#(My version had lines entirely in spanish)

[docholligay]

i know the 2011 musketeers movie is very understanbly disliked but the milady de winter is perfect to my eyes so the movie is perfect

I never saw it! I saw the preview and said, "You know what I can't handle? A steampunk three musketeers." And so, it passed me by.

I would actually love to do a whole THING, when I have more time, where we maybe...read the book, and watch a lot of versions, and talk about it as an IDEA. I love the cultural idea.

#I was queen anne in our production! #not becase I'm great at anything I suspect but because the role required one to #a) be very white #and b) speak spanish well #(My version had lines entirely in spanish) #I COULD DO BOTH #quizas le han caputrado #*looks at estefana* la garida del cardinal #I STILL remember those lines because I remember reading them in ...you know what? GOOD spanish pronunciation #and the director basically srtanding up and clapping ahaha #lol capturadoand guardia ACTUALLLLYYY

[daydreaming-en-pointe]

the swan and her princess (part 2)

summary: Swan Lake isn’t all beauty and grace, contrary to popular belief. And you experience firsthand that as you wage a one-sided war with your “rival” for the role of Odette.

chapter summary: A pleasant surprise turns out to be possibly not so pleasant after all.

pairing: Gwen Stacy (Spider-Woman) x fem!Ballerina!Reader [aka some sort of a messy Ballet!AU]

word count: 2695

warnings: cussing, ballet terms, creative liberties taken since I’ve never been to Lincoln Center and the research I’ve done may or may not be fully accurate

a/n: :D got a little carried away with this one whoops doing this is much harder than i expected this au is taking up my entire brain pls help

part 1 // part 2 // part 3 (pending)

glossary:

Barre: A handrail used by ballet dancers to maintain balance while exercising. One hand is placed on the barre at all times, and the dancer stands beside it.

Kitri: The feisty and wilful heroine of the ballet Don Quixote. When her father Lorenzo tries to marry her off for money, she doesn’t play the victim, but hatches a plan to marry Basilio, the charming barber who has won her heart, and pursue her own version of happiness. As a dancer’s role, Kitri is athletic and demanding. Kitri wears striking red costumes (look them up, they’re really beautiful) and gestures expressively with a fan in a nod to her Spanish heritage.

Don Quixote: Don Quixote is a ballet in three acts, based on episodes taken from the famous novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes.

Kurta: A loose collarless shirt/dress of a type worn by people in South Asia, usually with a salwar, churidars, or pyjama.

Dupatta: A length of material arranged in two folds over the chest and thrown back around the shoulders, typically with a salwar kameez. Usually worn by women from South Asia.

Right after you set foot in the studio and dropped your bag in the corner, you made a beeline for the cacophonous, eagerly buzzing crowd that had formed around the cast list.

You saw a familiar duffel bag and raised your eyebrows slightly. Surprisingly, Gwen had showed up on time. Miracles really did exist.

Murmurs of disappointment and cheers of satisfaction rippled through the dancers in the room as they dispersed one by one, either wearing an expression of genuine excitement or a mask of disguised regret that they hadn’t tried harder or trained longer.

You pushed your way to the front, your eyes immediately darting to the name next to Odette. Your heart sank as you traced over the curly loops and sharper lines of the handwritten letters.

White Swan/Princess Odette : Patricia Roberts.

Pat…?

Sure, she was good, but she was always a little bit too fast for the pieces. She was brilliant at lightning-quick steps in speedy variations, but couldn’t ‘dance like a flowy fairy’, as your ballet teacher said, to save her life.

And the White Swan was all about being slow and sad and graceful.

Your eyes travelled further down the list, going through the roles of Odile, the cygnets, the general swans, and the royals. Each time, you were disappointed. By the time you reached the end of the list, you couldn’t help but feel a little bit anxious. Your name just… wasn’t there.

You were a part of this, right?

The entire class was taking part in this production. It wouldn’t make any sense for you to not be there. Even if it was just as a regular background swan.

“Can’t find your name either, huh?”

You hadn’t noticed that everyone else had broken off into excitedly chattering groups to start warming up and take their places at the barre, leaving only you and Gwen standing and craning your necks up at the piece of paper that seemed to decide your fate in the studio for the next few months.

You shook your head no, earning a sigh from Gwen that lasted longer than it probably should have.

“Well, we could ask Miss Walker, but she’s not here yet. So…” She shifted awkwardly beside you. You tried to observe her from your peripheral vision without being too obvious. She sounded… tired. Exhausted, really, like she hadn’t slept in a few days and then had to run a marathon around the city. She had done a pretty shoddy job of concealing the heavy dark circles under her eyes — which truly was saying something, because her makeup was usually immaculate.

Fuck. You couldn’t believe it, but for a moment you almost felt sorry for her. Well, maybe not just almost.

“Hey, uh… you good?” You winced at your attempt at a nonchalant tone. Gwen turned to look at you like you had sprouted a third head, slight confusion reflecting in her eyes.

You had never noticed them before, but she had nice eyes, honestly. The expressive kind that could show every little shift in her emotions if she didn’t hide it. And right now she looked like she was about to grin or crack a joke, so you fixed a scowl on your face to ward off any amusing thing she might have been gearing up to say.

The smile in her eyes faded.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

Time to poke the bee’s nest. “You don’t sound—”

You were cut off as the studio doors flew open, and Miss Walker, looking extremely hassled, practically sprinted in. Random strands of hair poked out of her unusually-untidy bun, and her glasses were perched precariously on the tip of her nose. She held her phone in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

“Class, pointes on and everyone to the barre right now, please! Finish your second warmup, I’ll be right with you. Gwendolyn, Y/N, may I have a word with the two of you?”

We’re in trouble, mouthed Gwen with a comically scared, wide-eyed, completely exaggerated expression that was very childish and definitely should not have made you want to laugh. You bit the inside of your cheek to clamp down on your smile.

Your ballet teacher led you both over to a corner of the studio, adjusting her glasses right as they were about to fall off. “Okay, so I have some very good news for both of you. You might have noticed that your names weren’t on the final cast list at all, correct?”

You both nodded.

“As it turns out, you’ve been selected by the School of American Ballet to feature in New York City Ballet’s version of Swan Lake! And not selected for just any role — you girls are playing both Swans!”

The words took a few seconds to register in your mind. The sheer improbability of it all was phenomenal — two mere teenagers chosen to perform by the most prestigious ballet company in the world, to dance alongside some of the best professional ballerinas-in-the-making? This was a dream come true; was any of this real?

“You’re joking,” you heard Gwen say beside you. You felt like you were about to lift off and float all the way to the sky when your teacher just gave a broad, proud smile.

Everything after that was surrounded by a hazy glow of euphoric shock — blurred by excitement and lightheadedness and disbelief. You might’ve blacked out at one point, bracing yourself against the wall while you waited for your vision to clear.

Gwen suddenly narrowed her eyes in a wince, squinting as if she had a headache. “I’m so sorry, I have to go,” She mumbled hastily, before grabbing her bag and slipping out of the studio. And just like that, she was gone. Again.

You and Miss Walker exchanged a look of slight confusion, but she shrugged. “Well, you’re dismissed for today, Y/N. They’re expecting you tomorrow. You know where the company is, right?”

“Yes, miss.” Of course you did, which ballerina didn’t? Of all the best aspiring ballet dancers’ dream companies, New York City Ballet was right up there with The Royal Ballet in London, Paris Opera Ballet in France, and the Australian Ballet in Melbourne. In other words: this was a giant fucking deal and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

You’d have to be beyond idiotic to blow it off.

You arrived at Lincoln Center (which housed the New York City Ballet), fresh-faced and a few minutes early. Well, maybe not so fresh-faced, since you could barely sleep because of nerves. Throughout the night, what felt like a million thoughts that were all variations of what if I’m not good enough? and maybe I’m not cut out for this plagued you well into the early hours of the morning.

You felt a tap on your shoulder and turned to see Gwen, looking annoyingly (and most probably effortlessly) put-together and honestly quite fashionable. Did she have to have such perfect eyeliner? Even her hair tips seemed pinker than usual.

“Wow, you’re early for once,” You tried to load snark into your tone but failed miserably, earning you an insufferably relaxed chuckle from Gwen.

You shook your head and focused on trying to find the ballet company’s actual studio. Lincoln Center was comprised of a complex of buildings in a giant neighbourhood that you had never been in before, and the David H. Koch Theater which housed the New York City Ballet was just one of those many buildings spread over 16.3 acres.

You were lucky you two had arrived early, because it took you ten whole minutes trying to find the theater - because, as it turns out, you and Gwen had entered from a separate entrance from the main one. Finally you entered the studio, and for a while the only sounds were that of your shoes squeaking on the shiny wooden floors.

Something that struck you was just how big everything about it was.

The light fixtures that lined the walls cast yellow light all along the hallway, illuminating everything with a soft glow the colour of honeyed amber. Just walking that corridor made you feel like you were approaching a royal ballroom, floating around in a gown that could put Kitri’s costume from Don Quixote to shame.

You finally saw the door to the studio. Someone was waiting outside — a man in an all-black suit with close-cropped black hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. His face broke into a smile as he saw you and Gwen, and without waiting for you to fully make it to the door, he strode forward and clasped your hand.

“Welcome to New York City Ballet! I’m Carlos, the resident choreographer of this company. We’ve been expecting you! Your teacher has informed you of the production we are working on, yes?” He rattled all of this off at full speed in clipped, staccato pronunciations, so fast that it took you a second to register what he was saying.

“Swan Lake, right?” Gwen answered for you.

“Yes, yes. I assume you both know the combinations for both swans?” You nodded maybe a little too eagerly, eliciting a subtle eyebrow-raise from Carlos. “Very good. Come, I will introduce you to Shaoni. She is our support staff, and a former ballet mistress. She taught many young dancers who went on to become famous prima ballerinas. Don’t take her words too seriously; her bark is worse than her bite.”

He gave you a sympathetic smile and pushed open the double doors. Immediately the first thing you saw was a woman wearing a blue kurta with a gold-trimmed dupatta, her dark hair pinned into a bun at the nape of her neck. The thing that stood out most about her was her highly displeased scowl that had her looking like someone had insulted her entire bloodline three times over, spat in her face and then wrecked her favourite tutu.

Forget a simple resting bitch face, this was a prime, next-level display of an I’m-done-with-this-shit-and-I-need-a-vacation expression.

“Good morning, girls. My name is Shaoni Lahiri, you will address me as Miss Lahiri. You’re a bit early; please begin your warmup while we wait for the others. Also, our artistic director wanted to talk to you about your first day, so once he arrives meet him in his office.” Miss Lahiri had just finished her introductory monologue when her phone buzzed in her pocket with a notification.

Her eyes swiped over the lockscreen for a brief second before she tucked it away again, and you could’ve sworn you saw her roll her eyes slightly when she saw the name of the messager. “Mr. Osborn will see you now. The door to his office is in the far left corner of the studio. Try not to get lost, will you?” Even her sarcasm sounded effortlessly annoyed beyond relief.

And just like that, she abandoned you and went over to compare choreography notes with Carlos.

You turned and followed her directions, noticing a polished wooden door near the end wall of the studio. “Hey, wait for me!” Gwen had been busy gawking at the studio and, really, you couldn’t quite blame her. It truly was something else compared to the much smaller one you were used to.

You knocked once and pushed open the door once you heard a voice call out, “Come in!”

The moment the door swung open, you were immediately blinded by the brightest white light you had ever seen. The entire office looked like it had been bleached to within an inch of its life; there were no specks of dust to be seen and everything was neatly arranged in cupboards and on shelves.

“Oh, hello there!” Once your eyes had readjusted, you noticed a man with greying red-brown hair in a crisp suit with a green pinstripe jacket, an orange vest, and black pants. He sat with his hands clasped neatly on the lacquered teakwood desk in front of him, wearing a polite smile.

“You must be the new arrivals, yes? Let’s see, what are your names…” He opened a folder that had been pushed to one side of the desk, flicking through pages. “Gwen Stacy and Y/N Y/L/N?”

“Yes, that’s us,” You answered quickly, feeling slightly giddy with excitement as the truth sunk in properly. This wasn’t a dream, you had really been selected by the fucking New York City Ballet. You would be working alongside some of the best ballet dancers in the area. Better yet, you had more than a fair chance at dancing Odette. Of course, so did Gwen, but you were obviously the better choice… it wasn’t personal, really, just that she barely attended a full class and therefore should probably dance Odile instead.

“Excellent, excellent. Pleasure to meet you. I’m Norman Osborn, the artistic director of this company.” He stood up and shook your hand. He smiled at Gwen, but instead of smiling back, she just dropped her gaze, inhaling sharply as if she had been stung.

“Something’s not right with him,” She murmured to you the moment Mr. Osborn turned his back to retrieve a folder from his filing cabinet. “I can’t explain it, just… please trust me. I think he’s going to be a threat to us.”

You felt annoyance flare up inside you, white-hot maelstroms of anger expanding by the second. “Please excuse us, Mr. Osborn. Gwen and I need to discuss something.” You tried to sound as inconspicuous and well-mannered as you could. You grabbed Gwen’s shoulder and pulled her through the door, closing it behind you.

“Listen here,” You hissed, letting go of her. “I didn’t make it all this way and train for an extra four hours a day for three years just so you could blow this off. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re some sort of a package deal. So don’t you dare make up stuff and tell me this perfectly polite man is a threat. Is this some sort of scheme? You make me get cold feet, pretend like you’re dropping out, then when you convince me to leave the company you swoop in and snatch up the role of Odette? Is that what you’re playing at?”

Gwen stared at you in utter disbelief, rubbing her shoulder where your grip had tightened just a little too much. “What? No, of course not. I would never—”

“Okay, good. Now let’s get back in there and do whatever the hell he wants us to do, because this is the New York City Ballet and we are not leaving till we’re done with this production, got it?”

For a split second, intense desperation marred her features and she looked like she was about to cry. Then, just as quickly as it had come, all the vulnerability displayed on her face disappeared — but not from her eyes. Her mouth and eyebrows were relaxed, cool, but her eyes shone with a feverish light that made her look a bit manic. Finally she took a deep breath and glared levelly at you.

“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Something about her tone would have sent a shiver down your spine if you hadn’t been so pumped up about this whole ordeal. You dismissed it easily, penning it, possibly, as the sullen disappointment of a plotter whose evil scheme hadn’t gone quite according to plan.

You entered the office again, Gwen trailing behind you reluctantly, and gave Mr. Osborn a big smile. “You were saying?”

He passed you and Gwen two sheets of paper and a pen. “Sign this. It’s a contract that officialises your stay at this company for the duration of this production.”

You signed it eagerly. Gwen, who was studying the words intently, noticed your impatience and signed it too.

“Perfect,” said Norman Osborn, giving you a big smile. Was it just you, or did it look more plastic this time…?

Nope, definitely just you. He carefully filed the sheets away and clasped your hand in a handshake once again. “Welcome to New York City Ballet. I’m sure this contract will prove to be beneficial to the both of us.”

Gwen dropped her eyes to the floor. Probably just her odd headaches acting up again.

