, pat you on the head, and hope you stop soon. There’s a practical solution to your current problem? Heaven and earth will be moved to achieve it.) She keeps Shallan’s drawing, even treasures it. And I think that she obviously....Feels her lack of feeling (if that makes sense)

See: the hospital scene with Shallan where she attempts to apologise. She’s...Uncomfortable with the emotional aspect of things, and she’s completely wrong about Shallan’s intentions, and actually her actions as well. There’s a block there with the empathy...But that’s obviously something that doesn’t exactly...Sit right with her? She’s quite self-depreciating in that scene, actually, and it’s clear (to me, anyway) that there’s the sense of her being aware that there’s something...Missing. Something that...Doesn’t quite line up. Something that makes her different and stops her relating to people perhaps in the way that she wants to.

Anyway: don’t equate lack of empathy with lack of love: a novel by Brandon Sanderson. God bless. Intentional or not, this is one of the most relatable low!empathy characters I’ve ever read and I’m here for it.

“Chana knows, I wondered sometimes how I raised that child without strangling her. By age six, she was pointing out my logical fallacies as I tried to get her to go to bed on time.”

Shallan grinned. “I always just assumed she was born in her thirties.”

“Oh, she was. It just took thirty-some years for her body to catch up.” Navani smiled. “I won’t take this from you, but neither should I allow you to attempt a project so important on your own. I would be part. Figuring out the puzzles that captivated her . . . it will be like having her again. My little Jasnah, insufferable and wonderful.”

Again, a few things here: this concept of autistic children being far more mature/behaving like ‘little adults’ is actually pretty common. Also the puzzle-solving thing is just. Relatable.

Oathbringer

“Brightness?” Shallan said. “But … Shardblades aren’t fabrials. They’re spren, transformed by the bond.”

“As are fabrials, after a manner of speaking,” Jasnah said. “You do know how they’re made, don’t you?”

“Only vaguely,” Shallan said. This was how their reunion went? A lecture? Fitting.

Jasnah is believed dead for months on end, reunites with Shallan after who knows how long: immediately starts infodumping to her. Shallan:.......’Figured.’

People were always surprised to see emotion from Jasnah, but Dalinar considered that unfair. She did smile—she merely reserved the expression for when it was most genuine.

Jasnah back at it with the only bothering with emotions when they’re genuine. (Also Dalinar getting all indignant about people not understanding Jasnah/mischaracterising her is my favourite)

“They will try,” Jasnah said, “to define you by something you are not. Don’t let them. I can be a scholar, a woman, a historian, a Radiant. People will still try to classify me by the thing that makes me an outsider. They want, ironically, the thing I don’t do or believe to be the prime marker of my identity. I have always rejected that, and will continue to do so.”

Obviously she’s talking about her heresy here, but with a tiny smidge of tweaking it works well for her being autistic, too. She will always be a little bit different, always not fit, always be defined by being an outsider.

“In the face of such an atrocity, I would consider the sacrifice of one or more Heralds to be a small price.”

“Storms!” Kaladin said, standing up straight. “Have you no sympathy?”

“I have plenty, bridgeman. Fortunately, I temper it with logic. Perhaps you should consider acquiring some at a future date.”

Again on the feelings tempered by logic, thing. (Also Kaladin/Jasnah is interesting because they’re basically....polar opposites, and I enjoy the dynamic. But that’s for another day.)

“If you wish, Captain,” Jasnah snapped, “I can get you some mink kits to cuddle while the adults plan. None of us want to talk about this, but that does not make it any less inevitable.”

“I’d love that,” Kaladin responded. “In turn, I’ll get you some eels to cuddle. You’ll feel right at home.”

Jasnah, curiously, smiled.

Jasnah: approves of frank, honest comments. Even if they’re mildly insulting. As long as they’re genuine.

They didn’t talk tactics too specifically; that was a masculine art, and Dalinar would want his highprinces and generals to discuss the battlefields. Still, Shallan didn’t fail to notice the tactical terms Jasnah used now and then.

In things like this, Shallan had difficulty understanding the woman. In some ways, Jasnah seemed fiercely masculine. She studied whatever she pleased, and she talked tactics as easily as she talked poetry. She could be aggressive, even cold—Shallan had seen her straight-up execute thieves who had tried to rob her. Beyond that … well, it probably was best not to speculate on things with no meaning, but people did talk. Jasnah had turned down every suitor for her hand, including some very attractive and influential men. People wondered. Was she perhaps simply not interested?

All of this should have resulted in a person who was decidedly unfeminine. Yet Jasnah wore the finest makeup, and wore it well, with shadowed eyes and bright red lips. She kept her safehand covered, and preferred intricate and fetching styles of braids from her hairdresser. Her writings and her mind made her the very model of Vorin femininity.

Jasnah just not caring about social/cultural gender norms. Jasnah does what Jasnah wants. But also, gender roles, and tbh the entire concept of gender, is a social construct, it’s something a lot of autistic folks struggle with. (Also non-binary/agender!Jasnah just, as a fun little aside)

“Surely,” she said softly, “if Jasnah had known that I’d just confronted a deep insecurity of mine, she’d have shown some empathy. Right?”

“Jasnah?” Pattern asked. “I do not think you are paying attention, Shallan. She is not very empathetic.”

A)- Jasnah probably didn’t notice and B)- low!empathy Jasnah again.

Jasnah rubbed her temples. “Storms. This is why I never take wards.”

“Because they give you so much trouble.”

“Because I’m bad at it. I have scientific evidence of that fact, and you are but the latest experiment.” Jasnah shooed her away, rubbing her temples.

‘I have scientific evidence of the fact I’m not good at mentoring/teaching/with people in general’ actual quote from Jasnah herself. Also, just, the language here? The mentoring/taking of wards is an intimate social relationship in Vorin culture, but the way Jasnah speaks of it she uses words like ‘scientific evidence’ and ‘experiment’ which says a lot about how she views relationships in general tbh.

Also, I think her self-consciousness is something that’s interesting to note. This isn’t the first time she questions her teaching abilities/methods, in fact it’s one of her biggest and most obvious insecurities, it’s something that she’s very aware of. She knows she’s bad at this, and it bothers her.

“Ivory, you think all humans are unstable.”

“Not you,” he said, lifting his chin. “You are like a spren. You think by facts. You change not on simple whims. You are as you are.”

She gave him a flat stare.

“Mostly,” he added. “Mostly. But it is, Jasnah. Compared to other humans, you are practically a stone!”

[…]

“Jasnah?” Ivory asked. “Am I … in error?”

“I am not so much a stone as you think, Ivory. Sometimes I wish I were.”

And again with Jasnah being factual-based when it comes to her decisions ,and emotions based when it comes to her motivations. Jasnah Kholin feels things so deeply I will physically fight you over this matter. Also, given what we’ve seen, it definitely seems as though Ivory/Inkspren/Jasnah’s ideals are concerned with logic/reason/rightness, and that being a defining aspect of her/her order is interesting in the context of her being autistic.

Renarin still lurked at the far side of the room, mumbling to himself. Or perhaps to his spren? She absently read his lips.

Since, as far as we know, Jasnah isn’t deaf/hoh, the lip reading is something she acquired for other purposes. Probably as part of her paranoia/wish to protect her family, but it’d also probably help with auditory processing disorder. Which is basically where your ears hear words fine, but your brain scrambles them up and fails to make sense of them. Also a lot of autistic folks (self included) tend to watch people’s mouths instead of their eyes (bc eye contact Sucks) and I’m not saying I can lip-read, but if I could it’d definitely make life easier.

But when, before this, had she last heard him laugh?

“Maybe,” Navani said, “we should encourage him to take a break and go out with the bridgemen for the evening.”

“I’d rather keep him here,” Jasnah said, flipping through her pages. “His powers need additional study.”

Navani would talk to Renarin anyway and encourage him to go out more with the men. There was no arguing with Jasnah, any more than there was arguing with a boulder. You just stepped to the side and went around.