Taglist:

@hobiebrownismygod @l0starl @therealloopylupin2099 @theprismyyy

#⋆·˚ 🌹 ༘ * — 𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗶’𝘀 𝙧𝙤𝙨𝙚𝙨! #⋆·˚ 🌺 ༘ * — 𝙝𝙞𝙗𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙨! #across the spiderverse #atsv #atsv x reader #gwen stacy #gwen atsv #atsv gwen #gwen stacy x reader #gwen stacy x you #gwen stacy x y/n #gwen stacy x fem!reader #gwen stacy x female reader #gwen stacy x ballerina!reader #spider gwen #spider gwen x reader #ghost spider #ghost spider x reader #ballerina!reader #dancer!reader #going to go crash now byeeee

[zhuzhudushu]

Lingopie — Chinese Review ★★

So I did 3 months of Lingopie (stylized as Liñgöpie) so you don't have to (unless you want to lol).

I mention a Chrome extension, the Zhongwen dictionary, quite a bit in this review. It is here, I highly recommend it (click)! It's also available for Firefox (click).

What is Lingopie?

Lingopie is an app and desktop extension/website that allows you to watch tv shows and cartoons with interactive subtitles for language learning. It currently has Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Portuguese, French, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. It claims to improve your language learning by 80% (compared to Duolingo which is around 20%).

Here is their website. (click)

Pricing: (March 2024)

3 months $36

1 year $71 "on sale" (normally $144)

Lifetime $199 "on sale" (normally $663)

Please note: I have never seen these full prices. It appears that the "sale" is permanent.

My Review / TL;DR Version

Extremely disappointed both in functionality and content for Chinese. Maybe this is a good program for other languages, but for Chinese there is extremely limited content with pinyin subtitles only available for the non-Netflix shows. All the best learning features are available for non-Netflix shows, yet those tended to have significantly worse translations than Netflix. I would not recommend this product for Chinese. While it had a few good features and I enjoyed it for 6-7 episodes of one show, it then had a glitch where an entire episode was subtitled wrong, so I gave up.

See below the cut for full breakdown.

Strengths:

Has access to Netflix shows and films including some popular ones (e.g. Meteor Garden, Dear Ex, Nezha Reborn)

This is nice and I enjoyed rewatching the ones I was familiar with and getting a better grasp of listening and vocab. I appreciate that they try to incorporate kid-friendly along with more serious/adult content with animated and live action tv shows and films. I also liked that it specified if the show was from Taiwan or China, and also included shows that had some Cantonese influence (e.g. Scissor Seven)

Allows you to have English and Chinese subtitles simultaneously or alone, and you can easily click them on an off while watching.

This is pretty standard for all video/subtitle based educational apps, but it was nice to easily click them on and off in case I wanted to double check my understanding, and to compare the direct translation of the words to the full translation of the sentence.

Allows you to pause automatically after each subtitle. Can also loop subtitles over and over. There are also AI-produced explanations of grammar.

This hands down was the best part about the entire experience for me, and why I ended up using Lingopie for 3 months. While it was sometimes clunky (see below), this made singling out specific lines/words for listening practice so easy. Once I got in the groove, I was able to get through episodes fairly quickly and was starting to be able to listen and hear new words in sentences later.

Click on the words in the subtitle to make flashcard sets

This was a nice feature, but I do wish the flashcards were a bit more functional, see below. It was easy enough to use and a quick way to remind yourself of the new words you learned before you jump into the next episode.

Weaknesses:

Pinyin subtitles available on desktop only, with no pinyin subtitles for Netflix shows (as of May 2024)

This is a HUGE flaw, and I was 100% dependent on using another chrome extension for hover-over dictionary while using Lingopie. I know they are working on pinyin subtitles for Netflix and mobile, but I used this for 3 months and it still was not implemented when I ended. To me, if I have to use another app in conjunction with this one in order to fully learn, then what's the point? Especially since I watched Taiwanese and Cantonese-influenced shows with very non-standard pronunciations, comparing standard pinyin to accented productions is necessary for me. Even with the pinyin subtitles for the non-Netflix shows, it left a lot to be desire because they're tiny above the Chinese characters, and sometimes difficult to read. More than once I thought a ǒ was ō because of how tiny it was.

Not enough content, especially cartoons/beginner level

The one above and this bullet are the main reasons why I don't recommend this app for Chinese specifically. Maybe other languages are fine, but there is simply not enough content for the price. I was hoping for more beginner/lower intermediate content like children's cartoons, however there are none for Chinese. All the animated options are more teenager/adult oriented. There also weren't many light-hearted or comedy options, meaning you would have to watch a lot of serious dramas, thrillers, and violent shows if you wanted to get your money's worth. For my personal taste, I don't want to have to pause every dialogue line for an adult thriller. That would ruin my experience of the show and the suspense. For the non-Netflix options, most shows were incomplete with only 1-5 episodes available out of 10+. They also tended to be lower quality productions, with significantly worse English translations. The majority of what is available outside of Netflix are short films (~5 mins) and cooking shows (10-20 mins) which aren't bad for beginners. I personally have no interest in cooking, though lol. Essentially, there is no TRUE beginner fictional content in Chinese available.

The dictionary is... rough

Again, I was fully dependent on the Zhongwen extension. While the English subtitles themselves are good, the individual definitions of words that you hover over are definitely rough. They weren't actually that helpful for breaking down meanings of things like slang and characters' names. For example, in Scissor Seven there were quite a few animal puns, e.g. 汪星人 which is internet slang for "dog" Lingopie translated as "Woofer" which was... awkward and strange. Without the Zhongwen extension I would have had no idea what this was actually referring to. It would been nice if it functioned more like the Zhongwen extension, where it would highlight individual characters or phrases/combos depending on your mouse placement. Particularly on the non-Netflix shows, the translations even in the English subtitles were incredibly rough and at times I couldn't understand the context in either language. There was also one instance of an entire episode (Netflix) that had incorrect subtitles, I suspect subtitles from a different episode? That was the final straw for me.

It chooses whether or not to highlight single words or phrases so you have no control over your flashcards

This made the flashcards not as functional to me. Sometimes, I wanted just the specific noun/verb in the sentence, but it would make me highlight the entire sentence. Other times, I wanted a really functional phase, but it would only let me highlight the individual words. I barely used the flashcard feature because of this.

Clunky interface (Chrome & Firefox)

I can't speak for mobile or Safari because I didn't use them. Since I was relying on the Zhongwen hover-dictionary, I only used Chrome. You can only use Chrome or Safari if you want Netflix shows. Sometimes the auto-pause after each subtitle would be too early or too late, meaning I would have to actually click things pretty persistently throughout each episode. Using the spacebar to pause/unpause hardly ever worked, and using the arrow keys to flip between subtitles also never worked for me. Sometimes the hover-definitions of words would linger even after I clicked away, and would not disappear until the next subtitle appeared. This was super annoying and would block a good portion of the screen. Sometimes I would have to click things 2-3 times before it registered in both Chrome and Firefox.

Overall, I think it's a great idea, but needs some pretty major improvements in order to be worth the price.

In my opinion, if they were to add significantly more shows, including kid's cartoons, and improved their subtitles, dictionary, & interface function, it would be worth the price.

Maybe in a few years as Lingopie grows, it will be worth it. But for now, it's not. For now, it's clunky and limited. If you were to watch it for an hour a day, you would probably get through all the shows that interested in you in about 3-6 months. It wouldn't take longer than a year to go through all of the Chinese content, as of right now. So why would you pay for a year or lifetime price for that?

(divider credit here)

#chinese langblr #mandarin langblr #chinese learning #chinese #langblr #mandarin chinese #language learning #mandarin #learning languages #zhuzhu reviews #lingopie

[jamespotterthefirst]

Familia (Ethan x f!MC)

Book: Open Heart, beyond

Pairing: Dr. Ethan Ramsey and MC (Lilac Allende)

Word Count: 2.7K

Rating/Warning: T/ Some Language

Summary: Ethan meets her family over a traditional meal of tamales.

Note: In which Lilac's Mexican mother teaches him how to make tamales. Translations at the end :)

The usually cold, pristine kitchen of his apartment appeared like a different place entirely that afternoon. For one, it was crowded as Lilac's family bustled about, the sounds of music, laughter, and lighthearted conversation filling the space. Every inch of the counters was covered in a colorful mosaic of ingredients, each meant for a different dish and each tended to by a different Allende. Tendrils of steam swirled into the air as Mrs. Allende stirred the contents of a sizzling pan, the aroma nothing short of mouthwatering. 

It had never felt so inviting or close to a real home and Ethan felt momentarily stunned. 

He paused at the threshold to admire it, his attention finally resting resolutely on Lilac. She, too, appeared entirely transformed as she cooked and joked with her siblings in both of her languages. Sparkling green eyes creased at the edges, more alive than ever, as she dodged a dusting of flour sent her way by her younger brother. 

“You'll pay for that,” she told him mid laugh, followed by more vows of retaliation in Spanish. 

Ethan basked in the sound of her voice and how her native language made it sound different— like a soft melody that swelled pleasantly with every word. Something soared within him as he watched this version of her, taking root in his chest and blooming very much like the first time he saw her at Edenbrook. 

“Ya basta, muchachos,” Mrs. Allende chided over the hiss of the frying chilis. “Jaime, look at the mess you made all over Dr. Ramsey's kitchen. Clean up all this flour and go keep your dad some company in the living room.”

“Sí, señora,” Jaime Allende said with a mock salute that made his mother roll her eyes lovingly. Once her back was turned, he smirked at his sisters. “See you later, feas. I'll be in the living room enjoying the game.”

Laurel, the eldest, shoved him with her shoulder as he passed. It looked almost comical to Ethan since she was significantly shorter than him.

 “Hey, you better clean this shit up,” she called out after him. When the warning fell on deaf ears, Laurel shook her head and murmured to Lilac, “Twenty four and he still knows how to trick his way out of doing any real work.”

“Typical,” Lilac returned cautiously, eyes on her mother's back. 

Ethan took that opportunity to rejoin his girlfriend at the kitchen, his arms banding around her waist as he quickly kissed her temple. 

Lilac let out a pleased little laugh, her body relaxing against him. 

“How's my dad?” 

“Quiet,” he replied, trying his best not to take it personally. Still, the nerves he felt about meeting her father had tapered into a fine point when the man had spoken less than five words to Ethan. 

“That checks out,” Laurel commented knowingly from beside them. 

Lilac threw her sister an unappreciative look which did nothing to help with his anxiety. She swiveled in Ethan's embrace, her scowl softening when their eyes met. “My dad's just a quiet person at first. Once he gets to know you, he's the goofiest marshmallow imaginable.”

Ethan remained unconvinced, afraid that her father was less than thrilled about their relationship. Then again, if Ethan had a daughter, he would absolutely take issue with the bastard who was both her boss and boyfriend. 

“We found a football game on TV that he likes,” he commented, unsure of what else to say. 

“As long as it's real fútbol, he'll love you already.”

“Yes, he can excuse sleeping with his daughter but he draws the line at American football,” Laurel mused with a wicked laugh, already dodging the slap Lilac sent her way. 

Their mother caught the end of that exchange and sent them a single, silencing look that made both sisters cease at once. Then her eyes swiveled to Ethan and at once, her expression softened. Mrs. Allende straightened her spine and cleaned her hands against her apron. 

“Doctor,” she said cheerfully in Spanish. “Thank you again for inviting us into your lovely home.”

“Es un placer,” he returned as he studiously avoided Laurel's gaze. It would no doubt silently communicate “Kiss ass.”

“Thank you for making dinner,” Ethan said to Mrs. Allende, who waved this away dismissively, though she looked thoroughly pleased. 

“No thanks necessary. I hope you like tamales, Doctor. It's my mother's recipe.”

“I'm honored to try them. How can I help?” 

This was evidently the right thing to ask because Mrs. Allende lit up with pure admiration and approval. If he didn't have her blessing before, he was convinced he did now.

 Waving her daughters aside with fluttering hands and instructions in both languages, Mrs. Allende led Ethan to the part of the counter Jamie formerly occupied. She spent the next few minutes teaching Ethan how to prepare the masa. 

“Muy bien,” she praised minutes later when Ethan had caught on to the technique quickly. “Ya está listo para casarse, Doctor.”

You're ready to get married now. 

Three reactions occurred at once: Lilac coughed, Ethan felt his ears flare with heat, and Laurel all but cackled. 

“Madre!” 

“It's just a saying, mi vida,” her mother returned innocently, finding her way back to the stove. “Why don't you start on the filling?” To Ethan she added, “My Lilita makes the best green salsa, did she tell you?” 

Ethan paused his movements, the sticky dough beneath his palm melting against his skin. 

“She didn't.”

Lilac was studiously avoiding his gaze now, cheeks as red as the tomatoes she rinsed. For as long as he had known her, Lilac had made a show of professing her lack of culinary skills. 

“You're missing out, Doctor,” her mother proclaimed proudly. “Her chilaquiles are the best too.”

Ethan quietly assessed his girlfriend, who gave him a fleeting, embarrassed look. 

“You didn't tell me you could cook.”

Cheeks brighter still, she refused to look at him for longer than a moment. 

“Nothing anyone I know would like.”

“What do you mean?” 

“Mostly obscure Mexican food my grandma taught me how to make.” 

The words were an embarrassed mumble. 

“Your friends and I would love it.”

“Yeah, well…” 

Something about the shame in her expression and the tension in her shoulders opened little fissures along the surface of his heart. With a pang, he began to comprehend that every time his Lilac said, “I can't cook!” it was the simpler alternative. Feigning incompetence was easier than explaining the dishes she loved so much to people who often looked down on them. Not that Ethan or her friends ever would, but all it took was one asshole to look down on her customs with disgust for a protective barrier to emerge.

When Mrs. Allende busied herself with the oven, Ethan moved to encircle his arms around his girlfriend, careful not to get any of the dough still coating his hands on her. 

“Make it for me someday?” 

She blinked at him in surprise and when he smiled, she relaxed against him, nodding quietly. The grateful smile she gave him made his heart skip. 

“Dad's team is losing,” Jamie announced a

minute later as he reentered the kitchen, closely followed by his father. “He's mad. So he'd rather come in here and help wrap the tamales.”

Mr. Allende rolled his eyes at his son. “They have the ref bought, mijo. It's a waste of time to even watch.”

Unbeknownst to him, Laurel and Jamie silently mouthed their father's words in perfect sync behind his back. Ethan almost allowed a smile, unable to resist the infectious laughter that proved to be an Allende family trait. Before he could join in the myrth, however, Mr. Allende's eyes met Ethan's. The older man's expression was an impenetrable mask and it made Ethan's nerves buzz with a start. 

It was only when Mr. Allende's eyes fell down to Ethan's hands, clasped securely around his daughter's waist, that he realized he still held Lilac in a rather close embrace. 

Without thought, Ethan released her, almost shoving her away instinctively. 

Lilac, slightly affronted, shot him a funny look. She was no doubt incredulous that a man Ethan's age was still afraid of his girlfriend's father like some kind of hormonal teenager. A cheeky part of his mind mused that when it came to Lilac, he was much like a juvenile version of himself. 

“You're almost forty,” she teased in a whisper when her family was too preoccupied with an argument over what music to play. 

Ethan threw her a dry, unappreciative glare. He couldn't add anything more because at that moment, the notes of an upbeat and unmistakably eighties song drafted from the small Bluetooth speaker. 

All three Allende siblings groaned in unison, the sound dropping lower still when Mrs. Allende began to dance unabashedly to the beat. 

“Not Luis Miguel,” Laurel sighed. “Our mother's crush.”

“Luis Mi Rey,” their mother corrected with a lovestruck sigh. 

“I'm standing right here,” their father returned, arms crossed.

 Ethan could see, however, that the faux stern expression threatened to break as he watched Margo singing happily. His wife pulled him close, singing lyrics about falling in love under the sun on a beach. 

“I really lucked out,” Mrs. Allende said, voice sing-song and eyes fixed adoringly on her husband. “I ended up with someone better than El Sol de México himself.”

The sun of Mexico belted a high note from the speaker. 

“Yeah, you ended up with the entire solar system with Dad,” Jaime teased, a wicked gaze falling on their father's generous belly. 

“Don't body shame my dad,” Laurel returned sternly, though she looked on the verge of laughter. 

The family dissolved into a good-natured argument. 

Ethan watched them in silence, admiring the small pocket of chaos they occupied as they each spoke over one another. Even in doing so, they laughed and joked until all that could be heard was a chorus of mirth that made his heart ache. 

“The sun is a solitary star,” Ethan found himself saying through the cheerful chatter. 

Everyone fell silent, casting him glances that ranged from curious to downright confused. Only Lilac glanced up at him with a brilliant, knowing smile. 

“Many astronomers believe it once had a companion. As it stands now, it's an anomaly because it's alone in the universe.”

Still, no one said anything. 

Ethan was beginning to wonder if he overstepped and interrupted a family moment with his nonsense. Before panic could settle over his insides like a sheet of ice, his girlfriend wrapped an arm around his waist, settling into his side. 

“In other words,” he continued, eyes moving to a quiet Mr. Allende. “You don't want to be like the sun. You and your wife are more like binary stars, who are gravitational bound forever.”

More silence followed his words and Ethan had half a mind to retreat from the room. 

Finally, when the pause was almost unbearable, Mr. Allende chuckled. 

“You hear that, viejita? I'm better than Luis Miguel. I'm a star.” 

“Made of gas,” Jaime supplied. 

In the chaotic symphony of their laughter, Lilac reclaimed Ethan's attention with a chaste kiss on his cheek. “Ethan Ramsey,” she murmured, impressed. “You are a bit of a poet after all.”

It's how I feel about you. 

“I could've come up with that.” Jaime said loudly. 

“No way,” Laurel returned at once. “You literally said Dad was as vast and old as the solar system.”

“Old?” her father asked in mock offense. “No one said anything about old before.” 

After that brief glimmer of Mr. Allende's approval in the kitchen, the awkward edge in the air lifted. By the time Mrs. Allende promptly sat all of the men at the kitchen table to wrap the tamales, Ethan had proudly earned himself a smile from Lilac’s stoic father. His eyes crinkled at the edges as he watched Ethan studiously wrap the corn husks.

“My wife is going to favor your tamales, Doctor. You’ll make us look bad,” Mr. Allende commented. 

“We do that all on our own, pops,” Jaime returned without missing a beat. As though to prove this point, a glop of dough fell from the corn husk he haphazardly wrapped. 

Ethan paused, concerned. “Am I doing it wrong?”

“Not at all. They’re nearly damn perfect,” Mr. Allende chuckled. 

“Ethan does everything with mathematical precision,” Lilac commented as she approached, placing a kiss on Ethan’s forehead. 

Laurel muttered something from behind Lilac. Whatever it was scandalized her sister. 

Luckily, Mr. Allende missed this because he grinned at Jaime. “See, mijo? You should put your degree to use, too.”

“I was too hungover the day they covered tamal wrapping in my engineering classes,” Jamie returned. 

“Cabrón,” Mr. Allende laughed. 

As it turned out, Mr. Allende was correct. His wife adored the neat work Ethan made of the task she assigned. Bursting with pride and delight, she squeezed Ethan’s shoulder. “Excellent work, mijo!” 

Ethan’s heart felt weightless at the term of endearment.

“Ma, don’t go replacing me as the favorite son,” Jaime joked. 

“About time,” Lilac muttered. 

Jaime and Laurel rolled their eyes, exchanging a look. 

“Middle child,” they chanted in unison. 

They dissolved into a melody of voices and laughter once more. As the tamales steamed, they found themselves locked in a boisterous and heated game of Lotería. Ethan proved to be exceedingly good at it, much to everyone's delighted surprise (except Lilac's). After winning a particularly dramatic and fast-paced round, everyone flashed him an impressed smile.

 Everyone except Laurel. 

“Looks like you met your match, Lau,” Mr. Allende laughed. 

“I only lost because I was calling them,” Laurel responded, red in the face. “It slowed me down.”

“Then let me call them,” Ethan returned, matching the challenge in her voice. 

Lilac smacked an excited hand against the table. “This I have to see!” 

Mrs. Allende, looking just as delighted, proclaimed, “Have him call out the personalized cards too, mija.”

“Personalized?” 

“La Doctora,” Laurel said pointing at Lilac. “Mine is La Maestra and Jaime's is El Ingeniero.”

“Your parents don't have one?” 

“Dad's is already in the original deck,” Jaime began with a devilish grin. “El Borracho.”

Mr. Allende responded with a string of curse words and hearty laughter. 

“Ethan needs one, too,” Mrs. Allende said, kind eyes surveying Ethan. “We need to think of what his will say and I'll ask your cousin Natalia to make it.”

The group erupted into suggestions of what to name Ethan's card but he remained silent. His throat felt inexplicably tight as he watched them, thinking of ways to include him. 

“How about El Anciano?” Lilac whispered close to his ear, her warm hand atop his under the table. 

Ethan smiled at her jab but it was half-hearted. 

“They love you already,” she said reassuringly, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. 

For once, Ethan was speechless. 

“Alright, alright,” Lilac called out through the jovial clamor of voices. “We can decide on Ethan's card over the tamales and the bottle of tequila he bought for tonight.”

Jaime let out a loud cheer, his hands rubbing together in exaggeration. Lilac rose from her seat to retreat the bottle. When she returned, she raised it over her head like a trophy to the cheers of her siblings. 

“Good choice, Doctor,” Mr. Allende commended as he caught sight of the label. “How did you know that was my favorite?” 

Lilac telling him that morning is how Ethan knew. 

“I just knew you had good taste and went with that.”

The smile Mr. Allende gave him left little doubt that he had effectively won him over too. 

Laurel scoffed quietly, flicking a finger to the tip of her nose and spearing Ethan with a look that basically shouted “brown-noser.” On a whim, he flashed her a swift middle finger, careful to keep it hidden from her parents. 

Jamie howled with laughter, Laurel looked impressed, and Lilac grinned, looking far more in love than he'd ever seen her. 

It was then that Ethan realized that the foreign warmth coursing through him, welcoming and comforting as a morning sun, was a sense of belonging. 

Translations:

Masa: Dough

Tamales: A Latin American dish made of dough and filling. It is steamed in corn husks or banana leaves.

Chilaquiles: a traditional Mexican dish consisting of corn tortillas cut into quarters and lightly fried. Usually topped with cheese, cream, and other ingredients.

Mijo/Mija: Term of endearment meaning "son" or "daughter"

El Sol de Mexico: The Sun of Mexico. A nickname dubbed to singer Luis Miguel.

Viejita: Affectionate way of saying older lady

Loteria: a traditional game of chance, similar to bingo, and is played on a deck of cards instead of numbered ping pong balls.

Maestra: Teacher

Ingeniero: Engineer

Borracho: Drunk

Anciano: Old Man

Note: Hi. Lots of apologies to give out. First off, sorry it's been literal months! I'm back. Sorry this is long. Sorry this is long overdue (I wrote it two years ago and held it close to my chest.) Sorry I still have other fics to finish!

And thank you so much if you're still here and read this!

#ethan ramsey #open heart #ethan x mc #playchoices

[nekoannie-chan]

Dance practice

Title: Dance practice.

Ship: Steve Rogers X Reader.

Word count: 319 words.

Square: N1 “Ballroom.”

Rating: Teen.

Summary: You and Steve practice how to dance.

Major Tags: Dance practice.

Additional tags: This my entry to @cabottombingo Captain Bottom Bingo round 2. CABB2024.

Links: Wattpad, Ao3, Spanish version.

@saiyanprincessswanie

My native language is Spanish so I wanna improve my writing skills in English if you notice any mistakes, please let me know and I will correct them.

I don’t give any kind of permission that my fics to be posted on other platforms or languages (I translate myself my work) or the use of my graphics (my dividers are included in this), I did them exclusively for my fics, please respect my work and don't steal it. There are some people here who make dividers that anyone can use, mine is not this type, please look for the other's people. The only exception is the ones I gifted 'cuz now belong to someone else. If you find any of my works on a different platform and are not one of my accounts, please let me know. Reblogs and comments are always welcome.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Marvel's characters (unfortunately), except for the original characters and the story.

Add yourself to my taglist here.

My other media where I publish:  Ao3, Wattpad, ffnet, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter. 

If you like it, please vote, comment, and give me feedback to improve my skills and reblog.

Tags: @sinceimetyou @unnuevosoltransformalarealidad @navybrat817 @angrythingstarlight @shield-agent78 @charmed-asylum @pandaxnienke @real-fbi @smokeandnailz @white-wolf1940 @tenaciousperfectionunknown @xoxonotme @bluemusickid @leyannrae @harrysthiccthighsss @marvelatthisonee @caplanbuckybarness @sapphire-rogerss @lizzieolseniskinda @notyourtypicalrose @hallecarey1 @nana1000night @talia-rumlow @writingshae @alexxavicry @azulatodoryuga @daemonslittlebitch @chaoticcollectivenightmare @endlesstwanted @chemtrails-club  @marigoldreamer @whiskeytangofoxtrot5555 @here4thefanfics @theestorm @patzammit @kmc1989 @somegirlfromasgard

Steve Rogers was stunned by the decision you made; you had accepted the invitation to attend a night of ballroom dancing.

It wasn't something he expected, but after all, what could go wrong? You had decided that you needed to improve your skills on the dance floor before the big event. Now Steve felt he was facing the most difficult mission of his entire life: learning to dance with grace and style.

You and Steve found yourselves in a small ballroom, with mirrors lining the walls and soft music in the background, inviting romance. Steve scratched his head nervously as you smiled knowingly.

"Steve, this will be a piece of cake. We just need coordination and a little practice," you said, taking Steve's hand.

You both got into position, waiting for instructions from the dance teacher, who was watching you from across the room. You moved gracefully, as if you had been dancing for years, while Steve looked a little awkward at first.

"Relax, Steve. Let the music guide you," you advised, moving to the melody.

After a few moments, Steve began to feel more comfortable. He followed your instructions and let himself be carried along by the gentle beat of the music. Soon, you were twirling and gliding across the floor with an elegance that surprised Steve to no end; he had never managed to dance like that before.

The dance teacher approached you. "Good, good! You're progressing fast. Now, let's try something a little more complicated," he suggested.

You smiled, ready for the next challenge, while Steve nodded, unconvinced. The teacher began to teach them more elaborate steps and moves that required more synchronization.

As you danced, Steve couldn't help but be amazed at your skill on the dance floor.

After several hours of intense practice, you had done it and were ready.

The night of the party finally arrived, and you surprised everyone with your dancing.

#cabottombingo #cabottombingor2 #steve rogers x reader #40's steve rogers x reader

[lolotheparagon]

Rating Every TNBA Redesign Cos Why Not

The New Batman Adventures was the last season of the infamous Batman the Animated Series, although it moved to another less strict network. Because the producers wanted to do crossovers with the Superman animated series, they gave the series and its characters a more streamlined style to it. Now I dont wanna blame Bruce Timm entirely since there were many artists on staff back then who did the redesigns but because I hate this coomer, Im going to anyway. In BTAS, you can tell each character apart and they have their own unique outfits and looks to them. But here, these are some of the most unimaginative superhero/villain designs Ive ever seen. Although some did surprise me and were not that bad. So, for a bit of fun, here's my look at each Batman character's redesign in the final (and worst) season of the show.

(Not counting Robin cos he's a different character to Dick Grayson or characters that had very little changes like Clayface or Harley Quinn)

Batman

The big emo rodent himself. For his redesign, I like the more sleek look to Batman's cape...thats it. His original design is really hard to perfect. Its got everything. Why tamper with perfection?

Batgirl

I actually kinda like Batgirl's redesign. The yellow gloves and boots really help her stand out and its the one of the few times the darker toned outfits actually accentuate a design rather than ruin it. Too bad Bruce Timm couldn't stop salivating over her and the rest of the women in this show. So next time you see someone consider Bruce Timm this legendary storyteller of Batman, give them a healthy reminder that he shipped this college girl character with her mentor/surrogate uncle figure FOR YEARS.

Alfred

Its like they sucked away all of Alfred's snark and replaced it with a cardboard cutout. Literally, he looks so sterile and empty. Who had the idea of making Alfred look more bored and done with everything? Also whats wrong with his chin??

Commissioner Gordon

Good ole Commissioner Pringle got off pretty much unscathed but I think they made him a touch too old considering they gave him a more lanky body, which makes him look more feeble and weak. Dude looks old enough to be Babs' grandad

Joker

Ohhhhh boy. So Joker's redesign is infamously considered by fans as one of the show's worst redesigns, to a point even the showrunners were like yeahh. And thats not unwarranted. He looks like an inverted Dr Draken and im so glad they redesigned him again for Batman Beyond and onward.

Seriously he's A CLOWN WHERES THE MAKE UP?!!

Two-Face

I know Two Face is just a redrawn version of the original design with the TNBA streamlined art style but I want to draw special attention to the monster side of Dent's face. Notice in the original it looks more manic and feral? Heavily contrasted with the conflicted, guilty look on Dent's normal side? But here, in the redesign the monster side is less scary and Dent looks way too bored and angry. The overuse of black lines doesnt help.

Catwoman

She looks like Harley Quinn or Barbara wearing a catsuit. Starting to see a pattern here?

Baby Doll

Its a tough call cos they both look very good but Im gonna lean towards the redesign cos shes got that creepy doll look down to a T (Annabelle would be proud) whereas her original design looked more like a Tiny Toons character.

Scarface and the Ventriloquist

I like the redesign cos of the exaggerated style of the rest of the show perfectly captures Scarface since he's, yknow, a puppet and having the Ventriloquist be shown to be scared and submissive really does show how the puppet is ironically the puppetmaster.

Penguin

Actually I like both of them. They both give off that sophisticated element Penguin is known for and after so many reiterations of him being this crass Scouse-talking crime boss, its nice to see versions of him going back to his rich asshole roots.

Bane

In the original, he has a luchador-style mask and wrestling suit fitting his Spanish roots. Here, he straight up looks like a gimp. Its really bad. Embrace your heritage, Bane!

Riddler

They went from Frank Gorshin to Jim Carrey for Riddler (fitting cos Batman Forever came during TNBA's development) and I love that. So I love both of them. Nice to see a villain with some fucking colour in TNBA cos im tired of seeing all this black outfits. Also his cane being an extended question mark instead of a question mark on top of a regular cane is genius.

Mad Hatter

Both of them fit Hatter's deranged stalker vibes perfectly, but I wish they kept the colour scheme for the redesign cos Hatter's new colour scheme looks too rounded and doesnt stand out.

Poison Ivy

Killer Croc

Finally, now he looks like an actual crocodile instead of whatever the hell he was supposed to be!