Jasnah being completely and utterly oblivious to the hidden agenda/undercurrent to Navani’s thoughts which is ‘Renarin is comfortable with the men/is enjoying himself with them, maybe we should encourage that?’ and just responds to her mother’s words and nothing else. The boulder analogy makes me laugh (but also recalls what Ivory said about her being ‘stone’ which is, again, a kind of othering, a setting apart of the ‘normal’ humans, based on how she emotes/deals with things/processes fact.

I’m sorry, Mother. I’ve been dealing with a lot of lesser ardents today. My didactic side might have inflated.”

“You have a didactic side? Dear, you hate teaching.”

“Which explains my mood, I should think. I—”

A lot of autistic folk find it difficult to teach people, largely because, if they explain something in a certain way, away in which they understand, they have trouble rephrasing it/altering it to make other people understand it as well. Can definitely, definitely see Jasnah struggling with this.

Jasnah preferred to work alone, which was odd, considering how good she was at getting people to do what she wanted.

This shocks me to my very core so it does.

Next to her, Jasnah stood with arms wrapped around herself, eyes red. Navani reached toward her, but Jasnah pulled away from the others and stalked off toward the palace proper.

Oh look, it’s touch!averse Jasnah. (she’s really not very touchy feely at all) Also Jasnah not knowing how to deal with her emotions/grief and withdrawing from people around her. Also I’m calling the arms wrapped around herself as a pressure stim. Fight me.

Jasnah met his eyes, chewing her lip as she’d always done as a child.

Jasnah having anxious!stims (that she probably forced herself to unlearn)

“Forget I asked,” Dalinar said, sharing a look with Navani and Jasnah. Navani smiled fondly at what was probably a huge social misstep, but he suspected Jasnah agreed with him. She’d probably have seized the banks and used them to fund the war.

Jasnah ‘fuck your social niceties, I have a war to win’ Kholin.

Suddenly they were young again. He was a trembling child, weeping on her shoulder for a father who didn’t seem to be able to feel love. Little Renarin, always so solemn. Always misunderstood, laughed at and condemned by people who said similar things about Jasnah behind her back.

Mm, who else was ‘solemn’ as a child? Maybe ‘correcting logical fallacies at age six’ ‘no longer needed a mother when she reached adolescence’ Jasnah. And, like, ‘people mock Renarin for his autistic traits...Jasnah is also mocked for having these exact same traits.’ It’s basically canon, people.

Jasnah fell to her knees, then pulled Renarin into an embrace. He broke down crying, like he had as a boy, burying his head in her shoulder.

Also, the fact that Renarin instinctively went to Jasnah for comfort, not Navani, who eagerly mothers literally everyone around her, or anyone else, he went to Jasnah ‘empathy of a corpse, made of literal stone’ Kholin for comfort and support tells me something. It tells me that these two had an understanding. That Jasnah understood Renarin, and that Renarin understood Jasnah, and that there perhaps a reason for that that has to do with their shared brain weirdness.

This is also the first time, as I recall, that Jasnah responds with physical affection. (And this doesn’t undermine what I said about her being touch!averse, she is, but a)- she initiates this contact and b)- it’s with someone she’s clearly comfortable with this level of contact)

Jasnah glanced over her shoulder at the gathering army. “And perhaps … this is one time when a lecture isn’t advisable. With all my complaints about not wanting wards, you’d think I would be able to resist instructing people at inopportune times. Keep moving.”

I have said it before and I will say it again, Jasnah infodumping to an exhausted Shallan in the middle of a fucking battlefield is the most autistic thing I have ever witnessed in my entire life.

These had always been right. Until today—until they had proclaimed that Jasnah Kholin’s love would fail.

And, to summarise it all neatly, Jasnah Kholin, empathy of a corpse, heart of a boulder, whose love in the end never failed her. *wipes tear* my beautiful autistic queen is good and full of love and feeling but just being really bad at showing it to people. We do not deserve her.

TL;DR: Jasnah is autistic af. It’s basically canon. Fight me.