Scarecrow

Okay, who the fuck decided to make Scarecrow look like the Babadook? Cos I want to give them a raise. Holy mother of piss, that is terrifying. That shit belongs in the Arkham games. I still prefer the old design cos it has that perfect blend of goofy and gothic. He looks like a Cacturne now that I think about it.

Mr Freeze

HONEY WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU?!! WHY DO YOU LOOK LIKE A FUCKING FUTURAMA HEAD?!! WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?! YOU HURT MY HUSBAND, TIMM, NOW ITS PERSONAL

#batman #batman animated series #btas #the new batman adventures #tnba #batgirl #commissioner gordon #catwoman #joker #riddler #two face #penguin #the scarecrow #mad hatter #ventriloquist and scarface #baby doll #poison ivy #bane #killer croc #redesigns #mr freeze #also freeze's suit looks so robotic and lifeless which I know that was the intention but it still looks boring as fuck

[bitchesuntitled]

Through the Motions

Pairing: Francisco “Catfish” Morales x Reader

Summary: You and Frankie decide to start a family. Regardless of your mental illness and the challenges it faces.

Warnings: Mental health, cussing, pregnancy, bit of angst, comfort, fluffff, pretty much sums it up

A/N: Sooo…. This would be my first fic I’ve ever actually put out for the entire world to read. I used to have several 5 subject notebooks full of fanfic for myself and my cousins to read cause they were the only ones I trusted with that part of my brain. 15 years later and here I am. I had 4 different friends read it before I posted. All of which gave amazing input and helped me with wording, grammar, punctuation, etc. I love you guys!!! @hessofather(knows all about mentally ill pregnancy cause she did that), @jay-zzle(Spanish expert), @bi-panda(help with grammar and punctuation) and Sarah(helped with wording, who needs to get a tumblr)

Special shout out to: @chloeangelic- Thank you for being so helpful to this newbie with your writing advice! You saw this fic before it became what it is now, hopefully it’s still as interesting as you thought it was to begin with @gracieispunk for just telling me to go for it! ❤️❤️❤️

HERE GOES IT! 🫣

Masterlist

At the time you felt like this was a good idea, that you were strong enough to handle it, that it would get better as time went on. Except now you’re not so sure.

*****

It was your idea first, trying for a baby and Frankie was ecstatic. You’d discussed kids before but it was always in a wishful way, too nervous to stop the meds to actually try. Late one night while in bed you decide to talk about it once more.

“What if you can’t handle my episodes?”

“Such as…” He asks moving on his side propping up his head with his fist.

“Well… I’m kinda, actually no, I’m crazy without meds. You haven’t had to experience that side of me but other people have. I had so much rage in me all the time, I would snap in an instant at the smallest of things, there were days I couldn’t even get out of bed. I almost lost my job at one point.” You say rubbing your face trying not to think of the past without meds. He moves your hands and cups your cheek turning your head towards him.

“Hey now, we don’t have to do this. It’s up to you. I’d love it if we could have a version of you and me out in this world but it’s not a necessity if you don’t want to. I’m still going to be here whether we decide to do this or not”

“Oh god, the manic episodes! I’ve gotten those under control finally because of the meds but the mania was almost just as bad as the depression! Sooo many bad decisions, honestly surprised I don’t have a kid already. Definitely had a rise in my labido during the manic episodes,” with widened eyes and a panicked look you start to back track “Sorry! I’m so sorry! I’m rambling now.”

“Shhh, we all have a past,” Frankie laughs, shaking his head, “If we’re being truthful here though- if we try for a baby that would be helpful, right?”

You laugh and roll your eyes.

“Yeah, I guess you got me there.”

*****

Thinking about it and doing it are two completely different things. The trying part was definitely fun and then it happened. Those two pink lines happened a lot faster than you were expecting. What now? You have to get off your meds. That’s what you have to do now. It’s really happening. There is now a life growing inside of you. You thought you were ready for this. Mentally trying to prepare yourself for the moment the meds had to stop, the pregnancy hormones and what they’ll do, the changes your body will go through, the mindset you’ll need to have going through this, so much to prepare for. Then the first slip up happens. It took 3 weeks, 3 weeks for the first incident to happen.

“Oh, I see!” You say gritting your teeth, “So I need to have supper ready for you when you get home? Like I’m some 50s fucking housewife?!”

“That’s not what I even said. All I asked was what are we having for supper? I did not mean what are YOU making for supper.” Frankie said as calmly as he could. He never thought his army training would help him in a situation like this. They teach you how to handle dangerous territories, hostile situations, survival, and so much more. But this? No one ever trains you for this. For a hormonal, mentally ill, pregnant lady.

You can feel your face hot from anger turning into one of embarrassment and shame instead. Your bottom lip begins to tremble. You realize your mistake immediately. Not sure if it’s the mental illness or the hormones rushing through your body. It all kinda feels the same right now. Frankie notices the change immediately and rushes towards you.

“Bebé, bebé, bebé,” He says quietly wrapping his arms around you, pushing your head into the crook of his neck. “It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay. We’ll get through this just like everything else. I’m here.”

“I hate this!” You sob

*****

Your entire pregnancy you feel as if you’re going through constant loops. The manic and depressive episodes coming in waves. You sense it before it happens, a lot like when you can smell rain before it starts. The only thing is when. When is it going to hit you? Will it be a depressive episode? Where you find it near impossible to even get up but you have to in order to make sure things are ready for this baby. Will it be a manic episode? Where you have so much energy it feels like you’re going to crawl out of your own skin but also in a way beneficial because you can get so much ready for the nursery. Will it be one of sadness, anger, anxiousness? What will it be and can you make yourself stop it? Doubtful, you never can, just like now.

**9 months later**

He plops down at the kitchen table sighing. The baby has finally gone to sleep. After 2 hours of crying there is finally silence.

“What‘s wrong?” Frankie asks

“I don’t know.” you sigh, putting the last bottle in the dish rack to dry.

He can tell something is wrong by your actions. The way you’ve been rigid. You’re so stiff. You’re so tense. You feel on edge about every little thing.

The baby is crying. Needs changed again. The baby is crying. Needs fed again. The baby is crying. Needs soothed again. The baby is crying. When is there time to sleep? So over-stimulated it’s almost too much to bear.

It’s only been 2 weeks since the baby arrived and you’re back on meds finally. As with all things though, it takes time.

“What’s wrong? Hermosa, please tell me.” he asks again

“It’s just one of those days.”

One of those days, the hatred for yourself you feel. Am I a good mom yet? Am I doing everything that needs done? Is there anything I missed? I have to be perfect on the outside. Why am I NOT perfect on the outside? Can I even pretend to be perfect? The internal battle is almost too much. You don’t want to look at him. You don’t want him to see how much your mind is making you suffer because he will see it, he always sees it now.

“Baby, please talk to me!” He pleads

You push yourself off the kitchen sink and finally turn around wrapping your arms around yourself and you know he sees it. Your mind starts racing. He thinks you’re a failure. He wants to give up on you. He doesn’t want to deal with you anymore.

He gets up and takes a step closer, you take a step back. Not ready for the comfort, the consoling, the pity party to ensue. He grabs you before you can get too far away.

“You're an amazing momma. Don’t sell yourself short!”

“Hold on,” You start to remove yourself from him, “I need to get the hamburger out for supper tomorrow.”

He furrows his brows letting you go and sighs, “Will you sit down, please?”

Reluctantly you sit down and your mind starts racing and panicking again. Why does he want me to sit? Why did he sigh? Is he mad at me? Did I do something wrong?

The baby monitor goes off and you start to get up again

“Stop, sit. I got this. Stay here.”

So you sit. You sit at the kitchen table with your mind spiraling and wondering what to expect next. Can he change the diaper? Can he make the bottle if the baby needs feeding? Can he soothe the baby to go back to sleep? What does the baby need?

You hear the crackle of the monitor

“Momma is so tired, isn’t she? She needs a break sometimes. She takes such good care of you while I’m at work.“ the baby starts to wail louder, that must be the getting diaper changed cry, “Oh yes, I know mi vida, it’s so cold and momma does it better but daddy is here and can do it too.” Low and behold you are correct!

The baby stops crying. Soothed for now. Who knows how long it’ll be before they’re awake again. Frankie comes back to the kitchen.

“Mi amor, we should get to bed.”

You nod while he grabs the baby monitor then your hand, in a daze you let him lead you to the bedroom. He helps you change your clothes for the first time in three days. Frankie grabs your brush, he gently brushes til the knots are out of your hair and he puts it in a bun the way you like. He grabs you around the waist and guides you into the bed. Laying there together, he’s whispering words of praise to you, “Eres hermosa, you’re a good momma, you’re perfecto for me and our baby” placing soft kisses to your neck with each phrase, and then you hear his soft snoring. With silent tears falling down your face you finally start to drift off to sleep, you suddenly remember you forgot the hamburger meat. You try to move but with Frankie’s warmth and tight grip surrounding you you easily give up, guess there is always tomorrow.

#pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal fanfiction #frankie morales #frankie catfish morales #reader fic #i’m new to this #be kind #white girl doing Spanish #angst #comfort #fanfic writing #fanfiction #fanfic #fluff #pedro pascal #y/n fics

[phoenix-downer]

What do you think about the translation, or adaptation, in general of KH from Japanese to English? As someone who is a Spanish speaker, I realize that even in my language the story is more different when I hear the dialogues in both languages @_@

Now I'm really curious about what the KH Spanish translation is like! What are the similarities and differences that you've noticed? My guess is that the Spanish translation is done based on the English translation, but I'd be interested to hear more about it!

As for the English translation (and keep in mind that I have not played the entire series all the way through in Japanese), I'd say that overall it captures the spirit of the Japanese version as far as I can tell? I mean there are differences in the KH original stuff, like Sora's catchphrase "connecting hearts is my power" becoming "my friends are my power," but I really like both versions of the catchphrase. The Japanese version keeps the focus on hearts as is fitting for a series about hearts, but friendship is such an integral part of the series and the English version captures that really well.

I also really love how Sora's line in Blank Points was translated. The Japanese version is something along the lines of:

"There are still people out there who are suffering, and they’re waiting for me. I have to get them back, they’re all connected to me."

Which again ties things back beautifully to Sora's Japanese catchphrase. The English version takes full advantage of the cultural and religious history of English with an "I am who I am" reference making its way into the dialogue, which shows a deep understanding of the target culture of the translation and gives it a lot of power:

"It’s just…they really need me. I have to go. I am who I am…because of them."

The versions are "different" but they're both well-done, and that's what a good translation should do.

Of course, are also a few ??? translations. Roxas's heartbreaking, "Let's eat ice cream together again/The three of us will eat ice cream together again" line in Days shows his grief and denial and attempt to reassure Xion as she's dying that she and Axel and Roxas will meet again. Unfortunately, in English this line became "Who else will I have ice cream with?" which just didn't land the same for me or for a lot of people. I remember watching the scene in Japanese for the first time and being like what the heck, this is so much better and Roxas sounds truly grieved instead of kinda whiny, why was it translated like that? Something like "The three of us will get ice cream together again, okay?" would've been a lot better. There's no way the translator(s) didn't know that though, so maybe they had to keep the English translation short and "Who else will I have ice cream with" was the only thing that would work with the cutscene timing that would approach the meaning of the original version.

And then Roxas's "Why did he pick you" line inserts some unknown "he" in the English version, whereas the Japanese version was more like, "Why were you chosen," with the implication being he was chosen by the Keyblade as indicated by at least one Japanese source (even though it's not directly spelled out in the dialogue). So that's another line I think could've been translated better.

But overall the English translation seems pretty solid. I mean there are a few jokes that don't translate (Seifer's ore beanie, which would be roughly equivalent to him wearing a beanie that says "tough guy" on it in English lol), but that's just the nature of translation, and there are so many good lines in the English translation as well.

Also, the KH translators have always done a stellar job on the Disney dialogue. It's clear they carefully reference the original dialogue from the Disney movies, and when there is dialogue original to the KH games, they make sure it stays true to the character's voices. Disney is also involved with checking the translations.

And in these instances, where the dialogue was originally written in English for the Disney movie, the KH Japanese version references what I assume is the Japanese translation of the movie, and the KH English version references the original English version, I usually prefer the English version (and granted I'm biased because I grew up with the English language versions of these movies, so there's the nostalgia factor plus the original script factor).

Barbossa in KH2, for example, says, "The curse..." in Japanese but "I feel...cold," in English, which just hits different, you know? Like it's the first thing he's felt since he was cursed, and he feels cold because he's dying. The English version just packs a punch for me that the Japanese version doesn't. And good on the English KH translators for making sure the original, iconic Barbossa line was used for KH even though a more literal translation ("The curse...") would've been more faithful to the KH Japanese version. In fact, Nomura mentioned in an interview that this is on purpose:

"We have spent a lot of time making the preparations, so the original text has been translated as directly as possible, while in the case of the different Disney worlds we asked the translators to keep the original dialogues of the films."

There's just a lot of art and nuance to the translation process, especially because KH features movies that were originally written in English but the main KH story was originally written in Japanese, so it's like there's a meeting in the middle between the two languages almost, which is a good metaphor for the series as a whole, honestly.

Also, Tai Yasue, the co-director of the series, is a fluent English speaker (he's Japanese but lived in Canada for a long time before moving back to Japan) and checks over the translations:

"The translation of Kingdom Hearts III is done internally, and we follow a multi-layered process; co-director Tai Yasue, who speaks English, checks the text, and Disney later checks it again."

So I think that helps a lot with fidelity and generally getting the heart of the meaning across even if the wording changes from the Japanese version to the English version.

Of course, this is just my view on the matter, and it would be worth asking other people who are familiar with both the Japanese version and the English version of the KH games what they think too. I remember reading a post or comment by someone who speaks both Japanese and English who said overall they thought the meaning was very similar in both languages but that there were certain character nuances that came across differently (I really wish I could find the post again, but I read it years ago and didn't save it, unfortunately). So I think it would be worth asking other people for their thoughts.

Thanks for the ask!

#kingdom hearts #kh #kh analysis #phoenix-downer #answer #kbunink #long post

[obsidian-warthog]

Fan Servant/Remake: Avenger Tezcatlipoca

I've been displeased with the representation of Aztec mythology in FGO since Quetzalcoatl, and it was clear that Tezcatlipoca was going to be demonized, so I made a fan servant concept for him well before LB7 was being teased. Wanted to show how Aztec gods fit Fate perfectly if you actually do your research.

Now that LB7 happened and I'm on tumblr, figured I'd share it.

Name: Tezcatlipoca

Class: Avenger 

Skills

Independent Action: A

World Destroyer: A

Protection of the Faith: EX

Oblivion Correction: EX

Noble Phantasm: The Victorious Night

Ascensions:

First form’s art sticks close to depictions of Tezcatlipoca’s ixiptla. He has an enraged look on his face, standing in a bloodstained temple while holding a weapon.

Second form’s art has Tezcatlipoca dress as a jaguar warrior, weapons raised and covered in blood. The background is outside on a dark night.

Ascension Quote: The crimes of the enemy cannot be forgiven. My punishment will be without mercy.

Third form’s art is mostly the same as the second, just with more signs of damage.

Ascension Quote: Stand back, I don’t want you to get hurt, but clearly more of my power is needed.

Final form’s art shows Tezcatlipoca sitting in a field at night, with flowers in his hair. Weapons are strewn across the field. Tezcatlipoca is playing a flute.

Ascension Quote: You’ve done well handling my power. Perhaps you have earned the right to see more of my nature.

Profile

Entry 1: A major Aztec god associated with smoke and mirrors. He both destroys and creates, his destruction of the past worlds paving the way for the creation of the current world, which he gave up his own foot to create. Because he loves humans, he is willing to be harsh and even kill some in order to ensure they continue growing as a whole, like a farmer tending to his crops.

Entry 2: Humans known as ixiptla would be chosen to embody gods. Tezcatlipoca’s ixiptla had a long list of requirements, and was sacrificed to himself at the festival of Toxcatl every year. Every human that has been Tezcatlipoca is part of him. Because of this, he can be summoned as a servant through his ixiptla with a minimal loss of power and authority. The one here is the one who bore witness to the Toxcatl massacre.

Entry 3: The Toxcatl Massacre was a turning point in the conquest of Mexico, where worshipers were massacred by the conquistadors. Tezcatlipoca carries with him not just the vengeance of a profaned sacred rite, but the vengeance of those who saw their way of life trampled upon by the Spanish. 

Because he carries the rage of an entire culture, Tezcatlipoca’s Oblivion Correction surpasses the scale of any one individual. His is the grudge of one culture against the other, thus it could be said that he embodies prejudice rather than merely being prejudiced. To him Christians and Spaniards are monsters, not humans. All monsters must be slain.

Entry 4: Protection of the Faith EX: The ixiptla blend the line between man and god, Tezcatlipoca is both the worshiped and the worshiper. He believes in himself and his fellow gods as a human who revered them. As an existence bound in religious practice this manifestation of Tezcatlipoca is an aspect of religion itself. Therefore, it is impossible to place his version of Protection of the Faith on a scale.

Entry 5: The Victorious Night: Tezcatlipoca’s Noble Phantasm, a reality marble that forms a recreation of the Aztec retaliation against the Spainards after the Toxcatl Massacre, casting Tezcatlipoca’s enemies as the Spainards. 

Since it is a recreation those cast as the Spanish will always lose, unless they can escape the reality marble. Additionally, the activation of this Noble Phantasm summons every ixiptla of Tezcatlipoca from across time to slay the monsters in the name of humanity. 

Bonus Entry (requires start of Cosmos in Lostbelt): World Destroyer A: Tezcatlipoca is one associated with the end of worlds, clearing the way for Pan Human History. This skill facilitates the destruction of things that must be removed for the current world to exist. Tezcatlipoca destroyed many timelines like the Lostbelts.

“You have no need to bear the responsibility of destroying a world. A human can’t act on such a broad scale. I will destroy these stagnant worlds to plant the seeds of one where you can grow. That is a god’s love of humanity.”

My Room Lines

Random Line: Every manifestation of mine is different in some way, but they are all ‘me.’ If you are seeking a true Tezcatlipoca, you seek what does not exist.

Random Line: An evil god? That’s nonsensical propaganda spread by the monsters. Quetzalcoatl and I are opposing forces, do not simplify us into ‘good’ or ‘evil.’

Random Line: Avengers can’t forgive, it is in our nature. The monsters were the ones who refused to coexist, do not insult me by implying peace with them is possible.

Bond 1: The energy needed to maintain this form is enough of an offering to me, you need not give more. 

Bond 2: Say, do you have any interest in ballgames? Perhaps I’ll show you the great game of my people. It is far superior to any that those monsters play.

Bond 3: If you have any relationship troubles, feel free to request my help. I had four wives, we would renew our marriage every year a little before… apologies, I need to go unleash my rage on one of the monsters who deserve it, rather than you.

Bond 4: Why did I appear as a corpse with its heart showing in your room last night? That was a test, you passed it, so don’t worry. As the last hope of humanity, I can’t let you be weak. Now, do you have a wish for me to grant?

Bond 5: You don’t meet every one of my requirements, but I wouldn’t complain if you became the next ixiptla of mine. Perhaps you will become a me who is not an Avenger, who is free of this hatred.

Thoughts on Master-Servant relationship: I dislike both the terms master and servant for our relationship. My identity is no secret, call me by name, contractor.

Thoughts on Holy Grail: The world is movement, it is always changing. So rather than undo their crimes I will destroy the monsters, so something new can be made from their remains.

Birthday: Happy birthday. Now, what was the precise date of your birth? I hope it was a day that I govern, it’ll make protecting you from the monsters easier.

During Events: Oh, something lively is going on? It’s no Toxcatl, but perhaps it will do. Toxcatl… if only those monsters hadn’t appeared.

To John Dee: You have something that is mine. Return it, and your death will be swift and painless rather than the slow painful one you’d otherwise deserve.

To Cortez: I won’t let you tarnish this place. Your death will bring much joy, I’ll make sure you die again and again until I bore of killing you. Then it will be Quetzalcoatl’s turn to kill you.

To Chistian servants: Monster, invader, your day of judgment has come.

To Quetzalcoatl: Brother we should keep our distance, for the sake of our contractor. Call upon me if you’re fighting a monster or Beast however.

To Jaguar Warrior: Quit slacking off. Go back to your training or be punished. Humanity itself is on the line you idiot.

To Spartacus: Forced to fight to the death for mere entertainment? Mistreated slaves like you have my protection, continue your rebellion. Destroy the empire that will become a center of that detestable religion.

To Geronimo: You suffered at the hands of the monsters as well. Normally I don’t have allies, but I will always side with humans against monsters. We march together.

To King Hassan: Kill for the sake of killing? You must mean someone else. Every death has meaning, each act of destruction makes the path to an act of creation. What have you created through your death dealing, assassin?

To Ozymandias: Pharaoh? That’s the first I’ve been called that. Certainly not the worst title foreigners have given me, but it still does not suit me.

NP Chant

“A sad night for monsters is a joyful one for humanity. Your defeat has already happened. VICTORIOUS NIGHT!”

Gameplay/Interludes

I don’t care enough about FGO gameplay for a full kit theory craft, but Tezcatlipoca would have a specific anti Christian niche like Boudicca for the Romans. To make this not suck he’d be able to stick that trait on all enemies, either with a normal skill or as part of his NP before the damage part. His NP would be an AOE attack.

Tezcatlipoca’s interlude would have him talk about the story of the five suns as it relates to the Lostbelts. He and Quetzalcoatl would bicker over whose fault the first four worlds being destroyed really was, but they both agree that they can’t afford any real infighting while the Lostbelts remain.

Max Bond Craft Essence

Obsidian Mirror (art is of a handheld mirror): An item sacred to Tezcatlipoca. With these one could see and be seen by him. So long as this is kept close, Tezcatlipoca will always be near. For the last master of humanity, for the sake of humanity, just this once he will only be the enemy of one side.

Valentine’s Craft Essence

A Lost Song (art is of a flute): Not all knowledge is preserved, some is destroyed. There are many songs that will never be heard again. To cause such circumstances is unforgivable, but for this night that does not matter. For this night one of those songs is remembered, it is played to you. More than a song, it is a sign of trust, and as you listen, the avenger of the night wind smiles in a way avengers rarely do.

#FGO #fate grand order #fgo criticism #Tezcatlipoca #If I was writing this now I'd remove the bits about killing some humans because I'm sick of mass murderer Tezcatlipoca #The Tezcatlipoca fgo ended up with is the worst portrayal of him I've heard of #fanservants #anyway point of this is you can do edgy scary Tezcatlipoca without this 'kills because he likes it' nonsense

[namesisfortombstones]

Howling II: ...Your Script Needs Work

I am fascinated by the insane sequel Howling II: Stirba - Werewolf Bitch (U.S. title—Howling II: ...Your Sister is a Werewolf). The movie is a train wreck, like if a jet full of mimes crashed into a bus full of clowns. And its behind the scenes story is every bit a train wreck with mishap after mishap after mishap happening to stymie the filmmakers at every turn. Hearing everything that went wrong with the movie, watching the final product makes one think it may have been something entirely different. And logically so, I had always wanted to read the screenplay for the film to find out just what it was originally supposed to be, but all attempts to do so met with failure.

Howling II: Choose Your Own Adventure!

Here is what we know as facts from eyewitnesses who participated in the production of the film; The Howling novel author Gary Brandner was enlisted by the Howling producers to write the screenplay for the sequel and what he did was adapt his book sequel The Howling II (aka The Return of the Howling). When he was done, he turned it in and the producers said "Gary, this is really good, but we have some money in Mexico. Can you set it down there?" Brandner was all "Sure!" and off he went on a re-write. When Brandner turned that in, the producers said, "This is really good, but now we have money from Spain, so can you re-write it to be set in Spain? And the producer's a friend of Fernando Rey. Can you write a part for him?" Brandner was like "Fine" and off he went on another re-write. When he turned that draft in, the producers said, "This is really good, but the Spanish money fell through, so now we're gonna shoot the movie on the cheap in Yugoslavia." Now that Brandner had a book deadline approaching, he basically told the producers, "I gotta go. Do what you want with it" and off he went to go write his next book. Enter a writer named Robert Sarno, whom the producers enlisted to polish up Brandner's work. But what does he do? He throws out most of what Brandner wrote and re-writes an unproduced vampire screenplay he'd written, turned the villains into werewolves, and passed it off as The Howling II.

Seen here: not the person at fault for Howling II. Director Philippe Mora, who says he never read anything but the Sarno draft when he came on board the movie, says that he shot a campy, silly movie. This is almost in line with Joe Dante's original The Howling. That movie played its events dead seriously, but with a tongue-in-cheek tone as if to say, "Yeah, it's scary sometimes, but you can laugh at it too." But Robert Sarno and Philippe Mora aren't John Sayles and Joe Dante. At any rate, Mora reports that after he created his edit of the film and left to go shoot his next movie, Death of a Soldier, the producers got cold feat about having a funny horror movie and decided they wanted a scary horror movie. As such, the producers had the movie re-edited without Mora's knowledge or input and it became the movie it is today. Logically, this would lead one to believe that at one point, Howling II was a completely different movie.

Still probably too much of this guy, though. A few months ago, I was watching the now "lost" TV version of Howling II to see if there were any differences between it and the normal version of the film (and in addition to the new end titles montage, there were a few here and there). But watching the movie with closed captions, I noticed when they announced Christopher Lee's character's name, it was spelled as "Stefan Krosko." Now, since I saw the movie back in... 1989 or 1990 (?), I presumed his name was "Stefan Croscoe" with one 's' because that's how all the Croscoes I've known spelled their name. With the advent of the internet, however, everyone online seems hellbent on spelling it "Crosscoe," which to my knowledge is not a legitimate name. At any rate, I did a few searches for "Stefan Krosko" and there were some hits from some eastern European websites and I subsequently discovered "Krosko" is a real European surname.

What is your name, man?! And what is your deal?! So what is the character's name? I decided we needed to find a damned script then and there to find out. And somehow, I happened to manage upon a site selling a Howling II screenplay and immediately snatched that sucker up. After waiting just shy of a month's time because of the site owner being in the hospital, the script arrived and I finally got to see just what the hell they were dealing with from the get-go. And the results are a disappointing mixed bag. Firstly, I have no reason to doubt anything said by anyone who made the movie. There is a literal laundry list of things that can go wrong with any movie. It's hard work to make a bad movie. A great or even a good movie is a miracle to pull off. However, while there are many differences to get into, this screenplay is more or less the final movie. By and large, everything that happens in the movie is here. Some of it is a little more in depth, but not much. Does the screenplay do anything to explain just what the hell is really going on in this story? The answer is a gritty, in-your-face "no."

“What do you mean it was like that already?!” The draft of the script I have is merely entitled "The Howling II." No subtitles. It's marked as "Revision Draft: May 1, 1984" and "Further Revised: June 20, 1984." It's about 89 pages long with a 4-page "optional" prologue. This is the first time I've ever encountered a writer bothering to craft something that could specifically be discarded. But why did I think anything about this movie would be standard? The prologue opens in L.A. where a couple named Gary and Joann [sic] are trying to get home before the latter's father realizes she's out. When they miss the bus, Gary thinks he's got a great shortcut— through the cemetery. Of course Joann is spooked the entire time, especially when they begin to hear "hideous laughter" that is not coming from Gary. As they flee in terror, a cemetery guard cackles to himself "Bet they'll never take this shortcut again." Scared senseless, the couple takes refuge in a church they run upon. Inside is a casket of one Karen Marie White (the protagonist played by Dee Wallace in The Howling). As they try to go out the back of the church, the coffin's lid opens and Karen emerges as a rotted zombie werewolf. Cue screams and the main titles. And after that bit of standard horror business is dealt with, the script moves on to Karen's funeral scene that opens the movie.

Dame Not-Appearing-In-This-Film The most peculiar thing about the screenplay, however, is the obscene amount of Hispanic character names, even when the story changes to Transylvania in Romania! Somehow, I don't think there are too many Carloses running around Romania. Frankly, Ben White and Jenny Templeton are the only characters whose name made it from script to screen. So do we finally get to discover what the true spelling of Stefan's surname is? No. Because in this script, his character name is Luis Romo. Now, I've seen damnably British Christopher Lee convincingly portray Chinese and Pakistani characters before, so I have no reason to doubt that I could buy him as a Spaniard. But on paper, it just looks silly (slightly less silly than "Stefan Croscoe/Krosko" I suppose). The proprietor of the Transylvanian hotel is named Carlos. The number two (three?) werewolf-in-command is named Vittorio (?!). Vasile the dwarf is Emiliano. And last but not certainly least, there is no Stirba. Well, there is, but she is only known as "La Bruja" ("The Witch" in Spanish) here. She has no true name other than "La Bruja," which is what Stefan/Romo refers to her as, as well (I'm going to use the film and script's character names in order to curtail confusion). This of course further betrays the story's vampire origins as, while La Bruja doesn't behave like a vampire, she's never really written to behave like a werewolf either. Stirba of the film does once or twice transform into a "werewolf bitch," but that's the extent of her werewolfery. Stirba in the finished film just seems to be a sorceress that can randomly grow body hair.

Fernando Rey as... Luis Romo???  This La Bruja business actually tracks to me because of the origin of Stirba's name. "Stirba" (properly pronounced by Christopher Lee and Judd Omen as "Still-buh," although Lee may be saying “Shtill-buh,” which is more correct) is derived from the German word "sterben" (still-ben/shtill-ben), which means "die" or "to die." And I don't believe for a second Robert Sarno was clever enough to come up with that. Maybe Philippe Mora (who alternates between being a genius and an absolute madman depending on the moment you're talking to him). But I'd bet dollars to donuts that Christopher Lee came up with that name, him being fluent in German.

Mora, you magnificent bastard...   Probably the most interesting name-related bit from the script is that Mariana, portrayed by Marsha Hunt of Dracula A.D. 1972, in this script is Marsha Quist of the original Howling! Marsha was portrayed by Elisabeth Brooks in the first movie, but—like Dee Wallace—she refused to appear in the sequel. There are conflicting accounts as to why. At any rate, Marsha plays the same part and story function that Mariana does in the final film. Additionally, Marsha/Mariana's sidekick in the early parts of the story is Erle, originally portrayed by John Carradine in the first Howling but portrayed in Howling II by the fine character actor Ferdy Mayne [billed here as Ferdinand Mayne, who reportedly only did the movie because Christopher Lee was in it]. However, the script never seems to acknowledge that Marsha and Erle are returning characters and they are introduced in the text just like every other character, as if we hadn't seen them before.