323 notes · View notes

jejemonmon · 7 years

Text

Analysis + Semi-Theory: Zen's relationships with other people (including the RFA)

Yo, so this has been on my mind for a while and I just had to share my thoughts with you, because you made a post before about Rika that had some similar points and I wanted to add on to that.

You know how Rika made had a “connection” with each RFA member (aside from Jaehee) that made them agree to join the RFA and caused them to be so torn up about her “death” and just generally really affected by her in every way?

Logically speaking, Zen should have been just as impacted by her as Yoosung, Jumin, and Saeyoung and really emotionally distraught and traumatized by her “death” as a result. She sought him out, she was his earliest fan when no one else was, she attempted to made him successful and give him a “family” with the RFA.

But he always kind of avoided her. He sidestepped and rejected her help and friendship most of the time. He even declined to join the RFA at first, as I recall someone saying in one of the chat rooms. He only joined once V saved his life. Even when the game starts and also throughout the game, Zen always keeps the rest of the RFA at an arms distance, save for V, who he allowed to get up to his elbow, so to speak, because he saved Zen’s life and gained some of his trust. He doesn’t seem to act like his true self at all around most of the RFA. No one really knew anything about his past until MC shows up.

It’s just really interesting and weird to me. People always brush Zen off as being “less important” than the other RFA members, and that just makes me roll my eyes. Honestly, him deliberately keeping himself somewhat disconnected from Rika made me like him more. Because while some people really liked the bigger overarching plot, it wasn’t what I signed up for when I decided to play an otome game. (I prefer the universe theories about the game itself and Zen knowing he’s in a game and Seven and V and the wizards and etc.) I wanted to learn and fall in love with the individual characters themselves and not groan and roll my eyes every time the convoluted plot got in the way and took up time and then boom you and the character you’re pursuing magically decide to share deep feelings for each other with little to no buildup or progression of said feelings. At least that’s how it is during the excessively plot-smothered Deep Routes, which just felt like a hot mess tbh.

I got off on a slight tangent there. But I always think of Zen as someone who was able to see through Rika’s bullshit at least somewhat and didn’t become so overly attached and emotionally invested in her. (That’s one reason why the secret ends felt so OOC to me. Zen would have never just settled for being kept in the dark by Jumin, Seven, and Jaehee, and while he’s impulsive, he’s too detached from Rika to want to send her away. Although that might be the “white knight” in him who always feels like he has to speak out and protect the oppressed. Idk.) Zen was always the one who, while emotional and hotheaded, actually reacted like a sane person should in some of the extreme situations - the bomb, Jumin keeping MC in his apartment, V keeping secrets, forcing a stranger to jump into a dead girl’s job without thinking of how she feels, etc. The rest of the RFA is so blinded by Rika that they ignore logic most of the time and do things that don’t make sense because “it’s what Rika would have wanted”. They’re so caught up in this dead girl’s charity organization that has itself basically become super shady and conspiratorial, ignoring a lot of things that are so obviously sketchy and borderline illegal. And yes, I’m including Jumin, Mr. “I’m so logical”, who threatens the MC if she doesn’t agree to join the RFA and also declares she’s useless and obsolete if she doesn’t fulfill Rika’s duties. Like, jeez, mob boss much? He basically is one in every way except for official title.

So back to my main point. I think people tend to overlook how emotionally isolated Zen is from the rest of the RFA, something that he probably did deliberately. He doesn’t really like anyone in the RFA, except for V, and he mentions that a lot. He never believes that any concern or help that the RFA gives him is genuine. He doesn’t believe Jaehee is actually his fan, he doesn’t think Seven was actually trying to help him out (he thinks Seven was just being goofy and his weird trolling self), and the whole debacle with Jumin which everyone knows about so I’m not gonna go into (and tbh I still question Jumin’s sincerity and motive other than personal and financial gain bc Zen would owe him, so I don’t blame Zen for thinking the same way). He doesn’t believe anyone could actually care about him. He only knocks down some of his walls and lets V in a little bit because V fucking saved his life. But other than that, Zen has isolated himself so much emotionally that he hasn’t formed real relationships with any of the RFA members except V, nor does he really trust them, like them, or consider them friends. He doesn’t open up to them, and he keeps on the same mask that he shows to everyone else. He can’t afford to let anyone in, because they’ll just reject and betray him like his family.