Seen here: Elisabeth Brooks escaping from the raging tire fire that became Howling II.

I prefer continuity, but eh, we did okay.

Shit no, Ferdy! Nobody’s gonna notice you’re not John Carradine! Or... Martin Landau? So, as I said before, the script more or less unspools exactly as the movie does. No sillier, no more serious. It's the movie. What is different? Well... Ben White is written to be slightly less stubborn and disbelieving in this script than Reb Brown portrays him in the movie. Ben and Jenny don't know each other at all at the beginning. And Stefan/Romo is written as a bit of an aloof goof, at one point falling asleep in front of Ben and Jenny after giving them the lowdown on La Bruja and her evil plans. In the film, Christopher Lee imbues Stefan with a bit more personable humanity and never once does he come off as tired.

”It is her immortal soul which is in very grave danger.” “Please, eat my ass with a bag of skittles, Stefan.” “Now was that so hard? Good day, sir.” In the punk club scene, alas Stefan/Romo is not present in punk clothes and wraparound shades.

UNACCEPTABLE!!!  Marsha comes in, picks up some annoying riffraff victims, and off she goes to the warehouse. I had noticed an odd name in the movie's end credits, "Moon Devil." All these years, I assumed this referred to the helmeted guard outside Stirba's castle. Apparently, Moon Devil was supposed to be one of the jerks at the club and subsequent warehouse victims! He absolutely does not live up to that cool moniker.

You’re gonna sit there and tell me this isn’t the “Moon Devil,” script??!?!? The whole slaughter in the warehouse is written to be quite a bit scarier than it comes off in the film. You're let in from the get-go that Marsha/Mariana has brought these people here to feed her werewolf friends. However, whilst Marsha/Mariana does appear naked to lure the men to their deaths, she doesn't seem to be hanging around partially transformed, listening to her werewolf brethren devour people. Once the attack begins, she disappears. Hell, she may be one of the attacking werewolves. However, at the very end of this scene, there is Stefan/Romo outside the warehouse (presumably in his normal clothes, but it'd been a lot cooler if it were that punk outfit), hanging around, "investigating outside" the script says, and doing absolutely nothing to help those poor people being eaten alive.

“Fuck those kids.” The scene where Stefan/Romo explains werewolves to Ben and Jenny happens right after the previous scene in the middle of the damn night, rather than more sensibly the next morning as in the movie. Stefan/Romo is written with explicit text that he is "giddy" and "excited" as he lays down the wolf lore here. There is about two-thirds of a page description of Stefan/Romo's home (a place we never see again) that more or less amounts to "it's gothic and messy." It's said that he has just stuff thrown all over the place with a combination work table/work bench right in the middle of the living room! What it's for goes without explanation. In the final film, Stefan’s house is shot at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Ennis House, notably used in The House on Haunted Hill (1959).

Seems a little... I dunno... big for one person? The tape that Stefan/Romo has seems to be trying to describe what's onscreen in reference to what happened at the end of the first Howling. However, here too, Karen is described as being a roaring, ferocious animal with bared fangs and blood red eyes filled with murderous rage. And of course in The Howling, Karen transforms into a weeping were-poodle that doesn't look frightening because she's "innocent" and hasn't murdered anyone. Sarno eschews all that in favor of cheap horror movie thrills. But at least it all comes off better than whatever the hell was on that tape in the movie. Yeesh.

I think somebody sold Stefan a copy of The Howling as recreated by those kids that remade Raiders of the Lost Ark in their spare time. Stefan/Romo shows Ben and Jenny pictures of Marsha/Mariana and Erle on a slide projector, rather than blown-up photographs. He still explains that Marsha has become immune to silver bullets and only titanium will kill her, but also adds a perplexing bit that if one were to shoot her with silver bullets, it would transform her into a "more dangerous mutant"!

SHIT. It's important to point out a couple of things here. According to the audio commentary on the Shout Factory Blu-ray, Philippe Mora reveals that they shot this scene on location over in Czechoslovakia. However, when the film came back, it was all dark, which forced them to reshoot the scene once they got back to L.A. In the song, "Your Sister is a Werewolf" written by Steven Parsons on the Howling II soundtrack (but not used in the film), the song's lyrics are solely pieces of dialogue heard in the film. All except for "Hear me; in three weeks time, at the next full moon, on the midnight hour of that fateful day, all werewolves—all—will reveal themselves. Each and every human being will be devoured by her lustful disciples." I assumed this might have been a line that was in that original Czech version of the scene but didn't make it into the U.S. reshoot. And that line is indeed here in the script (what Lee says in the final film is "At the next full moon, it will be the tenth millennium of Stirba's birth. At midnight on that day, all werewolves will reveal themselves—ALL. The transformations have already begun... Process of evolution has reversed. There are many stages before man becomes a beast.")

“ALL, motherfucker.”  Additionally, you know that bizarre pre-title bit where Christopher Lee is floating in space, reading from a book, with a skeleton slowly fading in behind him? "The great mother of harlots and all abominations of the earth"? That bit is here! And while he is reading it, for some reason, thunder and lighting are going on outside (just like the unwarranted thunderclap over the title card). I suspect maybe this was shot in Czechoslovakia and was perhaps the only usable footage from the sequence. And Mora just threw it in at the beginning of the movie to 1.) ape Dune (1984) and b.) I dunno... baffle everybody? At any rate, the scene ends with Stefan/Romo falling asleep in a chair and telling Ben and Jenny to show themselves out.

That look says it all.  So who exactly is Stefan/Romo? Who did you think he is? Because whoever he was in your head is who he will have to remain. There is absolutely no backstory on the character. There is no indication that Stefan/Romo is himself a werewolf or a witch or if he is in fact 10,000 years old like Stirba. Watching Howling II, you have questions. The film nor the script has any answers and Sarno seems infuriatingly uninterested in exploring whatever mythology he had cooked up for this story.

Stefan, we hardly knew ye. Sorry your creator couldn’t be bothered to give a damn. The whole sequence at the cemetery is far more involved than in the movie, starting with Ben and Jenny discovering the fence has been yanked wide open so something could enter. In the film, it looks like they're flabbergasted that someone used bolt cutters on a chain. There are four werewolves during the attack, presumably Marsha/Mariana, Erle, and two others. Stefan/Romo is not doing last rites over Karen's body like in the film, but instead is just loitering around waiting for Ben and Jenny to show up. When they try to flee into the crypt, one of the werewolves is up on the roof waiting to pounce, but gets shot for its trouble but when that doesn't work, Ben throws a flashlight at it. Maybe the flashlight was made of titanium casing? At any rate, once Jenny and Ben are in the crypt, Stefan/Romo seems to invoke the occult by drawing triangles around Karen's casket, though it says he does mutter a prayer in Latin. This, of course, pisses off Ben to no end and he threatens to "blow [his] nutsy head off!" Jenny tries to step in between the two to calm things down, but Karen-wolf bursts out of her coffin and grabs Jenny's wrist. When Ben tries to shoot Karen, Stefan/Romo stops him, claiming "Not yet! They are coming!" Karen-wolf proceeds to shred the lid of the coffin whilst still hanging onto Jenny. At this point, Ben loads his rifle with titanium bullets and pumps Karen full of lea—er, alloy?

Also not found in the screenplay, “BLAAAH!!!” Stefan/Romo blesses Karen, but then smiles and remarks, "Here they are," and sure enough the four werewolves are in the crypt with them. While Ben is busy shooting the monsters, Stefan/Romo "chants a strange Latin chant” [sic] and hurls holy water at the werewolves. And it works. One flees and another follows after it. The last werewolf helps the one blasted by Ben back to its feet and out of the crypt. For some reason, the four werewolves are on the run, fleeing for their lives from the cemetery as the wounded one lags behind. Now, in the film, Ben asks at one point, "Do you think Stefan's going to the cemetery tonight to set traps?" and there's no real payoff for it. Here, actual traps are mentioned being in Stefan's home and then, the wounded werewolf trips one and is caught in... a net. The other werewolves ditch him and our ersatz heroes catch up to Erle, who has transformed back into a human. We get the exchange in the movie "Where is La Bruja?!" "Dark country..." Stefan/Romo stabs Erle and kills him. Rather than Mariana, the security guard from the prologue has apparently been watching all this and remarks, "I gotta stop drinking."

Not gonna lie: this does work better. Stefan/Romo announces he's going to "do battle with La Bruja" and Ben demands to come with. When they ask where the "dark country" is, the response is "Transylvania... where else?" Where else, indeed... if you were fighting vampires! Christopher Lee's response in the movie works a lot better. "Where do we have to go to find 'Stur-buh'?" "To the dark country... to Transylvania." Ben then wonders if it's safe to drink the water... which works for when the story was to move to Mexico, but makes no sense referring to Romania.

You know Mexican architecture when you see it. At any rate, somehow Marsha/Mariana beats the heroes over to Transylvania and the script claims the town they're in is "Santa Marta," rather than "Vlk." Vlad here is named "Vittorio" and he meets Marsha/Mariana at the train and takes her to the castle. There's the scene with the hitchhikers, which seems to be played for terror rather than laughs. And then, we go to La Bruja's castle. The rite here is far more involved, starting with the little girl—said to be hypnotized and 14 years old—being prepared. The script says the rite is being witnessed by a coven of 12 disciples and that many of them are villagers of Santa Marta, even though we haven't met any of them yet! The little girl is taken and rested on a huge pentagram that has been drawn on the castle floor. It is at this point that Stirba/La Bruja makes her entrance into the story and she is rather rudely described as being "an incredibly old hag” [in all caps for emphasis]. The script does, however, describe what the hell the staff she has for the whole movie is—"some hideous gargoyle with folded wings and long fangs." So if you were wondering what it was, there it is.

Sarno’s mean.  Stirba/La Bruja takes a "wickedly serrated dagger" and beheads a chicken over the little girl, pouring blood onto her face while mumbling "indecipherable magical words," and then the script proceeds to write them out! If you can discern them, they aren't indecipherable now, are they? In the movie at a later point, Stirba casts the Eko Eko Azarak protection spell against Stefan, and here, the words spelled out appear to be the black magic spell Exorcism of the Bat. At any rate, instead of the batshit crazy montage that is randomly edited into the scene, the script just describes a bunch of batshit crazy things going on at once: Stirba/La Bruja leans down inches away from the girl's face and "draws in air with a sucking sound." The little girl begins convulsing. The disciples writhe about "in orgasmic ecstasy" (which sounds repetitive to me) as they look on, the headless chicken is still flapping its wings, Marsha/Mariana watches "with intense pleasure," and Stirba/La Bruja kisses the little girl on her lips.  The rite is apparently successful and Stirba/La Bruja is a young woman again. The little girl, though, has become desiccated and is dead. Stirba/La Bruja beckons Vlad/Vittorio and two handmaidens to her bedchamber.

Oh, gawd, yes! The two women dress the "werewolf" queen, but the script does not describe in what. She shoos them off and turns her attention to Vlad/Vittorio who can just barely keep his hands off her. Marsha/Mariana is brought in and she kisses a ring with "a strange design" Stirba/La Bruja is wearing Godfather-style. The scene continues as in the movie, though as Vlad/Vittorio and Marsha/Mariana begin "making love" on her bed (the script rather prudishly constantly uses the phrase "making love" rather than "sex" or "fuck" even though, let's face it, in the Howling II movie, nobody is making love), Stirba/La Bruja just slowly removes her clothes instead of ripping them off. Fade to, and I quote, "three wolves in a lovemaking frenzy" [again, in all caps for emphasis].

*sigh* Why? At this point it's worth mentioning that in an interview with Philippe Mora with Fangoria magazine during the filming of Howling II, Mora made the outrageous claim that Sybil Danning didn't really exist in the film. What he said was that throughout the entire movie, Stirba was an old woman and that the appearance of Sybil Danning was what Stirba wished she looked like and was a spell that she had cast over everyone. Some of this seems to make it to the final film like when Sybil-Stirba first appears and seems almost scared until she realizes that everyone sees her as young. And then the end of the movie where Stirba's magic won't work on Stefan and as such, he sees her as the 10,000 year old woman she actually is. However, the movie does in fact play it off as Stirba is young again, Elizabeth Bathory-style. None of that is in the script. Not even Stefan/Romo seeing Stirba/La Bruja as an old woman in the showdown.

Goddammit, Philippe. For real? We then hang out with our three heroes for a bit as they cross Transylvania in "a small European sedan." In the film, Christopher Lee seems to be asleep in the backseat but here, Stefan/Romo is described as "meditating" with a "slight smile on his face." For some reason, Stefan/Romo is written frequently to constantly have "a slight smile on his face." Yeah, I think Lee made the right decision not doing that.

“Meditating” my ass. I know a nap when I see one.  They have the encounter on the road with the woman in the street and it goes like in the movie except the priest claims she was hit by falling rocks (?!) and the woman doesn't suddenly grow fangs. Stefan/Romo just ices her werewolf ass out of nowhere. Just like in the movie, Stefan/Romo randomly ditches Ben and Jenny, though he does anti-explain, "I will leave you now. There are things I must do alone." Where he goes is never described... just like in the movie. Ben and Jenny continue on when a tramp suddenly steps out into the road and they hit him. When they run out of the car to investigate, the tramp is nowhere to be found, but blood is on the road. Our heroes shrug it off (Ben remarks, "He is here... but he is not here. Welcome to Transylvania.") and get back in the car. This is where the crouching werewolf-hidden dumbass comes into play and the scene continues just like in the movie, complete with a random cliff just appearing out of nowhere.

Wait, so you’re telling me this actually made sense at one point?!? Ben and Jenny make it into Santa Marta/Vlk and the hotel they stay in is given a name, the Hotel Aragon. They also don't do the dumb "six floors" gag and are given room 204. As mentioned before, the hotel proprietor is named Carlos here, but his nephew porter is "Tonio" rather than Tondo. Once in their room, there is none of that godawful garlic nonsense. Instead, Jenny kinda randomly decides to entice Ben into bed and outside, Vlad/Vittorio can smell it. That brings us to page 50 in an 89-page script and the rest of the script unspools at a rather breakneck pace. Honestly, there isn't really much writing so much as there is just action sequences and stuff happening until Sarno decides to call it a script. Ben and Jenny go to the church, where they are spied on by "Carlos" from a hotel room. Stefan/Romo's allies are introduced; Father Florrin is "Father Matteo," Vasile the dwarf is “Emiliano,” Konstantine is "Rudolpho," and Luca is "Juan." Honestly, this is getting out of hand and the absolute region-blindness is sickening. This is just piss-poor writing. Are there some Spanish people in Romania? Sure, there probably are. This many? Doubt it.

Seen here: not a Carlos.  In the script here, the children seem to really enjoy the wolf/girl puppet show. They make a bigger deal of Ben leaving Jenny to go stalk Vlad/Vittorio and Marsha/Mariana as they wander through town and... actually they don't even have the dialogue they have in the movie. They eventually come upon Stefan/Romo. Vlad/Vittorio bows mockingly at him and Marsha/Mariana just glares at him "with murderous intensity." When Vasile/Emiliano asks if that's the woman they're looking for, Stefan/Romo warns "she is as deadly as the black widow spider."

“Punk-ass werewolves...” Vlad/Vittorio and Marsha/Mariana return to Stirba/La Bruja's castle with Ben and Vasile/Emiliano hot on their heels. Vlad/Vittorio uses something described as "a cross between a whistle and a yodel" to gain entry from the rifle-toting sentry. When we go into the castle, Stirba/La Bruja is sitting on her throne, watching a fire and her "eyes are abnormally bright as if she were in a trance." In the movie, Stirba is wearing sunglasses because Sybil Danning had an allergic reaction to that wolf-hair makeup they put all over her and it looked like she was punched in the face, so they put sunglasses on her to cover it up and continue filming. The two other werewolves report Stefan/Romo is in town and Stirba/La Bruja spills the beans that he's her brother and that "he circles me like an avenging angel of death." She goes on to deliver the bizarrely-written "he lusts to destroy me. But I will destroy him!"

“Oh come on! We just sprayed for dwarves in here!” Stirba/La Bruja sees Vasile/Emiliano spying on them from the window and unleashes her werewolves upon them. When the castle door slams open, Vlad/Vittorio and Marsha/Mariana are already in full wolf form. Stirba/La Bruja chants another black magic spell that seems to be made up nonsense words this time. When Vasile/Emiliano loses his blessed earplugs, Stirba/La Bruja's chanting causes his head to explode from the inside out and the script says that geysers of blood and brain "tissure" [tissue, I imagine] sprays out of his eye sockets, nose, and ears. That seems unnecessary. Stirba/La Bruja pours an oil over Vasile/Emiliano's corpse and whispers something into his ear that causes him to come back to life as a zombie.

Like you w--wait, what were we talking about? Tondo/Tonio tries to rape Jenny, but rather than "take him away and teach him discipline," Stirba/La Bruja has a werewolf minion eviscerate Tondo/Tonio right then and there. She captures Jenny as bait. Stefan/Romo has the encounter with zombie Vasile/Emiliano and is saved by Ben in a sequence that reads like it goes on forever. Ben's fight with the dwarf is more involved than in the film—Vasile/Emiliano proves capable with a blade and Ben manages to toss him out the window with a judo throw! Ben and Stefan/Romo go back to the church for reinforcements and weapons. The significant change here is that Stefan/Romo says they have a titanium spike that was somehow made from the Holy Grail, rather than having the Holy Grail itself and nobody stopping to wonder how the fuck they have the Holy Grail on hand. He also shows off a "titanium machete" made by Luca/Juan. That, unfortunately, didn't make it into the movie, but perhaps it should have.

”Yeah, yeah, Holy Grail, whatever. Gimme dat gun!” [Yes in the final movie, Stefan actually cops to having the Holy Grail on hand. No, not a single person goes, “Hey, wait a second, Stefan...”] Stirba/La Bruja has a fuck party at her castle (described in the script as a "Black Sabbath revelry," but it's a fuck party). Here, there is "a diabolical altar with the head of the horned god prominent over it" (heavily implied to be Lucifer). Additionally, a slaughtered lamb has been split open and crucified upside down on a wooden cross. In the final film, I don't think it's crucified, but they do have a lamb just hanging in the corner of the castle, which Stirba prays to briefly.

Ya know... this movie is kinda making a good case for evil. One of her disciples runs in and tells her [presumably] the heroes are coming and she stops the fuck party dead in its tracks and orders, "Go my children... destroy them!" Everyone starts transforming, but Stirba/La Bruja tells Vlad/Vittorio and Marsha/Mariana to stay with her, which they do in human form. The trio then goes over to the altar and prays to their horned god, described as "staring out with eyes as dark and empty as deep, endless space."

Don’t make a Kristen Stewart joke. Don’t make a Kristen Stewart joke. Don’t make a Kristen Stewart joke. The werewolves attack our heroes and all hell breaks loose. Ben pushes Stefan/Romo down "for safety" and sets about murdering everything in sight. Konstantin/Rudolfo saves Luca/Juan by ripping through a werewolf's throat with his titanium machete. Another werewolf "rips Rudolfo's face" [did Sarno mean "rips off"?] and proceeds to slash him to death. Stefan/Romo—I shit you not—has a fire extinguisher that sprays holy water, which he uses to finish off the other werewolves! It causes them to "shriek in agony as if they were being burned alive!" I hope it was Christopher Lee who put his foot down and said "I'm not doing that." As they continue onward, "an unearthly, grotesque hand" with "enormous curved talons" grabs Luca/Juan and drags him into the earth like a random quicksand pit. There's no mention of werewolves here; it's just someTHING's hand. Another hand grabs hold of Luca/Juan's neck and drags him underground. Rather than hurl the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch as in the movie, Stefan/Romo throws a vial of chrism at them and Father Florrin/Matteo [misspelled as "Metteo" here] lights the leaves up with a match. Then, this happens: "as the three men sprint away, there is a horrible agonizing roar of pain from the demonic creature as it begins to burn in the fire of the consecrated Chrism. The outlines of some unearthly form rises up in the flames and twist wildly [sic] in his death throes." As we cut back to the castle, Stirba/La Bruja is "screaming and writhing in ecstasy as she walks on glowing ashes." Why?? You will go wanting because there are no answers. Stirba/La Bruja orders Vlad/Vittorio and Marsha/Mariana to "bring the girl" and they head off for Jenny. Instead of the ultra-creepy area made up of walls of human skulls, Jenny is just being kept in a more mundane torture dungeon. When Father Florrin/Matteo sneaks into the castle, Stirba/La Bruja just steps out of a shadow and stares at him. She orders her gargoyle staff to attack him and the "hideous little creature opens its eyes which glow with an infernal ruby light," leaps onto the priest's face, drives its fangs into the top of his skull, uses its tail to wrap around his neck, then uses the tip of its tail to prod up through his nose into his skull. The thing causes Florrin/Matteo's head to explode from the inside out, causing "squirming, gelatinous tentacles" to pour out. Stirba/La Bruja marches off because that was all just a touch much. Vlad/Vittorio and Marsha/Mariana appear to harass Jenny and Ben charges in and blows the back of Vlad/Vittorio's head and his brains onto the wall behind him. Marsha/Mariana is understandably stunned by this and when Ben tries to shoot her, he's out of bullets. Sorta-Ms. Quist starts to wolf out and leaps at Ben but he stabs her with a silver knife, despite the fact Stefan/Romo had explicitly told him she's immune to silver now. However, she doesn't actually seem to die. She slumps to her knees and cannot pull the knife out. When Ben hauls Jenny away, Marsha/Mariana is said to be slumped onto the floor dying and screaming. I have to say, Marsha was done dirty and she should've been able to get away Howling I-style to run amok in The Marsupials: The Howling III, dammit (which yes, does seem to take place in the continuity of the first two movies, if Olga's stealth reference is to be believed). It's worth mentioning that in the script, this scene does not have a wooden cage locked full of victims which does appear in the corresponding scene in the movie. And after Ben kills Vlad and Mariana and hauls Jenny away, our ersatz hero just leaves those poor people there to starve to death! Stirba/La Bruja hears the screaming and charges off to help (I guess?) but Stefan/Romo steps into her path and boasts "You go no further." At this point, the script goes even more off the rails. Stirba/La Bruja beckons Stefan/Romo to come to her and dares him to fuck her, going so far to throw back her cape, revealing "her luscious naked body." Stefan/Romo just starts involuntarily walking over to her (as one would) and rather pathetically calls out for Christ and God like he was inside the Wicker Man and Lord Summerisle just lit it on fire. Stirba/La Bruja says "You will be my Prince of Darkness and I will be your Queen of the Night!" Obviously, there was no way Christopher Lee was going to let that line stay in when he came on board. Similarly, a line where Ben describes Stefan/Romo as looking like "Dracula's grandfather" was removed, probably for the same reason. Anyway, Stirba/La Bruja laughs that they will rule the world and that "I give myself to you; I am yours to ravage and rape." No, really. Bottom of page 86. Sarno seriously wrote that shit.

Seen here: not a man freaking out about possibly banging his smokin’ hot sister. Stirba/La Bruja demands "Love me, my brother!" [though, based on previous scenes, Sarno definitely means "fuck me, my brother!"] and Stefan/Romo leaps through the air, tackles his sister, drives the Holy Grail titanium spike into her (where is not said), and plants one on her as she shrivels into her "hideous and shriveled hag" form [again, rude!]. Now, some of this was actually shot because there is a still of Christopher Lee kissing Sybil Danning from this scene that is not in the movie. But there's absolutely no way they were gonna have/get 62-year-old Lee to jump through the air and tackle Sybil, even with his trusty stunt double Eddie Powell on hand.

You thought I was lying, didn’t you?  Now, here in the script, Stefan/Romo's flying tackle causes he and Stirba/La Bruja to crash into her fire pit and that causes them to become engulfed in flames. Stirba/La Bruja won't let go and he can't get away from the fire and they both burn to death. And honestly, that works a lot better than whatever the hell happens at the end of the movie where there's no real excuse for Stefan having to burn to death too while Stirba admonishes that they will be "wedded for eternity." Got a man doing God's work here and God absolutely drops the ball on him.

Bullshit, I say! At any rate, Sarno thinks its funny to cut from them screaming as they burn to death to Jenny's fireplace in her apartment the next Halloween. Jenny says that she misses Stefan/Romo and Ben jibes that Halloween was probably his favorite [spelled with an extra u] day. There's a knock at the door and a werewolf plays trick or treat. You've seen the scene; you know how it goes, except Ben gives the werewolf money instead of candy and wishes him happy Halloween! The werewolf waves back and howls. When Jenny demands they go over to the apartment and say hi, the script says that Erle answers the door! But he had been killed by Stefan/Romo at the beginning of the story! In the movie, it's the priest they encounter when the woman on the road was hit by a car/falling rocks. The script just gives up after Erle/the priest asks "won't you come in?" It claims to be "The End," but it's more like "The Quit." For what it's worth, the script does not have the scene that I saw on USA one time where the camera creeps down the hall to reveal the inside of another apartment with a family of laughing werewolves inside. I'm told this ending also appeared on the VHS release in Australia, but it was certainly not in the "normal" TV version that played elsewhere (Fox, predominately, and later the Sci-Fi Channel).

Before you ask, yes that IS Philippe Mora painted into the mural on Stirba’s castle to the right of Sybil there. So there you have it. Everybody who worked on it says Howling II isn't the movie they made... but damned if the script isn't pretty much the movie we saw.

#Howling II #Stirba - Werewolf Bitch #Your Sister is a Werewolf #Robert Sarno #Christopher Lee #Sybil Danning #screenplay #script #writing #what the what? #Philippe Mora #Gary Brandner #Reb Brown #Annie McEnroe #Ferdy Mayne #Marsha Hunt

[dummerjan]

A while ago I was tagged by @die-schwanenkoenigin to list 10 songs I like with names in the title. Thank you. <3 Right now I am way too intense about a song with a name in the title, Major Tom - Peter Schilling. It's been playing on repeat all day long and it's slowly driving me mad. So I will try to break the cycle by forcing myself to listen to something else before I lose it entirely. 1. Cody's Theme - AJJ - It's the kind of song I want to take apart word for word, note for note to analyze out why it makes me feel so much. The angry child is quite relatable but the music itself is so energetic it makes me want to stomp around like Rumpelstiltskin but in a good way, not out of anger. (Which my parents called me when I was a child because I was perpetually angry and frequently stomping my foot in rage.)

2. Paula Ausente - Marta Gómez - She wrote it inspired by Isabel Allende's memoir by the same name. I used to cry my eyes out listening to this. I no longer do but the tenderness and beautiful wording remain just as moving. The first line of the book still makes me tear up though if I spend a second too long on it.

3. Katharina - AnnenMayKantereit - This song came out at just the right name and it even contains my name. As if it had been written for me.

4. Rebecca - Against Me! - This one just makes me feel good and energized. Perfect to scream along to. And queer!

5. Amie - Damien Rice - For years I have been wondering about the reference to Story of O since it appears both in this song and the album title itself is O. Maybe it's about going in a circle and not the book at all because I have never been able to find any interviews that address this. Either way, I love the song.

6. Für Marie Louise/Voor Marie Louise - Herman van Veen - I can't decide between the German and Dutch version so it's both. His voice is like home to me and his words of utmost comfort.

7. Антонина - Юрий Шевчук (ДДТ) (Antonina - Yuri Shevchuk (DDT)) - DDT has become one of my favourite bands, partially due to Yuri's voice. Russian, to me, is the most beautiful sounding language and hearing him sing evokes such a strong reaction I feel it in my chest. It's oppressive and too much and I can never get enough of it. I go a few weeks without listening to his voice and when I finally do again, I wonder how I could live without.

8. Báidín Fheilimí - Sinéad O'Connor - One of my favourite songs ever. There isn't much to the lyrics but she just knew how to make songs her own and give them her all. Anything her voice touches turns into the most beautiful music.

9. Laura Laurent - Bright Eyes - Perfect depression song! The verse "But you should never be embarrassed by your trouble with living" always hits home. As having trouble with living describes quite well how I've experienced a lot of my depression.

10. Paula - Zoé - One last song with my name. I like how my name sounds in Spanish, and I like the song and the album it's on. It's the quintessential autumn music for me for some reason and today I can already smell autumn in the evening air. This took forever – especially editing it down from my original ramblings – but I think the spell Major Tom has had on me is broken. I closed the tab, I think I am free now. As for tagging... @ilovetextingandscones @imminentinertia @biveganpoetbat @mvickym @hummingbooks and whoever else wants to, I am always curious about music and I love songs with names in them. No pressure obviously. :)

#meins #playing tag #Can I ever do a music tag with just listing songs and not going on tangents? #This is heavily cut down - sigh... #This prompted me to look up if there was finally a studio version of Anna by Harry Styles #I don't even listen to him anymore and it's been years but I need it! #I was also tempted to put Hey Paula by Paul & Paula on the list #which is not a good song but I do like to listen to it every few years when I remember it exists.

[librarycomic]

A Song of Fruitas by Margarita Engle, illustrated by Sara Placios. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2021. 9781534444898. https://www.powells.com/book/-9781534444898?partnerid=34778&p_bt

A little girl walks with her abuelo as he sings and sells frutas from his cart. Engle's author note explains that this Spanglish picture book celebrates los pregoneros, "singing vendors who walk the streets of Cuba describing the things they sell in poetic ways, to attract customers." And Palacios's illustrations make everything about Cuba's streets feel friendly. (There's a Spanish version of this book, too.)

One Day by Lee Juck illustrated by Kim Seung-youn. Translated from Korean by Asuka Minamoto, Lee Juck, and Dianne Chung. Enchanted Lion, 2021. 9781592703135. https://www.powells.com/book/-9781592703135?partnerid=34778&p_bt

A little boy misses his grandfather, a tailor, who has died. His grandmother won't stop feeding him. (My favorite parts of this book are the glimpses Kim Seung-youn provides of South Korea's past which seem almost entirely gone, with streets full of small shops and lines for fresh water to carry home.)

The Bird Coat by Inger Marie Kjølstadmyr & Øyvind Torseter. Translated from Norwegian by Kari Dickson. Enchanted Lion, 2022. 9781592703661. https://www.powells.com/book/-9781592703661?partnerid=34778&p_bt

A young boy getting a haircut is told the tale of Pierre, a popular tailor who lived in Paris. Pierre's dream was to fly, which no one had ever done at that point. So he sewed a coat with wings in order to try to become a human bird. (Warning: the story does not end as one would expect.) (It was this and Torseter's odd, detailed drawings made me love it.)