Think about it too - Zen doesn’t really have any friends outside of the RFA either, like at all, save for a few people from his biker gang days, who I doubt he was his complete and true self around either. He’s super independent and relies only on himself, because that’s the only person he has. But he’s so desperate for affection and validation, which is why he seems desperate for a girlfriend yet simultaneously rejects so many people who are interested in him under the guise of focusing on work. When in reality, and he’s said this and there’s proof from VN flashbacks and in game events, that no one has actually treated Zen like a real person, or tried to understand him enough to warrant him opening up to them, except for V and the MC. That’s why he falls for the MC so fast, because she treats him unlike anyone else has before, like a person, and actually cares about what he wants. (Remember, V lies and keeps a lot of things from Zen, but Zen’s less torn up about it because while he trusts V more than the rest of the RFA, he hadn’t completely opened up to him, so he saves himself from some amount of emotional hurt.) The RFA may mean well, but they ultimately grossly misunderstand Zen, try to force what they think he should do on him, and treat him either like he’s an object on a pedestal or just too dumb to fully grasp or contribute meaningfully to a situation.

Basically, people don’t give Zen enough credit, and they brush him off as a background character with a shallow personality. There’s so many obvious things Cheritz has given us to showcase more of Zen’s character and personality, but the fans either make fun of him for it or call him annoying because of it. He’s super intuitive and guarded and I can definitely understand why he never completely bonded with the RFA. I love them, but quite frankly, they consistently fail to treat Zen like a person and don’t care about what he ultimately wants, but rather what they want from him. He protects himself from getting hurt by never getting completely emotionally invested in these people and reminding himself that they’ll probably all let him down someday. Which they do. No one actually sees Hyun Ryu, instead of ZEN, save for V and the MC.

This is really good analysis and oh my goodness way more than I could ever do. I never really thought about it this way.

While I mostly agree, I think some points should be open to discussion.

I personally feel like the RFA members treated him like a real friend, family, but the connection wasn’t there because of Zen. They were open to him, but he wasn’t open to them. That contributed to all the misunderstandings they had, so in that sense I don’t feel like I could ever blame them for how they treated him at times.

I also don’t recall Jumin ever threatening MC or saying those things to her, but maybe that’s just my bad memory. There’s many more I can say about that, but I think those who know his character better can explain it more substantially than me. I wouldn’t want to spout inaccurate information about him.

As for the fact that we don’t give Zen enough credit, I must agree. Although, since the April Fools DLC, more and more people have grown fond of him. I’ve been receiving messages from people saying how they’ve grown to appreciate Zen more after they realised this and that from my theories. So it’s definitely getting better, I’d say. I think overall, it’s really up to people’s types. Even before I had realised all this, I already liked Zen because I liked how romantic and caring he was. Others like Yoosung because of how cute and innocent he is. It’s the same for the other characters. And people see Zen as annoying because well, letms admit it he can be at times!

As I have said previously, all of the characters are complex. I chose to closely analyse Zen, and so have you, and that’s why we really love him. On the surface, he seems like just a romantic, narcissistic guy. I can’t blame anyone for not liking him. Same goes for the other characters. If I analysed their character more, I’d probably end up falling for them too, and that’s what others did, and that’s why they like who they like.

Thank you so much for submitting this. You wrote so much and you had a lot of valid points. Though this is as deep as I can go with my opinions because I’m currently rushing through a lot of work, I hope that you guys can also give your two cents on this. Reblog/Reply! Let’s start a discussion :D

214 notes · View notes

tsunrugi · 7 years

Text

So I have a lot of thoughts about Ares that I haven’t been writing down/sharing on here! I was going to go through point by point with that trailer they did a few months ago, going in to my personal opinions/predictions for each team, situation, and what I think that means for the characters in them… but then I realised I really just want to talk about Teikoku. So i’m gonna. do that.