#bookreview #picturebooks #picturebookreview #fruit #grief #flying

[mod--soul]

I’m having language thoughts again after going back down the One Piece maelstrom ...

Anyway, languages in One Piece are weird and I have come across a few Fics that explore this, which is awesome, love them, if you have recommendations send them my way!

The world has such a confusing mix of languages that from a world building perspective it doesn't make sense at all as it seems like there actually are as many languages as we have (names with "English" surnames and "Japanese" first names, "Spanish", "French" or "English" attack names and so forth ... ), yet no one acknowledges it and there does not seem to be a language barrier between any of the characters? Yeah, I am mostly scraping by, by ignoring that part of the storytelling ...

Still, it’s interesting to look at a few things a bit closer, like the prime example for all of this combined: Trafalgar D. Water Law

Let’s look at his name first:

Even if Laws creation was pantsed, the idea to connect him to Dofy must have been there, as his name pretty much declares it. I mean, Trafalgar is a cape in Spain, the story Dofy's and Roci's names are based (you know: The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha) on is Spanish. It also is the place of the battle that resulted in the death (by musket) of one of the most famous Navy Admirals in British history (Admiral Nelson, you know, the one with the statue/column on Trafalgar Square in London?), hinting at Cora-san's demise

Besides that his first names don’t exactly make sense to any native speaker, do they? Though Water Law, the Law of the Water is quite a name for someone who can’t swim ... I know it’s Wateru Rou in the Romanized Japanese version, but let’s focus on the English version for this - by the way: Apparently the combination is also a play on “Waterloo” another decisive (the final even) battle during the Napoleonic wars. (Curiously enough the pirate “Edward Low” was an inspiration for that as well, though through this a last name became a first name)

In addition to that Law is supposed to be German in our world, which might mean that he actually has an entirely different name - if we go by the theory that different islands have different languages - but chose to “anglicize” it like his attacks (and tattoos).

Just had the urge to see if there were any old German dictionaries around with words that would make more sense than “Wasser Gesetz” or “Wasser Recht” (law as in “the right to do something”) - which I really hope no German speaking person would ever call their child ... though there is a child out there called Solarfred ... people are weird ...

Anyway! I found: Fenni/Venn (swamp, standing water) and ewa/ēwa (right/rules, but also eternity - with ēwin and ēwo more in the direction of eternal, which seems fitting considering the eternal youth operation) ...

So, whose to say Law’s name isn’t actually something along the lines of Venn Ēwo? (There is a German name “Ivo” that is a variation of Iwan/John, but also means “archer”)

Side Note: It is also interesting to see that the Heart Pirates are using the English word and not the Japanese one for their crews name.

His attacks:

While using nearly entirely English attack names, he “recently” developed two with grammatically questionable German names ... and I’m not sure how much of that is due to the translations.

One was the “Sterben Blade” he used when whirling his detached arm against Trebol. While “Sterben” is the correct translation for “Dying Blade” as, well, he was pretty much dying and didn’t know the limb was actually salvageable, it doesn’t make sense to a native speaker as “sterben” is the act of dying itself ... That would be “Todesklinge” “Death Blade” - which incidently would create a connection to his tattoos, but well ... sterben it was ...

The other was used in the fight against Big Mom, which was in one version translated as “Shock Wille” and another put it as “Shock Wave” making it “Shock Welle”, which makes much more sense - both language and attack-style-wise. (Wille means Will, Welle Wave), though complete German name would include a c in the Shock (Schock).

It’ll be interesting to see, if “he” comes up with more variations of this and if this means he gets more comfortable acknowledging his heritage?

Real world implication:

The whole “being German” thing also creates quite heavy subtext that I’m not sure if Oda put it there intentionally ... I mean, a part of the “German” population entirely annihilated for their wealth and constantly lied about in political propaganda? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who sees this for the potentially antisemitism reference it is, even if the “nun” in the backstory kind of contradicts it, but maybe that is just to make it less obvious ..

If you have any additional thoughts on this, feel free to add them!

#language #one piece #analysis #trafalgar law #trafalgar one piece #heart pirates

[astronicht]

🗣️

🗣️Talk about your favourite WIP

i swear to god i just typed out a WHOLE THING and hit post and tumblr ate it. Like i sometimes take forever to type these out so rip an hour of my life ANYWAY, ONCE MORE, ONLY NOW WITH MY COLD MEDICINE KICKING IN:

Amusingly the two closest to the top are both tk/nolpat and both set at least partly in south Wyoming; so it goes. My favorite of the week is a tk/nolpat Butch Cassidy AU (historical AU, I guess?)! I'm in it to write about being sweaty and gay and doing some train robbery, to be clear, but writing a Western has sort of grabbed me by the throat. Like, the West is a series of could-have-beens and almost-weres, and in many ways it's a tragedy (though framing it entirely as one doesn't do it much justice) -- the imperial landgrab wins, the mining barons and the railroad barons and their capitalist system win, even the Apache eventually have to surrender, land management is going to suck. But alongside it all there's this grasping sense of "what if, what if, what it" on both the individual and the macro scale. It's like this gasp where things could have been different, even if they weren't. Just-- idk, Billy the Kid had an Irish accent and spoke fluent Spanish and maybe a little Navajo and definitely could dance the fandango. And then there's the weirdly inescapable urge to romanticize it, like I'm getting close to in the above or in more traditional ways. FASCINATING as a challenge in a writing project.

However, all the naval-gazing of this now much longer (oops) version of the reply aside, pls do not expect any particularly effective historical commentary from this rpf fanfiction?? I am writing to put nolpat in a black felt hat and maybe some spurs and have tk sing early corrido ballads off-key. Also, in some idle research, I found out the Library of Congress has a recording of a 19th century cowboy cattle-call that includes the banger of a line "My horse is leg-weary and i’m awful tired… but if i let you get away, I’m sure to get fired” which, imo, is a fuckin gem.

#sending this again before i just keep talking

[vagueandominousvibes]

📚 for the music ask game?

📚 A song or album you could write a term paper on

Oh boy, ok, let me just—

There are so many amazing songs with fantastic lyrics and meaning, full of allusion and meaning and symbolism — 'Achilles Come Down' by Gang of Youths comes to mind, as does 'Spanish Train' by Chris de Burgh (and, frankly, his entire 'Moonfleet & Other Stories' album), 'Telegraph Road' by Dire Straits, 'Suzanne' by Leonard Cohen, 'All Is Found' by Kacey Musgraves ...

But the one I want to tell you about is 'Byssan Lull' (trans.: 'Galley of Riches'), a Swedish lullaby written by Evert Taube. I don't know a whole lot about music theory, so all I can say about it will be based on text and convention. The translation I'm using is this one, because although I understand most of it, I'm not proficient enough in Swedish to trust my own translation of it. If you want to listen to it, my first recommendation would be to get my dad to sing it (he's a bass singer in the local choir, and his rendition is absolutely gorgeous). My second recommendation is Helene Bøksle's cover, which I can't find on YouTube, but know is on Spotify.

'Byssan Lull' has a repetitive structure, where each verse starts with the line 'Byssan lull, koka kittelen full' (trans.: 'Byssan lull -- boil the full kettle'), and is then followed by a list of three. The first verse lists three wanderers, the second lists three winds, the third lists three sailing ships, the fourth lists three figures on a treasure chest, and the fifth lists three religious figures (which, interestingly, was changed in the version I grew up with, and is something I'll come back). From what I understand, the melody is based on the Swedish fiskeskärsmelodin, which is a folk melody associated with lullabies about fishing, rowing, sailing, etc. Taube is to have heard his mother sing this particular melody, and claims to have improvised the song on a summer evening at Skagen. We know that the song was dedicated to a partner Taube had, and that Skagen was where he met the mother of his daughter. 'Byssan Lull' was first published in 1919 alongside seven sjömansvisor (trans.: sailor songs, sea shanties).

I'm neither a sailor nor Swedish, so my brief analysis here may be lacking.

What I love about this song, however, is that it focuses on the seemingly small and forgotten things. First come the three wanderers, of which one is limping, one is blind, and one is implied to be mute. Do they travel individually or in a group? Is there anyone with them? We don't know. All we know is that they seem small, quiet, and far away.

Second come the three winds. One blows on 'the great ocean', one on 'little Skagerrak', and one 'far up on the gulf of Bothnia'. The winds blowing on the great ocean are grand and terrific, known primarily to sailors, and the image of a ship caught in towering waves is a dismal one indeed. Skagerrak is denoted as 'little', and 'the gulf of Bothnia' (Swedish: 'Bottniska viken') is the northernmost part of the Gulf of Bothnia, which in turn is the northernmost part of the Baltic Sea (between Sweden, Finland, and the Baltics). It's remote, removed, and liminal.

Third come the sailing ships. The first one, a barque, is a ship with three or more masts. The second one, a brig, has two masts. The third one 'has ragged sails'. This time the visual grandeur of the ships shrinks and fades into something worn and weary.

Fourth are the figures on the chest: our faith, our hope, red love. After all the melancholic images of the small, the lost, and the weary, this verse shows a turning point. Firstly, the language changes. It's no longer listing one, two, three people, natural phenomenons, or objects, but talks about 'our' faith and 'our' hope. Sure, there's definitely something Christian going on here (which is emphasised in the fifth verse), but there's also something infinitely warming in the way the language goes from external and excluding, to internal and including. Where the first three verses compared and contrasted, this fourth one brings everyone and everything together in 'red love'.

Fifth and final are the religious figures, introduced as 'three good things'. These are God, the Son, and the Virign Mary. What I find interesting about this is that, whereas Taube could have used the Trinity (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), he chose to focus on the actual family instead — the father, the son, and the mother. He even emphasises Mary by ending the verse and the song on her name, and I wonder if that is his way of paying tribute to his own mother, the partner he dedicated the song to, and the mother of his child. Aside from this, the focus on the family also works to bring the lullaby back to the idealised love of the nuclear family, once more placing the internal and including over the external and excluding.

The version of this I heard growing up, however, changed the fifth verse out with the following (first line preserved in Swedish, the rest transcribed in Norwegian):

Byssan lull, koka kittelen full, Der skinner tre stjerner på himmelen. Den ene er så blank, Den andre o så fin, Den tredje er månen den gule.

Lyrical translation:

Byssan lull, boil the kettle full, Three stars are aglow in the heavens. The first one is so bright, The second oh so fine, The third one is the moon so golden.

I don't know why it was changed. If dad heard it from his mother, I wouldn't be surprised if she fiddled with it — she was known for fiddling with lyrics and concocting new text to go with old melodies. I don't know that she was overtly religious, either, but I do know granddad did agricultural application of science in uni, so maybe there was a mutual appreciation for early astrophysics?

Who knows. The point I want to make about this is that 'Byssan Lull' is a gorgeous melancholic lullaby that, at least in my family, has survived through generations and been changed to reflect our culture. This, I think, is the nature of lullabies. Because we sing them to our children, and our children in turn sing them to their children, lullabies carry that inter-generational love and affection that, in some instances, is worn down by trauma and miscommunication. They remind us that we come from somewhere, but we can also change them to suit our individual situations. Even if the entire text is rewritten, the melody remains, and isn't that something beautiful to remember?

#kalh answers #kalh is on the loose

[ikatako38]

TPWCH Fun Facts Day 12

Ever wonder how TPWCH got its title? It’s a bit of a long story!

Like I said on Day 9, the original title was The Aftermath. That is, the aftermath of Octo Expansion. But the story began to become so much more than just “What consequences arose following Octo Expansion?” It still uses that as its foundation, but it’s also a completely new story, flashing back to the time before Octo Expansion and stretching on long after it.

Still, The Aftermath remained the working title until some time before February 1, 2022 when I traumatized a well-meaning redditor with this comment:

But where did I get that exact wording? For that, we’ll have to turn to these two amazing renditions of “Ebb and Flow”:

(Tumblr doesn’t let me use timestamp links, but the timestamp you’re looking for is 5:06!)

Be sure to see the lyrics of the second video in the description!

You’ll notice that the section of Ebb and Flow played in the first version overlaps with these lyrics from the second version:

Life’s all ready

You don’t have to stay here

This place will leave you alone, alone

No one’s gonna hate you

(It’s true, I promise you)

Hangin’ by the wall or dancin’ with me

Let’s focus on the line I bolded! You can probably see where I’m going with this! I’m pretty sure that Cement City meant the song to be about general motivational stuff than the canon of the game itself, but it got me thinking. “This place will leave you alone” sounds a lot like Eight’s fears about his future after Ascending, with “this place” referring to the Surface.

But in TPWCH, Eight wasn’t left alone. Instead, this happened:

“There’s no way I’m sending you off to your new apartment alone. You’re moving in with me. I don’t want to let you out of my sight.” (TPWCH, Ch. 1)

Believe it or not, this is the single most important line in the entire fic. If this interaction hadn’t happened, Eight would have gone off to live on his own. Being one of the least savvy Octolings due to his memory loss, Eight would have been one of the first Octolings captured by the IU. Meanwhile, There’s mental state would only continue to deteriorate, especially after he gets the news of Eight’s disappearance. Both our heroes are neutralized. The IU wins.

(Maybe I should write something for this AU at some point lol)

Instead, Three and Eight end up together and have a fighting chance! And whether they succeed is for us to find out through the rest of the story!

Especially with the “Ebb and Flow” theme of the song, I started thinking about the dual nature of Eight’s experience Ascending to the Surface. It was all new and terrifying for him, but he could still hold onto the hope of finding something better than his life before. The promise of the Promised Land became Three’s promise.

At some point, an alternate, more optimistic lyric popped into my head:

This place will leave you alone, alone

This place you’ll love and call home, call home

And that’s Three’s promise. That’s his goal throughout the entire story: to provide a home for Eight, whatever that entails. And that’s why he adopts Tsuku, too. He wants to provide a home for Eight and Tsuku because he felt like he never had one growing up. And very soon, his motivation is going to shift from creating that home to protecting it.

But then… what is this place, exactly? Where is this home that Three has built for Eight and Tsuku? Is it the Surface? Inkopolis? The apartment?

The apartment might work as an answer for now, and it does stand as a strong motif of home in the series. But it’s not going to hold up forever. Without spoiling anything, the most I can tell you is that we will be leaving the apartment at the end of Part 2. And we won’t be returning until the very end of the story.

So if not the apartment, where is this elusive place we’re calling home?

What if home isn’t a place at all?

Mi hogar eres tú

Oh, yes. You didn’t really think I was going to leave out the title of the Spanish version, did you? It’s been right under your noses this whole time, and only the most observant of you bilingual readers out there might have picked up on it! The Spanish title isn’t a translation at all, but rather a complement. It completes the title.

Este lugar que llamamos hogar - Mi hogar eres tú

This Place We Called Home - My Home is You

And if Eight’s “this place” is Three, and Three’s “this place” is Eight, it gives a whole new meaning to the line:

This place you’ll love and call home.

I’ll leave you all off on these two lines from Chapter 1. The first one’s Eight, and the second one is Three:

“I love here, you know.”

“Maybe someday you can call it home”

[Part 2 of this post out tomorrow!]

#this place we called home #tpwch fun facts