so aliea is a super influential arc for a lot of characters, and three of those have ended up at teikoku - sakuma, fudou and kazemaru (just mentally add + genda every time i mention sakuma, i love him but unfortunately he doesn’t get built on much after aliea). and actually the minute hino said this was an alternate timeline i was v. concerned in regards to the development for these characters bcs i see them as being v important to them growing up in to strong healthy beautiful adults! very briefly:

- it reaffirms sakuma’s sense of self in a teikoku w/out kidou. it helps him define himself w/out kidou. also like it’s super fucking mature of him to be able to encourage kidou to go to raimon when he knows it’ll hurt him in the process!! props for sakuma, look at all that Character Growth.

- it sets up fudou’s whole deal. on subsequent viewings it actually also sets up his isolation which is super super important for his later development.

- it shifts kazemaru’s perspective, shows us (and him) how destructive it can be to cling to things like being the best, how having high standards for yourself can, when left unchecked, be self destructive. the whole dark emperors thing makes him grow up very fast and kind of refocuses his priorities in sport (and life?).

so in ares, these things haven’t happened. maybe they won’t happen! that concerns me because i love that these things happened because it’s a testament to how well i11 develops its characters subtly and continuously through the series. i want to have faith but lbr, this is going to be one fucking crowded series. here’s maybe my thoughts re: all of these characters being together, on what appears to be the most fucked team in the competition. like, rip teikoku, you’re not getting anywhere and it’s not fair because you’re beautiful and you deserve it.

first up with sakuma. he’ll probably suffer enough being a captain on a team coached by kageyama, but i’m curious to see exactly how. not just because i enjoy suffering, but because kageyama brand suffering is pretty bland at this point, so the real question is - will this suffering bring about as nice character moments as shin teikoku did? shin teikoku was such a good story arc. it had purpose in the overall season as well as for the characters involved! and i’ll say it again, i really love how sakuma Grew because of it. it takes a lot to own up to your own mistakes, let alone as big as the one he made. he wasn’t just trying to absolve kidou of his guilt by telling him he was better at raimon: he was also in a way repenting himself, giving himself a stern talking to, to try and see past his own desires and fears and paranoia and to fight his loneliness with his friend’s happiness. it sounds so petty but this can be hard!! fomo is a Real Thing. and i think this kind of shapes sakuma later, in ffi - he gets setback after setback but he works through it and it’s Brilliant. he works hard to get back in to shape so he can play again. he works even harder to try and be on the representative team, and then gets knocked back. picks himself up and keeps going. puts aside his own beef with kageyama to support kidou. he works on himself constantly, physically and mentally and just As A Person, and it all starts with that guilt from shin teikoku. will ares have these moments for him?

i can see the whole “kidou come back to teikoku :cccccc” thing being solved by a casual conversation. it might even be OFF SCREEN. and that feels super anti-climactic considering the lasting impact of shin teikoku? what i want is for sakuma to lose it again - maybe have his anger at his own inability as captain boil over, have him lash out at kageyama in the Worst Possible Way. he’d have to be isolated. he’d have to ignore support from genda and kazemaru and whatever interaction he has with kidou. but it would be FUN and we also get to have his development and learning growth and i’d be happy*

i want to jump in with kazemaru next. because he’s kind of similar with sakuma in how dark emperors impacted his character, only his attachment was to the idea of winning/being the best rather than a person or idealised team/friendship situation. kazemaru doesn’t look like he’s in a good position in aliea which ngl gives me Life, but the question is - will this lead to his realisation and reconfiguration of his toxic mindset?

there’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve, or with having ambition or goals. but we all know how that ended for kazemaru, because of the way he internalised loss and failure and was eventually tempted by pure power. he’s very de-powered in ares. he has to play second fiddle to KAGEYAMA, of all fucking people, and idk i got the vibe from the trailer that he’s trying to start a coup with sakuma at least to usurp it all. but… is this consistent with s1 kazemaru, or even early aliea kazemaru? he feels very ffi kazemaru already. again, no doubt he’ll Suffer, but there was something to dark emperors that was so shocking, so impactful, that you can’t help but want something just as big? i don’t think there’s space for it in the ares story. and like sakuma, i don’t think he’s isolated to the point he was in aliea for it to happen all that naturally. so the question is - will his toxic mindset get addressed? will the dark parts of his ambition be dealt with, or will they still be there ready to explode?

i think that’s my major concern. aliea built kazemaru’s dark emperor turn so well. i don’t want that aspect of his character to just be ignored like it was never a thing, because imo it’d make the whole thing feel less like natural, human development and more like contrived plot device. and yeah, i know this is fiction, i know things have to happen for the plot, but i like i11 because it does treat character seriously, and does have the plot evolve along character lines. even in s1 kazemaru talks about how he wants to fight on the world stage. his break in s2 is believable. his stress, his fear, his anxiety, his despair, it’s all believable! please let elements of that stay in whatever he has to go through in ares.

and now for fudou! i love fudou. i was v. concerned when he turned up in the outer code and seemed Actually Stable. see, the thing with these three in aliea is that they were all isolated (sakuma you could argue had mentally separated his own suffering from genda’s, when you consider the extend he went to in shin teikoku in comparison). and they all dealt with that isolation by taking the power of the aliea meteorite. sakuma and kazemaru did that with a whole lot of passion. they let it consume them. fudou… didn’t. fudou was in control. and he seems to discard it without having to break like the other two did.

fudou is so interesting, i’d recommend an aliea rewatch just focusing on him. he’s all about the calculated revenge agains the world. he wants chaos, but he himself is not chaotic. he wants it to come apart around him, but to stay above it all. that’s why the only real moment of shock for him comes when kageyama rubs it in his face that he’s just as much of a pawn as the rest of them. this is a Deep Cut for him. this is Huge. and it’s huge because, as much as he wants to stay separate, he is still insanely affected by his family situation. it follows him in to ffi in that he can’t open up or trust any of his teammates, and how he deliberately antagonises them to keep them away. he doesn’t want, closeness. he doesn’t think he needs it, even though in many ways he craves it (snarky comments to himself that just serve to show how lonely he is, the fact that 90% of his hissatsu are combo moves, etc).

ANYWAY. why does this matter? well, in what we’ve seen of him in ares he’s…. playing nice? he’s sitting quietly and listening? he’s involved in team play? HE’S WEARING THE NO. 10 JERSEY JFC. this fudou already feels post-ffi. i can give them the benefit of the doubt - he doesn’t know why he’s at the teikoku meeting, and he doesn’t seem to have an established relationship with kageyama. maybe he’s just playing it save, sussing things out. but i hope there is some chaos. i hope he doesn’t play nice from the get-go. ffi was really fun in deconstructing his actions vs. everyone else’s intense dislike of him. it’s a really subtle unravelling of a villain, one that i missed on first watch because i was too god damn mad at him. but!! it’s so good. it’s so well done. and there are so many layers: we see fudou as we know him, just that Shithead who caused shin teikoku. we see fudou from the POV of kidou and sakuma, as someone who can’t be trusted, as someone who might still be working with kageyama. and then we see him through his own actions: he was fucked over too, and he wants to get back at kageyama just the same as everyone else. he’s insanely attentive to his teammates, even in the early stages of the season. he’s alone. and he grows. i love adult fudou because it’s such a lovely transformation from this isolated kid who dealt with his pain by causing chaos, to an actual well adjusted human being who has Friends and who Coaches and Helps people and Supports them while still retaining his own sense of self. IT’S REALLY NICE. BUT WE CAN’T HAVE THAT ARC IF HE’S ALREADY THERE.

so hino, please, make fudou a shit. make him the biggest shit. make him ambiguous and unpredictable and look I know there’s not that much time to deal with this but make him chaotic, just for a little bit. he is the joker - let him act like it before he joins up all buddy with sakuma and kazemaru, as per the implications of the trailer. you can do it, i have faith in you.

*i will most likely be happy with anything they do anyway this is all moot

#inazuma eleven #inazuma eleven ares #magic soccer

11 notes · View notes